Girl Takes The Oath (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 5) (14 page)

“How do you know you can trust us?” Braswell asked.

“A grizzled veteran who’s seen how institutions can bring out the worst in whoever seeks advancement through them… I think I can trust you. And the young hothead,” she said, nodding to Padgett, “I know pretty well what to expect from him.”

“And me,” CJ asked, almost afraid to hear how her friend would answer.

“Oh, CJ, it’s not about trust between you and me, but I needed you to see how serious this business is, because it might turn ugly.”

“Wait a second,” Padgett said in a sudden realization. “What guy in an alley?”

Braswell saw it an instant before his distracted partner did, lights flaring in the mirrors. One of the vehicles behind them had accelerated suddenly, attempting to overtake them with no traffic on the almost deserted road to account for their maneuver—his instincts told him to prepare for the worst. No headlights lit up the westbound lanes, and the other vehicle behind them had also accelerated, as if acting in concert.

“
Neil, hostiles coming up on your left,” Braswell shouted, as the side door of the van, now next to them, slid open. “Bump ’em, before they can fire.” Padgett swerved into the van, upending a man with an assault rifle strapped over one shoulder. The impact from the sedan following behind slammed Braswell into his seatback, and then into the dashboard. “Damn it, Neil, step on it. Get us the hell outa here.”

B
ullets struck the rear window. “CJ, get down,” Emily cried, and yanked her friend into a half-prone position on the backseat, then probed her head and shoulders to make sure she hadn’t been hit. “Looks like an AK-47 in the van, probably more in the pursuit,” she shouted.

Braswell hoisted himsel
f partway through the passenger side window, swung his arm over the roof and sent four rounds into the front of the van. “Hit ’em again, Neil,” he yelled over the wind noise. A burst from the pursuit car caught Braswell in the shoulder, and he wrestled himself back in the passenger seat, cursing at the top of his lungs.

Peeking between the seats, CJ saw his face turn pale and beads of sweat form around his ears.
He’s going into shock
. She kicked the back of his seat and called out to him. “Keep it together. This is no time to fade out on us.” She hadn’t known what name to use, and didn’t have the nerve to be familiar the way Emily had. He looked at her and smiled, a little shaky, but now focused, picked up his gun from the seat and tried to turn to his right to fire out the side window at the car behind them.

The van veered wildly, and
struck the side of their car, causing the man with the AK-47 to lurch toward them and bring the gun to bear on the back window, his finger inside the trigger guard. Emily reached out of the window and deflected the barrel upwards before he could fire, then seized the gunstock, yanking him forward out of the van and twisting the gun up sharply. With a scream, he fell onto the door, groping feverishly with his free arm for something to keep from hitting the pavement, shrieking as Emily bent back the finger caught on the trigger. Two rounds went through the roof as she struck his throat and wrenched the gun off his hand. With a single, smooth movement, she slipped the strap from his shoulder and struck him across the face with the butt end of the gun. He fell between the vehicles, and the van jumped when it rolled over his legs. The second car probably hit him too, judging from the movement of its headlights, and then it dropped back from the pursuit.

Now in possession of the AK-47,
Emily leaned out and raked the hood and windshield of the dark sedan with bullets. Two more sets of headlights came into view in the distance behind them. “Stay down, CJ,” she shouted, unable to tell whether her fire had struck anyone inside the car. No return fire came right away, so she emptied the clip at the front grill and tires, hoping at least to disable the vehicle. One last burst from behind struck the trunk and shattered the rear window, just as the rudderless van swerved into them again. Blood streamed from Padgett's ear, and CJ watched in horror as he slumped to the side.

“Neil,”
Braswell shouted and grabbed for the wheel, too late to keep them from running off the road, and only narrowly missing a bridge abutment. Two loud bangs and then a splash, and water began seeping in through the lower seal of the door, next to CJ's feet.

