by Sam Sisavath
“I thought I heard voices,” Peters whispered back.
“Where?”
He nodded forward at the bright alley up ahead. There was a back door into a building to their right, but the left was just brick and mortar. Another thick patch of shadows awaited them about ten meters away, but first they’d have to go through the bright spot.
Damn, it’s bright.
“You sure?” Gaby asked.
“Pretty sure,” Peters said.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I.”
“But you heard something.”
“Yeah.” Then, with less conviction, “Maybe.”
Gaby looked around them. There was the entrance into a side alley just behind them, but that was it. It was either keep going, or turn around and look for another route. The former would add a few extra minutes to their trek.
They weren’t exactly in a hurry—according to Peters, they were already out of the danger zone vis-à-vis Lara’s plans—but she hated the idea of staying out here any longer than necessary. Especially after running across those three ghouls. How many other nightcrawlers hadn’t obeyed their master’s call to exit the city?
“Peters,” she whispered, “we have to keep going.”
He nodded and started to get up—
“The fuck you guys doing, skulking around back here?” a voice said from in front of them, just before a man in jeans, wearing a vest with a circled M over one pouch, stepped out of the shadows across the alley and into the large bright pool of moonlight.
The Bucky was holding his rifle, and he was lifting it when Peters shot him in the chest—two times, so fast that Gaby barely heard the pfft-pfft!—before the man collapsed to the filthy floor.
“Go!” Peters hissed.
Gaby thought, Go? Go where? Why?
Then she understood the why part: Because the dead Bucky wasn’t alone, and three more were running out of the shadows behind him.
Gaby was lifting her own rifle when a beam of flashlight hit her in the face. She turned her head as she went temporarily blind.
I can’t see!
She was vaguely aware of Peters shooting, the pfft-pfft-pfft! of his gunfire barely louder than the clink-clink-clink! of his bullet casings ricocheting off the wall to their right, then pelting the floor.
Then someone grabbed her from behind and Gaby stumbled, fighting to maintain her balance, even as Peters shouted, “Goddammit, Jolly! Go, go, go!”
Jolly must have been the one with the viselike grip on her left arm, pulling her back even as she struggled to see again. Her vision was temporarily blurred, and she could just make out Peters in front of her, his black form backing up even as he continued to shoot, moonlight gleaming off the smooth sides of his ejecting bullet casings as they spat out from his rifle one after another, after another…
Then she was turning and running, Jolly and Jones somewhere in front of her. Slowly (Hurry up, goddammit!) her vision returned to her, and Gaby was finally able to make out where they were and where they were going.
They were in the side alley, the one they had already passed, and running down it even as the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire broke through the silent night behind her. That wasn’t Peters, because Peters’s rifle was suppressed and those shots clearly weren’t.
She managed to shake loose from Jolly’s grip—she didn’t know how exactly; the man’s hand was like a bear’s claw—and glanced back, expecting to see Peters behind them. Except he wasn’t. Instead, she heard more shooting coming from the back alley.
Pop-pop-pop!
Finally, Peters appeared around the corner, his boots slipping and sliding against the slick floor as he made the sudden turn. He grabbed at the wall with one hand to keep from falling and slung himself into the alley behind them.
“Go!” Peters shouted.
Gaby was turning back around when she heard the squeal of tires coming from the street beyond the mouth of the alley they were running toward.
Jolly and Jones were ahead of her, and they heard it, too. Both men stopped—Jolly on a dime while Jones kept going for another few feet—just as a vehicle began backing up until it was straddling the sidewalk directly in front of them, its large hulking frame filling up the alley opening.
The first thing Gaby saw was the big white M painted on the driver-side door before her eyes were quickly drawn to the man in the back of the truck. He was wearing a balaclava over his face and was standing, manning a machine gun that he began swiveling around. There was a giant metal plate in front of him, the barrel of the MG jutting out of it near the top.
Pfft-pfft-pfft! as Jolly fired. His suppressed gunshots were quickly swallowed up by the same rounds pinging! harmlessly off the shield in front of the machine gunner. Gaby opened her mouth to scream when the Bucky in the back of the truck opened fire.
The brap-brap-brap was louder than anything she’d ever heard in her life, but even before she could react, someone tackled her from behind. She fell forward, the zip-zip-zip! of bullets piercing through the air above her head. Pek-pek-pek! as bullets slammed into the walls and flesh and concrete floor and chunks of the alley flicked into the air, landing on top of her as she fell to the trash-strewn pavement.
She was flat on her stomach as she watched Jolly and Jones twitching violently against the torrent of bullets. Jolly, who was in front of the backtracking Jones, took the brunt of the gunfire. The rifle in his hand snapped in half as he collapsed in a pile, blood pouring out of every part of him.
Oh, no. Jolly…
The shooting didn’t go on for very long. In fact, it seemed to last only a few seconds but was enough for Gaby to find herself covered in garbage and blood. A lot of blood. Jolly’s and Jones’s, but not hers. She had made it through the gunfire in one piece, even if she didn’t know how exactly.
Someone was shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
She vaguely recognized Peters’s voice. He sounded desperate, screaming at the top of his lungs. It must have worked, because the machine gunner didn’t keep shooting.
