Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed

by Molles, D. J.

  Marie grabbed the rifle as the panicked operative brought it up. She jerked the muzzle out of the way, reached through and grabbed the buttstock, and pivoted away, taking the rifle with her.

  Jones tried to drag the thrashing body backwards into the breezeway, even as his bloody hands tried to get a new grip on the knife. His forearm was clamped tight over the other man’s mouth, but he was still screaming—it was just muffled.

  Sam slammed into the man, just a half-second behind the others, and seized the man’s right arm as it dove down for the holstered pistol on his belt. He pinned the arm to the man’s side, his knife nicking at the man’s ribs.

  The man started to kick, trying to rear back and hit Sam.

  Jones wasn’t expecting the sudden movement, and as he was already dragging the man backwards, suddenly lost his footing and all three of them went down in a tangle.

  Jones’s knife left his grip and want clattering to the concrete.

  Sam didn’t know what to do, except stab as rapidly and deeply as he could. The man wore no body armor. And so Sam pinned his arm with his thigh and then, in a heavily steeped panic, began stabbing the man in the midsection, his arm pistoning back and forth with the stiff rapidity of a sewing machine.

  The muffled screams became high pitched.

  “Get him, Sam!” Jones hissed. “Fuckin’ kill him!”

  For a brief, dissociated moment, Sam felt like he was watching himself. The arm going back and forth. The stiff resistance of flesh against a knife point, which gave way almost immediately to a sickening, frictionless slide, until his fist hit the sodden surface of the man’s torso, everything hot and slick.

  He saw his own eyes, stretched wide in an animal panic, his teeth bared.

  That’s you.

  “Slit his fucking throat!” Jones wheezed, barely able to hold onto their thrashing victim now.

  Sam had heard that if you slit a man’s throat he can still scream. So instead, he reached up and simply punched the knife into the man’s right carotid, twice. Bright, almost neon arterial spray shot out, speckling Sam’s face, warm on his lips.

  Two squirts, and suddenly the pressure seemed to abate, like a hose with a kink in it.

  The man’s thrashing began to weaken.

  Sam snapped his eyes to the breezeway, then up to the third floor. He half-expected to see the other Cornerstone operatives there, but the breezeway was empty.

  Had they really managed to eliminate the sentry successfully? And without alerting the others?

  The thrashing died off to random jerks. The eyes were unfocused, heavy lidded. The neck didn’t spurt anymore, simply flowed, and even that flow was ebbing.

  Jones still strained to hold his forearm over the man’s mouth. His teeth shown in a savage grimace, every vein in his forehead distended.

  “Let up,” Sam huffed. “He’s done.”

  Jones immediately released, went slack, and flopped back onto the pavement, panting.

  The man, still not quite dead, waggled his head nonsensically back and forth, his sightless eyes gazing off into nothingness.

  Sam tore his attention away from that face. Visually scoured the man’s body. There—to the left of the dozen sopping holes that Sam had punched in the man’s shirt—a radio.

  It crackled as Sam reached for it.

  “Hey, Mikey,” a voice drawled. “You keyed up. You okay?”

  Shit. They must have accidentally hit the transmit button during the struggle.

  Sam reached for the radio, his hands halting as he saw how oddly red they were. Not just streaked with blood, but coated in it. Like he’d dipped his entire hand in red paint. If he didn’t know that it was real, he would have thought it unrealistic.

  His throat tightened. He pushed forward.

  Grabbed the radio. “Yeah. Standby,” Sam said, hoping that three syllables wouldn’t be enough to clue the others into the fact that it wasn’t their buddy speaking.

  Sam staggered to his feet, finding himself surprisingly wrung out by the brief battle. But there wasn’t time to rest. No time to adjust, or to think about what the hell he’d just done and try to come to terms with it. Pickell and Johnson were still up there, still needed their help.

  Sam turned to Marie, who stood off to the side with a stricken expression on her face. Sam couldn’t tell if it was worry, or guilt, or some strange amalgamation of so many differing emotions. He bent and scooped the man’s pistol from his holster, checked the chamber and saw brass in it. Full mag.

