Chapter 16
There Was A Firefight!
The trailers provide excellent cover, it turns out. They’re parked at an angle, so we can hunker in the shelter of the huge double wheels, and the tires provide a nice stable surface to rest the muzzle of the assault rifles on.
The problem is, we're wildly outnumbered.
They have us pinned down, and with their numerical superiority, they can keep us pinned down.
"This may have been a mistake," Killian shouts over the din of gunfire.
"No shit!" I yell back.
"We can't just sit here trading volleys," he says, after popping up and sending a burst in the general direction of the bad guys. "It's a losing game for us."
"So what, then?"
I feel panic squeezing around my chest—this was my idea. Ambush heavily-armed and well-trained professional mercenaries, I said. It'll be easy, I said Just run off into the sunset, I said.
Dumbass.
I'm frozen. I can't breathe. Can’t move from my spot next to Killian, who is the only one of us doing any shooting.
I never thought I'd be the one to panic and freeze in a gunfight, but here I am, eyes squeezed shut, lungs frozen solid inside my ribcage, weapon clutched in both shaking hands, trying not to do the dumbest thing possible and just get up and run away.
Beside me, Killian trades a spent mag for a fresh one, takes a deep breath, holds it, and then forces it out in a sharp, bracing exhale before swinging around the side of the tire and squeezing off a burst, a second, and a third before duck out of the way, just in time for a flurry of rounds to clink-clink-clink off the side of the trailer.
Sirens howl—a fucking lot of them.
"I wonder what happens when law enforcement gets here," Killian says. He frowns at me as if just now realizing my mental status. "Hey, you good?"
I bark a panicked laugh. "No!" The laugh turns into a half-sob. "I'm—I'm f-f-fr…." I can't even finish the thought.
"Shit," Killian mutters; then he leans into me, forehead to forehead, cupping my nape and squeezing hard. "Hey. You're good. It's okay."
This statement, meant to be reassuring, seems so idiotically, patently untrue that it's what actually breaks me out of my frozen state. "Oh? It is? Which fucking part?"
I hear something worrisome over the staggered volleys coming from the parking lot—voices from a different direction: our flank.
I spin away from Killy and drop forward to one knee, peering under the bottoms of the line of trailers behind us—and I see boots shuffling our way. "They're behind us!" I shout.
"Fuck! Motherfucking fucking fuck!” He glances my way, and then pops up and fires two quick three-round bursts toward the parking lot.
I wait, watching four sets of boots creep our way, counting the seconds until they round the end of the trailer and can pull bead on us.
I shoot a quick look at Killian, who in turn is watching me. "I'm good, now."
"Sure?"
"I'm good," I repeat, pretending I'm not lying to both of us.
The barrel of an assault rifle pokes around the corner of the trailer, and I put the sights a few inches above that, waiting, breath trapped in my chest.
A beat.
I hear Killy fire.
Rounds tinkle and clank off the trailer. They chew up the concrete and stitch their way past him, whizzing and buzzing and humming like a murderous swarm of those giant killer hornets you hear about.
A bearded face appears, but I wait. A second face, this one brown-skinned and smooth-shaven, appears next to the first, and they fire in unison—their rounds spit concrete shards into my face and zip overhead, but none comes particularly close.
And now it's my turn.
I picture the trailer I'm using for cover as being packed full of terrified teenage and pre-teen girls, and the rage that boils through me blooms hot, and then incandescent, and then it goes icy cold.
The world narrows, my perspective foreshortening to dial in on the faces less than fifty feet away; I see the wavering heat distortion from their muzzles, a black gap in the bearded white man's teeth, a fly or some other flying insect buzzing around the roof of the trailer beside mine.
The sounds of the battle fade to a muffled barrage of distant sounds, only faintly and fuzzily noticed.
My panicked, hot, gasping breath slows and steadies.
My finger tightens and my weapon bucks into my shoulder in bizarrely-taffied slow-motion: one…
two…three, one…two…three—ONETWOTHREE suddenly loud and violent in my ears, ringing and warbling and humming in and out of focus.
The black gap of a missing tooth explodes crimson as my first and second rounds crater the majority of his face by way of his mouth.
The second burst misses. The third trio of bullets severs a finger off the second mercenary's stock-gripping hand, eliciting a pained roar.
Time snaps back to normal flow and the cacophony of the firefight returns in a deafening roar.
