A gun will get you into trouble, but a grenade get you out

  Philip had been waiting for a fifty to tear through the trees or SWAT to e speeding into the lot for the past five mihe fire arm wailed out the windows and sirens echoed from somewhere out of sight. He trolled his breath and tried to guide his body away from an adrenaline dump he knew would be strong enough to leave him lying on the crete.

  He imagined EP sending a few of her droo “deal with the sniper”. They would probably get taken out before they got within a hundred yards of him. Then the boys in the lobby would radio in Philip’s location and he would be dead very soon. He was ready for it. It was the waiting that was unbearable.

  “Snipers down,” EP said calmly in his ear.

  “You sure?” he said. There was no reply. He stood there like an idiot for a moment then got up.

  “All right. Get ready to pack it up and head home.”

  He took the gre of his pocket, pulled the pin, and visualized the distao the lobby. He saw the grenade nd just below the loft ahe vision as he stepped out from the car and threw it over his head. Rounds snapped in the air and he dropped down. Someone in the lobby yelled. After a brief breathless silehe roar of the grenade was like an old friend cheering him on.

  With the bst still eg across the lot, he moved in a low run up the steps ahrough the bare frame of the right waiting area. The floor was covered in window gss, shell gs, fragments of furniture, and one long blood trail. The only guard in sight was a corpse sprawled behind aurned chair, but another one somewhere else was screaming.

  Boots struck marble to his left. He stepped up to a support beam and fired at the two guards ing out from the elevator lobby. Ihan a sed, they fell dead. Philip had a new gash in his forearm and most of his right ear was gone.

  Two guards stomped up on the loft. He pivoted to the right around the support beam, putting it between him and the guard on the left, and dropped to a low crouch as rounds cracked over his head. He shot the one on the right twice below the vest, and the guard colpsed over the edge and crashed into the fractured front desk. The uard put five rounds in the beam as Philip stepped around it and shot him in the waist. Another bullet tore through Philip’s shoulder and sprayed him in the face with his blood. He put o round through the guard’s neck as he dropped.

  There was a brief silehe fire arm just ambianow. Blood pounded in his ears, the one sound the earbuds couldn’t do shit about. He marched across the lobby toward the exterior metal staircase that led from the waiting area to the loft. Blood streamed down his face from a gash iop of his head, but he didn’t feel the wound. Somewhere out of sight, footsteps kled on gss.

  Celeste had go a windoulled herself onto the roof. A news chopper circled in the sky. Cars glittered on the highway like a river of metal. Bumper to bumper traffic. Dead still. The overcast was starting to break above the horizon, and it was going to be a lovely afternoon. For some people.

  Stu the crevice between the ey and the roof was a very big gun.

  “Oh god, you know I don’t know how to use that!”

  “I’ll walk you through it,” said EP.

  She did, and after being instructed how to shoulder the rifle, brace herself for the recoil, and a million other things, Celeste had it aimed at the office building across the highway. Something fshed at the base of the building and cracked and boomed like a firework. She would have jumped, but she was too scared to move.

  “Ok, I need you to look at the fourth floor. you see it?” EP said.

  Celeste ted up from the lobby.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, do you see those men standio the stairwell?”

  “No.”

  “What? Right o the stairwell!”

  “I see a blob, kind of.”

  EP flipped through her camera feeds. The gss inside wall of the feren had a frosted bar across it six feet high.

  “Ok, put the crosshairs on the ter of that blob. When I tell you, squeeze the trigger, slowly.”

  Celeste tried to cheer herself up.

  If I get him, they’ll have to give me half. Probably more than half! And if I fuck up, they’ll never make me do anything like this again.

  “Now!”

  The gun was the loudest thie had ever heard. She twisted from the recoil, lost her footing, and slid off the roof. Her feet slipped from under her as she dropped onto the sed-story roof and rolled off the side. After a screaming fall and an instinctive para roll on the grass, she was on her side on the wn, right o the sniper’s corpse. Her ass felt like it had been stabbed and her shoulder was burning from the fall or the recoil or both. Whehiled, she looked up to see two men, civilians, oh a Glod oh an AR, aiming at her and looking surprised.

  “It’s a girl.”

  “Are you Mossad?”

  She muttered half a word before a scraping on the roof cut her off. She turned around just in time to see the rifle nd on its stock a few feet away. She squeaked in surprise and the men stepped back.

