Chapter 7

Seven

Rockets lit up the night. The impacts sending plumes of flames, debris, and screams into the skies. Heat from the fires that were already burning left a sheen of sweat on my face. A half-broken sob from behind me had me shifting so I could glance at the half-dozen kids huddled with their teacher.

Seniors in high school on a trip of a lifetime. The last thing they expected was for a war to erupt all around them. The hot air ballooned out from the impact force. We were far enough away that it was just a hot breeze against my already sweaty face.

The choked sound of a sob reminded me that this was the last place these kids should be. The problem was, the situation had blown up from bad to worse to fucking insane in a matter of hours. Standard evacuation routes weren’t available, civilians in country were in danger, much less out of country, and two hospitals had been hit in the forty-eight hours since I hit the ground.

“Listen to me,” I said. “We have a plan. Do you guys remember the plan?”

The teacher, a guy who had his own asthma inhaler, but had rallied to keep the kids between us and kept them moving, nodded. “We do—Marcus?”

“We stick together, no one moves alone.” The kid had athlete written all over him, but fear didn’t care about your hobbies.

“Kendall?”

At the prompting, the girl with the glasses and the frizzy hair wiped at her eyes, sweat soaked her ruddy face and while she hadn’t stopped crying since I’d arrived, it hadn’t slowed her down.

She sniffled. “When Mr. McQuade moves, we move. When Mr. McQuade holds up his hand, we stop. When he drops his fist, we go low.” A choked sound escaped her and she sniffled again. “Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry, crying is a good stress reliever. It’s letting you think. I’d rather you were teary and thinking than stoic and frozen.”

Surprise flickered over her face. In the distance, a scream of rockets whistled through the air. Their impacts were followed by more heat, more wind, and the char of death on the wind.

The invasion was driving steadily into the more populated areas. The conflict was old, and it was colonial. Some said downright tribal. Right now, I wanted the civilians out of the way.

“Jonathon?” The teacher prompted the gamer in their little group.

“McQuade is point. Mr. Maxwell is rear guard. We are never to get ahead of Mr. McQuade or fall behind Mr. Maxwell. Move in pairs. Help each other. Watch each other’s sixes and we’ll keep moving northwest to the water.”

Some of the spark Jonathon had for this had gone out of him. Grim reality was not a video game. Just being good at Call of Freedom didn’t mean you could handle it when it was real bullets whizzing through the air.

I checked my watch as another set of rockets arced through the sky. It was five to six volleys, then it would go quiet for about six to seven minutes.

It was that six to seven minute window we would use to move.

Patch and I had gone over four different exit strategies. I’d memorized the maps, the road layouts, and the general security patrols. Every single one of those had to be discarded for the emergency extraction plan on the Mediterranean.

The safe corridors closed too rapidly. I’d feel better about it if I had Patch watching my back, but communications were cut off. Cell towers were down and I’d bet anything they’d cut cables so not even WiFi or hard lines would work.

Patch had given me options and we’d gone over it until I could move in my sleep. It was better to stick to the plan and knowing her—she was probably tracking me with a satellite or something. That woman had her ways.

“Solid planning,” I said, sweeping my gaze over all of them before I went back to watching the road. We weren’t the only ones hunkering down. I’d seen a family a way up the street.

Wars had no pity in them.

Another volley of rockets. I waited for impact and the hot breeze to get hotter. It was like noon in the summer out here. The air was almost too damn uncomfortable to breathe.

“Masks,” I reminded the kids, dragging my own handkerchief up over my face. There was ash and smoke, and who knew what else out there. It was stinging my eyes and my face. We needed to shield our lungs as much as possible.

One more volley and it screamed a lot closer than I liked, hitting a building not more than fifty meters away. The detonation of the impact, and the sundering of the building facade, glass, and the crunch of metal as more of the building hit the road covered the girls’ screams.

Terrified or not, though, all of the kids kept their heads down and when I raised my hand, they moved. Mental clock running, I scanned the street as I led them across it and through an alley. The stench of smoke, burning oil, and the acrid bitterness of munitions wreathed the air.

Breathing through the handkerchief helped, but it couldn’t quite smother the foulness of it all. Movement ahead had me pressing flush to the building and I raised a fist. One hand touched the middle of my back.

A train, that was what I told them. They touched me when everyone was stopped together, it would let me know we were all accounted for. The movement faded in and out of the flickering light and smoke. Then the dog trotted on and I blew out a breath.

Poor beast. Keep going, I urged it mentally. I spared one look back and found Mr. Maxwell splitting his attention between me and what was behind us.

Good man.

Normally, I wouldn’t take on an extraction like this without backup. But no one expected the escalation to go as swiftly as it had. I was in country, and my backup wasn’t.

If I’d been able to find a safe place to bunker down with the kids until a team could get to us, I would have. Nowhere was safe in the city.

Not anymore.

I checked the V Seven Harbinger. I had a Sig Sauer in one holster and a Glock - 19 in the other. Right now, Harbinger and I were going to be besties.

