AMIRA by Matthew Betley (feel good books to read .TXT) 📕

speaking.  Large, cushioned chairs had been knocked over, providing additional cover to the men behind the stage.  A fourth agent lay on the stage, unmoving, blood pooling around his still body.  The three protective agents were engaged in a gun battle on two fronts, and he recognized Charlie Jenkins, the head of the director’s detail, as he’d met the man on multiple occasions.

Two hostile shooters, a man and a woman – Amira’s double, Logan realized – stood near the left glass wall while two others fired from the far side of the ballroom.  And all four concentrated their fire towards the podium and the protective detail behind it.

The only good thing in Logan’s mind was that the bad guys were using pistols, probably because it was easier to conceal a pistol than a long gun.  But that didn’t matter to the several hundred people trapped inside when the gun battle began – they knocked over audience chairs and scrambled for safety towards the back of the ballroom.

Need to even the odds.  Logan moved against the tide of humanity along the back wall until he reached the glass windows on the left side of the ballroom.  The sound of gunfire combined with the screams of the bystanders was deafening inside the enclosed space.  Bullet holes appeared in all three walls, and Logan was reminded of the battle at the mountaintop hotel in Venezuela ten months ago.  Why is there always so much glass?  He kept moving forward.

He was twenty-five feet away, and both shooters’ backs were to him.  The Kimber was up and locked on the back of the head of the male shooter, who was closest to him.  Unfortunately, several people still fled towards him, as if the side of the ballroom could somehow grant them refuge.  A woman spotted him from ten feet away and screamed in horror, mistaking him for one of the attackers.  He grabbed his badge with his left hand, pulled it away from his chest to show her and the others who’d seen him, and motioned for them all to get down.

The second it took for her and the attendees near her to process and follow his instructions was enough to gain the attention of the man he’d locked on to with his Kimber’s front sight.  As they dropped to the carpet, the man turned to see what had caused the commotion, and he spotted Logan just in time to see the bearer of his death.

Logan pulled the trigger, and the Kimber roared inside the space, and the jacketed hollow point struck the man in the right eye, blowing out the back of his head and spraying the Amira look-a-like with a dark red mist.  That got her attention, I’m sure. 

She stopped firing towards the back of the ballroom and turned towards Logan, the right side of her face and head covered in blood. Her eyes were wide as she saw the man who’d pulled the trigger.  She screamed in outrage and swept the muzzle of the pistol towards Logan.  She made it halfway before Logan pulled the trigger once again.

The round struck her just above the right eye, and she dropped to the carpet, no longer a threat to anyone in the land of the living.

The gun battle on the right side of the ballroom continued, the two attackers unaware of the fate of their two friends on the opposite side.

Logan glanced at the stage and spotted Charlie Jenkins staring at him, recognition and relief written upon his face.  Logan pointed through the fleeing masses towards the other two shooters and received a nod from the head of the director’s detail.  Now, for the really fun part. 

He crouched low and began to combat walk quickly through the crowd, weaving in and out of moving bodies.  He was confident in his approach, as he knew the shooters’ goal wasn’t to slaughter innocent civilians but to assassinate the director of the CIA.  While he knew that key piece of information, the crowd didn’t, which explained the chaos and panic that reigned in the ballroom.

The director’s detail concentrated their fire on the far side of the room, striking the glass behind the shooters and a rolling drink tray they used for cover.  Bullets bounced off the tray, and Logan realized they’d added some kind of bulletproofing to it under the white cloth that covered it.  Smart bastards. 

He was halfway across the room, and most of the crowd had reached the back half of the ballroom like an amoeba moving across a petri dish.  In a few more seconds, he’d lose his concealment, and he prepared to take his shots the second he was exposed.

A few more feet, and the last attendees cleared the area around him like a living fog dissipating.  Logan stopped, raised the Kimber, and placed the front sight on the torso of the man on the right.  At forty feet, the Kimber Tactical II was accurate, but it was still a precision shot.  He slowly squeezed the trigger, and the .45-caliber roared in his hand, the heavy barrel recoiling.  He didn’t wait to see the impact of his round, and he squeezed the trigger two more times until he saw one of the bullets strike the man in the upper chest just below his neck.  The shooter reflexively dropped his pistol and clutched at the hole in his upper torso as blood flowed over his fingers.  He stood for a moment and looked around as if hoping someone might come to his aid, and then he fell forward on top of the cart.

Logan ignored the dramatic display and adjusted the Kimber to the second shooter, who began to turn in his direction.

An explosion of pain struck his right side as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat, and he collapsed to his knees on the carpet, his Kimber still in his right hand.  He