Flash Points by David Hagberg

Author:David Hagberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

THIRTY-SEVEN

McGarvey pulled out the phone as he raced down the corridor. “She’s in the stairwell and someone’s shooting.”

“Do you want the cops?” Otto asked.

“Not yet. But get on the building’s surveillance system.”

McGarvey held up at the stairwell door and peered through the glass window. Fischer was sprawled facedown just below the landing. Blood from a head wound was already pooling on the concrete steps.

Shadows appeared to the right and above, and McGarvey ducked aside as a half-dozen shots starred the window.

“At least two men at the switchback just above you. Looks like they’re armed with suppressed room brooms,” Otto said. The room broom was the German-made Heckler & Koch MP5K compact submachine gun.

“Shut down the lights on this floor, then shut off the lights in the stairwell, wait one second, turn the stairwell lights back on and then off again. Now!”

More bullets slammed into the glass, finally breaking through and smacking into the corridor wall several feet beyond where McGarvey stood.

The lights in the corridor went off. A moment later they went off in the stairwell.

McGarvey laid the phone on the floor then ducked below the window, his left hand on the door handle.

The stairwell lights came on for one second then went out.

McGarvey slammed the door open, reached around the corner with his pistol and fired seven shots up the stairs, the unsilenced rounds impossibly loud.

Ejecting the spent magazine, he seated his only spare in the handle and charged the weapon as he waited for returning fire. But none came.

McGarvey picked up the phone. “Stairwell lights.”

The lights came back on.

“They’re gone,” Otto said.

“Find them.”

“The system’s been shut down. I’ll restart it, but it’ll take a few seconds, so hold where you are. No telling where these bastards got themselves to.”

“My six,” McGarvey said.

He jumped up and raced toward the other end of the corridor as one of the apartment doors opened and a barefoot man, in jeans, no shirt, stuck his head out.

McGarvey stopped and pointed his gun at the man, who held up a hand, his face white.

“Get back inside.”

The man immediately stepped back and closed the door.

McGarvey ran the rest of the way to the opposite stairwell door. “Otto?”

Otto was excited. “They’re in the north stairwell, right behind you!” he shouted.

“I’m there.”

“Do you want help?”

“No. But delay the cops if you can.”

“I’m on it.”

McGarvey pocketed the phone and ducked to one side so that he would be behind the door when it opened.

Someone was there. The handle came down slowly, and all of a sudden the steel door swung open and a man came halfway through.

McGarvey shouldered the door back, catching the man in the chest and wedging him against the doorframe.

A second man was right there, and shoved his partner forward.

McGarvey put two shots into the side of the first man’s head. Immediately he stepped aside so that the door could fully open, and the dead man fell forward on his face.

The other one still inside the stairwell started down. McGarvey could hear the man’s footfalls. He yanked the phone out of his pocket.

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