A gun will get you into trouble, but a grenade can get you out

Philip had been waiting for a fifty to tear through the trees or SWAT to come speeding into the lot for the past five minutes. The fire alarm wailed out the windows and sirens echoed from somewhere out of sight. He controlled his breath and tried to guide his body away from an adrenaline dump he knew would be strong enough to leave him lying on the concrete.

He imagined EP sending a few of her drones to “deal with the sniper”. They would probably get taken out before they got within a hundred yards of him. Then the boys in the lobby would radio in Philip’s location and he would be dead very soon. He was ready for it. It was the waiting that was unbearable.

“Snipers down,” EP said calmly in his ear.

“You sure?” he said. There was no reply. He stood there like an idiot for a moment then got up.

“All right. Get ready to pack it up and head home.”

He took the grenade out of his pocket, pulled the pin, and visualized the distance to the lobby. He saw the grenade land just below the loft and held the vision as he stepped out from the car and threw it over his head. Rounds snapped in the air and he dropped down. Someone in the lobby yelled. After a brief breathless silence, the roar of the grenade was like an old friend cheering him on.

With the blast still echoing across the lot, he moved in a low run up the steps and went through the bare frame of the right waiting area. The floor was covered in window glass, shell casings, fragments of furniture, and one long blood trail. The only guard in sight was a corpse sprawled behind an overturned chair, but another one somewhere else was screaming.

Boots struck marble to his left. He stepped up to a support beam and fired at the two guards coming out from the elevator lobby. In less than a second, they fell dead. Philip had a new gash in his forearm and most of his right ear was gone.

Two guards stomped up on the loft. He pivoted to the right around the support beam, putting it between him and the guard on the left, and dropped to a low crouch as rounds cracked over his head. He shot the one on the right twice below the vest, and the guard collapsed over the edge and crashed into the fractured front desk. The other guard put five rounds in the beam as Philip stepped around it and shot him in the waist. Another bullet tore through Philip’s shoulder and sprayed him in the face with his blood. He put one last round through the guard’s neck as he dropped.

There was a brief silence. The fire alarm just ambiance now. Blood pounded in his ears, the one sound the earbuds couldn’t do shit about. He marched across the lobby toward the exterior metal staircase that led from the waiting area to the loft. Blood streamed down his face from a gash in the top of his head, but he didn’t feel the wound. Somewhere out of sight, footsteps crinkled on glass.

Celeste had gone out a window and pulled herself onto the roof. A news chopper circled in the sky. Cars glittered on the highway like a river of metal. Bumper to bumper traffic. Dead still. The overcast was starting to break above the horizon, and it was going to be a lovely afternoon. For some people.

Stuck in the crevice between the chimney and the roof was a very big gun.

“Oh god, you know I don’t know how to use that!”

“I’ll walk you through it,” said EP.

She did, and after being instructed how to shoulder the rifle, brace herself for the recoil, and a million other things, Celeste had it aimed at the office building across the highway. Something flashed at the base of the building and cracked and boomed like a firework. She would have jumped, but she was too scared to move.

“Ok, I need you to look at the fourth floor. Can you see it?” EP said.

Celeste counted up from the lobby.

“Yes.”

“Okay, do you see those men standing next to the stairwell?”

“No.”

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“What? Right next to the stairwell!”

“I see a blob, kind of.”

EP flipped through her camera feeds. The glass inside wall of the conference room had a frosted bar across it six feet high.

“Ok, put the crosshairs on the center of that blob. When I tell you, squeeze the trigger, slowly.”

Celeste tried to cheer herself up.

If I get him, they’ll have to give me half. Probably more than half! And if I fuck up, they’ll never make me do anything like this again.

“Now!”

The gun was the loudest thing Celeste had ever heard. She twisted from the recoil, lost her footing, and slid off the roof. Her feet slipped from under her as she dropped onto the second-story roof and rolled off the side. After a screaming fall and an instinctive para roll on the grass, she was on her side on the lawn, right next to the sniper’s corpse. Her ass felt like it had been stabbed and her shoulder was burning from the fall or the recoil or both. When everything settled, she looked up to see two men, civilians, one with a Glock and one with an AR, aiming at her and looking surprised.

“It’s a girl.”

“Are you Mossad?”

