Kara hoisted her weapon back up, checking to make sure that the safety was back off (she had flipped it on upon spotting Gimli). “What’s the situation?” she whispered to Cross.
The man lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “Hard to say,” he whispered back. “The party was starting to wind down when we arrived, and we sent most of the Hellraisers scattering by bursting in with motorcycles revving and firing a few shots over their heads. But it seems like they’re starting to creep back.”
“Well, at least they can’t get to their weapons,” Kara whispered back.
Cross’s eyes dropped down to the assault rifle in her hands. “Is that where you got that beast?” he asked.
“Yep. Looks like I found their base of operations for the smuggling - they’ve got crates of assault weapons like this one down in the basement. If I can get out of here, I just need to call in the cavalry, and they’ll come sweeping in.”
“Of course, it would be better if we weren’t caught in the crossfire,” Cross finished her thought.
“So what’s the plan?”
Cross tilted his head to one side for a moment, listening, but he didn’t hear any more sounds. “The bikes are just outside the front hallway,” he said, pointing around the corner. “We just need to reach those, and we should be able to get away.”
“That’s what, fifty feet away?”
“Pretty much,” Gimli affirmed from behind Kara.
The FBI agent took one last breath, hoisting her weapon. “Well, the longer we wait, the more likely we are to get pinned down here. Let’s go.”
Cross nodded, but the big biker didn’t move for a second. “Wait,” he finally spoke up.
Kara looked up at him in surprise as he turned back around to face her. “What?” she asked, confused about why he was delaying.
“If I’m about to risk death, there’s one last thing I need to do first,” he told her, gazing down at her.
This time, as he swept her up in his arms, Kara just barely managed to lower her gun in time so that it didn’t poke into his abdomen.
A second later, his lips found hers, and she let her body melt against him.
The kiss was powerful, but only lasted a few seconds. Cross pulled back, and for an instant, Kara was still leaning forward, wanting more. “To be continued,” he whispered her. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
“Let’s,” she agreed, picking the barrel of the assault rifle back up.
In an explosive burst of energy, Cross dove around the corner, his gun up in held firmly in both hands, swinging back and forth as it searched for a target. As if they had trained together for years, Kara was just a half-step behind the man, her assault rifle up and ready to provide covering fire over Cross’s shoulder.
“Man, no one ever kisses me like that,” Gimli grumbled, before hurrying after the other two on his shorter legs.
CHAPTER 12
Kara, Cross, and Gimli made it about halfway down the hall before the shots started.
The first couple bullets came whizzing in from their left side, shattering one of the windows as they entered but burying themselves harmlessly in the ceiling.
At the sound of the bullets ripping through the air, accompanied by shattering glass, the three all ducked, Cross and Kara both turning. Cross had his gun up, but Kara was faster, and she fired a short burst from her assault rifle out through the broken window. She doubted that she’d hit anything, but the returning fire would put their attackers on their guard.
For a moment, no bullets came back, and Cross took the chance to move up further, ducking behind one of the walls of the front hallway. “I can see the bikes!” he called out to the other two. “They’re still there, and look untouched!”
Kara’s reply was cut off as more bullets came into the house - these ones from their right, breaking another window and stitching a line across the mantel above the fireplace.
“Yeah, but they’re on both sides of us!” she shouted back, sending another spray of bullets out to their right from her automatic weapon. “If we go out there, we’ll be in the open, totally exposed!”
From her left, Kara heard footsteps thudding outside. She lifted up her gun again - but this time, instead of shooting out through the window, she fired her burst through the wall itself, below the sill.
As the shells from this burst clattered onto the floor, she heard a grunt of pain from outside, from below the window. Kara grinned savagely. Her rounds had found their target.
But, as if reminding her that they weren’t out yet, another few shots came in from the right side. “Well, we sure as hell can’t stay here!” Gimli shouted out, scurrying forward, looking almost like a crab as he tried to stay low. “We gotta get out, and the longer we wait, the worse it’s gonna be!”
Without waiting for an answer, the short, burly biker kept on running, straight out through the front door. Kara and Cross both shared a momentary look of consternation, but they both instantly knew that they’d have a better chance together.
Besides, Kara knew that she had no chance of reaching her own motorcycle, all the way out at the edge of the Hellraisers’ property, in the darkness. She had to leave with Cross.
So, both of them muttering curses under their breath, they both ran forward, chasing after Gimli.
Outside, sure enough, both Gimli’s and Cross’s motorcycles were parked right at the bottom of the porch. There was no sign of any Hellraisers, aside from hastily abandoned bottles - but the bikes were illuminated still in the flood lights mounted on the porch, making them an attractive target to anyone hiding in the darkness.
Gimli, either not recognizing or not bothering to acknowledge this danger, went charging across the porch, running hell-bent for his motorcycle. But as he reached the steps, another handful of shots came ringing out from the darkness - and the short man’s run suddenly fell apart as one of his legs gave out under him and he went tumbling down the stairs.
“Shit!” Cross shouted out as he saw his friend tumble.
But as he started forward, moving to help Gimli, Kara raised her own gun. “Close your eyes!” she shouted, obeying her own command as the barrel of the assault rifle rose.
