“Uh, I think you got ’em,” said David, appearing above the barrier on the other side.
“I just hope I didn’t kill anyone on the next block. These bullets are crazy,” said Nathan.
Bravo side hopped over the barrier, landing a few feet from where Nathan lay.
“Jesus! That’s one way to do it. Everyone in that car was dead before it hit the intersection, by the way,” said Bravo.
“I wasn’t taking any chances,” said Nathan.
“Apparently not,” said Bravo, turning to David. “How’s the shoulder?”
“I just need to wrap it in hemo gauze to stop the bleeding.”
“Wrap it on the run, Marine Corps!” yelled Alpha, rushing up to the group. “We need to clear this area right now. This bought us some time, but every motherfucker around here has a cell phone, with their friendly neighborhood cartel boss on speed dial. They’re calling this shit in as I run my mouth. We’re jogging from here.”
A few seconds later, they crossed the intersection at a slow trot. The backpack cut cruelly into Nathan’s shoulders, weighing him down with every step. He hoped Alpha wasn’t serious about jogging the rest of the way.
CHAPTER 21
Keira vomited near the corner of Calle H and Marmoleros. It wasn’t the stomach-pitching, fire-hose event she expected, but it still sucked. She felt a second wave coming and resumed her position on the curb—legs spread, hands on her knees. For some odd reason, she felt bad about puking on the dusty, oil-stained sidewalk. Her stomach heaved, launching a small mouthful onto the street. Not so bad this time.
Nathan crowded her on the left. “Try to breathe slowly and deeply.”
She wanted to push him away. It was a little hard to breathe when ejecting your stomach after jogging more than a mile with a forty-pound backpack. Instead, she nodded from the uncomfortable position and spit a few times, trying to get the taste out of her mouth before standing upright.
“I’m fine now,” she said.
“I told you to lay off the chili mac,” he said.
She laughed, standing up slowly.
“If you’re not puking, you’re not trying,” said David, crouched on the street several feet away, aiming his rifle down the street they had just traveled.
Car tires squealed nearby, drawing Alpha across the street from a hidden position between two cars.
“Break’s over. Jose said there’s a ton of radio traffic on cartel frequencies. Give me one more minute, and I’ll give you all the time in the world to puke,” said Alpha. “We’re almost there.”
“You said we were almost there ten minutes ago,” said Keira.
“Now we’re really almost there,” he said. “It’s just down the street.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she said, reaching out to her son. “How are you doing, sweetie?”
She knew the answer. Nathan had carried him off and on since they’d started Alpha’s forced march after the gas station ambush, Owen spending more time in his dad’s arms than on his own feet toward the end. She was amazed Owen had made it as far as he had. The combination of heat, stress, and Alpha’s merciless pace had taken a toll on all of them.
“I’m OK,” he said. “I’m sorry I made Dad carry me.”
“Don’t be silly, Owen. Your dad doesn’t mind,” she said, glancing at Nathan, who moved sluggishly into place behind the two commandos.
She wasn’t sure how Nathan had managed to carry Owen. She’d tried to give him a break early in the forced jog before quickly realizing she could carry either the backpack or Owen, but not both. She put him down after taking no more than a dozen labored steps, her legs rubbery after half of them. Nathan carried him the rest of the way without complaining. It made her feel better about their chances of survival. He looked determined and capable—adapted to their new reality. If they were going to survive, she’d have to make the same transformation. They couldn’t survive on Nathan’s attitude alone.
“A few more minutes, and we’ll be in a car the rest of the way. Promise,” she added. “Catch up with your dad.”
Owen nodded and marched off to join Nathan. She took another moment to catch her breath before falling in line behind the already moving group.
“You sure you’re all right?” said David, shuffling in her direction.
“As long as Alpha isn’t full of shit about the time, I’ll be fine,” she said, noticing the tightly stretched gauze covering his lower left shoulder. “How bad is your shoulder?”
“Not bad, but this stuff only stops the flow,” he said, gesturing for her get moving.
She took one more deep breath and jogged after her son, hearing another long tire screech somewhere within the neighborhood. How in the hell did they hope to get out of here by car? On foot they could hide, kind of. Surely driving the streets would draw a ton of attention.
One step at a time. They had to get to the cars first.
Her stomach in a tight, painful knot, she lumbered behind Owen, thigh muscles tightening. This would be a shitty time for a leg cramp. Another car engine revved nearby—somewhere behind them—causing her to pick up the pace. Real shitty.
Ahead, Alpha kicked a metal gate, crashing it into the yard next to them.
“Get inside and stay low,” he hissed.
They quickly filed through the gate, sliding down the inside of the shoulder-height stucco wall bordering the sidewalk. Alpha pushed the squeaky gate shut and crouched on the other side of the opening, opposite David. The muffled engine sounds grew louder until she heard a worn brake squeal nearby.
“They’re at the corner we just left,” he whispered, raising his rifle and sliding its barrel a few inches through the closed gate.
