Primal

by D. J. Molles

  But it also wasn’t impossible.

  Lee put the sights on the first Apache, which was broadside to him. He aimed for the nose, gave his sight picture a lead, and some elevation, and then pulled the trigger.

  Five round burst.

  The moment the sights settled and became clear again, he gave another five round burst.

  And another. And another.

  He watched the hits on the gunship’s body. Ripping through the control modules under the cockpit, across the main body where all the heavy machinery lay, and then into the tail boom, shredding fiberglass and aluminum, and wrecking the helicopter’s innards.

  The spall burst out as the rounds struck, like gouts of dust. The last burst of rounds from Lee clattered across the Apache’s tail rotor, and Lee saw bits of black go spinning off into the air.

  The Apache wobbled violently. A noise reached Lee’s ears, like mechanical things tearing themselves apart.

  The Apache began to spin, at first gaining altitude as it did. For a few seconds, it looked like the pilot might be able to stabilize it, and the helicopter pointed it’s nose towards the sunset, the pilots clearly intending to get the hell out of there…

  Then something came loose. Something slammed wrong on the bird’s interior. The noise of it was like the sound of cars colliding. And immediately, black smoke began to gutter from the engine housing, as the Apache tried hard to head west, but rapidly dropped altitude, and began to spin out of control.

  Lee didn’t wait to see it crash—maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t, but it was damn sure out of the fight.

  He gulped air, and shifted his point of aim.

  The other Apache was already turning on him.

  Lee fired wildly, trying to get rounds out, even as the Apache began to move laterally to its threat, rather than sticking to its previous hover. Its main gun came around, now half turned, now three quarters, and now facing Lee.

  Lee released the M240 and dove out the back of the Blackhawk. He hit the dirt in a tumble of limbs, rolling across Mr. Daniels’s corpse, as the center of the Blackhawk flew to pieces in a barrage of fire from the Apache’s main cannon.

  There was a distant crash, and Lee knew the first Apache had gone down.

  He rolled, and caught a glimpse of the sky through the open doors of the Blackhawk, and he saw the second Apache, roaring towards him.

  Lee’s rounds had been ineffective.

  And now it was just him and a gunship.

  The Apache roared overhead, the wind beating at Lee’s face.

  Lee got up and scrambled across the front of the Blackhawk’s nose, to where Tex lay on the other side. The body of the Blackhawk was hardly any cover from the Apache’s guns, but it was better than being out in the open.

  Lee skidded to a stop beside Tex, whose eyes were wide—and enraged.

  Lee glanced skyward, and saw the Apache tilting, banking hard to the right, coming around for another pass.

  Probably the only one it would need.

  Lee pulled the gag out of Tex’s mouth, then hooked his hands into Tex’s armpits and pulled him closer towards the semi-cover of the Blackhawk’s cockpit.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Tex yelled, his words mushy after so long with a gag in his mouth.

  “Tryna get out of here alive!” Lee snapped, as his back hit the body of the Blackhawk.

  “You don’t shoot a fucking M240 at a fucking Apache!”

  “Didn’t have another choice!”

  The clatter of Apache rotors, approaching.

  The pilot, searching for his targets.

  Would probably end up chewing the Blackhawk to shreds to be safe.

  Lee held onto Tex, who was still cursing at him.

  That was okay. Lee understood.

  He sucked in air thick with dust and spent propellant and the acrid chemical scent of explosive 20mm rounds. It stung in his throat, and dried his tongue. He looked up into the darkening sky. Looked at the refinery, with its cloud of steam crowning it.

  His eyes flicked to the left, and he saw the Apache coming around, catching them now in its visuals, and bringing its main gun to bear.

  Lee couldn’t outrun this.

  He did the only thing that came to his mind in that moment.

  He pushed Tex to the ground, and flattened his body over him.

  His body wouldn’t stop one of the rounds. But it might save Tex from shrapnel.

  Tex’s eyes glared up at Lee, disbelieving.

  “It’s okay.” Lee said. “I’m okay.”