  “You ready?” he asked Marie.

  She snapped her eyes up to him. Then offered him the rifle. “Swap. You’re better with a rifle. I’m better with a pistol.”

  Sam didn’t argue, simply traded weapons with her.

  He turned to Jones, who was negotiating himself out from under the body. “Jonesy, give us twenty seconds, and then radio in. Sound scared. Ask for backup.”

  Sam locked eyes with Marie, then jerked his head towards the breezeway and the stairwell up. His pulse was a rampant stampede, his vision constricted. His whole core bore down in the center of him, as though clenching for a blow.

  They moved up the stairs as quietly and rapidly as they could, first Sam, then Marie. Sam’s legs felt wobbly, the sudden and massive expenditure of energy to fight the dead sentry leaving his muscles shaky and weak. The seconds ticked down, each landing a checkpoint in his brain as he drew closer to the top floor.

  He stopped at the second level. Right at an apartment door that he knew was unoccupied. He tested the doorknob and found it unlocked. He pushed his way in silently, waited for Marie to huddle behind him, then eased it closed, one hand still on the knob, the other holding his rifle in a high ready.

  He waited. Painfully. Now his muscles seemed to burn, to itch to move. His bladder suddenly spasmed, leaving him feeling like a little kid in a grim game of hide and seek, damn near close to pissing himself with tension.

  He held his face close to the door, listening intensely.

  The sound of Jones’s voice, calling in over the radio—distant, and he couldn’t hear the words exactly, but he knew it was Jones.

  Then silence.

  His heart slammed out the seconds.

  The sound of a door above them wrenching open. The tumble of footsteps. A yelp of an urgent voice.

  Boots, slamming down the stairwell.

  Sam couldn’t breathe. Everything in him was locked as though in one massive cramp.

  The boots clattered past the door behind which Sam and Marie hid.

  Almost…

  The sound of them receding down the stairs to the ground level.

  A shout.

  Sam ripped the door open and shot out, leveling his rifle. He slammed his hips into the metal banister, leaning over. Shapes moving below. He brought the optic of his rifle to his eyes, an unfamiliar reticle hovering over the forms of three Cornerstone operatives as they vaulted onto the first landing below.

  “Hey!” Sam shouted.

  Their eyes shot up, their feet halting in surprise.

  Sam’s first shot plowed through a face, yanking the life instantly out of the body and causing it to flop down onto the stairs. He didn’t let up—couldn’t let up—just kept pulling that trigger, kept that rifle tight in his shoulder pocket as he traced his rounds to the next target, and the next.

  Marie’s pistol barked, dim in his already deafened ears.

  The second operative fell backwards into the wall of the stairwell, trying mightily to bring his rifle up, though Sam’s rounds had raked his shoulders and broke the structures inside.

  The third operative took a handful of rounds from Marie, spinning around like he couldn’t decide where to go to seek cover, until one final round punched the top of his skull and ended him.

  Sam pivoted back to the second operative, just as he was sinking down to the ground—putting his back to the floor in order to get his rifle pointed upwards. Sam steadied himself and placed one round into his forehead, halting any further ef
forts.

  “They’re down!” Marie squeezed out with a clenched breath.

  Sam threw himself off of the banister and mounted the stairs to the third level. His body felt both unstable and unstoppable in the flood of adrenaline. The lactic acid hit him hard, but he could barely feel the pain of it—only the rubberiness of his muscles.

  The middle landing. The next flight of stairs. The final landing ahead.

  The door to their flat hung open to his left.

  He paused at the top step, feeling Marie cinching up close to him.

  He sidestepped onto the landing.

  He could see straight through that open door, to the back wall of the flat.

  Johnson and Pickell, kneeling against the wall, their hands behind their backs.

  Sam’s eyes struck Johnson’s. The other man’s eyes widened, flicked off deeper into the flat—looking at the remaining Cornerstone operative? How many were there?

  Sam raised his eyebrows, as though to ask the question.

  Johnson’s eyes went back and forth again—to Sam, and then to the operatives inside, then back to Sam once more. He made the tiniest motion—the barest shake of his head.

  The walls of the flat seemed to shake.

