Perkins was starting to regret this.
She had assumed that with a top-tier killer like Hunter backing her up, and with him covering the operation from a distance as a sniper, the job would be simple enough. Even if he only provided overwatch, she figured her own skill was more than enough to finish the contract.
But she had underestimated the situation from the start.
She had been too careless, and too stingy to spend more Continental coins.
With just one coin, the intel she bought from the Continental in Las Vegas had been incomplete. They had never imagined that Zelvisky had hidden so many bodyguards inside the Charles Building to protect himself.
"Hunter, I need backup, now!"
She called out over the earpiece.
Then, as Hunter ordered, she dug in and held the room with everything she had.
Crack.
Bang.
Crack.
Different firearms kept barking in and outside the room.
Perkins held the door with both hands and kept one eye on the window beside her.
At her waist hung two grenades and two flashbangs. Those had been given to her by Hunter before the hit.
At the time, she had thought he was being overly cautious. Now she was thinking that two grenades might not be nearly enough.
The room she was trapped in was a guest suite. The walls were thick, apparently soundproofed, and on one side there were only two small ventilation windows high up near the ceiling.
That was the only reason she had managed to hold this long by defending the door.
And she had to admit, Hunter's earlier long-range shots had saved her life. He had dropped two guards trying to force their way in through the doorway and rattled the rest hard.
If those men had rushed the room all at once, she could not have said for certain that she would have held them off.
The noise outside was getting worse by the second. The guards at the door were clearly getting restless, ready to surge.
Perkins's stomach tightened. They were probably about to rush her.
She pulled a grenade from her belt, yanked the pin, and hurled it through the doorway.
Outside, curses and shouts of alarm erupted at once.
Bang.
The explosion made the chaos even worse.
A few guards, trying to dodge the blast, ended up spilling into the room.
Crack crack crack crack.
Perkins immediately raised her rifle and emptied the magazine in a burst. The men dropped before they could recover.
Her hand went to her tactical belt.
Nothing.
Her face darkened.
She had assumed Zelvisky only had a dozen guards at most in the building, so she had only brought two spare magazines in addition to the one already loaded.
She had been wrong.
Even three magazines would not have been enough.
With no rounds left, the assault rifle was useless. Might as well have been a stick.
Perkins acted without hesitation. She tossed the empty rifle aside, drew her two pistols, and aimed one in each hand at the doorway.
Then the vent above the wall suddenly shattered with a sharp impact.
Something small was thrown in through the opening.
Perkins's eyes widened.
Bad.
She lunged away from the object, diving toward the far corner and curling in behind the bed.
Bang.
A blinding white flash swallowed the room.
Her sight vanished for a few seconds.
Guns kept barking outside.
Perkins had not expected a flashbang. She forced herself through the nausea and pain, raised her pistol, and fired blindly back through the haze.
Crack.
A shot struck her shoulder.
The pain hit like a knife.
She knew instantly that she had been hit.
As the flashbang effect began to fade, Perkins blinked hard and dragged her vision back into focus.
She turned her pistol and kept firing, ignoring the fire in her shoulder.
Click.
One pistol ran dry, but she did not have time to reload.
She flung the empty weapon away, grabbed another grenade from her belt, yanked the pin, and threw it out toward the door.
Bang.
A few seconds later, another explosion ripped through the hall.
Using the blast as cover, she slammed a fresh magazine into the other pistol.
Voices were still yelling outside. She stripped another flashbang from her belt and kept it ready.
Crack.
Something she could not identify came flying in from outside and landed not far from her feet.
She glanced down.
Her face changed instantly.
She sprang off the bed and threw herself to the opposite side of the room, yanking the pin on the flashbang as she moved and hurling it back out the door.
Bang.
Bang.
Two explosions followed in quick succession.
The first shattered the room's windows. The bed, which had been absorbing most of the incoming fire, was blown apart into several ugly chunks.
The second blast hit like a sledgehammer, smashing into everyone's skulls.
In an instant, most of the people in the room and the hallway lost the ability to fight.
"Can you hear me?"
Perkins had clapped a hand over her head and shut her eyes at the last second.
Even so, the grenade and flashbang left her dizzy and sick to her stomach. Her ears rang so violently that everything sounded distorted.
She barely registered the voice in her earpiece.
Outside, gunfire suddenly exploded.
Rat-tat-tat-tat.
It was the sound of a machine gun unleashing hell.
Hunter, sweat beading across his forehead, had reached the building only minutes earlier. When he discovered the elevators had been locked down, he had taken the stairwell and sprinted all the way up.
From the first floor to the seventeenth in under two minutes.
Even with his body nearly five times stronger than an ordinary adult male's, he was still breathing hard by the time he reached the top.
Now he held an M249 light machine gun, laying down a torrent of suppressive fire. Thanks to his maxed-out Shooting skill, every target he could see dropped under his fire.
He advanced while firing, both hands locked on the weapon.
Bodies hit the floor one after another as the M249 spat fire down the hallway.
At last, Hunter reached the room where Perkins was pinned down. He cleared the corridor in a brutal sweep and forced the remaining guards into adjacent rooms.
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