Cortez was the first one into the offices of a former AMP recruiting center. The gangbangers had fortified the large, open bull pen by turning over desks and stacking them.
In the weak light, Dom could see little aside from muzzle flashes. He fired at them, keeping eyes on his zone and trying not to let the screams of his companions distract him.
Cortez went down, and Dom crawled over to find part of the sergeant’s face erased by two gunshots. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and the hole where his nose had been.
“Dom!” Camilla shouted.
Moose’s shotgun sounded like bombs going off in the enclosed space of the office. Dom crawled over to Camilla and Moose, who stood and fired another blast.
A banger came around the corner holding a machete. He raised it above his head to swing down on Moose, but Dom blindsided him, breaking the banger’s jaw with his rifle butt. Then he put a burst in the guy’s chest.
Dom turned his rifle on the other hostiles in the room. He counted at least three.
Even numbers, but the F-13 soldiers had Dom and his team pinned down, and now two more bangers slipped into the room from the far hallway.
Dom fired a shot that dropped one of the guys, but return fire forced him right back down. He kept his head low, right next to Camilla.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
Dom nodded.
“Go,” Moose said. “I’ll cover you.”
“No way, man. We go together,” Dom said quietly.
The shooting paused, and in the second’s lull, Dom heard a thump and roll.
“Grenade!” Moose yelled. He grabbed the dead machete wielder and heaved the body onto the grenade as Dom and Camilla bolted for the door.
Dom dived into the hallway right behind Camilla as the explosion ripped through the office. The corpse seemed to absorb most of the blast, but a piece of shrapnel cut his arm. Another lodged like a red-hot knife in his boot.
Dom knew pain. He could handle pain. He was more worried about Moose.
Smoke drifted through the room, and Dom groped about for his rifle. He found it and brought the barrel up, scanning for hostiles and also for Moose.
Heart thumping, he strained to see in the smoky darkness.
Someone coughed. Then a flurry of gunshots forced Dom to roll over to the wall. He got up on one knee, aimed at a target, and squeezed the trigger.
The enemy’s muzzle flash went dark.
“Andre!” Dom shouted. He got up and started back toward the open office area. Camilla grabbed him by the arm, but he yanked free, moving back to find Moose. Four steps later, a second bright flash exploded in the room.
The blast knocked him backward into Camilla.
Broken ceiling panels rained down on them.
Dom breathed in cordite and coughed, his ears ringing. He tried to get up but fell back to the floor. Blood dripped from his lips.
“Moose,” he mumbled.
Through the swirling smoke, he saw a figure moving like a ghost, from the bull pen out into the hallway.
Dom reached for his rifle but couldn’t find it and drew his pistol. The phantasm coming through the smoke coalesced into the small frame of an F-13 soldier.
It took three shots to take him down. He slumped in front of Dom’s boots but then reached up, a crazed look on his face. He screamed through ragged gray speed-freak teeth.
Dom pulled the trigger twice, blowing off his chin and silencing the bloodcurdling shriek.
“Behind us!” Camilla shouted.
Dom whirled about to see two men moving through the open door outside.
He blinked again, eyes stinging from the smoke, and raised the pistol. Both men wore helmets mounted with night-vision goggles.
These weren’t gangbangers. Or cops. They wore fatigues that he had seen almost every day that his dad was home from deployments.
These were marines.
-25-
“Salvatore!” Marks shouted. “Hold up!”
Ronaldo sprinted down Roseberry Avenue, ignoring the bullets that zinged by his helmet. An ambulance rushed past him, heading in the opposite direction with injured cops who had joined the fight against F-13.
The Desert Snakes had beelined it to Florence as soon as they heard that cops from Downey were pinned down in the streets and shopping center.
Don’t be too late. Please don’t be too late.
His earpiece crackled with enraged and confused voices as he dashed to the school buses and police cars parked in the street by a strip mall. Another ambulance did a U-turn and blared off toward the closest hospital.
The radio chatter painted a desperate picture of the medical situation. The lack of doctors, nurses, and medicine had resulted in ad hoc triage. The limited staff were now working only on people they could save, and that didn’t include any wounded gangsters.
An explosion boomed from a shopping center across the street. Several Humvees had parked right outside, but no living marines or soldiers were in sight.
There were only corpses on the sidewalk and road around the building. Some were gangbangers; others …
Ronaldo resisted the urge to shout his son’s name. He scanned bodies for his boy, and then the buildings for the sniper who had fired at him earlier. Spotting no one on the rooftops, he glanced over his shoulder to confirm that Marks, Tooth, and Bettis were on his heels.
They had spent most of yesterday at the port, holding back angry mobs of civilians looking for a handout, when the fighting started. Since then, the four marines had aided the police in skirmish after skirmish with the gangs, in what was fast becoming all-out urban warfare.
Then word had come that Dom’s unit was pinned down and taking heavy casualties only a few miles from where the Desert Snakes were operating.
A muzzle flash came from a rooftop half a block away. Rounds picked at the pavement behind him. He crouched behind a Humvee and sneaked a look around the bumper.