Would they see her vomit on the side of the street and put two and two together? She hugged Owen tight as the deep thrumming crescendoed. For a brief moment, the sound level fell, indicating the car had passed, before it started to rise again. Shit. Were they backing up? She let go of Owen and slid the MP-20 into a ready position across her tactical vest.
“Second car,” whispered Alpha.
She grabbed Owen again and held him until the second car passed. As the sound of the engines faded, Alpha peeked over the top of the wall. He stared down the street until it fell quiet.
“Two cars loaded with cartel heavies,” said Alpha. “They’re just cruising around, hoping to get lucky.”
“How much farther. For real?” she said.
“You can see it from here. We’re headed to an abandoned school on the opposite side of the street. The tall chain-link fence marks the start of the school. We can walk the rest of the way. They won’t double back.”
She turned to her son. “We’re almost there.”
“Good. I’m too tired to walk anymore.”
“You can sleep the rest of the night in the car,” she added.
Somehow she doubted that was true, but she said it anyway. She couldn’t imagine sleep would come easily, if it came at all. The kid needed something to cling to.
They filed back through the gate and continued west on the sidewalk. She hadn’t thought it was possible, but Avenida Marmoleros took Mexicali’s dilapidated motif to a new level. The farther they moved from the US–Mexico border, the worse it looked. Ever-present graffiti. Boarded windows. Cracked walls. Collapsed roofs. Bullet holes. Stripped cars. Trash everywhere. The city was in an unrecoverable state of neglect, plagued by violence and ruled by gunmen.
The fence Alpha had referenced barely qualified as a barrier. Twisted, unraveled sections of chain link clung to bent poles. The school beyond it looked worse. Calling it abandoned was a kind description. Destroyed would have been more appropriate. The right half of the one-story building just beyond the fence had collapsed, its flat roof angled steeply into a soccer field littered with piles of metal and wood scrap. The only reason she assumed it had been a soccer field was based on the warped rectangular goal visible beyond the scattered debris.
Alpha led them past the school and into
a narrow passage beside a shuttered, graffiti-covered auto-parts business. They passed between the school’s chain-link fence—surprisingly intact here—and a head-high wall topped with haphazardly placed coils of rusted razor wire that grabbed at the top of her night-vision goggles if she rose from a stoop.
They continued along the path to the southwest corner of the property, where two figures inside the school yard pulled open a neatly cut section of the fence to admit them. Alpha writhed through the fence first, while Bravo continued on several steps to guard the alley the passage opened on to. Once they’d all passed through the fence, Alpha ushered them through a dented metal door into the building next to the fence.
The room met expectations established by the school’s exterior. The walls were covered in graffiti and scorched in several places. Squatters’ cooking fires, Keira imagined. A long, cracked chalkboard leaned against the southern wall to her right. The windows on the opposite side of the room had been boarded over but were surprisingly intact. In between the front and back walls lay the remains of a classroom. Broken metal desks and facedown bookcases. The door slammed shut behind them.
“You can ditch the night vision,” said Alpha.
Keira lifted the goggles attached to her helmet and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the interior light. She glanced at the intact windows again, then behind her at the metal door, which looked new from the inside. “This room looks like a movie set,” she said.
“The whole place has been more or less staged,” said Alpha, walking between them to open the door leading deeper into the school.
“Does the cartel know about this?” said Nathan, looking around.
“The cartel knows everything,” he said. “But this place is mostly unknown to the rank and file. It’s also off-limits by order of the cartel jefe who rents us all of our space in Mexicali.”
Keira patted Owen’s shoulder. “We can rest here, sweetie.”
“No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid,” said Alpha. “The gas station scene generated a lot of communications traffic. Jose wants you out of here immediately, before every cartel bozo looking to earn a bonus shows up.”
“Christ, we just got here,” said Nathan. “We need a break!”
“You can recuperate on the road,” said Alpha. “Last time I checked, driving wasn’t a physical activity.”
“Our car trips haven’t exactly been relaxing lately.”
Alpha opened the door, revealing a dimly lit hallway. “My mission is to get you to the Route 2 and 20 interchange—alive. The chances of a successful mission decrease every second we spend this close to the center of town.”
“It’s fine, Nate,” Keira said. “I’m fine. I want to get Owen as far from here as possible.”
Nathan sighed, then nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
The hallway and adjoining classrooms smelled musty and had been stripped bare, explaining the scrap piles spread over the soccer field. Keira now wondered if the school’s entire exterior facade had been carefully crafted to discourage investigation, right down to the partially collapsed building.
At the end of the hallway, the Alpha directed them into the last classroom on the left, which contained a surprise. Two metallic gray, midsize SUVs, side by side, facing the wall on the right side of the room.
Keira and Nathan dumped their backpacks onto the floor. Staring at the SUVs, Keira couldn’t help asking the first question that popped into her head. “How did you get the cars in here?”
Alpha laughed. “I thought you might ask how we plan on getting them out.”
“The answer to one question satisfies the other,” said Nathan.
“That it does,” replied Alpha. “The wall they’re facing is obviously fake. Well, it’s a real wall, but it can be pulled down from the outside—when we’re ready.”
The windows in the doors of the SUVs looked odd. Each was rolled down a third of the way, topped by a thick metal bar spanning the top of the window.
