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WE HUDDLED NEXT TO the building, as deep into the shrubbery as we could squeeze. Perlmutter remained rooted, with me crammed up against him, tight enough he could probably tell I was circumcised. Millie crowded my back, and Staff Sergeant Patrick held down the rear.
Perlmutter craned around to get my attention and pointed to the parking garage. “You know what that is?”
“Sure. It’s a big structure where cars live during the day.”
“No, dickhead. The gap.”
“Yes,” I said. A short wall protected the first floor of the garage; above that it was open to the bottom of the second floor. Between us and that gap lay an expanse of landscaping and a driveway, a good eight-second sprint. I figured I could make it in four.
“When I give the word, you two are going to run like hell for the gap. Jump over, don’t stop. Jump and roll, okay?”
“Jump and roll, got it. Why are we still waiting? I’m ready for jump and roll right now.”
“For the rest of the team to catch up,” Patrick said. As soon as he did, the blaring back door popped open, and the three rearguard marines tumbled out in gun-shifting synchronization, each covering a sector as they exited. “Private Perlmutter, covering fire!”
Perlmutter leaned around the corner, and his rifle stuttered. It made less noise than a sewing machine, but it had an effect far out of proportion to the sound. Yells and commands burst from the Homeland troops when Perlmutter hosed them down with his LM44. A crackle-pop of return fire spat and sputtered, bullets zinging off the tarmac and dusting the wall over Perlmutter’s head. He ducked back.
I glared at Millie. “You know, hanging around you is like playing duck in a shooting gallery.”
Patrick gestured, and the marines behind him fanned forward. Lance Corporal Jackson belly-flopped at the edge of the building and ripped off controlled bursts at the enemy position. Privates Charles and Benson stacked high and low at the corner where Perlmutter had been and engaged as well. Perlmutter reloaded and held his weapon at the ready position. Sparkly lights winked from the garage.
What the hell was that? Muzzle flashes. Fire Team 2 had the Homeland troops in a crossfire.
The sergeant slapped Millie and me on the shoulder, one at a time. “Go!” he roared in my ear. “Go, go, go!”
I grabbed Millie under the arm and jerked her up, dragging the compact woman around to my right side, away from the incoming fire. Her mouth set in a grim line, eyes blazing, the blond pixie resembled a fierce Sidhe warrior more than she did an underground leader. All she needed was an elven bow and silver arrows.
We ran.
Sounds muted by the roaring in my ears, I couldn’t hear the slapping of our feet on the pavement, or the furnace-bellow gasping from my lungs. Our route to the garage appeared more of a tunnel than an open space. I held Millie’s sweating hand in mine, our mismatched tempo throwing me off, but I was determined not to let go of her. Hot, zinging bullets slapped by me, some close enough I could see the air distortion when they tore past.
I screamed one long, impassioned word: “Ssssshhhhhiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttt!”
Then we were at the garage, and hands hauled us over the low wall. I dropped to the oily floor, pebbles stabbing my back, and sucked air, waiting for the blackness to recede.
Don’t pass out, don’t pass out.
Corporal Appier leaned over me. “Are you hit? Did you get shot?”
I shook my head, grit crunching against my hair. “No... I’m good. Millie?”
“Fine.” Millie bent double, hands on her knees, panting.
“We need to move out,” Appier yelled. “They’re getting their shit together over there and bringing down some heavy fire.”
He was right. The wall we’d vaulted appeared to be disintegrating under a sandblaster. The feds were pelting it with a streaming hose of incoming rounds that spewed concrete and sparkled with ricochets spalling rock.
“What about—?” How in the hell would Patrick and Fire Team 1 make it past the lethal barrage?
“Don’t worry. We got this.” Appier belly-crawled to his three marines, who were popping up, burping out small bursts of fire, and ducking back down. “It’s time, boys. Light ’em up.” The corporal double-tapped his ear. “Talon Actual, Claw 1.”
