by Lolita Lopez
“If they don’t, they won’t be breathing long.” Laird turned to his son. “See if you can raise her on the radio. I need her to ride shotgun for Lance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you find her, tell her to come see me. We need to have a word.”
“Will do.” Luke stepped away and unclipped the radio attached to his belt.
Clearly exasperated, Laird shook his head. “God help you if Emma gives you a daughter, Major.”
The thought of a little girl with Emma’s dark hair and sweet smile hit him like a punch to the gut. Julie had warned him that it might take months and months for Emma to conceive after years of poor nutrition and hard labor, but he secretly hoped the doctor was wrong. He damn sure planned to keep trying and practicing until it happened.
Too aware that talk of Emma put him on edge and made him more apt to be emotional, Max shifted the topic. Gesturing toward the flames still shooting sky high, he asked, “Any thoughts about this?”
“I know what you’re thinking.” Laird eyed him critically. “I run all the fuels and guns in the Outlands, but that,” he emphasized with a jab of his fingers, “isn’t from my supply.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Son,” Laird said with a patronizing smile, “you smell that?” He sniffed loudly. “That’s burning gasoline. I deal in diesel.” Shaking his head, he added, “I know my partners. I don’t deal with new people. I cultivate a list of clients that I trust. Nobody who buys from me would do something this evil.”
Max took Laird at his word. “So who would?”
Laird leveled a stare. “You tell me, Major. Who do we know who can get their hands on barrels of gasoline and explosives?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Three words: Gulf Point Labs.”
Shock tore through Max. Everything to do with Gulf Point Labs was supposed to have been kept secret and silent. How did Laird know? “How the hell—?” He stepped into the arms dealer’s space and lowered his voice to a hiss. “How do you know about GPL?”
Laird didn’t flinch or make a move. “You think your people are the only ones with an intelligence network?”
Before he could answer, he heard a scuffle behind them. Turning toward the raised voices, he spotted a young woman arguing with a man. She had the whitest blonde hair he had ever seen and held a young child close. The little girl who couldn’t have been more than two clung to her mother and sobbed pitifully. Clearly some type of altercation had taken place.
“Who the hell is that prick?” Concerned about the man’s aggression, Max stepped forward to intervene but Laird held out his arm and blocked him.
“Let them sort it out.”
“She’s a young woman with a baby. I’m not going to stand here while she gets pushed around by some prick.”
“That’s Zoe Morgan, the older of the two Morgan sisters. Believe me. She can handle that asshole. Hell, she and her sister have survived more than even your Emma.”
Your Emma…
Hearing Emma described in that way sent a small pang of something tender through his chest.
Those tender feelings fled when that prick shouted something nasty at Zoe. Incensed by the filthy word slung at the young mother, Max started toward the ugly scene. He’d had enough of that asshole’s big mouth.
But, seemingly out of nowhere, a blonde appeared from the shadows.
Like a well-seasoned warrior, the younger blonde struck the back of the man’s knees with the wooden handle of a worn ax. She dropped the bastard like a sack of rocks. Standing over him, the slim, petite woman put a booted foot against the man’s neck and pressed the sharp tip of her ax against his wrist. “You put another finger on my sister or my niece, and I’ll take this fucking hand off at the wrist. Understand?”
The man gurgled a reply as she pushed hard on his throat with her heel. She finally let him up and held her ax at the ready as he scrambled away and ran toward a different truck. One of the Keaton boys stepped forward to help Zoe and her daughter into the back of his vehicle but not before the sisters exchanged hugs. The younger one kissed her little niece on the cheek.
“Chloe Morgan,” Laird named the sister. “She’s small but mean as hell. There’s nothing that girl won’t do to protect her older sister and that baby.”
Trying to piece together the limited facts, Max asked, “Is there a husband? Where is the baby’s father?”
