Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (9 page)

Bryce unclipped his handheld radio unit and lifted it to his mouth.
 

“Attention all detail. We have a breach. Single male suspect appears to be entering the main hallway of Building ‘E’. Remain on high alert and await further instructions, out.” With his other hand, Bryce lifted his pistol from its holster.

If the brothers can just get to the room, I can reach them on their handsets,
he thought.
I can keep watch until they’re in the room, call for backup, and approach the intruder myself.

As the black-clad man slowly crept forward, keeping to the shadows, Bryce reconsidered. Wayne and Jeff wouldn’t make it to their room before the intruder reached the doors; there was no time to wait. Bryce needed to get control of the situation right now. He wasn't sure who this guy was, but he certainly wasn’t dressed for a business meeting. 

With a flimsy outline of a plan — overtake the intruder first, ask questions second — Bryce stood and quickly plotted his route down the hill. Before he could take a step forward, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Someone was behind him. 

Turning on a heel, he swirled his body around and down, planning to land prone, gun drawn and forward. As he dropped, something hit him on the left side of his neck, causing his mind to jumble. His body went weak as he fell forward, but he could just make out a figure in front of him. 

Black cargo pants, military combat boots. Voices above him, speaking another language.
Russian?
The figure moved closer, and bent down to retrieve something from the ground. Bryce hadn't realized he’d dropped his pistol when he was struck. The figure straightened, and Bryce drifted into unconsciousness onto the grass. 

CHAPTER 12

WAYNE AND JEFF HAD BEEN inside the building for barely two seconds when the two security officers on duty rushed past. Behar was already dripping in sweat and heaving as he waddled by. “Captain Reynolds issued an early alert order,” Bensen called in passing. "Must be some kind of drill; we haven't heard any update," he finished. 

The brothers picked up the pace toward their shared room; their ongoing argument about which lady at the bar was obviously single suddenly unimportant. "You think there's something going on?" Jeff asked his older brother. 

"No idea, seemed pretty quiet out there tonight.”

"Yeah - let’s just grab our gear; we can change later if we need to."

As they entered their room they could hear scuffling sounds in the hall ahead, around the corner to their left.

They both froze at the sudden unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
 

"What the hell?" asked Wayne.

"Watch my back,” Jeff said, tossing Wayne’s gear toward him. “I’ll see if I can get a look around the corner.” He grabbed his handgun and radio and hustled back into the hall with his brother close behind.

At the corner Jeff crouched, peering carefully around the corner.

A shot from somewhere down the hall narrowly missed his unprotected head. 

"Shit!" he yelled, ducking back undercover. 

Wayne grabbed him by the collar. “Let’s go around — we can block their exit from the north wing!”

Jeff followed his brother the other direction, crouch-running in the dimly lit hall. With no sounds from behind them, they focused their attention forward, expecting a threat at any moment. 

This building housed the scientists' quarters — mostly dormitory-style rooms along the exterior wall. The rooms on both floors opened onto the inner perimeter hall, with a single large amphitheater and meeting hall taking up the center of the structure. The brothers intended to intercept the shooters — whoever they were — by cutting off their escape route either through the theater or around the hallway. 

The theater entrance was directly in front of the main doors. Wayne slowed and took up a position outside the theater doors, careful to stay out of the light coming through the main entrance. He signaled for Jeff to stay put.
 

Jeff turned, automatically taking up the rear guard. "If they come through the theater, they'll have a straight shot through the main doors," Wayne whispered almost inaudibly. "Stay here and don’t let ‘em get past you. I'll move up to the next corner and see if they're trying to get around the back way.” Without waiting for a reply, Wayne ran forward, hugging the wall. He paused for a second at the corner, peered around it, then disappeared from Jeff's view. 

Wayne could see the far end of the hall clearly. Two men — soldiers from their looks — were standing against the wall, looking the other way. At first they didn’t see him coming toward them at a determined trot, but one of them eventually caught the movement in his peripheral vision. With a swift turn, the soldier lifted his assault rifle to his eye — just as his head disappeared in a cloud of blood as Wayne’s hollow point impacted the bridge of his nose.

