hard across the face, dropping her to the ground.
Zack spoke softly to Court again; their shoulders were touching as they knelt on the unstable staircase. “Hold.”
“Copy,” came the reply. Court had already decided that if he and Zack were going to have to engage this much larger force of men, first they would need to take the last few steps up and out of the stairs so they could either find cover on the factory floor or go prone. There was a real chance of the staircase collapsing, especially if he and Zack started using it as a gun platform in a six-on-two firefight.
Zack was thinking the same thing. “We need to get off these stairs.”
“Copy.” But Court didn’t rise up immediately. One of the rifle lights on the catwalk had shifted a little, and now he thought he might be visible to the men ahead facing this direction if he tried to move.
He could hear the voice of another man now. “Dunno, boss. I think she might be telling the truth.”
The man standing over Annika on the left paused several seconds, then said, “Agreed. It was worth a try. I’d love one more shot at Gentry, but she ain’t gonna be any help.” He looked to the man on his left.
“Thor.”
“Boss?”
“Kill her.”
“Copy.”
The man to the left raised his pistol without hesitation; the woman on the ground shielding her eyes from the flashlights lowered her hands a little and shouted, “No!”
SIXTY-FOUR
Court fired once at the man with his pistol pointed at Dittenhofer’s face, striking him squarely in the base of his skull. The operator dropped his weapon as he pitched forward, landing next to where Annika had crawled up to her knees.
Court had already shifted his aim to the leader of the team, but Annika was just beyond him so he didn’t take the shot.
Hightower, on the other hand, opened up with fully automatic fire on the four men above on the catwalk, sending one of them tumbling backwards over the side.
The other men returned fire on the muzzle flashes in the dark, and dust and debris kicked up on the ground around the stairwell.
Court shifted fire to the catwalk, as well, but he only managed to squeeze off one ineffective round before his footing became unsteady. Bolts on Zack’s side of the stairs broke apart under the combined forces of the weight of the men, their movement, and the vibrations of the gunfire, and the entire rusted iron structure dropped a foot down on the right-hand side. Court fell into Zack, and Zack slammed against the railing.
They didn’t fall over and the stairs didn’t give out completely, but if they wanted to continue to engage the men on the factory floor they’d have to climb out, exposing themselves.
Court said, “Going for the package!”
“Move!” Zack shouted, and Court pushed off his former team leader, climbed the last couple of steps up, flipped on his light, and sprayed automatic fire above Annika Dittenhofer’s head towards movement along the wall where men had been retreating to cover. He raced forward, as low as he could, and by now Zack was out of the stairs and prone on the debris-strewn floor, sending enough rounds towards the men on the catwalk to hopefully keep them on the defensive and scattering to cover, as well.
Return gunfire had begun by the time Court got to Annika, who, to her credit, had already begun running over the rubble on the floor in his direction. He took her by the hand and pulled her back towards the stairwell as Zack’s weapon ran empty, and they passed him on the floor right as he pulled his pistol and used it to keep up the suppressive fire.
Zack had long told Court that if you can’t make hits, then you can at least make noise, and that appeared to be his philosophy as Court rushed past with the woman.
Annika stumbled right before Court made it to a low broken wall made out of cinder blocks not far from the stairwell out of the basement, and when he pulled her upright again he could feel her limping with each step on her right leg. He got her around the three-foot-high wall and pushed her down onto the rubble on the other side, and then he spun around and began dumping a magazine across the floor, giving Zack the opportunity to get off the ground and bound back to Court’s position.
Zack ran towards his fellow Poison Apple asset’s gunfire, which was safer than