Laird shot him a look. “We don’t talk about that. It’s done. It’s in the past. If you don’t want to be on the receiving end of Chloe’s ax, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
A bad feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. There were few reasons why a child’s parentage would be forbidden to discuss, and none of them were good. Had Zoe been a victim of rape? Had she been trafficked or sold?
He watched the younger sister hop up into the truck. With a gun holstered on one hip and that ax in the other hand, she looked like a warrior princess. She wore her pale blonde hair long but pulled back in a high ponytail with some sections braided and twisted and decorated with beads. She looked like trouble—and several of his men seemed much too interested.
“You should tell your boys to steer clear of the Morgan girls,” Laird warned. “There are plenty of sweet, smart, hardworking women in New Town and Borden’s Crossing who won’t hack their balls off with an ax if they overstep the line.”
“Duly noted.”
A bark louder and deeper than any Max had ever heard suddenly tore through the night. The bark carried through the noise from the fire, the idling truck engines and the radio traffic. Laird instantly went rigid before rising up on his toes and searching frantically left and right. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted into the night, “LEILA!”
“I can’t reach her!” Luke’s apprehension was clear as he returned to his father’s side and tried the radio again. “Leila, come in! Damn it, Lei! Answer us!”
A heartbeat later, the report of a rifle—a fucking big one—echoed in the distance. Neither of the two Zed squad men who left to scout with the Keaton girl carried rifles like that. No, that was a specialized rifle. Large-bore. A sniper’s weapon.
Someone was shooting at Leilia, Butch and Butler.
He quickly calculated the direction and pointed just off to the east. “There.”
Jack, what do you see? Max figured his friend had the best view from his sniper’s perch.
Darkness—but I’m scanning. I can’t find Butch or Butler’s signals. It’s like they’re blocked.
Max tried to locate the two cyborgs and pinged their specific frequencies again and again. It was dead silence. They were cut off from communicating.
The radio clenched in Luke’s big hand crackled. “…go….trap….DADDY!”
Laird snatched the radio from his son’s hand. “Leila? Sugar?”
“Daddy!” The radio squelched. “Biters….so many… Now!”
“Leila!”
“You need to get—shit.” The radio transmission ended and the crack of a shotgun exploded twice. The dog barked incessantly now, each booming woof as loud as the thunder rattling the sky. The radio went silent but the pop of small arms fire and rifle shots ricocheted in the night.
Rafe had heard the radio traffic between daughter and father and was already directing his men. “Civilians are the priority! Squad One with me. Squads Two and Three ride escort on the trucks. We’re moving out in one minute for the base.”
Max turned to face the small crowd of civilians and wounded cyborgs that waited for the medical convoy. He noticed that some of the civilians seemed hesitant to get on the trucks now that they were planning to head in the other direction toward the Outpost and not toward New Town.
“Get on the trucks—or you get left behind.” He snarled the order in his most commanding voice. These people had to know he was serious. “If you want to live, move!” Looking at his men, he shouted, “Get those people loaded up! Pack ‘em in tight. We’ve got to move.
Now.”
Luke Keaton broke away from the jostling crowd and sprinted toward the closest section of the still-standing fence. Toward his baby sister.
At the exact same moment, Max became aware of Tripwire racing toward Luke while waving his hands.
Max, we’ve got a big fucking problem. Urgency filled Jack’s message, but the rest of his transmission was garbled and lost.
“Secondary explosion wired.” Tripwire shouted as he hurdled a pile of debris. The young explosive’s expert had activated the alarm sensors they all carried. Every cyborg within one mile felt the jolt of a painful zing in their chests before Trip’s voice ricocheted around their heads.
It’s a trap. It’s a motherfucking trap!
“NO!” Tripwire shouted over the din as he spotted Luke reaching out to flip the red handle mounted on the tall fence post of the still-standing guard shack. It was the switch that would kill whatever electricity was still running through the gate he needed to use to get out to his sister.
