by Schow, Ryan
The officer opened his mouth to speak when Skylar put on a huge burst of speed; Logan was hot on her heels, racing against time, praying to cover the distance and smoke everyone in the kill box before the man could alert anyone else.
The men in the tent started turning just as Skylar dove for the nearest target. Knife out, she caught him in the throat, both of them crashing into the others as they went down. Logan was in the box fast, slicing throats, faces, punching his blade into armpits and kidneys. But he was being punched and kicked as well, and the men weren’t dying fast enough. Even worse, he was trying not to drop on Skylar who was down low, stabbing up into calves and thighs, aiming for femoral arteries.
Guns were suddenly out and bullets took flight. While they were holding their knives, a gun fight had broken out. He dropped his, went for his gun. He didn’t get it. Not before he was tackled from behind and wrestled to the ground outside the tent. The man maneuvered Logan onto his back and overpowered him. Logan squirmed, but the man pinned both his arms down, and then he grinned victorious. He drove a knee up into his attacker’s balls just as gunfire rattled the air around them. Had Skylar been shot? A sudden burst of adrenaline had him bucking to get free. It was no use. The man pinning him in the dirt was too strong. He rammed his knee up into the man’s balls a second time, connecting flush.
Anyone who’s ever had the family jewels assaulted knows it takes a good three seconds before a shot sinks in mentally, and another five before for the pain really hits. But at the eight second mark, unless you’ve had your testes conditioned—i.e., unless you’ve gotten them kicked again and again and you like that kind of pain—that’s when you’re done and in danger of losing your life. He didn’t have eight seconds. He needed this guy to weaken now.
Pinned to the ground by huge hands on his biceps, the man cringing as he felt that awful, churning sensation in his gut from the nut shot, Logan waited a beat, saw the opportunity, then spit up in the man’s mouth—a righteous loogie that hit the mark perfectly. In other words, it went right into the man’s mouth, nothing but net.
He started to gag on Logan’s mucoid nugget, coughing so hard, Logan jerked an arm free, shrimped out of the mount, then wrestled his other arm free. He was too late, though. He didn’t see what was coming next, otherwise he wouldn’t have struggled. He would have just let it happen. But the gun went off, startling him, stilling him, the bullet hitting its mark.
He didn’t even know it was over until it was.
Seconds after gagging on Logan’s weighted ball of hocked-up snot and spit, just as the gripping pain of having his balls smashed by a second brutal knee strike took hold, the man’s head jolted straight down into his neck, jerking his entire body. His left eye instantly burst with broken blood vessels and turned into an upwards stare, like someone had pulled a string and it shifted directions. The other eye just looked at Logan, lifeless.
Blood immediately fountained out of the man’s crown, an open faucet with no off switch. He pushed the body off him, his limbs loose, his jaw slack. A sniper’s round was somewhere in the man’s guts after first traveling through his skull and breaking apart.
Logan quickly glanced up and in the distance, he saw what looked like a shooter lying prone on the rooftop of the HQ, dangerously close to the crumbled edge of it. Logan gave the shooter a thumbs up, then watched him scramble back along the roofline, tucking down again.
Skylar, he thought
He turned and saw her stabbing one last man to death. She was bent over him like a nightmare, working him over like this was a prison shanking. He hustled to his feet, swiped the splashed blood off his face, then joined her in the tent. Skylar spun around, gun quickly drawn, eyes wild and trembling.
“I thought you were dead,” she said, breathless.
“Being dead is for pansies,” he replied. “Never count me out.”
“Hey!” someone said.
They both looked up, saw a SAA officer drawing his gun. Logan shot him point blank. His head snapped back and he dropped to the ground.
“We have to go,” Skylar said, taking his outstretched his hand. “Thanks.”
They turned to regroup at their original staging grounds on the ridge overlooking the valley when gunfire sounded behind them. Over his shoulder, Logan saw two men shooting at them. He spun around, dropped to a knee and shot them both. Skylar was already high-tailing it out of there.