Wayne’s Smith & Wesson Compact 9mm wasn't silenced, and in the closed-in hallway the shot was almost deafening. Without slowing, he targeted the second man — now fumbling around, trying to bring his weapon to bear — and fired two more shots, putting the man down. As he fell, Wayne continued his quick jog, only slowing down as he reached the bodies and the next corner. As he dropped to one knee to check for vital signs and move the weapons out of reach, Jeff ran up, clearly making sure his brother hadn't been caught alone in a gunfight. Taking stock of the situation, Jeff breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s get to work,” Jeff said, almost solemnly. His entire demeanor had changed completely. Five minutes earlier, he had been a fun-loving, carefree kid brother. Now Wayne saw Jeff’s face take on a steely resolve; the quietly angry look of a cowboy who’d just learned that there was a trespasser on his land. Wayne knew from experience that in situations like this it was best to point him in the right direction and stay the hell out of the way.
 

They looked around the next corner, expecting an immediate onslaught of gunfire. Instead, there was almost complete silence as they cautiously moved ahead. The only sound was a faint beeping. They both pinpointed the source at the same time: About 200 feet ahead on the left wall, was a tiny blinking red light — each pulse corresponding to a muted beep.

“
Get back!”
Jeff yelled, almost lifting Wayne off his feet as he turned to get away. They ran together toward the safety of the corner wall, both men stretching out into a full sprint…
 

The explosion lifted them off the floor and flung them toward the two dead soldiers. A shockwave and billowing heat enveloped them, close enough to choke them with scathing, burning smoke, but not close enough to injure them. Assuming that whoever had set the charge had planned it as an escape route, the brothers scrambled to their feet and charged back through the smoke, determined not to give the intruders any room for escape.

Two soldiers burst through the rear theater doors ahead of them, the first dropped instantly by Jeff’s 9mm. Wayne’s shot missed the second man, giving the soldier enough time to fire a wild round toward them before leaping out the newly formed smoldering exit.
 

They dropped behind an overturned table to reload. Before they finished, a flashbang grenade popped to their right — thrown out the door by someone still within the theater — and their world went white.
 

Jeff, being closest to the grenade, was knocked out of commission; temporarily blinded. Wayne fared slightly better, momentarily deafened and seeing double, but able to see nonetheless. He ensured that Jeff’s arms and legs were out of the line of oncoming fire and rolled sideways into the theater.
 

Luckily, there was no one near the door as Wayne entered — no one jumped out to finish him off. Regaining his footing, he shook off the flash grenade’s effects, checked left, right, and center, and ducked behind a row of seats. He looked toward the stage. A red curtain was pulled across it, but a section of it was billowing softly. He could see a light behind the curtain interrupted by moving shadows. Someone was on the stage.
 

Wayne moved quietly toward the side aisle leading to the stage right entrance, but he didn’t get far. There was a loud crash from behind the closed door, prompting him to duck down behind another row of seats.

A man burst through the backstage door, fuming. He was followed by two more soldiers, and they were dragging along a younger man, probably in his mid-twenties.

“I thought there was to be little resistance!” the man in the lead shouted to no one in particular.
 

“Sir, we expected a light security detail, and our intel indicated there would be no more than three guards on duty at any time,” one of the soldiers said. The men were moving swiftly toward the exit, directly across from where Wayne now lay concealed on the floor. If they continued through the doors, they’d see him for sure — the seats would not keep him hidden as they walked past.

“I don’t care if they had a small army of attack dogs — this was supposed to be a covert mission! In and out — but then you shot that scientist and woke up the entire complex!”
 

Wayne took it all in as the group closed in on his position. If he could swing around, somehow get a straight shot from under the chairs, he might be able to take out the leader — possibly give him a fighting chance.
 

