No Tomorrow (17 page)

A
single small window let in some ambient light from the streetlamps outside. The Russians were slow to react, faces a mix of shadow and orange glow, looking to one another for an explanation, for someone to take the lead. Victor pushed through them and dragged Gisele to the floor, below the level of the window.

“Hey,”
she said. “What are you doing? You're hurting me.”

Victor stayed quiet for a moment to listen. He heard nothing.

Gisele pulled her hand free of Victor.

“Stay down,” he said.

“Okay, okay. You could have simply asked, you know?”

Dmitri said, “What's happening?”

Victor gestured at the window and the orange glow filtering between the aluminum blind slats. “We're the only ones who have lost power.”

“Then it's a circuit breaker,” Dmitri said, but without conviction. He stepped closer to Victor—farther away from the window—and squatted.

“Please,” Gisele said. “What's going on? Why are we on the floor?”

Victor didn't answer. He didn't yet know. Maybe it was nothing, but he didn't believe in coincidences.

One of the Russians—Ivan—stepped toward the window, curious, investigating. No tactical sense.

Victor said, “I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

He glanced back, an incredulous expression contorting his face for a second before it exploded.

Blood and tissue splattered against the far wall. Shattered glass from the window flew across the space and rained down over the floor, pelting Victor as he shielded Gisele. The shot Russian dropped into a heap, the left side of his face missing, blood quickly pooling around him.

Gisele gasped and some of the other Russians yelled in surprise or horror. Victor paid no attention as he concentrated on listening for the sound of the shot, to work out how far away the shooter was positioned. It never came.

A suppressed rifle, then, shooting subsonic ammunition from enough distance for the city to swallow up the noise, but with a heavy round to inflict that kind of damage. Victor pictured the shooter across the street, maybe one hundred meters away, on the roof of the building on account of the difference in height between the hole in the window and where it had struck the target. Any farther, and the slow round's inaccuracy would have made such a shot too problematic to take.

Regardless, the sniper was an excellent marksman to have made a head shot from a cold bore with a slow round when the target had only just appeared and had been partially concealed by blind slats.

Dmitri and the others dropped to the floor to join Victor and Gisele. She kept her palm over her mouth as
she breathed in huge, panicked breaths. Victor avoided the growing pool of blood draining from the exit wound in the dead Russian's head and took the pistol from his coat along with the spare magazines.

“What do we do?” Dmitri asked, eyes wide in the darkness, a brave man but one succumbing to panic.

“First thing: calm down. Second: we have to defend the staircase outside this room. That's the best place to assault. Come on. We don't have long.”

Still in a crouch, he opened the door and stepped out of the room, Dmitri and the other Russians following him, making more noise than he would like, but there wasn't time to instruct them on better operational procedure. The warehouse was vast, but mostly open on the ground level. The first-floor office section was narrow, located on the building's west side, accessible via two sets of stairs.

Victor whispered to the Russians, instructing them on the best positions to take to cover the nearest staircase. They nodded and spread out as they were told.

“That's their primary assault route,” Victor told them. “If you hold your positions here, you'll drive them back. You'll have them in a crossfire.”

“How do we know there are more?” Sergei asked. “Maybe just one man with rifle.”

Victor looked at him. “If you believe that, go down those stairs and make your way outside.”

Sergei said nothing further.

“What are you going to do?” Dmitri asked Victor.

“There are two staircases leading up, remember?”

He motioned for Gisele to come over to him. She did, walking as fast as she could while still crouched.

“Where are you taking her?” Dmitri demanded.

“Out of the line of fire. If you and your guys can contain them at the first staircase, I can do the rest. Okay?”

Dmitri nodded. “Do it.”

With Gisele following close behind, Victor headed toward the farthest set of stairs at the far end of the office floor, straining to see in the darkness where the artificial ambient light failed to reach. A single corridor spanned the entire length, a staircase at either end, with doors leading off to offices, a kitchen, toilets, and walk-in storage. He opened each door as he passed, improving visibility as the outside light seeped from the rooms' windows into the corridor. The sniper had shot from the south. He couldn't shoot through these windows.

Victor paused when he reached the open reception area at the far end of the corridor. The staircase lay out of sight around a corner. He listened. He didn't know how many were out there. He didn't know anything about their skill or armaments beyond the fact that they had a sniper with a suppressed weapon who was a fine shot. He had to assume the others were as capable. They wouldn't assault with sniper rifles, though, but automatic weapons—submachine guns or assault rifles. His handgun would come off second in any firefight, but he knew the location better than any attacker, and those attackers knew nothing about him.