He caught up to her, but by that time, there were a dozen men chasing them. Fortunately there were enough points of cover between there and the ammo truck for them to safely move through. But it wasn’t fun. Running past dead men strewn everywhere, guys lying around with their heads blown off, it was an act of skill to not trip over them, or roll an ankle. There were also the smoking holes in the earth, impact craters from mortar rounds. You go in one of those, you cut your speed in half. And then there were the guys on their heels, their guns now blazing. Soon, there would be no cover left and they’d have to dig in and fight. Meaning Quan was probably right. And he was wrong.
I can still turn this around, he thought.
When they reached the ammo truck, four people popped up with Chicom weapons loaded for bear and opened fire, laying waste more than a dozen or so SAA chasing them.
“Thank God,” Logan said, out of breath.
Clay threw them both fresh weapons and said, “They’re loaded. It’s weapons free, baby.”
Logan felt like an idiot having charged into this war with Skylar totally unprepared. Clay didn’t say anything, but neither did Boone, Ryker or Harper. They all just stood there, guns smoking, every bit as anxious to be in the game as the rest of them.
“Did you clowns actually think you were the only ones wanting in on the action?” Clay asked.
Skylar looked at Harper and said, “So you’re in now?”
“Screw it,” Harper said, waving away a moving cloud of smoke. “I’m tired of sitting around, twiddling my thumbs.”
Boone turned around, waved to the hillside. Their private army from three different cities scurried down the hillside, all of them gathering around the truck. Clay, Boone and Harper passed out weapons and extra ammo.
Ryker then looked at them and said, “Let’s go kick this bear in the balls!”
At that point, everyone moved forward in a wave, spreading out, covering the far edges of the valley, the middle and everything in between. Looking back, Zeke and his men were moving together smoothly. Brandon and his guys were taking up the rear, moving in unison with everyone else.
As they moved through fields of smoke, past the skeletal remains of trucks and Jeeps, over the carpet of dead bodies—both whole and in parts—they mentally prepared themselves for the firefight of the century.
“Good God,” Boone said, as he and Logan huddled behind another point of cover, “how many of them are there?”
“Hundreds,” Logan said. “Maybe thousands. If you’re referring to the dead.”
“I am.”
Just as they were about to move, two SAA soldiers appeared, both of them aware of Logan and Boone. Both men reacted, but they were both too slow to catch the kill. But then two perfect shots blew two perfect holes in the men, one for each SAA soldier.
“Was that Quan?” Boone asked.
Grabbing his Uniden, Logan tuned into the general channel and said, “Sniper cover is active! I repeat sniper cover is active!”
Renewed, everyone started moving, but none of them moving as brazenly as Orbey. She charged ahead of everyone else.
“Orbey, wait!” Logan yelled.
She was close enough to hear him, but she wasn’t listening. Was it the cover of noise that kept her going? Was it the curtain of smoke now drifting over them? Or did she have the false confidence of cover fire leading her to act like the tip of this spear?
She lined up a shot, fired, moved forward. Logan took up behind her, but she was already on the move again. Two rounds ricocheted off the roof of the truck in front of her; another kicked up dirt at her fee
t. She lined up another shot, fired, then pressed forward.
“Slow down, dammit!” he roared.
Skylar was forty feet to the right of him, looking at Orbey with concern, then at him. Orbey was not slowing, then again, neither was he. He finally caught up with her, treating her as an equal, not an older widow.
“Follow my lead,” he turned and hissed at her.
She didn’t even look at him; she just moved. Shaking his head, he moved with her, both of them now taking fire.
“Get down!” he screamed.
She lined up a shot, fired. She lined up the next shot, then jumped sideways, a bloom of red shooting out of her back. She staggering backwards, the rifle sagging. Logan shot up, fired two rounds, was fired on relentlessly, then ducked back down.
“Orbey, dammit, get down!”
