by Sam Sisavath
Twenty
She had just finished wrapping up her leg and pulled her pants back up when she finally noticed the sudden silence around her. She might have realized it earlier if not for the numbness that vibrated from her leg all the way up to her teeth, occupying much of her senses.
“Keo!” she shouted.
“Yeah?” he shouted back, his voice far from the trapdoor in front of her.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a damn thing.”
At least he’s still alive, she thought, and shouted, “Did you get any of them?”
“Nah. Too far.”
“How are you for ammo?”
“Pretty good. You?”
“I’m good,” she said, but thought, Everything’s good, except the bullet holes in my leg.
Gaby put the first-aid kit away and hobbled over to the ladder. She climbed up one rung at a time, grimacing the entire way, and somehow made it all the way to the very top and pulled herself up and onto the loft without blacking out.
Keo was standing next to the open doors, hidden behind one of the walls. He didn’t bother glancing over as she gingerly made her way over to him before sliding up against the wall across the sixty inches of open space that revealed the morning landscape beyond.
“Downstairs?” Keo asked.
“I got the doors closed. But you didn’t…”
“Didn’t think it was a good idea, considering they couldn’t care less about taking me alive.”
“Good point.”
From her position behind the wall, Gaby had a very limited angle out the loft doors. She could just make out the office building and the farmhouse’s porch behind it, but not the road on the other side of the yard. Which meant she had no idea where the shooters were. Keo was clearly limited by the skewed perspective, albeit in the other direction.
“How many?” Gaby asked.
“I counted three shooters earlier.”
“Just three? You sure?”
Keo shrugged. “Possibly more.” Then, “Likely more.” He glanced over at her, then down at her legs. “You good?”
“I’m okay,” Gaby said. “They’re using suppressors. I didn’t hear the shot until it was too late.”
“Neither did I,” Keo said, nodding up at the holes that covered the top part of the doors. “Cheaters.”
“Look who’s talking,” she smiled.
“My gun has very limited range, so it’s a lot fairer.”
“If you say so.”
Keo checked his submachine gun’s fire selector for a second, before saying, “So, you and Nate broke up?”
Gaby sighed. “I already told you, I don’t want to talk about Nate.”
“He still hasn’t forgiven you for ditching him that time?”
“Keo…”
He chuckled. “Hey, I’m just curious.”
“Yeah, but now?”
“Thought it’d take your mind off the pain.”
“What pain?”
“Exactly,” he said, when pek-pek-pek! as bullets began punching through the wall above his head before starting to travel down—
Keo dropped to the floor as the last three rounds penetrated through the spot where he had been standing just seconds ago. Splinters filled the air and dust that had been clinging to the building for years formed clouds over his head. Not that Keo noticed, because he was too busy wincing from whatever pain he had accumulated in the last few days but wouldn’t tell her about.
“Took a couple of scrapes and bruises. Nothing I can’t handle,” he had told her earlier. She guessed it was more than that, and whatever they were probably had a lot to do with his right side that she’d seen him favoring more than once.
He looked up at her from the floor and grinned. “You might want to do the same, kid. They can’t exactly see you hiding behind that wall.”
“Oh,” she said, and lowered herself to the floor even though her side of the loft wasn’t being perforated like Keo’s.
Better safe than sorry, she thought, and began crawling backward, away from the opening. That allowed her to begin moving slightly to the right, until she could see out the open loft doors at the yard in front of her, while still remaining hidden herself.
Or she hoped she was still hidden, anyway.
But no one was shooting (yet), so she took that as a positive sign.
There, four figures racing across the highway, even as shooters leaned out from behind trees, ready to supply covering fire if she or Keo poked their heads out far enough to shoot back.
Definitely more than three.
“Keo,” Gaby said.
“I see them,” Keo said.
There were about a hundred meters between the barn and the road, just slightly bigger a distance than a football field. The men were already on the asphalt highway and crossing it when she slid the AR in front of her and peered at their sun-drenched forms behind the weapon’s optic. At her current position, on the floor, she was almost certain they could see the barrel of her gun, but (hopefully) nothing of her behind it.
You better hope that’s true or you might eat a bullet, girl.
Just her luck that the rifle in her hands would be equipped with only a red dot sight. What she wouldn’t give for an ACOG right about now.
Or a grenade launcher…
“You got a shot?” Keo asked. He kept his head down even as bullets continued piercing the wall above his head, the subsonic rounds filling the barn with a continuous string of pek-pek-pek! chorus. He had also crawled back from the opening, stopping when he was far enough away not to be picked off but could see out.
“Yeah,” Gaby said.
“Don’t miss.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Shut up, Keo.”
He chuckled, and out of the corner of one eye she saw him make a “zipping” motion over his mouth with his fingers.
She focused on what was in front of her.
In and out.
In and out…
The first figure was within ninety meters—eighty-five—eighty. A man, his rifle in front of him, running while slightly hunched over at the waist, which slowed him down just enough to…
Bang!
