“Right, coach,” Freddie joked. The others clustered about him. Cooper put his hand in the middle and waited for the others to join him. “On three, muffled yell of ‘shoot straight’. One…two…three!”
“Shoot straight!” They yelled together softly, so that the noise would not carry very far. Angela was grinning in delight. Calvin had a wry smile on his face. Freddie was chuckling and breathing easily. Dranko was smirking at Cooper. Scared men make bad decisions, his father had told him repeatedly. That’s how you tell a real leader from an imposter. The real ones lessen the fear of those around them, the bad ones stoke it.
“Well then, team. Let’s roll,” Cooper commanded. Despite his efforts, he hadn’t finished the words when he sensed the tension spike all around him. Faces tightened and muscles tensed. Jaws clenched. It was palpable in the air. The corner of Cooper’s mouth curled upward. The best efforts can fail, can’t they? He was thankful that Jake would be safe, remaining in the rear with the vehicles with Julianne and Lily.
Angela and Calvin moved across the roadway to his right so they were aligned with the same side of the road as the houses that they sought to cover on the wooded hill. The trio waited for them to be in position and actively scanning before they moved.
Dranko went first, scurrying at a crouch about ten yards before he came to rest behind a bright yellow Volkswagen bug. Next to him, Freddie rasped a frantic breath before he ran onto the overpass, his feet clattering loudly on the asphalt. In front of him, Dranko had his rifle trained onto the opposite side. When Freddie drew parallel to him, he turned towards Dranko and his eyes were white saucers. He kept running for a few seconds before crashing hard against a black sedan that had careened sideways, blocking the left two lanes.
My turn. Cooper breathed steadily, filling his lungs to capacity. Then, he crouched and began running. His eyes were alert and scanning the ground before him. He didn’t want to trip while crossing ground that might be under enemy observation. Quickly, he reached Dranko and passed him. Then, he was past Freddie and sliding into the spot he’d chosen opposite of him. He was behind a red pickup that had also blocked the right side of the road, just a few yards past the black car that Freddie had sought cover behind.
They continued across the overpass like this. The road was littered with vehicles of all sorts. Some were pristine rather than being dirty. Some had burned, while others had crashed. It would have been barely passable to get one vehicle through at any given point.
They were three-fourths of the way across the overpass when Cooper’s mind clicked. Just enough room for one vehicle to get across? This is too neat. Like it’s been set up this way.
Freddie was rushing at full speed to the next cover point.
Cooper’s eyes flew wide, “Get down,” he screeched.
It was too late.
The shots rang out almost simultaneously, coming from in front and behind him.
His eyes were fixated upon Freddie. He saw it all in slow motion. Freddie was mid-stride, his hair dancing in the wind, his feet churning gravel and broken glass from the road’s surface, when he was hit. The impact ripped his shirt, sending bits of cotton exploding into the air. Freddie took two awkward steps, his legs crashing into themselves, before smashing into the ground, his rifle clattering and bouncing across the pavement.
Dranko was in front of where Freddie had fallen. Before he could react, a tinny voice bellowed from what Cooper guessed was a bullhorn, “Don’t fire! We will negotiate!”
Cooper’s temper flared, “Negotiate? After you shot our guy!” He yelled. Cooper’s eyes were still trained on Freddie, looking for movement. His heart leapt into his throat when all he saw was stillness.
“We got your attention, don’t we? We got you dead to rights.”
Cooper’s mind raced, “What do you want to cross safely?”
“Our terms are fair and the same for all who cross,” the voice’s smug tone grated on Cooper.
“Where the hell are they?” Now, Cooper was frantically scanning the opposite side of the bridge. That they could hear his unamplified voice told him the voice on the bullhorn was close. Then, he saw it: a spot of white waving just above the roof of a red Mini Cooper.
“Half. Half your food. Half your guns. And, half your women.”
Buying time, as he sighted in his rifle to punch through the Mini’s doors at where he thought the bullhorn person was, “OK! Half our food and half our guns. But, we gotta keep our women. They are our wives!” Lowering his voice, he called to Dranko over the hand held radio, “Behind the red Mini. Spray.”
Cooper waited until the tip of the bullhorn rose above the Mini’s roofline once more, he breathed, exhaled and then held his breath. He squeezed the trigger slowly. The rifle barked once. The bullhorn dropped out of view.
Dranko opened fire and the harsh staccato of the M4 on full auto was punctuated by the shells finding home, punching sheet metal, shattering glass, and the sharp thwick-thwick as they tore through plastic and sheet metal on the cars. From behind him, Angela fired again at a target he could not discern.
Cooper instinctively ducked as a fusillade of gunfire splattered the Chevy Malibu that he was hunkered down behind. Above the din, he heard a plaintive groan from Freddie. Quickly, he got onto all fours and scrabbled toward him. The gunfire remained focused on the car, as the other vehicles must have blocked his movement from his adversaries. Ricochets bounced angrily about him, however, and he crawled away as fast he could, his knees rubbing raw in the process.
In front of him, Freddie was clutching at his shoulder and rolling from side to side. He was moaning and his left hand, the injured side, was clawing at the ground. It’s good he’s still feeling pain. It means he’s not in shock yet.
Cooper closed the last few yards with a furious scramble. Freddie’s eyes lit up when he saw him.
“I’m shot,” he muttered, grinding his teeth.
“Yeah, I know. You’ll be fine. I’m going to move you behind cover so I can patch you up. Alright?”
Freddie gave a curt nod. Cooper grabbed him by his shirt collar and began dragging him across the rough pavement, grunting at the effort. Freddie groaned even louder, his jaw muscles clenching to hold back the pain. Cooper kept scooting along the ground, pushing with his legs, and pulling Freddie along. A splinter of concrete stitched across his cheek from a nearby bullet ricochet. He ignored it and kept sliding along the ground. His back bumped into the reassuring steel of the cement truck’s frame and he pivoted to slide Freddie alongside, parallel to it. He stepped over him and knelt beside him.
The bullet had punched Freddie squarely in the shoulder, just below the collarbone. The bleeding wasn’t heavy, as Freddie had kept his hand pressed up against it.
“Keep your hand there,” Cooper said as he gently lifted him up and slid his hand underneath his back. He felt dampness and pulled his hand back to find it stained red.
“You have an exit wound, which is good. The bullet isn’t stuck inside,” Cooper relayed as he pawed open the makeshift first-aid kit that Dranko had given each of them. Using his teeth, he tore open the packaging to a maxi-pad. He used his pocket knife to slice it in half and quickly positioned one on each side of Freddie’s body; covering both the entry and exit wounds. Before he could reach for his own, Freddie handed him a roll of gauze from his pack and Cooper used it to fasten the pads in place, looping around his neck to fix it in place. When finished, he patted Freddie on the opposite shoulder, “You’ll be okay. I’ll be back.”