Nicholas pulled Mike behind her Crown Vic, leaned over her, and said in her face, “Wake up, come on, wake up!” He shook her shoulder as three more shots rang out.
“Stop it, I’m together.” Mike pulled herself onto her hands and knees as more shots rang out. She pulled out her phone, called for backup. Her Glock was in her right hand, and her left reached for the gun at her ankle. She slapped her backup Glock 27 subcompact into Nicholas’s hand.
They fired, crouched side by side, the Crown Vic their only shield.
Their attackers shot off thirty-two rounds, fast and hard. An MP5, Mike knew. Bullets spiderwebbed the Crown Vic’s windshield, smashed the windows, struck the columns, sending jagged concrete shards in all directions. Nicholas saw a streak of blood snaking down Mike’s neck.
A moment of stark silence, then the slap of another clip jacking into place. The second man, the idiot, started firing again, but many of his shots went wild, ricocheting off other cars, smashing glass, wreaking havoc. In the confined space, the noise was deafening.
A bullet narrowly missed Nicholas’s head, shattered into the concrete pillar behind him.
Too close. Who the hell were these guys? “Where are the cops?”
“Any second now, they’re out of the Seventh and usually really fast.” Nicholas remembered Esposito and his Nikes. He fell forward onto his belly and shot under a parked car halfway down a row at the idiot’s legs. He yelped, jumped up, and cursed. Then he moved fast, crouching behind the rear tire of an SUV.
He didn’t know where the kicker was, but he was clearly the one in charge of this attack. Had he left the idiot behind? Or was he circling around?
More bullets struck the Crown Vic, this time shattering the windshield. Then, suddenly, the firing stopped.
Nicholas touched his hand to Mike’s arm. She stopped shooting.
Dead silence. He’d hit the idiot in the foot, so he couldn’t be lying dead behind that SUV.
Mike shouted, “We’re federal agents. Hear those sirens? You’re surrounded. Put down your weapons now!”
Silence. Was that talking he heard? Low, agitated? It was hard to hear anything over their own heavy breathing. He knew to his gut both men were still hiding in the dark, probably trying to decide what to do.
A half-dozen bullets pinged off Mike’s car from the left, opposite from where Nicholas believed the kicker was crouching.
Too close to Mike’s head, too close.
Bullets began raining on their position again from two directions. The kicker had joined the fray with another MP5.
Nicholas pressed his mouth against Mike’s cheek, tasted her blood, and whispered, “The idiot is on the up ramp. I think the guy who kicked you is in charge here. He’s behind the dark SUV at one o’clock. I’m going for the idiot, since he’s in the open. Cover me,” and he took off toward the ramp. Mike laid down fire to cover him, going back and forth between the ramp and the kicker.
Nicholas made it to the opposite side of the garage seconds before the darkness lit up with the flash of bullets. He pressed hard against a column, took two deep breaths, saw the idiot, and squeezed the trigger twice, his last two bullets. He missed, and the idiot ducked away into the darkness.
A heartbeat later, Nicholas was hit hard from behind, and went down face-first, the wind knocked out of him. He managed to fling himself over onto his back, struggling to catch his breath, when the idiot leapt on top of him, straddled him, and punched Nicholas in the mouth. He felt his teeth tear into his lip and tasted blood.
Nicholas jerked up and headbutted him, a sickening sound of flesh against flesh, then hit him hard in the jaw with the small Glock. A shot rang out. The idiot fell sideways, his head hitting the concrete floor with a thick, meaty sound. The man’s legs twitched, and Nicholas shoved them off and rolled spread-eagled on his back, the scent of his blood hot and thick in the air.