Now it looked like the northwoods version of the Matrix lobby scene. Bullets were already flying at us as I came in the front door. There were a series of planters leading up to a three-story waterfall that cascaded down behind the registration desk in the middle of the massive lobby.
The glass panes that lined the front of the room shattered within seconds of me leading the way into the building, my team a few dozen steps behind me. I’d meant to draw the mercenaries’ fire to me, and wow, boy, did I succeed in a big way.
I rolled behind a concrete planter and heard a hundred rounds lodge in the cover I’d chosen. I’d heard about auditory exclusion, a temporary loss of hearing caused by an excess of adrenaline, but it obviously hadn’t kicked in for me. My adrenaline was in overdrive, but I could hear a hell of a lot of gunshots, and they were loud.
I edged my gun just slightly around the side of the planter and fired in the direction of the nearest shots. I had no hope of hitting anything, but the gunfire tapered slightly as I did so, which was my main goal. I didn’t know how many assault rifle rounds it would take to bust through two sides of a concrete planter and the three feet of dirt in the middle of it, but I was guessing a hundred rounds per second would eventually do the job.
Fortunately, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had given me an app for that.
I tossed the flashbangs that had been hanging off my belt and curled into a ball. I heard Reed in my ear as I did it. “Stacked up just outside!” he called.
“Two seconds!” I replied, and there was a blast of light as blinding as Amaterasu even behind the planter and a thunderous noise that sounded like the bass roar of grenades exploding around me.
I heard the chatter of guns firing from where I’d entered the building and saw Reed, Kat and Scott making their way into the building with their guns ablazin’. I knew Zollers, Janus and Foreman would be somewhere outside, coordinating their powers to throw a damper on the area as much as they could.
I came up shooting, pegging three guys in less than three seconds, headshots all. Tangos down and all that jazz. Yippy-ki-yay.
I saw the flare of a gun blind fired from behind the registration desk in the middle of the lobby and realized that all the holdouts had cover by this point, because anyone out in the open when those flashbangs went off had been shredded by Reed and company’s entry. Reed was lurking behind a planter a row up from mine, and Scott was next to him. Kat was behind the planter opposite mine on the right side. She was reloading, I saw, and I threaded my way forward along the side of the lobby while firing a couple shots at the front desk. I hoped there was no clerk hiding behind the desk, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at this stage if there was.
The steady chatter of an AK-47 answered me, aimed at approximately my last position. It hosed the tree above me with a good ten rounds before it ceased.
“Harper,” I said, “call it out.”
“You’ve got three, say again—zero three—tangos behind the planters in front of you. At least two are definitely still in play, and the third is either wounded or playing a real good game of possum. You have three more tangos behind the registration desk along with a possible civilian. Civilian has their head down and is curled up, left hand side. Tangos are on your right.”
“And the rest of Century?” I asked as I reloaded, sticking a fresh mag into my Sig.
“Acting cautious. They’re all clustered in the labyrinth of hallways behind the lobby, moving real slow.”
“Roger that,” I said. “First things first, the tangos behind the planters—”
“Got ’em,” Kat whispered, then I heard something truly horrific.
The trees in every one of the planters came to life simultaneously, with the sound of branches cracking and whipping through the air. I poked my head up in time to see a man jerked from the ground with a broken branch impaled through his shoulder. He screamed as the tree jerked him to his feet, and I shot him in the head out of mercy as he was ripped in two by the strength of the branch heaving through his chest.
I heard another call from across the lobby and watched a guy get hit by a stray branch like it was clubbing him. It came down on him once and he staggered. It landed on his head the second time and flat-out crushed it like a boot on a grapefruit. He dropped and didn’t move, and the slow ooze of red across the floor signaled to me that his resistance was done.
There was the heavy sound of branches whumping against something on the ground from behind the third tree, the one nearest the registration desk, and I cautiously looked out to see it flailing against the ground. There was no noise from behind the planter, and I thought about what Harper had said about the last tango being either dead or playing possum. I figured there was no doubt which it was now.