She didn’t bother returning shots back out into the darkness - she knew that she stood no chance of connecting.
So instead, she fired up, directly into the flood light mounted on the porch above them.
The porch light shattered, plunging them into darkness as little splinters of glass rained down.
As soon as the light went out, Kara was moving, following Cross down to where Gimli lay at the bottom of the steps. Fortunately, the assault rifle had a shoulder strap, so she could sling the thing back over her shoulder and have both of her hands free.
In the darkness, she nearly slipped and fell down the stairs herself - but she could hear faint curses coming from the darkness as the shooters hiding further out lost sight of their targets. Her ploy might have inconvenienced Cross and Gimli, but it also was, at least for the moment, keeping them alive.
Reaching down, Kara felt her hands connect with Gimli’s warm shoulder. “It’s just a flesh wound!” the man grunted, although it sounded like his teeth were gritted. “Just get me up on my bike, and I’ll be fine!”
There wasn’t time to argue. Already, Kara could hear the sounds of men approaching, the Hellraisers moving in closer now that they’d lost their line of sight on their targets. Soon, they’d come close enough to spot Kara, Cross, and Gimli, even with their night vision not yet fully adjusted.
Kara grabbed onto Gimli, looping her arms beneath his armpit, and she felt Cross do the same on the other side. Kara cringed internally as she felt the man go tense from the pain as they both hauled forward, but he managed to keep his teeth locked shut and not cry out from the pain.
The bikes were just ahead, and Kara and Cross hoisted Gimli up onto his with an effort. The man might be short, but he was still surprisingly heavy!
Gimli landed in the seat of his bike with
another barely suppressed grunt of pain, but Kara felt his hands come up, reaching for the controls. “I’ve got it from here!” he insisted. “Get to the other one - I don’t think I can carry any more weight!”
A hand grabbed at Kara’s side, and she almost shrieked in surprise. But as she turned, she saw Cross’s face in the dim light, tugging her away. “Over here!” he hissed at her, pulling her towards his own motorcycle.
Kara clambered up onto the back of the chopper behind the man, not caring about where her hands went as she grabbed at him. For once, even though she was pressed up tightly against Cross, she wasn’t thinking of how it felt, of how close to this man she was squeezed.
Instead, all she could think about was getting out safely, of actually managing to escape with her life.
This was further than she had expected to come, even a half hour previously.
She wasn’t about to trip and fall on her face right before the finish line.
Even before she was settled in behind him, Cross mashed down on the starter button, leaning forward to keep low behind the handlebars as the engine beneath his legs roared into life. He gave the throttle a single twist as the motorcycle sat in neutral to get the engine hot, and then slammed his foot down to put the machine into gear.
As they pulled away, Kara heard the similar roar of Gimli’s machine jumping into petroleum-fueled life - and over that sound, as if underscoring the need to get away, more cracks of bullets rang out, the rounds zipping overhead through the foliage like deadly hornets.
And that wasn’t all. Behind them, back at the house, a longer, more sustained chattering suddenly rang out. This noise was deeper than the cracks of the pistols from the other Hellraisers out in the woods, and Kara knew that someone must have made their way downstairs and grabbed one of the assault rifles.
“Drive, go, go, go!” she urged, not bothering to whisper any longer as she leaned forward to direct the words into Cross’s ear.
The man needed no urging. They leapt forward, rushing down the dirt road and out, away from the Hellraisers’ house, as more bullets sliced into the trees from behind them.
The next few minutes were an exercise in paralyzed agony. Kara couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, couldn’t make out anything besides the shadowy shape of Cross’s shoulders just in front of her. The motorcycle’s headlight was on, but it only illuminated the area directly in front of them. When a tree came looming up out of the darkness, Cross was barely able to turn aside at the last second, and Kara felt the bark go scraping past, only fractions of an inch from her knee.
Branches, hanging down from the trees that overshadowed both sides of the path, came swiping in at their faces. Kara didn’t have her helmet, but she couldn’t hold up her hands to shield her face from the attacks for fear of falling off the back of the motorcycle as they hit the bumps in the dirt road. Instead, she had to just keep her head down as much as possible, giving up sight in exchange for protecting her eyes and face.
Behind them, she occasionally caught flashes of light from Gimli. The short man was managing to barely keep up with them, but Kara didn’t know how long he’d be able to last. From the occasional roars of protest as he struggled to change gears, he was having issues maintaining his coordination.
And then, just as she was certain that this was her Hell, that this would continue forever, it was suddenly over.
The transition was abrupt. One second, they were in the woods, bouncing across the bumpy dirt road, the bikes seeming to hop from pothole to pothole.
The next second, they were suddenly shooting across smooth tarmac, out on a two-lane country road.
Cross nearly shot all the way across the room and off the other side before he recovered, grabbing the brakes to slow them down and leaning over to turn along with the perpendicular road. The back wheel of the motorcycle threw up pebbles and dirt as it slid along the far edge of the wheel, but they managed to make the turn without falling over.
After a moment to suck in a quick breath, Kara turned, keeping one hand wrapped firmly around Cross’s waist so that she wouldn’t slide off. For a minute, there was nothing but blackness behind them, and she felt her heart jump into her throat.
