by Sam Sisavath
“Rocket launchers,” Becker said.
The question wasn’t what, but who? Black Tide had rocket launchers, too. M72 LAWs—Light Anti-Tank Weapons—that worked just as well on buildings and groups of attacking personnel as it did on tanks and vehicles.
“Ours or theirs?” Angie asked.
Becker shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“It came from behind us. That’s the marina.”
“Around that area, from the sounds of it.”
“We have rocket launchers, too, right?” Angie asked, looking over at Gaby.
Gaby nodded. “Yes.”
“So those could be ours.”
“It could be,” she said and thought, But it could also be theirs.
Too many ifs. The night was full of ifs. The only thing she knew for certain was that the answers weren’t going to come to her while she stood here not moving.
Gaby nodded at Becker. “You have point.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Becker said, and began moving again.
Gaby followed him as another explosion ripped across the night sky. This one was a little closer to home than the last two, and instead of coming from behind them, it had originated from somewhere in front.
“Was that one closer?” Angie, walking beside her now, asked. “It sounded closer.”
“Yeah,” Gaby said, more softly than she had intended. “It was closer.”
“Does that mean anything?”
Gaby shook her head. “No. Yes. Maybe.” Then, at Becker up ahead, “Two more blocks, right?”
Becker nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Two more blocks to the halfway point.”
Two blocks. Just two more blocks left.
That should have made her feel better, but the way the night had gone, two blocks suddenly felt more like twenty.
Five
10:59 p.m.
She was surprised by how little time had passed since the attack began. It hadn’t even been a full hour yet, but to listen to the chaos around her, she might have believed days had already passed. But no. It had been less than forty minutes since the barracks was destroyed and she began this trek to the center of Darby Bay to find Lara.
She looked down again just to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with her watch.
11:00 p.m.
Dammit. The watch was ticking along just fine, the luminescent hands glowing green in the dark alleyway as they moved through it.
It’s going to be a long night.
They were surrounded by buildings—stores, warehouses, and structures that she didn’t know the purposes of because she could only see their undistinctive rears—and had been since they left the old OP behind. With just one more block before they reached the halfway point, Gaby decided there was no point in taking risks by exposing themselves unnecessarily. And that meant going even more out of their way to avoid the streets and lights, which added to their slow progress. The ambush had already cost her Goldman and Springer, and now she was down to a shooter in Becker and a support personnel in Angie, who was probably more of a liability than an asset.
Gaby didn’t say those thoughts out loud, though she suspected Becker already knew how much more was on his shoulders now that his partner was dead. He stayed in front of them the entire time, always turning the corners first. Angie brought up the rear, lugging the laptop with her. Gaby didn’t have to keep an eye on the older woman because she could hear Angie’s slightly labored breathing just fine. Angie wasn’t trained for this, but that didn’t make her unique. Most of the people out there right now, trying to survive the night, weren’t trained for an attack of this magnitude.
Five years to plan. He had five years to plan all of this.
Fucker.
There was a loud crackle of gunfire from in front of them, causing Becker to stop and drop suddenly to one knee, his rifle sliding upward to take aim. Gaby did the same, lifting the M4 in front of her. Her left arm was bandaged, the piece of shrapnel that was previously sticking out of it resting in a puddle of old rainwater a block behind them.
The shooting before them signaled a clear exchange between two groups. The way it had begun told her someone had stumbled unexpectedly across someone else. They listened to it going back and forth for a moment. Small arms fire—rifles shooting on semiauto, but there were some handguns in there, too.
The gunfire came from inside one of the buildings that faced the street to their right. Maybe a storefront, one of many that the people of Darby Bay had since converted for other uses.
Becker glanced over his shoulder at her, and Gaby mouthed back at him, “Anything?”
He shook his head before facing forward again.
The back-and-forth continued for a few more seconds. Five, ten… Before it finally died down and there was just the pop-pop-pop of small arms coming from other parts of the city. Whatever had started the gunfight nearby had come to an end. Chances were good someone was victorious and someone was dead. Or someones, more likely.
Becker began to stand back up when a door in front and to his right crashed open and a figure stumbled outside into the back alley. A woman, staggering her way through the door. Gaby might have thought she was drunk or dazed by the way she was moving.
The woman stopped suddenly, as if sensing them, and turned. The first thing she saw was Becker pointing his rifle at her.
“Get down!” Becker shouted.
The woman threw herself to the floor, and Gaby was thinking, Why did he just tell her to get down? when two more figures rushed out the open door. She glimpsed flashes of assault vests, black rifles, glowing white circled M emblems, and breathing apparatuses jutting out from underneath their chins like elephant tusks.
Mercerians, she thought, but even as her mind processed that information, Becker acted and killed both of them with a burst from his rifle. Both men slumped to the ground, one of them stumbling into the open door and leaving a trail of blood on the slab of wood as he slid down its length.
