Still the steady flow of refugees spilled from the low buildings and making their way onto the truck. Leah thought how the withdrawal would work; there wasn’t enough time to get everything loaded and all vehicles manned, but she couldn’t leave behind the armoured vehicle or the fuel truck. If push came to shove, she would have to prioritise with fuel, but she couldn’t bear the disappointment of losing the Foxhound. She thought Dan would be upset about that, even angry with her, then mentally kicked herself for daydreaming while in such a dangerous situation. She heard her name shouted from the front and ran around to find Adam pointing ahead as he handed her the rifle. Settling herself on the bonnet and using the top of the wall to the side to rest the big gun, she followed his instructions.
“Rocky outcrop. Ten o’clock, up and right. You see them?” he asked.
She did. An unidentifiable person dressed all in dark green and covered with torn-up grass for camouflage was barely visible. The dead giveaway was that something on them was reflecting the light and from the resulting flash seen from their position, the shooter may as well have lit a fire. Breathing slowly out and holding her breath a few times, just as Dan and Steve had taught her, she nestled herself down to take the shot.
Breathe in, breathe out, hold.
Breathe in, breathe out, hold.
Breathe in, breathe out, hold, and squeeze.
Just as the person looking straight back at her similarly framed in a scope did the same.
Taking up the trigger pressure carefully, Leah caressed the metal back towards herself gently so as not to snatch the shot. A millimetre difference at her end could mean a two-metre difference at the target end, and she wanted this bastard dead.
The huge noise from the gun made her flinch involuntarily, but she regained her composure in time to see the result. As the bullet left the end of the barrel at an impossibly high speed, it spun true towards its intended victim. Finding her enemy in the sights once more, she watched in satisfaction as the last few spurts of arterial blood from the ruined head fountained high into the air. Firing directly along the line of the body, Leah’s bullet had taken them in the top of the head, cutting through the stone-hard skull not once but twice, then carried on through to sear a destructive path through the torso and on into the ground.
They were dead the split second the trigger was pulled, and Leah had no idea that a bullet had come her way at the same time. Her shot had been good, there’s hadn’t.
Being afforded no time to congratulate herself on a fine shot, the sound of renewed screams and a curious war cry echoed from behind. Without thinking, she dragged herself upright and onwards to the roof of the cab where she saw muzzle flashes and movement emerging from the treeline behind.
Dismayed, she realised that no sooner had they resolved the threat to their front did the true danger emerge to their rear. Still holding the big rifle and standing so horribly exposed, she raised it to seek a target only to find after precious wasted seconds that the distance was too short to be accurate with the distance scope. Resting it down, she swung her carbine round and began stitching the approach paths of these new attackers with short bursts of fire. Having quickly emptied her magazine, she threw the empty one into the pouch she kept free for such situations and slapped in a fresh one to continue the fire. Her reload had been slick and professional, but it was a talent born of sad necessity more than pride or fanaticism.
Unaware of her own efficiency, she emptied the second magazine and reloaded again just as she felt the first of the return fire disturb the air around her. Her ingrained sense of survival dictated that she should probably not be standing on the highest point totally skylined for everyone to aim at, so she rapidly dropped to ground level.
She heard the distinct sound of rounds fired through a suppressor and found Mitch had been loaded into the rear of the truck where, although looking very pale and pained, he began to methodically put rounds down at anyone foolish enough to show themselves in the open.
Realising she had completely forgotten that she was currently babysitting, she looked around wildly for her neglected dog to find that Sera had already ordered him into the truck where he sat protectively in front of Marie wearing a confused look.
Unable to count in the panic and disorder, she bawled into the truck to ask if everyone was there. Confused and terrified faces looked around at one another as the volume of fire intensified from behind. Along with the sharp bangs of small-calibre bullets came the louder booms of shotgun rounds and simultaneously came the tinny sound of lead rain as the shot scattered from the metal skin of the vehicles and made everyone instinctively duck down lower.
A roar of challenge sounded from the woods, as though some semblance of order had infected the momentum of the attackers, and as one, a line of men emerged from the trees at a run. The opening rounds from Mitch and Leah cut down almost a third of the invaders, but the impetus of the attack threatened to overwhelm them if they stayed as they were.
A hand tugging at her shoulder made her turn her eyes away from her targets for a brief moment to find Henry holding his hand out and demanding a weapon. Ignoring him and looking back to the front to select another victim, she stalked the head of a man which bobbed up and down from cover. Timing it perfectly, she fired a short burst just as he peeked out and dropped to the ground dead.
Again, Henry tapped her shoulder insistently, forcing her concentration away from the attack.
“No, Henry!” she snapped. “Get back!”
Having someone who had never fired a gun before choosing this precise moment to take part in his inaugural firefight was dangerous to say the least. Pushing thoughts of his stupidity aside, she tried to calculate how many were left to get safely on board before they could escape. Firing less carefully, just to increase the volume of fire in the hope of suppressing the attack, she concentrated on her job for the last few seconds it would take until they could get away safely.