Lifting the rifle, she aimed, fired, then stepped sideways, reloading. Two more shots hit her, causing Logan to risk his own life to save hers. Bullets nipped at him, catching his calf, an arm, the top of his shoulder. He didn’t care. Instead he grabbed Orbey and she collapsed into his arms, her eyes rolled up and looking at him.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, choking up, angry that she’d been so brazen.
“I miss him,” she said.
The second she said this, her head rocked back, a red hole opening up in her forehead. Scrambling out from under her, he looked up and saw a man with a rifle. He was hastily replacing an empty mag, his eyes locked on Logan. Logan leveled his weapon on the man, fired so fast that he hit his shoulder rather than center mass. The man bucked sideways, groaned, then fought to replace the thirty round mag in his automatic rifle. Logan fired again. This time he was the one with the empty mag. Looking down at his weapon, he thought, how the hell did I miss this?
Thinking of Orbey, dropping the pistol, he let his heart roar, his soul coming on so big and so ferocious, his body couldn’t even begin to contain it. Sprinting like his life depended on it, he shot forward with all his might, railing against the pain, against common sense, against the odds, and he went after the shooter, the man who killed Orbey.
The shooter snugged the fresh mag into the weapon, started to swing it around. Logan hit him flush, took him to the ground.
The first thing he did when they landed was dig his thumb in the hole he’d shot in the man. The soldier screamed and let go of his weapon. Logan grabbed it, ignoring others shooting at him, and then he stood and emptied the entire thirty round mag into the man’s face, screaming out with rage, with pain, with untethered emotion. When he was done, he looked up and saw another man with the weapon aimed at his face.
“Just do it you piece of shit,” he said in Spanish, resigned to his fate.
The side of the would-be shooter’s head rocked red and he fell sideways. Logan turned and saw Harper running his way. She’d saved his life, but now she was risking hers. Two men shot at her; Logan grabbed a nearby weapon, took one man down, and then a sniper round took out the other.
“Get down!” Logan screamed. She hit the deck, crawled his way under heavy fire, then stopped at the sight of Orbey.
Immediately, she started to tear up.
“Don’t look,” he said.
A stitch of gunfire lit up the car in front of them as someone crossed his path. The lone soldier didn’t notice Logan until it was too late. Logan dumped two rounds into the man’s side. As Harper began crying and scrambling through the dirt to get to Orbey, he went after her, grabbed her and pulled her close to a car for cover.
“You can’t do this, Harper! Or the next person you’ll be crying over is me, or me over you. Snap out of it!”
“She’s dead, Logan!”
He gave her a shake, leveled her watery eyes with his enraged eyes and said, “Let’s go take it out on them.”
She turned and saw the man Logan just fired thirty rounds into and said, “Was that him? Did he do this?”
“Yes, but we have to go.”
“Hit me,” she said.
“I’m not going to hit you!” he retorted.
“Just do it!”
He smacked her across the face, hard, shocking her, forcing her to hold her mouth. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to get back to herself, the fighter who didn’t know that Orbey was now dead.
“Too hard?” he asked.
Eyes once again focused, she shook her head, then grabbed her gun and got to her feet. He followed her and they continued to press forward, grabbing the guns and ammo left behind by the dead. As the smoke poured over them, they began to cough, their eyes burning, their throats becoming scratchy and hot.
Gunfire was still persistent, things were blowing up around them, and the voices of dozens of SAA men had Logan thinking they were in a fight they could not win.
The sun cut through the haze, painting the valley in odd, haunting colors; bodies were everywhere. A shadow crossed in front of them, mostly hidden in the choking mist. Harper looked up into the sky; he followed her gaze. Above them, carrion birds were circling the dead, waiting for a break in the fighting so they could come down and eat.
“You better not do anything dumb,” Logan said, having a hard time keeping the images of Orbey out of his mind.
“This is all dumb,” she said, devoid of emotion. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be,” Logan barked.
Ahead, half of their team peeled back while the other half hunkered down. They had no idea who was coming at them from behind, or even from the front, the smoke was so heavy.