The gunshot was like thunder inside the enclosed second floor and impossibly loud against the suppressed gunshots of the Buckies.
Her target seemed to trip on something before slamming into the dirt driveway that joined the highway and the property. The three figures around him broke off into different directions even as their wounded comrade attempted to pick himself back up.
Somewhere from the other side of the globe, Keo said, “Nice shot.”
But she wasn’t really paying attention to him because she was too focused, letting her breath out slowly.
Then back in.
In and out.
In and out…
Another crashing bang! and the wounded man crumpled back down to the dirt floor, and this time he didn’t try to get up.
Gaby moved her rifle, searching for more targets, but they were being extremely smart and were coming at the barn from three different directions. They were also running full speed, the closest one already at sixty meters—
Bang! and the man—short dark hair, wearing a scarf over the lower half of his face—awkwardly pitched forward and slammed face-first into the ground.
She swiveled her rifle again even as the barn wall above her began breaking against a new onslaught of bullets, splinters pelting her body and digging into her hair. She blinked through the showers of dust coming down on her and continued searching, but she couldn’t find anyone to shoot.
“Hey, boys, your boss wants me alive, remember?” she thought about shouting over at the Buckies, but she wondered if it would make any difference. They had just seen her (even if they probably weren’t for sure it was her) kill two of their own, and maybe orders didn’t matter anymore.
/> Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft! coming from her right, as Keo fired down the open loft doors.
She followed the angle of his gun to a body lying motionless about thirty meters from the barn. The man had dropped his rifle when he fell. The scope mounted on the weapon, she saw, was an ACOG.
I could use that…
But of course she wasn’t going to go down there and risk everything to retrieve it. Instead, she counted numbers.
Four men charging the barn, but only three down. That left one still unaccounted for.
The covering fire from the road had stopped, and Gaby figured out why when she couldn’t locate the fourth Bucky no matter where she looked. He had either reached his destination—them—or he had taken cover. Or both. The man could have been directly below them right now and they wouldn’t know it.
Gaby slid to her left to get farther behind what remained of her side of the wall. One look in Keo’s direction was enough to convince her not to try to stand or even raise her head more than a few inches off the floor. Tiny slivers of sunlight poured in through what must have been hundreds of holes along the front of the barn wall.
“Stay here,” Keo said, and began crawling backward.
“Where you going?”
“We’re missing one Bucky.”
I guess he knows how to count, too, she thought, watching Keo as he picked himself up and jogged the short distance over to the hole in the floor behind them.
“Keo,” Gaby said.
He climbed down the first rung but stopped and looked back. “What?”
“Your horse took off.”
“My horse, Horse?”
She grinned. “Yeah. Your horse, Horse. It ran off as soon as the shooting started.”
“Typical,” Keo smirked, before disappearing down the ladder.
Gaby turned back to the opening and resumed her search for the fourth guy, but the man was nowhere to be found
Slick sonofabitch.
She decided to try to get a better look at the shooters across the highway instead. How many did they have out there? Judging by all the holes in front of her, there was definitely more than one shooter out there.
So that was at least two remaining shooters and one MIA. Probably more. How much more was the question. Enough to send a second wave across the road while still providing credible covering fire? That was the quest—
Two gunshots from the first floor, both coming from near the back of the barn.
Gaby glanced back at the trapdoor and waited.
Two gunshots, both from an unsuppressed weapon. Not Keo’s MP5SD.
Shit.
Five seconds of silence.
Come on, come on…
Ten…
She sighed and was prepared to get up and scoot her way to the trapdoor to check on Keo, when someone shouted, “I found the fourth guy!”
Keo. Thank God.
She breathed a sigh of relief and turned back around to refocus on the sunlit front yard. There were no movements outside and still no signs of the remaining Buckies.
Noises, as Keo climbed back up the ladder behind her.
He jogged halfway over to her position, stopping halfway and lowering himself to the floor before crawling the rest of the way.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Bucky made a big hole in the barricaded window in the back. He saw me and fired. I shot him in the face for his trouble. Anything happen while I was doing that?”
“Nothing as exciting. They’ve gone quiet.”
“For now.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“They’re down four men. I don’t think they’re stupid enough to throw more at us, because they don’t really have to, do they?”
“Why wouldn’t they have to?”
“If they’re not complete idiots, they’ll have already radioed our position in. Won’t be long now before we get a lot more Buckies crawling up our asses.”
“Shit,” Gaby said. She hadn’t considered it, but he was right.
She looked out the open doors at the flat road beyond. It didn’t matter how many men they had left out there; they didn’t need to send a second wave. At least, not yet. All they had to do was call for reinforcements. There could be a technical or two (or three) racing down that state highway right now toward them.
Gaby sighed. “I told you we were still too close to Fenton.”
“It’s twenty miles.”
