And then I say,
“Manny!”
I turn on my heel, away from the forest. I run through the brush, the pain of my wounded hip on the backburner for the moment. I reach the clearing. There is a little highway here. It has been cleared of all vehicles, and Manny’s biplane is settled in the midst of it.
“Manny?” I call.
He is standing on the wing of his biplane, his leather duster caught in the wind, his flight cap stuck to his head, tangled with his wild gray hair.
“Cassidy,” he smiles. “What is it, my girl?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” I say. “But I think we found your niece.”
Manny’s hand drops to his side. I see something that I have never seen on his face before: shock.
“Elle?” he asks.
I nod.
He takes his flight cap off and hops off the wing of the plane.
“But where? How?” He walks closer. “How did you know I had a niece? I was under the impression that I’d kept that a secret.” He pauses. “Have I been talking in my sleep?”
I laugh — almost hysterically.
“No, Manny,” I promise. “I figured it out for myself.”
“Where is Elle?”
“She’s safe. She’s at the Naval Postgraduate School. She’s got a bomb dog.”
Manny makes a face.
“Makes sense,” he says, but I can see the excitement on his face — the total relief.
“Manny,” I tell him, snapping my fingers. “I need you to focus.”
“I’m focused. Bright eyed and bushy-tailed.” He grins. “What’s the situation, Commander?”
“You’ve been flying overwatch, right?” I ask.
“Just about three times a day,” he replies.
“What have you seen?”
“Well, I didn’t see Harry’s cronies hidden in the dunes,” he replies. “I’ve got a biplane, not a modern aircraft. I couldn’t see them through that thick fog.”
“Have you seen anything else?”
“I’ve been circling the city about twenty or thirty miles out every day. Haven’t seen a thing.” Manny shrugs. “Why?”
“Have you been flying today?”
“No. The threat of missiles put a cramp in my organized schedule.”
“What about last night?”
“No. Pulled aircraft in. I was searching the bay, looking for you.” He smiles softly. “I’m glad you’re alive, my girl.”
I blink, hard.
“Me too,” I say, clearing my throat. Then, “So all of our forces, all of our resources have been concentrated on the coastline, keeping those warships out of our hair.”
Manny nods. “Yes, that’s about the size of it.” He leans closer. “You’re brain’s working so fast, I can hear the cogs whirring.” He makes a motion with his finger. “Don’t give yourself a headache.”
“Too late.” My eyes widen. “Manny. Remember when we were fighting in the Grapevine? You told me that Roman soldiers used to send mercenary groups to the front of the line as a sacrifice. Right?”
“Yes, they knew that the first line of defense is always killed, so why waste the rest—”
“—Manny, I think we’re in trouble.”
“How do you figure, my girl?”
“Five hundred troops. Warships that are just sitting in the harbor, blowing up stupid buildings on the shore…” I look Manny in the eye. “My God, Manny. I think we just let Omega roll a Trojan horse through our front door.”
Manny doesn’t reply.
He just looks at me with an expression that says,
Here we go again.
We are back in the forest. Chris is on the radio, contacting the Naval Postgraduate School. Don’t pretend this isn’t happening, he keeps saying. Something bigger is coming. This is a distraction, smoke and mirrors. We’re in trouble. Call in the Alliance’s air support — everything.
I am breathing hard. Normally I can control my breathing, but right now I am on the verge of panic. I have lost quite a bit of blood, and I lean on Manny for support. He keeps his arm around me, gently squeezing my shoulders.
In the distance, the sound of gunfire and rockets echo across the sea.
“They’re not answering,” Chris says.
Manny cracks his knuckles.
“Try again,” he tells Chris.
Chris does try again. And again. We try contacting the guard posts, anyone.
“What the hell is going on?” Uriah mutters.
Nobody knows, so nobody answers.
“We should send scouts into the city to see what’s going on,” I suggest. “If something bad did go down, we won’t risk sending all of our militia forces into the heart of the city where we can’t make a quick exit.”
More gunshots. More rockets.
There is a distant scream, like someone is punching the air. I look up. Two fighter jets scream above our heads. “Enemy aircraft,” Chris says. “Damn.”
“What do we do?” I ask Chris.
Because I really don’t know what we should do.
The city isn’t responding. We’re stuck in a phantom gray area. Without communication with the rest of the Alliance, how can we know what’s going on?
“We send the scouts into the city,” Chris says, seconding my suggestion. “We find out what’s going on, and we keep the rest of our forces hidden in the woods. If Cassidy’s theory is right…” He shakes his head. “We’ll find out. Uriah, Vera. Take a team. Do a recon. See what you can see.”
“I’m going with them,” I say.
“You’re going nowhere,” Chris replies. “You’re wounded.”
“Give me some epinephrine and I’ll be fine.”
Chris gives me a look.
Geez. I was only joking.
Well… kind of.
I get a flashback of Desmond, the crazy field medic from the Mountain Rangers, his dreadlocks fluttering in the breeze as he went from wounded to wounded on the battlefield, saving every man he could.
He would have had me fixed up by now.
“Sophia,” Chris replies. “Help Cassidy with her wound, then hit the city. Fast.”
Sophia doesn’t meet Chris’s gaze, but she does as she’s told. She has often been our go-to medic when there is no one else available.
I walk over to her, sitting on the edge of a rotting stump. The sound of distant warfare is unsettling. Sophia kneels beside me, checking my hip. It is only a flesh wound, but it still smarts. The skin has been cut and burned. The bullet passed through the flesh, leaving me with nothing but pain — and what I’m sure will be a highly attractive scar later on.
“How are you doing?” I ask Sophia.
She glances at my face, shrugging. She cleans the wound with water and antiseptic wipes from her medial kit. “This needs some stitching,” she says. “Hang on.”
I sigh. She takes the needle and inserts it into my flesh. It pinches and burns, but I force myself to remain still. If I can endure a gunshot, I can endure the stitching up that comes afterward.
“Sophia,” I say.
She keeps stitching.
“Lieutenant,” I press. “Look at me, soldier.”
Sophia snaps her head up, locking gazes with me. Her eyes are red, teary. I touch her shoulder. She freezes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a moving vehicle.
“What is it, Sophia?” I ask. “Why all this bitterness?”
She finishes the stitches and ties it off, leaving me with a cleaned, bandaged hip. “What’s going on,” she whispers, “is that we’re at war.”
She stands up.
She swipes her black hair out of her eyes, now long enough to pull into a ponytail.
“You know,” I say, “you can only act like this for so long before you have to take responsibility for your attitude. And let me tell you, Sophia, I’m getting sick of this. We’ve all been through crap, and none of us do this to the team. It’s time for you to suck it up and get over it.”