Denver Overrun (Denver Burning Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

pinged off the car's side. "Stay behind the engine block!" Andrews told her. He turned and looked up through the car's windows, spotting the shooter. It was the man with the red bandanna, shooting down at them with his AK from the roof of the building across the street.
    He must have climbed a fire escape in the alley, Alicia thought. It showed that he, at least, was dedicated to the fight. That was a bad sign. Whoever these guys were, they had planned the attack carefully, they were committed to success, and they were local. Or at least they were Americans; all of the terrorists Alicia had seen so far had been white men speaking without foreign accents.
    Three more shots sank into the car’s metal hood. One shattered the windshield. The shooter was taking his time, edging his shots closer and closer to where the two officers lay, trying to tuck their legs in close to the solid protection the tires and engine offered.
    “That way,” Andrews said, pointing to an alley directly opposite the one through which the gunman had escaped. It was about five yards away at the intersection of two tall brick buildings. The distance seemed impossibly far to Alicia as she flinched from another gunshot impacting the car. Thank goodness it was an older model Chevy with some heft to it, and not one of the tiny plastic cars that had flooded the city in recent years.
    Andrews reached his pistol up and popped off a series of shots directed at the roof across the street. Alicia lunged to her feet and ran for the alley, trying to zig-zag but finding it difficult because of her momentum. She did hear another rifle shot, but made it to the safety of the alleyway without getting hit. Then she turned and aimed her own gun across the street to give Andrews cover.
    She fired once and saw the dark shape of the gunman duck down behind some brickwork atop the building he had chosen for his sniper’s nest. Then her revolver clicked on empty, and she realized in a panic that she hadn’t even thought to keep track of her shooting since the ordeal had begun. Andrews was already up and running, and fortunately reached the alley before the shooter came up again.
    They both turned and hurried down the alley, going all the way through to the next street over from the scene of their battle. Before leaving the alley, they stopped to catch their breath, steady their nerves, and reload.
    “Oh, man. I didn’t know if we were going to make it,” Andrews breathed. “I thought any second one of us would take a bullet, and then it all would have ended right there.”
    Alicia looked at him hard. “Andrews, if I get hit, you have to keep going. You have to get away and link up with someone, do some good today. I don’t need you to be a hero. The city needs help far worse than I do.”
    “Sure, Sergeant.” Andrews’ dark eyes lingered on her. She busied herself inserting cartridges into the cylinder of her gun, then snapped it back into place and gave it a spin.
    “Now let’s move out and see if we can cause some more trouble for these punks that think they can destroy our city.”
    They spent the next few hours moving cautiously through their district, looking for the officers they knew had been on patrol. They found one patrol car, Officer Hansen's, but it had been abandoned hours earlier, and the driver-side window was smashed. The smoke coming from the crash site near the northern boundary of their district told them that whatever efforts had been taken to keep it under control weren't going well.
    There seemed to be no more shooters in the area, and they did not see the one with the red bandanna again. But there was still plenty of chaos. There was the usual disorder from a prolonged power outage, this time with no backups, no emergency services, and no idea of when it might come back. But there was also the terrible violence, the fires, the sense of instability and danger, and the utter lack of confidence in authority.
    It bothered Alicia, almost to the