David must have seen the same thing. “What’s up with the windows?” he said.
“Retrofitted bullet-resistant glass. We installed a single molded sheet that extends from the metal support bar to the bottom of the door. The entire door serves as a shield. We left the top third open so you can shoot. The metal bar extends into the door frame on each side, keeping the glass in place.”
David reached out to touch one of the windows. “What about the front windshield and rear cargo windows?”
Alpha shook his head. “We purchased these off a commercial lot. It wasn’t feasible to replace the windshield without some serious modification to the upper chassis. We’ve bolted a custom-cut sheet of glass behind the rear seat bench, extending to the top of the seat. You’re covered from the sides and rear.”
“But nothing helping us up front,” said David.
“You got the engine block and your tactical armor,” said Alpha. “Look on the bright side—you can shoot forward if you need to.”
“How bullet resistant are the side windows?”
“Standard-issue, jacketed semisteel-core rifle rounds will not penetrate. When you start getting into the tungsten-carbide stuff, all bets are off. You’ll know when something like that hits one of the windows. You don’t want to be there when the next one hits.”
“Four-wheel drive, I assume?” added David.
“You assume correct. Full spare mounted inside and under the rear compartment, which will be a pain in the ass to access. We packed the compartment tight with the supplies you’ll need to get past Arizona. Fuel cans. More MREs than you can stomach. Water. Medical. Six-eight ammo for your rifles. Even a tent and some sleeping bags.”
“When did you run these last?” said Nathan.
“I honestly don’t know,” said Alpha, glancing at Bravo, who shrugged. “The guys you saw outside arrived a few hours earlier and said everything checked out.”
“Does it matter which vehicle we’re in?” Keira asked.
“Take your pick. For all practical purposes, they’re identical.”
“In that case, this one looks good,” she said, opening the rear door of the SUV directly in front of them.
“Great choice,” said Alpha, cracking the first smile she’d seen since they’d met him.
“You’ll find a handheld radio in the glove box, tuned to the channel we’ll use to communicate between vehicles. My team will lead. You follow closely—less than a half car length. Report anything that doesn’t look right.”
“The whole city doesn’t look right,” said Keira.
“Funny. Report any threats, real or perceived, and we’ll handle the rest. It’s important that you stay close. If a car gets between us, things will get very complicated. With any luck, we’ll be at the interchange in twenty minutes. Questions? No? Good. Let’s get on the road.”
Less than a minute later, they were situated in the SUV according to David’s tactical seating plan. Owen sat in the middle of the rear bench, two backpacks separating him from the right passenger door. Keira sat next to him, her assigned field of fire extending from the left side of the car to the rear. Optimally, she’d drive instead of David, freeing their most qualified shooter to occupy the most flexible firing position. Realistically, she didn’t trust herself to drive under fire well enough to suggest the switch. Emotionally, she had no intention of leaving her son’s side.
Her husband peered back between the front seats. “Ready, buddy?”
Owen gave him a thumbs-up, and Nathan reached back to give him a high five.
“How’s Mom doing?” he said.
“Never been better,” she said, purposely overdoing a smile.
Nathan nodded sharply and smiled. “I have a good feeling about this.”
“You keep saying that,” said Keira, her voice trailing off. Nathan’s words had rekindled a thought.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Maybe nothing, but why would both cars be identically loaded with supplies? We’re the only ones going any distance
.”
“Jose said they were all pulling out and heading north,” said Nathan.
“Yeah, but not right now,” said David. “And these two guys wouldn’t just be taking off on their own.”
“I don’t know,” Keira said. “I just found it odd.”
“It sure as hell is,” said David, making as if to open his door, then freezing as Alpha’s digitized voice squawked over the encrypted handheld radio.
“Ready to roll?”
David sat back in his seat, eyes narrowed. He shared a dark glance with Nathan and Keira in turn, then shook his head. “Either way,” he said, “we can’t hang around here. If they stay with us after we get out on the road, we’ll deal with it then.”
“You reading me?” Alpha pressed. “Ready?”
Nathan picked up the radio and pushed the “Transmit” button. “Affirmative. Lead the way.”
“Remember to keep the distance between the two cars as close as possible. We’ll turn sharp right coming out of the building, then left in the alley.”
“Copy that,” said Nathan.
“Start your car. The wall comes down in three, two, one.”
As the SUV rumbled to life, the classroom wall in front of them fell like a ramp, crashing into the ground. A thick cloud of dust exploded from the impact, obscuring their view beyond the room.
“That was cool,” said Owen.
“Not something you see every day,” Keira agreed.
Alpha’s SUV pulled forward and stopped on the crashed section of wall. Two figures emerged from the swirling haze, immediately absorbed by the vehicle. The men who’d let them through the fence, Keira imagined.
“Alpha, your brake lights are out,” said Nathan.
“All taillights have been disabled,” replied the commando.
“What about the front lights?” David asked.
“We’ll run with headlights inside the city, so we don’t stand out. Once on the outskirts, we run dark.”
Rogue State (Fractured State Series Book 2) Page 13