Gary Haynes - State Of Honour

Reaching the alley, he ducked down as a swath of bullets was fired from a HK, brick fragments raining down on him. But he’d managed to glimpse at least five cars, parked hood to trunk, although it’d been impossible to tell which one the secretary was in. The helicopter hovered low, the wash from the rotor blades creating a whirlwind of dust and litter. Kneeling in the open side door, a police commando scanned the ground through the day-scope on his G3 assault rifle. The helicopter is her only hope, Tom thought.

But then he noticed movement below it. A man had appeared on the edge of the flat roof opposite, the unmistakable shape of a Stinger perched on his right shoulder. Tom shouted out to the commando, his words lost in the cacophony of voices coming from behind him, and the wave of sirens from fast-approaching fire crews and ambulances. He aimed his SIG at the man, but there were a good three hundred metres between them. He let off four rounds, but realized there was nothing he could do. The effective range of the handgun was a third of that on a good day.

Stunned, he watched the flash at the tail end of the Stinger’s launch tube, the small engine falling away after about three metres, propelling the missile at a rate of over a thousand miles per hour. Using infrared to lock onto the heat in the helicopter’s exhaust, the missile impacted the target with devastating precision. The explosion created a fireball and caused the rotor blades to buckle and the windshields to shatter. As the helicopter lost altitude, zigzagging like a massive kite, a second explosion occurred as the fuel ignited. It fell the remainder of the distance to the ground horizontally, black smoke spewing from the tangled metal. When it hit the asphalt, the rotor blades snapped off and splintered, sending a flurry of lethal fragments through the air.

Tom gritted his teeth and ran forward, ducking down as he reached the alley entrance. But the men had disappeared and the cars, half on the narrow sidewalk under awnings and store overhangs, sped away, each one taking a different exit along the rutted track.

He realized he had one option left open to him.

Tom turned towards the entrance of the run-down apartment block where the man had fired the Stinger. If he could capture him alive, it might be a start. He pressed the PTT button, waited for the static to clear, and reported his position, asking for back-up. He raced across the road, jumping over chunks of jagged metal and smouldering craters, oblivious now to the pepper-like stinking still in his dark, streaming eyes.

As he got to the door of the building he saw that the security system was one step up from a Yale lock. Phlegm rose in his throat, impeding his breathing. He bent over and spat it out, the taste in his mouth like pure acid. He ejected the clip from his SIG, took a fresh one from the pouch on his belt. Slipping it in, he chambered a round in what appeared to be one smooth action. Deftly.

He shielded his eyes with one hand and shot open the entrance door, the rapid impact of the rounds acting like a ripsaw, the spent cases spinning to his right and clanking on the glass-ridden floor. He ducked in, his pulse racing, his shirt sticking to his aching body. There was an elevator directly in front, a concrete staircase to the right. He decided to take the stairs.

He reached the top in twenty seconds. A slick of sweat covered his ribboned forehead, and he was breathing heavily, the debilitating combination of tear gas, inhaled smoke and the build-up of lactic acid taking its toll. He hadn’t met anyone on the way up, but had heard muted shouts and cries from the apartments he’d passed. There was a solid wooden door leading to the flat roof, but it was padlocked. You don’t shoot padlocks with a round—the ricochet could kill you, he’d told a rookie agent once. It was a good rule. One he wasn’t about to discount now.

He spun around, saw a red firefighter’s axe in a metal case on the breeze-block wall. Below it, a regular fire extinguisher and a couple of gas canisters. He used the butt of the SIG as a hammer on the Plexiglas cover. After the first hit, the plastic broke, and he jerked out the axe from its perch. He holstered his weapon, and held the axe firmly in both hands. He stood to the side of the door, and began hacking at the wood, knocking out the lock with the splintering chunks.

Dropping the axe, he drew his SIG. He kicked open the door, but ducked down behind the wall immediately afterwards. It was a sound move. A burst of automatic rounds tore into the doorframe and lintel, and peppered the wall to the rear. He felt blood run down his face, but felt no pain save for something akin to a paper cut. He brushed his forehead, pulled out a large splinter.

He glanced around the door, seeing a portion of the ill-kempt rooftop: an array of rusted TV aerials, mouldy tarps, and a weather-beaten awning hung over plastic chairs. There was no visible sign of the shooter. He moved back, picked up one of the canisters, and held it before him. Turning, he launched it into the centre of the rooftop.

As he sank down against the wall a second burst was unleashed. But he’d figured out the trajectory of the bullets. Smarting, he aimed his SIG around the doorway at the canister. Fired. The round pierced the metal and a huge mushroom of white smoke spewed out, the safety valve preventing it from exploding into a thousand lethal shards as he’d hoped it would. He stepped back, grabbed the axe and flung it, so that it somersaulted handle over blade to the left.

As it clattered to the concrete floor he darted out from the wall, using the smoke as cover. He dived into a forward roll to the right. Springing up into a crouch position, he glimpsed a man in black fatigues and a gas mask, holding a MAC-10 machine pistol: a stubby weapon fitted with a suppressor and a holographic sight. Just as the smoke was thinning Tom shot him twice in the legs, guessing he was wearing ballistic plates. The pistol fell from his victim’s hands. He ran over.

The man was still, save for his twitching left leg. Tom didn’t have the time to frisk him, the Stinger being nowhere in sight. He spoke into his mic, reporting his position and saying that one terrorist was down. Badly wounded.

He checked behind a pile of bricks, and noticed the curved iron handrails of a fire escape on the rear wall about four metres away. He sprinted over, saw a man descending three-quarters of the way down, the Stinger strapped to his back. The ground-to-air weapon weighed a mere sixteen kilograms, but it could hit anything flying below four-thousand metres. The helicopter had been hovering at less than thirty and hadn’t stood a chance.

The fire escape was rusted and unstable, the steps grating against the concrete under the weight of the black-clad terrorist. But at least it reached all the way to the side road beneath, which was the reason the access door was locked, Tom guessed.

If the man had a handgun, Tom knew he would be ridiculously vulnerable. But if he used his SIG to shoot him from above, he wouldn’t be any further forward. Unless he just winged him, and the man didn’t die from the fall. Concluding that that was far too risky, Tom spoke into his mic and asked for back-up again, said that the area should be cordoned off. The short reply crackled over the radio: “With what?” He figured all the nearby local resources were still dealing with the devastation outside the hospital.

He eased over the ledge, his right foot hitting the third step. He saw the man look up, a tinted gas mask and woollen skullcap covering his face and head. The man half slid down the remainder of the steps, hitting the ground with a crunch of his boots. Tom hurtled after him, almost losing his balance twice, the fire escape threatening to bust loose from the wall and either swing under his weight or collapse backwards. Conscious that the man could escape, he placed his feet outside the steps. He plummeted the last five metres, crouching into a parachute roll at the bottom.