Consortium of Planets: Alien Test Read Online Free PDF Page B

security guard opened the door and shoved Dean out onto the street. As the door slammed shut behind him, Dean rolled across the asphalt and jumped to his feet. In that instant, he faced all the security guards from the other two vehicles. They stared back with their weapons drawn.
    Dean’s snipers immediately saw what was happening. Gretchen fired into the security guards, followed by Antoine. Gretchen switched to auto and quickly had to replace the five round clip. Antoine followed her lead and had to do the same. Seven guards dropped at once in the deadly crossfire. The other guards quickly forgot about Dean and took cover wherever they could find it. Dean dropped through a manhole cover and into the sewer…as he began to make his way to the rendezvous point, he hoped his team was right behind him.
    Gretchen and Antoine were so focused that they didn’t see Dean drop out of sight. They kept firing to cause as much confusion as possible so that Dean could escape. A fatalistic attitude overtook Gretchen – she knew that she had been there too long. It was only a matter of time before they found her and stopped her, but she couldn’t leave Dean unprotected, so she just continued the “wild ride.”
    Ralph’s bombs always went off when he told them to. These bombs are being bad, he thought nervously as he continued to press their trigger, trying to make them work. While he tried to make sense of what was happening, three large men in black overcoats and dark glasses surrounded him. Feeling closed in, Ralph looked up at them.
    “How did you know?” Ralph asked innocently.
    “You can never trust a nun with a beer can.” One of the men smirked as they dragged Ralph away.
    Dean had only made it through about one hundred meters of the wet, foul sewer before he stopped. He could still hear Gretchen and Antoine – they hadn’t stopped shooting. They weren’t following protocol and should have already gotten out of there. What’s the point of a rendezvous if everyone is dead? He raced back. As he slowly pushed the manhole cover up to check the situation, he saw four attack helicopters. They were hovering high above the buildings that Gretchen and Antione were firing from. Antione had taken on all four helicopters with his rifle. Gretchen continued to provide cover fire for who she hoped was Dean.
    Two of the choppers released rockets onto Antione’s location, silencing him. Debris and dusty rubble exploded and flew everywhere. The other two choppers began chasing Gretchen around the roof with their deadly Gatling guns blazing relentlessly. Thousands of casings from all the huge bullets they fired at her rained down on the street. They fell like burning tears all around Dean.
    “Run, Gretchen, run!” Dean screamed in helpless desperation at the rooftop, not knowing if she was alive or dead.
    In the mayhem, no one noticed Dean burst through the front door of Gretchen’s building and race up the stairs to the roof. She had locked the door to the roof and braced a board against the knob so that no one would disturb her. Dean bounced off when he threw his body against it and came up firing his weapon into the locking mechanism. After ten rounds and two adrenaline-aided hard kicks, the door flew open. He fell through the opening onto the harsh sunlight.
    “Gretchen,” he screamed desperately, “where are you?!”
    Miraculously, she was unhurt. She had taken refuge behind a large air conditioner unit about ten meters from Dean. All four choppers were circling around and would have her in their sights in less than a second. She had emptied all her ammunition into the street and could no longer defend herself. Her only chance would be the door Dean had just opened for her.
    “You’re alive!” she screamed back with a huge smile. Her beautiful eyes were filled with defiance and desperation as she jumped up and began to run flat-out toward Dean and to safety.
    The choppers were already lined up and eight Gatling guns