“Operation Tailpipe,” she said, just under the compressed, rat-a-tat-tat sounds of a raging gun battle nearby. Another gunshot sounded off in the distance, the cracking sound of a sniper’s rifle. Behind them, a body dropped. Behind the heap on the ground were three more men, all slowed down by their dead comrade. Dumping her guns and ammo, Harper lifted her rifle, shot the three of them, her mag now empty. She went for another rifle, but ducked out of the line of fire. A fourth man crept in. Logan emptied his mag, but the man found cover. With a pile of guns in front of them, yet out of reach, they went for their knives and prayed Quan would shoot him. But he didn’t. Were they hidden so well by the smoke he couldn’t get a bead on them? Or was Quan out of ammo?
Already down, Logan scrambled under the nearest undercarriage while the shooter took shots at Harper, who was fighting to keep her cover as well. Behind him, someone appeared, there was a flop of red blood, followed by a red rain and a dropped body. A big boot kicked the body aside, then knelt down and offered Logan a hand.
“No need to hide anymore,” Brandon said. “I got him.”
Logan took his hand, let himself be pulled out, saw a big grin on the big man’s face. He lifted him up, handed him the dead man’s rifle and said, “No time to take five, brotha…we ain’t even close to done.”
Harper crawled out from under a truck of her own, then joined them. Logan’s sat phone buzzed on Harper’s side. She dropped down, frowned, then fished the phone out and answered it using the speakerphone feature.
“We’re out of rounds, so you’re on your own,” Quan said.
“I just figured that out,” Harper said.
“I’m sorry about Orbey.”
Without saying anything, she tossed the phone to Logan, who caught it. There was a touch of silence on the line. Was he gone? Logan put his finger in his ear, crouched down, tried to hear above the beating sounds of war.
“Quan?” he said.
“Still here,” Quan replied.
“If we don’t make it through this thing—”
“You will,” Quan interrupted. “We will.”
“I don’t know,” Logan said, popping his head up. He saw the Portland crew advancing, watched Reed take a shot in the face, and Lok go down from a chest shot. He saw this and nearly dropped the phone. His face flush, the blood draining from it fast, he heard himself say, “Either way, it’s been an honor.”
“For me it’s been stressful,” Quan t
eased. “You white people are crazy.”
With the phone still on, Logan went on the move.
“This is true,” he said.
“If we survive, remind me to tell you what Steve did,” Quan said. “He did something straight out of the serial killer handbook.”
“Get off the phone!” Harper hissed.
She was going for the guns when a barrage of bullets tore up the car in front of them. Brandon and Harper dove for cover.
Logan ducked down and growled into the phone. “Don’t let these rats kill you.”
“Roger that,” Quan said. And with that, Logan clipped the phone to his side, then looked at Brandon and said, “Where are your people?”
“Cleavon got hit, so did Reed just now,” he said, his words heavy. Logan didn’t realize how pale the man’s face had just gone. “I don’t know where Edwin is.”
Logan drilled him with his eyes and said, “We’re all going to die, Brandon. It’s not a race to the finish, it’s about getting as far as we can before we eat our own lead sandwich.”
He drew a breath in through his nose, lifted his chin in pure and utter resolve, then said, “Okay, then. I’m ready.”
And with that, the three of them ran into the crossfire, trying to climb up the backs of the SAA while not getting killed by either them or the Chicoms. They didn’t see the mortar coming in, but they heard it.
All three of them looked up in time to turn to run, but seconds later, something blew up so close, the explosion of dirt hit them like a wrecking ball, the blast so ferocious it kicked them off their feet and into the air.
Logan never even felt himself hit the ground.
He didn’t remember opening his eyes, for it took no conscious effort at all. One minute everything was black and painless, the next thing his eyes were opening and the pain came flooding in. Was this his body’s way of getting him back in the fight? There were hard, gritty things smashed into his face, and his body ached all over. Face down on the ground, he turned his head, scraping first the bridge of his nose and then his cheek. Delirious, his hearing slightly off, he took a mental inventory of his body. He was definitely in trouble, but all systems were still operable…somewhat.