Henry chose that exact moment to do the bravest and most stupid, ill-advised and reckless thing he could possibly do.
Having snatched a gun from the belt holster of Emma, who cowered with her precious laptop bag covering Marie, he jumped down and ran forwards, sending rounds pointlessly, wildly and inaccurately towards their assailants. Shouts of alarm and anger and fear followed his suicidal charge, but miraculously he remained untouched by the enemy’s relentless fire. Almost believing himself invincible, he grinned widely as he fired until the magazine ran dry. His smile turned to a horrified look of abject fear to accompany the empty clicks coming from the gun, just as he looked left and right in terror for a way out of the situation he had placed himself in.
At that moment, Jack, the last of them to emerge into the ambush, turned away from the safety of the truck he was climbing aboard and ran to seize Henry’s arm, dragging him towards cover.
Just as the bullets began to come in reply to the boy’s charge did they make it to safety. Only at the last possible opportunity did two lucky bullets find their mark.
Letting out a bone-chilling howl of pain and shock, Jack dropped to his knees as the colour drained instantly from his face. Blood showed thick and fast at his left side as he slowly toppled forward to pitch face first into the ground.
As though in slow motion, Leah leapt down and ran to him. Dragging his arm over her shoulder and screaming in rage at Henry to help her, she took him to the truck where almost every available space at the back was filled with her friends pouring fire at the trees to give her time to restore them all to the incomplete safety of the truck. As Jack was hauled inside, with his last moments of concentration, he met Mitch’s eye and reach a blood-soaked hand out to him.
~
Taking the offered item, the soldier’s eyes widened at the small lump in his hand: a faded dull green cylinder with its rusted ring pull on top. The yellow stencilling bore the faint marks SMOKE SCREENING.
So many questions as to how and why Jack was in possession of such an ancient and destructive piece of hard
ware bounced around his mind. Shaking away the confusion, he pulled the pin and held the short metal tube away from his body in fear of an early explosion, as though a mere arm’s length would save him.
“Tell them to drive. Now!” he screamed, and he waited until the message was relayed forward and the truck began to move before shouting back at those still trying to find space to fire at the emerging invaders who had taken the opportunity to press their advance. “Everybody down!” Mitch roared, then ignoring the terrible pain in his whole body, he drew back his arm and threw the cylinder towards the attackers.
The incendiary grenade exploded, bursting bright white smoke as though a firework had ignited at ground level. The thick smoke gouted outwards, pouring white-hot fire throughout the edge of the trees and cremating everything it touched including the men. As they drove away, abandoning their fuel stores as well as their other vehicle, the pain returned to him and he knew that he had failed them. Watching Kate and Sera work on Jack brought a tear to his eye, before he blessedly lapsed into unconsciousness.
~
Leah now had the sound of dying men being roasted alive to complement her already recurring nightmare of savage dogs ripping the flesh from her bones.
WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GOODBYE
Dan’s return journey was even more unremarkable than the outbound trip had been. Feeling better about almost everything, a strange sense of satisfaction and achievement washed over him as he drove steadily back to the group to tell them the news. If they could make it to the south coast, and if the people broadcasting the message were still there, it would make finding help to cross to Africa much easier.
If that worked, then they had a goal, an achievable undertaking, a quantifiable task.
People worked so much harder and felt happier about hardship if they knew what the end looked like, and in this case, it looked like somewhere safe. No more nomadic lifestyle, no more temporary reprieves from the permanent discomfort of daily travelling. After that, he had no idea what they would do, but he refused to allow his constant depressing pessimism to infect the elation he now felt.
Only stopping to rest once, to stretch out his creaking back made weak by too much time spent behind the wheel, he pushed hard to get back, eager to spread the news. He could almost picture Leah with her piece of string snaking along the colourful lines on the map to estimate the distance.
His reverie was shattered as their small haven came into sight at the far end of the valley he drove into. That sudden jolt of realisation hit him again, not fully understood or articulated but there all the same.
Something was amiss. Registering finally that the entrance to the camp was no longer blocked by the large truck and that smoke was rising lazily from the remnants of some form of fire, Dan’s heart dropped through his chest and into the ground. The fear, anger, dismay and desperation he felt then threatened to consume him. He had been away from them for less than two full days – a matter of hours in the grand scheme of things – and he had returned full of excitement to find that their poor luck had struck again and it had struck hard.
He was the bearer of good news coming to lift the spirits of all of them, but instead he found evidence indicative of something so terribly wrong that guilt came in the second wave of emotional attack and forced a sob to escape from his mouth. Not caring if he was visible to the occupiers of their former temporary home, he stopped his vehicle to get out and lifted his carbine up to take in the closer view through the scope.
He counted at least twenty people, none of whom seemed to be on guard duty, and watched on in horror as they rifled through the supplies abandoned in camp. Curiously, fires still burned in places among the trees and he wondered if his friends had been forced out by flame and the heavy white smoke which lingered menacingly.