He tried to shift his position, but the row just wasn’t wide enough for him to do it without standing up.
Oh well,
he thought. He’d have to make a stand from here, lying on the ground and firing underneath the chairs at their feet. He didn’t want to take the chance of their finding Jeff sprawled out helpless in the hall.
 

He waited until they were three steps away from the exit and only two away from spotting him. Wayne was good with a rifle — damn good — but firing a handgun, laying on his side, through two rows of chairs at a moving target — well, the closer, the better.
 

He fired off two shots in rapid succession — missing the lead man’s foot but shattering the man’s shin. The soldier crumpled to the ground, screaming and clutching his leg.

The leader and his remaining backup raised their weapons and looked for the source of the shots. Wayne was way ahead of them. They were reacting to him, and he wanted to keep it that way. Another shot, and the leader flew backwards against the wall. The other soldier grabbed the unarmed younger man’s arm with one hand and fired two quick shots in Wayne’s general direction. Not wanting to let the young man go, he dropped his gun, snatched a round object from his belt, and flung it toward Wayne.

Grenade.
Not a flashbang, but a live military-issue fragmentation grenade. Time slowed down as Wayne took a fraction of a second to evaluate his options:

Run or crawl away — running would leave him vulnerable from the waist up, and crawling was too slow — he had no time to get away.
 

Throw the grenade toward the exit — he might have a chance at injuring the last soldier or at least cutting off his escape route, but he also had a good chance of hurting his brother or the young hostage.

Wayne grabbed the grenade with his left hand, chancing the brief exposure to a sitting position, and threw it as hard as he could over his head onto the stage. It rolled under the curtain and out of sight backstage. Wayne crawled as fast as possible toward the exit as the other two men ran… and
—
for the second time in five minutes, his body was rocked by an explosive blast.

The fireball that erupted from the stage obliterated the raised platform and engulfed the walls next to it, but the blast was far enough away that the only immediate effect on Wayne was a renewed ringing in his ears. He lurched to his feet and ran for the door in pursuit of the two men.

CHAPTER 13

JEFF GROANED AND SAT UP. Had he been unconscious? The blast from the flash grenade had rattled his brain, and it took him a minute to clear his mind. He heard gunshots in the theater, but he couldn’t get to his feet yet. He waited by the table for a moment, shaking his head and getting his equilibrium.
Where was Wayne?

After a few seconds, two men ran from the theater, the younger one being dragged along by one of the intruders. Jeff didn’t recognize either man, but he knew what he had to do. He reached for his gun, but found only the cold, empty floor.
Where was it?
He guessed that it had been knocked from his hand by the flashbang…
 

Another explosion went off in the theater, sounding like a thunderclap.

At the same time, the younger man stumbled, dragging his captor down with him. Jeff saw his chance.
 

I may not have a gun, but I can sure make this asshole’s escape a little more difficult.

Jeff’s high-school football coach would have been proud. The tackle was hard, fast, and incredibly effective. Jeff placed the crown of his head right in the soft part of the soldier’s gut, driving forward with his legs. Though shorter and more slightly built, Jeff took down the soldier in a tumbling heap that left them intertwined, rolling on the floor. Before the man could react, Jeff landed a devastating punch between the man’s eyes — a blow strong enough to shock a bull into motion back on his parent’s ranch. He followed with a few quick jabs to the man’s side — aiming for his liver. The sudden attack only kept the man off balance for a moment. Obviously trained to fight, he quickly regained his composure and easily started slipping Jeff’s punches.

Jeff tried to step up his barrage, but he was still feeling the effects of the flashbang and couldn’t get the upper hand. Suddenly, the soldier shot a fist hard into Jeff’s face. Jeff heard his own jaw crack. He instinctively raised his guard against the next blow, but the soldier went to his gut instead. The air left his body, and it was all he could do to reach up and try to wrap his arms around the larger man, trying to get him into a wrestler’s hold. He held fast, but the larger man was still on his feet and fully in control. With a swift elbow to the head, he dislodged Jeff from his body and fled through the hole in the wall.