Dead Six-ARC

by Larry Correia

  All at once the marketplace was in chaos. People screamed and began to stampede in every direction. Tailor and I were nearly crushed by a throng of people trying to get away from the shooting. We couldn’t even see the shooter through the morass of panicked shoppers, much less get a bead on him.

  “We’re compromised!” Tailor shouted, straining to be heard even though I was only a few feet from him. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” He struggled to reload his .45 while he talked.

  Following his lead, I lowered my now-empty revolver and began to push my way through the crowd. We headed west, toward the mosque. Our Land Cruiser was parked in an alley between the mosque and a school next door. After a few seconds, the crowd thinned a little, and I had room to breathe. I emptied my gun’s cylinder and reached for my belt again.

  Someone crashed into me as I drew the speed loader from my belt, causing me to drop it. My speed loader bounced off the concrete and rolled away. Swearing, I shoved the hapless person aside and crouched down, grabbing my loader.

  I stood up, pausing to twist the cartridges into the cylinder, when someone shouted at me to stop in heavily accented English. I froze and looked up. About ten feet to my left was a Zubaran police officer. His pistol was pointed between my eyes. He held a radio in his other hand.

  Two puffs of blood and uniform material erupted from the Zubaran police officer’s side as Tailor double-tapped him. The cop staggered, and Tailor put a third round into his head. He dropped to the concrete like a sack of potatoes, his pistol clattering as it hit. I made eye contact with Tailor, nodded at him, and we took off at a run toward the mosque.

  Looking back through the crowd, I couldn’t see the stocky man who had shot as us by the fountain. But as we crossed in front of the school, I noticed a woman in a black burka running determinedly in our direction across the lawn of the mosque. She produced a small pistol from somewhere just as I rounded the corner into the alley.

  LORENZO

  I spotted the two Dead Six operatives fifty yards ahead, moving fast, straight for the mosque. That had to be where they’d left their car. I raised my gun, but there were too many terrified people stampeding between us, then they were around the corner of some booths and out of sight. “Damn it! Carl, flank around the mosque and hit them from the other side. Reaper, get your ass up here now.”

  I took off after them, darting between people. Some lady saw my gun and bloodsoaked countenance and screamed. That caused a bunch of other people to shriek and point, and a lot of them were already on their cell phones. This was so not good. “Reaper! We need immediate evac!”

  “Almost there!” he responded.

  There was a winding alley between the one-story school and the much taller mosque. The east end dumped into the market, and the west onto a quiet street. That’s where I would have parked. I caught a glimpse of a khaki-clad figure duck into the alley. Got you. I moved up along the school wall, gun at my side. I was going to drop whichever one I saw first, then try to shoot the legs out from under the other.

  Most of the people from the market were moving away from the two Caucasians and the men chasing them, and maybe that’s why the woman with the veil stuck out so quickly. Jill Del Toro was coming across the lawn of the mosque, directly toward me, only she was going to reach the alley a few seconds before I was. She reached into her clothing and out came the little Makarov.

  I ran faster, forcing myself forward. Jill brought the gun up in both hands, but she made the classic mistake of letting her gun lead around the corner, telegraphing her presence. And he had been waiting for it. One hand clamped around her wrist, jerking her forward. Jill disappeared.

  Chapter 14:

  Anger Management

  VALENTINE

  I grabbed the woman’s arm with my right hand, crushing her thin wrist as roughly as I could. I used her momentum, vaulting her around the corner. She cried out in surprise as I wheeled her around a full two-hundred and seventy degrees, and gasped for air when I smashed her against the wall of the mosque, my forearm on her neck. In the same instant I brought my own gun up, leveling it between her eyes, and I froze.

  The veiled woman was now staring down the barrel of my .44 Magnum, dark eyes wide with fear. Her right hand went slack, and the little Makarov pistol clattered to the pavement. She stopped struggling, and I asked myself why I hadn’t already fired. I couldn’t find an answer. Tailor asked what was going on. I didn’t answer him either.