The anger rose like a burning fury in him. Wanting nothing more than to stride straight through the gate and murder every last one of them to get answers, he knew he would die in any attempt alone. As he breathed deeply to ready himself for another long drive without any sense of elation, movement showed at the camp.
They had seen him.
They had seen him and the chase was on.
The grim irony was that he was being chased in his own vehicle, too.
As the armoured truck bounced recklessly along the pitted road towards him, his mind focused once more. Like a curtain of purposeful anger had descended over him, Dan felt the world slow down just a fraction as he perceived a simultaneous acceleration in himself. For a man who had experienced the intense sensation of a maximum dose of adrenaline so many times that he fully understood it, it was a rarity.
Dan could harness it: he knew what it did to him and he embraced the change. His responses and reactions were sharper, more precise and accurate. His senses heightened and his mind moved at such a speed that the information was processed and the appropriate response was beginning before he had even intended it.
Now, before the conscious choice of staying to fight or escaping became a consideration, he was already turning the key to fire up the engine.
Knowing the capabilities of both vehicles well, he knew that if he could stay ahead for just a few miles to the more open roads, then he could easily outpace the slower, far heavier pursuit. If.
Pushing hard, he looked in the wing mirrors and saw that the chase was abandoned long before it became unwinnable.
“Amateurs,” he spat nastily as he watched the reflection of his own pride and joy shrink away into the distance, only to see one of his own motorcycles bearing down on him in the reflection. Incredulous at the sheer temerity of these attackers, he satisfied himself with taking at least one of them down and hurting them badly before he escaped. Weaving the Land Rover left and right as though he were trying to shake off the agile bike, he slowed slightly until he had hypnotised the rider into matching his pattern. On the next drifting movement left, he snatched the wheel back hard to the right and just as the startled rider tried to match the movement, Dan threw the wheel back to the left and stood hard on the brakes.
Catching the bike with his nearside between the wheels, he floored the accelerator again and was rewarded by the grinding noise of both rider and motorcycle passing under his rear tyre.
Gripping the wheel tightly as he kept the pace high, he steeled himself to create a big distance between him and these bastards.
It would take him another day to get to the rendezvous point, and he just hoped he wouldn’t still be alone after that.
DESPERATE TIMES
Neil was behind the wheel of the big, unfamiliar truck as they bounced along the roads in flight. Overloaded with people and supplies, the engine screamed in pain as it was pushed to the very edge of its limits to make their freedom and safety a reality.
They weren’t chased, nor was there an ambush waiting for them on the road. The sheer lack of professionalism in the attack made Neil’s blood boil in fury: how could they have gained such a victory without the ability to plan even the most basic cut-off to ensure they captured them all? Unless they weren’t after them. Unless they only wanted their shelter, or their vehicles or supplies.
Thinking of how many valuable resources they had abandoned made him wince. They had gone from having weeks’ worth of food, thousands of spare rounds as well as backup weapons and parts to having little in reserve other than what they carried. They had lost all of their spare fuel, the thought of diesel making him glance down at the instruments in relief that he had topped off all of the fuel tanks when they were stationary. Further consideration of their fuel situation made him slow the truck down to extend their range; at the speed at which they made their escape, they would have suffered a breakdown or crash within the hour.
Hearing a thumping noise on the bulkhead behind him brought him back to reality. Adam and Jimmy were crammed in the cab beside him, and Sera’s voice cut through to them.
“We need to stop. Jack’s bleeding too badly,” she yelled.
The risk of stopping so close to
where they had been attacked was too great. Neil made the simple but brutal calculation: stop now and risk everyone’s lives or continue and put Jack at risk of bleeding out.
The needs of the many.
When Steve had said that about them leaving, it had caused uproar. How can one person be so calculating, so callous, as to demean another person’s life to a matter of mathematics? How can their conscience allow the words to escape their mouths, to accept their death without even trying to fight it just to claim responsibility for the unquantifiable survival of others?
As harsh as his thoughts were when the sentiment was uttered by someone else, he came to the conclusion quickly in his own mind.
“Tell them we have to keep going,” he said in a low voice to Adam, who was sitting next to him, as he kept his eyes resolutely on the road. “We’ll stop as soon as it’s safe.”
Adam swallowed and stared at him, trying to phrase it as gently as he could before turning his face and calling back through the thin metal partition.
“We’ll stop as soon as we can,” he shouted lamely, offering no further explanation and receiving no answer.
Everyone had their priorities, thought Neil. To Kate and Sera, and he accepted most likely Jack, the priority was to stabilise him and stop the bleeding. The fact that a pack of armed hostiles may be hot on their heels driving their own stolen vehicles and firing their own looted bullets at them was an irrelevance to them at that moment. His priority was to put as much distance between them as possible, and he had to do that no matter what the fallout. Playing off longevity against immediate safety, he pushed the speed back up a little.
For another ten minutes, he heard nothing more. When the shouting and banging behind him raised in intensity, he could no longer ignore them and told Adam to say that they were stopping.
Sanctuary: After It Happened Book 5 Page 11
