by Leslie Jones
Mace followed closely behind, turning his rifle upward to guard Alex’s back. This wasn’t going to work. Live rounds from semiautomatic assault weapons beat rubber bullets and beanbag shells every time.
“Weapons free!” bellowed Jace, who had evidently come to the same conclusion.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he dropped the rifle and drew his sidearm, firing almost instantly at one of the shooters in the loft. The man clutched his stomach, pitched forward, and fell onto the dirt floor.
“Shooter down,” Jace shouted, “from the enclosed part of the loft.”
“Shooter down in the loft proper,” Mace added. “And third shooter secured in the first stall.”
Tag appeared underneath the loft.
“Six o’clock high,” Mace called to him, having the better visual angle.
Without hesitation, Tag swung around, firing five rounds in rapid succession into the hay loft. Someone screamed.
“Dad!” The voice rose in horror. “Dad!”
Mace could hear someone scramble through the hay and drop to his knees. Shit. A kid. “You in the loft. Throw down your weapon and surrender.”
“Fuck you!”
The five of them moved to the center of the barn, each turned outward in a loose perimeter.
“Do you want to die, kid?”
Jace, Alex, and Tag started shooting almost in tandem. Mace turned in time to see the sixth shooter shove open an occupied horse stall, level his MP5, and fall before he could get a single shot off. The horse squealed and reared in fright, barely missing the man’s prone body. Covered by the others, Alex approached it, arms up, speaking soothingly. The horse shied, but finally calmed enough for him to grab its halter. Alex stroked its neck as he led it back into the stall and secured the door.
“Throw down your weapons,” Jace called to the kid in the loft, his voice brooking no disobedience. “Your pals are dead or dying. Do you really want to join them?”
A blond head appeared at the edge of the loft. The boy’s face, streaked with tears, shone with defiance and fear. He couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“All right,” he said, a quaver in his voice. “I’ll come down. Please . . . please don’t hurt me.”
“No one will—”
The whoomp whoomp of rotor blades chopping at the air as the HMRU helicopter arrived drowned out the rest of Jace’s words. The boy whipped up an M-16, finger depressing the trigger as he sprayed rounds indiscriminately in their direction, screaming obscenities.
Mace didn’t know who fired the kill shot. At least ten rounds pierced the boy’s chest and head. He was dead before he hit the floor.
“Fuck it all,” Jace swore. “Goddammit to hell.”
Sickened, Mace stumbled toward the door. “Son of a bitch!”
Alex appeared next to him, gripping his elbow. He pulled free.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Alex said. “None of us did.”
“I know that.” Mace stopped, breathing deeply to control the rush of emotions.
“Motherfuckers brainwashed this poor kid,” Tag said. “Made him believe he couldn’t surrender. They’re as responsible for this as we are.”
Jace scrubbed a hand down his face. “Command, Team Three. Barn is secure. Commencing search for the package.”
“Roger, Team Three,” Driscoll said.
They found it in the last horse stall. The fifth shooter still wriggled to get free of the zip ties, glaring up at The Sandman, who had his heavy boot pressed against the man’s collarbone. Mace couldn’t blame him. It was a small enough expression of their shared rage over the forced killing of the boy.
A heavy green tarpaulin covered a banded wooden shipping crate in one corner; Mace and Tag tugged it off and to one side. Jace took the crowbar from a hook on the wall.
“We need to make sure,” he said. They carefully pried the lid off and removed the industrial packing material, revealing an oversized red-and-silver suitcase. Mace and Alex loosened the straps and eased open the lid.
There it lay, beautiful and deadly. Two silver neutron-generating canisters surrounding an arming switch, nestled on either side of a red case containing high explosives. A circuit board with wires connecting the various pieces completed the nuclear bomb.
Jace keyed his mike. “Command, Team Three. Package is secure.”
“Roger, Team Three. Team Two is taking fire. Can you maintain a protective posture where you are?”
Could they guard the nuke against reacquisition by the white supremacists? Damned right they could, and would.