The soldiers fiddled with a switch on their rifles, peeked over the revetment, and steadied their weapons on the ledge.
“Go for Actual.” Patrick’s voice droned in my ear. He sounded as excited as a man ordering takeout.
“Cover going downrange. Bring it home, boss.”
Pom-pom-pom.
“Grenade launchers,” Millie yelled in my ear.
Flashes lit up the night, followed in an instant by flat cracks that thumped me in the chest.
“Again!” Appier commanded.
Pom-pom-pom.
Another series of hard bangs slapped the air and thudded into my breastbone. For a second, I almost felt sorry for the guys on the receiving end of this little slice of hell. They were simply guys doing a job, everyday working stiffs like me. I couldn’t indict the entire agency because of Ramirez and the system that produced him. Could I?
On the other hand, they hadn’t seemed reluctant to gun down unarmed civilians using undead troops as surrogate executioners. And Ramirez wasn’t a part of that, so were all of Homeland’s agents as warped as he? Did they know they would soon all be replaced by Revvies?
Pom-pom-pom.
Fire Team 1 crashed over the wall. They tumbled in graceless heaps, all panting harder than perverts at a peep show. At least I wasn’t the only one stressed by outrunning a river of speeding bullets.
White lightning banged again, flaring against the underside of the garage deck above us. I rolled onto all fours and scrabbled over to Millie, who had sense enough to use a support column for cover. I squeezed in next to her. The acrid fumes of burned accelerant clouded the air with a misty gray fog, and my ears were ringing, which made hearing problematic. Somehow, even with all that, I felt pretty damned glad to be alive. Almost giddy.
“Can we go somewhere just once without getting shot at?” I shouted.
Her expression would best be described as perplexed. “You’re asking me out? On a date? Now?”
What? “I—no! I mean, ah... No, that’s not what—”
“Let’s go, people,” Sergeant Patrick boomed. “They’ve pulled back for the moment. We need to hustle before they regroup.”
Millie poked a finger in my chest. “We’ll discuss this later, Joseph Warren.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am.”
Women. Always thinking about sex.
The marines leap-frogged to the far wall in cover teams. The garage wasn’t that big, so everyone made the fence in about four leaps. The chain link made a ching-ching sound as we slipped through.
John and Alex had turned the two vans around and opened the back doors.
“Everybody mount up,” Patrick ordered.
“What about the car?” Millie asked.
“Leave it.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “In her hands, it’s a lethal weapon.”
“Eagle in here.” Patrick guided Millie into John’s vehicle on the right and all of Fire Team 1 piled in behind her. The sergeant slammed the doors and pounded the back twice. Stuffed in the driver’s seat, John twisted around, showed a thumbs up, and stomped the accelerator.
Patrick climbed into the passenger seat of Alex’s van, and the rest of us clambered into the cargo space like a herd of cattle off to market.
“They’ll figure out where we went sooner or later,” the sergeant told de Galvez, loud enough for the rest of us to hear. “Pull out slow, with no lights until you know our cover’s blown, then haul ass.”
“Alex,” I said, “you know what haul ass means?”
“Run like a jagged streak of hot burning cheetah?”
“That’s it, buddy.” Squashed against the divider, on the passenger side, I had a limited view through the gap of Alex’s wide-toothed grin. The old professor seemed to be enjoying the shit out of this.
“Let’s roll!” He shifted the gear lever, and the electric-powered van coasted forward at a walking pace.
“You might try rolling a little faster, mi amigo.” I craned forward to see through the windshield as Alex kicked it up to a jog, and eventually to a weak run. We made the left at the store’s corner. A brick dividing wall blocked the alley, so we had to make a run for Golf Road. Ahead, the night sky flickered with a multihued patina of bright lights.
“Keep crawling,” Patrick urged. “They’re all over at the ADC building, sneaking up on the parking garage. Nice and easy, and they’ll never see us.”
