Patriot by M.A. Rothman (summer reading list TXT) 📗

the second-floor landing, knowing there would be shooting on the other side of this door. The alarms hadn’t sounded yet, which meant that the watcher was either out of the room or asleep. Either way, he probably wouldn’t live through the night once his bosses realized what had happened. Regardless, the lack of alarm was a blessing for Connor and Annie. He only hoped it would stay that way—though he knew it probably wouldn’t.

He pushed through the stairwell door. Twenty meters ahead, the sheikh’s group of protectors had grown from three to six. One man’s eyes widened as he saw Connor coming out of the stairwell, probably due to the M4 he held. He opened his mouth to warn the others, and Connor squeezed the trigger.

The subdued pop of the M4’s silenced shot echoed down the empty corridor, and the man’s throat blew out in a spray of blood and gore, his hands coming up to wrap around the wound as he fell to the floor. Connor shifted targets, finding the second man pushing himself out of a chair. He put three rounds into the man’s chest, knocking him back into a third guard standing behind him. Without skipping a beat, Connor gave him three rounds center mass as well. Both collapsed to the floor in a heap.

Three down, and the only sounds had been the muffled pops from Connor’s silenced M4, the pinging of the bouncing brass, and the rustle of bodies falling. Years of training and experience flooded back into Connor’s mind as he pressed forward, identifying the remaining three targets and assessing their individual threat levels. A part of his mind reminded him that Annie was somewhere behind him, but the part of his mind that was doing the work didn’t care where she was. As long as she wasn’t in his way, she wasn’t an issue.

The fourth guard managed to yell out a warning as he scrambled backward, hand reaching behind his back. The fifth managed to clear leather and had his pistol halfway up before Connor had him sighted and squeezed off three more rounds. He felt, and heard, three more shots to his right and looked up from his red-dot optic to see the fourth man fall back, cut off mid-scream.

Annie appeared beside him, her pistol up and ready. She kept pace with him as he advanced.

The final guard threw his hands into the air as high as he could get them. He dropped to his knees, begging for mercy in Arabic. There was shock and horror on his face as he looked down at the dead companions that he’d been joking and laughing with only seconds before.

“Please,” he said, “I—”

A muffled pop and flash from Annie’s pistol cut him off. His head snapped back, a red dot appearing on his forehead, and he collapsed to the floor next to his companions.

Connor hesitated briefly, then immediately knew she’d done the right thing. They wouldn’t have been able to take him as a captive, and he would’ve been a major liability. Their mission was the sheikh, and they couldn’t let anything interfere with that.

The alarm sounded as Connor stepped up to the closed door to the sheikh’s office. He transitioned from his M4 to his Glock, letting his rifle hang from the sling and holding the pistol one-handed.

He glanced over his shoulder at Annie. “You have left, I’ll take right. Don’t shoot unless you’re sure of your target.”

Annie nodded, holding the pistol against her sternum. For some reason her stance gave him more confidence in her abilities. She wasn’t handling herself like some action hero or movie star, holding the pistol next to her ear, the barrel pointed to the ceiling in some kind of dramatic pose. She held it like she was going to do work with it.

He wrapped his fingers around the door handle and pushed the door open.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Sheik Abdullah Khan stood behind his desk, hands extended. To his left was his second-in-command, Shakir Al-Wahid, half-turned like he’d been moving to investigate the commotion outside the door. Two more men stood to the other side of the desk, both already moving toward the door, hands on holstered pistols.

Connor leveled his sights on Al-Wahid’s chest and squeezed off three shots. With each bullet’s impact, the man was pushed further off balance, his face contorted into a mask of confusion and pain. He stumbled back against the wall. One of the men to the left screamed a warning, drawing his pistol. Connor dropped to the floor as several bullets whizzed past and smacked into the wall behind him, spraying the room with fragments of wood and plaster.

He came up to a knee, eyes already locked on his next target. To his left, Annie cut off the man’s screaming with a single shot to his face, spraying gore against the wall behind him. Connor shifted his aim, finding the final guard, and squeezed off three shots. The rounds smacked into his waist and stomach, doubling him over, and he dropped to his knees with a grunt. Connor stood, leveled his pistol, and put a single round into the back of the man’s skull. His body collapsed lifeless to the floor.

Finally, Connor turned his pistol on the sheikh. Khan’s eyes were wide with terror and confusion. He looked between Connor and Annie as if trying to discern which of them he should be more afraid of.

“Just stay right there,” Connor said, keeping his Glock trained on the man’s face. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“What is this?” Khan asked, backing away from his desk. “What is going on? Do you realize what you’ve done? You have desecrated this holy place.”

“You’re the last person I want to hear talking about desecrating holy places,” Annie said, moving around his desk, her pistol also trained on him. “It’s nothing compared to what you’ve done, asshole.”

“I’ve done nothing but follow the commandments of the prophet,” Khan said. He didn’t say it with malice. It was said as a statement of