“Affirmative, Command. We’ll hold steady here,” Jace said. “Sandman, stay here with the nuke. Tag, there’s an open portal in the loft. See what you can do to help Team Two. Mace, Alex, we’ll take the front door. No one gets in.”
“Roger that.”
“Got it, boss.”
They scattered to their assigned positions.
The human-sized entrance through which they’d entered, as opposed to the huge, closed double doors at the other end of the barn, showed both the white supremacists and the friendly forces hunkered down in a firefight. The HMRU helicopter circled five hundred feet above them. The copilot had flipped on the searchlight.
They all heard the muted whoomph, saw the streak of dark gray smoke twisting into the air from the direction of the guard shack. Mace barely had time to breathe “Oh, shit!” before the RPG exploded against the helicopter’s tail boom. He watched with horror as pieces of the tail rotor blew apart in the ball of fire, thrown in all directions as the helicopter spun to the left and dropped. A figure in a crewman’s flight suit gripped both sides of the open door, but the helicopter bucked and he pitched headfirst out the door. The pilot dropped the collective and autorotated, then flared it to grab the air, working desperately to bring it to the ground without crashing.
“Losing altitude,” he said, voice calm in their earpieces. “Brace for impact.”
Time seemed to stop until the helicopter slammed into the ground, glass shattering as most of the windows burst. One of the struts collapsed as the main rotor hit the grass and buckled. They heard the cries and groans of the passengers through the pilot’s headset.
“Status report,” Driscoll said. “Pilot, respond.”
No one answered.
“Helo, please acknowledge. Anyone available, respond. Shit. Can anyone see them?”
From his position, Mace could see shapes moving around. “Roger, Command. I see activity. Looks like the pilot’s down, though, and I don’t see the copilot.”
“Hello? Hello, is anyone out there?” A woman’s voice shrieked through the headset, so high-pitched it hurt his ears. “We need medical help right away.”
“Identify yourself,” Driscoll said. “Can you tell me the status of those on board? How badly are you hurt?”
“I’m one of the forensic scientists,” she said, sounding slightly calmer. “We have three injured. My leg is broken. Manny’s unconscious. One of the FBI agents has broken ribs, I think, and he’s coughing up blood. He’s not looking so good. I think the pilot is dead. The copilot was thrown out of the cockpit and isn’t moving. Neither is the crewman who fell.”
“I need to get out there,” Mace said. “Evaluate the situation and stabilize them, if I can.”
“Team Three, stand by,” Driscoll said. “Control, we need those ambulances down here stat.”
“Roger, Command,” Javier Castellanos said. “Sending them down now, but I won’t put them in the middle of a firefight. Can you secure the helicopter?”
Mace saw figures running through the dawn mist. Two armed women ran toward the children’s dormitory, but the others headed directly for the helicopter. “Contact, ten o’clock west. Four men, all armed.”
“Oh, my God,” the woman shrilled. “They’re coming right for us.”
“Team Three, intercept. Protect that helo,” Driscoll commanded.
“Roger that,” Jace said. “Sandman, take this door. Mace, Alex, with me. Le
t’s move.”
The three operators sprinted toward the downed aircraft, zigzagging across the open field. The skinheads saw them and raised their rifles, firing as they ran. Mace felt the whine of a bullet pass by his head and kicked it harder. He returned fire, hearing the others do the same, glad they’d switched to their sidearms and live ammunition.
The separatists scattered, taking refuge behind the refrigerator and old farm truck.
Mace dove behind the combine alongside Jace. Alex crouched behind the bales of straw, rising to return fire. One of the separatists tumbled to the ground.
“Cover me,” Mace called, pushing away from the huge front tire. Trusting his teammates to cover his six, he leaped over the combine’s blades and ran flat out toward the helicopter. The crewman who’d fallen lay to his left; he dropped to slide in beside him, pressing his fingers to the man’s carotid artery. No pulse.
He rolled to his feet. A bullet plowed into the ground near his boot, and he felt something slap against his pack. Keeping a low profile, he sprinted the rest of the way to the helicopter, firing a few wild rounds to keep the separatists back.
