If Tom tried to stop him, he’d kill him too.
“If you go over there and shoot him, Bravo will cut you up,” the soldier said. “Which will hurt morale and ruin Mitch’s day. I can’t allow that.”
Alex didn’t give a crap about Mitch’s day.
“So if you want to kill him, you have to be smart.”
He stopped struggling. Tom had his full attention now. The soldier released his hold but kept his arm wrapped tight around Alex’s shoulders.
“Do you know what friendly fire is?”
Alex nodded.
Tom clarified anyway. “You wait until the shit starts flying, and then you frag his ass.”
He took a sharp breath and nodded again.
“You don’t tell anybody you’re doing it. You don’t tell anybody you did it. You just do it. After you do it, I’ll have your back.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“Shook is a stain on our cause,” Tom said. “He doesn’t follow orders. He shoots prisoners. I’ll be happy to see him dead.”
FIFTY-ONE
Aubrey raised her glass. “You guys are awesome.”
Face flushed with champagne, Terry smiled and held up his own glass. “Here’s to a very successful partnership.”
Even the moody Rafael was grinning. “À votre santé.”
They clashed glasses and drank. The champagne went down like silk.
New Year’s Eve. The reserved Castle bar had turned boisterous. A cover band played a loud pop tune while the smiling patrons talked and drank.
They were all fiddling while Rome burned, but Aubrey wasn’t one of them. She had a big reason to celebrate tonight.
“Let me see it again,” she said. “One more time.”
Terry held out his phone. She gazed rapt at the image of two hands holding today’s issue of The Guardian. There was her story, with a large photo of Hannah Miller, on the front page below the fold.
Aubrey still couldn’t believe it.
“What will be next for you?” Rafael said.
“The sky’s the limit,” she said, glowing.
“Maybe the New Year will bring peace. I cannot believe it has lasted this long.”
One of the patrons was dancing with a server while his friends cheered him on. The pretty blond girl swayed in her white button-down shirt and black bow tie.
The patrons no longer seemed like fiddlers to her. They were celebrating surviving a year of war.
The girl looked like Zoey Tapper. Aubrey pushed the thought aside. Not now. Not here.
“Come and dance with me,” she told Rafael.
He inspected his champagne. “Maybe after I finish this drink.”
The Frenchman carried his photos inside him, and they haunted him. She found it both attractive and annoying. She wanted him to let go and have some fun.
She said, “What about you, Guardian?”
Terry chuckled. “Not for me, thank you. If you dance like you drive, you’d give me a stroke.”
“Fine,” she pouted. “I wore my best dress tonight for nothing, it seems.”
“And you look ravishing. But I have to be at least somewhat fit for my flight tomorrow.”
“What flight? You’re leaving?”
“I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject with you,” the journalist said. “I don’t think this city will be a safe place for me for the near future.”
“Christ, you’re both such downers,” Aubrey said.
“I’ve already overstayed my welcome. This is, after all, a tour.”
“Where are you going next?”
“New York, for a few days. Then back to London. My American adventure is coming to an end. It’s time to return to my family and start working on my book.”
“You are not worried?” Rafael asked Aubrey.
“Of course I’m worried,” she said. “Or I will be tomorrow. The war doesn’t get to have me tonight.”
She wanted to hold on to this feeling as long as she could. Drink herself stupid and dance all night. If only Gabrielle were here, she could get this party going. But the UNICEF worker was busy preparing for tomorrow’s aid shipment.
“I will worry for you then,” Rafael said.
“You want somebody to worry about you.” She caught the look of dismay on his face and cupped his chin. “I could be persuaded.”
Tomorrow, if past brushes with champagne were any indication, she’d wake up with a crushing hangover. That was the least of her worries. She might be arrested. She might be assassinated. But that was tomorrow.
She took Rafael’s hands in hers. “Come on. You’ve finished your drink.”
“Aubrey…”
“Dance with me. Make me think about you. And whatever happens…”
He smiled. “It is war.”
Terry laughed and rose from his chair. “My dear boy, I believe this is one of those offers you can’t refuse. I shall leave you to it. Goodbye, Chronicle, and good luck.”
Aubrey hugged him. “Thank you, Guardian.”
Terry returned it with a surprised grunt. “Human touch. It’s the only thing we truly miss when traveling. If you’re ever in London, do look me up.”
War ground down the spirit, normalized horror, and destroyed permanence. But it also created strong bonds among those who survived it. Terry’s invitation was earnest. They were the same tribe now.
He extended his hand to Rafael. “And you. Stay safe. It was a real pleasure working with you. Honestly, you’re the best at what you do.”
“I am glad we had the chance.” The men shook hands.
Aubrey watched the British reporter shamble out of the oasis with foreboding. The night’s high was slipping away. Tomorrow’s worries crept along the edge of her mind, wanting attention. She pushed them away and focused on Rafael.
“It appears I am all yours now,” he said.
“You bet your ass.” She led him toward the band, where a few patrons were dancing.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and swished her hips in time with the rhythm. Rafael matched her movements with their own masculine counterpoint. He knew what he was doing, and she quickly lost herself in sound and motion, back on the top of the world.
