Blades of Winter by G. T. Almasi Read Free Book Online Page B

loud a 50-mm grenade blaster sounds in an enclosed concrete stairway. My ears are ringing as I hustle back up the stairs, and Raj steps to the side to let me pass. He needs to reload, and the Squad can mop up whoever survived that boom plate special we just served up. I lead the Squad through the shattered doorway and onto the top floor. We find a seven-hundred-square-foot area completely covered in blood, limbs, heads, and mangled torsos. One of our victims is still alive even though he’s lost both arms and his chest is blown open so wide that I can see right through it. He sits on the floor and breathes with shallow gasps. His eyes swing from one blood-gushing shoulder to the other. Then he shudders, coughs, and stops breathing.
    Raj finishes reloading his gun and rejoins us. Back to work. “Solomon, this is Scarlet, direction.”
    “Take a left out of the stairway, go straight to the corner, and up the maintenance stairs to the roof.”
    “Hostiles?”
    “I’ve got eyes on four hostiles on the roof.” A pause.“Hurry, Scarlet, they’ve got her with them. We can’t risk it with the choppers.”
    I rocket down the smoking, bloody hallway. Raj and Alpha Squad barrel along after me. They know what this means to me and that I’m done with any kind of strategy. We soar up the stairs. Raj and I hit the roof door simultaneously. The door flies open, and Raj and the Squad troops deploy into a kneeling perimeter around the doorway.
    I’m so cranked up that my teeth chatter. Time moves at one-tenth its normal speed, and everything sounds murky, like I’m underwater. The four hostiles are gathered around Cleo behind some giant air conditioners. The two guys in the middle have their guns pointed at my mom. Her eyes go wide when she sees me, but she doesn’t move or cry out. ExOps’ mandatory training for agents’ family members taught her to keep quiet in exactly this situation.
    Li’l Bertha goes into Sniper mode: .30-caliber slugs, fired singly, no bursts. Her gyroscopes spin up so I’ll be able to hold her steady despite all the natural and artificial chemicals zipping through me. Her sensors label the group as Hostiles 1, 2, 3, 4 and Subject. Hostiles 1 and 4 stand in the open a few feet away from my mother, so I pick them off first with shots to both eyes, both guys.
Ba-bam! Ba-bam!
They’re still falling as I charge toward Hostiles 2 and 3 to take away their cover. I’m almost all the way around the ventilators when they instinctively point their guns at me instead of my mom.
    Now they die
.
    I leap in the air to throw off their aim. My jump peaks at about fifteen feet. Li’l Bertha spits out shots for each of the two remaining kidnappers, one at each of their guns. Before these fuckos realize they’ve been disarmed, I land right in front of them.
Time to F.U.C.K. them up
. I smash Li’l Bertha’s barrel into Hostile 2’s neck so hard that it slashes his carotid artery open. He screams, and a quart of his blood splatters all over me. I turn to Hostile3. His eyes are wide open, and his mouth makes a silent little circle. I rear back and smash his chin with a right-handed uppercut that crushes his jawbone into jelly. His teeth shatter, and blood squirts out of his eye sockets. His face turns dark purple, and he tips over like a fallen tree. Something gray spurts out of his nose as he lands flat on his back.
    I shut off my neuroinjector’s flow of Madrenaline, and my sense of time whooshes back to normal. Mom isn’t hurt, so I check myself for wounds. I’m not shot, but my right hand is pointed the wrong way and is throbbing with pain. I’m covered in blood, guts, and eyeball goop. Little bits of bone, shards of teeth, and pieces of skin are stuck to me like glitter.
    My stomach churns, I wheeze when I breathe, and suddenly I can see only in black and white. My head and my guts race to see which I do first: pass out or lose my lunch. My legs feel like rubber, so I sit down among what’s left of the dead