CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #5
Once in the shoulder, once in the meat of his bicep. That’s going to be really fucking painful once the adrenaline wears off.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Lachlan mutters, rips open his shirt, tears it in two and ties a thick, tight strip that cuts off his blood flow at the armpit. He’s going to lose feeling in his right hand, and the ability to raise it soon after.
Fucking hell.
‘Oh my God, are you going to die?’ Savannah cries softly.
‘No, honey, I’m fine,’ he tells her. ‘Just a flesh wound.’ It’s really not, definitely arterial, but he has a little time before it gets serious.
‘Here’s the plan. You, you and you, you’re with me,’ he directs to his units.
‘You stay with the kids. Us four will take out the surrounding forces, then once we get inside, we all get out through the vents.’
‘What if they’re waiting for us on the other end?’
‘There’s emergency supplies in the vents, including weapons.’
‘Let me come too,’ Roman says intently. ‘You have extra gun. I can help.’
Lachlan hands it to him, but says, ‘Stay with them.’ He’s impressed that Roman doesn’t argue. The boy holds the gun well. ‘Jules, I’ll be back soon.’
‘What if you’re not?’
Lachlan grits his teeth. ‘I will be.’
‘What if you die?’
‘We all die eventually,’ he says, cracking a grin as he tightens his tourniquet, swallows the wince because holy fucking shit, that took his breath away. ‘Maybe you’ll b-be rid of me sooner than you think.’
It’s a stab in the dark to offer a little levity and Lachlan doesn’t hang around to see how it lands. He leaves the kids in a room that has a solid vantage point from the door, and takes his three units with him, communicating in silence.
It’s refreshing not to have to keep stopping for the kids.
Along the way, they start to encounter hostiles.
One by one they take them out in silence, neck smiles for all, throats wide open, weapons collected, ammo, even knives. Two are wearing decent Kevlar. Lachlan takes one for himself, gives the other to the best of the three.
Triage is always tough, but Lachlan knows his priorities.
When he gets close enough to see the door of the Cove, he falls silent, assessing. They’re trying to cut through the steel to get inside, must think that’s where Jules is.
This is by far the most exposed he’s been since he realised the frequency was jammed but there’s no other angle from which to attack. He spies a half decent choke point, a narrow little room in which he could front a bottleneck, but they wouldn’t follow him in, they’d toss a flashbang.
In silence, he signals to his three.
Take them all out with headshots. Avoid the windows.
Lachlan disconnects his heart from his brain.
These three people are probably going to die.
Count the rings in a cut-down tree.
One.
Two.
Three.
He opens fire, methodical and precise, goes for the visors.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The return fire is immediate and severe.
They’re outnumbered four to one.
Lachlan stays calm, waits for an opening crafted when one of his three throws cover fire, then he gets on his stomach, aims and fires from the lowest place to use the floor as aim-assist because his arm is going numb, his fingers can’t feel.
Lower than the toads, his mom used to say when he’d lie like this in the grass, pretending to be a soldier.
Lachlan takes out six more until his semi-automatic clicks empty and he abandons it.
Two of his three are dead.
The one he gave the Kevlar to is still alive.
He signals to her in silence, can hear footsteps approaching.
They’ll take them out from either side, spray aimed up so as not to hit one another.
The first five that come through go down easy but the ones from behind are smart, they start shooting through the walls.
Lachlan moves back in time, but his third wasn’t quick enough.
Her wounded cry is cut off by a headshot.
Lachlan scurries for cover, but not before he smacks into someone. He whips around, holding a handgun in his left, but quickly realises who it is.
His heart sinks.
‘Jules, what the fuck are you doing?’
Bullets pour through the door.
Jules screams and Lachlan drags him down for cover, the third bullet of the night carving a vicious path through the left side of his body, leaving a jagged, white-hot trail of fire in his bones, blood and nerves.
He hears yelling in Russian saying to hold fire, Lazorevy is inside.
Lachlan pulls Jules all the way backwards until they hit the wall. It’s the bottleneck room, Lachlan realises. A windowless box with a long, cramped entryway and storage cupboards on either side for towels and linens.
‘Come here,’ he utters, roughly grabbing Jules to feel him all over. ‘You hit? Are you hit? Look at me, there you go. Are you—?’
‘No, but you…’ Jules gasps, voice wobbly. ‘You’re shot!’
‘It’s fine. Listen to me now.’
‘Lachlan, you’re bleeding so much, let me—’
‘You’re going to have to shoot them, OK?’
Jules’ hands are pressed against Lachlan’s side wound when he looks up, eyes so wide they’re circles. ‘What?’
‘I can’t raise my right arm, and I can’t waste bullets on bad aim.
You see there?’ he directs, nodding to the left corner of the room.
‘Good position to take them out one at a time. They’ll come in single file, and they won’t risk a flashbang if you’re in here.
You can kill them one by one with headshots. ’
‘No, no, no. I… I can’t, I d-don’t know how!’
‘Remember when you aimed my own gun at me? This one’s much easier. No hammer. Hold with two hands. Right hand takes the recoil. Lean in when you pull the trigger. Bottom hand holds you steady. You’re gonna shoot nice and slow. This gun has nine bullets.’
‘Let me hide you then. Let me put you in the closet while—’
‘No.’ Lachlan pulls out a flashlight, switching it on and resting it beside him, facing the door, full beam. ‘Once the first few go down, I can crawl forward, get their weapons. They’re carrying UZIs. That’s automatic fire. As soon as I do that, you get in the closet.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know how, I’m not tough like you, please. Please just hide with me or… or let me—’
‘Julian,’ Lachlan snaps. ‘Take the gun right now. Go there. Point and shoot these fuckers in the head. You can do this, sweetheart. For Mimi. Please.’
The poor kid almost drops the gun but then he takes better hold of it and scurries away where Lachlan pointed just before the door is kicked open.
Lachlan’s right arm is fully dead.
He’s directly in their line of sight.
There’s way more than nine of them.
If he doesn’t get one of their guns, Jules is fucked.
In English, the leader of the line moves inside. ‘Give us the boy.’
Lachlan breathes ragged, blinks slow, looks dazed. He’s waiting for the guy to cross the threshold, for Jules to hopefully do what Lachlan instructed.
Jules fires a shot.
It hits the first guy right in his temple.
He falls down flat on his face.
Another three pour inside, all aiming at Lachlan.
Jules takes two more down, misses the third but Lachlan kicks the flashlight away, uses the confusion to crawl forward, grab an automatic weapon and unleash a spray of metal death down the bottleneck, doesn’t need aim when there’s seventeen bullets firing per second.
The narrow entrance fills with fallen bodies.
‘Closet!’ he grits out, bleeding heavily now. Jules, of course, ignores him, flattens himself against the wall and peers around it like he must have seen people do in the movies. He’s still holding the gun. ‘Julian, get your ass—’
Jules aims around the wall and fires three more shots, then ducks back into his corner before the return fire can get near him.
Lachlan is grudgingly impressed despite being mad.
He has three new weapons now, can take out most of whoever tries to come in but he knows it’s moments before they switch up tactics and throw in gas.
No window in here, but maybe he could—
A new burst of gunfire from outside draws his attention.
Jules looks that way too.
Lachlan waits.
Then, incredibly, he hears Roman’s voice. ‘Lock?’ he calls out.
‘Yeah,’ Lachlan answers weakly, oh God, he’s dizzy and it’s so not the fucking time. ‘Y-you OK, kid?’
‘I brought backup,’ Roman yells and then Lachlan hears Carrigan’s voice right before he passes the fuck out.