Behind him, the Russians were nervous as they waited at the defensive positions he'd assigned them. They were gangsters now, not soldiers as they had once been long ago, but they had guns and he had no reason to doubt their ability or willingness to use them. Whether they would be able to repel whoever came up the staircase, he couldn't be sure. But they would slow them down, and that's all he needed them to do. He cared only about Gisele's survival and his own.

He hand signaled her to follow and whispered, “Hide behind that desk and keep down until this is over. Don't come out. Okay?”

She nodded, breaths coming fast and quick. “Okay.”

He watched her get down to her hands and knees, then moved on. A floor-to-ceiling window covered the wall adjacent to the staircase. Victor saw no reflections of movement within. He gestured for Gisele to stay put, then hurried across the reception area, gun up and leading, sweeping around the corner as he stayed in partial cover. The staircase was clear. He heard nothing from below.

Victor checked that Gisele was staying in her hiding place and then took up a position farther into the room, from which he could cover the staircase. He felt no fear because fear was an emotional response to danger. The brain learned to fear before it learned how to solve problems. It was a survival mechanism: running from danger increased the probability of living through it. Emotion was older than thought, and stronger, but Victor had learned that the best way to survive was through cold logic and lateral thinking. He suppressed the part of his brain that wanted him to be afraid. He allowed no emotion to cloud his judgment and survived many times because no fear ever slowed him.

•   •   •

Behind him, the Russians waited in the darkness, breathing heavily and sweating. Their gaze passed over each other when they weren't staring at the stairwell and its descent into blackness. They were tough, brave men, but all were scared of what was coming. Adrenaline made them shake. Sweat shone on their faces. The thump of
their racing hearts filled their ears. No one wanted to end up like poor Ivan with half a face.

They didn't hear the shuffle of feet on the floor below, near the staircase, didn't see the figure that peered up from the darkness and made a swinging motion with his arm.

Something small and metal hit the polystyrene ceiling tiles above their heads, bounced off a wall and clattered and rolled across the thin carpet.

“What was that?”
someone yelled.

A second later the grenade exploded.

L
ight flashed in the darkness, sparks and flames rushing out from the epicenter, shrapnel hissing through the air, burying itself into walls and melting ceiling tiles. Debris rained down, clattering on the floor. Smoke billowed, filling the corridor, swirling and snaking to fill the space. Sound, powerful and excruciating, pulsed outward, consuming all.

The dull thump of the explosion was colossal, the burst of light so bright it reached all along the corridor and illuminated the room around Victor for the briefest of instants, blinding him while the overpressure wave reverberated through his body.

A disorientation grenade. Or flashbang.

The Russians grimaced and squinted, their ears ringing with a high-pitched whine, their eyes, streaming tears from the smoke, seeing nothing but impenetrable white.

A black-clad figure emerged at the top of the staircase, moving fast and assured in a half crouch, picking out the closest target and hitting him in the chest with a burst of submachine-gun fire. The Russian stumbled backward
into a doorframe, sliding down it, lifeless by the time he reached the floor, clothes soaked red.

The gunman swept his weapon away even as the Russian was still stumbling backward, seeking targets, shooting at the next nearest enemy, but missing as he backed off through the doorway of another room. Nine-millimeter rounds took chunks out of the door and wall.

The Russians returned fire, sporadic and desperate, blinded by the flashbang.

The gunman kept moving, firing in bursts, taking cover as behind him another black-clad figure followed, reaching the top of the stairs, sweeping the other way, covering the lead man's blind spot, seeing no live targets but double-tapping the Russian slumped against the doorframe when he saw him twitch.

No enemy could be too dead.

•   •   •

The noise of the shooting was monstrous. The lights flashing were as bright as fireworks illuminating the office around Gisele in staccato strobes. The barrage of noise and light overloaded her senses. She sat huddled in a ball behind the desk, as the man had told her.

Smoke hung throughout the room. The air was a thick gray gloom that deepened shadows and dulled the orange glow of outside streetlamps.

She had her palms pressed over her ears in an attempt to muffle the incredible amount of noise. She kept her chin down, almost pressing against her chest, and shoulders hunched.

Gisele flinched and gasped and trembled but didn't scream or cry out. Despite her fear she knew she had to
stay as small and quiet as she could manage. There was nothing else she could do.