She muttered half a word before a scraping on the roof cut her off. She turned around just in time to see the rifle land on its stock a few feet away. She squeaked in surprise and the men stepped back.

“What happened?!” EP said in her ear.

“I fell.” Her voice cracked.

“Are you fucking—” EP groaned then clicked off the line.

“Did I get him?” There was a pause.

“No!” EP said and clicked back off again. Celeste started to cry. The two guys looked at each other, but kept their guns level.

Lindsey watched seconds tick by on a yellowed analog wall clock, counted the muffled thumps of gunfire from the ground floor, ran her thumb over the selector switch on the Galil. Anything to distract her from the nagging feeling that she shouldn’t be here. A buried voice cried out.

You’re going to get killed, or arrested, or maimed for life. Why are you doing this? Run!

She had set up the bomb in the stairwell and had the camera feed pulled up on her phone. EP had called it a “stairwell cleaner”, apparently something Michael had the twins cook up. A specially crafted thermobaric charge tweaked to send an incendiary blast wave snaking up the stairs, killing anything within five stories, but leaving the rest of the building intact. It seemed too good to be true.

On the camera feed, a guard came down the stairs from the elevator lobby and walked right up to the luggage.

“They found it!” God damn E.P. They must have another camera system. “I’m gonna have to blow it!” She flexed her thumb over the button.

“Shit. Just wait, trying to move the target.” Said EP.

“What? Where is he?!” He should have been in range by now. How long does it take to get down five flights of stairs?!

“Just wait!” EP clicked and slapped keys in the background and Lindsey got a sinking feeling in her chest.

“He’s not in the stairwell?!” she whispered. “Why did they move him out?!”

“Boss was moving down!”

“He’s been dead for ten minutes!” It didn’t make any sense. Unless they had seen the bomb. Lindsey grimaced as the man on the screen rummaged through the suitcase. All this for nothing! If those two idiots had been on site instead of dying on an overpass, they could have made a move together. Now all she could do was pray.

“I’m setting it off!” she whispered.

“Just wait! Why aren’t they moving him?!” EP screamed, and Lindsey, despite herself, felt for her. On the feed, the man tore the back fabric off, exposing the main case.

“Clear the stairs!” Lindsey said. She dialed the number and hoped for a miracle.

Her earbuds muffled the roar, but she felt the shock rip through the walls and jump from the floor straight into her bones. Support beams groaned and dust flaked off the ceiling. The quiet that followed made her feel like the room was the last thing left in existence.

“Kill confirmed?” She said, hopelessly. Her voice fell flat on carpet and dusty air, already smelling of the chemical explosion.

“No,” said EP. “They’re opening the elevator shaft. You need to hurry.”

Lindsey got her Galil up and moved to the door. Finally, something direct. Adrenaline washed over her like a wave. She was ready for it.

Paul was crouched in front of the elevators when the glass conference room exploded and the guard standing over him went down a bloody crash. The guard’s head and shoulders wobbled strangely as he dropped, and his vest caved outward with a burst of gore. Something flew off at an angle and clanged on an elevator. An arm. Paul sat there stunned, covered in blood and gore while the guards scrambled around him.

“Get him down!” they forced him on the floor and up against the wall between the elevators and crouched around him with their guns up. Andler screamed at the space where the window used to be.

“You mother fucker! Must’ve been bought off! Overlord this is House! We’re taking fire through the windows! Moving to the stairwell!”

“No! Get him away from the windows and drop the blinds!” Anthony’s anger was a rolling boil, but a fifty cal is a fifty cal. The guards looked at each other and Paul could almost see the words “fuck that” form in the air between them. Paul waited for one of the other guards to get ripped in half, but they just sat there staring and breathing and grimacing for a few seconds that dragged on like hours.

A boom rose from the floor and shot up the walls, and a roar in the stairwell rattled the door like a tornado had been summoned on the other side.

“Overlord, what was that?” Andler screamed.

“The stairs are gone,” Anthony said. “Drop the blinds, get that elevator open and get him down the shaft. Gear is in the manager’s office.”

He sounded like he was explaining how to boil water. All the guards looked at Andler.

“You get paid more,” someone said.

Andler marched swiftly to the shattered glass wall and let down the floor-to-ceiling roller shades. Paul and the guards all exhaled at once.

“Ok!” Andler’s voice cracked. “Get that fucking elevator open!”