Last Chance to Die by Noah Boyd (good books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

now. In a minute they’re going to figure out that if the two in the house can keep us pinned down, the two at the car can start moving up to our position and pick us off.”

“So?” Kate said, with a little more urgency than she intended.

“When your position becomes indefensible, there’s only one option. You have to—”

Bursaw said, “Don’t say it.”

“Attack.” Vail picked up the MP5 and handed it to Kate. “You know how to use this, right?”

“I fam-fired it at the range a few times.”

“Well, you’re about to get a lot more familiar with it.” Vail started ejecting the buckshot rounds from the shotgun and replacing them with deer slugs. “Luke, you think you can fire this into their car, one round every ten to fifteen seconds? It’ll sound like a howitzer when it hits and keep their heads down so Kate can move.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll go after the two in the house. Once I start shooting and moving toward them, Luke, you fire. Kate, you’re going to have to move when we shoot and get down when we stop. If you don’t, that rifle probably has a night scope along with the laser, and they’ll be able to find you. Even though your two targets are at our twelve, you should flare off to like one o’clock so you’re not coming straight into them. Then, when you get there, you’ll be on their flank rather than head-on.” He could hear her breathing. “You ready for this, Kate?”

She chambered the first round and flicked off the safety. “This is getting close to being worse than our last date in Chicago, but I’ll be fine.”

Vail said. “Luke, you set?”

He rolled onto his side and passed Vail two more of his Glock magazines. “Hands down, this is the worse date I’ve ever been on with you.”

Vail crawled around Bursaw and watched the cottage that was to their ten o’clock. Then he was up, running and firing. Behind him the shotgun exploded, the massive slug thudding into the car that the two LCS men were using as cover, causing them to squat further down. Kate was off at a dead run in the one o’clock direction Vail had suggested.

Keeping low, Vail used the same slightly indirect route, approximately toward nine o’clock, that he had suggested to Kate, running to the stone house in an arc that swept away from both Bursaw’s and Kate’s positions. That would force the two gunmen in the house to shift their points of aim away from the other agents, so they could fire at Vail. If the sniper rifle that had hit Bursaw was resting on something to keep it steady, Vail’s path would completely disrupt its accuracy as it tracked him.

The front of the house had a single door with a window on each side. The scoped rifle was being fired out the right window and the assault rifle the left. When Vail got to within twenty yards of the house, the automatic weapon opened up on him.

Inside, Alex Zogas said in an urgent whisper, “Karl, did you get him?”

“I think so.”

Outside, Bursaw’s shotgun boomed again, followed by the thud of the slug hitting the car. Within the house the two men’s focus shifted back to Bursaw and Kate, trying to reestablish them as targets.

Suddenly Zogas noticed the doorknob turning. He snapped his fingers to get Karl’s attention, pointing at the door. Karl nodded and backed up a few steps from the window and toward the door to establish a better angle to shoot through it. Then he opened fire, expending the entire clip into the door. Zogas had taken the rifle off the window rest and stepped back himself, ready to fire.

A single shot came through Karl’s window, hitting him in the face, throwing him back into the wall, where he crumpled to the floor. Zogas could see that he was dead. He backed up a few more steps with the rifle held on his hip, waiting for Vail.

Kate got up from the ground where she had found cover in what looked like a deep wheel rut. She could see one of the men through her night goggles. She was far enough off to his left that he hadn’t seen her yet. She was hoping that Bursaw could track her through his goggles.

As quietly as possible, she walked toward the gunman. But somehow he sensed her movement, turning quickly and firing blindly. She was in the open now and had no choice but to be aggressive. Flipping up her goggles so as not to be blinded by her own gunfire, she quickened her stride, walking steadily toward him, firing two- to three-round bursts. She wasn’t sure exactly where he was, so she would have to fire out the clip in hopes of hitting him. If not, she still had her handgun.

The killer fired back, and now she knew exactly where he was. She adjusted her fire with the next couple of bursts. Then, with a sickening clank, the gun’s bolt locked back, indicating that her MP5 was empty. But the final burst had found the gunman, at least one of the last three rounds hitting him in the stomach. She dropped the submachine gun and started to draw her sidearm when the second man came around the car and leveled his gun on her. “Kale,” he spit out at her in a guttural foreign tongue, a derogatory term every woman recognized no matter the language. Her only option now was to try to finish drawing.

Then a single shot rattled through the cold night. The Lithuanian fell to the ground dead. A head shot had blown out a good portion of his left temple. She had the presence of mind to flip down her goggles.

The first man she’d hit in the stomach got to his knees and raised his gun. Kate took careful aim and fired three rounds into him. He fell back, his legs at impossible angles under him. She went over and checked him for