Ignited (Titanium Security Series) (33 page)

Dropping the damp cloth that was doing jack all at this point, he yanked his pistol from the waistband at the small of his back as he turned the handle and shoved the door open with a grunt.

It swung open easily. A wash of cool, comparatively clean air hit him. When no one shot at them he reached back for Khalia, grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her through the opening. The moment she cleared the jambs he dragged her sideways to lie behind him and slammed the heavy door shut with one foot. They collapsed together there in the stairwell, heaving and coughing like a couple of drowning victims.

Hunter forced his head up, wiped at his watering eyes to see what the hell they were facing. No flames below in the stairwell as far as he could tell from this angle, and the smoke was much thinner here, curling in a thick layer that hugged the ceiling and left the bottom foot or so near the floor relatively clear.

He rolled onto his side to get a look at Khalia. “Okay?” he wheezed.

She dropped the soot-stained washcloth she was holding and kept coughing, managed a nod. Her face was streaked with grime and blood oozed from little cuts in her forearms, but otherwise she didn’t seem hurt besides the smoke inhalation.

“Keep low,” he told her, stopped to hack a few times to clear his lungs. “Smoke’s still bad enough to do damage here.” Flipping back onto his hands and knees, he gripped his weapon and started for the edge of the stairs. Other than the fire alarm, he didn’t hear anything. No shouts, no pounding of feet. Didn’t bode well. There should’ve been plenty of other people scrambling to get out of the building.

He’d just started down the first set of stairs when he heard running footsteps. An instant later a spray of bullets gave him his answer. He jerked back a split second before they slammed into the concrete wall less than a foot from his head. With a mental curse he reared back to shove Khalia into the corner between the wall and emergency exit door. She grabbed hold of his sides and froze with a blurted, “Oh, shit.”

A chilling stillness followed the shots. He could feel her tensed up against his back but she reached behind her and withdrew the semi-auto Hunter had given her, aimed it with both hands over his shoulder. Ready to fight her way out and kill if necessary. A surge of pride swept through him because he knew just how foreign a concept it was to her.

“Don’t move,” he whispered, still sprawled out on the cold concrete. They couldn’t stay here in the stairwell with the smoke thickening and the fire encroaching on their position. Khalia didn’t have the training to help him eliminate the shooters and they certainly couldn’t go back through the emergency door into that deathtrap of a hallway.

That left him the only option of clearing this goddamn stairwell to give him and Khalia a fighting chance at escape. “Stay put. I’ll yell once it’s safe. When you move, hug the ground and keep your head down.”

“Ok-kay,” she stammered. “
Please
be careful.”

Since there was nothing he could say to reassure her, he didn’t answer. Squeezing her leg once in a gesture meant to give her encouragement, he hugged the wall and inched forward. He was willing to bet the shooters weren’t trained in taking a stairwell the way he was, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. Unfortunately, fuckwads like them seemed to have a knack for getting lucky in close quarters.

Creeping low and slow, he peered over the lip of the staircase to check the place where the lower landing made a ninety degree turn and disappeared from view. No one there. He eased forward with his weapon up and ready, wishing he had a rifle instead. Thankfully Khalia stayed where he’d left her, giving him one less thing to worry about.

At last he reached the bottom of the first staircase. The air here was clearer than at the top. He drew in a full breath, stifled a cough as his lungs attempted to expel more smoke. The minimal sound that emerged triggered an immediate response. A burst of bullets smacked into the wall below him and pinged off the metal railing. Hunter swore and readied himself, bracing for the attack he knew was coming. He heard the shuffle of feet, caught sight of the muzzle end of the rifle as it appeared around the corner.

The second the man’s head came into view, Hunter opened fire. His shot hit the guy in the side of the head and dropped him like a sack of sand. The rifle clattered to the ground.

“Safir? Safir!” The frantic shout rose up from below.

Hunter shifted his attention to the AK, lying there for the taking in its dead owner’s hands. Only twelve stairs separated him from increased firepower and his best shot at evening the odds. If he was quick enough he might be able to get it. He leaned forward to make a lunge for it and heard the heavy footfalls racing up the steps below him. At least two men, maybe more.

Shit.

He snapped up into a better firing position and took a slow, deep breath. This time the shooters didn’t wait for visual contact to start shooting. Their weapons barked, a hail of bullets sprayed the lower stairwell. Bits of concrete and plaster exploded in a hail of white around him. He bit the inside of his cheek and covered a grunt when he felt a hot sting in the back of his left calf. A cold, deadly resolve came over him.

Fuck. This.
He was not going down like this. Not with Khalia waiting helpless behind him.

Blood pumping fast, he stayed in position and rode out the initial barrage, forcing himself not to move and maintain the pitiful cover the bend in the stairs and metal railing provided him. Time screeched to a halt. The men were still coming; he could feel the subtle vibrations of their boots on the steps. They were still firing, rushing at him headlong when the first one appeared below. Hunter took aim and hit him twice in the chest. The guy fell back but didn’t stay down, and Hunter realized the assholes were wearing ballistic vests.

He eased forward a couple of inches to get a better line of sight and fired again with a head shot. This time the round plowed into the first shooter’s forehead. The guy’s upper body dropped back where he lay, unmoving. A split second later an enraged cry split the relative quiet and another explosion of gunfire ripped into the stairs where Hunter waited. Wickedly sharp bits of concrete peppered his arms and legs, then he felt a heavy thud and couldn’t hold back the curse as one of the rounds buried itself in the back of his upper arm. Pissed off beyond belief, fighting through the pain, Hunter kept his sidearm raised with his good arm and started firing as soon as he detected motion below him.

