“Sucks, huh?”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Yeah, where?”
“I dunno, let me think about it for a moment.”
Gaby chuckled, prompting Lara to smile.
She pulled aside Gaby’s shirt and peered at the wound underneath. There was a big piece of shrapnel buried near Danny’s shoulder blade. She would have to remove that as soon as she could, or Danny might lose the use of his arm completely by morning.
“What happened?” Lara asked. “I heard an explosion.”
“Some kind of grenade launcher,” Gaby said. “Blew up the ceiling. Well, blew up everything else, too, I guess. Danny must have seen the guy. He grabbed me and pushed me down to the floor and covered me with his body. Saved my life. It’s almost enough to make me forgive him for all the crappy jokes I’ve had to listen to for the last two days.”
“Sounds like Danny,” a voice said behind them.
Lara looked over at Will, climbing up through the door in the floor. He had his Remington slung over his back, and his left arm hung loosely at his side, a field tourniquet tied around it. There was blood on his arm and shirt.
“You’ve been shot,” she said.
She remembered how he had teased her about getting shot in Lancing. He had been through wars. He and Danny. And neither one of them had ever gotten shot. For a while, she had thought of them as invincible. That night in the Cleveland bank, the siege on Harold Campbell’s facility… They were always untouchable. Until tonight.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Take care of Danny and Gaby.”
She gave him a long look to see if he was lying to her. He wasn’t. “How are the others?”
“We stopped them at the beach. Bobby’s dead.” He sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall across from them. “Maddie was shot.”
“Come here and let me take a look at that arm.”
“Only if you let me take a look at yours first,” he said.
“Get a room,” Gaby said, rolling her eyes.
CHAPTER 37
WILL
A shot rang out from behind them. Danny, firing from the Tower.
Will saw one of the spotlights on the incoming boats blink out of existence. Then another shot, and another light went out.
A third shot took out the final light.
The boats were close enough now that when Will looked through his night-vision binoculars, he could see four figures scrambling around on the darkened boat. He couldn’t tell if they were panicking or getting ready to land. They were heavily armed, he saw that much. Weapons swung around with their bodies.
He moved the binoculars over to his right and picked up four more men in another boat. The spotlights of the second boat were still shining, too bright, and made watching them difficult with the lights directly in his eyes.
Will heard another shot and looked back at the first boat just in time to see a man pitching off the side. The remaining three men were in full panic mode now, and suddenly he saw the man behind the steering wheel shove the throttle forward. The boat began pushing across the calm water at full speed. Will lost track of it for a moment before picking it up again, just in time to see a second man stumbled over the side of the boat, almost as if the wind had caught him by the shirt and jerked him free. He fell into the water and disappeared into the blackness.
Then they were suddenly there and Will dropped the binoculars, picked up the M4A1, and opened fire. His first shot hit the driver of the second boat in the chest, the bullet smashing through the clear screen guard. The man’s body jerked violently and he fell forward, his hand hitting the throttle. The boat took off, leaving the others behind.
Will pulled his eye back from the rifle’s sight to watch the boats coming. They were almost on top of them.
Thirty meters…
Twenty-five meters…
Blaine and Maddie took his cue and opened fire on the incoming boats. They were close enough now that Will could see bullets smashing into the sides and chopping off chunks of wood and fiberglass. The collaborators were firing back, but they were firing blind, trying in vain to gauge where the bullets were coming from.
Amateurs.
Then the first boat hit the beach and kept coming.
For a moment, Will thought it would continue to rake its way across the beach and right into the woods, but it stopped five meters up the sand and its occupants (three left) jumped out. Will shot the first one just as he landed — a tall man with a mustache and a Dallas Cowboys cap. The man fell face-first into the sand.
The other two opened fire in Will’s direction. He calmly lowered himself to the ground as tree bark above him cracked and snapped loose. The AK-47 fire continued for a while, joining the other gunfire erupting all over the beach. Will saw one of the men clutch at his chest and go down.
Nice shot, Danny.
Will, still on his stomach, shot the third man in the side. The man stumbled but didn’t go down. Another shot from the Tower and the man collapsed.
Then the second boat hit the beach and this time it really did keep going. Will was about to pick up the Remington and run for his life when the boat finally stopped halfway up the beach and the three men inside scrambled out. Will heard a hellacious torrent of fire from his left (Blaine) firing on full-auto. He watched chunks of the boat’s side splinter and one of the men fall, try to get back up, then fall again. The remaining two returned fire into the woods in Blaine’s direction.
Will took the momentary distraction to sit up and shoot the closest man in the chest. The man fell, and as the third and last man turned toward him, Will shot him in the chest, too.
He heard intense gunfire from the right side of the beach and looked over, saw that the other two boats had made landfall and men were spilling out, kicking up sand as they scrambled forward, desperately trying to escape the beach. There were four in one boat and five in the other, and Will watched one of them stagger and fall as Maddie razed them from her hiding spot. In response, nearly all of the men turned in her direction and fired back.
Shit.
Will quickly switched the M4A1 to full-auto and unleashed a volley into the group of men. He caught one of them square in the chest, hit another one in the thigh, and dropped a third man with a lucky shot to the head.
They turned away from Maddie and toward him and sent their own fusillade his way, forcing him to snatch up the Remington and dart farther back into the woods. Behind him, the trees where he had been crouched were torn and reduced to green mist in the black night.
He was still moving through the woods, picking his way toward the cobblestone pathways to his left with the Remington in his hand, the M4A1 slung over his back, when he heard Lara’s voice, screaming into his right ear: “They’re here! They’re at the Tower!”
The Tower!
He reached for his PTT, but Blaine beat him to it: “Where?”
Will looked back toward the beach when a new round of gunfire drew his attention. He stopped, went back down into a crouch, and listened. He heard M4 rifle fire coming from his left, then responding AK-47 fire from his right, very close to him.
Blaine. Or Maddie. Engaging on the beach.
Will jumped the last few meters out of the woods and onto the cobblestone pathway. He didn’t expect them to be there, but they were. Right in front of him.
There were three of them, two looking back toward the beach at the sudden massive exchange of fire. They were big men in boots and camouflaged hunting clothes. The man directly in front of Will, who had a look of total surprise on his face when he saw Will leaping out of the woods, was wearing an assault vest with a radio in one pouch.