“Fall back!” I heard a voice yell, which I now know belonged to Bart. “Fall back now!”
But I couldn’t bring myself to move. The only course of action that made any sense was to stay low, out of sight, to not make myself a target. But then I heard a third gunshot, and someone screamed “Nick!” and finally I got the message. We were being picked off like Coke cans in target practice. The shots were being fired from a considerable distance. Just because we couldn’t see the guy didn’t mean my magnified head wasn’t the next target.
I rolled sideways and onto my feet, where I scrambled deeper into the trees and caught up to Ed. The two of us ran blindly back the way we had come, at least until we spotted Bart and Jimmy huddled near the ground. Somehow Bart had grabbed a pair of orphaned binoculars.
“Stop and sit down,” he hissed. “Listen for any sound. We need to know if they’re following us or not.”
“Holy fucking shit,” said Ed. “They shot Aaron. Holy fucking—”
“I said shut the fuck up!”
Even when Ed stopped talking, our gusting breaths made it difficult to hear anything.
“We have no chance against that sniper,” I finally said. “He’s standing on the roof of that warehouse playing a goddamned video game.”
“Maybe so,” said Bart. “But I’m starving and thirsty and we don’t have shit for supplies.”
“We’re low on energy and not thinking straight,” Jimmy said. “Whereas those guards are well fed and enjoy better visibility. But they are missing one ingredient the rest of us will bring when we make our move.”
“And what’s that?” asked Ed.
“Desperation,” Jimmy said. “Because if we don’t get inside that building, the rest of us will die like our boys just did.”
Seeing the spilled blood of fellow soldiers brought focus to my desires. Where minutes before I had been ready to shoot one of my own men, a real opportunity had finally arisen to fire at someone else. Also, I was pissed off. Why would God choose me to facilitate His plan and then intentionally cut our team in half? It made no sense. I began to wonder, for the first time, if God really played an active role in my life. Had my journey from unemployed graphic designer to member of this assault team been my doing? Was I the one in charge?
It was time to find out. Time to assume command.
“Why don’t I take your binoculars,” I said to Bart, “and sneak back to the tree line in a different spot? The sniper probably found us so easily because of the way we spread out. Maybe I can locate him this time before he finds me.”
“You’re willing to do that?”
“Sure. I’d rather go out guns blazing than starve to death.”
“It better be soon,” Jimmy said. “You’re losing your light.”
Until then I hadn’t noticed the rapidly approaching darkness. There was also a towering cloud structure behind the DC, dark and flat at the bottom, brilliantly pink in its upper reaches.
“Bart,” I said. “Hand me those binoculars.”
While I looked for a new spot to survey the roof, the screeching in my head began to sound more like a ringing, or a high-pitched tone you might hear during a weather alert. A sense of destiny wrapped me like a warm blanket, as if this assault had somehow been arranged for my benefit. As if I were the hero of this subplot.
Eventually I found a suitable position and crouched near the ground. I pushed the binoculars into an open space and hoped the rest of me was hidden by branches and leaves. I found the northeastern corner of the building and panned westward. The light was so low it was difficult to tell where the roof ended and the sky began, especially because, through the lenses, the approaching storm seemed close enough to touch. Its popcorn cloud formations had become a pinkish, dusky gray and the smell of rain floated on the wind.
I couldn’t see how anyone could hide on the roof, as featureless as it was, at least not until I reached the middle portion of it. That’s where I discovered a single row of what appeared to be exhaust ducts.
Adjacent to the closest one, if my eyes were not deceiving me, stood a rifle mounted on a tripod. As far as I could tell the gun was pointed right at me.
I blinked.
Rolled violently away.
The crack in the air might have been thunder, so close was the storm, but the explosion of nearby dirt verified the arrival of a bullet. Had I moved a second later, I would have been dead. Instead, I saved myself.
Which made the truth so obvious. I could be my own God!
“He’s at the middle of the roof!” I hissed. “By the exhaust duct. Cover me. I’m going in!”
The deliverance I felt in the next moment electrified me so thoroughly that as I sprinted out of the trees, down the slope of grass, it felt like my conscious mind had spread beyond the boundaries of my body. As gunshots rang out the world seemed to slow down and become drained of color. My footsteps on the ground were thunderous, the air in my ears a gale-force wind. Only when I reached the parking lot, when I saw a row of handholds mounted near a corner of the building, did I realize rain was pouring out of the sky. By this point, because of his angle, the sniper could no longer shoot at me from his original position. I kept waiting for other guards to appear, to be riddled with bullets, but these ground-based sentries were nowhere to be found. I darted between a semi-trailer and the exterior wall of the DC and found the handholds again. They turned out to be rungs of a ladder that stretched all the way to the roof. Without bothering to stop and rest, I slung the rifle over my shoulder and began my ascent. Through the torrential rain I saw Bart and Jimmy and Ed approaching, firing in bursts toward the roof. Hopefully their assault would occupy the sniper while I climbed.
On the way up my arms and legs seemed to take on weight, and my energy ran out just as I reached the last rung. Rain roared on the steel roof. Below me I heard loud voices and someone pounding on a door. What I didn’t detect was a response, like other voices or return fire or any sort of resistance.
Finally, when my muscles had recovered, I summoned the energy to push my right hand upward, where it slapped against the wet steel surface of the roof. Rivers of rain poured out of my hair and into my eyes.
Amid all this chaos, a voice emerged. At first the identity of the voice didn’t register because I was concerned only with the message itself.
“Come any closer,” said the sniper, “and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
Then reality poked through my confusion, and I marveled at this unexpected twist.
The sniper was a woman.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“If you wanted to kill me,” I shouted back at her. “You could have done it while I was out in the open.”
“I tried. Conditions were poor.”
“Still, you murdered three of our group without so much as a warning shot. I can’t leave you up here to keep firing at us.”
“Warning shot? Your friend was carrying a grenade launcher!”
I saw her point, but nonetheless we remained at stalemate.
After seeing that first armed guard, the one who stood on the fuel tank, we had assumed the DC would be well-defended. But a lack of commotion on the ground suggested a much smaller force. If Jimmy and Bart and Ed were already inside the DC, that left the sniper up here alone.