Page 79 of Leading Conviction

“Open fire.”

BlackStone returned gunshots at the unknown group as Hawk’s team spilled from the hallway and into the room, finding their own cover among the materials. Their firefight succeeded in forcing the unknown group back into their shadows. Hawk couldn’t tell how many bullets the gunmen had, but they’d already unloaded quite a few in their standoff with Vlad’s men.

Speaking of…

“Someone get Vlad,” Hawk ordered over his microphone.

“Already on it,” Draco grunted.

Return fire snapped and cracked by Hawk as he ducked and weaved, taking cover behind whatever he could on his sprint toward the General’s location. But before he and his team could converge on their target, one of their new enemies grabbed the General, hoisted him in a fireman’s carry, and ran.

“Got him!” a member of the other team shouted.

“Cover and peel! Cover and peel!” one of them bellowed before leveling a massive squad automatic weapon at BlackStone’s positions.

What the hell?

“They’ve got a SAW?” Jaybird shouted from behind a metal barrel beside him. It had already been loud during the gunfight, but the chugging bark of the weapon made hearing impossible. “Aren’t these supposed to be trafficking mobsters? Where the fuck did they get that power?”

“No fucking clue,” Hawk yelled back. “We’ve got to go after them—”

As he was about to give the order, the bullets pouring out on them became torrential. Snake and Phoenix fired blindly over the top of their cover, unable to even stick their heads around the metal girders they were sheltering behind. Hawk clenched his jaw, biting back the order that would no doubt get his brothers killed. Instead, he leaned sideways from his position, and returned fire himself.

After what felt like an eternity, the machine gun suddenly cut off, but the semiautomatic gunshots ramped up. Hawk risked a peek over the top of the barrel to see Russians spilling into the room once more from the recesses of the building as the General’s saviors slipped away through a door on the far side.

“This must be the rest of Vlad’s men,” Snake called out over the headset.

“Shit,” Hawk cursed as he took cover behind a different barrel that he sure as fuck hoped was filled with something bulletproof. Jaybird followed him and together they shot around it, engaging and downing a number of Vlad’s men spilling into the warehouse. “What’s the status on Vlad? We can’t lose him too.”

“Got him,” Draco answered gruffly.

“Good,” Hawk grumbled just as another bulletthunkedagainst the barrel he and Jaybird hid behind.

“These guys are coming out like flies to a corpse,” Jaybird griped.

Hawk took aim, fired, and watched as another man crumpled silently. “Yeah, well, they die just as easily. We need to hold. I don’t know where those other guys ran off to with the General or if there’s more coming.”

“Vlad might have answers,” Snake suggested through the headset.

They held their position until the Russians were flagging. Hawk gave the assault order, and the team moved in tandem, clearing the room of opposition. The whole encounter took years and seconds at the same time, but they kept shooting until silence erupted around them.

“Hold,” Hawk commanded them to wait a few more minutes as they hunkered down to watch their sectors.

It didn’t take long for inexperienced or panicked troops to get impatient and show their position, and inexperienced was exactly who they were dealing with now. Not whoever the fuck those professionals were before.

Hawk glanced at his watch, giving an extra thirty seconds just in case the men had more discipline than he’d given them credit for, but there was nothing.

“Jaybird, you, Devil, and Snake clear the area. Phoenix, you meet me wherever Draco is.”

“Copy,” Jaybird, Phoenix, and Snake replied simultaneously.

“Fifteen meters from our breach point, about eleven o’clock from there,” Draco answered with his location.

“Now,” Hawk ordered.

They all emerged from their hiding spaces, Snake and Phoenix weren’t too far from where he and Jaybird had been hiding, but Devil was nowhere in sight.

“Devil, brother, you copy?”