  I reached forward with my gun hand and ripped the woman’s veil off of her head. The black veil covered a very pretty face. She was young, with tanned olive skin and night-black hair. She was Hispanic, or maybe of Philippine ancestry, and she looked . . . damned familiar.

  Holy shit, I thought, suddenly remembering where I’d seen that face. “Jillian Del Toro?” I asked cautiously. Her eyes suddenly went even wider, and the color flushed out of her face. I couldn’t believe it. It was the woman Gordon had put out the BOLO on.

  I noticed something out of the corner of my eye: movement. Everything moved in slow motion as I watched, my consciousness still enveloped by The Calm. The man with the soccer jersey was approaching from my right, weapon drawn. He was running straight at me, hoping I wouldn’t notice him in the mass of panicked, fleeing shoppers.

  I yanked Jill Del Toro’s arm forward as hard as I could, twisting to the right as I did so. She gasped in pain again. I let go of her hand and clamped my right arm around her neck. I pulled her against me and tightened my arm as I brought my revolver over her left shoulder and leveled it at the son of a bitch in the soccer jersey.

  “Lorenzo, look out!” Jill Del Toro screamed. I tracked him with my gun and fired. Jill winced as the gun discharged a foot from her face. He dove aside. The .44 slug smacked the corner of the school, smashing a small piece of brick into a cloud of dust.

  I tightened my grip on Jill and hunched down behind her. The man in the jersey, Lorenzo, hovered just around the corner, where I couldn’t get a shot at him. He didn’t seem willing to risk a shot at me under the circumstances, either. Tailor was coming up behind me, pistol drawn.

  “Just let the girl go,” he said from around the corner. He spoke flawless, generic, unaccented English. “We can all just walk away.”

  “Listen, asshole,” I growled, slowly backing down the alley. “I’ve had just about enough of you today. Why don’t you come out so we can finish this?”

  “Yeah,” Tailor said, “we got your girl and your money bag. Having a bad day?”

  We could hear police sirens in the distance. “What’s it gonna be, ace?” I asked calmly, continuing to back down the alley, pulling the young woman with me as I went. “Cops are coming.”

  “Lorenzo!” the woman cried out, fear now obvious in her voice. I caught a flash of movement at the edge of the school. My revolver barked as I popped off another shot, taking another chunk off the corner of the building. Jill cried out again.

  A couple of long seconds ticked by, and there was no response. Tailor and I made eye contact. I dropped the muzzle of my gun as he crossed in front of me, weapon held at the ready. He checked around the perforated corner of the school as I covered the opposite corner.

  “He’s gone,” Tailor said, stepping back around the corner. He looked at Jill. “Guess your boyfriend got cold feet, bitch.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the situation. I yanked Jill Del Toro around and began to force her back toward our car.

  LORENZO

  I left her.

  “Fall back, Carl. Fall back!” I ordered. The sirens were wailing. The security forces would be here any second. Everything was ruined. Jill had gotten herself captured. Dead Six had won. She was as good as dead. The mission was screwed. The only option left was self-preservation. I would have to figure out what to do about Eddie later. “Hurry.”

  “I’m almost there!” Carl responded.

  “Leave them!”

  The van tore around the edge of the school. I waved both hands
overhead so he’d see me. Reaper stomped on the brakes, and the van screeched to a halt. I yanked open the side door. “Back up, grab Carl, and let’s go.”

  “Where’s Jill?” Reaper shouted.

  “Go!” I bellowed.

  But he hesitated. “She’s one of us.”

  I froze, half in, half out of the van. My first inclination was to reach forward and smack Reaper on the side of his stupid head. In a minute we’d be fighting half the cops in Zubara. I was a thief. You run. That’s what thieves do.

  But he was right.

  Something snapped just then.

  I couldn’t leave her.

  Things had changed. She wasn’t just bait. Jill wasn’t just somebody I could use and throw away anymore. Reaper was right. She was one of us. “Son of a bitch!” I grimaced. Reaper must have seen it. Instead of putting the van into reverse like I had ordered, he stomped on the gas, narrowly avoiding running down a bunch of innocent bystanders, and headed straight for the alley.

