The North Bronx, Eight pm. 
  
The first snowflakes fell on New York in the late afternoon. But by eight pm a full on blizzard crippled the city. Rica and her wolves plowed through the Bronx streets in their dark SUV. The trio circled the neighborhood of a Turkish money-man named Berker. He was the man who handled Ahmed and the Turks’ cash flow.  
  
“But if we got Ahmed why do we need this Berker guy, boss?” Bling asked while navigating the blinding snow. “Ain't the war with the Turks over?” 
  
“No,” said Rica glaring out the window. “We’re still in this war because as much as Ahmed acted like a king, there are still Turkish under-bosses who can’t wait to continue where Ahmed left off. So we’re going to speak to this Berker fellow and find out who else is gunning for power in New York.” 
  
“But didn’t Ahmed already tell us?” Ian asked, “I mean we tortured the fuck outta that guy, hahaha!” 
  
The wolves chuckled but Rica answered, “Ahmed is only one source and a man will say anything under torture. So it’s better we confirm it with his money-man.” 
  
“Then it’s a good thing Ko memorized those license plates, yeah?” Bling asked. 
  
“Hmph!” Rica pouted, “I’m sure we would've found this guy without Ko!” 
  
“Hahaha!” The wolves laughed at Rica’s false contempt before Ian turned to Bling, “Yo B, can you still see Lewis and Erwin?” Ian referred to the white SUV driven by two of Rica’s other goons who drove in front of Bling. 
  
Bling squinted at their truck some two car lengths ahead of them in the quiet half residential/half industrial neighborhood. “I can barely see them, but we good. The block is coming up!” 
  
“Good,” Ian said as he loaded a sawed off shotgun in the front seat. “This snow is great! We’ll kick in this fuckin guy’s door and drag-” 
  
Suddenly Rica’s phone rang, “Eh?” She checked the ID but the number read, zero-zero-zero. “Hello?” 
  
“Rica! It’s Ko!” 
  
“Ko?” Her heart raced with excitement hearing his voice on the line, but Ko spoke with haste. 
  
“Rica, Jun-Seo is still working with the Tur-” 
  
“Oh shit!” Bling shouted while slamming the truck brakes in the snow. The violent action forced Rica to drop her phone. 
  
“Bling?” she yelped as the vehicle slid forward. While outside Lewis and Erwin’s white truck spun three hundred sixty degrees in the street before slamming into a set of parked cars. And at that exact moment Thwap! A gun shot burst through the frost covered windshield, striking Ian’s forehead, and exiting the back of his skull.

"Oh my god!" Rica shouted.

“Ian? Fuck!” Bling yelled as Ian’s blood splattered all over him and Rica in the back. But the danger wasn’t over. In moments a second shot shattered the rear side window, missing Rica’s face by a fraction of an inch. Glass flew everywhere as Bling frantically yanked the steering wheel, while sideswiping the crashed truck in front of them. But in that dark millisecond Rica knew that they were in the crossfire of two first class snipers. 
  
“Bling!” Rica screamed, gazing at a squat building in front of them. “Go straight, don’t turn, go straight go, go, go!” 
  
The wolf floored the gas pedal and plowed headlong toward the building. But Rica marked where the shots came from and watched the clearing for the building on her right. Once that structure obscured behind the street houses the second sniper couldn’t make another shot. Adrenaline flowing she glanced at the bloodied body of her beloved wolf, Ian. He lay still, slumped over with a hole in his head. That's when Rica lost it. 
  
“Enough! Stop the truck!” she screamed. 
  
Bling looked back, “But, boss?” 
  
“Stop the fucking truck now, Bling!” Her voice thundered with rage as Bling smashed the brake while pulling left. The truck slid in the snow smacking sideways into two parked cars. With the vehicle halted Rica kicked the door open while tossing a long bag on the truck floor. And before Bling could call her name she jumped out into the blizzard in her all black tacticals and carrying her most deadly M24 sniper rifle, Strongbow. 
  
The Rifle Girl Rica Reyes 
  
“You fucks!” Rica howled in a pure rage. Like a true shinobi, she covered her mouth and cheeks with a low cut black ski mask, while running with a subdued profile to evade the second sniper. With revenge in her heart, she raced toward the building that the first shot came from, and fired a single round at the building’s locked side entrance. The blast shattered the latch as the fast moving Rifle Girl kicked the door open and dashed inside the dark structure. 
  
Damn snipers set a trap for us! she thought while flying up the staircase to the top floor of what appeared to be a closed garment warehouse. I gotta get to him before he moves position, and before he hears me com- 
  
“Crap!” she screamed while ducking down from the unmistakable thump of suppressed automatic fire coming from the top step. But she saw him, no, two of them. One stood in the open doorway, the next behind him. Rica backed off and raised her rifle straight up in between the stairwell. And like she predicted, the shooter stuck his head out oh so sligh- 
  
Thwack! 
  