  “What happened?!” EP said in her ear.

  “I fell.” Her voice cracked.

  “Are you fug—” EP groahen clicked off the line.

  “Did I get him?” There ause.

  “No!” EP said and clicked back off agaie started to cry. The two guys looked at each other, but kept their guns level.

  Lindsey watched seds tick by on a yellowed analog wall clock, ted the muffled thumps of gunfire from the ground floor, rahumb over the selector swit the Galil. Anything to distract her from the nagging feeling that she shouldn’t be here. A buried voice cried out.

  Yoing to get killed, or arrested, or maimed for life. Why are you doing this? Run!

  She had set up the bomb iairwell and had the camera feed pulled up on her phone. EP had called it a “stairwell er”, apparently something Michael had the twins cook up. A specially crafted thermobaric charge tweaked to send an indiary bst wave snaking up the stairs, killing anything within five stories, but leaving the rest of the building intact. It seemed too good to be true.

  On the camera feed, a guard came dowairs from the elevator lobby and walked right up to the luggage.

  “They found it!” God damn E.P. They must have another camera system. “I’m gonna have to blow it!” She flexed her thumb over the button.

  “Shit. Just wait, trying to move the target.” Said EP.

  “What? Where is he?!” He should have been in range by now. How long does it take to get down five flights of stairs?!

  “Just wait!” EP clicked and spped keys in the background and Lindsey got a sinking feeling in her chest.

  “He’s not iairwell?!” she whispered. “Why did they move him out?!”

  “Boss was moving down!”

  “He’s been dead for ten minutes!” It didn’t make any sense. Uhey had seen the bomb. Lindsey grimaced as the man on the s rummaged through the suitcase. All this for nothing! If those two idiots had been on site instead of dying on an overpass, they could have made a move together. Now all she could do ray.

  “I’m setting it off!” she whispered.

  “Just wait! Why aren’t they moving him?!” EP screamed, and Lindsey, despite herself, felt for her. On the feed, the man tore the back fabric off, exposing the main case.

  “Clear the stairs!” Lindsey said. She dialed the number and hoped for a miracle.

  Her earbuds muffled the roar, but she felt the shock rip through the walls and jump from the floor straight into her bones. Support beams groaned and dust fked off the ceiling. The quiet that followed made her feel like the room was the st thi ience.

  “Kill firmed?” She said, hopelessly. Her voice fell ft on carpet and dusty air, already smelling of the chemical explosion.

  “No,” said EP. “They’re opening the elevator shaft. You o hurry.”

  Lindsey got her Galil up and moved to the door. Finally, something direct. Adrenaline washed over her like a wave. She was ready for it.

  Paul was crouched in front of the elevators when the gss feren exploded and the guard standing over him went down a bloody crash. The guard’s head and shoulders wobbled strangely as he dropped, and his vest caved outward with a burst of gore. Something flew off at an angle and ged on aor. An arm. Paul sat there stunned, covered in blood and gore while the guards scrambled around him.

  “Get him down!” they forced him on the floor and up against the wall between the elevators and crouched around him with their guns up. Andler screamed at the space where the window used to be.

  “You mother fucker! Must’ve been bought off! Overlord this is House! We’re taking fire through the windows! Moving to the stairwell!”

  “No! Get him away from the windows and drop the blinds!” Anthony’s anger was a rolling boil, but a fifty cal is a fifty cal. The guards looked at each other and Paul could almost see the words “fuck that” form in the air between them. Paul waited for one of the uards to get ripped in half, but they just sat there staring and breathing and grimag for a few seds that dragged on like hours.

  A boom rose from the floor and shot up the walls, and a roar iairwell rattled the door like a tornado had been summoned oher side.

  “Overlord, what was that?” Andler screamed.

  “The stairs are gone,” Anthony said. “Drop the blinds, get that elevator open a him down the shaft. Gear is in the manager’s office.”

  He sounded like he was expining how to boil water. All the guards looked at Andler.

  “You get paid more,” someone said.

  Andler marched swiftly to the shattered gss wall a down the floor-to-ceiling roller shades. Paul and the guards all exhaled at once.

  “Ok!” Andler’s voice cracked. “Get that fug elevator open!”

  Episode: Do or Die