  There was a sound like the air being rent.

  And then that distinctive clatter.

  Of mechanical things gone wrong.

  Lee dared a glance over his shoulder.

  Saw the remaining Apache dipping sideways, spewing black smoke, pounded by a barrage of incoming tracer rounds from the east. It spun, its nose going skyward, its main gun spitting out at nothing.

  Lee looked to the east, tracking multiple lines of concentrated tracer fire back to their sources, and found the silhouettes of four military vehicles about a quarter of a mile distant, sitting stationary to give their gunners a stable platform.

  Lee’s jangled brain was so shocked by the simple prospect of not being in a million pieces that it took him a moment to connect the dots.

  Whoever the hell that was, they must’ve been the ones that took out the Cornerstone guards.

  He had no idea who it was, but in that moment, the old adage was true: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And those were his best friends at that moment.

  The Apache hit the ground and tumbled in a clatter of disintegrating rotors and dirt and metal components flying out like debris from an asteroid strike. It rolled into the center of the paved road that led to the refinery, and stopped in a wash of dust and smoke.

  “Get me up!” Tex yelled.

  Lee snapped back to the present.

  He was still alive.

  He was still in the fight.

  He’d found a path.

  THIRTY

  ─▬▬▬─

  SAVAGES

  Lee wrenched himself off of Tex. Went to the nearest Cornerstone body—he had no idea where he’d dropped the other knife, but they all had one on their kit. He batted around the dead man’s rig until he found it, then returned to Tex, and cut him free.

  In the distance, Lee became aware of the rumble of approaching engines.

  “Who the hell is that?” Tex demanded as he stumbled to his feet.

  “No clue,” Lee said, working the blade through the zip-cuffs still attached to his own wrist and ankle. “But friendly or not, I’d like to be armed when they get here.”

  Lee and Tex turned to the dead bodies of the Cornerstone operatives.

  The Apache that had fired on Lee and chewed up the side of the Blackhawk had also taken out two of the corpses, scattering them into pieces and rendering their kit useless—their armor was mangled and torn, their weapons looking untrustworthy.

  But the other two—the ones that had been on Tex—were unmarred.

  Except for the bullet holes in their heads.

  Lee and Tex rushed to these two bodies, each taking one.

  Lee stripped the rifle and sling from the body. A SCAR-16. Lee was familiar enough with the platform to use it. He checked the magazine and the chamber. The previous owner hadn’t even had a chance to fire a round—the rifle was fully loaded.

  Lee set the rifle next to him, casting a glance over his shoulder and seeing that the vehicles were close now—only a few hundred yards away. Two Humvees and two MATVs.

  He ripped the Velcro cummerbund from the dead man’s armor, then grabbed it by the shoulder straps and pulled it free, trailing comm wires.

  A piece of dirt to Lee’s left exploded.

  His first thought was that the approaching vehicles had fired on him. But then the rifle report splashed over him, and he snapped his head towards the refinery, and saw in the shadows of the structure, a white shape, spewing
puffs of gunsmoke, and sending more lead his way.

  Mateo.

  “Cover!” Tex yelled, but Lee was already moving. The dead operative’s arm caught up in the plate carrier for a moment, forcing Lee to drag the whole body, but with a violent jerk, the arm flopped loose and Lee dove for cover around the front of the Blackhawk.

  He skidded through the dirt, resisting the urge to hug the side of the helicopter, but instead thrust himself away from it to improve his angling.

  Tex was right on his ass, but he turned the front of the helicopter too sharp, and his legs went out from under him, sliding in the layer of gravel that had accumulated on the top of the battered pavement.

  Lee swore, dropped the plate carrier from his left hand, then reached out for Tex.

  Tex lurched up to get his feet under him. He reached for Lee.

  Then toppled sideways in a spray of blood.

  Lee yelled. Maybe his name. Maybe another curse. All he could tell was that his throat felt scraped raw.

  Tex was still alive.

  The left half of his face was missing.

