Grapes rose out of the rubble. All the skin on his forehead was scraped off. A piece of corkscrew-shaped metal had landed just inches from his head. Blood trickled out of his right ear from a ruptured eardrum. He staggered through the ruins to the spot where he’d been crouching until a minute ago.
At first he thought his Humvee was gone; then he spotted it, twenty feet away, embedded in the living room of a house. Most of his men had been holed up in houses, poised for the ambush. Now those houses were piles of burning rubble. Here and there, a dazed militiaman stumbled through the ruins.
Grapes’s forces were shattered. His only consolation was that the other groups hadn’t fared any better.
Then he detected movement out of the corner of his eye. Two figures were scrambling over upended vehicles. He rubbed his eyes. It couldn’t be! But there they were: that goddamn lawyer and his Commie friend. Somehow the fucking lawyer had survived the Wasteland and made it back to Gulfport. There he was, limping along, not fifty feet away. Anger consumed Grapes, crushing the defeated feeling eating away at him. That asshole was not going to make a laughingstock out of him.
Grapes tripped over an assault rifle and picked it up. His eyes locked on the two men as they crossed the Chink soldiers’ lines and ran toward city hall. Grapes fired, but the gun didn’t go off. Grapes pulled the trigger again and again, until he realized that the blast had destroyed the M4. He threw the gun to the ground in disgust.
He spotted two Green Guards climbing out of the rubble. “Over there! Get ’em!”
The Green Guards looked around, then opened fire. Their delay gave the figure in front enough time to move out of the line of fire. The second figure, whose limp slowed him down, took cover behind an overturned car as bullets took chunks out of the concrete around him.
“Don’t let that motherfucker get away!” Grapes roared at his men. “I’ll get the other guy!”
He jumped over a pile of bodies and headed for the figure who was running full speed toward city hall.
51
Bullets whistled around my head as I curled up into a ball behind an overturned car. We’d almost made it to the far side of the bombed-out battlefield when a couple of militiamen opened fire. I threw myself to the ground as Prit vaulted over a low brick garden wall and out of the line of fire. My old pal looked at me, about to jump over to my position.
“Go on, damn it!” I shouted. “I’ll catch up.”
He hesitated.
“Prit, one of us has to stay behind and stop those guys, or else they’ll nail our asses before we reach the end of the street!”
Pritchenko glanced around and shook his head. He knew I was right.
“Be careful!” he shouted and tossed me the magazine from his AK-47. “I’ll be back soon! Hang in there!”
I nodded, wondering how the hell Prit thought I was going to hold out for even ten minutes. But I didn’t say anything. Time was the enemy. Flames were leaping out the roofs of the houses next to city hall.
Pritchenko waved, as if to say, Be cool. Everything’ll be OK. Then he took off running, and I lost sight of him.
52
The explosion threw Hong against the side of his tank so hard he cracked a rib. He stifled a howl of pain as he stood up. Out of the hundred and twenty men he’d led into battle, he saw only a handful, most too badly injured to be of any use.
The colonel guessed where that explosion came from, and he knew it meant he’d failed miserably. The mission was over. That defeat was hard for him to swallow.
As he leaned against the tank, staring off into space, he felt a hard lump in his jacket pocket where he had put the bottle of Cladoxpan for safekeeping. All was not lost.
The colonel took a deep breath, leapt to the other side of the tank, then ran in the direction of city hall. Hong was playing his last card.
Mendoza heard the shots and peered out cautiously. Flames lit the street, casting an otherworldly glow over the dozens of bodies strewn everywhere. The fighting had stopped, except for two Green Guards firing at an overturned car.
They were the last of the Greens. The rest were dead or had fled. Mendoza savored the victory. The whites-only city was on fire and he was still alive. The Wrath of the Just had triumphed. Their revenge was almost complete. There was just one small detail left. Screwing up his courage, he hurled himself toward those bastards. Then he’d take care of Greene.
Hong and Mendoza spotted each other at the same time. The Mexican was surprised to see the Korean’s uniform, but he didn’t miss a beat. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he wasn’t one of his men. He raised his gun and started firing as he sidestepped the fallen bodies.
Hong picked up his pace without firing. Closer. I’ve got to get closer.
When they were thirty feet from each other, Mendoza’s bullet hit the colonel in the shoulder. Hong staggered, more surprised than hurt, but didn’t slow down. He raised his Makarov and fired at the Mexican three times in quick succession.
The first bullet went high, but the other two drove into Mendoza’s chest and he fell in a heap. His body convulsed a few times and then went limp.
Panting, the colonel stopped and looked at his shoulder. The wound wasn’t deep, but he’d need to clean it out first chance he got. Still clutching his gun, he walked up to the Mexican’s body and kicked him. You son of a bitch! You nearly killed me.
Hong looked away from the body toward city hall. A hundred feet from him, a soldier wearing a green armband was shooting at a wrecked car. The fallen body of the other soldier was proof that his target was a good shot. Hong decided not to bother with them. Let them kill each other. He had more important things to do.
He heard a jingle at his feet. He looked down and saw a couple of metal rings rolling on the ground. A bloody hand gripped his pants leg. What the hell?
Carlos “Gato” Mendoza looked up as his life ebbed out of the bullet holes. On his chest lay two deadly grenades with their pins pulled.
Hong paled and tried to take a step back, but Mendoza held tight to his leg.
“Chinga tu madre, you bastard,” the Mexican mumbled, bloody spittle bubbling out of his mouth in his last act of defiance.
The grenades exploded simultaneously. Their flash was the last thing Colonel Hong saw. He died clutching the broken bottle of Cladoxpan.
53
Prit crunched through the broken glass that carpeted the lobby of Gulfport’s city hall. The curtains fluttered through the broken windows. The fiery wind had blown burning embers through the cracks in the walls. Small fires burned here and there, threatening to come together into a monster fire. Sparks from a transformer lit up the room.
Prit tossed aside the AK-47. It was useless without ammunition. He crossed the lobby, clutching his old knife.
The Ukrainian had no idea where to start looking. The building was huge and time was short. He heard wood beams crash down in one of the offices. The whole building groaned and creaked as the fiery wind wafted inside, inundating everything with the smell of smoke. Just then Pritchenko heard footsteps behind him.
“Well, you finally got here. You almost beat me.” He turned, smiling. “I told you to wait—” The words died in his mouth and his smile faded.
In the doorway, Grapes glared at him with a wild look in his eyes, his face covered in blood. He clutched an ax he’d taken off the wall.
“You piece of shit,” Grapes growled and moved to the center of the room. “You dirty Soviet midget.”
“Nice to see you, too, Grapes.” Prit took a deep breath. “You look a little tired.”