St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

that was a sign:
     
    TACTICAL SHOOTING HOUSE
LIVE FIRE IN PROGRESS
     
    Rand blew out the lock with a short burst of fire. The door slammed inward. He dove low through the opening, rolled behind the first cover he saw, and ignored the pain that was shutting down his vision.
    The quick look he’d gotten as he dove through the door told him that the shooting house was the size of a basketball court. No windows. No ceiling for the maze of hallways and rooms. Light level so low that he had to let his eyes adjust.
    Kayla’s scream was louder this time.
    Rand clenched his teeth. I’m sorry, Kayla.
    God, I’m sorry.
    Breathing as quietly as possible, he lay behind a concrete pillar, trying to pinpoint the direction of the scream that was echoing around the room. Somewhere to his left, down a hallway without ceilings and behind a closed door, he heard the ring of a brass cartridge hitting and rolling across hard concrete.
    A piece of shooting debris kicked by a careless foot.
    Or a distraction created in the opposite direction of the real threat.
    “Kayla!” Rand yelled, and rolled behind another pillar.
    She answered with a choked-off scream, all she could manage before Bertone clamped steel fingers across her mouth.
    The sound came from Rand’s right, down a narrow corridor formed by two eight-foot-high Kevlar “walls” designed to catch bullets sprayed by wild shooters. He examined the hallway. Thirty feet from his position, doors faced each other across the corridor.
    It was intended to simulate a standard business-building arrangement, a place where a weapons team could practice tactics to use against a man who had gone postal.
    Fifty-fifty.
    I storm the hallway and take one door, only to find the shooter is waiting behind the other.
    Rand didn’t move. It wasn’t like Bertone to settle for even odds.
    The attack will come from the far end of the corridor while I’m busy shooting at empty doorways.
    He circled to his right and came at the shooting maze from the other end. It was the only way he had a hope of surprising Bertone. With each quick step, he tensed against hearing Kayla’s scream.
    Nothing but silence.
    Way too much silence.
    But at least he’d distracted Bertone from Kayla.
    Three more steps.
    A leather sole squeaked on the smooth concrete ahead and on the other side of a wall.
    Rand had run ten feet when sound exploded, a shattering burst from the M-60 machine gun. Apparently Bertone had found more ammo for his heavy iron. Slugs chewed through the Kevlar partition where Rand had been. The sound was more shocking than the bullets that ripped through the wall.
    Rand couldn’t hear his own breath, which meant that Bertone was also deafened for a time. Moving fast, Rand turned the corner of the shooting maze.
    There was another long, dimly lit corridor with a series of facing doors and a side hall that cut away. At the far end of the corridor, a steel stairway climbed halfway up to the open ceiling and then cut back on itself.
    Perfect ambush.
    Tactical nightmare.
    A defender could hide at the cutback point and fire down the corridor or wait at the second-floor landing and fire down on his attacker.
    Rand focused on a Mylar dome hanging from the ceiling halfway down the hall. He’d seen gear like it in high-security installations all over the world. Closed-circuit TV cameras lived behind the Mylar. Other similar installations covered the rest of the shooting rooms.
    Son of a bitch. Bertone can monitor every step I take.
    Rand stepped into the center of the corridor and lifted the AK with his left hand, forcing his right arm to support the barrel. The fingers had feeling again, but his right shoulder wasn’t worth shit. He fired three shots.
    The closest plastic dome exploded in a shower of sparks as Rand raced back to cover.
    The hard black snout of a machine-gun muzzle poked out of a seam in the corridor wall. A hail of bullets screamed and whined off the concrete floor. Bertone had turned jacketed slugs into a shotgun blast of shrapnel that shredded the wall three feet from where Rand was hiding.
    Cute. If I’d stopped to admire my work like Foley, I’d be bloody rags on the floor.
    Like Foley.
    Breathing softly, listening hard, Rand wondered what Bertone’s next trick would be.

78
    Arizona Territorial Gun Club
Sunday
2:40 P.M. MST
    K ayla pulled and twisted against the duct tape covering her mouth, scrubbing it against the rough console in the control room. High up on her thighs, flesh