“Yes, I understand,” came the response, slightly muffled by the helmet.
“Okay. We’re going to do this on three. One. Two.”
The man spun to a seated position. Kylee was caught off-guard and had just enough time to register the pistol in the sniper’s hand. She heard the bang of a gun firing. She looked down, expecting to see a hole in her chest. She saw nothing… felt nothing. She looked back up. The sniper was dead, folded over onto his back. A hole was smashed in the glass over one side of his mask. She looked over at Bill. He had a shocked look on his face, and he pointed toward Joseph.
Joseph’s gun was still drawn. Kylee ran over to him. “Joseph, you saved me!”
Joseph’s face was deadly serious. “He will kill no more of our people.”
“Holy crap,” said Bill in a shocked whisper. “Joey, you are the very definition of badass.”
“We need to get back out to the street and keep moving,” Kylee said. She was determined not to let the others see just how much this situation had upset her. The death of one of her soldiers, and her own near-death experience had thrown her mind into a spin. She had to maintain focus and control. Had to get back on the road, moving block by block toward Theo.
She led the way to the door. As she crossed the threshold, the sniper’s radio crackled. “Nestor, come in. This is Supreme Leader Tiberius. Your superiors told me you reported rebel troop movements?”
Kylee looked at Bill and Joseph. “Bill, this has to be you.”
Bill smiled. “Alright, you’ll get exactly what you want. Brace yourselves, I’m about to show you my Nestor.”
He walked over to Nestor’s body with caution, as if he expected the dead man to rise up and grab him.
“Nestor,” Tiberius called again amidst the static on the radio, “Nestor, do you read me?”
Bill leaned down over Nestor and took the radio. He took a deep breath. Pressing the button he said, “This is Nestor, oh Supreme Leader.”
“Good. Nestor, you said there was troop movement?”
“I was mistaken, Supreme Leader. Only two of the rebels. I shot and killed one, the other ran away. I think I was fooled by shadows.”
Silence. Bill looked up to Kylee for approval. She gave him a thumbs up.
“Very well,” Tiberius said. He sounded disappointed. “Congratulations on your kill. You have done a great service for your country and I will instruct your commander to award you proper honors.”
“Thank you, sir. Have a glorious night.”
Bill dropped the radio and walked over to the door. “How did I do?”
Kylee smiled. “You did great, Bill. Let’s get back to the others.”
They walked back down to the ground level and made their way back out on Atlantic Avenue. Kylee looked at the sky. The sun of a universe to which they did not belong was low on the horizon. She guessed there was only maybe an hour before they would be plunged into total darkness. She knew there was not much time for them to connect with Carlos Menendez and assault the prison.
She signaled to the rebels hiding around the street. They emerged from every possible hiding place, and moved to the center of the road, where the fallen woman lay in a puddle of dark blood. A woman named Debra checked the body and looked up at Kylee. “It’s Helen,” Debra said, tears in her eyes.
Kylee flashed back to her few conversations with Helen. Her time training with her in the street outside the safe house. A friendly face, one of many that had provided her and her friends with food and shelter. Now a face that stared blankly at the darkening sky. How many more friendly faces would she lose? How many more would die for this cause?
Kylee walked over to Helen’s body. She put her hand on Debra’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it from here. She knelt down and scooped up Helen’s body. Kylee carried the body to the side of the road and placed it gently on the ground. She closed the vacant eyes with her fingers.
“She will be hidden well enough here for now,” she said to her army. “When we are victorious, we will return and bury our dead.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted the connotation. Her words held the implication that Helen would not be the only one buried at the conclusion of this conflict.
Kylee worked her way back to the front of the line. Ryan and Jamie approached as she neared the head of the group.
“Kylee,” Ryan said, “we have an idea.”
“Okay, Ry, what is it?”
“We’re about to go through the demolition zone, right? Well, it’s possible there are other traps arranged for us.”
“I agree,” Kylee said, “so how do you want to handle it?”
“What if we go down by the beach?”
She was confused. “The beach? Ry, it’s going to be hard to maneuver the SUV onto the boardwalk, and there are supposedly guards around the camp of the people who got evicted from their…oh.”
Ryan smiled. “Exactly. Who better to recruit for our army than the people who have been dumped into tents on the beach?”
“Okay,” she said. Kylee’s brain was on maximum throttle, cooking up strategy for an attack. She called Brian and Liz to her.
“What’s up, Kylee?” asked Liz.
“I need to know an estimate of the typical security on the beach camp.”
Liz turned to Brian. “What do you think? Five to ten?”
Brian scratched his chin. “Yeah. I’d say closer to ten, but we don’t know what exactly is going on tonight.”
“That’s fine.” She turned to address the rebels. “We’re going to take a little detour, people, and it’s probably going to be an ugly one. We’re going to take over the beach camp, and recruit the people living there. We anticipate a little resistance from the Security Force. You know what I expect. Listen carefully to my orders. Be aware of your surroundings. I don’t want losses if we can avoid them. And watch out for innocents.
“Those of you in charge of the SUV, you’re going to have to bring up the rear along the boardwalk. Stay back and out of the conflict as long as you can until we give you the all-clear. The rest I’m going to divide as you walk past me. We are going to travel down four access points to the beach at once. Remember that these aren’t full side streets any longer because of the demolition. Be careful to keep to the shadows until we are all at the boardwalk. Watch your backs. Let’s go.”
They fell into position in accordance with Kylee’s orders. This, then, was what Theo had told her about. The funny feeling of disbelief he got every time people responded positively and with respect to his decisions. She was seeing that now. Somehow, a teenaged girl with some Security Force training was now the general of the rebel army, and they treated her as such.
She divided the army into different groups, assigning them various approaches to the beach. She sent some of her inner circle with each group, keeping Joseph with her. There was a power to him, a violence that she had not realized was there. She had a hunch that it would be harder for him to transform to Mr. Hyde if he was standing next to Andrew. Dividing them was the more prudent tactic.
She led Joseph and five of the women up the closest of the approaches. The beach was littered with tents. Campfires provided flickering views of the encampment. Kylee thought her army probably had the advantage of numbers over whatever brigade of the Security Force was present. With their high-tech helmets, the Force had the advantage of sight. They would be able to pick her troops out of the darkness as soon as they came around any kind of barrier. The attack would have to be swift.
The rebels knew that her group would take the first shot. At that point, she expected the other guards to reveal themselves. Then she would see what her army was made of. On her stomach, she crawled to the edge of the boardwalk and studied the beach.