“We get the fuck downstairs and find an exit! Shodo, you got point!”
On their way across the lower lobby a shower of Molotov cocktails rained down around them and Shodo was completely consumed by fire, screaming and flailing in a futile attempt to beat out the flames. Forrest shouldered his carbine and shot him dead before any of Lee’s men could react, whirling about to spray the balcony above them and driving back the firebombers.
“Forget the emergency ward!” he ordered. “The Humvee’s fucked anyhow.”
They burst out the main entrance onto the sidewalk to see that the Humvee was indeed burning fifty yards away.
“Looks like we hoof it,” Forrest said. “I trust you remember the way, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir! Grip, on point! I’ll bring up the rear!”
Using their night vision, they ran the two miles all the way back to the checkpoint, where they were nearly machine-gunned by their own troops before they could identify themselves.
“Check fire!” Lee screamed from behind a truck. “Check fire!”
“Identify yourselves!”
“Stacker Lee, you dumb motherfuckers! Stacker-fuckin’-Lee!”
It took a minute but they were eventually permitted to advance, and Lee wasted no time telling the men at the checkpoint what had taken place at the hospital. A great fury swept through the men upon hearing that twenty of their comrades had been abducted and eaten. Two full companies of men were quickly assembled.
“At first light we go back there and clean those motherfuckers out,” Lee said, gathering a fresh supply of grenades. “Care to lead us, Captain?”
Forrest looked at Kane. “We should be on our way.”
Kane agreed.
“In that case, I’ll drive you to the barricade,” Lee said.
At the barricade he told them to keep their helmets, NVDs, and body armor, and complied with Kane’s request for three more sets of NVDs.
Forrest reached into the back of their Humvee and grabbed a bottle of Tequila from a barracks bag, offering it to Stacker Lee. “For that final circle jerk, Sergeant.”
Lee smiled a white, toothy smile and accepted the bottle with relish. “And this time I’ll save it.”
The soldiers all saluted one another, and Forrest and Kane mounted up.
“My guys took the liberty of gassing it up for you,” Lee said, shutting Forrest’s door for him. They shook hands through the window. “Godspeed, Captain. Sorry I was such a prick.”
“Live forever, Sergeant.”
Kane started the engine and wheeled the Humvee around, roaring through the gate, headed north.
Both men were so exhausted from the fight that neither of them remembered to be alert at the eighty-four-mile marker—until a Molotov cocktail flew out of the darkness and exploded in flames against the windshield.
“Son of a bitch!” Kane shouted, cutting the wheel hard to the left and narrowly missing a car that had been rolled onto the center of the highway. He could barely see where he was going through the flames and ended up swerving into the center median and up a concrete highway barrier, perfectly high-centering the vehicle. “Cocksucker!” he swore, realizing they were stuck fast.
“Dismount!” Forrest said, grabbing his carbine and helmet.
They took cover behind the barrier as shots rang out and bullets began pinging off the Humvee. Forrest could see a number of men across the highway in his night vision and opened fire, killing four with four quick shots. The firing from across the road stopped and the attackers disappeared from their view.
“Guess you saw a flashlight after all,” he said.
They could hear hushed voices on three sides.
“They’re moving to outflank us.”
“We’re already outflanked,” Forrest remarked. “Soon to be surrounded.”
As if to verify that fact, a shotgun slug struck Forrest dead-center in the back panel of his boron carbide body armor, knocking him into the concrete barrier as if he’d been mule-kicked.
Kane whipped around and returned fire, driving the shooter back under cover. “Jack!”
Forrest got to his knees and grabbed his carbine, blinking his eyes to clear his vision. “I’m okay,” he groaned. “Christ, that hurt.”
“We need to get out of the light of the headlights,” Kane said, and they both moved farther down the barrier.
More shots rang out.
Kane grabbed his lower leg. “Shit, I took one!” He and Forrest backed in tight between the barrier and the large steel shovel of a backhoe.
Forrest lifted his head for a look around, switching to infrared. Men were scurrying about in the dark, but there were too many abandoned vehicles to get a shot. They were protected on three sides now from direct fire, but that protection worked both ways, potentially allowing their attackers to creep up unseen and lob a Molotov cocktail directly onto their position. “How many you think we’re up against?”
“Feels like about twenty,” Kane said. “Give or take.”
“Well, let’s pick a direction and break out before they tighten the noose.”
Another shot rang out, but it was far away and nothing hit near their position. Then they heard another shot from the opposite side of the highway, equally far off, and this time one of the attackers screamed.
“Fuck is that?” Kane said.
“Got me.”
They took the chance to raise their heads for a look around, seeing that some of their assailants were now entirely exposed, having taken cover from whoever else was firing. Forrest and Kane fired and killed five more men.
Their attackers began to fire wildly into the night, panicking in the darkness and shouting to one another that they were surrounded. Their firing subsided after a minute, and Forrest could now see that someone was picking their attackers off with apparent impunity, probably from a hundred or more yards away and likely from an elevated position.
“That’s gotta be the Forty-fifth!” he said.
The five or six remaining attackers suddenly broke from cover and ran south through the cars in attempt to escape, but the snipers didn’t seem inclined to let them go, continuing to fire until they had killed every one of them.
Forrest and Kane kept low as they crept back toward the Humvee, using their infrared to scan the low bluffs east and west of the highway.
“Got one to the west,” Kane said. “Moving carefully this way. It’s a GI.”
“Got one to the east too,” Forrest replied. “Has to be the Forty-fifth.”
The two men stood near the Humvee and waited for the troopers to approach from opposite sides of the highway.
“It’s probably Lee and one of his men,” Kane said. “What if they want to join us?”
Forrest took a moment to slap a fresh mag into his weapon. “I’d say they’ve earned it, wouldn’t you?”
Forty-Four
Emory slowed her pace, waiting for Marty to approach the troopers first, prepared to gun them both down if they gave him any shit. Sullivan was not with them. He had a concussion from being shot in the head and was too sick to be tromping around the countryside, so he lay sleeping in the back of the SUV parked half a mile north of their present position.
Emory and Marty had spotted the group of twenty-five road agents earlier in the day and taken cover in the hills around the highway with the intention of picking them off during the night after they were bedded down. The party had stood across their path south, and there was no other way through to Topeka without a long backtrack. Emory had been about to open fire on the snoozing band of marauders when Forrest’s Humvee had first gone racing down the highway and stirred them all back up again.
Afterward the bandits stayed awake, taking up positions covering the highway, waiting to see if another Army truck might come by.