  “Carl, turn around and take them out!”

  He was out of breath from running. “Make up your mind!”

  The alley was probably forty yards long, five yards wide, and their car had to be parked either in it or on the exiting street. Trying to walk down that alley would get me killed, and shooting it out down the alley would only get Jill killed, and either way the cops were going to kill all of us in a second anyway. I needed to get on top of them, fast. The school wasn’t very tall at all. I had an idea. “Reaper, pull right up to the front door of the school.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it! Then back up and block that alley.”

  He did as I said, actually crashing our bumper into the front steps. But I didn’t feel it as I was already out the side of the moving vehicle before impact. I stepped onto the bumper, the hood, the windshield, and finally onto the van’s roof. I ran, jumped, and caught the edge of the roof with my hands. Pulling myself up, I scrambled onto the roof of the school.

  I ran up the angled tile of the roof, parallel with the alley. This was idiotic. Half of Zubara was probably watching this moronic stunt, and I was sure that I’d be nicely silhouetted for the police snipers. The STI materialized in my hand as I approached the edge. Glancing downward, there were the assassins. The tall one was struggling against Jill, trying to force her into the backseat of a car, while she was fighting like crazy, but he outweighed her by eighty pounds. The Southerner was watching back down the alley, wearing my backpack, 1911 extended, waiting for me to appear at the end.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Cops are coming. Just shoot her already!”

  The tall one grunted a response that I couldn’t understand. He was hugging Jill’s arms tight, but she just kept swinging her legs and jerking her head back into his face. I had no idea why he hadn’t already shot her. Dead Six must have decided they wanted Jill alive for some reason. There was no time to think. The second Reaper appeared at the end of that alley, that psychopath was going to light him up. I punched my gun out, sights lining up on the Southerner’s head.

  There was a door into the alley from the mosque. It swung open directly behind the man, and he instantly spun toward it. There was a kid, probably all of six years old, standing there, and the kid was right behind my target. I was putting two and a half pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger when I froze, thinking of the bullet that had passed through Jalal that was still throbbing, stuck in my vest.

  I couldn’t kill a kid. I’d never killed a kid.

  The child looked at the Southerner, at his gun, and then over his shoulder, right at me. The Dead Six operative instinctively turned, following the kid’s gaze. He saw me, eyes narrowed, and his gun flew up. Chunks of tile erupted skyward as I moved back from the ledge. Bullets just kept tearing through the mosque, searching for me, as he ran for the car.

  At the end of the alley, our white van appeared, blocking their exit. They would cut Reaper to ribbons. I had to take them out now.

  I took a few steps back, trying to remember the exact position of their car, hoped I was right, then ran forward and jumped off the edge.

  VALENTINE

  Jill Del Toro struggled mightily as Tailor snapped off several rounds at the man she’d called Lorenzo. I turned back to our Land Cruiser and, despite the girl’s thrashing, pulled the passenger’s door open. We had zip-ties in the glove box, and I was going to restrain the girl in my arms before I gave in to the temptation to shoot her. The terrified young child had disappeared back inside. We were out of time and had to get the hell out of there.

  “Just shoot her and let’s go, Val!”

  CRUNCH! I looked up in surprise as Lorenzo fell off the roof of the school. He put a dent in the roof of our Land Cruiser as he landed. He tried to do a shoulder roll to dissipate his impact but ended up rolling down the windshield and falling off the hood of the truck. He disappeared over the truck as he hit the pavement on the other side.

  He reappeared a split-second later, pistol leveled at me across the hood of the truck. He was listing slightly to one side, and blood started to trickle down his face, but he had a killing look in his eyes.

  “Lorenzo!” Jill screamed again. Before Lorenzo could turn around, Tailor was behind him, pushing his pistol into the back of his skull.