As the car drifted into the shallow current, a calm overtook the occupants of the car. Braswell had managed to force the wheel to the left
just before they left the embankment, shifting their momentum enough to bring them partly under the cover of the bridge. But the river’s current, lazy as it was, would push them downstream soon enough to expose them to fire.

“CJ,” Emily called out, forcing the
door open and letting even more water rush in. “Help Ed out of the car. He's been hit.” Then she waded into the water and yanked the driver’s side door open. CJ watched as, with one arm arranged behind her neck, Emily groaned under Padgett’s weight. She pulled him out and toward the bank, calling back over her shoulder, “Hurry, CJ. We only have a few seconds before they’re on us again.”

“It’s a Type-81,” Braswell called out from where he and CJ sat on the riverbank, when Emily, back in the river by the car,
held up the now useless rifle she'd taken from the first gunman. “Chinese-made, which tells us who these guys are.” She rummaged in the trunk for a few seconds, then headed back up the bank, holding two vests, and a few extra magazines for the Glock 19’s carried by Braswell and Padgett.

“
You took two in the shoulder, Ed,” Emily said, giving him the once over as she helped him into the vest. “And one more in the hip. Must have been smaller-bore pistols. Three rounds from that rifle would have cut you in half. Can you still fire a gun?” Braswell nodded. “You’ve got this side,” she said, tipping her head to the slope leading back up to the road on their right, and stripping off her jacket and uniform shirt. “Don't let anyone through. Your partner’s unconscious... looks like one round creased the side of his head, took off half his ear, but he's still breathing.’

Sitting with her back against the massive concrete pier supporting the eastbound side of the bridge,
CJ blinked in and out of focus as Emily removed Padgett’s Glock and handed it to her. “Are you in the game?” she asked. When she nodded, Emily pushed the gun into her hands. “Put this on,” she said, handing her the second vest. “You've got three full clips. Ed's gonna watch that end. Cover him, but keep an eye on the other bank. They may try to circle around and come down over there,” she said pointing across the river. “You can do this,” she said, looking directly into her eyes.

And then, as matter-of-factly as if she were rolling up her sleeves to clean the shower in Bancroft Hall, Emily crouched down to roll her jacket and shirt into a cushion for Padgett’s head. CJ watched trance-like, admiring her friend’s body, lithe and sinuous, and wondering, “Who the hell wears a sports bra to meet a princess?” as Emily rose up and stood over her in dark pants and a grey, sleeveless undershirt.

“Where are you going?” CJ cried out after her, as loudly as she dared. “You don't even have a gun.”

“Don’t worry about me,”
Emily called over her shoulder as she ran toward the other side of the bridge.

Looking over her shoulder, uncertain what to do or where to look for danger, CJ watched as Emily sprinted up the embankment between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway. Three loud explosions snapped her back into focus. Braswell had fired at their car as it drifted into open water.

“I want them looking in this direction, you know, to give her a chance,” he explained. She didn’t understand his next gesture and gave him a quizzical look. “Get after her,” he shouted. “I got this. Cover her. Anything you see up there that isn’t her, shoot it.”

CJ turned and ran as fast as she could get her legs to move, though it felt intolerably slow, her feet sticking in the strangely glutinous mud. Just as she reached the gap dividing traffic on the bridge, and turned to climb the embankment where Emily had gone a moment earlier, she heard a muffled scream and a body fell into the water a few feet away. In the second it took her to realize what she was seeing, the man righted himself and stood up, waist deep in the water, and raised a gun he had somehow managed to hold on to. She watched helplessly as the barrel came into line with her face. Two loud explosions and his body convulsed, arms splayed out wide, no longer in control of their movements, and he fell backwards into the water. She turned to see Braswell holding his gun in a shooter’s stance, one arm supporting the other, body turned to the side to minimize his exposure, smoke issuing from the muzzle. “Move it, sailor,” he shouted, then turned to watch the other end of the bridge.

