“Fuck yeah!” Mark shouted, exultant.
George blinked. He was shocked that it had worked.
Then the Tab who had just finished removing the bodies of his dead comrades from around the fifty-caliber machine gun on the roof of the IMP, jumped behind the gun and opened up on the top floor of the police station.
The massive bullets slammed through the walls in a hail of metal. George made to dive out the open doorway but an impact flipped him sideways and as he spun around and hit the floor he saw Mark falling backward, the air between them filled with flying debris.
Ed had taken a knee just inside the door and was staring out at the Growler as they waited. Sarah was with Quentin in the back seat of the vehicle working on his wound. Her hands were bright red with blood.
Inside the apartment building they couldn’t hear the grenade launcher, but the ripping sound of Mark’s SAW was unmistakable. He got on the trigger and didn’t let up until he’d fired at least a hundred rounds.
George came over the radio. “Bird is down,” he said, coughing, his voice weak. “Go.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“Don’t wait for us,” George responded.
“Fuck that,” Ed said, but not over the radio. He stood up and pushed through the doorway. He started barking orders. “Renny, get in there,” he said, pointing at the front seat of the Growler. “Weasel, you get the fuck out of here. See if you can get Quentin up to the hospital on One Way, then scatter. Early, Jason, on me, we’re getting George and Mark. Nobody fucking gets left behind. Ditch your radios so they can’t track you.”
“See you when I see you,” Weasel said, then slammed the driver’s door. Renny jogged around the back of the Growler and tried to figure out how to fit himself and his big rifle inside the vehicle.
“You hang in there,” Early called out to Quentin, traded a look with Sarah, then shut the back door on them. The Growler took off with a start and headed north through the parking lot.
Ed had ditched his single-shot grenade launcher when he’d given the last of his rounds to George. He felt unburdened and fast on his feet as he ran behind the McDonald’s and through the rear door of the police precinct. “Mark! George!” he called out, but heard no response.
“Gotta be up,” Early said.
Ed nodded and they found the stairs in short order. It made sense that the two men would be on the top floor and as they reached that hallway Ed heard a cough. “Theodore, coming in,” he called out.
“Stay low,” somebody croaked.
They found the two men in an office that appeared to have been fed through a wood chipper. Mark was sitting on the floor, back propped against a wall, a pained look on his face. When Ed started toward him Mark waved him off and pointed to George.
George was on his back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. His intestines had been blown sideways out of his body and stretched ropily across six feet of floor. But, somehow, he was still alive. Ed knelt down beside him. Behind them Jason’s eyes were wide, his face green. Early’s face was expressionless.
George’s eyes slid over to look at Ed. Then he rolled his eyes. “You never did listen,” he said, his voice little better than a croak.
“Who gives the orders here?” Ed said, trying to smile, but it died on his face.
George saw the effort. “Had a good run,” he croaked. “Been fighting… since day one. Did… my best.”
“You did,” Ed agreed, nodding.
“I’m sorry… I…,” George said, and then was gone, eyes forever fixed at something far ahead.
“Fuck,” Ed sobbed, tears dropping onto George’s body. He sucked the snot back into his nose and wiped his face, blinked his eyes to clear them. He turned to Mark. “You hit?”
Mark made a face. His one leg was covered in blood below the knee, but it was dried blood. And there didn’t seem to be any other blood on him, although the Hawaiian shirt didn’t make it easy to spot stains. “Well, yes and no. Fifty, right in the edge of my plate. Bent it like it was tinfoil, think I’ve got a couple broken ribs. Was trying to catch my breath. Pretty sure I can walk.” He looked to his SAW, the barrel still smoking. “SAW’s done for. Took a round in the feed tray.”
Ed nodded, and coughed to clear his grief-constricted throat. “Take George’s carbine, he loved that thing. And some mags.” He began going through George’s pockets and the pouches on this gear, looking for whatever they didn’t want the Tabs to have. He unstrapped the sling from George’s Springfield AR and slid it across the floor, following it with half a dozen magazines.
Early was well back from the frame and kept to the shadows as he peered out the window toward the vehicles on the bridge. While they were hiding behind their vehicles, there were still a lot of soldiers out there. He sunk back down. “Cap’n, we need to go. And… not that way.”
Ed looked at Early, and the window, and nodded. “We’ll head south,” he said after some deliberation.
“South side’s pretty open, ain’t it, Cap’n?”
“Crossing the road it is, but then we’ve got a lot of buildings for cover,” Ed told him. “Why?” He detected a note in Early’s voice.
“We’ve got us an eager beaver over there on a roof gun,” Early told them.
“Think you can take care of that while I get Mark down to the ground floor?” Ed asked him. “Then you can join us for our dash?”
Early edged his eye past the window frame again and studied the scene. What was that, two hundred yards or so? He looked down at the M1A National Match in his hands. “Give me just a minute,” he said.
Ed looked down at George’s still face one last time, then patted the man’s chest. “Let’s go. Jason, help me grab this fashion tragedy.”
The two men grabbed Mark’s shoulder straps and dragged him out of the room with much groaning, then lifted the man to his feet in the hallway beyond. Jason went back into the room for George’s short-barrel carbine and magazines. A tumult of emotions raged through his body as he knelt by the man who had spent the most time trying to teach him what he’d need to know to survive.
“Jason?”
“Yeah, coming.” He had to put the sling over Mark’s shoulder, the man couldn’t lift his arm high enough to do it himself.
Early heard them go. He’d shot an M1A out to six hundred yards in High Power competition, but the farthest he’d ever shot this rifle in combat was maybe two hundred and fifty yards, and that was at scrambling targets of opportunity. This would be a precision shot. He huffed. Well, then, it was a good thing he’d been shooting a rifle since he was six.
Being careful not to make a target of himself Early looked around the shredded room but didn’t see anything the proper height on which he could rest his rifle. There was always the window frame, but he was not about to go forward and stick the end of his rifle out the window—might as well stick an I’M WITH STUPID bumper sticker on your forehead if you were going to do something dumb like that.
He backed up out of the room, pressed his left palm against the metal door frame, thumb out into the opening, and shouldered the big rifle. He cradled the scarred walnut forend between his index finger and thumb. He flicked off the safety with his fingertip and fought to get the narrow front sight in crisp focus through the rear aperture. His eyes weren’t near what they used to be… but they’d have to do.
Early would have preferred to be shooting prone or off a bench, but standing supported, especially supported against something immovable like a metal door frame, wasn’t too bad. In this position it wasn’t his heartbeat that was the major issue. It was his breathing.