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  Recoil rippled up Sarah’s arms with each squeeze of the trigger. Light flashed from the barrel with each shot, followed by the puff of smoking lead that ejected and sped toward the exposed flesh of the guards in front of her. The magazine in her left hand emptied. She sidestepped behind an old packaging machine. Her thumb hit the small button on the side of the pistol and ejected the magazine. Before it hit the floor, she had a new one in place, pivoted on her right foot, and continued firing.

  Slowly, one by one, the guards retreated. It was only one step at a time, but considering there were twelve of them and only one of her—which, in her mind, equaled out to pretty much the same thing—she considered it a good starting point.

  Sarah maneuvered around the packaging machine and up behind a stack of crates, where the click of the firing pin in the right pistol triggered another ejected magazine, which she quickly replaced. Only four left. She holstered her left pistol and pulled one of the C-4 charges from her side. She peeled off the magnetic seal, flicked the trigger, and chucked it into the cluster of guards. The magnetic strip homed in on one of the rifles like a heat-seeking missile. It slapped the side of the gun and, two seconds later, sent a wave of heat and human matter across the factory floor.

  Sarah peeked around the side of the crate and was greeted with the sight of scattered limbs. She looked at the casualties on the ground then at the pistol in her hand. Why don’t I use those things more often? She quickly ascended the stairs toward the office in which her target was located. She placed another one of the C-4 charges against the door and stood back. The explosion evaporated most of the door and parts of the wall.

  Sarah stepped through the smoke and smoldering debris, both pistols aimed at the group of suits cowering in the corner. “Gentlemen, if I can have your attention, please. You’re all under arrest. Well, I’m not technically arresting you, but I have the guns, so you should just do what I tell you.”

  “Agent Hill, you’re persistence is incredibly irritating.” The voice came from the back, in another room behind the conference room she was standing in. The smoke had yet to clear, but she could only see an empty doorframe the voice was coming from. “You should leave now, Agent Hill,” the voice said, “before it’s too late.”

  The smoke cleared, and a man dressed in a fine suit stepped through the doorway. She recognized the face. Rick Demps. He looked exactly like his photograph: manufactured, plastic, and cold. There wasn’t a single strand of hair out of place or a wrinkle in his suit. “Put the guns down,” Demps said.

  “I don’t think you understand how a negotiation works, so I’ll start. Tell me where the laptop is, or I’m going to kill you,” Sarah said.

  Rick’s polished shoes crunched over the bits of glass and drywall that littered the carpet from the earlier explosion. He made his way over to the window and pointed to the factory’s machinery below. “I’m sure you know by now what we make here.”

  “I did my homework.”

  “Your name is Sarah Hill. Daughter of Dave and Susan Hill.” Rick twirled the ruby studded ring around his finger. “I did my homework, too.”

  A muscle spasm ran through both trigger fingers, and Sarah put two bullets in his chest, flinging Rick backward and onto the ground. He gasped for breath, but no blood leaked from his clothes.

  “Smart move with the Kevlar,” Sarah said. She took a few steps forward and lifted him off the ground, pressing the gun to his forehead. “Too bad you don’t have a helmet made of the stuff. Ever play Russian roulette? Hell of a rush.”

  Demps didn’t flinch. The only response she got out of him was a smile that offered no emotion other than mockery. “You have family that lives in Chicago. I have a bomb heading there now.”

  “Where’s Global Power?” Sarah asked, jamming the end of the pistol into his head.

  “Not concerned about your family? What was that little girl’s name again?” Demps put his finger to his lips. “Ah, yes, Ella.”

  Sarah brought the side of her pistol against Demps’s cheekbone, and he fell to the floor, where he caught himself with his hands. Waves of rage washed over her, gaining momentum and eroding the sands of reason. She gripped Demps by his collar and jammed her pistol into his temple. The tension that ran through her arm, shoulder, neck, and back begged to be released. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger. Her finger wobbled over the small sliver of steel. She wanted to do it.