One round hit the second attacker in the shoulder. He spun back out of sight and the muzzle of his weapon dropped. Hunter lunged forward, exploding down the stairs. Asswipe number two was picking himself off the floor, blood pouring from the wound in his shoulder. His head snapped around when he saw Hunter coming. In slow motion he started to raise the barrel of the AK, his eyes fixed on Hunter. Hunter let fly with a double tap, grazing the man’s temple. He hit the floor and Hunter didn’t hesitate. He sent a final round through the fucker’s brain and snatched up both fallen AKs, tossing his near empty pistol aside.

In the wake of the initial rush, the tide of adrenaline flooding his body died down a little, enough for him to become aware of the burn of the shrapnel and bullet wounds. Blood flowed down the back of his left arm and calf, warm and sticky. They burned like fucking hell. But he was still mobile, still in the fight. For the moment nobody else was coming at them and they had to keep moving.

Without taking his eyes off the next portion of the stairwell, he called up to Khalia. “We’re clear for now. Come quick but stay a few yards behind me, and keep down.” Because they had a lot of stairs left to take before they reached the ground floor and he had a gut feeling they weren’t in the clear yet.

Chapter Twenty

At the sound of Hunter’s voice Khalia closed her eyes for a second and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. She had no idea how he’d survived all that gunfire, or how she’d remained unscathed with all those bullets flying around. Pushing to her feet, she threw out a hand to steady herself when her legs wobbled. The inside of her chest burned from the smoke and her coughing had done little to clear her lungs. Her left hand gripped the railing, her right holding fast to the pistol. It felt strange against her palm but she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if she had to, lack of training or not.

A few unsteady steps down and she craned her head around to see Hunter and the two men lying crumpled on the floor. Bile rose in her throat. Her gaze swung from the bodies to Hunter, taking in the rifles and—

Hunter was bleeding.

“You were shot!” She rushed down the remaining steps, ignoring his muttered dismissal, her attention on the blood spilling down his upper arm and the back of his leg in scarlet rivulets.

“Don’t worry about it now, I’m fine,” he said gruffly, blocking her hand as she reached out to staunch the bleeding in his upper arm. “We’ve gotta move fast. Same drill, stay back and stay low. Come on.” He turned away from her and limped down the stairs, trailing blood behind him.

A door slammed open somewhere below them. Hunter dropped to one knee on the stairs and Khalia did the same. Heart in her throat, she waited there for a few tense seconds before she heard it. People coughing, a woman crying. Then shouting. More screams. The primal fear in them caused a visceral reaction deep inside her—an automatic and uncontrollable curling in her guts. Chills broke out across her cold skin, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end.

The clatter of panicked feet further down the stairwell had barely registered when the door banged open again and another gun opened fire. Hunter remained frozen in place ahead of her, his full attention riveted to the lower stairwell. Then he shifted slightly, the muscles across his back and shoulders tensing, and Khalia knew the assault was coming. She gripped the pistol in both hands and started to bring it upward when Hunter suddenly fired the rifle. Precise, controlled bursts of a few rounds each. A cold trickle of sweat rolled down her spine. She had to remind herself to breathe.

Hunter rose slightly from his crouch and went down a few steps to the landing, paused. Without looking back or giving any sort of signal he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Khalia forced herself to follow at a distance, the weight of the gun still a foreign sensation in her hands. Her left foot had just landed on the bottom step when Hunter yelled out.

“Khalia, get down!”

She dove onto the landing before the last syllable was out. Raising her eyes, she stared in horror at the carnage revealed before her. Blood everywhere. Splattered on the walls and the stairs and the floor. Bodies lay crumpled in the narrow stairwell. An elderly couple was curled around each other, the man on top of the woman as though he’d attempted to shield her in their final moments. Their eyes were still open, staring at each other in terror even in death.

The roar of gunfire jerked Khalia’s attention to Hunter. It drowned out the shouts and screams of the victims as the gunmen mowed down anyone left moving. Hunter returned fire.

Her eyes were glued to him in the midst of that carnage when he ran out of ammo. He flung the now useless rifle away and reached over his shoulder for the second, then suddenly jerked and Khalia knew he’d been hit again. A cry of denial built in her throat, but it was blocked by the tightness there. She rose to her hands and knees and began crawling toward him without realizing it, intent only on getting to him. All she knew was that he was down and the shooters were still coming.

She was only a few yards from him when he reared up with the second rifle and let loose with another stream of bullets. She stopped and risked a glance past him, caught sight of three men bursting into view down the spiral of the staircase. Hunter had held his own so far, but he couldn’t hold off that much firepower alone.

In that moment a surge of cold, hard determination flooded her system. She brought her pistol up, finger on the trigger, prepared to shoot at anything coming up those stairs, but Hunter suddenly swept an arm out and knocked her flat. The air whooshed out of her as her chest hit the hard concrete and something hot and sharp tore into her back, just below her right shoulder blade. A split second later, Hunter’s weight crashed down on top of her. She went dead still beneath him, the repeated boom of gunfire echoing in her ears. She felt Hunter shift and heard the answering bark of his rifle, then he twitched and grunted, rolling away slightly.

Khalia snapped her head up in time to see two of the three gunmen appear at the bottom of the stairs. Hunter must have taken out the third. The remaining two were so close now she could see the whites of their eyes. She didn’t think, only reacted. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting, not cowering in the corner begging for her life. Rage and adrenaline crashed through her in a toxic, dizzying tide. Everything slowed. Hunter was still struggling to turn over when she brought both arms up to grasp the pistol grip and pulled the trigger over and over. The gun kicked in her grip. Her first two rounds slammed harmlessly into the concrete wall behind the men.