A second later, however, another light came bursting out from the side road, turning to follow after them. The light made it impossible to see any details - was this Gimli, or a pursuer?
Her assault rifle was still bumping against her back and the rear of the motorcycle, and she now grabbed for it. She pulled it up; the weapon was awkward to brandish with one hand, but she managed to get it leveled as the other motorcycle behind them pulled up alongside. Her finger found the safety switch, disengaging it and getting ready to send a burst into the rider alongside them.
But as he pulled up, Gimli’s familiar voice came booming up. “Well, that worked better than expected, all things considered!” he shouted out. There was still a faint note of pain in his voice, but he didn’t seem to be having any trouble with his bike.
“Let’s pull off!” Cross shouted back, as Kara thankfully flipped the safety back on and dropped the barrel of the assault rifle. “Kill the lights and hide!”
Gimli nodded, and dropped back behind Cross as he pulled in the clutch of the chopper and slowed down. Off to their right, Kara could see the dim shape of some building, and Cross aimed over into its parking lot.
It was a general store of some sort, Kara saw, as the motorcycle’s headlight played across its front before Cross cut the power. He dropped the kickstand down, and Kara jumped off the bike and hurried over to where Gimli was parking his own.
Now out in the open, there was at least the fainter light of the moon providing some illumination. Gimli protested, but Kara forced him to sit down, her fingers carefully peeling away clothing and examining his wound.
Just as the man had said, the bullet wound appeared to be just a flesh wound, although the round had taken quite a bite out of his thigh. “You should count yourself lucky, you ass,” Kara told the man as he still tried to push her away and insist that it was nothing serious. “Another inch or two, and this would have severed your artery. You’d have been dead before you even got the motorcycle running!”
“Is he okay?” Cross called out from behind her.
She glanced back at him. Cross was standing over near the steps of the closed store, looking over at them. Why was he over there? He looked as though he was leaning on the railing. Maybe he was feeling the shock of their adventure only now starting to set in.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” she replied. “He lost some blood, but the bullet didn’t hit anything serious. We should get him stitched up, but there shouldn’t be anything long-term but a scar.”
“Good, good,” Cross said. There was definitely a note of something new in his voice. Kara turned towards him, confused. What was going on?
“Are you okay?” she asked, taking a step over to him.
The man nodded, but didn’t respond. And as he leaned forward a little, holding on tightly to the railing, Kara saw that his face was a mask of agony. What had happened?
A second later, the man leaned a little further into the moonlight, and the pale light caught a dark spot on his abdomen, radiating out from where one of his hands was pressed tightly against his chest.
Kara opened her mouth to cry out, and her feet started forwards. But before she could reach the man, she saw Cross tilt forward. His eyes closed as he toppled down to the ground...
CHAPTER 13
Before Kara could reach him, Cross’s eyes closed, and he toppled forward, down the stair of the general store and onto the dusty ground.
A moment later, the female FBI agent landed down on the ground next to him, her hands flying to where, below his ribs, Cross’s motorcycle jacket was soaked through with blood. “What the hell happened?” she gasped, trying to get his jacket unzipped.
“Bullet. On the way out.” The man’s eyes were still closed, but his lips moved, pushing out each word with an effort. “Didn’t wa
nt to say anything until we were safe.”
Kara wanted to scream. They made it out, had rescued Gimli after he had been shot - and now there was this to deal with! “You should have said something,” she hissed fiercely, even as she peeled back the remains of the man’s shirt to reveal the wound.
She had her mouth open to say more, but the words caught in her throat as her eyes fell upon the wound.
This wasn’t a flesh wound, something that could be shrugged off and dealt with later, like Gimli had taken.
The hole was in the man’s upper abdomen, lower than his diaphragm but definitely cutting through his lower cavity. There was no way that it could have missed the intestines, Kara guessed - and it might have caught a kidney on the way out. The blood seeping out of the wound was dark, suggesting contamination, although it was tough to say anything for certain in the pale light. But the wound was still bleeding, and she could feel the wetness welling up when she tried to press her hands against the hole.
Think, Kara! She tried to keep herself together, to fight down the rising sense of panic. She needed help. She couldn’t do this on her own.
A cell phone! She shifted her hands down, running them over Cross’s pants, searching for the bump in his pockets.
As she searched, the man let out a faint chuckle. “Even now, can’t keep your hands off me, huh?” he managed to get out, his voice raspy.
“Shut up,” Kara ordered him. “I need your phone.”
Her hands found it, and she managed to dig it out of his pocket. There was a passcode on it, however, preventing her from getting in. “What’s your code?” she demanded urgently.
“Five, two, seven, two.”
Kara punched this in, and breathed a gasp of relief as she saw the device unlock. She quickly dialed for emergency services, accessing the maps location to provide them with an address. Only after the man on the other end of the line had confirmed that an ambulance was on the way did she hang up.
“What about the Hellrasiers?” Cross managed to get out, as Kara switched the phone back off and resumed applying pressure to the wound in his abdomen. “Shouldn’t you call their info in?”
Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series Page 8