  A single rifle report.

  The wall behind Johnson’s head splashed with red, and Johnson fell sideways, dead.

  Sam was almost too shocked to move, but then found his feet treading forward of their own volition. He’d seen the angle of that shot—Johnson’s last gift to his squad. The operative that had fired the shot was deep in the flat, perhaps in the kitchen…

  Somehow, in a flash, Pickell had hauled himself to his feet and then, with hands bound behind his back, he bellowed out a cry that seemed to know it would be his last, and charged into the apartment.

  The sound of someone else shouting—alarm, panic—and a loud crash and clatter.

  Gunshots ripped through the air.

  Sam thrust himself through the door, Marie tight on his heels. By force of habit, he hit the corner hard, his rifle coming around, sweeping across the flat, searching for something to put bullets into.

  One step in, one step over, but then he was still moving.

  He couldn’t see anyone, but he could hear the strangled cries of two people fighting.

  A scuffle from the kitchen. The sight of a pair of boots, and Pickell’s bare feet, tangled and thrashing behind the kitchen peninsula. Pickell had vaulted himself over the counter and crashed into the operative taking cover on the other side.

  He’d given Sam a chance, and Sam couldn’t waste it.

  Another two gunshots. Sam perceived the rounds slamming into the ceiling above the kitchen, gouts of drywall dust spraying down.

  He moved as fast as his feet were able, and yet it felt like he wasn’t moving at all.

  He plunged around the kitchen counter.

  Two bodies.

  And blood. Squirting. Painting the linoleum floor. Streaking the low parts of the cabinets.

  The bodies thrashed, still fighting, so locked into combat that neither noticed Sam come into view over top of them.

  They were on their sides, Pickell trying his best to use his legs to keep the operative pinned, because he had no arms to work with. The operative, sprawled on the floor, was angling his rifle towards Pickell’s chest with one hand, while Pickell’s bare feet, pale and white and odd in the gloomy interior tried to kick the rifle away.

  Sam thrust the muzzle of his rifle like a spear. He slammed it straight into the temple of the operative and pulled the trigger—five rounds in the space of a single second.

  He blinked once, almost surprised at the mess at the end of his rifle. Then he snapped back into the moment and fixed his attention on Pickell.

  The Cornerstone operative was motionless, but Pickell was still squirming, a low, unending groan issuing from between his clenched teeth, his eyes cinched tight, tears eking out of the corners.

  “Dammit,” Pickell managed, craning his neck to look down at his torso.

  Sam slapped the rifle down on the kitchen counter and dropped to his knees at Pickell’s side. “Where are you hit?”

  It was obvious, even as the question left Sam’s lips. Pickell’s torso was a mess, the fabric of his shirt dark, painting crimson smears across the floor. Sam spotted the single, small hole in Pickell’s shirt, and smashed his hands down on it.

  “Oh fuck!” Pickell gasped. His breath came in short gasps, and then he did something that sent Sam’s mind swirling: he laughed. “Same damn place as last time,” Pickell seethed, spittle flecking his lips. “Survive that, just to get…” he choked.

  “Stop,” Sam snapped. “Shut up right now. You’re not gonna die.”

  “Sam?” Marie’s voice behind him, the sound of her feet rapidly approaching. Then: “Oh, shit.”

  Pounding footfalls up the stairs.

  Marie whirled, bringing her pistol up.

  Jones scrabbled through the door, skidding to a stop in the face of Marie’s muzzle. He still held the radio in his hand. Marie dipped her pistol, and Jones immediately turned his attention to Sam.

  “We gotta go! They got a call in! Asked for backup!”

  “I gotta stabilize Pickell first.”

  Jones shot around the corner of the kitchen peninsula. “We ain’t got time for that, Sarge. We stick around here we’re all gonna be dead. We gotta move to safety. Safety first, then we can fuck with Pickell’s wound.”

  Sam knew he was right, but the decision felt rotten. Because he knew that Pickell was bleeding too fast.

  “Same fucking place,” Pickell marveled, his voice becoming less strained, more dreamy.