Just that quick, Rica shot him and chambered another round while continuing her run up the stairs. The shooter’s body didn’t get a chance to fall before she shot the second gunman who tried to duck behind the doorway, however, these men were Turks! But they weren’t the snipers. 
  
“Ya!” Rica shouted and thrust her butt-stock forward to block an attack from a down swinging bayonet attached to a rifle barrel. This was the real sniper. 
  
In the low lit hallway Rica barely made out her opponent, who also wore a low cut mask in the same style as… “Grah!” she grunted as she blocked blow after blow with this fast fighter skilled in Rifle-Kata? This fighting technique is only practiced by- 

“Aaah!” Rica yelped while forward kicking the attacker in the chest. But the strike caused her opponent to grunt in pain, and to clearly announce to the world that this sniper who killed Ian was a female. And a tough one. 
  
Rica backed up and fired a point blank shot, but the sniper sidestepped and slashed Rica’s rifle downward as the two warriors jockeyed for position. But in the grapple of close quarters combat Rica kept her ears open. For outside the scream of racing police sirens broke the winter calm, and on the staircase behind her a second assailant rushed at Rica, also with a bayoneted Rifle.
  
Shit, the second sniper! Rica reflexively turned and slashed her rifle-butt at the approaching attacker in an effort to hold him off. But the new attacker parried Rica’s strike and thrust his own bayonet rifle forward.
  
“Rah!” Rica cried as the strike stabbed her in the back of her gut. This forced her to spin against the hallway wall. But she kept close to both assailants to avoid them firing at her, and shooting each other. “Damn!” she yelped as she blocked, dodged, and parried both attacking rifles on either side of her. But during the fray she caught a glimpse at the second attacker’s hazel green eyes, and pony-tailed auburn-red hair. Another female, and the way these two fight there’s no question that these women were- Boom!
  
An ear shattering explosion followed by a blinding light dropped Rica to her knees. Someone tossed a flash grenade at her and at the two snipers. A third attacker, perhaps, making three against one. Rica was in serious trouble.

Her eyes and ears seared in pain as she bled from her back wound. And worse yet, she no longer sensed the first two female attackers. Panicked, Rica jumped up and slashed wildly around her, hoping to strike anything. But after a second the air vibrated with the thump of a battle rifle firing on full automatic. 
  
“Eh?” she dove on the floor as her returning eyesight observed the third rifleman, firing down the staircase. But this man wielded a weapon she recognized. A black M110A2 named, Yeomra. Gripped by a beautiful boy in a low cut black ski mask.
  
“Ko?” Rica screamed, barely hearing her own voice. Her rifle still in hand she tried to run to him, but the injury to her back dropped her again, “Ah!” 
  
Ko, the lower half of his face masked, turned to Rica and said something she couldn’t make out. But a second afterward he pulled the pin on a foreign type of smoke grenade and threw it in the stairwell. He then tossed his rifle over his shoulder and lifted Rica in front of him while white smoke filled the area. Carried in his arms, Rica protested, “I can walk!” she lied. But Ko ignored her and raced headlong through the dark hallway toward an open window. Rica, grasping his neck, balked at Ko’s obvious plan. “Ko? What are you doing?” 
  
Without a moment's hesitation, Ko jumped out of the window. The cold outside air smacked Rica as she gripped him tight during their free fall. “Yaaa!” she screamed as they hard landed in a snow pile on an adjacent building rooftop. “Ow!” she cried as her weapon dropped, along with the blood from her back wound. 
  
“Come on!” Ko growled under his mask as he secured her rifle while helping her stand up. But Rica’s injury was deep, so Ko mostly carried her as the two hustled down the side of the building’s fire escape and emerged around the block, and away from the police. 
  
Once down, Ko shouted in Korean into an earpiece. A moment later a black sedan plowed through the blizzard in front of the teens, while sirens wailed around the corner. 
  
“Arrrgh!” Rica winced from her back wound as her blood painted the snow behind her.  
  
Ko immediately lifted her up and into the back seat of the black car. “Easy Rica. We’ll get you help.” 
  
“Ah!” she ripped her mask off as the vehicle raced away from the scene, “Ko, it was a trap!” she yelped. 
  
“I know!” he growled. 
  
“But Ko!” she continued, “Those snipers they-” 
  
“I know, Rica!” He tore off his own mask, “Those two weren’t ordinary snipers, no!"

They were Rifle Girls!

..