  “Drop it, motherfucker!” Tailor growled. Lorenzo let his gun fall. Then there was more movement as someone ran up the alley from my left. I’d been so fixated on Lorenzo that I hadn’t noticed. Neither had Tailor, who, with a metallic CLANG, crumpled to the pavement as he was smacked in the head with a goddamned shovel.

  LORENZO

  CLANG!

  Carl hit the Southerner unbelievably hard, collapsing the man in a heap.

  I told him to take one of them alive.

  The tall one shoved Jill down as his hand flew to his gun. Carl was already diving behind the trunk as the Magnum spit flame. I hit the ground as he reflexively turned on me next. Brick dust rained down on me when he fired, pulverizing the wall where I had just been. The shooter with the hand cannon was circling the back of the car, wearing that look on his face again, like everything else in the world had just stopped, and that all that mattered was taking out the garbage.

  Carl was going for his pistol but was struggling to get it out, snagged on the unfamiliar clothing. The left-handed shooter came smoothly around the back of the car, doing the math, deciding to take me out first, like he had all the time in the world, mammoth handgun leveled right at my face. Time dilated until I could see the cylinder rotate another giant hollow-point into position behind the barrel. Guns are scarier when you can actually see the bullets.

  He twitched at the last possible instant, .44 slug digging a divot into the pavement next to my face, fragments raking bloody chunks from my upraised hands. The shooter jerked as another round struck him in the chest. I looked through the open door to see Jill shooting him with my pistol, then back in time to see him go down.

  The police sirens were right on top of us. Reaper was honking the horn.

  “Come on!” Carl shouted. He had leapt to his feet, tossed the shovel, and was trying to pick up the man he’d knocked out, pulling him by one limp arm. I moved to help but saw the man crawling around the back of the car, his buddy’s 1911 in hand. Carl grimaced as the bullet struck him in the back. “Aaarg! I’m hit!”

  “Run!” I shouted. The shooter ducked back down as Jill started punching holes in the trunk. I grabbed Carl by the vest and tugged him along. “Back to the van!” Jill kept shooting. “Jill, move!” She finally complied and ran after us. We reached the van a second later, and I shoved Carl in first. Jill leapt in after him. A new .45 caliber hole magically appeared in the sheet metal next to my hand. My opponent stood up and reflexively dropped the empty magazine from the .45 in his hands. He cursed as he realized he didn’t have a reload. I made eye contact with my nemesis.

  This isn’t over.

  There were flashing police lights coming up behind him. He tossed the emp
ty gun into the car and went back for his friend, who was still wearing my backpack. I dove into the van and jerked the door closed. “Drive, Reaper, drive!”

  Reaper did his best to get us out of there and managed to scrape all the paint off our passenger side on an approaching police car. The screech of metal on metal filled the compartment. Carl grimaced.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “You know how hard it is to get a clean, untraceable, vehicle? How much work I put into this engine? I’m gonna have to burn it now. I didn’t want to have to use the spare yet. It ain’t as nice—”

  “I meant the bullet.”

  “Vest stopped it, bet I piss blood tonight, but I better drive before galinha-boy kills us all.” Carl crawled forward and started yelling at Reaper to get into the passenger seat. There was a brief lull as Reaper got out of the way; then the van really started to roar. Even kidney-punched with a .45, Carl was the best getaway driver in the business. We still had a chance.

  I was lying on the floor of the open cargo area, breathing hard and sliding about as Carl took us around corners on two wheels, sirens screaming right outside our back window, when I saw Jill looking at me strangely. “You okay? Are you injured?”

  She didn’t answer for a long enough time that I started to worry she’d taken a blow to the head. Then she finally spoke. “You came back for me. You weren’t going to. You were going to save yourself, you could have, but then you came back.”

  “Yeah.” That made me uncomfortable. Of course I had been ready to ditch her. I don’t know why I’d changed my mind, but she had ended up saving my life, not the other way around. “Can I have my gun back?” She realized that it was still in her hands, then passed it over. “Go take a seat and buckle in.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly as she moved forward.