A pact but powerful firearm designed for vehicle crews, support personnel, weird guys in office towers—
Lindsey sat at a small table outside a coffee shop iunnels, watg office workers walk down the linoleum street where fluorest lights stood in for the sun. They talked into phones with sales pitch fidend groao each other about the tragedies of the st four hours. Voices echoed off the paneled walls and slick floors until they were beaten into white noise. Smells of espresso, peanut oil fried chi, and pan-Asianess moved with them. It was corporate culture after a nuclear war.
Across the tunnel from the coffee shop was a dark empty deli with ‘for lease’ signs pstered on the gss, and its double doors wide open. Oher side of the seating area, behind another set of gss doors, was a well-lit and well-guarded elevator lobby. The two security guards standing at the entrance looked like they should be helping a puppet dictator out of a limo oher side of the world. o the doors, a woman on a phed over a turkey sub. Lindsey imagined her giving a speech to her er-citizens while snipers shuffled on the rooftops. A new age of fresh eating. Thunderous appuse. EP chimed on the line and brought her out of it.
“How’s it going?”
“Hey babe, you get me around these guys?” said Lindsey.
“I’m looking. This map is fucked. There’s a parking garage and two levels of basement below you. No, wait, one sec.”
Liapped the stopper on her lid while the tv in the er repyed a clip of Philip firing the M240 on the ramp. If it hadn’t been for his road warrior shit, she might have been able to walk right through the front door with the lunch crowd. Now even the rent-a-cops iunnels were looking around like mae-gun fire might break out at any moment.
“Ok, there’s a maintenance door or something in the parking garage below building three. If you take that, you make it to the elevator in the basement of his building, ride that up a out in the lobby.”
“There’s no other pedestrian route?” Lindsey was sure the first thing they would have locked down was the maintenance access.
“Not unless you e in above through the lobby.”
“What’s Boss’s status?”
EP was silent for a moment. Ov, the newscaster interviewed an expert on the cartels. Lindsey looked back across the deli. One guard wanded a woman while the other tried to find something telling in her eyes.
EP came ba the line.
“He says the guards should be moving soo ready to pull the fire arm in the lobby on my signal. I think he’s going loud.”
~
“The mail guy just dropped it off at reception,” EP said in his ear. Michael put up his DS a out the door. There was a box sitting on the ter at the reception desk.
“Hey, is that for IT?” He asked.
“Uh, yea.” said the receptionist.
“Thanks. I’ll take it.”
“What is it?”
“New overhead.” She had lost i before he got the words out. He took the box bato the feren.
“Anyone rustled out there?” he asked EP.
“No. The guards are all either in the lobby or down iunnels.”
“Do you have eyes on the door?”
“No, but there’re a lot of pces with no cameras down there. I sent the map to Theresa.”
Michael opehe box with his keys. Inside was an old puter case. He took it out and unscrewed the panel. Everything was taped down and the only puter po left was the motherboard. He id it all out oable.
The receiver slid into the lower half of the P90 with a familiar click. He took the sight out of its padded ing and mou, attached the fshlight to the side of the top mount, clipped the strap into pce, and loaded a magazih a sp. He took off his overcoat and put the low-profile pte carrier and magazine pou his chest. The st thi oable was a leather pouch that seemed to have fallen off a fantasy hero. He put it on his belt like a medieval fanny pad sat back down.
Some part of him wao take it all off, throw it ba the box and mail it back, go home and e baonday to his new job. He could take Kelsey out, get David’s gamertag, build up a 401k ao know all the restaurants in the area. He smiled at that part of him and gave it something like a mental hug. After today, he would never see it again.
A helicopter whined outside the window. When it was over his head he got up, set the DS oable, and walked to the door.
“Stairs or Elevator?”
“They just came off the stairs, but they’re moving to the elevator. Theresa’s not in positiohey have the tunrance guarded.”
“They should move once I start shooting. Have her pull the fire arm after he’s off the elevator.”
He opehe door and stepped out into the office. That other part of him screamed, but the sound had bee white noise long ago.
The post-lunch haze had set in and no oiced the ammo pouches or small polymer submae gun as he walked through the office towards the elevators.
“Sir, you o sign out please!” The receptionist said. He took the elevator key out of his pouch.
“ter,” said EP in his ear.
“Sir?” She stood up. Michael put the key in the small hole in the door of the ter elevator and pushed open the doors. He leaned against one, holding the other back with his foot, flicked on the fshlight on the P90 ahe selector to full auto. A man waiting in front of another elevator saw the gun and screamed.
“Gun!”
Michael aimed up the shaft and fired in short bursts.
Ihe car, rounds zipped through the floor and cracked on the ceiling. One guard took a burst through the foot and leaned on the wall screaming aied his mag through the floor. Anuard got hit in the groin and sunk into the er without a sound.
“Get on the edge! Put him above you!” Andler yelled. The st two guards lifted Paul onto their backs and backed up into the er. Andler worked the buttons as they fired blindly into the floor. The guard shot in the foot finished reloading and took two rounds under his and fell forward as more bullets cut into him. After a few more seds of guwo empty mags dropped o his corpse. A fshlight searched up through the floor, lighting up dust and gunsmoke.
The doors opened suddenly. Andler leaped out and the two guards pushed through with Paul between them, his feet barely toug the ground. Bullets chased them out and one cracked inches from his ear.
“What floor is he on?” Andler yelled into the radio.
“Twelve,” a voiswered as gun fire sounded below.
“Send a team to tain him and ao escort us down!”
Michael saw a door opeories below him and throw a square of light into the dusty shaft. Two men fired up at him aepped bato the lobby.
Across the floor, a man came out of an office at the back. His shoulder fshed and Michael ducked as bullets ripped through the tops of cubicle walls and cracked the marble floor around him.
“About ten heading up the stairs,” EP said in his ear. The fire arm went off, and his earbuds muffled it to a low tone as he moved up to the side of the reception desk in a low run.
“He’s ing up on the right side,” EP said. Michael stepped to the left of the reception desk, quietly.
When the guards at the door ran for the elevator, Lindsey grabbed her luggage and walked across the tunnel into the dark deli. Through the gss double doors, she saw them pry open one of the elevator shafts and aim pistols up, sweeping the dusty darkness with bright beams. She pushed through the doors into the lobby as they opened fire, and someone screamed.
Four people took off in her dire. She let go of her luggage and stepped right to let them pass and drew her Walther PPQ out of her jacket. She came around them so close the st woman’s hair brushed her shoulder and stopped right behind the guards. From their point of view, she might as well have teleported.
She shot one in the back of the head and the g bounced off the uard just above his temple. She shot him before he had finished fling. They dropped into the dark shaft and the doors slid closed.
“You’re such a smooth bitch. Hit the fire arm, please.” EP said in her ear. Lindsey flipped the arm on the wall and grabbed her luggage.
“Thanks. You got eyes oairwell?”
“Yea.”
“Where do you want me?”
“Office at the end of the hall. Wait out the evacuation, the up.” EP said.
Lindsey walked the suitcase down the lobby like she had never fired a gun in her life.