“Dunno,” he answered, hauling her upright. “From the size of those blasts though, I think it’s worse than that.”
Near the second impact site she saw bodies. Some moving, others not. A few of them naked, their clothes either burned or blown off in the explosion. She lurched toward them, stomach twisting when she saw some of the wounds. Other soldiers were already converging on them as she reached the scene. People were on cell phones and shouting for water, bandages, medical kits. A terrible helplessness washed over her, along with the fear that the attack wasn’t over yet.
“We can’t do any more for them. We gotta go,” Smithers urged, grasping her upper arm again.
Knowing he was right, Honor nodded. On unsteady legs she turned and ran with them away from the field. At the edge of it they got caught up in the surging mass of soldiers and family members scrambling for cover. Mothers, fathers, kids all caught up in the confusion. The level of chaos was unlike anything Honor had ever seen, even during the most recent attack on Bagram. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. That strike had clearly been targeting the President, but was there more coming?
She wove her way through the crowd and headed south as fast as possible, away from the field. They needed weapons to defend themselves if this wasn’t over. “Our arms room,” she yelled to Smithers and Ipman, running toward their company building. She pulled out her phone to call the armorer as she pushed her way through a knot of walking wounded, their faces and arms cut and bleeding.
Honor couldn’t afford to stop and help them. POTUS visit or not, the base was under attack and the nearest armed security personnel had just been obliterated in those explosions. Guards and MPs would be fanning out in an effort to stop further attacks but per regulations the majority of soldiers on base weren’t armed. The chatter Liam had told her about was right, and the security precautions taken had done dick-all to safeguard the facility, its soldiers and their families.
She and her fellow soldiers were the first line of defense now.
All around her people were racing in different directions. Some wounded, some carrying injured soldiers, others trying to rush their terrified family members and children to safety. Honor wheeled right around the corner of the next building, dodging a line of Humvees and emergency vehicles as they headed toward the PT field. She ran past without stopping.
Two hundred yards to the company building. Ipman and Smithers were right with her.
Then the unmistakable staccato shots of an automatic rifle shattered the air.
Honor faltered, automatically searching for this new threat. Enemy shooters? Or security agents firing on tangos?
The thought had barely formed when screams of agony came from her left, raising the hair on the back of her neck as she understood what was happening.
Active shooters were on base. Targeting unarmed soldiers and their families. They’d either forced their way through the security gates, or…
They were dressed in uniform to blend in. Maybe they were even currently serving. Liam had mentioned rumors of an insider. The thought enraged Honor.
Before she could move, another burst of fire opened up, closer this time.
Shit! Honor grabbed the soldier closest to her and tackled him to the ground. Ipman. Smithers hit the deck beside them just as bullets slammed into the asphalt to their left, kicking up a spray of needle-like shards. Honor gritted her teeth as they pelted her left side like little beestings, her mind screaming at her to get the hell out of range.
Move, move! She got to her elbows and began belly crawling toward cover, barely feeling the tears in her skin as she made for the shelter of the closest building. Her breath was sawing in and out of her lungs, her heart pounding her ribcage so hard it felt bruised.
“What the fuck is happening?” Ipman snapped, right behind her.
“Just move, go, go,” Smithers barked, crawling as fast as his large frame would allow.
Honor scrambled around the corner of the building and pressed her spine up against the far side, panting for breath. Her knees and elbows were raw and bleeding but she was barely aware of the sting.
She was shaking all over, fighting to wrestle back control of her body as she scanned the area in front of her, then risked a glance back the way they’d come. No sign of the shooters but she could still hear automatic fire in the distance, moving away from them. Soldiers and civilians were running in every direction to escape the deadly hail of bullets.
It was utter fucking chaos out there.
As the crowd cleared she could see bodies lying on the ground, people fallen where they’d been hit, some writhing in pools of their own blood. Others were limping away or being dragged to shelter by bystanders. Some were racing toward the barracks or the gun range, she hoped to get weapons.
Checking in the other direction, she gazed toward their target destination. Like-minded soldiers had reached their arms room and were rushing around with rifles, only adding to the confusion. Due to the nature of the attack there was no way to tell who was friend and who was foe until the shooting started. The timing didn’t help—all the shadows formed as dusk fell making it hard to see far away clearly even with the lights posted on the buildings.
“We gotta get weapons,” she told the others, mentally mapping out various routes to the company building. She settled on what was likely the safest route, given the direction of the shooting. Arming themselves was the only way to defend themselves and others against active shooters.
“Come on.” Her legs wobbled a second as she got to her feet but she turned and ran along the wall of the building to the end and shoved the door open. She raced down the darkened hallway then skidded to a stop and pressed against the wall when she saw other soldiers already hunkered down near the opposite doorway.
One of them looked over his shoulder at her. “Can’t see the shooters,” he said in a quiet voice. Satisfied he wasn’t part of the attack, Honor moved closer. She and Smithers approached the soldiers at the door and snuck a peek outside, Ipman trailing behind. Through the window in the door she could see groups of soldiers were running around but she didn’t hear any more shots. Was the threat neutralized?
She wasn’t going to risk it. “Have to get weapons,” she said to the others. “Let’s go.” With that she shoved the release bar and the door swung open. Immediately the volume of screams and yells increased.
Ignoring everything but getting to the arms room, Honor sprinted to the next building, pausing only to ensure there was no gunfire before hurrying to the next. The others followed. She leapfrogged her way across the base, pushing back the numbness that wanted to overtake her. Her soldiers needed her. They—
She gasped and stumbled, staring in horror as something hit the ammunition holding area. The building erupted into a towering column of fire and smoke, shaking the ground with the force of the explosion. The blast wave knocked her down and she barely had time to throw out an elbow to save her head from slamming into the ground.
“Jesus, they blew up the AHA,” Smithers muttered in disbelief. He was scraped all over his hands, arms and face, bleeding from at least a dozen cuts, his eyes wide.
Shaking, Honor pushed up onto her right hip and opened her mouth to reply just as smaller, secondary explosions started to go off.
Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom as the ammunition and weapons detonated from the heat of the fire.
Their firepower had just gone up in smoke. “Shit,” she breathed and twisted her head to check behind her. Where the hell were the freaking missiles coming from?
Confusion had reigned before but now the energy shifted toward panic. Rather than hunker down behind cover, people were running for their lives now, fleeing the burning armory and scattering in every direction.
The vehicles trying to reach the PT field ground to a halt as a wave of people clogged the roads. Honor saw men and women carrying babies, frightened children crying as they clung to their parents.