Page 104 of Long Past Deadly

Alanna kept her eyes forward. Her shoulders tensed, but she stayed focused and stubborn as hell. He mirrored her attitude. They weren’t firing, only practicing to overwhelm. Besides the fact the building wasn’t built for live fire, their objective was to identify where angles, weak spots, and targets were.

“You ready, Remy?” Mackey called into the stage area.

“Target ready.” Remy was moving their objective every round. He was a canny son of bitch and was catching them off guard with unpredictable positions.

“Button hook left,” Mackey ordered. “Hunt, cross. Quaid, deep corner. Call it when you see it. Move.”

Alanna moved through and took a hard left. “Left clear.”

Hunt crossed past her to the opposite wall. “Right clear.”

Quaid moved past them both, weapon up, eyes scanning the far corner behind the stack of crates. “Deep corner clear.”

“Hall!” Mackey barked.

Hunt moved to cover. Seconds past. “Target acquired. By the fucking water fountain, Remy?”

“Time. Too slow.” Mackey checked their positions. “You hesitated Alanna. At the door. Hesitations get you killed. Don’t think. Move.”

“Noted.”

“That hallway is a death trap.” Hunt pronounced, shoving the target at Remy. “If he takes refuge in there, we are ducks in a shooting gallery. It doesn’t matter how we’re lined up.”

Harrison twisted to check the open ceiling of the building. “Would we benefit from a sniper in the rafters?”

Ryker stepped forward and studied the beams, too. “They stripped this place. There’s no where to camouflage up there.”

“We could build something like a hunting hide.” Remy could pull from his Cajun youth to do it, too.

Mackey examined the massive space again. “It’ll take too long, but a platform misidentified as an air conditioning unit might work. And let’s define our objective. Are we here to capture him or kill him?”

Quaid’s special operations and spy experience flooded his memory. “We all know where this is leading. We’re dealing with a man who is a trained sniper, and he developed all those skills along with a few unexpected tricks. Let’s borrow the idea and be unpredictable.”

Alanna moved to the hallway. “Smoke and mirrors.”

Frank followed her. “Like a haunted house.”

“More or less. We can’t go into the hallway without being picked off, but he can’t hide there either without being seen in the mirrors. Lose-lose. And narrows his options.”

“Oh boy, who is explaining that expense to Elizabeth?” Remy muttered.

“Harrison,” Quaid uttered in tandem with Mackey. Harrison made a face at both of them.

“We’re here to kill him,” Alanna stated, her quiet determination locking them all in place. “No matter how much I’d like to take him alive and make him talk about all his other victims, it’s not going to happen.” Her eyes went to Hunt. “You agree, right?”

Hunt was a study in stillness. “He won’t let us capture him. We’ve been close too many times. He’s already guessed what is about to happen. But he is sure he can beat us.”

Ryker moved to stand by Frank. “Agreed.”

Frank added a caution. “We have to make this happen with no collateral damage. I can’t explain civilians hurt or killed to the police chief.”

“The aim is only us in the line of fire.” Alanna’s grit struck him deep. He kept from pulling her to him and begging her to be careful by running Marine Corps cadence in his head.

Mackey broke the moment. “We have work to do. Quaid take point. Frank, cross, Ryker, deep cover. Alanna and Hunt, back door. Harrison gets Whit and stays back. Regardless, someone in this will have to check the halls, mirrors or not. But we’ll work that out. I need to watch what everybody is bringing to the table, so give it your all. The point is to move together as a smooth team, performing without hesitation, moving as one unit.”

Three more rounds and Mackey put himself in for left, Alanna for cross, Quaid for deep cover. Frank and Ryker were on backup. Hunt remained a wild card for any shit the killer brought to the fight. Harrison would take Whit again.

As each round got smoother, Mackey’s mood settled and Quaid gathered confidence grew that they’d get out of this alive. An old saying flashed: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.