The next song was “Auld Lang Syne.” She buried herself in his warm arms, face resting against his chest.
The song came to a sudden stop.
No, she thought. Don’t let it ever end.
“Ten!” the bartender called out.
“Nine!” the crowd roared.
“EIGHT… SEVEN… SIX…”
Aubrey raised her head and kissed Rafael for all she was worth.
“HAPPY NEW YEAR.”
She flashed to Zoey Tapper’s murder on a busy street. A man killed in his house by a random mortar round. Hannah and Alex Miller fighting a war. Dozens more whose lives she’d observed, lives disrupted or abruptly ended in mindless savagery.
The conflict had raged for a year now, and a new year was beginning. How long could it go on?
Aubrey’s eyes welled with tears. She returned to Rafael’s embrace to hide her weeping. She thought she was tougher than this. Look at her now, blubbering when she should be happy. She was crying for them all the way she did each night while she listened to her music, her one time of the day she allowed herself to feel anything. Music that reminded her of humanity’s bright light, made only brighter when contrasted against the overwhelming darkness of war.
Like Rafael, she carried all the people she’d met inside her, both the living and the dead, and she hoped this somehow honored them.
FIFTY-TWO
Hannah awoke to the crash of guns.
Next to her, Maria rolled over and pulled her sleeping bag over her head. “Tell them to shut up.”
Hannah shoved her friend’s shoulder. “Get up!”
The girl shot upright. “What?”
This wasn’t another skirmish. It was an attack across the front. T
he other women in the house where they’d stayed the night were already on their feet and checking their weapons. The radio buzzed with frantic voices.
The fighters hurried to the windows and the firing holes they’d drilled through the walls. There were six of them in all, four downstairs, two up.
Hannah went to the nearest window and looked out. Nothing to see except the empty yard and street. The crackle of gunfire in the distance built to a single roar.
The women tensed at their firing positions.
“What’s going on?” Maria said.
“Something big.”
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know.” With the new radios, the militia had little use for runners. “They’ll call us if they need somebody to mule ammo.”
“So we stay here.”
Again, Hannah didn’t know. Their house was third in a defensive line three deep, the safest place to be on the battlefield. “We should be okay here.”
One by one, the houses at the front of the line went up in flames. A rolling wall of black smoke blotted out the sun.
Maria gasped. “They’re bugging out already?”
The gunfire grew louder. The enemy was closing in fast, hitting the second line of houses.
“Get ready, girls,” the sergeant yelled.
The fighters replied with a fierce shout.
“Hannah,” Maria said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m really scared.”
She gripped her friend’s hand. “No matter what, I have your back.”
Maria squeezed back. “No matter what.”
The house in front of them began to come apart.
Debris sprayed in the air as rounds tore through the structure. A fireball burst from a second-floor window. Smoke poured out of the building.
Maria was shaking. “Oh my God.”
The house’s back door slammed open. Militia dashed out of the burning building. One slid on the porch steps and went down hard. It was Grace Kim.
Hannah winced as if she’d fallen herself. Come on, get up, get up.
A man in a long blue coat marched out of the house wearing a large tank on his back and a white cross stitched over his left breast. He pointed a tube at Grace, who was scrambling for safety.
Run!
Hannah screamed as the tube belched fire across the sniper and engulfed her in flames. She flailed across the yard until she collapsed.
The man eyed Grace’s burning remains with a pained expression as if realizing he’d done something no human should do. Then he looked up at Hannah screaming at the window.
He offered her a reassuring smile as if to say: It’s all going to be okay.
Other coated figures rushed from between the houses, shooting as they moved.
The last of the Free Women bolted into the house and fell sprawling and gasping. A fighter writhed on the carpet, shrieking and pawing at her bloody shoulder. Another rolled to smother the flames devouring her jacket.
Eyes clenched shut, Maria wrapped her arms around Hannah. “Stop! Stop!”
“Let ’em have it!” the sergeant cried.
The fighters let up a banshee howl as they opened fire on the attackers. The man with the flamethrower jumped in the air as the rounds tore into him. The tank burst in a fireball that splashed the deck with orange flame.
Enemy fighters went down, but more appeared, waves of men and women in black berets and long coats.
They weren’t Liberty Tree. They were something new, something terrible. They seemed more like robots than people.
What they’d done to Grace Kim. To Hannah, it was the worst way to die.
Maria clung to her, screaming.
Bullets shredded the wall. A fighter jigged and collapsed. The sergeant flew back from her firing position. An explosion rocked the house and hurled the girls to the floor.
Dazed, Hannah rose to all fours. “Maria?”
Another blast knocked her down in a blinding flash of light. A wave of intense heat washed over her. The Free Women were dumping homemade bombs and Molotovs out the windows. The line was about to be broken.
Hannah rose again and staggered through flying glass and debris. Insulation, dust, and smoke filled the air around her. She spotted a body lying in a pool of blood. The sergeant. She was dead, her chest a smoking hole.