We broke cover, and the light show intensified. I stuck my head all the way through the gap and peered past Alex’s nose at the red-blue-white-yellow emergency flashers blocking a big chunk of Golf Road to our left. The way ahead remained clear. No sign of John’s van; he must have gunned it out of the lot and made the road. All we had to do was play mouse and sneak out past the big, bad cat and we could do the same.
Tonk-tonk-tonk-tonk-tonk. A row of holes stitched the cargo compartment over the heads of the seated Marines.
“Floor it!” Patrick barked. “We’re taking fire! Everybody down!”
The van surged ahead with all the muscular acceleration of an old man’s wheelchair. Behind me, the marines dogpiled together. I crouched as low as I could get and still see out the front. If I buried myself under Marine Hill, I would be blind and deaf to whatever fate had planned.
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” I yelled.
“I’m giving her all she’s—Uhh!” The driver’s side window starred, and chips of glass exploded inward. More bullets hit the door and punched through. Alex jerked and grunted again. He clenched his arm against his side and grimaced in pain.
“Are you hit?” Patrick barked.
Alex hissed, and his head bobbled loosely. “I’m okay,” he gasped.
The speedometer needle crawled up the dial... 50 kph... 60 kph...
Thwap-thwap! The van shuddered as more rounds punched through its thin-skinned sides and hit something in the cargo space. A marine yelped in pain. We rocked and bumped over pitted pavement, and the motor whined at its highest output. Golf Road grew closer, like a bad dream where you ran but couldn’t gain any ground.
A white streak of light burned toward us in an arrow-straight line.
“Missile!” Patrick yelled.
A cart-return island saved us. The ancient structure bloomed in fire when the missile impacted a metal pipe, less than twenty meters away. The van rocked through the shuddering boom. I lost sight of the fireball as we sped past.
“Come on, baby. Come on.” I chanted under my breath while holding on to the partition walls. “A little bit more...”
Alex had gone pale, and his face twisted into a mask of pain. He breathed in sharp gulps and listed away from the door, his left arm clamped against his side. He kept his foot jammed on the accelerator. 70 kph... 75...
“Slow down,” Patrick cautioned. “You’ll never make the turn.”
“Can’t,” Alex gasped.
In truth, we were rocketing toward the curb cut, flying over weeds and debris. As top-heavy as the van was, a sharp turn at this speed would likely tip us over. More rounds thunked into us, sensed but not seen.
“Alexxxx...” I gripped the partition edges and squinted my eyes shut. We barreled to the edge of the lot, the van juddering and wallowing at more than 80 kph.
At the last second, Alex slammed his foot on the brake. The nose of the van dipped hard, nearly throwing me into the center console. He slewed the wheel right, palming it one-handed, and the boxy vehicle bounced and skidded, tires squalling.
We tipped...
tipped...
hung...
and fell back to four wheels.
“Yeah, baby! Way to go, Alex!” I slapped his good shoulder. “Punch it, bro, punch it!”
Alex punched it, and the electric motor whined a protest song.
Cool as a rock star, the sergeant said, “Keep it floored. We’ll be out of range in under a minute. We’ll need to ditch this vehicle as soon as we’re out of sight. The feds will be all over the roads ahead looking for it.” He craned around, peering over my head. “Anybody hit?”
“Private Charles caught a round in the butt!” Bensen yelled.
“Brain damage?” the sergeant asked, a tiny smile curling his lip. His eyes widened, and I spun around to see what spooked him. Through the van’s rear windows, another arrow-streak of fire burned toward us—
God smacked the back of the van with the biggest hammer in His toolbox. We flipped into the air, and my world tumbled. Freefall. We floated, and, for a moment in time, I lived in a suspended state, processing images like pictures from a still camera.
—Patrick, hands braced on the dash—
—straight down, the concrete road filling the windscreen—
—a machine screw, frozen in space—
Then the van hit, nose first, and white lights exploded in my head.