Fires of Midnight Read Online Free

opened fire while the two men were still twisting and bringing their pistols around. Unable to properly aim, he was lucky for the shoulder hits that spun the gunmen away from the bar before they could start shooting. Blaine was just steadying the SIG on them again when he heard the familiar click-clack of a shotgun being cocked. He caught a glimpse of the bartender wielding a Mossberg sliced-handle pump in time to duck behind the bar’s cover next to Marokov, who was fighting to steady an ancient Greysa pistol in a trembling hand. The first blast carved a huge fragment from the bar top and the second showered chunks of wood over both of them. Blaine bounced back up above the bar to find the original gunmen wheeling toward him, wounded, their pistols spitting orange. It took four more shots to drop them. But backing up to steady his aim had given the bartender a clear shot at him. The man had the Mossberg steadied dead on him when Marokov lurched up into its line of fire. A shotgun blast shattered the Russian’s chest as he squeezed off a single round from his Greysa that snapped the bartender’s head backward. Marokov’s frame slammed back into McCracken, spilling both of them to the floor.
    Blaine pulled himself from beneath the Russian and leaned over him. “Andre—”
    Too late. The Russian’s eyes had locked open in death, looking strangely at the end as they had in the jungle that day near Highway 9.
    Blaine rose just as three men wielding Ingram submachine guns tore into the bar. McCracken drained the rest of his clip at them to cover his dart for the swinging kitchen door. He crashed through it and heard yelling in Spanish directed at him, which ceased when the workers saw his gun. He bolted past them and negotiated the clutter of stoves and counters where chefs were busy preparing meals. That route took him through a storage area lined with messily stacked shelves, the bottoms of which held a number of propane tanks.
    Blaine propped two of them against the other side of the door, certain to be knocked over as soon as his pursuers came crashing through. He
backed down the hall, reloading, and held his ground until the door rocketed open. In that instant, McCracken fired twice, once for each of the tanks that had clattered to the floor.
    The explosions rocked the corridor and brought sections of both walls and the ceiling tumbling inward. Blaine was close enough to feel the heat of the blasts before he sped through the exit that took him outside the Buena Vista.
    Three jeeploads of Cuban militiamen had arrived, and the last of the uniformed men were just racing toward the hotel. He waited a moment until all of them had vanished inside before lunging atop the lone jeep featuring a pedestal-mounted machine gun. He turned his SIG on the remaining jeeps and shot out two tires in each before speeding off.
    The objective now was to get off the main avenue as quickly as possible, use back roads to reach the extraction point at an airfield a twenty-minute drive from here. Since this had been a setup all along, though, chances were the airfield would be covered by more Cuban militiamen before he reached it, and no pilot in his right mind would chance a landing under such conditions.
    Blaine had no choice. The airfield was his only option.
    He pushed the jeep on at top speed, the events at the Buena Vista flashing through his mind. He and Marokov had been set up, lured here by men certain that these two apparently implacable enemies would not be able to resist the endgame that had eluded them for so long. If only they had known the truth …
    The only truth that mattered at this point was that McCracken had been lured to Cuba to do a job somebody wanted done. Marokov had said he’d been working with some faction of the CIA. Maybe he had outlived his usefulness to them and this was their way of paying him back. Involving Blaine had been a mistake they would be paying for now.
    McCracken sped off the main drag and thumped