She nodded. “What about Riley?”
“George will do the best he can.”
“I have a doctor — a real doctor — on the Trident.”
“Can you bring him over?”
“Her. And yes. Until then, what happens now?”
“What do you mean?” Terry asked.
“I mean,” Lara said, “Mercer’s people will be showing up anytime now. Are they going to ask where Riley is if he’s not here to meet them?”
Hart and Terry exchanged a look.
“Well?” Lara said. “Are they?”
“Maybe,” Hart said.
Lara was annoyed by their uncertainty but managed to temper it down — at least, some of it. “Did the others meet with Riley when they came through here?”
“Yes,” Terry said. “I mean, they didn’t ask or demand it or anything, but he was always there when they showed up. You know, as the CO.”
“What about you?” Lara asked Hart. “Can you take his place?”
Hart was still trying to wipe the blood off his hands when he looked up at her. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
He didn’t answer her.
“Hart,” she pressed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can do it.”
She wasn’t sure if Hart actually believed his own words, but it wasn’t like she had any other, better choices at the moment. It was either Hart or…who else was there? Terry? The thirty-something woman who was shaking next to her?
“You’re staying, right?” Terry asked her.
The idea that she would leave now — run away, essentially — had never occurred to her until Terry brought it up. She could hear the fear in the older woman’s voice, and it bugged her that people who should be telling her what to do were always deferring to her instead. There was something very wrong with that.
How did you handle it, Will?
God, I never knew how hard you had to work all the time to keep us alive.
“No,” Lara said. “We’re not going anywhere. I promised Riley I’d take you and the others away from here, and I’m not going to break my word.”
She saw the instant relief on Terry’s face, and even Hart seemed to stand just a little straighter.
Lara focused on Hart. “What’s your plan?”
He shook his head without even thinking about it. “I don’t have one.”
“None?”
“Riley was the brains of this operation. What about you?”
“Me?”
“I saw you back there on the yacht. Next to Riley, you probably have the most leadership experience. Which, yeah, is sad considering I can probably pass for your dad. But I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m in over my head here, Lara. I could really use your help.”
She took a moment to wipe her hands, still covered in Riley’s blood, on her pant legs.
Then: “We’re going to proceed like everything’s normal. They’re going to show up on schedule and we’re going to resupply them, then watch them leave. If something happens that prevents that, then we’re going to kill them.” She stared at Hart when she added, “You okay with that?”
“Yeah,” Hart said.
“You might know some of them. Riley said he knew the ones that were on the way here now.”
“I do, too, but that won’t keep me from doing what I have to do.”
“Good.”
“What about me?” Terry asked.
“I need you to get people out here and clean up the blood and”—she looked back at Andy’s corpse, left where he had fallen—“the rest of this mess.” She glanced up at the crane and shielded her eyes against the sun. “Is he up there? Peters?”
“Only Peters could have made that shot,” Hart said.
“Tell him to come down,” Lara said. “I want to talk to him before Mercer’s men show up…”
17
Gaby
Despite the sunlight filtering into the lobby through the hole in the wall, she could feel the cold seeping through her jacket and the thermal layers underneath. The weight of the ammo around her waist and Benford’s M4 with the now-useless M203 grenade launcher helped to (mostly) keep her mind off what was coming very, very soon.
Tap-tap.
The sounds came from behind her, but she didn’t react with alarm. There was only one other person moving around in the bank lobby, and that was Danny, who appeared in the corner of her peripheral vision and settled into a crouch on the other side of the hole in the wall.
“How goes it?” he asked.
“Same-o, same-o.”
“That bad, huh?”
She smiled. “How’d it go with you?”
Danny had spent the last ten or so minutes in the back, using Benford’s military ham radio to contact the Trident and letting their friends know that they were still alive but weren’t going to make it for their pickup today. With her attention focused almost entirely on the city outside the bank, she hadn’t been able to hear as much of the conversation as she would have liked.
“As good as can be expected,” Danny said.
“That bad, huh?”
“And a bag of chips.” Danny leaned his carbine on the floor and made sure his jacket’s zipper was all the way up to his neck. “The big news of the day is that they ran across some of Benford’s friends out there in the Gulf and were pulled temporarily off course.”
“Everyone okay?”
“Lara seems to have it all under control. They finally got refueled and could have come and gotten us if we were somewhere gottenable.”
Danny opened a bottle of water that he had scavenged from Benford’s pack while looking for the radio and took a drink. When he was done, he tossed it across the opening to her. She caught it and took a few sips as he talked.
“But none of what’s happening out there’s gonna do us any good in here. Probably a given they have the back alley manned and the whole street locked down. Snipers on the rooftops would also be my guess.” He leaned out slightly and peered up at the rooftop ledge of Gallant’s Best across the street from them. “That’s a pretty big clothing store for such a small town. What do you think they sell in there? Cowboy boots? Belt buckles the size of my head?”
“Why, you looking for a belt buckle the size of your head?”
“Hey, accessories make the man. Besides, it’s not the taste in fashion that matters; it’s how big it is. Or so I’ve been told.”
She finished and tossed the bottle, with still half left, back to him.
“Too bad we couldn’t find the key to that Jeep,” Danny said, eyeing the parked vehicle on the sidewalk outside.
“Maybe it’s in the glove compartment.”
“Don’t you think ol’ Benford would’ve checked?”
“Possibly.”
“Well, finding out for sure would take anywhere from five to ten seconds. Maybe less if I really haul ass and don’t do something stupid like slip when I cross the sidewalk. Alas, that’s more than enough time even for these wannabe soldier boys to take their sweet time shooting me in the ass.”
“They don’t want to kill us, remember?”
“Even if they only tried to wound us, all it’d take is one shitty shot and I’m rolling around on the street, clutching my ass.”
“What’s the preoccupation with getting shot in the ass?”
“It hurts, kid. It really hurts.”
“Are we talking from experience?”
He snorted. “Maybe.” Then, still looking out at the Jeep, “Look at it.”
“What?”
“The Jeep.”