Private Rogue

Chapter 86

The masked man closest to me raised his pistol. I backed toward the open car door. He aimed at my head, but never got the opportunity to pull the trigger. A terrifying rattle tore up the silence as a burst of bullets chewed the concrete directly in front of him and his accomplices. The six masked men were startled, and I took advantage of their shock to run toward the Toyota. The machine-gunfire continued and Andreyev barked commands. His masked gunmen turned their weapons on the source of the thunderous volley, but the window on the seventh floor of a warehouse to the east was too far away for an effective pistol shot. Two figures appeared intermittently in the aperture, but only in silhouette, vanishing between every burst of muzzle flash. Their machine guns spat flames and bullets and created chaos. Andreyev’s gunmen took cover behind their vehicles as the rounds shredded concrete, drilled through steel and shattered glass.

I jumped through the Toyota’s open door, landed in the driver’s seat, threw the car into gear and stepped on the gas. A couple masked men saw what I was doing and shot wildly at the car as I sped away, but their bullets went wide. As I put distance between me and my would-be killers, I looked in the rear-view and saw them scramble into their vehicles, which were being riddled by bullets. The three SUVs fled the scene under a hail of gunfire, which followed them until they disappeared behind a chemical processing facility west of the courtyard.

I turned off the service road and followed a set of fresh tire tracks through the snow. I drove round the warehouse. When I rounded the final corner I saw one of Private’s staff cars, a blue Nissan Rogue, parked by the entrance. As I pulled up beside the Nissan, the back door opened and Justine and Mo-bot stepped out.

I joined them in the snow.

“That sounded ugly,” Justine said, hugging me.

“It was pretty intense,” I replied.

“Didn’t mean to get so close,” Joshua Floyd said, emerging from the pockmarked old building. Jessie was with him. They each carried a full auto-converted AR-15 over their shoulder.

“You did great,” I responded. “Thanks for keeping me alive, yet again.”

I turned to Mo-bot.

“How are we doing?” I asked.

She leaned into the Nissan and took a tablet computer from the back seat. She showed me the screen, which displayed a constantly changing map. At the center was the locator beacon representing the tracking device we’d installed inside the bronze figure I’d given Andreyev.

“We’re picking up the signal loud and clear,” Mo-bot said.

I turned to Floyd. “Let’s go get your wife and kids.”