Codename: Night Witch by Cary Caffrey Read Free Book Online

they wouldn't kill her. Killing her wouldn't serve their purpose. They wanted her alive. They wanted her back.
    They'd captured her on Bellatrix. That wasn't going to happen again.
    With her foot to the floor, Sigrid gunned the engine, full throttle, and charged straight into their midst. Men and women scattered to the sides. She heard the chatter of small-arms fire. The windshield shattered, spraying her with bits of broken glass. A second salvo ripped through the door panel, tearing apart the seat cushion at her back. Her skin burned, grazed by hot lead. Sigrid plowed forward.
    The Thunderhawk roared into the air ahead of her. Four missiles dropped from its side pods, arcing toward her. Sigrid braced, but the projectiles weren't meant for her, they were aimed at the road instead. The four rockets hit as one, blasting a wide gap in the causeway. The span heaved and collapsed, sending chunks of permacrete, rocks and ice skyward.
    Unable to stop, the truck plowed into the gap. Its nose dipped sharply down while its back wheels bucked high into the air. For a moment she found herself floating weightless, but then the truck's nose smashed headlong into the far side of the gap. She barely had time to raise her arms before she was hurled through the shattered remains of the windscreen. She landed hard some twenty meters down the road, skidding, rolling violently across the graveled surface, only stopping when she tumbled into the guardrail.
    The taste of blood was strong in her mouth. Her ears rang with a heavy low hum. Rising on unsteady legs, she did her best to shake it off.
    Three of the soldiers hurried toward her, moving to flank her. And still they didn't fire. One of them held a weapon, something heavy and ugly. It was a riot gun, a weapon Sigrid knew all too well. It had taken five of them to take her down on Bellatrix.
    One, she could deal with.
    The soldier stepped forward and fired. It was a decent shot, not poorly aimed. But the riot guns were bulky, slow to aim and slow to fire. While perfect for dealing with unruly mobs, they were never designed for a single fast-moving target, especially one as fast as she.
    Sigrid heard the ka-chunk as the electrified netting shot forward, spreading out to its full width of eight meters. Explosive pitons drove the edges of the netting into the ground, drawing the webbing tight at the very spot she'd been standing. But Sigrid was long gone. She didn't bother to shroud this time. She didn't need to. Her first two steps took her out of the path of the stun netting; her fourth and fifth had her at full stride, running, not away, but rather straight into their startled midst. She could sense the women and men around her, felt their adrenaline, their bloodlust. And when that bloodlust turned to fear and panic, she sensed that as well.
    She reached the female soldier first. The woman's finger hovered over her trigger. She could have killed Sigrid, and they both knew it. But her orders were to take Sigrid alive, not kill her. In that single moment she hesitated. That was all the time Sigrid needed.
    Sigrid stepped in next to her and snapped her neck. The woman collapsed in her arms. Her death worked like a trigger, snapping the other soldiers awake. Any thought of capturing her was gone. It was kill or be killed.
    Sigrid held fast to the dead woman in her arms, using her body as a shield. Round after round barked out at her, tearing into the still-warm flesh of the body held against her. She grabbed two grenades from the woman's belt and hurled them toward the men. The flare from the flashbangs lit up the sky and filled the causeway with black smoke and blinding gas. The concussion from the twin blasts staggered one soldier unlucky enough to be standing too close by. Sigrid hurled the dead body of the woman at him, bowling him over and sending both of them over the barrier to tumble down the embankment.
    More shots blasted at her. Glowing tracers whipped by her head. But it was blind fire.