Page 85 of Assassin's Game
We fanned out, took our time picking our way through the woods toward the entrance. Given that there were no formal blueprints for the tunnel, no records of it being built, we assumed it had been concealed somehow. We also assumed they would have cameras on it. Eli couldn’t control those without a connection to the building security system, which we needed to establish. When we got close, Eli raised his fist and the rest of us fell back to varying degrees, keeping us off camera for now.
I moved up to a right-angle view of Eli as he began inspecting what looked like a ragged limestone cliff face. He ran his hands over the surface, back and forth, edging farther along until he found what he needed. He keyed in something on his computer that I couldn’t see, then, after retrieving a light-colored cord from a pocket, he hooked one end to the computer, gripped a piece of the rock face with his free hand, and jerked hard. A hard crumbling sound reached me as the piece came off the surface.
A keypad. Somehow Eli had found a camouflaged keypad where I’d seen nothing. He fiddled with it for a moment, then attached the cord he held, looked back to his computer, and clicked a button on the screen.
I motioned my men forward. Eli should now be hooked into the hard line at the door, his computer running code until it found the combination to open the entry. In the background, he’d told me, the program would also be searching for a back door into the building’s security systems—cameras, comms, locks. We couldn’t shut everything down, but we could ease our way inside.
We waited, crouched, for Eli’s signal—a raised hand. Rhys and I rushed forward just as a section of the cliff detached itself and slid open.
The guards were waiting, backs to the walls on each side of the entry. Weapons at the ready. We went in low, rolling through the door to avoid their notice as long as possible. A mere split second, but that gave us long enough to shoot both soldiers with darts. If they noticed, they didn’t hesitate, simply dog piled onto us without taking the time to check their flanks. Monty and Titus used strategic punches to knock both men out before the drugs could take effect.
“I hope this doesn’t represent the highest quality of X’s defense force,” Rhys said as he laid his guard out against the wall. “I was hoping to at least break a sweat.”
Eli moved inside, sans computer. He held out his hand to Monty, who passed him the second one. “Cameras down; jammers on,” he said.
“Levi’s signal?” Titus asked.
Eli tapped the screen in his hand. “Come on, baby.” One, two seconds went by. Three. Four. “There you are, bro.” He brought the screen to his mouth and kissed it. “Mwah.”
“I put my hands on that thing, you know,” Monty pointed out.
“Me too,” Rhys said.
“Me three.” Titus shuddered. “Anyone got some GermX?”
“As long as his lips don’t touch anything else,” Rhys said. On cue, all of them looked at me.
“For fuck’s sake!” I brought both my middle fingers up, very close to their faces. “Are we on a mission or a high school girls’ sleepover?” I shot Eli a glare. “Are we ready?”
His grin would’ve gotten him a smack if we had time. As it was he skirted behind the rest of the team—on the opposite side of the tunnel—to pass me. “We’re ready, Beautiful. This way.”
“They’ve got no cameras and no comms, right?” Rhys asked. “They’re expecting trouble. What are we expecting?”
Monty held up a separate device similar to a small video camera, with a wide, flat disc at the camera end. “FLIR will tell us.” He pointed the thermal toward the tunnel. “So far, two ahead.”
Rhys and Titus moved forward, Eli directly behind with Monty, me bringing up the rear. As we neared the end of the tunnel, two wide glass doors opened into what appeared to be an empty concrete receiving room. The guards inside that room knew someone was coming—they’d have been alerted by the original two, but had no way of knowing they were facing five soldiers. One was almost to a phone hanging on the north wall of the room; the other was heading for us.
A beep sounded, and the door swung open. Rhys and Titus were through it and on the two guards before they could alert anyone else to our presence.
Monty took up a spot at the far end of the room, which opened onto a blank white hall, no signs. “Clear.”
Eli glanced at the computer strapped to his wrist. “Looks like we are going down. Stairs will be in the corners.”
Rhys and Titus joined us, and we moved as a group toward the hall and Monty. “We’re going left,” Eli said. “How’s it look?”
Monty held up the FLIR, first in one direction, then the other. “Good.” The camera in his hand beeped. “Scratch that. We’ve got six on their way.”
Monty and Eli stashed their electronics and the rest of us holstered our dart guns as we waited. Monty held up an open hand and counted down—five, four, three, two, one.
The first guard rounded the corner, gun first. Monty grabbed the man by a fistful of clothing and yanked him forward. He went flying—right into Rhys’s fist.
Titus let out a whoop and leaped into the group in the hallway. The rest of us followed, and chaos erupted. The guards had made a mistake; they’d bunched up in too small an area. With a fight in a confined space, guns were useless unless you wanted to shoot your buddies, which meant all those hands holding weapons were now a liability. I caught a quick glimpse of one smart soldier punching Rhys in the face with the gun still in his hand, finger not behind the trigger guard, thank God, but most took those precious few seconds to holster or drop their weapons—and regretted it.
Taking advantage of Titus’s bowling-ball move on the right side of the hall, I got a running start and jumped. My right foot made contact with the wall, pushed off, and I was zigzagging back toward the center as I landed behind much of the group. The only guy outside the fray was big. Very big. When he got a good look at me, his body relaxed and he laughed.
And that was Mr. Big’s mistake.
In a move that would’ve done Black Widow proud, I ran for my target and, knowing he was too stunned at my aggression to move, used his thigh as a step up his torso. My ass hit his shoulder as my leg swung around, pulling my body around as it wrapped his neck. My stomach pressed against the back of his head, my legs locked in front of his throat, and I threw my weight forward to push him off-balance. The man tumbled forward, and my body added to the momentum, forcing him into a somersault. He landed, sprawled on his back, legs on a couple of downed soldiers, head still locked between my thighs.
