Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 65104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
He keeps his phone open with one hand and presses a button I know will call his men. The line connects before the first man appears.
Figures step from the hedges and from the mouth of a side alley, shapes in heavy jackets with hoods up and tools in their hands. The hiss of a generator lifts into a grind as someone yanks a cord. Sparks twitch in the distance as a blade tests metal. The curve of the street behind us blooms with light when another van switches on its beams and rolls forward just enough to close our path back.
Damien speaks into the phone, fast and clipped.
“Ambush on Kettleman, south approach to the docks. Two vans and at least ten on foot and more in vehicles. I need a wall and I need it now.” He listens for two seconds, nods once, and drops the phone into my lap. “If I go down, you talk to Alek,” he says. “You say where we are. You keep talking.”
I lock my fingers around the phone and push it under my thigh. The first blade bites the metal near my door, a screech that slices through me like wire pulled thin and tight. Sparks fan up and spit against the glass. Damien opens the small compartment by his knee with a smooth, practiced motion and draws two guns, one heavy and one compact. He hands me the compact by the grip without looking away from the men moving toward his side.
“Do not use it unless they break the window,” he says. “If they do, aim and fire.”
I wrap both hands around the gun and try to steady my breathing. It smells like oil and cold metal. The generator’s drone deepens. Another blade hits the car near the back wheel with a sound like a scream being torn in half. The windshield blooms with a spidered crack when a pry bar kisses it too hard.
Damien lowers his window two inches before they can wedge it, leans out, and shoots the first man in the thigh. The man falls, yowls, and then goes silent when Damien fires again. The others flinch back on instinct, then surge forward, six at once, faces shadowed and grins bright where the light catches teeth.
Damien empties the first magazine quickly. Three men drop and two more stumble, blood blooming dark across jackets. The sixth flattens against the front quarter panel and lifts a grinder, its blade screaming an inch from Damien’s arm. Damien kills the engine with his free hand and twists sideways, firing through the narrow gap until the man pitches backward with a guttural sound. The smell of hot metal and the iron tang of blood floods the air.
The rear window blows inward when a pry bar punches through the corner and the tempered glass gives up and becomes glittering rain. I cover my face with my forearm and feel pellets hit my skin. A hand snakes through the new hole and gropes for the lock. I swing the gun up and slam the muzzle into the knuckles, and the hand jerks back with a curse.
Damien glances at me and gives the smallest nod. He swaps magazines with a swift, sure motion and fires again through his gap, each shot loud in the confined space.
They keep coming because there are more of them than bullets in his gun and because the sight of their own men bleeding writes a simple script in their heads. They fight or they die.
Someone drags a wheeled jack to the side and starts cranking. The car lifts a fraction and then settles again when Damien fires down at the mechanism and shatters a tooth. A second grinder screams to life at my door. A thick-gloved hand plants near the handle. Heat blooms against my leg as the blade chews into the seam of the frame, and the smell turns coppery and bitter and hot. The phone under my thigh vibrates. I cannot reach it without losing the grip on the gun.
Damien leans farther out and shoots left, then right. The slide locks back on empty. He goes for the last magazine and comes up with it already half-seated. A black-gloved hand darts through the small opening he made to shoot. It catches his wrist in a grip that looks like it belongs to a machine, not a man. Two more hands clamp onto his forearm and elbow. He snarls something low that I have never heard from him and rips his arm back with a strength that would break smaller bones. He almost makes it. Someone slams a knife into the outer rubber seal by his elbow and wedges it. The blade on my side bites deeper and sparks jump like fireflies that only know how to burn.
“Stay down,” he commands.
He fires the last rounds across the hood and hits another man in the throat. The final bullet catches a shoulder and spins a body into the street, where it rolls and lands heavily. The slide stays back. Damien reaches to the console, grabs the spare magazine from the narrow slot, and fails to seat it before a hand punches the window wide and latches onto his collar.