Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) by Jacques Antoine Page B

jacket
was dark brown, but she was wearing khaki pants and an orange tank top. It
wasn’t ideal camo, so she would need the cover of the fire.
    She saw eight or nine men crossing
the lawn, firing as they ran. Four of them ran straight for the front door. The
rest peeled off and circled around toward the back of the house, pausing to
consider the garage. Once they made it to the kitchen, she would have no way to
get to the house. She had to act now. There was no more time to wait, no more
deliberating. She moved quickly, but deliberately toward the corner of the
house near the kitchen, keeping the woodshed between herself and the last
position where she had seen the second team. The brightness of the flames kept
them from seeing her, but it also kept her from seeing precisely where they
were. At least, they weren’t aware of her presence yet, she hoped, so they
wouldn’t be looking for her in the fire.
    She heard a noise from the house.
It sounded like muffled gunfire. There was a crash and the sound of breaking
glass. She peered as far around the woodshed as she dared. The men in the
driveway ran toward the house, some toward the front, the rest burst in through
the kitchen door. Emily followed them in as closely as she could without
attracting their attention. What she saw when she cleared the door was a full
on gun battle. Two men in the kitchen were laying down a steady fire into the
public rooms of the house. Even more gunfire was returning their way. One man
had sustained a significant leg wound, another was trying to help him out of
the line of fire. None of them seemed to see her..
    Emily’s first thought was to launch
herself at the two who were shooting into the rooms where she assumed her
father was. But the gunfire was too hot to make it worth the risk. If she were
shot or killed, she would hardly be any help to her father. Her next thought
was to make her way to the kitchen staircase and down to the basement. From
there she could come up at the other end of the house where she might be able
to help her father.
    She cleared the staircase and
entered the furnace room. Peering through the doorway into the rec room, she
saw her father walking unsteadily from the other end of the basement. He was
bleeding from his left side! She ran to him, threw her arms around him. All she
wanted was to hold on to him. He winced. She slid around under his right
shoulder and helped him stand. With the relief of seeing her, he breathed a
little easier. Now to get them both out of there.
    “Quickly, Chi-chan, downstairs,” he
said in a sharp whisper.
    “Okay, Dad. What’s going on
upstairs? Anyone else up there?”
    “No. We’re all that’s left. Come,
quickly.” They slipped behind the bar where a door in the floor covered the
ladder to the lower basement. Emily lowered the door over in place them. It
wouldn’t conceal their escape route for long. At least it wasn’t the first
place they’d look. It might buy them a few minutes at best. The sound of
shooting died away. The tactical teams, or what was left of them, must be
regrouping. In the initial onslaught George had managed to disarm the first man
through the front door and used that gun to dispatch the next man through. He
ducked into the study off the dining room, crouched in its doorway, and fired into
the kitchen as the second team entered there. They returned fire through the
dining room and living room. The remainder of the first team fired back. George
slipped down the basement stairs in the confusion.
    “We need to get out through the
tunnel before they make it down here. Hurry, Chi-chan.”
    “I’m on it, Dad. Let’s go!”
    Unfortunately, the enemy was
already there. Somehow. But, how?! One man in black tactical gear burst out
from behind the door to the tunnel. George saw him just as he was pulling his gun
up to fire. He knocked the gun to the side, slapped the man hard across the
face and shoved him back into the tunnel door, slamming it closed