“Friendly coming aboard,” he shouted, leaping onto the strut and into the main cabin. A man wearing a flight suit, on his belly at the far door, crabbed around into a half sit-up and pointed his semiautomatic toward Mace, finger on the trigger.
“Friend,” Mace barked. “Stand down, crewman. What’s your status?”
The crewman relaxed. “I’m good. Just bumps and bruises.”
Mace could see blood dripping down the side of his face, but he seemed both mobile and able, so he turned to the other occupants in the confined space.
One of the FBI agents crouched to the side of the far cabin door, sidearm in his hand. They nodded to one another, immediately refocusing on their primary objectives. The woman who’d called for help sat awkwardly behind the copilot’s seat, her leg bent at an unnatural angle, cradling a man’s unconscious head in her lap. Another member of the HMRU team crouched near her, the whites of his eyes showing as he swallowed over and over again. When he saw Mace, hope flared on his face.
“I’m coming in,” Alex bellowed, jumping into the cabin. He immediately turned, firing out the door. “Got your back, bro.”
The second FBI special agent pressed a towel against the third’s chest, blood coating his hands. Mace wasted no time dropping his pack and pulling off his medical bag, briefly fingering the bullet hole piercing it. Fuckers had missed. “What happened?”
“One of the pieces of our equipment broke free and slammed into him. He’s having a hard time breathing.”
Bullets pinged against the outer skin of the helicopter. Alex and the FBI agent popped off round after round, keeping the separatists back. The forensic scientist cowered, hands pressed to her ears, her hair in wild disarray.
Mace listened to the radio chatter as he checked the man’s pupils. He shivered with shock and pain. Lifting the towel, Mace cut away the man’s shirt and examined the injury. He pulled gauze and a wound seal kit from his pack, cleaned the area as best he could, then pressed the seal over the area, preventing air from entering his chest and collapsing a lung. Finally, he spread an emergency blanket over him.
“Watch him, okay?” he said to the other agent. “If he loses consciousness, sound off.”
“I will. Could you check on the pilot?”
“Yeah.” He made his way into the cockpit. The pilot was slumped over the cyclic, eyes closed. His helmeted head rested against an instrument panel, face covered in blood. Mace pressed three fingers to his neck.
“Pilot’s alive,” he reported, “but unconscious. We’ll need a back board for him.”
“Tango approaching on your twelve o’clock, Mace,” Tag shouted from the barn loft. “I don’t have the right angle.”
Shots echoed through the cabin. The woman screamed. Mace scrambled out of the cockpit in time to see the FBI agent go down. One of the separatists climbed in, aiming at the hurt crewman. Mace shot him twice in the chest; his body jerked, and he fell backward to the ground.
The slide of his handgun locked back. Shit. He was out of ammo.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked, going to check on the agent. He’d been shot in the head. Mace scooped up his sidearm, pulling him out of the way and taking his place.
“Everyone converged on the helo,” Jace said. “But we got it under control. We’re mopping up now.”
“I’m out of ammo,” the crewman said.
“It’s almost over,” Mace said. “You’re good.”
The gunfire ceased. Mace heard shouts for the skinheads to surrender. He hopped down onto the skid, immediately spotting a teenager careening his way, heading for the trees. He snapped the handgun up, tracking the boy with his finger hovering at the trigger.
No.
Of its own volition, his arm dropped. Not another kid. Not today.
Instead, he holstered the gun and jumped off the strut, took three running steps, and tackled the boy, riding him down hard. Mace flipped him over, knee at the small of his back, and fastened the flex cuffs to his wrists.
He caught movement from of the corner of his eye. Like a flash-frame movie, he saw a woman round the end of the blown-off tail rotor. He had every chance to note denim overalls over a red flannel shirt, the camouflaged baseball cap crammed atop her blonde head, and the jumble of black tattoos spidering down her arms. The American-made Barrett REC7 aimed at his head. Time slowed and stretched as Mace slowly, too damned slowly, drew his sidearm and aimed.
“Mace, look out!”
A body slammed into him, knocking him sideways. Time snapped back into the here-and-now. He felt the bullet tear into his shoulder, experienced the instant flare of agony. He and Alex hit the ground together, and for a moment both lay stunned.
