There was a tremendous amount of blood all over the ground beneath me, or so it seemed to me. Already, it had soaked my jeans. Some of it was certainly Grant's.
Just not much of it.
There were two marks in my vest, where rounds had hit and died against the Kevlar. The highest was in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen, the other roughly middle, about where my navel was. The blood I was spilling was coming from further below. With my free hand, I reached around to the small of my back, beneath the vest, and discovered a hole in my body that couldn't have been much larger than an apple. Maybe a Fuji. Maybe a Braeburn. When I brought my hand back around, it shone black in the night, covered with more of my blood.
I wasn't hearing Mark or his AR-15. There was a good chance he didn't know I'd been hit, that all he knew was that there'd been a quick exchange of shots, and now there was silence. But he wasn't calling out, either, wasn't asking Grant for his status, which meant that he figured either I'd killed Grant and was still alive and kicking, or that Grant and I had killed each other. Certainly, if Grant had killed me, Grant would have announced the fact the same way he'd announced everything else that he'd witnessed.
I was getting cold, and it wasn't just the night.
When Alena had begun teaching me, she'd done so, first and foremost, by showing me her training regimen. "Showing," in this instance, had meant making me do it with her, and the first month of the process had been a living hell, had very well nearly killed me. It wasn't just the diet and the exercise, it had been the choice of exercises. Between the swimming and the running and the combat practice, she'd thrown in ballet and yoga. Everything she did, everything she'd taught me, had been about one thing: control of the body, how to make it do what you wanted it to do, the way you wanted it done, when you wanted to do it.
Breathing had been one of the very first lessons. How to breathe properly.
I took a breath, forced myself to do it right, to bring it in deep to the lungs, to let it out slowly. I took a second one, then a third, and then, when I felt I wouldn't have to scream when I moved, I shifted myself away from the side of the Ford, turning as best as I could to face the front of the vehicle. When I moved, it felt like I was literally ripping myself in two directions, as if everything below my pelvis was grinding itself to paste, and an ocean roar grew suddenly in my ears, and the night all around me turned white.
Then the night came flooding back, and I knew I had blacked out, that I'd lost seconds, hopefully only a handful. I'd pitched forward, almost doubling over, and I'd dropped the MP5 in my lap. That had been lucky, and it had probably saved my life, because if Mark had heard it hitting the pavement, he'd have forgotten about coming slow and careful. I got my breathing under control, took hold of the MP5, and forced myself to sit upright again.
Grant's body lay to my side, his eyes open and unmoving. Through the open front doors of the Ford, I could see his partner, the one he'd called Sean, flat on his back. His eyes were closed. He had a boyish face, clean-shaven. The watch cap had come off when he'd fallen, and the hair on his head was cropped close, either brown or black. I couldn't see where I'd hit him, but the blood that had spilled from beneath his body made me think wherever it had been, it had been high in the torso, maybe even the neck. I couldn't tell if he was breathing or not.
The blood slicking my hands made controlling the MP5 hard, and I fumbled with the burst selector, trying to get it off three-round and onto full-auto. Then I listened for Mark and his AR-15 to approach. I hoped it wouldn't take long. The way I was bleeding, long was something I didn't think I could experience for much longer.
Something scraped the pavement, a faint sound, and it could have been nothing more than a leaf blowing across the lot. I raised the MP5 to roughly even with my head, supporting the barrel with my left, keeping my right on the trigger, pointing the muzzle downwards, towards the ground at an angle. It was counterintuitive, and it was risky, but it was the only way to turn a direct-fire weapon like the MP5 into an indirect-fire one, and indirect fire was the only way I could see out of this.
Firing like this-skip-firing-relied on the inherent strangeness of ballistics. Bullets don't behave like billiard balls. Despite what movies and television portray, they don't ricochet at perfect angles. This is why soldiers and cops don't press themselves against walls for cover; if the angle is right and the surface hard enough, the bullet won't bounce away, but rather will ride along the plane, sometimes as high as an inch or an inch and a half above its point of impact. If you're leaning against the wall the round is riding when that happens, you can end up with a very nasty, very lethal surprise.
I didn't like doing it, and I didn't have terrific faith that it would work, but I didn't see any other choice. I was bleeding badly, I knew it, maybe even bleeding out. I had an MP5 with eighteen rounds versus an AR-15 with quite possibly a reloaded magazine. Even if I had been able to stand for a straight-on fight, I was pretty certain I'd lose.
C'mon, I thought. C'mon, come and get me, you bastard.
It was what he had to do. His night, like mine, had become a total clusterfuck, and now he had to end it, one way or another. From the setup for the ambush, it was clear they hadn't expected that I would make them. But I had, and now Mark was down two buddies and all alone, and the last he'd heard had been Grant's shots and mine, and now he didn't know what was what. Like me, he was running out of moves and out of time. He could either climb back into his Cherokee and bolt, or he could approach the Ford and finish the job. And since I hadn't heard the Cherokee starting up again, it was going to be the latter.
Distantly, somewhere ahead and in front, I heard the clack of a magazine being fitted into place, a bolt being slid back. He'd made his decision; he was coming to finish me, reloaded and ready. Probably swinging around behind the rear end of the Civic, using it for cover.
The ocean was rising once more in my ears, and the edges of my vision were beginning to lose color again. Sitting the way I was hurt, and I was sure it made the bleeding worse. If I waited any longer, the chance that I'd pass out seemed more and more likely.
My finger was slippery on the MP5's trigger, but I got it down, laid a spray at the pavement, sweeping the barrel in a slight arc in front of me. I tried to count the shots, let up when I hit ten, but I was probably off by one or two.
There was an immediate scream of pain, and I heard first the AR-15, then Mark, hit the ground. He continued to scream, and he was loud, and I didn't blame him for that. One of the rounds must have found a foot, maybe destroying a toe, maybe coming at him a little higher. There are a lot of bones in the foot, most of them small, and all of them delicate. There was a reason he was screaming.
I readjusted my grip on the MP5, pulled the trigger again, sprayed at the ground again, but this time I kept the trigger down until the weapon went dry.
Mark stopped screaming.
I tried very hard not to start as I began lurching towards the Cherokee.
CHAPTER
To this day, I'm still unsure as to how I got into the Cherokee, how I got it turned around and headed the right way on County Route 10. I have a vague, distorted memory of reminding myself to breathe, and that getting to the vehicle itself was agonizing, not just because I was hurt, but because I had to do it quickly. My right leg had become beyond useless, and my left had been desperately trying to follow suit. How I managed to drive the vehicle at all remains a mystery; I must have used my left foot to work the pedals.