Sleeper Cell Super Boxset by Roger Hayden, James Hunt

breath from the growing smoke. Bullets ripped through the sheet metal of the cruiser down by the trunk, and Cooper jumped up and fired retaliatory shots.
    With the fires now downwind, Dylan saw the landscape more clearly. Officers and the masked terrorists emptied the magazines in their pistols and rifles, shell casings ringing against the asphalt in delayed reactions to the bullets that ejected the hot lead from the barrels and into metal, Kevlar, flesh, and bone.
    One of the officers sprinted up to another car to join his partners, but before he made it, Dylan watched a bullet slice through the top half of his skull, and he crumpled to the ground like a house of cards. Bits of grey matter, bone, and squirts of blood erupted from the officer’s head as his lifeless body twitched on the ground, the brain sending the last of its messages to the arms, legs, hands, and feet before it finally came to a rest.
    A sour pit churned in Dylan’s stomach, seeming to grow along with the pooling blood at the base of the dead officer’s head. A scream broke Dylan’s stupor as he watched a woman try and fend off one of the masked terrorists that pulled her backward, using her as a human shield. Her face was red and soaked with tears, her mouth distorted in pain and fear as the terrorist jammed the muzzle of his gun into the soft flesh of her neck.
    Dylan eyed the officer on the ground along with the pistol in his hand. Cooper must have been reading his mind because before he could even make a lunge for the dead officer, she pulled him back by the shoulders, and he fell to the ground beside her. “Don’t do anything stupid, Captain.”
    “The woman!”
    “You can’t save her if you’re dead.” Cooper squeezed off a few more rounds, and Diaz mimicked her. The heat from the flames of the fires behind them started to wane as the fires ran out of fuel to consume to continue their greedy rage.
    Dylan poked his head up and looked through the back of the busted window of the cop car. The officers had done little to penetrate the wall of terrorists in front of them. Then, through the shattered glass, one of the terrorists locked eyes with him. Dylan quickly ducked, and the series of shouts and gunshots that followed were all aimed toward the small squad car they were sitting behind.
    What little glass was left exploded from the window casings and clinked against the trunk, hood, asphalt, and the tops of Dylan, Cooper, and Diaz’s heads. The tires blew out on the driver side of the vehicle, and Dylan dropped his head lower to remain concealed behind the cover of the car. Holes from the bullets entering the hood and roof started to combine to completely tear away any shielding of metal. Dylan kept his hands covering the top of his head, feeling the vibrations from each shot and wondering if the next one would kill him.
    Finally, the gunshots ended, and before Dylan had time to react, both Cooper and Diaz returned fire, taking turns shooting and ducking as they reloaded. Most of the other officers were dead, and those that were left looked as though they were running out of ammo and stamina to stay in the fight.
    “We need to head back to the station!” Cooper said, screaming between the gunshots coming from Diaz.
    The three of them huddled in a corner at the back bumper and looked to the station’s entrance, and the daunting sixty feet that separated them. Diaz grabbed Cooper and Dylan by the collar. “You two make for the door. I’ll cover you.”
    Cooper shook her head. “It’s too risky. We need to thin out the herd.” Automatic machine-gun fire peppered the squad car to further her point.
    Dylan glanced around frantically. If they stayed there much longer, there wouldn’t be a car left to hide behind. Another officer tried to make a run for it and was immediately gunned down. Six bullets left red patches in his back as the body lost control of its function and smacked to the ground, where he joined his fallen brothers. Dylan