The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [118]
"More of 'em, Enzo!" Brian said, right at his brother's side, his Beretta in his right hand. "This one's all gone. Any ideas?"
"Follow me, cover my ass!"
Mustafa found himself in a low-end jewelry store. There were six women in view, in front of and behind the counter. He lowered his weapon to his hip and fired, emptying his first magazine into them and feeling the momentary satisfaction of seeing them fall. When the gun stopped shooting, he ejected the empty magazine and reversed in to reload, cocking the bolt as he did so.
Both twins came to their feet and started moving west, not fast, but not slow either, with Dominic in the lead and Brian two steps back, their eyes mainly going to where the noise was. All Brian's training came flooding back into his consciousness. Use cover and concealment wherever possible. Locate and engage the enemy.
Just then a figure came left to right from Kay jewelers, holding a SMG and spraying to his left into another jewelry store. The mall was a cacophony of screams and gunfire now, with people running blindly toward exits instead of first looking for where the danger was. A lot of those went down, mostly women. Some children.
Somehow this all passed the brothers by. They scarcely even saw the victims. There just wasn't time for that, and what training they'd had took over completely. The first target in view was the one standing there hosing the jewelry store.
"Going right," Brian said, darting that way with his head down but looking in the direction of his target.
Brian almost died that way. Zuhayr was standing at Claire's Boutique, having just turned away from dumping a full magazine into it. Suddenly unsure of which way to go next, he turned left and saw a man with a pistol in his hand. He carefully shouldered his weapon and squeezed the trigger -two rounds fired off uselessly, then nothing. His first magazine had been expended, and it took two or three seconds for him to realize it. Then he ejected and reversed it, ramming it back into the bottom of his machine gun and looking back up -but the man was gone. Where? Without targets, he reversed direction and walked with a measured pace into the Belk's women's store.
Brian crouched by the Sunglass Hut, peeking around the right side.
There, moving to the left. He brought his Beretta into his right hand and squeezed off one round -but it missed the head by a whisker when the man ducked.
"Fuck!" Brian then stood and put both hands on the pistol, leading just a hair and firing off four rounds. All four went into the thorax, below the shoulders.
Mustafa heard the noise but didn't feel the impacts. His body was full of adrenaline, and, under such circumstances, the body simply does not feel pain. Just a second later, he coughed up blood, which came as quite a surprise. More so, when he tried to turn to his left, his body didn't do what his mind commanded. The puzzlement lasted just another second or two when -Dominic was facing the second one, gun up and aimed. Again, he fired, as trained, for center-of-mass, and the Smith was on single-action, barking twice.
So good was his aim that the first round hit the target's weapon -The Ingram jumped in Mustafa's hands. He barely held on to it, but then he saw who'd attacked him and took careful aim and squeezed-but nothing happened. On looking down, he saw a bullet hole in the steel side of the Ingram, just where the bolt was. He took another second or two to realize that he was now disarmed. But his enemy was still before him and he raced toward him, hoping to use his gun as a club if nothing else.
Dominic was amazed. He'd seen at least one of his rounds take him in the chest-and the other one had broken his weapon. For some reason, he did not fire again. Instead he clubbed the bastard in the face