at his fallen man. Just then he began to feel the heat from the growing fire in the library reaching him out here. He knelt down and took the corpse under his arms, began lifting him up to drag him towards the staircase. Ares’s head hung back, his eyes open, and blood stained the forearms of Hades’s tunic. But he’d only begun to move him when Atlas squeezed him on the shoulder. “We gotta exfil, boss. This whole place is gonna go up in flames.”
But Hades was barely listening. He transmitted to his men, even though most of them were within a few feet from him, standing over the body of their comrade. “Anybody see any other hostiles?”
“That’s a negative,” Mercury replied as he came out of the burning room, slipping a computer hard drive in his bag as he did so. “Gunfire came through the door, tagged Ronnie as we covered Mars while he prepped the C-4. I never saw the shooter.”
“Me, either,” said Atlas, then added, “but I caught a pistol round in my plate right before Ronnie dropped.”
Several feet away from the cluster of men around the body, Mars came out of the bathroom, having just rechecked it for hostiles. He brushed the doorway with his right arm as he exited, and then he winced with pain. He touched his gloved hand to a spot right below his elbow on his forearm.
“Shit, guys. I took one, too. Not bad.”
Atlas stepped over to him to check it out, pulling out his flashlight as he did so. He put it away when he saw that the growing firelight would provide plenty of illumination.
“Yep. That ain’t shit, bro, but you definitely got lucky.”
Hades put Ronnie Blight’s body back down in the hallway, and stood back up. “Three of us got hit? By Drummond?” He turned and moved quickly back into the burning library. He ducked below the ever-thickening smoke and sprinted back to the veranda. Here he found Zeus already searching Drummond’s body.
“No weapon, boss. He either lost it or tossed it.”
As Hades weighed the slim possibility that Drummond might actually have been the man who killed Ares and shot both Atlas and Mars, the voice of Thor, still positioned on the opposite hillside with a long gun trained on the veranda, came over the net.
“Thor for Hades. Be advised, I’ve got four squirters movin’ down the driveway. They’re staggering along like they’re hurt or on drugs or some shit. No weapons visible. I got a shot if you want me to waste ’em.”
“Negative,” Hades said. “Intercept. I’ll come to your poz.” He then rallied his remaining men, and they all began climbing down the rope hanging from the veranda, leaving their dead comrade behind to be consumed by the growing fire.
* * *
• • •
Court Gentry woke slowly, shook his head to clear it, then felt the lumber and plaster pressing down on his back. He pushed with all his might and after several seconds managed to free himself, though when he looked around he saw it was too dark to make out much of his surroundings.
Water from burst pipes somewhere above rained down on him, and though he smelled smoke, he could see no light from a fire here. He climbed out of the tub, pushing his way through flooring that had collapsed with him, and slowly oriented himself.
He was dazed still; his hearing protection had saved him from burst eardrums, but the jarring impacts had taken a toll on his already weakened body. He had to reach out to a wall to hold himself up as he shook the haze and exhaustion from his brain several more times. He wasn’t badly hurt, he realized, especially after what had just happened, though the surgical wound in his shoulder screamed in agony and blood dripped from his nose.
He didn’t know if Drummond had made his way off the veranda, but he knew he had to go and find out.
He’d lost the Glock and the Walther somewhere during the explosion, but he did have the HK VP9 he’d taken off the bodyguard in his dump pouch. He drew this and headed for the stairs.
Seconds later he was back in the upstairs hallway, kneeling low to stay out of the thick smoke. He saw a body outside the doorway to the library; the man had been stripped of his weapons by his mates, so Court just moved past him, then directed his attention to the fire raging in the last place