Chemical Burn Read Online Free Page B

Victor’s arms, and dragged him quickly inside. As I pulled, Victor’s coat and shirtsleeves slid back, and I noticed a black tattoo on his wrist:

    I rolled Victor’s body over onto his back, revealing a hopeless reality. With rounds through his neck and head, he was dead before he hit the ground.
    “Leave him,” Natalia said when she turned and saw her driver. I picked up no emotion at all: not sadness, regret, shock … nothing . Victor was just a body to her. I filed that little fact away along with the others.
    “Where to now?” she asked as she flipped the double banana clip around in her rifle. She switched the selector back to full auto as gunfire came through the front doorway again, sending chunks of plaster flying from the thick, adobe-spackled walls.
    “Downstairs,” I whispered, nodding my head towards a door at the back of the kitchen.
    Natalia stuck the barrel of the rifle around the corner and, taking one quick peek, unloaded a long burst outside without looking. She heard the satisfying yelp of a man catching a piece of the burst, and we both enjoyed the sound of his screaming.
    “Nice shot,” I said, grinning.
    “Thank you, but won’t we be cornered down there?” she whispered.
    “No,” I said confidently.
    Making sure we were behind the counter, I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a baseball-sized sphere. Translucent, like smoky glass, it had a seam down the middle and two small black rectangles embedded in the center. With a twist, the two halves came apart and, holding up the first, I pressed a few times on the small, black control. I caught Natalia looking at it, but she couldn’t possibly recognize the characters. I set the device to double-trigger, quarter-second and placed it at knee-level on the kitchen-island facing the doorway. Clicking on the readout of the second half, I set it to quad-trigger, four-second and placed it directly below the first one.
    Natalia got a confused look on her face when I grabbed a bag of potato chips off the counter, tore it open, and emptied the bag on the floor just inside the doorway. Chips scattered across the tiles and over Victor’s body. I wish I could have captured the baffled look on her face as I tossed the empty bag on the counter.
    Through the downpour, I heard someone run across the yard and take cover behind the limousine.
    “Move. Through and down,” I said quickly, pointing towards the door at the back of the kitchen with my thumb.
    Natalia ran without hesitating, crouching as she skirted around the island and scuttled to the back door leading downstairs. She reached the door, silently opened it, and bolted down the stairs, her bare feet making almost no sound at all.
    She’s good , I thought. Definitely combat trained .
    I straightened up, turned, and walked casually back towards the door to the basement. As I rounded the corner of the kitchen island, I heard a man rush up against the wall outside and then a rustle as he quickly peeked around the corner and drew back.
    “One …” I said, counting the motions in front of the burner as I closed my eyes and walked towards the basement door.
    The gunman, seeing my exposed back, took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I could almost see it in my head. He came around the corner, the second motion in the doorway triggering the first of my devices. In the quarter-second it took for the barrel to traverse from straight up to just shy of drawing a bead on me, the device I’d placed—called a burner —cooked off. An intense, metallic hissing sound filled the room, like magnesium burning. The kitchen burned with an impossibly bright light and intense heat, and the blast-wave hit the poor bastard square in the face. It cooked his skin, fused his eyelids open, and burned out his eyes. His clothes ignited as well. I knew because I’d seen it before. Many times.
    “Two.” I smiled wickedly. The gun clattered to the floor, and the man screamed in agony.
    “Mamma mia!” another