Her heartbeat thundered against her chest as she ran for all she was worth, the M4 clutched in her right hand, her left swinging back and forth as if that would somehow make her go faster. She couldn’t help herself and tossed a quick look to her right and down the street just as she crossed the shoulder.
They were still coming — both of them. The Jeep that she had seen on the I-10, which may or may not have been tracking them since Port Arthur, and the big black truck with the dark uniformed man perched behind the towering cab. It wasn’t the size of the second vehicle that made the pit of her stomach drop. No, it was the mounted machine gun. Gaby had seen what one of those things could do, and the thought of being on the wrong side of it made her run faster and faster.
She forced herself to turn forward and focus on the long white metal pole separating the car lot from the street. She reached out with her left hand and leapt over it, her momentum almost sending her right into the grill of a used Ford truck.
She stuck out both hands to protect herself, rifle clanging against the parked vehicle, and twisted her body until she slid against the dirt-caked side. She didn’t waste any time and leaned against it — ignoring the surprisingly cold contact! She raised the M4 and laid it across the hood and took just a second — maybe even a half-second, just long enough to see the Jeep filling up her ACOG — to aim before she pulled the trigger.
The rifle bucked and empty shell casings clink-clink-clinked against the truck and slid down like raindrops to scatter at her feet, but she never released the trigger. Gaby oscillated her fire left and right, sweeping the street as the Jeep swerved about fifty meters away (Jesus, how did they get so close so fast?) until it somehow ended up on the northbound lane. That left the southbound wide open and the big truck — a GMC, from the logo up front — taking up the entire lane as it continued barreling in her direction.
She was sending everything she had downrange because it was her job to slow them down (or stop them, but she didn’t think that was possible) in order to give Danny and Nate just enough time to—
The pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons coming from her right told her she had done her job and given her friends the time they needed. Danny and Nate were pouring it on, and the ping-ping-ping! of bullets punching through the truck’s body were some of the best sounds she’d ever heard in her life.
She kept shooting, waiting for the GMC to stop under the prolonged assault, but the damn thing kept coming. It wouldn’t stop or slow down even as bullets raked its front windshield and grill and hood. The pavement around it exploded, chunks of asphalt flickering into the air like missiles.
And then the thing she had been dreading: The ferocious roar of the machine gun finally coming alive, the brap-brap-brap of the MG drowning out her shots and Danny’s and Nate’s—
She ducked as bullets smashed into the other side of the Ford, the ping! ping! ping! like bombs going off next to her. It was all she could do to reload the M4, concentrating on getting a solid grip on a fresh magazine from one of her pouches even though her hands were covered in sweat. Every inch of her trembled every time a round slammed into the vehicles and road around her. The damn machine gun never seemed to run out of bullets and continued to rain long after she had finished loading her rifle and pulled back the charging handle.
And then, just like that, nothing.
The suddenness of it froze her in place, still crouched behind the bullet-riddled truck, her breath hammering out of her. It took her three full seconds before she allowed herself to finally believe what her ears were telling her.
It was quiet. Unbelievably quiet.
It took her another five full seconds to will herself to stand up — her legs were wobbly for some reason, and her hands trembling slightly — and look over the hood of the vehicle up the street.
The GMC had come to a stop (Thank God) at an odd angle in the middle of the road about twenty meters from the red pickup, its hood facing her end of the street, which allowed her to see the (at least) two dozen or so holes spread out from one side of the windshield to the other. Spilled gasoline tickled at her nostrils, and the painfully gradual drip-drip-drip sound of leaking fuel from somewhere at the back of the vehicle was the only thing she could hear other than her own labored breathing.
The enemy truck was so close that she didn’t have to look through her weapon’s optic to see the smoke coming out of holes along the grill and hood or the driver slouched over the steering wheel, unmoving. The machine gun on the cab was resting on its stock, the muzzle pointed up at the cloudless sky. Sunlight beat down on the shiny black coat of paint as if it had just come off the lot.
She was so focused on the dead-in-the-street truck that it took her a while to recognize the sound of an engine roaring to life. She scanned past the GMC and spotted the Jeep still fifty meters up the road. It was attempting to make a wide U-turn and almost crashed into a stop sign in the process. The driving was erratic, to put it mildly, which made her wonder if the driver was hurt.
Pop! as someone fired at it, the round hitting the back of the Jeep as it completed its desperate U-turn before speeding away. She thought about shooting after it, but it was already too far away and hitting a moving target — even one as big as a car — was never an easy shot, even if her hands weren’t shaking.
“Gaby!” a voice shouted. Danny.
“Yeah!” she shouted back. She didn’t take her eyes off the unmoving technical; a part of her expected it to come back to life as soon as she relaxed, the man in the back rising behind the machine gun like some unkillable monster.
“You good?” Danny asked.
“Yeah! You?”
“Right as rain.”
“Now what?”
“Clear the technical!”
She stepped away from the Ford and climbed over the metal pole barrier — keeping her eyes on the target the entire time — before finally moving up the street. The smell of spilled gasoline became more evident as she drew closer, and broken glass crunched under her shoes. Her heartbeat had slowed down, her breathing returning to (mostly) normal, and she picked up her pace to cover the remaining distance.
Gaby glimpsed the fading Jeep in the distance just before it vanished completely, taking the sound of its engines with it. With that threat gone, she turned her attention to the technical, her finger testing the M4’s trigger, ready to shoot anything that moved. Any goddamn thing at all.
But nothing moved in or around the truck. At least, nothing living.
She kicked empty brass casings around the vehicle before finding the soldier in the truck bed. His hands were clutched around his throat where he’d been shot. By the amount of blood pooled under him, she guessed he had bled out soon after he fell.
There were two more bodies in the truck — the driver and his passenger. They were both wearing black uniforms, and the passenger was crumpled on the floor in an impossible ball shape. For a moment Gaby thought the man was hiding, but no; he was just dead. She made sure by opening the door and nudging him in the shoulder with her rifle’s barrel until he toppled sideways in the other direction and didn’t move.
“Clear!” she shouted.
She gave the street one last look, listening for the Jeep’s engines, and when she didn’t see or hear any signs of it, she turned and jogged back to Danny and Nate.