Chapter 5
Dozer
The first shot takes out our lead vehicle's tire, which means somebody has planned this, because you don't hit a tire by accident at sixty miles an hour on a two-lane county road with no other traffic in sight.
I have exactly one thought before instinct takes over completely. They knew our route. Then there isn't time to think anything at all.
"Contact left!" Reyes's voice comes over the radio, flat and fast, the way it gets when the adrenaline hasn't caught up to the training yet.
Our convoy is currently three vehicles; we’d planned it this way until we make it out of town safely. The lead, ours, and the follow, Malloy was driving that one with two of ours riding escort.
Simple math. Simple math that has just stopped being simple. "Down.” One hand is already on Kenzi's shoulder before I've finished the word, shoving her below the window line.
She goes down fast. She has good instincts; there was no hesitation or argument. But I feel the half-second where her whole body locks up solid, breath caught, eyes too wide for a person still processing the sound as gunfire instead of something else.
One beat.
That's all she gives the fear and then she's moving.
She drops into the footwell, both arms wrapping around the case at her feet like it's the only thing that matters. Which, as far as the mission is concerned, it is one of two. She has whatever piece of evidence she found on the body in that case and she’s protecting it.
I wrench the wheel hard right, taking us off the road entirely and onto shoulder gravel that rattles every bone in the vehicle, both the living and the dead.
The move isn't pretty. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to keep us alive. Rounds slam into the rear panel. I count them as they fire off. Two, three, and then four. The flat, ugly sound of metal taking damage it's not built for.
Kenzi ducks lower. I can hear her breathing fast but controlled. She's scared, of course she's scared. Anybody who says they're not afraid when somebody starts shooting at them is either lying or hasn't understood what's happening yet.
But she's not panicking.
I put more pressure on the accelerator. "Malloy, status."
"Taking fire!" His voice crackles through the comms.
Then another burst of gunfire cuts through the radio. I check the mirror and see the lead vehicle is fishtailing across the road.
"Lead's hit," Reyes says, and there's something in his voice now that wasn't there ten seconds ago. "Driver's down. I've got it, I've got it—"
He doesn't have it. I know that before he finishes saying it. The vehicle behind us loses its rhythm. The engine noise changes, it’s wrong. I glance in the mirror and watch it drift instead of drive.
Reyes is fighting a wheel that no longer has a driver actually steering it, which means we're about to lose the lead vehicle entirely and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.
"Malloy, hard left at the fork. Now." I'm already recalculating the convoy's geometry in my head. "We’re compromised. Full evasive. Do not slow down for anybody."
"Copy." A round cracks against the side of our vehicle.
Kenzi flinches, but she doesn't scream. Doesn't freeze. Her head comes up just enough to see past the dashboard. Then her voice comes from the footwell. "There's a second position."
I look at her in the mirror. "What?"
"East ridge. Tree line." Her breathing is still fast, but her voice is steady.
"The muzzle-flash pattern's wrong for one shooter. There's a second angle."
I hadn't clocked it yet. She has. From the floor of a moving vehicle under fire, with her arms wrapped around the one thing she's trying to protect. I file that the way I file everything that matters.
"Confirmed." I adjust the angle, cutting us out of the second shooter's likely line before I've fully verified it myself. She doesn't sound like someone guessing. Kenzi doesn't just notice things, she sees them.
We hit the fork doing something close to eighty, Malloy makes the turn. We’ve switched positions in the convoy with the shooting, and we follow.
Reyes's vehicle doesn't.
I watch it in the mirror for exactly the amount of time it takes to understand what's happening and not one second longer. It goes off the shoulder, hits the tree line.
The sound reaches us a second later.
Metal.
Wood.
A hard, final crunch.
Then the vehicle stops being a vehicle in any sense that matters.
"Reyes." I call over the radio, praying that somehow, a miracle has happened and he’s okay, while knowing it’s not possible for anyone to survive that. Nothing. "Reyes, copy."
Silence.
The word sits there between bursts of static and I know what silence means. I've known for a long-time what silence on the other end of the radio means. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it and as long as I’m in this line of business, probably won’t be the last.
My hands tighten around the wheel; there isn't time to grieve.
There isn't time to turn around. There isn't time to do the thing every instinct in my body is demanding I do and go back for my man. Leave no man behind, right? I know if I turn around, I’ll put all of us in danger. I’ll make a call to Hunter and have him send another team to retrieve Reyes.
I have to keep driving, keep the transport moving, and the last two people I haven't lost yet alive for the next mile. After that, we’ll break off and it’ll just be me and Kenzi. I have to keep her alive to make it back to Hunter in one piece.