Damn, he’s good, Gaby thought as she got up and hurried forward. She heard rather than saw Becker clicking his rifle’s fire selector back to semiauto as she moved past him and toward the woman, kneeling on the pavement with her hands over her head.
The woman was unarmed, allowing Gaby to turn right toward the open door and look into the dark building on the other side.
It was some kind of store, with a counter and cash register separating it from the front part. Glass walls gave her a great view of the empty streets beyond, and moonlight revealed two bodies lying on the tiled floor behind the counter. They had been hiding back there when the shooting began, which explained the damaged countertop and why the cash register was scattered in pieces across it. There was no one on the sidewalk or in the streets, so no incoming Mercerian reinforcements.
Gaby grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door closed even as there was a flurry of activity behind her as Becker moved toward her position, while Angie helped the woman up from the filthy alley floor.
The woman was shaking as she lowered her hands and looked from Angie to Gaby and back again. Young, early twenties, with shoulder-length brown hair. She was wearing civilian clothes—slacks and a plaid long-sleeve shirt. Amazingly green eyes finally rested on Gaby. “Are they dead?”
Gaby nodded. “Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
No, but they looked dead, Gaby thought but she said, “Yes.”
“Oh, God.”
Gaby left the two women to join Becker, who had continued on up the alley. He had stopped at the turn and was leaning around the corner while keeping most of his body out of view of anyone looking in from the street beyond.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Becker said.
Gaby glanced back at Angie. She was whispering something to the woman, who was still shaking noticeably.
As if reading her mind, Becker said, keeping his voice low, “She’s a liability, Commander.”
“What’s your point, soldier?” Gaby
asked.
“I’m just saying.”
“I know what you’re just saying,” Gaby said and thought, But Lara wouldn’t leave her behind, and neither can I. “Take point.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Becker said and jogged across the alley opening and onto the other side.
The woman’s name was Diane, and as Gaby had guessed, she was a Darby Bay resident who had fled her apartment when the attack began. The two men Gaby had seen inside the store, now half a block behind them, were her boyfriend and brother.
“They’re dead,” Diane said. “God, they’re dead. I can’t believe they’re dead. Why is all of this happening?”
Because a man named Buck lured us here, Gaby thought. Because this was the plan all along. Either that, or it’s one hell of a coincidence, and I don’t believe in coincidences.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Diane was saying. “God, I can’t believe this is happening. It’s unreal. How is this real? It doesn’t feel real. It’s like one big nightmare.”
Oh, it’s real all right, Gaby thought. People are dead, and a lot more people are going to die before tonight is over.
God help us all.
They were making steady progress through the back alleys, staying out of the open and keeping far away from the sporadic fighting that was still taking place all around them. Every now and then they heard vehicles moving nearby in the streets, and it was just another sign to stay out of the open.
And then there was the brap-brap-brap of machine gun fire, which made Gaby’s stomach churn every time she heard it, even as her mind chanted, Let it be ours. Let those machine guns be ours.
But she knew very well that it might not be, because Buck’s men had MGs, too. They also had technicals—machine gun mounted vehicles. They’d been using it on towns across southern Texas. It was those raids (Raids? Call them what they are. Massacres.) that had brought her and Lara and Black Tide to Darby Bay in the first place.
He lured us here. That was the plan all along.
Jesus Christ, he played us. The bastard played us…
Her mind snapped back to the present when Becker stopped and crouched down on one knee as they came up to another three-way intersection. Gaby moved over to kneel beside him.
“We’re almost there, ma’am,” Becker said. “Right into that alley and across the street, then another block and we’ll be at the halfway point.”
“That means moving in the open,” Gaby said. “Are you sure that’s the only way?”
“Only way I know of. You?”
She shook her head.
“We can keep going, try to find another path,” Becker said. “That’s going to add more minutes, though.”
“No. We’ll take the fastest route.” Gaby started to get up, but she stopped and went back down instead. “Gaby.”
“Hmm?” Becker said.
“Call me Gaby. Instead of ma’am.”
He nodded. “Will do.”
She got up and hurried back to where Angie was waiting with Diane, the two women huddled together in a patch of shadows. Diane had been crying and dried tears covered her cheeks, but she had stopped trembling. She’d even kept pace with them without slowing them down, though that might have been thanks to Angie, who never left her side.
“Are we close?” Angie asked.
Gaby nodded. “We need to cross the street first.” She looked over at Diane, peering back at her from behind her wall of hair. “Stick with Angie and don’t run off. Understand?”
Diane nodded, but Gaby didn’t see the conviction in her eyes that she was looking for.
“If you run off,” Gaby said, “we’re not coming after you. Do you understand? If you don’t stick with us, you’ll be on your own.”
Diane nodded again, but this time she added, with too much stuttering for Gaby’s liking, “I understand.”
“Good.” Gaby looked over at Angie. “The laptop. Is it password protected?”
“Yes,” Angie said.
“How many people know the password?”
“Me.”
“Just you?”
“Just me. It’s my responsibility. It’s basically the only thing I do. Take care of what’s in here,” she said, tapping the laptop resting on her knee. “Why are you asking about the password?”