Max registered the bright flash of a detonation before he heard or felt it. The shockwave from a massive explosion knocked him right off his feet. His brain rattled against his skull as the thunderous boom shook his body and tossed him around like a ragdoll.
As he flipped through the air, his boots pointed toward the sky and his head dipping dangerously close to hard ground, he thought of only one thing.
Emma.
2 Chapter Two
Flat on his back, Max closed his eyes as an incredible burst of heat flared over his skin. Deafened and dazed, he stared at the dark night sky, now awash with the glow of even brighter flames, and stretched his jaw. He couldn’t hear a damned thing. The pressure in his head and the pain arcing through his chest and ribs told him he was probably injured, maybe badly. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to suck in air but his body seized up in agony.
When he finally got oxygen into his lungs again, he wished he hadn’t. The sour burn of fuel and the excruciating pain along his ribs made him want to never breathe again. Get up, he ordered himself. Get the fuck up and move.
Pushing up on his palms, he surveyed the carnage. On instinct, he lifted his weapon to the ready position and slowly inched back toward the closest downed soldier. Ready to fire at the first unfriendly face he spotted, Max patted the soldier’s chest. The slap of a hand and a squeeze of his wrist communicated the man was down but not hurt. Taking his eyes off their surroundings for just a few seconds, he helped the specialist to his feet and got him oriented before moving onto the next man.
All around him, cyborgs crawled and stumbled into fighting positions. Their previous defensive positions had shielded them from much of the blast. Most of them were bleeding or singed. A few had obviously broken bones or were guarding their ribs. It looked as if most of them were still in fighting shape. That was the main priority.
The few buildings that hadn’t been damaged by the initial blast were now falling apart or engulfed in fresh flames. Only one stood tall and strong. The limestone building stood away from the main part of the town and seemed like their best defensible position. He identified it as their casualty collection point and the place they would make their stand.
But there were so many civilians on the ground, most of them unmoving or badly injured. They’d been out in the open, waiting to load up onto trucks or tending the wounded. Being so exposed had left them incredibly vulnerable to the explosion.
One of the Keaton trucks had been blown over onto its side. Lifeless bodies, many of them torn to bits by shrapnel, spilled out of the mangled truck. Thinking of the young mother and her child, he was relieved to see that the vehicle they had been climbing into seemed largely unharmed. Hopefully the civilians inside had been protected from most of the blast.
Blood dripping from a gash in his head, Laird Keaton proved what a tough bastard he was as he stumbled, one broken arm clutched to his chest, toward the truck bearing his family’s name. As Max helped another cyborg brother to his feet, he watched Laird run awkwardly toward a spot in front of the wrecked truck. It wasn’t until the man dropped to his knees that Max noticed the fatally wounded body of a young man.
His son. His boy.
Refusing to be distracted by the gut-wrenching scene of loss and grief, Max struggled to orient himself. The ringing in his ears told him he wasn’t permanently deafened. His med sensors sent a live feed of readouts that were projected onto the lens in his left eye. He was banged up, but there wasn’t any internal bleeding. I’ll live.
Standing tall, Max scanned his surroundings. He glanced toward the fence and the gaping hole there. Although Luke Keaton had inadvertently set off the secondary explosion by flipping that switch, it seemed the bomb had actually been placed off to their right. Luke had been spared most of the blast but was limping badly and obviously wounded. Tripwire rushed to his aid, half-dragging the man to safety.
Rafe was already on his feet and getting a headcount for his men. Max glanced at the water tower where Jack had taken up his sniper’s perch. Miraculously, Jack seemed unhurt as he tossed down debris that had been blown up onto him. It looked as if the ladder had been torn away in the explosion. They’d have to figure out a way to get him down eventually.
I’m good. Worry about yourself. Jack gave a thumbs-up signal.
Max returned the signal in acknowledgment and then jumped into action. With an explosion like that? Attack was imminent. He’d seen this tactic before, years ago, during a different war and a different time.
One: Cause a mass casualty incident.