“You should have made it forty.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s not wallow in the past, okay?”
“All right. So back to the present.” Where we’re both screwed, she thought, but said out loud instead, “Any ideas?”
“We need to get out of here before their reinforcements show up.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“Horse.”
“Your horse?”
“How many horses named Horse do you know?”
“I told you, it ran off.”
“It tends to do that, yeah. But it also usually comes back.”
“Always?”
“Usually.”
“What if it doesn’t come back this time?”
“It will.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
Keo shrugged. “Then I guess we’re screwed.”
She sighed. “Not what I wanted to hear, Keo. Definitely not what I wanted to hear…”
She remained upstairs to keep an eye on the remaining Buckies while Keo went back down to the first floor in search of his horse named Horse.
What kind of stupid name is that for a horse, anyway?
The kind only a guy named Keo could come up with, I guess.
Gaby spent her time crawling back and forth on the floor, always staying out of the line of fire, while at the same time keeping the front yard and highway within sight. It was a precaution in case they were both wrong, and however many of Buck’s men remained decided to send a second wave anyway. But they didn’t, and the outside world remained deceptively peaceful, with only the occasional piece of litter rolling across the asphalt hardtop.
The silence was eerie, and Gaby kept waiting to see metallic chromes moving down the road toward them. But they didn’t come, and no matter how hard she strained to listen, couldn’t hear the sounds of car engines, either. The lack of reinforcements should have comforted her, but it only made Gaby paranoid as she lay on the floor and waited for the shoe to drop.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before.
She sighed. She couldn’t even muster up enough conviction to lie to herself.
Between waiting for an impending attack, she checked her wound. Lying on the floor for a long time without having to put pressure on her legs had helped to numb the pain even further. She could still feel the bullet holes, but it would have been much worse if she had to stay up on her feet.
Gaby changed up her grip on the rifle and said quietly to herself, “Come on, Keo. What’s taking so long?”
It had been ten minutes since he went downstairs. Maybe fifteen? No. It was probably around ten. It just seemed longer, because every minute that ticked by meant another minute for Buck’s people to get closer.
And they were coming. She knew that. She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew—
Sunlight, reflecting off an object moving down the highway to her right.
Goddammit. I hate it when I’m right.
A vehicle, barreling down the road toward them.
Not just one, but two.
Gaby turned and shouted back at the open trapdoor, “Keo!”
There was no reply.
She shouted again, louder this time. “Keo!”
This time he responded with, “What?”
“Incoming!”
“How many?”
“Two!”
“That’s not good.”
No shit, Gaby thought, but she said instead, “Did you find your horse?”
“No,” Keo shouted from somewhere below her.
Of course not. Otherwise we might have actually stood a chance.
She turned back to the open doors and peered out. The trucks continued to barrel down the highway, seemingly gaining speed as they approached. They must have been doing at least a hundred miles per hour, maybe even more.
“They’re here, Keo!” she shouted.
“I can hear them!” he shouted back.
Gaby squinted and moved closer to the opening to get a better look at the vehicles. She could make out the outlines of men standing in the backs, the sun reflecting off the black barrels of mounted machine guns on both trucks.
Of course they’d be technicals; what else would they be?
They slowed down before finally slamming on their brakes and stopping haphazardly in the middle of the road. The machine gunners swiveled their mounted MGs toward the barn while the trucks’ doors snapped open and men flooded out. They jumped out of the backseats and down from the truck beds. More slid out the front seats and took cover behind both parked vehicles.
There were simply too many for Gaby to get an accurate count, but she guessed more than ten. A hell of a lot more than ten.
Seconds later, two men appeared from behind trees on the other side of the highway and raced forward to join their comrades at the trucks.
That’s a lot of guns. Damn, that’s a lot of guns…
Gaby glanced over when she heard a noise behind her.
Keo, poking his head through the hole in the floor. “How bad?”
She shook her head.
“That bad, huh?” Keo said.
“Worse,” Gaby said.
“How much worse?”
“We’re-probably-both-going-to-die-before-the-day-is-over worse.”
Keo grunted. “Daebak.”
Twenty-One
“Bucky,” Gaby said.
“How many?” Keo asked.
“One.”
“Just one?”
“Yeah. And he’s holding a white flag.”
“Hunh,” Keo said.
“Hunh?” Gaby thought. Leave it to you to under react, Keo. This is more like a WTF moment, if you ask me.
The lone figure walked across the ranch’s front yard at a deliberate pace—not too fast but not too slow, either—and passed the first man Gaby had shot. He was unarmed as far as she could tell. At least from the front; he could have had anything behind his waist. The only thing that was obvious about him was the white rag tied to a stick he was waving from side to side above his head. He was young—mid-twenties, and she spotted a ponytail when he turned around to check on the truck behind him, maybe for instructions—and was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. Like the dozen or so men squeezed behind the vehicle behind him, the flag waver sported a black assault vest with a circled M near the center.