Page 79 of Lethal Torture

I’m no stranger to bullets, but I’m not dumb enough to think I’m equipped for whatever clusterfuck this is rapidly turning into.

Nor can I leave Niamh to die here. I edge toward her hiding place, hearing a warning shout as the men advancing from the rear are engaged by fire from my team.

“Get them the fuck out of here,” one of the traffickers yells to the van drivers. “Go! We’ll take care of the rest of them.” The traffickers retreat toward their vans, piling in and slamming the doors, still firing as they start their engines.

I duck beneath another bullet as I drop to a crouch beside Niamh. One of her team is lying on the ground beside her, unconscious, blood seeping from his side. Niamh has been shot in one shoulder but is still shooting, even with her other arm hanging uselessly at her side and a dark patch spreading ominously through her black top. “You need medical help,” I say as she takes another shot. I clench my fists in frustration as the vans start turning in the yard. “And those bastards are getting away.”

“There’s a car outside the gates.” Niamh is sweating despite the cold as she reloads. “They’ll take care of tracking the vans. My team’s cover here is blown. Better the traffickers think we’re pinned down, or we’ll only risk those girls being killed.”

“You still need to get out of here.” I look around at the men in Port Authority uniforms spilling onto the ground around us. “I don’t know what the fuck this is, but we’re in some serious shit here, Niamh.”

My girls are fanned out, doing the best they can, but there are so many Port uniforms firing at us there’s not a lot we can do.

Niamh takes a shot at one of the vans, bursting its tire, then at another one. The first van squeals out of the yard, the other two following despite the blown tire. More uniforms pour into the yard.

Niamh and I look at each other grimly, and then we start shooting.

It’s a lost cause, and we both know it. But there’s no way out—not back, where my girls are clearly going hard at it, and definitely not forward, where there seem to be men everywhere.

Then suddenly there’s an explosion, right in the middle of the oncoming uniforms.

The men shooting at us start falling, one by one.

I cower down beside Niamh. “Do you have more people here?”

“I thought they were yours.” She’s stopped trying to shoot, slumped against the container, her face pale. “There’s only five of us. I sent two back to the car as soon as the shooting started. The others are all wounded.”

I look around, trying to make out who is shooting.

I’m not the only one. The yard is rapidly turning into a melee of smoke, explosions, and confused shouts as the men try to work out where the attack is coming from. I turn around, but Sally and Ana’s team are still behind me, trying to take down the force coming from the rear.

There’s another explosion, then rapid fire that takes out two more of our attackers on the ground. One of the remaining men takes a wild shot at the roof of the containers, but he clearly fails, because a moment later there’s another explosion, this time from behind me, right at the center of the force my girls are shooting at. It knocks out several men, followed by precision shots which take out several more and leave the rest running for cover.

Sirens sound in the distance.

Fuck.

Niamh’s eyes are closed, her breath coming heavily.

“We seriously need to get out of here,” I mutter, looking around.

“Oh, you think, huh?” A hard arm wraps around my waist, hauling me to my feet. I realize, with a sickening jolt of relief, who it is and go limp instead of trying to fight. “When we get out of this,” Luke snarls, “I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

Before I have time to answer, he thrusts me behind him, shoots a man who’s coming toward us, then bends down to Niamh, ripping open a bandage with his teeth. Pulling her shirt up, he presses it against the blood oozing from her stomach. “Press this hard,” he orders her. “There’s an ambulance coming. Can you hang on until it gets here?”

She nods.

“Good.” Luke pushes me down beside her and gives me a death stare. “Don’t even think about moving from this spot.”

Leaping to the top of a container, he picks off several stragglers, then makes it to where Sally, Ana, and the other girls are closing in on the remaining men. “Leave them,” he orders. “Sally, go and open that second container. We’re going to have to get the girls to the van on foot. Can you do that?”

She nods. “What about—” She looks at the remaining men.

“I’ll take care of them,” he says dismissively. “The way is clear to the container. Open it. I’ll cover you while you get them out of here. Go.”

Sally hesitates.

“Fuckinggo,”Luke snaps, and Sally obeys, running for the container, followed by the team of girls. The remaining men yell when they break clear, and start to follow them.