Shadows moved through a parking lot to his right—men in hoodies and tank tops running to find cover. Ronaldo brought the rifle scope to his night-vision goggles, looking for the sniper. He found the dumbass sticking his bald head up.
“Eat this, shithead,” Ronaldo said. He squeezed off a shot and got back up, running as the man sagged out of view. Another sniper got up to take his place, but gunfire from the pharmacy roof took him out before he could fire on Ronaldo.
Thank God, he thought. There were still cops up there after all.
One of them yelled down, “Get off the road!”
Tooth caught up to Ronaldo and gave him a what the fuck? glare.
They ran to the safety of the shopping center across from the pharmacy. A smoldering armored truck lay on its side, looking like a charred turtle.
“Salvatore, what the hell, man?” Marks growled as he and Bettis ran and joined them at the wall. “You got a death wish?”
Bettis remained silent, but he was pissed too.
They all were dog tired, bruised, and banged up from twenty-four hours of fighting.
“This isn’t how we do things,” Marks said.
“Sorry, man. My son’s here somewhere.” Ronaldo started moving around the side of the building. He stopped at the corner, checked for contacts, looked back. “It’s clear. We need to get to the front.”
The police sniper on the pharmacy roof waved at them and held up two fingers, indicating that two F-13 snipers were still on the roof above them, then one finger for a sniper on an adjacent rooftop.
Ronaldo gave him a thumbs-up and pushed his night-vision optics back into position. Taking point, he took off running with the other three Desert Snakes behind him.
A gunshot cracked. Then two. Two more followed, almost simultaneous.
For an eerie moment, the night was completely quiet. Ronaldo hoped the silence didn’t mean the police sniper
was dead.
He kept running, using the time the brave cop had bought them to get to Florence Avenue. He took a left and halted at the sight of friendlies.
A group of ten marines and six cops were hunkered down behind a retaining wall outside a restaurant patio.
“Who’s in charge here?” Marks asked.
A marine raised his hand. “Staff Sergeant Patel.”
“I’m taking over,” Marks said.
“And who are you?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Marks.”
The marine straightened a bit and said, “Good to have you with us, Gunny.”
Ronaldo searched the faces one by one, then turned to his team. “He’s not here.”
“Who are you looking for?” asked the staff sergeant.
“Dad?” came a voice.
Ronaldo pushed his NVGs up and looked at the blood-streaked faces of two officers who had walked down the outside stairwell leading to the entrance of the restaurant. They stepped out into the moonlight, both wearing body armor that looked a size too big.
When Ronaldo saw Camilla and his son, his heart leaped.
“Dominic,” Ronaldo said, running over.
“Where …? How …?” Dom stammered.
Gunfire hit the retaining wall, forcing the men to scatter. Ronaldo moved in front of Dom and Camilla, shielding their bodies with his as he returned fire at the shadowy figures across the road.
One fell, his head bouncing off the concrete like a Ping-Pong ball. The other made it to cover behind a tree.
“Four o’clock!” Tooth shouted.
Staff Sergeant Patel led a team of marines to a car in the street and took up position. They fired over the hood and bumper at the approaching F-13 reinforcements who had flanked from the parking lot.
“Clear!” one of the men shouted. He ducked back down as more rounds came in from gang members still hiding in the lot.
“Get this AO locked down, God damn it!” Marks yelled.
Ronaldo motioned for Dom and Camilla to back away from the sidewalk. He joined them in the stairwell and gave his boy a hug.
Camilla nodded to Ronaldo. She limped down a stair, wincing in pain. “Great to see you, sir.”
“Are you guys okay?” he asked.
Dom’s lips quivered. “They killed Moose.”
The words took the air from Ronaldo’s lungs.
“What?”
Dom sniffled, and Ronaldo realized that his son had been crying.
“He saved us,” Dom said. “Sacrificed himself to let us escape.”
Ronaldo didn’t ask what happened, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they kill the scum who had done this and get out of here before more of their scumbag friends joined the fray.
Marks moved over, keeping low. “Shit, Dom, good to see you’re okay,” he said.
Dom managed a nod.
Marks didn’t waste any time. “They think there’s about six hostiles left inside,” he said. “But they have at least four cop hostages, and we’re sitting-fucking-ducks right here.”
“When are reinforcements arriving?” Tooth asked.
“They’re not,” said one of the marines. “We’re lucky you guys showed up.”
“What? You mean we’re it ?”
The marine who spoke was still crouched behind the retaining wall with the others. Most of them were down to their handguns.
Ronaldo didn’t want to tell them that the only reason they were here was the radio transmission he had heard earlier. He exchanged a look with Marks. They had come here to save his son, and they would do everything they could to make sure the cop hostages got out alive.
“Reform this perimeter,” Marks ordered again. “I want it tight. Combat intervals. Eyes up on that roof. Who’s my best sharpshooter here?”
“That would be me,” Ronaldo said.
“I meant out of them,” Marks said.
The other marines all looked over the wall as a voice in Spanish shouted, “¡Pinches puercos! ”
“Some asshole just called us fucking pigs,” Camilla said, raising her rifle.
The young woman was more of a firecracker than he remembered.
