Gambit by David Hagberg (fantasy novels to read txt) 📕

“Incoming, maybe fifty or sixty yards off to the left,” Pete said softly.

McGarvey turned in that direction, and after a moment’s search, he picked out two figures about fifty yards out hunched over but coming fast. It took him only a second or two to see another pair off to the right, maybe five or ten yards farther up the hill, but keeping low and moving fast like the pair to the left.

“If we can see them, they can see us,” McGarvey said. “So stay flat, and let them come to us.”

“They’ll flank us just like they want to.”

“That’s right, and they’re going to learn a lesson in just a few minutes: Be careful what you wish for—it just might bite you in the ass.”

“Jesus,” Pete said softly, scrunching down on her stomach as low as she could get.

“Lay out your spare magazines where you can easily reach them,” McGarvey said. “Take the nearest pair on the left, and no matter what happens, just keep shooting. I’ll take right.”

McGarvey laid out two of his spare mags, with two more in his waistband.

“When you change out mags, give the new one a sharp rap on the side of the handle before you reload in case it picked up some dirt,” McGarvey told her. His only worry now was for Pete.

“I’ve been through the Farm three times, and I know how to shoot, you chauvinist pig.”

McGarvey couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, dear,” he said.

Bender had taken three hits to the chest. Alicia had raced to the bathroom for a towel to try to stanch the bleeding although she’d known it would be futile, but she had to try. He was a pompous ass, but a good man who believed in the Bureau’s mission.

He’d died while she was holding the towel, and she sat back. “Shit,” she said softly.

She wiped the blood from her hands, got the binoculars from where he’d dropped them, and eased back to the open window for a quick look, presenting little or nothing of herself to shoot at.

At first, she couldn’t find the four black-clad operators where she’d last seen them. She panned slowly up the hill, but finding nothing, panned back down the hill.

They were about thirty or forty yards down from their landing spot and moving fast. But they’d split up into two pairs, one left and the other right. They were trying to flank McGarvey and his wife.

She looked back at Bender’s body. There was nothing she could do here now.

Tossing the binoculars on the bed, she took up the room broom, stuffed a couple of spare mags in the waistband of her slacks, and headed downstairs in a dead run.

She’d counted four operators who’d landed just minutes ago, and she had scoped the same four running down the hill. No one was left between them and the lighthouse. If she was fast enough before they took the McGarveys out, she might be able to help.

Downstairs, she burst out the door, took the broad steps to the driveway, and then started down the hill, her feet barely touching the ground.

Both pairs of oncoming Russians opened fire at the same time, about twenty yards out, kicking up dirt and rocks left and right, closing on Pete’s position but farther away from where Mac was lying.

He brought his room broom around to the pair on the left, and firing measured bursts took one of them down. Before he could switch aim, he was bracketed by incoming rounds, and he had to keep his head down.

The firing stopped.

“Pete, are you okay?” Mac said.

“I’m hit.”

“How bad?”

“In the shoulder, and it hurts like hell, but I’ll live.”

“Stand by,” McGarvey said. He keyed the lapel mic. “Unit leader, do you copy?”

No one answered.

“Two of your people are dead. We have their weapons, and I’m speaking on one of your coms sets. In addition, we have backup at the lighthouse covering your six.”

Still there was no answer.

McGarvey raised his head a couple of inches just high enough so that he could see up the hill. The operators had hit the ground and were no longer in sight. For a second, he thought they might be withdrawing, but then he saw a figure racing down the hill from the lighthouse and closing in on the Spetsnaz position.

Even at the distance, he knew that it was Alicia Sherman, and she was carrying a room broom at the ready.

“Retreat! Retreat!” he shouted.

The black-clad operators down the hill had disappeared, and Alicia was certain that it was McGarvey who’d shouted, “Retreat!” She pulled up short and started to hunch down when a figure rose up just a couple of feet to the left.

She started to bring the submachine gun to bear on him when he was on her, batting the muzzle of her weapon to the side while jamming the muzzle of his room broom against the side of her head with his other hand so hard it drew blood.

She let the gun fall from her hand and collapsed on the rocky ground on her right side as if she had been knocked out. Her right hand, beneath her, was on the handle of the pistol in her waistband.

McGarvey had watched it all. He raised his room broom up just high enough so that the operator who’d taken Alicia down was in his sights.

“Ilich!” a man to Mac’s right shouted.

McGarvey fired a short burst, catching Ilich in the side, and the man went down hard.

One of the remaining Russians on the right opened fire, dirt and rocks flying up within inches of McGarvey’s head as he buried himself facedown in the dirt.

“Sesfir!”—Cease fire!—one of the operators shouted, and the shooting stopped.

SEVENTY-THREE

“Sherman, are you okay?” McGarvey shouted.

“I’m good,” she called, but her voice sounded distorted.

“Leaves only yourself and one other operator,” McGarvey said into the lapel mic. “The odds have changed.”

The earbud was silent.

McGarvey raised his head a few inches