Under Fire. Carol Ericson

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      Someone grunted. Someone screamed. Again.

      Ava held her breath as the rubber sole of a black shoe squeaked past her face. She followed its path until her gaze collided with Dr. Arnoff’s.

      From beneath the desk across from her, he put his finger to his lips. His thick glasses, one lens crushed, lay just out of his reach between the two desks. With his other finger, he pointed past her toward the lab.

      Afraid to move even a centimeter, Ava blinked her eyes to indicate her understanding. If they could make their way to the lab behind the bulletproof glass and industrial-strength locks they might have a chance to survive this lunacy.

      The shooter moved past the desks, firing another round from his automatic weapon. Glass shattered—not the bulletproof kind. A loud bump, followed by a crack and the door to the clinic, her domain, crashed open.

      Greg bellowed, “No, no, no!”

      Another round of fire and Greg’s life ended in a thump and a gurgle.

      Ava squeezed her eyes closed, and her lips mumbled silent words. Keep going. Keep going.

      If the shooter kept walking through the clinic, he’d wind up on the other side in the waiting room. At this time of night, nobody was in the waiting room, which led to a door and a set of stairs to the outside.

       Keep going.

      He returned. His boots crunched through the glass. Then he howled like a wounded animal, and the hair on the back of Ava’s neck stood at attention and quivered.

      The footsteps stopped on the other side of the desk—her pathetic hiding place. In the sudden silence of the room, her heartbeat thundered. Surely he could hear it, too.

      He kicked at a shard of glass, which skittered between the two desks.

      Ava turned widened eyes on Dr. Arnoff and swallowed. She harbored no hopes that the doctor could take down the shooter. Although a big man, his fighting days were behind him. Their best hope was to make it to the lab and wait for help.

      The black-booted foot stepped between the desks, smashing the other lens of Dr. Arnoff’s glasses. A second later the shooter lifted the desk by one edge and hurled it against the wall as if it were a piece of furniture in a dollhouse.

      Exposed, Dr. Arnoff scrambled for cover, his army crawl no match for the lethal weapon pointed at him. The bullets hit his body, making it jump and twitch.

      Ava dug a fist against her mouth, and her teeth cut into her lips. The metallic taste of her blood mimicked the smell permeating the air.

      Then her own cover disappeared, snatched away by some towering hulk. She didn’t scream. She didn’t beg. The gunman existed in a haze behind the weapon that he now had aimed at her head.

      His gloved finger on the trigger of the assault rifle mesmerized her. She mumbled a prayer with parched lips. Click. She sucked in a breath. Click. She gritted her teeth.

      Click. He’d run out of ammo.

      He reached into the pocket of his fatigues, and adrenaline surged through her body. She clambered over the discarded desk and launched herself at the lab door. With shaking hands she scrabbled for the badge around her neck and pressed it to the reader. The red light mocked her.

      Her badge didn’t allow her access to this lab. Her exclusion from the lab had been a source of irritation to her for almost two years. How could she forget that now?

      She dropped to her knees and crawled to Dr. Arnoff’s dead body. Her fingers trembled as she unclipped the badge from the pocket of his white coat.

      Amid the clicking and clacking behind her, the gunman muttered to himself.

      Expecting another round of shots at any second, Ava swiped Dr. Arnoff’s badge across the reader. The green lights blinked in a row as if she’d just won a jackpot. She had.

      She yanked open the heavy door and shoved it closed just as the shooter looked up from his task. Five seconds later, a volley of bullets thwacked the glass.

      Knowing the gunman could lift a badge from any of the dead bodies around him just as she had, Ava slid three dead bolts across the door and took two steps back.

      This windowless room, clicking and buzzing with machinery, computers and refrigeration, offered no escape, but it did contain a landline telephone. Maybe someone had been able to make a call to the police when the mayhem started, but no cavalry had arrived to the rescue yet.

      After his first round, the crazed man outside her sanctuary had stopped shooting. He seemed to be searching the bodies of her fallen coworkers—looking for a badge, no doubt. He wouldn’t find Dr. Arnoff’s.

      Ava pounced on the receiver of the telephone on the wall beside the door. Her heart skipped a beat. No dial tone. She tapped the phone over and over, but it remained dead.

      Even if she had her cell phone, which remained in the pocket of her lab coat hanging on a hook in the clinic, it wouldn’t do any good. Nobody could get reception in this underground building in the middle of the desert.

      The lock clicked and she spun around. The shooter was leaning against the door, pressing a badge up to the reader. The lock on the handle responded, but the dead bolts held the door securely in place.

      She’d resented being locked out of this lab, but now she couldn’t be happier about those extra reinforcements.

      He grabbed the handle and shook it while releasing another roar.

      Ava covered her galloping heart with one hand as she studied the glittering eyes visible from the slits in the ski mask. What did he want? Drugs? Why murder all these people for drugs? Why come all the way out here to a high-level security facility to steal meds?

      He gave up on the door and shook his head once. Then he reached up and yanked the ski mask from his head.

      Ava gasped and stumbled back. She knew him. Simon. He was one of her patients, one of the covert agents the lab treated and monitored.

      Guess they hadn’t monitored him closely enough.

      “Simon?” She flattened her palm against the glass of the window. “Simon, put down your weapon. The police are on their way.”

      She had no idea if the police were on their way or not. The lab used its own security force, so she and her coworkers never had a reason to call in the police from the small town ten miles away in this New Mexico desert. Since the lab’s security guards had made no attempt to stop Simon, she had a sick feeling Simon had already dealt with them.

      “You need help, Simon. I can help you.” She licked her lips. “Whatever you need me to say to the authorities, I’ll say it. We can tell them it was your job, the stress.”

      His mouth twisted and he lunged at the window, jabbing the butt of his gun against the glass, which shivered under the assault.

      Ava blinked and jerked back. She made a half turn and scanned the lab. If he somehow made it through the door and she got close enough to him, she could stick him with a needle full СКАЧАТЬ