  His mouth worked. Hand still reaching for Lee.

  Lee grabbed him by the wrist and hauled backwards, pulling the body across the gravel-strewn pavement, into cover. A flurry of bullet impacts chased at Tex’s feet.

  The approaching vehicles slewed to a stop, kicking up yellow clouds, their gunners swinging their turrets around and firing heavy bursts of .50 caliber fire towards the refinery.

  Lee grabbed Tex by the head, trying not to stick his fingers where the flesh had been torn. Half of Tex’s upper teeth were missing. His mouth was filling up with blood. He tried to speak and then coughed, splattering Lee’s face with it.

  Lee blinked it away, then tilted Tex’s head to the side, letting the blood fall out of his mouth so he could breathe. Tex pulled in a shuddering lungful, then tried to speak again, but he couldn’t make words. All that came out was “Guh. Guh.”

  He had enough of his mouth left that he should’ve been able to say something.

  Maybe it was just the shock.

  But Lee thought something much worse: Something went into his brain.

  Bullet fragment. Bone fragment. It didn’t matter.

  Lee’s eyes searched the bleeding tatters of Tex’s opened face, trying to think if there was anything that he could do. He found himself saying, “Hang on, Tex! Hang on!” But he didn’t know what he was telling Tex to hang on for.

  His mind ran in the same, tight loop.

  Through all of his medical training for combat trauma.

  But even the best medic couldn’t do anything about a shot to the head.

  Brain swelling. Maybe I can give him an ice pack to keep the brain from swelling too much.

  He lifted his head and saw figures running towards him, sprinting in that hunched manner that every man takes when there’s incoming fire.

  Desert digital uniforms.

  Marines.

  And then someone, behind the Marines, who wore a t-shirt under a tan plate carrier, and a set of worse-for-wear combat pants.

  “Lee!” Abe shouted at him.

  “I need an ice pack,” Lee called.

  The three Marines came sliding into cover, one of them taking a firing position through the Blackhawk’s open doors, the other going low and shooting under the belly of the craft.

  They were receiving plenty of incoming fire. More than just Mateo would be able to hand out.

  How many cartel are inside that refinery?

  “Ice pack!” he said again—repeating the only thing he could come up with.

  The third Marine came down on his knees right there at Tex’s side, trailed by Abe.

  “Lee!” Abe yelled at him, grabbing him by the back of the neck and forcing eye contact.

  “What?” Lee snapped.

  “He’s dead! We gotta move!”

  Lee looked down.

  Tex’s eyes looked, for just an instant, like they were staring at Lee.

  But when Lee moved his head, he saw that they didn’t track.

  They were half-lidded.

  Already going dry.

  A speck of debris clung to the pupil of one, and Tex didn’t blink it away.

  Lee still held the man’s bleeding head up off the ground. He set it down.

  And, for a few beats, he seemed to hang there, suspended in a nebula created of dust and gunsmoke. He existed in a vacuum, and he heard nothing outside of himself. Just the beating of his own heart. The scrape of the air through his dried-out throat.

  The cartel was shooting, and the Marines were shooting back.

  People were shouting.

  Another battle.

  Another gunfight.

  Another dead friend.

  Something passed close over Lee’s head, and he ducked, but his eyes never came off of Tex, and that little speck of dust on his cornea, and how dried out he suddenly looked, so barren.

  He never even had a chance to fight.

  And that, maybe above all else, was the worst thing of all.

  That someone like Tex, who’d spent his entire life fighting, could go out like this, with his wrists raw from being bound, and no weapon in his hands.

  I’ll fight for you, Lee thought to yet another friend that he no longer had.

  Because that’s what Lee did.

  That’s what he always did.

  He fought for others.

  I’ll kill them all.

  Something blazed a hot path, right across the back of his neck.

  Any closer, and he’d have a severed spinal column.

  It was a slap in the face that brought him back to himself.

  He reached behind him, grabbed the SCAR-16 and the chest rig that he’d dropped. He pulled them towards him, doing his best to stay low.