Two: Wait for medical and tactical support to arrive.
Three: Detonate a bomb to cause a secondary mass casualty incident and confuse the tactical teams.
Four: Strike when vulnerable and kill everything that moves.
Worried they might only have precious seconds until they were under fire, he glanced at the water tower. Jack, we need eyes. Let me know what you see.
Jack dropped to one knee and methodically searched the darkness. Scanning.
“Rafe!” Max houted at the Zed squad leader who was hurriedly mobilizing his men. Their gazes met across the expanse of burning and battered ground. They both knew what was coming. “We need to get a perimeter established.”
“Already on it.” Rafe had men from his primary Zed squad rushing to secure a perimeter.
Max turned to the second squad who had been tasked with loading up the wounded and began barking at them to get a casualty collection point setup in one of the few defensible buildings that wasn’t falling down or on fire. He had the third squad providing security for the casualty collection team. Despite the wails from the wounded and scared civilians, it was a well-organized and calm response. He trusted his men to see this through…however it ended.
Max hastily updated the Outpost on the quickly deteriorating conditions and the latest attack. In the middle of his radio transmission requesting immediate air support and medical evacuations, Max heard an air horn blowing quickly and loudly. The sound took him back to the day that Emma had saved them by guiding them to the safety of her small farm.
Fuck. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, he had forgotten all about Leila Keaton, Butch and Butler. His brain had been temporarily scrambled and his thoughts were mush.
Jack! The girl! Our men!
I see her. She’s got dozens of them hot on her heels. I don’t see our men.
Shit. If Jack couldn’t see them, the men were dead. Neither man would have left a young woman exposed and undefended.
No! I see Butch and Butler. They’re pinned down and wounded. There’s a dog protecting them. The girl is—oh hell. She’s going back for weapons one of our men dropped.
Can you give her some breathing room?
The crack of Jack’s rifle answered that question.
ETA to your location is seven minutes. Fighter pilot Logan Gray transmitted the message to Rafe, the scene commander, but Max also picked it up because of his rank and clearance. Pave my way with the lase
r. I’ll hit everything outside your casualty collection point and perimeter.
Doing the calculations, Max didn’t think there was any way to get out to Butch, Butler and Leila Keaton and bring them back to safety before Logan started raining fire from the sky. The best chance of saving them was to grab them and pull them as far away from the path of fiery hell that Logan about to unleash.
We’ve got company, boys. Jack transmitted that message wide. A field of Biters about fifty yards wide and sixty—shit—seventy yards deep. I see one truck following. They’re too far out for me to make out the driver or the number of passengers.
Every cyborg there knew what was at stake now. Even with the incoming air support, this could very well be a fight to the death.
“We can fight.” Laird Keaton, his face bloodied, his arm dangling useless at his side, gestured to the crates of unharmed weapons in the back of one of their trucks that his youngest son was now breaking open with a crowbar. The kid had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his lower right leg but he wasn’t letting it slow him down. He would be useless if they needed to run, but he could still shoot.
Max didn’t ask what had been done with his other boy’s body.
“You tell us where you need us.” Laird set his jaw. “Every man and woman here will fight—but I’m going to get my girl.”
“No. I’ll go.” Max made an on the spot decision. He had come out to this scene as the extra man and the eyes-on-the-ground for the top brass. Rafe had been tasked with the command of this mission. If they had one man to spare, it was him. Even though it was probably a suicide mission, he wasn’t going to let Emma’s friend or his men die out there alone when there was a chance of saving them. “You’re needed here, Laird. These people trust you. Rafe!” He caught the scene commander’s eye. “You’re point. Laird is your go-to for civilian response.”
“Got it.” Rafe didn’t even pause as he ordered his men into position for the attack that would soon bombard them.
Max, I can’t give you much covering fire. That girl is pulling a lot of heat. But I have to focus my fire on the incoming hostiles if we have any chance of holding them off until air support arrives.
