Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

But the bikes stayed on him, he wasn’t going to shake them as long as he stayed on the road.

Sam Driscoll came over his earbud, yelling at Jack to stand still a minute so he could get a GPS fix on the map long enough to find him in the narrow alleyways. But Jack was hardly in a position to comply; he just kept running, ducking under low wires that hung over a narrow pathway next to an office building. He made a hard left, then took a flight of concrete steps that ran down to a parking lot alongside an apartment complex. The bikes took the steps down as well, and they closed to within feet of their prey.

The crack of a gunshot and the flash of sparks on the ground at the bottom of the stairs told Ryan the men behind him had been given the all-clear to use lethal force by whoever the hell was controlling them. Of course Ryan had no idea why these men were trying to kill him. He and his mates had stumbled onto something big here in their tail of Colin Hazelton, but Jack didn’t have time to think about it now. He had to get out of the line of fire.

A satellite dish stuck out from a second-floor balcony at the bottom of the long flight of concrete steps. It was eye level in front of him now, but if Jack wanted to grab hold of it he’d have to make a running jump of nearly fifteen feet. Jack leapt off the stairs, using the momentum of his run, the kicking of his legs in the open air, and his high position on the staircase to give him as much distance as possible.

His hands just grasped the metal arm of the four-foot-wide satellite dish, his legs swung out below him from the momentum as if he were an Olympian on the horizontal bar.

The two riders on their bikes raced down the staircase below him. When they reached the parking lot at the bottom of the steps, they spun around on their front wheels to face him. Their tires screeched in unison.

Jack’s legs had gone horizontal to the ground during his swing on the sat dish’s arm, but he was unable to kick high enough to climb up on the balcony. Instead, he swung back down, tried to pull himself up to take hold of the metal balcony railing.

Suddenly the mount for the arm gave way under the strain of Ryan’s weight, tearing off from the balcony railing and breaking free, attached only by a thick band of wiring.

Jack dropped ten feet to the steps below. The satellite dish fell part of the way with him but was then caught by the wiring. Jack landed well initially but then tumbled forward and down the steps, ending up dazed on his back in the parking lot, just twenty feet from the bikers.

Jack looked up at the armed men. The bikers glanced at one another quickly, as if to marvel at their luck, then one man raised his pistol.

But before he could fire a bearded man dressed in black appeared on his right at a sprint, slamming into him like a linebacker making a tackle in the open field, and knocking both the rider from his bike and the gun from his hand.

The second helmeted man on the other Ducati spun his arm around toward the movement, but the bearded man—he was clearly a Westerner—swung his backpack off, hurled it overhand, and it connected with the biker’s firing arm, knocking it down. A gunshot ripped through the night, the entire parking lot exploded with an instant of light, and the biker fell back onto the pavement. He rolled quickly to his knees, but before he could stand the bearded man was on him, kicking him once in the visor of his helmet. The padded ballistic plastic absorbed the impact, but the blow torqued his neck back and he fell hard onto his back, slamming his head onto the unyielding surface of the parking lot and knocking him out cold.

—

Sam Driscoll was glad he was wearing his big Salomon boots this evening. Otherwise he was sure he would have broken his foot on the helmet of the prostrate man in front of him. Still, the top of his foot hurt like hell from the impact.

He’d been running full out for five minutes, with only a couple breaks to slow in order to check Ryan’s GPS locator on the map on his mobile phone. Now that both threats were down and Ryan was safe, Sam kicked his foot out to shake away the pain, picked his backpack up off the ground, and began looking for some zip ties to restrain the two attackers.

“Thanks,” Ryan said, still looking at the men on the ground.

Sam wasn’t reveling in his handiwork at all. Between gasps for breath he said, “Asshole shot my backpack. The camera and spotting scope belonged to the company, but the tablet computer in here is mine. Took a round right through the screen.” He looked to Ryan. “You gonna buy me another?”

Ryan had his hands on his knees; he was still heaving from the action of the past few minutes. He managed a laugh. “Sure, man. I owe you an iPad. If you want I’ll throw in—”

Ding Chavez’s voice came over the network now. “Clark? Hazelton is down and critical! I need wheels. Now!”

As one, both Jack and Sam hefted pistols off the pavement, left the two unconscious men where they lay, and leapt on the downed Ducatis.

Sirens filled the air in the distance as they began racing back to help Chavez.

—

Seconds earlier, Ding Chavez rounded the corner of a building at a full sprint only to find a large man crawling in the middle of a dark and otherwise empty two-lane street. He recognized the white shirt and bald head of Colin Hazelton, and he raced over to him. “Come on, Hazelton! Let’s move!”

Ding tried to help the man back to his feet, but Hazelton could not put weight on his legs.

Ding heard the hissing sound of air leaving the man’s lungs. The back of the ex–CIA officer’s shirt was soaked in blood. It took another second to find the wounds, but through tiny tears in the shirt his fingers felt the damaged flesh. Ding ripped Hazelton’s shirt open, exposing the man’s back and the pair of small, deep slit punctures below his shoulder blades.

“Shit,” Ding said. He knew all about deep injuries to the torso. Holding pressure on these two holes would do nothing for Hazelton, because he was bleeding internally, and his deflated lungs were far away from the surface wounds on the skin. They were behind the rib cage, spurting blood and functioning at ten percent efficiency at best. Ding needed to seal the holes and try to reinflate the lungs.

While still on his knees in the middle of the dark street, he reached into his backpack and retrieved a tiny black pouch. It wasn’t much, just a personal first-aid kit that each man on the team carried with him at all times. From it Ding pulled a pair of occlusive dressings, ripped them out of their packaging with his mouth. He used his forearm to wipe blood away from the sucking wounds, then he affixed a dressing over each hole. He pressed them firmly on the skin, knowing he needed to completely seal the breach before he could do anything else.

Chavez rolled the man onto his back. He saw Hazelton’s eyes were open and unfixed. Hurriedly he performed rescue breathing, more commonly known as mouth-to-mouth, trying to get enough lung function going to keep the man’s blood oxygenated.

He stopped only long enough to shout over the commo net. “Clark? Hazelton is down and critical! I need wheels. Now!”

Clark responded quickly. “I’m on the way!”

“Are you clear of the opposition?” Clark asked.

Ding started to reply in the affirmative, but he looked up when a single headlight appeared far up the street. It wasn’t moving, but he heard the revving engine of a finely tuned motorcycle.

“Negative,” he said. “At least one of the bikers is back. Probably trying to figure out how help showed up so fast.” Ding could run, but he didn’t want to leave Colin Hazelton here in the middle of the road. The man needed attention this second. Without someone to keep his heart beating he wasn’t going to make it more than a minute.