Grief is a thing I’ll have time for later, in a room that locks, completely by myself. Not now, not at eighty miles an hour with a second shooter somewhere in a tree line I still haven't fully located.
"Kenzi." She doesn't answer. I glance down. She's still wrapped around the case on the floor. "Kenzi."
"I'm here." Her voice is quieter now.
"Talk to me." I don't know why I need to hear her voice, maybe because the cab has suddenly gotten too quiet or maybe because somewhere in the last few hours, I've started thinking of her as more than an asset. "You good?"
"I'm—" She takes a breath. Then another. "I'm good. The case is good. I've got both arms around it. It's not going anywhere unless I do."
"You're not going anywhere either. I won’t let you.” Where did that come from?
"Noted." The word lands strangely because it’s my word. The word I’ve used a few times in answering her today. It sounds different coming from her in a moving vehicle with gravel and gunfire behind us and a man I've known for four years no longer answering his radio.
I tighten my grip on the wheel. "Keep your head down for a few more minutes."
"I'm already practically under the floorboards," she reassures me.
"Good."
"Although, for the record, this is not what I meant when I said I wanted an exciting job."
Despite everything, something almost like a laugh tries to get out of me. I kill it before it can. "Save the complaints."
"Wasn't a complaint."
"What was it?"
"A workplace observation."
"Well save it for the after-action review."
"Copy that."
The next mile feels like ten. Every vehicle behind us becomes a threat, and every overpass becomes an ambush point. Any movement in the tree line gets catalogued and dismissed only after I know exactly what it is.
The road widens and traffic appears as we get closer to the nearby town.
A tractor-trailer passes us going the opposite direction, then another vehicle before three more zip by.
Streetlights start appearing along with houses, businesses, people and civilization.
We are out of the boondocks and back into the ordinary world.
Which means, witnesses. The kind of witnesses that make an ambush harder to finish without consequences, even for men who clearly don't give a damn about consequences.
I don't slow down again until I have no choice. We pull into a gas station lot that has absolutely no business being the safest place I've been all day.
I kill the engine.
Silence.
For the first time since the ambush, real silence. There’s no gunfire, radio traffic, or gravel spinning beneath my tires. My heart isn’t beating loudly in my ears as the adrenaline rushes through my veins. The only sound is the ticking of the cooling vehicle and both of us breathing.
Kenzi comes up out of the footwell slowly, the case is still clutched against her chest. Like she hasn't fully registered that she's allowed to let go. Her hands are shaking.
She notices me noticing her.
Immediately she presses her hands flat against the case like she can force them still through sheer determination. It doesn’t work, not exactly, but the shaking slows to a small trembling.
"That was—" she stops. For Kenzi, that's its own kind of alarming.
I look at her, worried. “You okay?”
"That was an ambush. They knew our route." Her eyes meet mine. "Not a checkpoint. Not bad luck. Somebody handed them our timing, our roads, or both." She swallows hard, the color has drained from her face, but her eyes are clear. "We lost people."
It’s not a question. "We lost Reyes." Saying it out loud doesn't make it easier, I hadn't expected it to.
Her mouth tightens, but she doesn't offer any soft words of condolence, she doesn’t reach for me or say something meant to comfort me that would land wrong in this particular minute. She just nods once, like she understands exactly how much room there is for feelings right this minute.
None. There is no room for emotions right now. Later. Maybe. If I allow myself to feel. But emotions right now could get us all killed and I’m grateful she seems to understand that.
Then she looks down at the case. She sets it carefully on the seat between us instead of letting go of it completely. "Then we better make this count."
I look at her and her paint-flecked boots. A woman merely hours into a job she said yes to before hearing the details, sitting in a gas station parking lot with somebody else's blood not yet dry on the road behind us.
"We make it matter because he died protecting it,” she says.
I look at her for another second. "Yeah." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "We make it count."
She nods. No jokes or smart ass comments this time.
Just understanding. I quickly fill the truck with gas, and she runs inside to grab drinks and use the bathroom.
I make a quick call to Hunter and fill him in.
I hear the grief in his voice. Reyes was a friend of ours, not only a coworker.
He has a wife and family, and I know Hunter will take care of making the notification.
But still, it hurts. It’s a weight unlike any other.
Behind us, sirens are starting, distant and getting closer, headed toward a wreck that is no longer any of our business. Ahead of us, D.C. is still four hundred miles away and somewhere in that distance is the person who knew exactly where we'd be.
Someone who knew what we were carrying and what our route and our timing was. And now they know we survived.
I pull out of the gas station and merge back onto the road.
Kenzi reaches for the case.
Neither of us says anything.
We drive.