“Stay behind us,” Ronaldo said to Camilla. Then he glanced over the retaining wall at the courtyard between the shops and offices in the L-shaped building. Movement among the picnic tables and palm trees caught his eye.
An overweight police officer with his hands in the air staggered out across the concrete.
A gunshot pierced the silence, forcing him to run.
Laughter from one of the storefronts sounded as the F-13 soldiers took potshots.
“Over here!” Tooth yelled, waving.
The officer ran hard, avoiding another two shots. When he was a hundred feet from the retaining wall, a round to the back of the knee sent him crashing to the asphalt, screaming in agony.
“¡Ven a buscar a su hermano cochino! ” one of the gangsters yelled.
“What did he say?” Ronaldo asked.
Camilla snorted with anger. “He said to come get your …” Her features tightened. “Your filthy brother pig.”
“They’re baiting us,” Marks replied. “They’ll shoot the first person that moves out of cover.”
Tooth looked back at Marks for orders as the injured officer pleaded for help.
Another gunshot cracked, and a second bullet hit the man in his other leg. He howled in pain. Then he started crawling toward the wall, a hand up.
The next bullet took off a finger or two.
“Fuck this,” Tooth said. He moved around the corner and took off to grab the cop.
“Covering fire,” Marks said. “But watch your targets—there are hostages.”
The marines fired suppressing bursts, but Ronaldo couldn’t see any targets. Gunfire cracked behind them, in the opposite direction. They were being flanked again.
Tooth grabbed the guy and pulled him behind the wall, where a corpsman started to work on his injuries.
Marks bent down and said, “Where are they?”
The officer moaned and squirmed in agony. His eyelids began to close. Marks wiped the smear on his tag to read his name.
“Officer Peter,” he said, slapping the guy in the face to get his attention. “You have to tell us where these guys are, so we can save your friends.”
Peter mumbled something, then gritted his teeth in pain.
“AMP …” he said.
“The AMP offices,” Dom said. “That’s where they killed Moose. They must’ve all moved back inside from the other stores.”
“Show us,” Marks said.
Ronaldo hesitated. He had come here to rescue his son, not put him in more danger. But looking at him, he no longer saw a boy who needed protecting.
Dom pointed across the street. “They’re in that building, the one with the desks all piled up in front of the windows.”
Marks studied the area. He looked at another building. “If we can get to that rooftop, we might give a strike team a chance to get close. Once we start shooting, you guys have to move in fast.”
He glanced at the other Desert Snakes. “Salvatore, take the team and go with Dom. Get up there and lay down covering fire. The rest of us will hold position here until it’s clear to move up.”
Camilla called out as Dom got up and began to limp after the marines.
“Not without me!”
“No, stay here, Cam,” he said.
She hesitated, then said, “Fuck that; you’re not my CO.”
Ronaldo almost smiled, but he was too enraged and too tired to show any positive emotion. Keeping low, he followed his son across the street with Tooth, Bettis, and Camilla.
They stopped at a car and scanned the area. It looked clear. The building Marks wanted them to get to was only fift
y feet away.
“I’ll take point,” Tooth said.
He got up, but Ronaldo grabbed him, then brought up his rifle and zoomed in on the intersection of Albany Street and Saturn Avenue, a block away.
A dozen men walked onto Albany, on a collision course with the marines and cops. All of them were carrying rifles, and one even appeared to have something bigger.
“Snake One, we’re about to have company,” Ronaldo said into the comms. “Twelve hostiles, carrying small arms mostly. Maybe one rocket launcher.”
“Roger,” Marks replied. “We’ll be ready. Now, get on that roof.”
Ronaldo moved around the car and saw Marks across the street. They exchanged a wave, and Ronaldo took point.
Inside, his small team quickly cleared the rooms and found the roof access. Tooth went first, sweeping his rifle back and forth. Two cops lay where they had been shot. Their sniper rifles were beside them.
Ronaldo flashed hand signals.
Tooth, Bettis, and Camilla moved over to the left side of the roof to ambush the incoming posse while Dom followed Ronaldo to the dead cops.
Bending down, he picked up one of their sniper rifles, a bolt-action Remington 700 in .223 caliber, a round already chambered. He brought the weapon up and followed Dom’s finger toward the AMP offices.
Sighting through the scope, Ronaldo could see several guys moving behind a fort of desks. He zoomed in to look for the hostages but didn’t spot any.
“Sergeant,” Tooth hissed across the roof. He relayed hand signals to tell the story. The gangbangers would be in range in thirty seconds.
Ronaldo looked through the scope, but the gangsters were out of sight.
“Where the hell’d they go …?”
“What’s going on?” Dom asked.
A body suddenly flew out the broken window. Another guy, this one shirtless, went out next, pile-driving on his head in the courtyard.
“Execute,” Tooth said, keeping his voice low.
Dom ran over to help as they fired on the F-13 reinforcements below. The marines and cops on the street joined the firefight.
Ronaldo lined up his sights on the two men outside the offices. The shirtless guy had gotten back up and reached for a gun in his waistband. Ronaldo squeezed the trigger, knocking the guy back down with a broken spine.
Sons of War Page 34