Probably more than twenty…
Lara lowered the binoculars for a minute and glanced down at the Benelli leaning against the wall next to the window to remind herself it was still there. Behind her was a second shotgun, and two pouches of shotgun shells loaded with silver buckshot sat next to each weapon. It had been Lara’s idea to go with the shotguns. She was going to be in the Tower for most of the night, and if she had to shoot, it would mean there were ghouls or human attackers very near the Tower. In that kind of close-range situation, the shotguns were most effective.
The sight of the weapons reassured her, and she thought, amused, Mother would never approve.
The loud crack of a gunshot from above startled her. She glanced up briefly and saw the barrel of Danny’s M4A1 poking out of the Tower window just as he fired two more times.
Lara peered through her binoculars and saw that one of the boats was now moving in darkness, its lights shot out.
Danny fired again, and Lara thought she saw a man topple from one of the boats.
Then a long string of unrelenting gunfire exploded, shattering the calm night with such massive velocity and force that she almost jumped.
My God, is this what being at war sounds like?
There was a jagged line of fire stabbing toward the beach from the water. The men on the boats were shooting as they neared the island. For a moment, Lara expected to see tracer bullets like in the movies — brightly lit “laser” lines following the path of gunfire — but there was none of that.
The boats were clearly starting to slow down as they neared the beach. Lara wasn’t even sure if Will, Blaine, and Maddie, waiting on the beach, were firing back yet, or if they were biding their time, waiting for the attackers to get closer.
Above her, Danny was firing nonstop now. Single shots. Calmly, with precision. She knew the M4A1s had only two fire settings — semi-automatic and full-auto. Danny was squeezing off one shot after another.
One of the boats burst out of the water and slid up the beach. Men scrambled to climb over the boat’s railing even before it had stopped moving, but it was hard to make out how many of them there were exactly. Then one of the men stumbled and fell face-down on the beach and didn’t move again.
The gunfire didn’t stop. If anything, it got louder and faster and more intense.
She saw bodies falling on the beach as another boat came in, but it was moving too fast and didn’t stop in time. Or maybe that was the point. The boat slashed across the sand, traveling up even farther than the first boat. The men inside were shooting as they scrambled out, raking fire in every direction. She didn’t know if they saw what they were shooting at or if it was just desperation. Hoping to hit something while praying they didn’t get hit.
She knew Will was somewhere in the center of the beach, hidden in the trees, with Blaine to his left and Maddie to his right at opposite ends of the long stretch of sand. They would be firing into the center of the beach, into what Will called a “kill zone.”
And above her, Danny was still firing. Calmly, one shot at a time. Over and over again. She didn’t remember if he had even reloaded yet.
Lara continued looking through the binoculars, swinging left and right and center, watching men stumbling away from boats beached haphazardly on the sand, only to fall. She could already see bodies in the sand. Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. It seemed unreal, and it wasn’t even much of a fight. They were dying. Just dying. What did they think they were doing? Whose plan was this, to send men to die? Did they really think they were going to take the island just by boating up to it?
This is a suicide mission.
She lowered her binoculars. She didn’t want to see any more. There wasn’t really a fight on the beach. Will had set it up perfectly, and with Danny firing from a high position, there was no way they were going to lose the beach. No way—
One of the lampposts in the yard between the Tower and the hotel glinted off something metallic below her. Lara saw it out of the corner of her eye and looked down. The first thought that raced through her head was, Oh God, just before she pulled her head back — a half-second before the man standing below her window fired and a big chunk of concrete above the window frame exploded and showered her as she fell to the floor.
Lara scrambled away from the window as fast as she could, ignoring the sudden stabbing sensations from her tailbone, where she had slammed into the hardwood floor after falling. She backpedaled with her feet like a turtle on its back, sucking in air.
She frantically reached down and snatched the radio off her hip and screamed into it: “They’re here! They’re at the Tower!”
“Where?” someone asked through the radio. It might have been Will, or Danny, but she couldn’t be sure.
A second later she heard an ear-splitting explosion directly above her. The floor that separated the second and third floors shook so violently that dust and splinters came loose and fell down on top of her and the girls and Carly. She thought she saw brick and mortar falling down across the window in front of her, like sheets of rain.
Jenny began to cry and Vera grabbed the girl and held her, while Elise pressed her hands against her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
Brave girls, stay brave.
“What was that?” someone shouted through the radio. Male. It might have been Will. “What the hell was that?”
No. Not Will. The voice was too panicked, too loud, and too out of control.
She heard gunfire outside the Tower, and it was very close.
They’re outside! How did they get on the island?
Will had to be coming. Will or Blaine or Maddie. There were collaborators on the island.
They’re on the island!
But she could still hear gunfire from the beach. How many were left? Hadn’t Will and the others already killed everyone trying to land?
And the third floor was silent. That was the most disturbing part. Danny wasn’t shooting anymore. He had stopped shooting as soon as she had heard the explosion above her.
Oh, God, Danny…Gaby…
Lara scrambled to the other side of the floor. She grabbed the Benelli, which was still leaning against the wall, and struggled to her feet. She leaned out the west window and looked down and saw two figures racing by below her, appearing in the large pool of floodlights. One of the men stopped and looked up. She saw some kind of green-and-black camouflage paint over his face, but his eyes were wide and blue, and they zeroed in on her just before he lifted his rifle and fired.
Lara flinched as the bullet buzzed past her right ear. It wasn’t courage that kept her standing at the window — she had simply frozen and didn’t pull her head back as she should have. But the man fired too quickly, shocked by her appearance, and missed.
Lara shoved the Benelli outside the window and pointed it down and squeezed the trigger without aiming. The man’s legs buckled under him; then he seemed to vanish into a thick shrubbery.
She was in the middle of pulling the weapon back when the second man suddenly reappeared and began firing a shotgun up at her window. His first shot scattered buckshot along the window frame, and Lara screamed as some caught her left arm and she lost her grip on the Benelli. The shotgun fell through the window and the man, thinking it was some kind of attack, scrambled out of the way.
Lara stumbled away from the window. Her right arm was bleeding, but she knew it wasn’t serious. Shotguns didn’t kill unless you got most of the fire into center mass, and the man had gotten her with stray buckshot. It still hurt, and she was trickling blood on the floor as she moved.