  “Don’t want to kill me, Agent Hill?” Demps asked. “Or is that an order coming from your boss?”

  “If you did your homework, then you know I’m not good at following orders.”

  Sarah watched Demps’s pupils stare back at her, and his skin crinkled in the corners of his eyes as he smiled. He only broke eye contact with her for a moment, looking over her right shoulder, but it was enough to give away the person behind her. She rolled to the right, toward the shattered window, getting a glimpse at the tall man wielding a machine gun as bullets followed her, and she felt one hit the Kevlar on her chest. She continued the barrel roll and jumped out the window from the second story and crashed into a stack of crates, which spilled and broke onto the concrete flooring.

  With the bullets still flying from the second story, she turned back just long enough to see the stone-faced man continue his assault. The machine gun fire thudded behind one of the conveyer belts she ducked behind. The metallic timbre finally ended, and she could hear Demps’s voice shouting.

  “So what’s it going to be, Agent Hill?” The thump of helicopter blades sounded outside. “You can try and chase me, but by the time you find me, the bombs will be long gone. Or you can go after the bombs, save your family, and try and find me again. You’re going to lose either way, but at least I’m allowing you a choice.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a shit choice!”

  Rick laughed, and the thump of the blades grew louder. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon, Agent Hill!”

  The rumble of the trucks had already started, and they were on their way to their destinations. Bombs with enough explosive power to obliterate millions in the blink of an eye. She hesitated. For perhaps the first time in her career, she could feel the weight of indecision bring her down to her knees. But what shocked her most was the fact she was waiting for that voice in her ear, that tone that would help direct her path, whether she listened to it or not. But Bryce wasn’t with her. He was underground in a place far away from where she was. She was on her own.

  Trails of dust were already being kicked up from the three trucks heading toward their destinations, carrying their lethal cargo of radioactive induced mayhem. The trucks were too far gone for her to catch up on foot, and the only working piece of machinery she managed to find was wedged into the wall of the factory. She rushed to the front of the building, where she saw the helicopter vanishing into the distance carrying Demps and his henchmen. But her eyes fell upon the gleaming sight of a pearl-finished Rolls-Royce Phantom sitting out front with a very, very nervous man behind the wheel who kept his shaking hands in the air as Sarah pushed him out.

  “M-Mr. Demps said I c-couldn’t leave this car o-or h-he’ll kill me,” the driver said.

  Sarah shut the door and rolled down the window as the engine roared to life. “How much does he pay to not kill you?”

  “One-hundred fifty a year.”

  Indignation spread across her face, and she almost shot him for just saying it aloud. “Are you kidding me? For driving a car?”

  “Well, I drive more than one of his cars.”

  Sarah aimed the pistol at him, which shut him up completely. “I’m this close to shooting you.” She held her index finger and thumb so close together they were almost touching. “Don’t give me any more reason to, okay?”

  The driver nodded, and she tore off in the direction of the semis. The GPS navigation in the car showed that they were six miles from entering a major highway, and once they made it there, the trucks would separate to whatever destinations they were headed for.

 
The accelerator was pressed to the floor, and Sarah could hear the effortless speed of the car. With the trails of dust closing in from the first truck, she took a moment to look at her surroundings. The fine leather seats, the magnificent handling. She rubbed her palm against the wooden dash. I wonder if I could expense one of these on my next mission.

  Tiny pieces of rock and rubble pinged against the car the closer she moved to the truck. She pulled over to the right side of the rear truck, causing the tires to rumble along the coarser dirt and rocks, the smooth ride ending as she aimed her pistol at the truck’s tires, shredding two of them into bits of rubber.

  The GPS tracker flashed that the highway was only three miles away now, and all three trucks were still pushing forward. Sarah looked down at the lone piece of C-4 still attached to her belt. It wouldn’t be enough to disable all three.