“We’re moving,” I said, raising a hand and we were going. “Keep moving. We’ve got to cross a hundred and fifty meters to the next cover.”

There were abandoned vehicles, a burnt out school bus, and the husks of what looked like might have been shops once upon a time. Now they weren’t much more than rubble with an occasional frame where a door might have stood.

I kept my head on a swivel, checking the kids, checking our perimeter, and ahead. One of the girls stumbled, but Jonathon caught her and kept her on her feet.

Something tickled against my awareness. Something I noticed but I hadn’t seen. I kept us moving. We still had another sixty meters to go.

Fifty meters.

Forty.

Thirty.

Twenty—

The man surged out from behind one of the cars. He had a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. If I started a gunfight, we were going to draw attention. I couldn’t give him time to either alert others or risk random fire hitting one of the kids.

I cataloged the options, sorted through my choices, then struck in the same breath as the man charged me. Yeah, I was the biggest threat. I struck him across the face with the stock of the Harbinger. It knocked more than one tooth out.

He sliced down my arm. The body armor took care of most of it, but the blade managed to cut my forearm. The blood and sting just reminded me I was alive. I twisted his arm, took the blade and then drove it right through his throat.

The fight was brutal, efficient, and over in seconds. It wasn’t until I lowered him to the ground that I noticed the military clothing.

Yeah. I didn’t want to hurt a civilian, but this guy came at me looking for the fight. I glanced around for the kids. They’d huddled near one of the stalled cars.

“Let’s go,” I told them. “Eyes up. Don’t look at him.”

For once, not a single one even tried to give a bravado-laced glance at the dead man. Mr. Maxwell’s face was pale beneath the soot. The man rallied however.

We made it to the next block just as the rockets fired up again. Twenty minutes of raining hell that kept getting closer, before we got our next break.

The five hundred meters to the sea seemed to take hours, but the kids stuck with me. We’d encountered others fleeing the fire, but unlike the man with the knife, they didn’t offer violence.

Live and let live worked for me.

The breeze rolling in off the ocean had never been more welcome in my life. The salty air promised something refreshing even if smoke still filled the dark skies.

The moonless night worked in our favor. The lack of cloud cover did too, it let the smoke keep rising instead of pushing it down. The inflatable was where I’d stowed it.

“We’re going out over the water?” One of the girl’s asked, teeth chattering. Her name was Jane, I thought.

“Yes.” Another sweep, and I was pointing them to the water. The waves were low and slow. This was the perfect time to get out past them.

I secured my weapons.

“Stay together, we’re going to push the inflatable out into the water. Everyone holds onto it. Don’t let the waves push you back in. Once we’re past them, swim and then we’ll get you inside.”

“I can’t swim,” Jane said, seemingly turning to stone.

“Everyone else can?” I checked with all of them and one by one they nodded.

“I mean, yeah in a pool,” Jonathon said. “But—yeah.”

“Okay.” I peeled off a deflated lifejacket. I didn’t have enough for all of them. “This isn’t inflated, you tug here and here and it will. Don’t do it.”

I tugged it over Jane’s head and secured it. She blinked up at me.

“Hang onto the boat. Jonathon, you’re with Jane. Stay together, if you lose your grip, you can inflate the lifejacket, it will keep you above the water. We don’t want the resistance getting out.”

The terror crawling over her face was enough to give me pause but we didn’t have any more time.

“You can do this, Jane. Trust me.”

It wasn’t a request.

The order did what coaxing wouldn’t have. She nodded. We plowed out into the water. It was cool against all of us. Soaked clothing might be heavy but right now, we needed to move.

In the distance, the rockets started firing again. Past the break, I got them in the inflatable, one after the other and then I was in with them.

The motor wasn’t designed for long term travel, but I had a compass and the stars. I also had a rough idea of the distance off shore to international waters and where a U.S. warship would be waiting.

When we were close enough, I pulled out a radio and checked the channels. As soon as we had acknowledgement, I passed it to the exhausted Mr. Maxwell. The kids were asleep, all of them except Jonathon. Exhaustion would do that.

“I was never here,” I told them.

“But—” Jonathon said and I shook my head. Weapons still secure, I threw myself over the side. The swim back was gonna take time.

“Never here. You never saw me. Go home—live good lives.” Then I was swimming. The current would help, but I needed to get back to land, then work my way out in a different direction.

The kids were safe. I saw the lights come into view when I was almost a mile away. It was another three days before I made it out of the war zone. I was tired, I was thirsty and I needed a fucking shower.

But I needed to check in with Patch.

Only problem.

She didn’t answer.

I left my gear for cleanup to deal with, took a go bag and headed to the airport. I’d shower in the lounge.

Patch let it slip once that she loved Colorado. She’d been worried about the wildfires and possible evacuation. A warning she’d given me in case the call dropped.

It never did.

I checked on the fire—the only one at the time just happened to be northwest of Denver, near Rocky Mountain National Park.

In Estes.

That was where I’d start.