Alex Archer - Mystic Warrior

“No. Twelve of us are a small army.” Sabre reached to the back of the vehicle and Dyson slid an M4A1 into his hands.

How could Krauzer have gotten involved in the Merovingian legends?

8

“Give me an update.” Ligier de Cerceau skidded to a stop at the doorway to the stairwell his quarry had entered. One of his men lay across the doorway threshold, holding the door partially open. Bullet holes showed in the glass viewing section and shards lay scattered in the hallway, telling him at once the bullets had come from within.

“We don’t have access to the security cameras, Colonel,” Gerard Malouel said. He’d remained with the vehicle out in the parking lot so he could monitor the insertion and capture. “I’ve got two helicopters in the air.”

As he leaned against the wall near the stairwell doorway, de Cerceau heard the drumbeat of one of the helicopters’ rotors overhead.

“They’re searching the building, lighting it up with spotlights,” Gerard went on. “One of them is switching over to thermographic systems. We should know more in another minute or two.”

“Have the police been alerted?” De Cerceau hadn’t detected any alarms that had been set off inside the building, but there could be a silent warning system.

“Affirmative. They’re en route.”

De Cerceau cursed, knowing they were running out of time. “If we’re not done here soon, we’ll need to slow them down.”

“We’re already preparing for that. This is going to get messy.” Gerard’s tone remained neutral, but he was unhappy. He wouldn’t have mentioned the potential problem if he hadn’t been disconcerted.

De Cerceau gazed down at the dead man in the doorway. “It’s already gotten messy. We’ve got four dead and one wounded. Almost half the team down.” Because of one lone woman. That was something he couldn’t believe. The first man might have been careless in approaching the people they were after, and perhaps even the second man. But there was no way this many would have been lost through carelessness. Reading the combat situations they’d been engaged in, de Cerceau knew that someone with Krauzer was used to military operations. He cursed.

“Yes, sir.”

Two men closed on de Cerceau’s position, stepped into position against the wall and waited for his orders. The remaining three gunmen held the other end of the building and were advancing up the stairwell there.

Holding the machine pistol tight against his shoulder and aiming it up the stairs, de Cerceau stepped across the dead man and into the stairwell. The enclosed space trapped the stench of death and cordite. He held his position and listened.

Farther up the stairwell, footsteps and quiet voices echoed for just a moment. Then a closing door shut them away. De Cerceau headed up the stairs with the machine pistol leading the way. The dead man behind him had been caught unaware. De Cerceau didn’t intend for that to happen to him. He took the stairs two at a time, his forefinger resting on his weapon’s trigger.

* * *

AS SOON AS he stepped through the stairwell doorway, Krauzer took off down the hallway to the left. The lights came on just behind him as the automatic systems cut in, making him look as if he was leading the charge against the darkness.

Annja kept pace with Orta. “What rooms are this way?” She slid a fresh magazine into the machine pistol.

“Classrooms.” Orta sounded out of breath. He was in good shape, but adrenaline had to be wreaking havoc on him. “Alcoves for the graduate assistants. A research archive. The graduate dean’s office.”

“The research archive sounds big enough to hide in.” She matched Orta stride for stride as they followed Krauzer down the hallway. Glancing at the windows, she realized that the lights reflected from the large windows along the hallway made seeing outside difficult.

Still, she was able to spot the helicopter’s red running lights as it dropped to hover just outside the building. Shoving a leg out, Annja tripped Orta and grabbed his shirtsleeve, pulling him to the ground hard and falling on top of him. As they skidded along the marble tiles, a burst of heavy machine-gun fire chewed through the windows in a ragged line.

Annja threw her arm over her head to protect herself. The helicopter’s whirling rotor noise suddenly rose to a deafening roar inside the hallway.

“Stay down,” she told Orta as she slithered along the hallway through the spray of broken glass. Once she was past the line of destruction, she rose to her knees, pointed the machine pistol at the helicopter’s nose and pulled the trigger.

Bullets tore through the window, blowing shards outside the building. The light made it impossible for her to see where the rounds struck the helicopter, but she thought she saw a jagged line stitched along the pilot’s door.

The helicopter fell away, dodging to put distance between itself and the building. The machine gunner in the cargo area fired, trying to vector in on Annja’s position, but the helicopter’s sudden movement jerked the gunman’s aim off and tracers stabbed into the night.

Shaking the broken glass from her clothes as best as she could, Annja rose to a crouched position and returned to Orta’s side. “Let’s go.”

He pushed himself up on trembling arms and looked at her.

“The archives,” Annja reminded him. “Let’s go there.”

Numbly, Orta nodded, pointed down the hallway and stumbled in that direction.

Annja followed him and only then realized she’d lost track of Krauzer. She struggled to make sense of the sheer magnitude of the assault made by their attackers and what they thought they had to gain by their efforts. She had no answers.

* * *

SABRE STARED UP at the two helicopters circling the USC campus like buzzards eyeing roadkill. “Are those birds ours?”

“Negative.” Gerard pulled on the wheel and guided them over the low curb separating the parking area from the street. The Mercedes’s large wheels climbed the curb easily and the high-tuned suspension smoothed out the bump.

Green machine-gun tracers flitted from the helicopter closest to the building while the second craft circled at a wider radius.

“Who are these people?” Sabre asked.

“Professionals.” Gerard scowled through the windshield. “ Messy professionals. This isn’t how you contain a situation. Law enforcement agencies are going to be all over this. The clock’s working against us now.”

Sabre silently agreed but knew that was both a positive and a negative. Police were doubtless on their way now, which took away time from whoever was after Krauzer, but that knowledge was going to make those men tracking Krauzer take even bigger risks.

“Police.” Dyson leaned forward and pointed to the right. “On our two o’clock.”

Glancing to the right, Sabre watched as a black-and-white patrol car, light bar flashing red and blue, pulled into the campus parking area. While it was still in motion, a rocket streaked across seventy yards and impacted against the patrol car’s grille.

The warhead exploded and knocked the patrol car’s front end up like a boxer taking an uppercut to the chin. The engine hood sprang open and a ball of fire engulfed the vehicle, spreading quickly.

Sabre doubted the driver had survived the immediate detonation, and when the flames leaped into the patrol car’s interior and the officer didn’t try to escape, he was certain of it.

Meszoly cursed and launched into evasive action, yanking on the steering wheel, almost avoiding the second rocket that sped toward them. Instead of catching the SUV dead center as the shooter had intended, the warhead slammed into the Mercedes’s right rear quarter panel.

Flames wreathed the rear of the SUV and the force knocked the vehicle over onto its left side. Heat filled the interior at once as Sabre jerked helplessly in the five-contact seat belt harness. The air bag blew out and slammed into his chest like a giant fist. The stench of cordite filled the air, and the detonation rang against his ears and stole part of his hearing. He tasted blood in his mouth.