“Hannah?”
She wheeled. “Maria!”
The girl lurched toward her. “Help me!”
Explosions shook the house in rapid succession, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM. The front door burst into splinters. Gaping holes appeared in the living room wall. Maria flew into the rolling cloud.
Hannah found herself lying on the floor choking on dust, her ears ringing. The house crackled as fire began to consume it. The sergeant’s AK-47 lay within reach. She picked it up.
“Maria, where are you?”
She stumbled over wreckage and bumped into a man in a long coat.
Hannah closed her eyes as she squeezed the trigger. The rifle banged in her hands. Even with her eyes shut, there was no way to miss.
He crumpled and lay twitching. She gaped at his body with horror and relief.
The dust cleared to reveal a giant hole in the wall. Beyond, a dozen figures raced toward the house. One paused to fire a jet of flame at the second floor.
Hannah knelt and sighted down the barrel. The AK’s wood stock jolted against her shoulder. A woman shrugged and collapsed. She aimed again through a blur of hot tears and shot the man with the flamethrower.
The enemy wavered, pointing at something to Hannah’s right. One of them pitched forward in a spray of blood.
The gunfire was escalating again. Black and Hispanic men and women in a motley collection of uniforms swarmed down the street, firing as they moved.
Hannah watched with numb fascination, too dumbstruck to cheer.
The Indy 300 had come home.
She rose to her feet with a scream and charged.
A man was limping away from her. She raised her AK and sighted him. He toppled with a puff of smoke.
Fighters were coming from the other direction. She shifted her aim.
One of the Indy 300 waved at her. “Don’t shoot at them, kid! They’re Rainbow Warriors!”
The world tilted. The rifle she’d been carrying suddenly weighed a ton. She staggered under its weight and fell to her knees.
Shaking, she threw up in the snow.
A woman’s face materialized. “You okay, sweetie?”
Hannah opened her mouth to talk but could only produce a whimper.
“Let me help you. Where’s your people?”
She turned with an anguished cry. The house she’d left was ablaze.
“Hey!” the woman called after her.
Hannah ran across bloody snow and into the inferno. “Maria!”
The heat was incredible. Paint boiled off the walls. The air was filled with smoke and swirling ash. Dust-covered bodies lay scattered around the room.
“Maria?” she croaked.
She started coughing and couldn’t stop. Her lungs were on fire. She was choking. Her scream came out a jagged, keening wail.
Then strong hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her off her feet.
FIFTY-THREE
Alpha squad waited in yet another crappy derelict house for the go order to advance and mop up. Alex paced the living room with his rifle. He had a simple plan. Once the battle started, he’d work his way behind Bravo squad and put two in the back of Sergeant Shook’s head.
The radio burst with chatter. Tom listened to his squad’s marching orders.
This was it. The order to attack. Alex shot Jack a look.
His friend shook his head. “We’re out, bro. We used it all.”
“Just a little. That’s all I need.”
“You want more, go see Shook.”
Tom terminated contact with HQ. “We’re aborting. We aren’t going anywhere.”
The squad gathered around growling. They’d been sold ou
t. The Angels wanted it all for themselves.
“The Angels are being wiped out,” their new sergeant told them.
He called it a pincer movement that would have made Rommel proud. The Free Women had held their ground against the First Angels’ focused human-wave attack just long enough for the Indy 300 to sweep in from the north and the Rainbow Warriors from the south, squeezing the bulge like a vise. The Angels were surrounded and dying in a dozen last stands.
Alex pictured his little sister out there going Rambo on the Bible thumpers.
Tom glared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s just unbelievable.”
The men snarled their agreement.
“The colonel ordered us to be ready to withdraw back to our old positions at Fairfax,” Tom said. “We’re vulnerable to being flanked.”
The squad erupted at this news. After everything, they’d end up right back where they started.
A mortar thumped. The round whistled through the air.
Donnie looked up and said, “At least we still got—”
“Incoming!” Tom roared.
Alex dove to the floor and landed hard. The round smashed into the street outside. The windows burst with spraying glass. Shrapnel and chunks of asphalt battered the house.
“What are they doing?” Donnie raged.
Alex flinched as the next shell struck the ground near the house next door.
Jack lay next to him with his hands covering his head. “I’ll bet the libs captured the Angels’ mortars.”
Alex turned to gaze at the back door, which promised an exit from all this. The war was all a big joke, but it wasn’t funny anymore. The endless skirmishing had turned into a real war. The militiamen saw the libs as pussies, but it turned out the pussies could fight. They had a Rommel doing pincer moves. They had mortars. They were smart enough to set up their attack using runners while they kept the Liberty Tree busy listening to bull on the radio.
They’d just wiped out the First Angels, and now they were coming for the Liberty Tree.
Another blast shook the house. Shrapnel crackled along the siding. Clouds of dust and insulation settled on the floor.
“Why are you all looking at me?” Tom growled.
“Are we bugging out?” Alex said.
“We’re holding for now. We fought for this ground.”
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