Rounds ricochet in searing whines, snap overhead and buzz past my ears.
Something hot and sharp creases the tip of my left breast and I jerk, cupping myself.
"That was my tit, you fucker!" A quick glance assures me that my girl is intact, although it was a near thing—my shirt and bra are sliced open a few millimeters beneath my nipple, and a red line scores the skin there—any higher and I’d be missing a nipple.
Which is my reminder that I never put my vest back on; I shrug into it in record time and then fire back, more to keep their heads down than to hit anyone—I'm too pissed off to be rational. "Shoot me in the boob? I don't fucking think so, assholes."
I swap magazines, noting that I only have one more full spare for the MP-5.
As I'm doing so, the mercenary whose finger I shot off swivels out from behind the trailer-end and snaps off a quick burst, drops to his knee and fires again.
Only by virtue of a niggle in my gut am I saved—of the many lessons Anselm See has taught me, there are a few he repeats to the point of being a litany.
One of them applies now: always trust your instincts.
If you're in a life-or-death situation and your gut tells you to hit the dirt, don't ask questions; just hit the dirt.
Our senses detect a vast amount of information on a second-by-second basis, and we're only really cognizant of an infinitesimal fraction of it.
Your instincts or your gut impressions are merely your subconscious feeding you information you aren't aware you know.
Such as now. My gut, as I'm in the process of swapping mags, suddenly screams at me to lay down—NOW.
I do so without hesitation, and that's what saves my life—the second set of shots crack and snap through the air where I'd been an instant before.
I hear a short, strangled cry of pain behind me but can't spare a thought for it.
I return fire, and I don't miss. My rounds go through the mercenary's chest.
But it's too little, too late.
Two more men appear, and then two more, and I'm pouring fire at them, but I'm lying down flat on my back, firing down the length of my torso, and the angles are all wrong. My shots go high and wide, and behind me, Killian's firing has stopped.
"Killy?"
"Fuck." His voice is tight and pained.
"Killy!"
"Ah fuck. I'm hit." I hear him grunt.
The four at the other end are pouring suppressive fire at us, two on the left and two on the right popping out in alternation, and it’s only the fact that they seem to want me, at least, alive that keeps either of us breathing.
"How bad?"
"Dunno. Hurts."
"Where?" No answer. "KILLIAN!" I spray a long burst and then roll to my stomach.
Killian has one hand clamped to his left side, blood welling red between his fingers. "I'm fine, I’m fine. It's not bad."
What do I do? I can't fight back and triage him at the same time.
No one is coming to save us.
This was my idea.
Killian is hit.
There are too many.
Killian fires, and the report is right beside my right ear, leaving my ears ringing and the ghost of the sound banging off the inside of my skull in a brain-scrambling crush of sonic pain.
I twist to my back and scrabble my heels against the ground, pushing myself backward toward Killian as I fire and fire and fire, anger and terror and nausea hot and thick in my throat.
Killian fires past me again as I rummage in the backpack for a maxi pad.
I find one and peel Killian's shirt up, leaning half-reclined to keep my head down as Killian tries valiantly to keep the enemies at bay.
The wound is deep but not problematic—it chewed through the edge of his vest at an oblique downward angle and spiked through his side just above his hip.
Definitely not just a through-and-through flesh wound, but it didn't hit anything major.
I stick the pad to his skin as an emergency measure because it's all I can manage under the circumstances.
I pick up my rifle again and fire just as a merc pops out and takes aim—I hit him in the belly, more through luck than skill. "We have to get out of here, Killy," I say.
He winces and hisses, shifting his position as he tries to get a read on how many bad guys there are left. "Too fucking many. Goddammit."
I'm choking on my panic and guilt. "This is my fault."
"Fuck that. Not gonna help." He twists and fires, and then slumps back with an agonized groan. "Ah fuck me, that hurts like a motherfucker." He digs in the bag for a spare mag and comes up with one. "Last one. You?"
I fire, but my target ducks out of sight just in time. "I'm on my last one."
"And then it's handguns all the way." He growls. "Fuck this. Fuck them." He thuds his head against the tire. "Okay. Fuck. Okay."
I glance at him—he sounds like he's psyching himself up for something stupid. "Kills, what are you—"
He snatches my MP-5 from my hands, slaps a pistol in its place, and then slaps a fistful of spare magazines in my other unresisting hand. I clutch them, confused.