AN: So I didn't get the sewing machine... but the lady in front of me wanted it too and bless her heart she was such a dumpster fire of terrible in other ways that the very petty side of me laughed up my sleeve about her being sniped. I nicely explained to her why I needed that particular model and that there were newer better machines. There were too. Several of them actually. She at that point decided to NOT be the good Christian she was telling all about who makes quilts for kids who's parents are in Jail and taking them to see their parents and calling it a day with god when in fact it's a day with your parent which is WAY more important to a child who's mom or dad is in jail. Anyway, she wasn't trying to get us interested in the program, just patting herself on the back for making a couple of quilts and hadn't done it in some time by her own admission. Also she thought because she'd been exposed to Covid that now she was immune to it. She was a former teacher who was dismissive of online learning, then acted like a thing she was proud of doing that would have made any kid with anxiety have an attack was somehow good teaching. The more she talked the less I wanted her to get that machine more than I wanted it for myself. I know that's kind of petty but honestly when you make a big deal about being a Christian and you have a bunch of machines and the person behind you has one machine and it's broken an actual Christian doesn't act like that. If it was me I'd have just looked at the other machines or said how about I grab it for you when I get in, come find me.
On another note: Special thanks to my co-author MRKRZYHRSE for helping me get this chapter right. I promise I've been pushing him to get back into the groove of writing military dramas.
Chapter 12
Lonnie sat playing cards by herself while Gracie slept off a food coma from having just been nursed. She got the alert moments before the breach. Long enough. At least for her.
She quickly grabbed the pillows and comforters off the beds and tossed them into the tub to make a nest as best as she could then gently moved Gracie, baby blankets and all, trying not to wake her, into the bathroom and put her into the tub then closed the locked door. It wouldn't keep them long but the steel tub would protect her charge and the door would prevent her being pinned down by overwhelming forces and having Gracie ripped from her grasp. Damn him, Maybourne had been right. She owed that jerk fifty bucks. Lonnie, that was not her real name but it was the persona she'd adopted for this mission, would have sworn they would go after Sam, not wait until Gracie was alone with her seemingly harmless nanny. "Yah right. Harmless." She said with a grim smile as she swept the room visually.
The next text from her handler had more details. She had at least five tangos heading her way. Shit…
First order of business, she yanked the floppy mattress to the bed closest to the bathroom up against the bathroom wall and braced it with the box spring. The other one she propped against it to make a blind corner she can fire from and leaving her a small gap she can reach the kitchen from.
She then tossed her gym bag against the bathroom door. She's used up seven precious minutes so far.
She looked around for a moment then manhandled the bed frames to the door and angles them so they make a single fatal funnel exit point slightly away from the door The four chairs from the table she jams into the bed frames bottoms up with the cross bars of the beds supported by the chair bottoms, creating a minimalist version of an abatis that would do little more than slow them down but it would buy her time as a trip hazard. The table she propped against the wall by the kitchenette, blocking the view to the stove. With her few remaining moments, she pulled down the ironing board and turned on the iron and ran a pot of water and turned on the range to start it heating. What it lacked in style, her arrangement made up for in its ability to confuse the opposition. Her last action is to hit the lights, plunging the room into darkness, the curtains having already been drawn earlier by Sam when she left.
Lonnie grabbed the carving knife from the kitchen drawer last and jammed it into the upturned mattress she was using as a wall.
As she positioned herself behind her barricade, she smiled darkly to herself. If this were a spy movie she'd be casually playing solitaire at the table when they breached the door and just as casually pick them off like a skeet shoot game on easy mode. Real life didn't work by comic book physics though and real live Tangos were best taken out swiftly and without prejudice.
She unzips her bag and pulls out her Beretta 9mm and checks the chamber and mag. The mag was full. She loaded one in the chamber and grabbed a spare mag out of the bag. She takes a deep breath and settles into her position, calling on her training during her time in special ops.
A moment later, the door bursts open. A quick peek on her part shows her four men in all black standing two by two by the entry. Probably a trail that hasn't entered yet so she waits for it.
"Shit!"
The first two make contact with her amateur abatis and have clearly barked their shins on it at least.
She stands up, bringing her Beretta up and sights the closest. She double taps the two men in front left to right. As they fall to the floor, blood pooling under them, the two behind the now dead men dodge to the left and the right. The one to her right takes a shot in his torso and a second to the head. He crumbles to the floor like a rag doll.
The fifth man, who had stayed in the relative safety of the hall outside the room, evaluating his position, makes his presence known finally by firing several suppression rounds her way.
She dives for cover through the gap between the mattresses and positions herself behind the dining room table. She rolls to her side, leans out and fires four rounds towards the silhouette framing the doorway and is rewarded with a grunt and a crash as the body hits the bed frame and lands on top of his dead comrade.
Just then, however, a large hand grabbed her by the hair. The third man, having reached her and grabbed down to her hidey hole while she was distracted by the fifth tango.
"Got you now, bitch." He drags her up. She struggles while he forces her to her feet and his other hand catches her face with a thunderous clap as he slaps her hard across the cheek. His hand drags across her face, leaving her stunned by the force of the blow. Her head was ringing.
Dazed, she bounces off the wall of the kitchen. Seeing stars, she staggers and tries to clear her head.