  Losing control, the truck swerved hard right, and Sarah was forced off the makeshift road and into the thicker sand and rocks, losing control of the wheel. The truck sped past, and Sarah regained control and ended up right back where she’d started, at the rear of the convoy. She slammed her foot on the gas and veered left, speeding past the truck that had attempted to run her off the road, then past the second, then the first truck until she was in front of all of them. She put a few hundred feet between herself and the first truck and then turned the wheel hard. The car spun a one-eighty, the tires skidding across the road and sending a tornado of dust into the air. The grille of the first truck now stared straight back into her face, and she slammed the car into reverse, slowly easing off the gas until she was parallel with the first truck.

  The barrel of a shotgun poked out the driver’s-side window of the semi’s cab, and Sarah tapped the brakes, sending the bulk of the pieces of lead into the trunk of the car. Keeping one hand on the wheel and one foot on the gas, she positioned her left leg up on the seat with her left arm out the window. She accelerated until she was just in front of the connection of the truck cab and the freight then removed her foot from the gas and her hand from the wheel and leapt onto the trailer as the Rolls-Royce spun out in the sand.

  Sarah landed on the awkward strips of metal and made her way around to the driver’s side, where the shotgun barrel still waited for her. She fired at the barrel, knocking it out of the driver’s hands, and made her move. In the same nimble fashion in which she’d managed to leap from the car to the truck, she jumped for the driver’s-side door, yanked it open, grabbed the driver by the collar, and tossed him out. She poked her head out the window, shaking her fist. “And I’ll be contacting your supervisor about your poor driving!”

  Sarah slammed on the brakes, causing the second truck to crash into the one she had just commandeered and the third truck to crash into the second. The resulting jolt sent her flying into the windshield with enough force for her back to shatter the glass upon impact.

  The truck jackknifed, snapping in half the strands of metal that held the freight to the semi. The momentum and angle caused the cab of the truck to flip to its side, sending Sarah tumbling around in the cab like a rag doll. The semi skidded to a stop less than half a mile from the highway, where groups of cars were slowing to look at the massive wreckage on the old dirt road.

  Glass mixed with blood in the open cuts along Sarah’s face, body, legs, and arms. She lay in a twisted heap on top of the inside of the passenger-side door. She looked up and could see the white, blinding light from the afternoon sun reveal the open driver’s-side window above her. She slowly, carefully pushed herself to an upright position, mindful of the bits of glass underneath and around her. Her arms felt like they were going to snap in half, and her left shoulder wouldn’t allow her to move her arm more than a quarter of the way up from her side without a knife-like stab forcing her to put the arm down. Her knees popped as she climbed the cabin, using the shifter and the steering wheel to pull herself out of the wreckage. She squinted into the sunlight, now fully exposing the harsh gashes across her cheeks, neck, and forehead. “I really need to start wearing my seatbelt more.”

  Exhausting all the effort she had left, she rolled herself onto the top of the mangled semi and lay there, focusing all her energy into just breathing, as she tried to ignore the slight pinch in her right side with each inhale and exhale. “Thank God that’s done.”

  The long, deep horn of the boat at the dock in the marina outside the factory instantly reminded her of the bombs she had seen being loaded earlier. She lifted her head off the truck and could see the boat still sitting in dock, almost ready to begin its journey out to sea. “Shit.” Her head fell back against the truck with a thud, and she rolled herself off, landing shakily on the ground.

  A slight limp in her right leg limited the speed with which she could make it back to the Rolls, but after stretching her gait, she managed to settle right back into a light jog. One of the truckers climbed out of the cab, blood staining his shirt, wobbling on his feet and shaking his fist. “You dumb cunt! You could’ve gotten us killed! You stupid—”

  The bullet that hit him in the shoulder dropped him to the ground. Without looking, Sarah holstered the pistol and kept her eyes on the car in front of her. “We can exchange insurance information later.” She hopped into the Rolls-Royce and floored it back down the dirt road. By the time she made it to the dock, the last mooring line was being untied. She slammed the car into park and sprinted to the boarding ramp before the ship was out of reach.

