James Axler – Stoneface

“Not yet. You?”

“Rough estimate. I think there’s about fifteen of the opposition, not counting any you’ve put down.”

“As far as I know,” Ryan said into the mouthpiece, “I’ve accounted for two.”

A man jumped from cover a dozen yards to his left, slapping the stock of a rifle to his shoulder. He was dead on his feet, with a skull smashed into three pieces, before he could squeeze the trigger. A single shot from the SIG-Sauer had drilled him through the forehead and blown out the back of his cranium in a welter of brain matter and bone chips. He went down without an outcry.

“Three,” Ryan said. “What’s your score?”

“Two definites, two maybes.” There was a pause, and Ryan heard the crack of the ZKR. Her voice filtered into his ear again, tense and worried. “Make that three definites. Listen, we’re already pinned down, and pretty soon we’ll be outflanked and outgunned. I think we should split up.”

Ryan didn’t answer for a long moment. Mildred’s expertise was crucial to the successful completion of their mission. It was a tough call to make, but each of them had to take fundamentally the same chancesboth were important, and therefore both were almost equally unimportant, in terms of the risks to be faced by separating. It was the only way they really had a chance.

“Ryan?” Mildred’s voice was urgent.

“Okay,” he said. “We split up. We can stay in contact with the radios. I’ll draw them away from you in a very flashy way.”

“I’ll give you covering fire if I can.”

“No. Don’t draw any more attention than necessary. Just wait for my next signal.”

“Acknowledged,” she replied tersely.

One thing Ryan knew better than anyone else was how to conduct a running gunfight. He leaped from cover, sparing one split second to survey his surroundings, then he raced through the miniature Washington, D.C., in a long-legged, yard-eating lope. He jumped over boulevards, pounded past the Capitol rotunda and sprang over the Potomac in a single bound. Voices yelled to his right. He spied four men, less than fifteen feet away, rising from cover, fumbling to bring their blasters to bear, faces registering astonishment.

Ryan swept them with a long burst from the Walther. One took several 9 mm hollowpoints in the face and throat, the others receiving theirs in the guts, their entrails shredding and splitting.

He didn’t slow his pace, but he swerved back and forth, running in a broken-field fashion, trying to keep buildings at his back and sides at all times. Staccato pops filled the air, and bullets blasted chips of brick and masonry from the structures all around him. Flakes of stone and fragments of concrete stung the back of his neck and the left side of his face.

A dark-haired man ran to intercept him, a long-barreled revolver held in both hands. He assumed a two-handed combat stance, and with smooth, practiced motions drew a bead on Ryan.

The SIG-Sauer spit flame and noise, and three wads of lead centerpunched the man in the lower body. He staggered backward, dropping the blaster, arms windmilling as he tried to maintain his balance.

Another fusillade of shots chewed up the paint job of a building only a few feet in front of Ryan. Without aiming, he pointed the Walther MPL behind him and fired a strafing burst.

He felt a shock of impact in the muscle of his right shoulder, and he spun completely off his feet. His head reversed position with his boots and his back thudded heavily onto the floor with such force he couldn’t see or breathe for agonizingly long seconds.

He choked back the burning bile sliding up his throat, and he bit his tongue against the pain. Rolling over onto his left side, gulping the cold air, he looked behind him, in the direction from which the shot had come.

The man who had shot him confidently exposed himself to check the quality of his marksmanship. The blaster looked like a Ruger rifle. Ryan planted two slugs from the SIG-Sauer in the man’s dingy white shirtfront. He went down with a great yelp of pain and astonishment. Someone pulled him back behind the corner of a flat-roofed building.