His eyes were closed, his face in repose. She struggled to find the enemy in the boy before her. The sorrow of the day rose in her chest, and finally, a sob broke free. She croaked loudly and covered her mouth with her hand and began to weep deeply, uncontrollably.
Through the tears, she thought she saw his chest rise slightly. Emily wiped her eyes and studied him, the med student taking over.
Yes, he was still breathing. She grabbed his throat and felt for a pulse. His heart beat, surprisingly strong.
Emily scrambled for her med kit at the back of her battle belt and tore open a package of hemostatic dressing, working furiously to staunch the bleeding. She ran through his injuries as she carefully applied dressings: shoulder, stomach and chest, carefully rolling him to check the exit wounds in back.
The shoulder round had passed clear through, doing little damage. The chest shot might have missed his lungs, passing in and out of the left side at an angle. The stomach wound… it would be impossible to tell without surgery. Most people initially survived a shot to their gut, but few survived without a full surgical center. No matter. She would do everything she could.
He had paused. She felt certain. He had paused.
This time, five hundred men came at Jeff all at once. They swarmed like bees in and out of the homes alongside Vista View Boulevard, keeping pace with the clattering armored construction vehicles.
Jeff had no suicide bombers with gasoline this time. He couldn’t see a way out of this fight alive. His men could never beat the invaders fighting inside the homes. Maybe the odds had been carved back to seven to one after the morning’s killing, but he hadn’t trained his men for close quarters battle. They would inevitably be overrun, especially considering the armor.
As the Latinos fought their way forward, the pace of fire picked up, reaching a constant roar.
Just one thing left to do, Jeff thought. Fight to the death.
He leaned out, lying on the asphalt alongside the barricade and began firing, picking targets as they exposed themselves.
A thunderous boom shook the battlefield, followed by another. One of the front-end loaders turned hard to the left and rumbled across a lawn, crashing into the front of a home, the driver presumably shredded by Winslow and his fifty-caliber Barrett.
The gangbanger army began throwing one Molotov cocktail after another into the homes occupied by Jeff’s men. While the flames forced his men to retreat, they also had the unforeseen effect of blocking the attackers. With several homes on each side of the road fully ablaze, the Latinos couldn’t use the homes for cover. They were forced to advance in the open, directly down the middle of the boulevard, back into a fatal funnel. The infernal heat of the burning homes narrowed their advance even further, forcing the gangbangers away from the front yards and the cover of the houses. The Latino advance ground to a halt as they pushed up the middle of the boulevard, with only one remaining front-end loader as cover.
Jeff stretched out to make a shot on a red bandana-wearing gangbanger hiding behind an abandoned truck. An incoming round punched Jeff through the arm, sliding under his body armor and spalling into his stomach cavity. He gasped, steadied himself, and made the shot, nearly removing the gangbanger’s head.
Jeff inched back behind the barricade as a flurry of fire erupted from a house on his left. Half a dozen Latino men ran up behind a corner with handguns and shotguns peppering his barricade with rounds. With the hole in his side, Jeff didn’t think he could get up and run. He would have to fight from the asphalt.
Jeff hammered at the group with his big rifle, pulverizing the corner of the house where the enemy stacked. Two bodies slumped to the ground. Another round smashed into Jeff’s head, knocking him senseless and removing most of his ear.
As Jeff faded steadily toward unconsciousness, he heard the sound he had been dreading: the roar of a belt-fed machine gun opening up from Vista View Boulevard.
The gangbangers had finally figured out how to run the belt-fed, Jeff thought as he faded into unconsciousness.
Jason came to with a screeching headache. He had no idea how much time had passed. It felt like someone had switched off his internal computer—no dreams, no thoughts, and no sense of time.
Little by little, his current disposition returned to him. He had been in a gunfight. He was still alive. His rifle lay in front of him on the ground. He had a scorcher of a headache.
As reality came back, he heard shooting behind him and pulled himself together. When he sat up, his head roared in protest. He looked around and saw he was alone. Jesse lay dead and, as Jason stood, he could see Victor spread-eagled on the ground, his face smashed. The bodies of dozens of Polynesian warriors sprawled around the dry, grassy hillside.
Jason and his two dead friends had levied a horrible price on the Pacific Islanders. But the Islanders had won, and he could hear the battle continuing at the edge of the condo neighborhood behind him. The rest of the QRF must have engaged the Polynesians after Jason’s team fell.
Jason scooped up his AR-15 and looked into the breach. He saw two pieces of brass, stacked on top of each other in the classic, “type-three,” double-feed malfunction. Jason pawed at his battle belt and pulled out his Leatherman, whipping out the needle nose pliers. Within a minute, he had the weapon cleared. He removed the half-used mag, replaced it with a full one and looked around, taking stock of his situation.
He had been left for dead by the Polynesian advance. He saw the giant who had smashed his head lying dead twenty yards past Jason’s foxhole; he had probably bled out from the bullets Jason had put into his eighteen-inch chest. Up against the houses, he saw a few Poly fighters duck into a backyard. Jason had been left behind them. In the parlance of tactics, he had their “back door.”
Time for payback, motherfuckers, Jason fumed through the grinding pain of his concussion.
He crouched and steadied. One careful shot at a time, he put a round through the heads of each of the three enemies in the backyard of the condo, missing slightly with one round and hitting the man in the throat. All three were dead before they could find the source of the rifle fire.
The thought of his two dead friends rose with his fury, exacerbating by his migraine. Jason maneuvered laterally behind a row of condos, finding small groups of Tongan fighters and killing them without hesitation. Now that he had already “died” in battle, Jason fought like a machine, without fear and methodical to the point of soullessness.
He lost track of his kills after fifteen men. Then he went to work on the inside of the condos. His hearing had been utterly compromised after shooting all but two of his mags, but he could tell which of the condos held enemy from the sound of their shooting, firing undoubtedly at the rest of his QRF.
Jason paused his killing spree, becoming concerned that he had moved down range from his own QRF and the firestorm they were unleashing.
He keyed his radio and spoke. “Alec. This is Jason. I’m down range. I want to start fucking these guys up inside the condos. Shift fire up. I’m going into the first condo on the far west. Do you copy?”
“Holy fuck.” Alec radioed back. “You’re still alive? Okay. Hold where you are. We’re shifting fire.” Alec clicked off, presumably jumping on his team radio. Jason heard a pause in the incoming rifle fire as the QRF shifted their fire up and over the condo he was about to enter. The enemy would still be pinned inside.
“Jason. This is Alec. Fire shifted over the condo on the far west. Proceed.”
Jason quietly crossed the little backyard, going around a winter-dead garden and slipping through the open sliding glass door. He could hear several Tongans shooting and shouting from the front room of the house. Jason stepped carefully through a small kitchen and came up behind four shirtless men, darting to and fro in the living room. All of their attention was focused on the bay window facing the street.