  His breathing came in quicker now.

  Purposeful.

  Charging himself with oxygen.

  He pulled the armor over his head, set to strapping it about himself. “Mateo Ibarra,” he said to Abe, his voice a thick growl. “He’s in the refinery.”

  “Lee,” Abe countered. “We should—”

  Lee’s hands rocketed up from the plate carrier and grabbed Abe by the collar of his own armor. He was done with arguments. Done with talking. There was nothing inside of him now but a supernova of all the bad things that had been coalescing—not just since Julia’s death, but for years…

  For every time Lee’d been backed in the corner. For every time Lee had been punished for being civil, and reviled for being a killer. For every time he’d ever tried with everything in his being to keep his friends from dying, only to fail, time and time again…

  For all of that, he was going to kill everyone.

  And no one would stand in Lee’s way.

  Not even Abe.

  “We should finish what we started!” Lee snarled.

  Abe’s eyes searched Lee’s, and found only hate.

  There could be no turning back now.

  Now there was only forward.

  Now there was only vengeance.

  It didn’t matter the forces that were arrayed against them, it didn’t matter the odds. They’d been through worse. In a thousand different ways, they’d been through a thousand hells, and they were still here.

  They were the only ones left.

  And they would have what they came for.

  Abe nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

  Lee snatched the SCAR-16 off the ground.

  Another Marine ran to them. This one Lee recognized.

  “Captain Harden!” Brinly called out to him as he ducked incoming fire and knelt down where Lee and Abe were. “Angela—”

  The mention of the name sent an electric jolt through Lee that bore with it a myriad of feelings he had no intention of handling in that moment. He cut Brinly off. “Have your gunners concentrate fire on the front of the refinery. Whichever truck is up-armored, have them start rolling towards the main structure, and me and Abe will be on their a
ss.”

  Brinly blinked a few times, and for a second seemed about to object, but then it was as though he recognized that Lee—and Abe as well—were going to do this no matter what. And he simply nodded.

  “You got it, boys.” He keyed his comms and relayed the orders. After a moment, he leaned out of cover for a quick peek, then grabbed Lee by the shoulder, forcing him to look where he was looking. He pointed to one of the MATVs. “That’s your up-armored truck. The one with the Punisher skull painted on the back. You copy?”

  Lee dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Abe! Let’s move!”

  As they darted out of cover, Lee heard Brinly shout at the other Marines taking cover behind the Blackhawk: “Get on my ass! We’re goin’ with ‘em!”

  Pavement flew under Lee’s feet.

  Disassembled bodies to his right. The shredded structure of the helicopter.

  A Humvee roared across his path, close enough for Lee to taste the exhaust, it’s M2 gunner pumping bursts of .50 caliber fire at the refinery. The trucks spread out, creating separate bases of fire, and trying to keep moving.

  The MATV with the Punisher skull was dead ahead, angling its front towards the refinery, its armored turret chattering away.

  A few places in the refinery—dark windows surrounded by concrete walls—had sprouted muzzle flashes. The road burst in tiny pockmarks to Lee’s right and left, and a few rounds moaned right over the top of his head, forcing him to duck even lower as he sprinted.

  He reached the back of the MATV and sucked pure diesel exhaust. He coughed, turned his head towards the marginally-cleaner air to his left and cleared his lungs. Abe crashed into the back of the MATV and then slapped the rear doors.

  Only a second after that, Brinly and the three Marines that had taken cover behind the Blackhawk stacked up tightly around Lee.

  The MATV had already started to roll forward after Abe pounded on the door, but Brinly still transmitted to the squad leader inside: “You got troops right on your tailpipe! Don’t outrun us!”

  The MATV didn’t outrun them, but it didn’t dawdle either.

  The driver jumped it up to a pace that forced Lee and Abe to run behind it to maintain cover.

  The Marines ran alongside them, and, as the refinery began to tower over them—and shave away some of the valuable protective angles of their cover—they began to scrunch in, ankles pummeling each other, nearly shoulder to shoulder.