•   •   •

Victor pictured what was happening because he couldn't yet see. He knew about disorientation grenades. He knew how they worked. He knew what they did. He knew it had been thrown in ahead of an assault. The Russians would be deaf and blinded if they were fortunate, or injured or killed if they were not. In either case the staircase would be undefended. The assaulters would advance up it without risk and begin the massacre.

The positions he had assigned them would help. The flashbang would not have rendered them all incapacitated. If they had an advantage in numbers they could fight back. It was possible that they could still pin the assaulters long enough.

Victor's world came back into focus as the noise of the gunfire grew louder. In between the semiautomatic shots from the Russians' handguns, he recognized the distinctive click of the MP5SD, almost inaudible thanks to the integrated suppressor. He picked out two rhythms for two shooters. Such firepower was expensive and hard to source. These guys were better than well armed and had breached the warehouse without making a sound. They were no mere street thugs or enforcers but a well-equipped, well-trained assault team.

Bullets blew through the partition wall Victor was using as cover, easily penetrating the cheap material, showering his face with dust and debris.

He ducked and moved away, farther into the room, eyesight improving with every passing second. Though barely able to see and hear, the map of his environment
in his mind was unaffected, as was his understanding of what was happening behind him.

He switched the pistol to his left hand and stuck it out of cover to let out a few blind shots toward the far staircase, knowing the Russians were out of the line of fire. The
pop-pop-pop
registered in his ears, but far quieter than it should, masked by the incessant ringing from the explosion.

He turned to cover the closest staircase, but there was no sign yet of any other assaulters. He switched back again, seeing muzzle flashes flare bright through the smoke and darkness. The Russians were returning fire. Whether they had their senses back was irrelevant. Indirect fire could kill just the same as an aimed shot.

Rounds hit the ceiling somewhere above him. A light fixture exploded.

He shielded himself with an arm as chunks of polystyrene from the ceiling tiles and shards of glass rained down over him.

If the sniper and the two assaulters were the sum total of their attackers, Victor and the Russians could force them to withdraw with their superior numbers. But the team's intel had to be accurate for them to know about the warehouse. Then they would have a good idea of the number of defenders. If there were only three, then they would have attempted stealth, silently picking off their enemies. They hadn't. The sniper had taken the first opportunity to reduce the number of enemies because the assaulters were already in the building. And they weren't going for stealth. They were going strong. Because they had the firepower and, more important, the numbers.

The two at the far staircase were just one two-man fire team. There would be more, sweeping through the
warehouse to clear it in a slick military assault. The Russians weren't going to keep the two upstairs occupied long enough before the other team or teams joined the battle and overwhelmed them. If another fire team attempted to flank them using the near staircase, Victor couldn't stop them.

The gunfire would eventually draw the attention of the Metropolitan Police, but the warehouse was in an industrial area with no residences and no through traffic. By the time they arrived, this would be over.

The plan had been to defend. It wasn't going to work.

Victor hurried over to Gisele. She was shaking and even in the dark looked white with fear. He held out the pistol he had taken from Ivan's corpse.

“Is it true what you said before about knowing how to use a gun?”

She managed to nod and he passed her the weapon. She took a deep breath then released the magazine to check the load before pushing it back in place with her palm. She racked the slide.

Victor said, “If anyone approaches without identifying themselves, you shoot. Don't hesitate.”

Her eyes were wide. Fear. Disbelief. But she nodded.

He didn't know if she would. He didn't know if she was capable of taking a life. He hoped that neither of them would have to find out if she was.

Victor descended the near staircase, fast but quiet, gun up and sweeping. He reached the ground-floor offices. There were multiple rooms and corridors, leading both outside and into the rest of the warehouse. He paused and listened. He heard nothing.

The attackers must have entered the building from the west side, at the farthest point from the offices, where
they wouldn't be heard breaking in. There were rolling doors and loading bays along the west wall. They could have entered through any one of them or any number of them at the same time, either staying together or splitting up. They knew there were people in the offices upstairs, but they couldn't know where else threats might wait, so had to move with some caution, but it wouldn't be long before they reached the office segment. From the main warehouse, there were multiple ways in, but still only two staircases up for the attackers to converge on. Victor didn't know where they were now, but he knew where they had to end up.

Shooting the attackers in the back wasn't complicated. Doing it without getting caught in the Russians' line of fire was far from simple.

He hurried, because there were no enemies at this staircase.

He was behind them.