Wracking nausea blew through him. He shifted from his side to his stomach and vomited, then forced himself to sit up and cast about for the shooter. She lay on her stomach in handcuffs, the barrels of five weapons pointed at her head, glaring from an eye rapidly swelling shut.
Bitch.
He turned to Alex, who groaned but had not moved. “Thanks, buddy. I guess I’m getting slow in my old age.”
Alex’s back was still to him, blood smeared along his side. Something in Mace’s gut froze and congealed as Alex groaned again.
“Alex. Shit. Alex!”
“Quit yelling in my ear. I can hear you just fine.”
Mace chuffed out a relieved breath. “Thank Christ. Is that my blood? I caught a round in the shoulder. Which, thanks to you, is just a minor ding.”
“Good.” Alex coughed. “Saving your ass is becoming a habit.”
“That was some nice tackle,” Mace said. Why wasn’t he jumping to his feet and laughing like the knucklehead he was? Shit. Somehow he must have been hit, as well. “You want to turn over and let me take a look?”
“Nah, I’m good. Just gonna rest for a few.”
He barely noticed his teammates gathering around them. Gently, reluctantly, he eased Alex onto his back, supporting his head so it didn’t hit the ground, then unbuckled his tactical vest and eased it from his body. Probed the hole near his armpit. Found the entry wound, which soaked his hands with his friend’s blood. Found the exit wound on his upper back, allowing the single bullet to pass through Alex and enter Mace’s shoulder. Fuck.
“My medic bag—” he started.
“Here.” Jace shoved it into his hands.
Someone yelled for the EMTs, but Mace barely heard it over the roaring in his ears. He leaned over until he could see Alex’s eyes. His pupils were dilated and his face had leached of all color, save for the blood flecked around his mouth.
Mace squeezed his arm. “You got a little scratch there. I’m going to put a Band-Aid on it, okay?”
Alex managed a faint nod. “Gimme a sec to catch my breath, and we’ll all go get some beers.”
“You got it, kid. First round’s on me.”
He cut Alex’s uniform away, revealing the mangled skin and tissue above his ribs. Suppressing his own nausea and pain, he grabbed a fistful of gauze, wiping away the blood, trying to assess the extent of the damage. The thin material became saturated in an instant, and his heart sank. Even applying a wound seal didn’t fully stop the flow of blood.
“Okay, kid. You’ve earned yourself a ride in a cool bird.” He glanced at Jace, who was already on his radio calling for a Life Flight helicopter. “We’ll get you all patched up, okay?”
“Sounds good. We won, right?”
“You bet your ass we did. We stopped these motherfuckers and have the nuke safely under our control. You did it, kid.”
Someone shoved a liquid bag and tubing into his hands, and he wasted no time inserting the needle into Alex’s arm and starting a saline drip. His hand settled onto the farm boy’s forehead, his gut roiling at the clammy skin and shallow breaths. A fit of coughing exhausted Alex, more blood speckling his mouth.
Mace turned his head. “Get those goddamned ambulances down here. Now!”
“I could go for that beer now, dude,” Alex said, voice feeble. “I’m so thirsty.”
“I’ll personally bring you one, Alex,” Mace said, gripping his hand hard. “Just hang on a bit longer, okay? Keep your eyes on me.”
“You’re not that pretty. Where’s Lark? I could . . . stare into her eyes . . .”
Tears pressed against the back of Mace’s eyes as the churn in his gut grew worse. Alex’s injuries were critical. If he didn’t get to a hospital fast . . . Mace shut the thought from his mind. Alex wouldn’t die today. Not on his watch.
He needed to keep the kid conscious. “Talk to me. Tell me . . . tell me about your farm. The sunsets. You’re always going on about the sunsets.”
A corner of Alex’s mouth tipped up. “Nothing sweeter than the sun going down in Iowa. You can sit behind the windmill. Brilliant reds . . . and yellows. It’s like God paints . . . the sky.”
He shivered, starting to go into shock. Mace tore off his jacket, but his teammates were faster, tucking their coats around his limbs and under his head.