Chapter 16 #3
I think someone made a phone call and now the local law enforcement has seen fit to let this play out.
Pugli's influence, I would assume. Although, if I'm honest, it suits Killian and me, too.
Having a small army of cops muddling up things would just complicate matters.
I have no quarrel with them and no desire to harm them—as a first responder and ER nurse, I work closely with law enforcement and have a lot of respect for anyone who chooses that job, as long as they're doing the job to serve their community and not just for the excuse to use the tiny bit of authority for self-aggrandizing purposes.
I have to handle that flanking party.
Breaking into a flat-out run, the heavy backpack slamming painfully into the small of my back, I race down the row of cars until I'm well past the mercs' position and then risk crossing the open space at a sprint—I’m hoping I’ll go unnoticed, now that it's fully dark.
I almost make it.
The impact comes first, the sound of the report second, and the pain third.
The brutal hand of an angry god punches me square in the middle of my back; the breath is slammed out of me, and white stars flash across my vision, and then I hear the CRACK!
of the report—the two occur barely a heartbeat apart.
I'm sent crashing to the hard, unforgiving concrete in a helpless tumble.
My head cracks off the ground, and more stars burst behind my eyes, and a jumble of pains hit me all at once—my back and ribs, my head, my elbows, wrists, and knees.
For a beat, and then two, the world spins around me, dizziness from the lack of oxygen. My mouth flaps open and closed as I try to suck in a breath, and my entire body pulses with agony.
A flash of light winks in my peripheral vision, and I roll toward it—a hornet buzzes around my nose; someone snaps their fingers a centimeter from my ear.
I realize I still have my pistol in a deathgrip, and I level it one-handed where I'd seen the flash.
CRACK! I fire a shot, but have no way of knowing if I hit anything.
For good measure, I pop off a second and third shots in that general direction and then, still rasping and gagging and seeing winking white spots, I scramble backward across the concrete toward the rows of trailers, trying to blink away the breathless dizziness.
The muzzle flash of an assault rifle illuminates the form of a shooter approaching my position; he doesn't see me, though, judging by the fact that his shots stitch the ground several feet away from not just where I was but even further from where I am.
Makes me wonder whether he or whoever shot me just saw a moving shadow and took a potshot, or someone just got lucky.
I freeze in place, gripping my pistol in a classic isosceles hold, both arms fully extended down the length of my body, one hand cupped around the other.
The merc is a patch of moving black in the darkness, heading my way in a slow, silent creep. From this angle, he's skylined against the star-spackled backdrop of the night sky. I wait until he's looming over me, barrel scanning in a side-to-side sweep.
I can't help myself. I should, but I can’t:
"Hey, ugly,” I say. "Down here."
CRACK!
I see him rock backward and topple to the ground in a heavy heap.
Dropping my handgun, I snatch up his rifle, patting it in the darkness to see if I can discern what it is by feel—a carbine, I think.
An M4, maybe. I search the man's body and find four spare magazines.
I shove my handgun into the back of my jeans as I find my feet, finally breathing somewhat normally again.
It feels like an eternity has elapsed since that shot sent me to the ground, but in reality, it's been less than thirty seconds.
I think I got seriously lucky, though—I test my range of movement and find that while my ribs are painful and probably bruised, they're definitely not broken, which means the round must have hit at an oblique angle, because at these distances, rounds fired from a carbine should have enough kinetic energy to break ribs, assuming a direct hit to the vest.
Stifling a groan of pain as I force myself to move, I notice a distinct pause in the shooting. The silence is sudden and total. Kneeling at the front of a trailer, I listen, scan visually. There—a scuff of a foot.
I hear a distant hiss and a soft curse—Killian. I can't let myself spare a thought for his pain. He’s tough; he can deal. He has no choice.
I creep to the end of the trailer, peek out left and then right—four blobby dark shapes drift across the skyline. I doubt Killian has noticed.
The shapes stop. I hear the faint click of a charge handle. A whisper too faint to make out.
I swallow my nerves and ignore the hammering of my heart and the jangle of nerves and the twinge of pain in my ribs and elsewhere. Tighten the butt against my shoulder, place the red dot of the targeting reticle over the left-most patch of darker shadows. Inhale. Hold. Exhale…
Squeeze the trigger in a three-round burst, and then again in a short, precise, raking strafe to the right, and a third back the other way, all in rapid succession.
I hear grunts and coughs of pain, telling me I’ve hit at least one of them.