Reckoning by James Byron Huggins Read Free Book Online Page B

the CAR-15 managed a burst in the frantic exchange? Gage couldn't recall getting hit; only chaos, fire flaming towards him, returning fire, ready to die, ready to kill.
    Forget it. Finish wound assessment.
    His knee was twisted but not crippled and his arm was bleeding but not seriously. He could still move. The rest would come later. It was always impossible to determine how bad wounds were until hours afterward when the adrenaline was exhausted and the body protested the abuse. He might have fractured his arm or torn cartilage in his knee. His body would temporarily deny the injuries, anesthetizing the pain, running on speed.
    I gnoring the pain in his knee, Gage quickly ascended the stairs and found the MP5 and night visor where they had fallen. He glanced down at the other two men, watching for a moment and then knew that they were dead. Instinct told him, felt it for him, reaching out to find no life essence in his foes. By reflex he turned away because they were no longer important and he would almost certainly be facing more men to kill.
    He went back down the stairs and angled left, towards the back of the house. He put on the visor and switched to heat imaging as he walked forward. When he reached the rear entrance, he peeked carefully, slowly, around a corner of the kitchen. He selected a large rear window and looked through it, to the back of the townhouse, searching for the guard.
    It took two full minutes of concentrated, sweating calm to obtain a full field of observation. Gage only moved his head in degrees, moment by moment exposing a quarter inch of his face for a wider view. It was an action that went against the fever, the blood, because his body demanded movement, was fired and on fire with the scarlet heat that surged inside him. It was worse than he had ever known it because he hadn't seen action in so long. But he ignored the biological demand, disciplining his body to do what it was trained to do – Obey.
    It was the primary faculty, the highest qualifying criteria that had made him who he was: discipline. For his old world was one of speed, of blood drawn in heated conflict with his soul on fire. Yet at the same time he operated under a disciplined mind that allowed nothing, within or without, that would deviate from the unbending rules of engagement.
    It required men who could unleash devastating carnage through almost incomprehensibly violent attack, but who could, in the next breath, shut it all down in order to initiate complex technical procedures that required a surgeon's emotional detachment.
    It was never more difficult for Gage than it was in this moment. But he slowed his mind, focusing, doubling his efforts to ignore everything but the tactical action he had to perform.
    So deliberate, so still was his slow lean that he could have, degree by degree, eventually stepped fully into the darkened room, exposing his entire profile without ever appearing to have moved at all. But that wasn't necessary. Before Gage had exposed more than an inch of his face, he found his man.
    There …
    Across the alley .
    C rouching and moving in shadow.
    Clearly the sounds from inside the townhouse had carried over his headset and alerted the man but he hadn't yet decided what action to take.
    Gage eased back around the corner and closed his eyes, calculating.
    .. . Forty yards ... 9mm won't drop at all ... Contact at point of aim ... Plate glass probably won't sprawl the round ... First, get Malachi ready to move ... The noise might bring backup from the front ... Run across the alley on the shot, close on him ...
    Gage removed the visor, tried to loosen with a few deep breaths, and went back up the hall. Malachi uttered a brief, choked shout when he jerked open the door. He reached down to help the old man rise to his feet.
    Malachi stood unsteadily, his aged legs stiff from kneeling in the closet. He grasped Gage's shoulders strangely with his hands, as if confirming that Gage was, indeed, alive.
    "You