  “Hey, I told you to shut up, Pickell!” Sam grabbed Pickell’s shoulder and wrenched him onto his side. “Jones, gimme your shirt or something!”

  Jones shucked his shirt off without questioning it, as Sam whipped out his knife and sawed at the plastic restraints around Pickell’s wrists. The second they snapped free, Sam snatched Jones’s shirt from his hands and stuffed it against Pickell’s belly.

  “You gotta hold pressure on your wound,” Sam said. “Until we get to safety.”

  “Not gonna make it,” Pickell said, almost resignedly. “God has fixed the time for my death.”

  “Oh would you stop with that shit!” Sam shot to his feet and hooked his hands under Pickell’s armpits. “Jones! Grab his feet! Marie, get the satphone! And don’t forget the rifles!”

  Marie stuffed the pistol into her waistband as Jones and Sam hoisted Pickell up. Then she ripped the kitchen drawer out, sending it clattering carelessly onto the dead body crowding their feet. She bent down, looked inside.

  For a brief, horrific moment, Sam thought the satphone would be gone.

  But then she reached in. “Got it,” she said. Then she grabbed the dead man’s rifle up. “Let’s go!”

  The next few minutes were a blur of panic. Sam wanted to run, wanted to sprint into hiding, get out of the open before more Cornerstone troops got there to gun them down in the street, but he could only move so fast while burdened with Pickell.

  Down the steps, tripping and stumbling, fighting to stay standing, Marie leading the way with the rifle up.

  One landing. Past the dead bodies. Marie gathering up the rifles into a jumble in her arms. Stuffing magazines into her pockets. Down another flight. The last landing. Then the ground floor.

  An engine roared in the distance.

  “Around back!” Sam ordered, he and Jones stumbling out the back of the breezeway, away from the main street. Marie plunged ahead of them through darkness.

  “Where am I going?” she demanded.

  “Stay off the streets,” Sam huffed, all his physicality straining under the weight of Pickell’s body and the deluge of adrenaline. “Alleys and backstreets, stick to the dark. Get us to the hiding spot.”

  He didn’t explain what the hiding spot was. Marie already knew. They were heading for the only place of safety they had: the burned out o
ffice building.

  THIRTY

  ─▬▬▬─

  A GOOD SOLDIER

  In the darkness of night, blood took on many hues.

  Griffin stood near the center of Vici, his ears ringing with the ghosts of gunfire that had long-since ceased, and with the wails of those still alive that went on like a background hum. Wives grieving for husbands. Mothers grieving for sons. Sons and daughters for their dead mothers and fathers and siblings.

  There were not many men left in Vici now. The women had fought too, and those that had lay with the men, strewn about the streets in whatever pose their body had collapsed to the ground.

  In the darkness, all blood looked black. But in the piercing glare of Griffin’s weaponlight, the many characters of blood shown clearly. The deep, gelatinous ichor of unoxygenated blood, seeping from opened veins. The neon glow of arterial blood from broken arteries, thick and opaque upon the concrete and blacktop.

  Torsos skimmed and ripped by passing bullets spilled their pale contents. Skulls uncapped by large caliber projectiles, leaving empty and nearly-bloodless hollows behind, the gray matter now strewn about like thrown bowls of porridge.

  Sightless eyes, scabbed over. Dry tongues lolling in open faces.

  His countrymen.

  Is this what it was like at Antietam? At Gettysburg? To look out at the wreckage you’ve wrought and known that you’ve killed your brother because he was trying to kill you?

  The whole of it was more than Griffin could wrap his brain around, and so it became academic to him. A curiosity. A cause for reflection. Emotion was a dangerous thing, to be kept under lock and key, because so often it opposed what you were told to do.

  What other course was there? He had not fired on Vici. They had fired on him. And he had responded. How else could he respond? Should he feel guilty because his hand was forced?

  All those around him had chosen this as their last stand. Griffin could do nothing for them anymore. Their decision had been final. Surely they’d known it would be.

  And many more had chosen not to fight. And they were the ones that filled the air with that scraping, keening noise that buffeted against him whenever his brain chose to focus on it, like wind in your ears that you never notice until you think about it directly.