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Marching at a brisk pace, they neared the giant stone formation at the curve in the road. Valdez edged in front of them.
“I’m wearing the Armor of God uniform,” she said. “You guys hang back and I’ll take them by surprise. Be ready.”
“I was born ready,” Mike said.
“Never been more prepared,” Anthony said, and meant it. Adrenaline buzzed through his blood, but that sense of calm remained with him, that feeling of implacable purpose. As if all his training, all the fights he’d endured, all the grief his family had suffered, had been to prepare him for this day, this moment.
“On my right-hand signal,” Valdez said.
She rushed around the stone pillar. Mike and Anthony peered around the corner, watching.
“Look at her, man,” Mike whispered. “I’ll be damned if I don’t ask her to marry me.”
“Maybe you should ask her to dinner first, do things in logical order. Just a thought.”
“Don’t rain on the parade, AT.”
Ponytail swinging, Valdez sprinted down a long, steep driveway flanked on both sides by sheer rock walls. At the end of the drive, there was a set of wide, wrought iron-gates. The entrance was fronted by a guard booth stationed atop a squat stone foundation.
Beyond the gates, nestled behind oaks and pines, the mansion stood on a sloped crest of grassy land.
At Valdez’s approach, a guard in a white tracksuit emerged from the booth. He called out a greeting that Anthony could not hear. Valdez raised her right hand, as if waving.
Game time.
Anthony exploded from hiding, the wind at his back like the urging of an avenging angel. Mike brought up the rear.
Spotting them, the guard shouted, “Halt!” and started to draw his pistol, but Valdez swung her upraised hand like a hatchet and chopped it against the guy’s throat. He let out a garbled scream. Whirling like a dust devil, she nailed him with a brutal roundhouse kick to his temple, and he dropped to the ground.
Another guard bounded out of the station, pistol drawn. But Anthony had been expecting him, already had his gun chambered, and squeezed off a shot. The round punched the guard in the chest and plunged him backward into the doorway almost comically, as if he were a drunk who had fallen on his butt while trying to make his way outside.
Valdez had flipped over the first guard onto his stomach and was slapping a pair of handcuffs on him. The guy’s eyes were dazed, and he breathed in ragged bursts.
Anthony charged into the booth. The agent was rising on wobbly legs. Although Anthony’s hollow-point round had hit him in the chest, the agents wore Kevlar vests, so the round had not penetrated his tissue, only knocked him down and temporarily stunned him.
Anthony rapped the butt of his pistol against the man’s head, and the blow sent him spilling back to the floor, unconscious. He grabbed the guard’s ankles and dragged him out onto the driveway, turned him face-down.
Mike used the guard’s own restraints to cuff his wrists.
As they finished securing the sentry, Valdez scrambled into the booth.
“You’ve got about two, three minutes to get inside,” she said. “After that, this area is gonna be swamped with reinforcements. We sacked these dirt bags here, but on the surveillance cameras the others will have seen what went down.”
“You’re staying out here?” Anthony asked.
She mashed a button on a control panel, and the motor-operated gates began to whir open.
“I’ve risked my job by going this far, Thorne,” she said. “I’ve gotta hold them off here and wait for my team and our warrant. But this is only my job—it’s your life, like you said.”
“Thanks for everything, Valdez.”
“De nada. Here, take one of these.”
There were two tactical rifles stored in racks on the booth’s interior wall. She strapped one over her shoulder, and offered the other one to him.
Anthony passed the gun to Mike.
“Watch my flank,” Anthony said.
Mike flipped the strap over his shoulder and checked the rifle’s chamber to confirm that it was loaded.
“We’re good,” Mike said. He blew a kiss to Valdez, turned to Anthony. “Lead on.”