He watches her in disinterest. "Not going to matter now." He tells her while she struggles to get her bearings. "The kid is going with me." He tells her with a smug and decidedly unfriendly smirk. He shoves past her to the only location Gracie could possibly be at this point as there is only one door and they had eyes on it from the time Sam, Daniel and Jethro left.
She hears him cock his weapon. Her eyes shift to the left while her head is down. The pot on the stove is steaming and making definite boiling sounds. Pretending to crumple slightly, she feigns to the wall and grabs the handle of the boiling pot. In a single fluid motion, she throws it at his face. Water flies out into his face and onto his arm.
He'd been tracking her motions as he tried to force the bathroom door and his gun was aimed down where her head was a moment before. Reflexively he squeezes the trigger as he screams in agony.
The bullet tears into her upper thigh. She staggers slightly but takes advantage of the motion as it takes her to the hilt of the knife sticking out of the bed. She grabs it and comes out of her momentum behind the disoriented burned man. She pulls his head back with her free hand. "Not on my watch, asshole." She jams the tip of the knife into the base of his skull and twists as she thrusts upward. The man goes instantly limp against her and slides to the floor.
She weakly kicks the body away and slides down the wall.
She lays there staring off into the middle distance. Unable to push through the haze of blood loss and having had her bell rung nearly hard enough to knock her out. Dad always said she had a hard head she thinks with a snort of amusement. God my head hurts.
Two minutes later, her team arrives. There's an efficient body check as her handler walks through the room. "You okay?" The lanky unassuming blond man wearing windbreaker and grey dress slacks asks her.
She nods jerkily. "Gracie is in the tub. Go check her. I'll be fine." She tells him.
Her handler nods and quickly jimmies the bathroom lock with a table knife he grabbed out of the drawer after realizing it was locked from the inside. Gracie is crying but otherwise okay. He picks her up and cuddles her, making gentle shushing noises as he rocks her soothingly against his chest. Lonnie shakes her head in amusement. Only Blakewood, she mused. He'd told her once he was the oldest of nine.
"Should have sent you for the nanny job." She jokes at him.
"I don't like being shot at." He said with a shrug.
"Well who does." She quips and they share an amused smile.
Local PD start showing up and the EMS crew is hot on their heels.
Blakewood spends several minutes explaining who he is to the cops. The surely short Lieutenant sent out to investigate shots fired at the local business class long stay hotel argues with him a bit until his credentials are called in and he's grudgingly allowed to proceed.
The EMTs clean her up, decided she's not going to bleed out just yet, and bandage her thigh to stabilize it. One of them goes back to the bus to retrieve the stretcher they start rolling into the room for her.
"That won't be necessary." Blakewood said to the EMT tech that seemed to be in charge of the other medics.
"Sir, she's gravely wounded. She needs medical attention."
As he speaks, a Blackhawk chopper lands in the field behind the hotel. Blakewood hands Gracie to one of the other team members. "Jimenez and Lucas will take you back to home base. I'll see you after this mess is cleaned up." He tells the woman known as Lonnie.
"Carter isn't going to like coming back to a hotel room covered in blood and her daughter missing, sir." Lonnie told him.
"I'll handle it, Agent Canfield." He said with an amused smile. He'd take Carter over O'Neill on any day for the next part. Carter you could reason with. O'Neill had a history of going off the rails when it involved kids and worse when it was his own. Blakewood shook his head as Canfield was helped out of the room, limping but under her own power.
"Now then." He says to the EMT who was frowning at him for taking his patient. "I'm sure there are other runs?"
The other man threw his hands up in disgust and growled at a couple techs to grab their equipment. "Do you want me to call the coroner or are you just going to pretend the room isn't full of dead people?"
Blakewood smiled. "I'm sure the local law enforcement will be happy to handle that aspect." Blakewood said with a bland smile.
"I'll need to question your agent." The cop in question told him.
"Of course." Blakewood said as if it were the most natural thing in the world, having a shoot out in a hotel room over a baby with apparently murder worthy genetics. He wasn't privy to the details, only that the Trust wanted that baby very badly and was willing to go to great lengths to retrieve her. Preferably alive but apparently they were not averse to taking her dead either by the amount of bullet holes peppering the hotel room.
Blakewood absently turned off the stove and iron. Canfield had done a good job. Her cover was blown, of course, but the whole point was her protecting Major Carter and her child by not staying undercover indefinitely. She had, however, trashed a hotel room and most of the things in said room belonging to Major Carter, Dr. Jackson, and Agent Gibbs were a total loss now. Mostly due to dead people landing on things and spattering blood everywhere.
Hopefully, she hadn't spent her deployments riding a desk or she was in for a rude awakening when she got back tonight from her little side quest that Hammond had been decidedly tight lipped about when he'd called for a location confirmation on this op.
The cops were milling around tagging things and taking photos of bullet holes. The EMTs had left. Now it was just wait for the cops to get done so they could bring in the meat wagons. Just another Thursday night in his world really. He'd gotten over the stench of blood, vomit, and other bodily releases with the sudden and unexpected advent of death a very long time ago. One of the cops must be a rookie. He was tossing his cookies in the kitchen sink.
Blakewood just shook his head. Kids. He thought in bemusement. But even Canfield seemed young to him being twenty years her senior.
AN2: So as you might have noted... the other 2 stories were 12 chapters.
This one isn't. More to come campers :D
- Das Goat -