“Because I need to know if you drop it, or lose it, no one else can access what’s inside it.”
“No one can,” Angie said. “You get ten tries. You screw that up, and the hard drive erases itself.”
Gaby nodded. “Stay close,” she said, before getting up and walking back to Becker.
The soldier didn’t bother glancing over as she approached him. “We all set?”
“As set as we’ll ever be,” Gaby said. “Go.”
Becker stood up and moved forward before leaning around the corner. Gaby waved Angie and Diane over, and the two women hurried toward her position.
In front of her, Becker pulled his head back.
“How’s it look?” Gaby asked.
“Emptier than a Navy ship during Fleet Week,” Becker said. Then, without looking in her direction, “How’s the leg?”
“My leg’s fine.”
“We might have to run.”
“So we’ll run. Whenever you’re ready, soldier.”
Becker lifted his rifle up and slid around the corner, moving so fluidly that he barely made any noise. Gaby followed, her own carbine swinging up, while she listened to Angie and Diane shuffling behind her as they, too, moved.
The side alley was empty except for a dumpster and what looked like a Darby Bay civilian lying on his back near the opening up ahead, moonlight throwing a wide shaft of light over his body. The man lay crumpled on one side, fresh blood still pooling underneath him.
Gaby rushed forward until she was next to Becker. She kept him to her left while matching his pace toward the sidewalk. They passed the large beat-up trash bin and stepped into a bright pool of LED lights coming from the street corner in front of them. After moving around the back alleys for so long, Gaby had to blink away the sudden brightness.
One second.
Two…
There.
They reached the mouth of the alley without any problems, and while Becker slid up against the left wall, she took the right. She took a moment to focus on the row of buildings in front of them, across the two-lane road. Storefront windows, some with broken glass littering the sidewalk, and darkened structures that used to have people living and working inside them. There was also a big round white tower in the background that stood out like a rocket ship. Darby Bay’s water tower.
Signs of recent violence in the streets before them were difficult to miss. The broken glass, the cracks in walls of buildings from bullet impacts, brass casings glinting in the roads, and of course the body on the sidewalk between her and Becker. Probably more victims of tonight’s attack that she couldn’t see yet.
But there were no hints of men with guns in any direction she looked. It was a straight run across the street, and from there the halfway point. She couldn’t have asked for an easier path to Lara.
Which was the problem:
It’s too easy. This is way too easy.
Wasn’t it?
She checked on Angie and Diane behind her. The two women were on her side of the alley about five meters back. They were slightly crouched, and Angie had taken out the SIG Sauer and was holding it in one hand, the laptop clutched under her left armpit. Diane had her arms across her chest and had begun to tremble noticeably again.
Gaby faced the empty streets (It’s too empty. Why is it so empty?) again when the pop-pop-pop of small arms broke through the momentary silence from somewhere behind them. It was closer than previous shootings, but not close enough to be an immediate threat to them.
To her left, Becker glanced over and they exchanged a brief nod. Becker understood without having to be told and darted onto the sidewalk, his rifle leading the way the entire time. He spun left, covering his s
ide of the street, while she also stepped out into the open and pointed her weapon right to cover her end.
There was a Jeep (That’s one of ours) parked haphazardly on the sidewalk across the street about fifty or sixty meters down the road. Bodies in blue clothing (Definitely ours) lay around the vehicle, but they were too far for her to make out their faces or what kind of firefight had ended their lives.
There were no immediate dangers—no men in gas masks and rifles, and nothing that would pose a threat—on either side of the streets that she could see. The crackle of gunfire continued from other parts of the city but nowhere close to their position.
This is too easy. This is way too easy.
She checked back on Becker. He was already waiting for her, and with another nod, they simultaneously jogged off the sidewalk and onto the street.
Gaby listened for and heard the tap-tap-tap of footsteps behind her. Angie and Diane, following on her heels but staying far enough back that they wouldn’t bump into her if she stopped suddenly. She wasn’t sure if that was on purpose, but she was glad to have the extra room to operate.
Glass windows along the front of stores up and down the sidewalk across from them reflected back the brightness around her. She hadn’t realized just how bright it was, with the moonlight adding to the solar-powered LEDs that Darby Bay had set up strategically up and down the block.
Jesus, it’s bright out here.
She caught her own reflection in a store featuring a mural of a kid eating an ice cream cone. Some kind of ice cream parlor, though someone had torn down the sign. There was a Denny’s next to it; it was also the only building that looked untouched by the recent attacks. Flanking the other side of the parlor was a small building, some kind of insurance agency, also with glass walls.
And there, the alley where they needed to be to reach Lara.
Gaby focused on the ice cream parlor’s window because it was directly in front of her on the other side of the street. She could make out her moving reflection, along with the two women behind her. And there, Becker to her left—
The bang! of a gunshot rang out a split second before one of the glass frames in front of her shattered and something small but fast zipped! past her right ear.