Her academy training had prepared her in only theoretical terms for the scene that greeted CJ once she made it to the level of the road. Peering over the k-rail barrier, the grim reality took a little getting used to. She sighted along the gun to focus her eyes, sweeping it from one side to the other, searching for targets, and hoping she’d recognize them before they saw her. The van sat motionless, resting against the opposite barrier, its driver slumped over the wheel. Emily pressed her back against the side door, eyes fixed on the rear, two men lying crumpled in the roadway behind her.

Three more sedans had arrived since they went off the road, and several men prepared to descend the embankment. Heavily armed, some carrying AK-47s, others pistols, the one in charge signaled to send a few in her direction, which she should have anticipated. CJ prepared to engage as they came around the van, confident in her marksmanship—she’d gotten high marks in this aspect of her training—and hoped Emily would stay clear of her line of fire.

But Emily didn’t stay clear. As they rounded the rear of the van single file, she swung a high roundhouse kick into the first man’s face, sending his head into the rounded, metal edge. The man following directly behind recovered from his surprise and brought a pistol up—CJ prepared to fire—but Emily had already seized his wrist and twisted the gun back into his face, her thumb behind the trigger to prevent it from going off prematurely. A second twist of his wrist, and he would have screamed if she hadn’t struck him in the throat as she stepped under his arm, slipping the gun out of his hand. She wrenched him all the way down with one hand squeezing his contorted hand until his head hit the pavement just behind the driver’s door. Without even turning to look, she swung her free arm around, now in possession of the gun, and fired behind her at the third man, striking him twice in the chest and driving him back around the corner of the van. The sound of the gun and the sight of a fallen comrade got the attention of the rest of the team, who moved to investigate, uncertain how to find a safe position. She slammed the gun down on the exposed throat of the man whose hand she still controlled, bouncing his head off the pavement, then stepped forward to crouch by the front wheel.

CJ tried to signal her in the sudden quiet, hissing out “Em,” but she hadn’t expected the gun to snap around that fast, aimed directly at her, eyes dark and hard, no spark of human sympathy that she could detect, at least not from that distance. Then recognition glimmered, turning demonic darkness suddenly bright, and Emily lowered the gun to signal her to watch the far side, as she moved around the front of the van. Uncertain how many men they still had to contend with, CJ fired four shots at the first sign of motion at the rear, a scream and a groan indicating she’d hit something. Several others dodged around to the other side, only to encounter Emily that much sooner.

A quick burst of gunfire, at least six shots, all sounding like the same gun, followed by the sounds of a struggle and a blood-curdling scream, a man’s voice, which must mean Emily had not been killed yet. More screaming and five more shots in quick succession, and another man ran around the back of the van clutching an assault rifle. CJ put two rounds in his chest, and then all was silent.

The entire encounter couldn’t have taken more than a brief moment, maybe less than thirty seconds altogether. Of course, it seemed much longer to CJ, and she kept her gun trained on the dead man until she saw Emily step out from behind the van and wave her over. Once she’d cleared the barrier and run across the empty road, Emily jerked the driver’s body out of the van, and the two of them pulled the other bodies to the side of the road, some bloodied, perforated by steel pellets, others mangled and maimed—had Emily really done that to them? So many, CJ shivered to think of it—and piled them behind one of the sedans. She’d killed one, maybe two, in the antiseptic distance of a bullet, and Braswell had killed at least one by the water, maybe the driver of the van, too. How many had Emily killed, striking terror into them with her eyes before breaking them with her hands… eight, maybe nine… a dozen? CJ couldn’t bring herself to do the math.

“I think the van’s our best bet,” Emily told Braswell, once they’d returned to the riverside. “You call it in, but we can get him to Anne Arundel General before the ambulance even gets here.”

With one arm across each of their shoulders, the girls managed to haul Padgett up the hill and load him into the back of the van. Braswell staggered along behind them, fading a bit once the tension of the battle had dimmed down, leaving only muscular force to sustain him. When he crested the embankment and saw for the first time the results of the mayhem he’d only heard from below, he let out a whistle and ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair. “You girls really took care of business up here.”