Booted footsteps filled the alley when Gaby raised herself up from the floor. She had lost her rifle on the way down, but there was still her pistol. She was reaching for it when she looked up and saw the eyes of the machine gunner in the back of the technical squinting at her. She thought she could make out his lips, behind his balaclava, forming a mischievous grin.
Peters, behind her, hissed, “Put your hands up! Put your hands up, Gaby!”
Gaby took her hand away from her side and raised both arms high into the air. She glanced back at Peters. He was on his knees, his own hands raised. One of his arms was bleeding, and he was grimacing.
Peters looked back at her and nodded, as if to say It’s okay. We’re going to be fine.
No, it’s not, Gaby thought as two figures approached them from the back of the alley. Mercerians. One was clutching his left arm, blood dripping down the length of it. When the man stepped into a pool of moonlight, Gaby saw that he was gritting his teeth through what was obviously a lot of pain.
There was moaning next to her, and Gaby looked over. She was shocked to find Jones still alive and lying in a pool of his own blood. There was so much of the red stuff that it was still spreading like wildfire across the filthy floor. Was it possible for one man to bleed so much?
Jones was gasping for breath, trying desperately to hold back the wetness pumping out of his stomach. Gaby slid over to him, her knees soaking in blood immediately, and pushed against the wounds with her hands. It wasn’t hard to find the bullet holes. All she had to do was look for where they were spurting out of Jones. While she pressed against his stomach, more came out of his arms and legs and his right cheek. Jones was a fountain, bleeding everywhere.
It was too much. Too much…
Jones screamed with pain, but she didn’t take her hands away, even though she knew that all of this was for nothing, that Jones was going to die anyway from all his other wounds.
There was strangely not a lot of blood on his face despite the bullet hole in his cheek.
She didn’t take her hands away. Maybe it was because of Jolly lying next to her. He had taken the brunt of the MG fire, and half of his face was gone. His black uniform was mostly red now, the circled M barely visible under all the blood. He lay in one spot while his right arm rested a few feet away from his body.
“Don’t shoot,” Peters was saying as the two men approached them from the back of the alley.
The Mercerians stood over them while doors opened and slammed shut behind her.
“We surrender,” Peters said to the two in front of him. “Don’t shoot. We surrender.”
“Who gives a fuck?” the wounded Mercerian said before he lifted his gun and pointed it at Gaby.
“No!” Peters screamed, but it was mostly lost in the bang! of the gunshot.
Seventeen
I’m sorry, Lara, but I’m not going to make it.
I tried. I really did.
But I’m not going to make it…
She was ready for it—after the night she’d endured, it was almost a welcome relief, really—but instead of a bullet entering her body and ending it all, Gaby felt a sudden splash of wetness against her cheek.
What…?
She opened her eyes and peered down at Jones, at the small hole in his forehead that hadn’t been there before. The Black Tider looked back up at her as if he were just as shocked as she was by what had happened.
She was alive, but Gaby didn’t know if she should be happy about that. How long was it going to last? Or maybe the real question she should ask herself was, how much more pain and suffering was she going to have to endure tonight before she finally found some peace and quiet?
“Don’t shoot!” Peters was shouting. “For God’s sake, don’t shoot!”
She looked up and over just before one of the Mercerians hit Peters in the face with the butt of his rifle. Peters collapsed to the floor as the man took aim at him, his forefinger on the trigger. Gaby waited to hear the pop! of the rifle firing, but it didn’t come.
At least, not yet.
The two Mercerians glared at them. The one with the pistol that had shot Jones still had his weapon pointed at her. He was tall and lanky, and his uniform sagged against his droopy shoulders. But there was nothing wrong with the way he held the gun and looked down at her as if daring her to do something.
The one with the rifle was rounder and shorter, and he looked ready to shoot Peters, who kept his hands raised even as he pulled himself up from the floor, blood dripping from his broken nose. He might have been hurt, but Peters wasn’t letting it keep him down.
It took a quick glance for her to see that Peters still had his sidearm in its holster, along his hip. But like her own holstered Glock, she’d need to drop her hands to grab it. That would take a second at least. Then another second to draw it. That was a second and a half too many, because all it would take was half a heartbeat for Tall and Skinny to pull the trigger on his Beretta.
“Don’t shoot,” Peters was saying, his words slightly slurred. He spat out a glob of blood and kept going. “We surrender. You hear me? We surrender!”
“We don’t give a fuck about your surrender,” Tall and Skinny said.
“The orders were to take prisoners,” Short and Fat said.
“They just killed Ron and Floyd. I don’t give a shit what the orders are,” the Mercerian standing in front of her said, just before he thumbed back the hammer of his gun.
“Wait!” Peters shouted.
“Shut up!” Short and Fat said and turned his rifle around to hit Peters in the face again.
Peters shrank back but still managed to shout out, “You don’t wanna do that!”
Tall and Skinny glanced back at him, but he never lowered his gun from Gaby’s face. “Give me one good reason, dead man.”
“Her name’s Gaby,” Peters said.
“What?”
