muzzle trained on him.
“You problem. But now I make you not.”
Nate urged him forward with a Bruce Lee-style wave of his fingers.
Instead of taking a swing at him, though, Janus charged, roaring. Nate dropped anyway, one hand hugging his chest to his knees, while the other searched for the gun. As his fingertips touched the suppressor, Janus’s massive thigh whacked into his shoulder.
Nate tumbled onto his side, the gun under him and digging into his ribcage. Janus stumbled over him, then twisted back around and lashed out with his foot. His instep connected with the rear of Nate’s skull, sending a shockwave of blinding pain through Nate’s head.
“What’s going on down here?” The voice came from behind them somewhere.
Nate forced his eyes open. A soldier was standing near the base of the stairs. Nate guessed he was one of the watchmen from the wall.
“Help me with him,” Janus said.
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
The moment Janus looked toward the other man, Nate wrapped his hand around the grip of the gun and yanked it out from under him. The soldier was the first in his sights. He pulled the trigger and his bullet hit center mass, neutralizing Janus’s would-be helper.
Janus twisted around and tried to grab the gun from him, turning Nate’s hand back and forth, but Nate wouldn’t let go. When the barrel started arcing toward Janus, Nate let off another shot.
Janus yelled angrily as a splotch of blood appeared in his upper right chest. He made another try for the gun, and Nate pulled the trigger again. This time the bullet only grazed the other man’s ear.
Someone was running down the hall from the direction of the cells. Janus looked over, shoved himself away from Nate, and sprinted for the stairs. Nate got off another shot just before Janus moved up out of sight, but missed.
As he started to stand, Quinn ran up and held out a hand. “Here.”
Back to his feet, Nate said, “He’s mine.”
CHAPTER 59
“I know where Harris is,” Daeng told Orlando.
They had just finished moving everyone to the room at the bottom of the wall. The three op agents were in pretty bad shape, but were at least able to walk. Peter, on the other hand, was still unconscious and had to be carried, though he was showing signs of coming out of it.
“What about Romero?” she asked.
“Him, I’m not sure, but he’s probably in the same area.”
She thought for a moment. Her concern was that while Quinn and Nate went after Janus, Harris and Romero might escape.
“I don’t want them to get away,” she said.
“No. That would not make me happy.”
She looked around the room. If the men they’d just rescued were civilians, no way would she and Daeng leave them. But they weren’t. They were professionals. Damaged professionals, yes, but that didn’t mean they’d forgotten how to fight.
She pointed at the dark-haired man sitting on the floor next to Peter. “You. Lanier, right?”
He looked over. “Yeah.”
“Think you can handle a gun?”
“I’m not dead, am I?” he said.
Quinn was five steps from the top, Nate just in front of him, when they heard Janus yell.
“Intruders inside! Coming up the stairs now. They have taken the prisoners! Someone call back men who are out searching!” Then, not quite as loudly as before, he said, “Give me your gun.”
At the top of the stairs were a stone room with two windows and an open doorway on either side. Through the far doorway, Quinn could see Janus and four other men on top of the wall. Janus had a rifle, taken, no doubt, from the now unarmed man standing behind him.
The rifle was trained on the stone room, and as soon as Quinn and Nate stepped out of the shadows of the staircase, it barked to life.
The bullet whizzed between the two of them, sending them both diving to the side. They crawled through the room to either edge of the outside door.
There were several more shots, the bullets smashing into the building, both outside the room and in.
Quinn motioned for Nate to stay where he was. He pointed at himself and the window that overlooked the beach. Next, he pointed at Nate and mimicked shooting.
Nate gave a nod.
“On my signal,” Quinn mouthed. He went over to the window and looked out. There wasn’t much of a ledge there, but it was enough.
It took him ten seconds to work his way along the outside of the room to the front corner. Once he was set, he gently tapped the wall with the butt of his gun.
From inside came the
Two were direct hits, sending a pair of soldiers tumbling backward over the wall. The third shot went wide, and the fourth hit Janus in the arm, knocking the rifle out of his hands. Instead of picking the gun back up, Janus lowered himself over the courtyard side of the wall.
While the man was now mostly out of sight, Quinn could still see one hand holding on to the top.
He took two shots at it, but both missed by a few inches.
A bullet hit the wall six inches from Quinn’s face, forcing him to focus on the remaining armed soldier. Make that two. The man that Janus had taken the rifle from had reclaimed it.
Quinn took a quick shot, readjusted his targeting point, and shot again. This time he got his man.
There was another shot from inside the room, and the remaining soldier went down.
Quinn looked back to where Janus had been hanging on, but the hand was gone.
He leaped around the corner of the room onto the walkway, and looked down into the courtyard. Janus wasn’t there, either.
“Where is he?” Nate said, coming up beside Quinn.
“Don’t know.”
Nate turned back toward the stairs and began to run.
Harris looked up from his desk.
Someone was yelling, the sound coming down the hallway and through the door to his room. With a spark of hope, he rose to his feet, thinking the search party had finally returned with Quinn. He started across the room, anticipating a knock on his door from a messenger sent to tell him just that.
But it wasn’t a knock he heard next. It was the boom of a rifle. As he jerked to a stop, another shot went off.
He glanced at the bag next to the door holding his money. Was it time?
Perhaps the watch had spotted Quinn beyond the wall and they were shooting at him. That could have been-
More gunfire. Not just from one weapon, but several.