  Only one young man stood between her and the entrance. He put his hands up, trying to stop her. “Miss, you’re not allowed to—” Before he could finish, she grabbed hold of his arm, twisted it behind his back, and shoved him into the water.

  The boarding ramp crashed a few seconds later as the ship propelled forward. The vessel was easily three hundred feet long, and the large shipping containers on board were no doubt filled with the radioactive bombs.

  Still bleeding and now covered in a thick sheen of sweat, dust, glass, and grime, she kept both pistols at the ready, knowing full well she was down to her last three magazines. The deck of the ship was wet, slick, and her boots had trouble keeping their traction as she maneuvered to the front of the boat. The bridge was just ahead when a guard came out from between the crates. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, Sarah taking in the fact that there were still guards alive that she hadn’t killed and the guard taking in the sight of the bloody, mangled, confused-looking woman staring back at him. Almost as if he remembered that he was to guard the cargo on board from harm, his whole body tensed, and he aimed his rifle at her.

  “Freeze!”

  “Look, buddy, as you can see, I’ve had a hell of a day, so you would be doing me a very big favor if you could just not try and shoot me. Then I won’t have to shoot you, and we can just go about the rest of our day in peace. Maybe even get a drink later. What do you say?”

  The guard twitched nervously and moved his mouth to the radio on his chest. “I have a woman on board, injured and armed. I need backup in my location now.”

  Sarah sighed, her shoulders sloping in an exhaustive effort, and shifted her left hand to the side of her belt casually, just over the last C-4 explosive she had left. “Always the hard way.”

  A quick succession of boots pounded across the deck of the ship as the remaining guards hurried toward her. Her hand flicked on the detonator, and it immediately started blinking, causing the guard to shift his eyes to the distracting light. With her right hand, she drew her pistol and shot the guard in the chest before he had a chance to react.

  The sound of the oncoming footfalls doubled after the shot was fired, and Sarah flung the C-4 explosive over the side of the ship, where the magnetic strip found the side of the hull, and it clung to it like a leech to a body. Twelve guards surrounded her as she kept her hands up in the air. “You guys might want to hold on to something.”

  The explosion that rocked the side of the boat sent everyone off their feet, and Sarah managed to take out four of the guards before the rest
of them realized what had happened. Then Sarah wedged herself between two of the still-disoriented guards, brought her hands around the front of their chins, and viciously twisted their necks until she heard the distinct pop that severed the spinal cord from the brainstem.

  The remaining six guards rushed after her, some of them firing blindly into the smoke filling the air from the massive hole now etched in the ship’s side, sending ricocheting bullets all around them. One landed in her calf and sent her to the ground. She could feel the boat shift while she pushed herself up from the watery deck and examined the wound on her calf. She rotated her ankle, triggering a sensation of pain against her leg and a gush of blood from the wound. The bullet was still inside. She pushed herself out of the salt–blood mixture that covered the floor and limped between two piles of nets. The six remaining guards were now on high alert, and she was out of bombs. But with the ship turning around, all she had to do was wait it out until they made it to the dock then sneak off quickly, quietly, and with a bullet wound in her calf. Yeah, sounds like a great plan. She pulled both pistols out.

  The smoke covering the deck of the ship grew thick, and she could feel the jerkiness of the boat’s motions. She wasn’t sure where on the haul the bomb had hit, but from the way they were moving, she guessed that it was pretty. The acrid fumes caused her to squint her bloodshot eyes as her entire body throbbed in pain. She kept her pistols scanning the smoke, fingers on the triggers, waiting for the guards to show themselves.

  Sarah closed her eyes, letting the sound of their gear, boots, and guns tell her where they were. A light thump sounded behind her. Its culprit was a two-hundred-pound male, roughly six feet tall, with what sounded like an extra twenty pounds of gear on.

  With a weak leg, she pivoted, adjusted the aim of her pistol upward, and fired into the smoke, and the distinct thud of two hundred and twenty pounds hit the ground. Five more. The fallen comrade triggered another guard to rush to his aid, where he was swiftly disposed of with another shot into the smoke behind her. Four more.