“Gaby. Her name’s Gaby.”
“Who gives a fuck what her name is?” Short and Fat said, and turned his rifle back around to point the muzzle at Peters’s head.
“You don’t know who she is, do you?” Peters asked.
The two Mercerians exchanged a quick glance. It was clear they didn’t by their expressions.
“Who is she?” Tall and Skinny asked as he looked back at Gaby. He squinted at her as if he hadn’t really paid attention to her face before. His forefinger was still in the trigger guard of his weapon, rubbing against the trigger…
“She can get you to Lara,” Peters said.
What the hell are you doing, Peters? Gaby thought as she looked back at him.
But Peters didn’t meet her eyes. He was too focused on the two Mercerians in the alley with them. “Call your superiors. They’ll tell you that you don’t want to kill her. She can be useful to you.”
The two men didn’t say anything, but she could see the doubt suddenly flash across Tall and Skinny’s face. It might have been the same with Short and Fat, but Gaby wasn’t staring at him at the time.
“Well?” a voice said from behind Gaby.
She looked over her shoulder as another Mercerian walked away from the truck and toward them. A second one, the vehicle’s passenger, had appeared around the hood and joined the driver.
“What’s the holdup?” the driver asked with his hands on his hips. “Kill them already, and let’s go. We got places to be.”
“Get it over with. We ain’t got time for this shit,” the passenger added.
Tall and Skinny motioned at Gaby with his gun. “You know who this is?”
The driver and passenger came closer and peered at her.
“Is this a trick question?” the driver asked.
“Doesn’t look like anyone special to me,” the passenger said.
“Her name’s Gaby,” Tall and Skinny said.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” the driver asked.
“He said it should,” Short and Fat said, while nodding at Peters, still kneeling with his hands raised in front of him.
Gaby could see blood trickling down Peters’s left arm and pooling around his knees. If he was hurt, he didn’t show it. Either that, or Peters had amazing willpower.
“Radio it in,” Tall and Skinny said.
“What?” the driver said.
“Radio it in, and find out who she is.” Then, when the other two still hadn’t moved, “We gotta be sure. I don’t wanna go in the doghouse for popping her if she’s important.”
“Shit,” the driver said, before walking back to the truck. His passenger tagged along.
Gaby looked after the two men before her eyes trailed over to the machine gunner in the back of the technical. The man was looking somewhere else, apparently having grown bored with what was happening in the alley. His MG, though, was still pointed at her general direction, but the muzzle was lowered to the floor.
She turned back to the two Mercerians in front of her and Peters. Tall and Skinny was a mirror image of Peters and was also bleeding from his left arm, the limb hanging loosely at his side like some useless appendage. Short and Fat had his rifle aimed at Peters’s head, and it wouldn’t have taken very much for him to pull the trigger and end Peters’s life right then and there.
And then there was the Glock in her holster. She still had it. So did Peters with his SIG Sauer. The Mercerians hadn’t bothered to disarm them. They hadn’t even wasted a second searching them. The only reason they hadn’t, she thought, was because they had intended on ending their lives immediately, but Peters had changed things.
That was why he had done it, she realized now. Why he had given her up. He was trying to save her life.
And then what? What happened after that? Even if they did spare her, they were going to use her to find Lara. To get to Lara.
What was it that the Mercerian Clive had said to her in the tunnels?
“I need you alive. After all, how am I going to get to Lara if you’re dead, G
aby?”
Because the man knew—and others did, too—that she was important to Lara. Her friend had sent Becker and Goldman for her; then later, Peters and Jolly. Even now, Lara was waiting for her, and every action she had taken ensured Gaby wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire of their counterattack.
And these men could use her against Lara…
No. No way in hell.
Gaby stared at Peters, willing him to notice her.
Look at me, Peters. Look at me!
He turned his head and met her eyes, and she thought he might have nodded, but she couldn’t be 100 percent certain. There was too much darkness in the alley, and Peters had only moved his head slightly. Had he even nodded at all?
“He’s right,” the driver said as he walked back over to them. His passenger had stayed behind with the truck this time. “They want her alive just in case the operation goes sour. She’s insurance.”
“Who confirmed it?” Tall and Skinny asked.
“Clive.”
Clive, Gaby thought. That name’s going to haunt me all night.
“Fuck that guy,” Tall and Skinny spat out.
“You can fuck him all you want, but he still confirmed it,” the driver said. “They want her alive in case the HVT gets away again.”
HVT? Gaby thought.
Then: HVT. High value target.
Lara. They’re talking about Lara.
Tall and Skinny looked down at Gaby and wrinkled his nose. For a second, she thought he might pull the trigger anyway. But he didn’t, and instead he put his thumb on his gun’s hammer and eased it back, then forward to uncock it. “Looks like that call to the warden came through for you.”
She stared at him but didn’t say anything.
He smirked. “Don’t be giving me the evil eye, little lady. A lot of things can happen between here and the way back to Clive. You know what I mean?”
“They want her alive,” the driver said.
“You already said that.”
“Just in case you got wax in your ears. It’s an official order. We bring her back across town with us, and she gets to watch us take out the rest of her Black Tider buddies.”