Three (Article 5 #3)(78)

“Stay here.” Stealthily, Jesse bled into the surrounding landscape, making his way around the building.

I kept my eyes on Tucker, finding it odd that he sat in the sun when the metal awning provided shade just a few feet to his right. He seemed to sense that I was watching him because a second later he shook himself awake and rolled his head in a slow circle. Even from a distance I could see the red welts on his face, and the brown spattering of dried blood across his chest.

Someone had done a number on him.

I lowered the pack of medical supplies to the ground beside me while I waited. Across the street Chase stepped out into the open. I caught a glimpse of Jesse’s white undershirt moving through the thick emerald shrubbery behind the overturned trash cans in the back. He waved to Chase.

I left the pack and hurried toward Tucker, the gun I carried heavy in the back of my waistband. In the open, the sun was hot, and I couldn’t imagine how Tucker had been able to stand it.

I had only reached the first set of gas pumps when he saw me. He did a double take, and I cringed at the deep cut across his jaw. Then, so subtly I almost missed it, his gaze lifted.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered.

The next moments seemed to pause, and then lurch forward at twice the speed.

I followed Tucker’s gaze, and saw the flash of a navy dart across the roof. Seconds after a clatter on the metal came a loud crack, but I didn’t stop to see where the shot had been aimed because I was running for the closest cover, the mini-mart.

Another shot, and then another. I crashed into Tucker, and knocked him into the side of the building. We fell hard, a mess of arms, legs, and the hard metal angles of the chair.

“Help me up!” he shouted.

I was already scrambling toward the entrance on my hands and knees. A quick look over my shoulder revealed that he had yet to rise, and was thrashing around like a fish out of water. It was only then I saw that his hands were bound in front of him, and his waist and legs were fastened to the chair.

What remained of the glass double doors behind me shattered as a bullet screamed by my left ear. My ears rang, my heart hammered against my rib cage. I drew myself as close as I could to the building, feeling the shards of glass slash my thighs, and reached for the gun.

The trigger stuck.

An instant of frozen panic.

I released the safety, cocked the slide, and fired up at the roof. Once, twice. The kickback sent reverberations up my arms. I locked my elbows and fired again, straight into the metal overhead, watching the holes puncture through it like it was tin foil. There was a stunted cry, and then a crash as the awning gave way near my last shot, and a man fell through, landing ten feet away. There was blood on his face. It soaked through his open uniform jacket. He gripped his leg, screaming. It bent forward at the knee to the same degree that the other bent back.

I shoved myself up. In a surge of strength I grabbed Tucker’s shoulders and began to drag him backward through the front doors of the mini-mart. He twisted, trying to help me, and threw the chair onto its side.

My back strained. The muscles of my legs quaked. With a cry, I jerked us both through the entrance, landing on a warm, dusty floor.

Immediately I searched for more soldiers, any signs of movement. It wasn’t until that moment that I saw what filled the mini-mart.

Bodies. A dozen of them. Tossed over each other like dirty laundry. I smelled it then, the rotting flesh, the sharp tang of blood. Flies buzzed through the air, a thick black cloud over them.

The medic from Chicago leaned against an empty rack, his face white with death, a hole in the center of his forehead.

I stared at the gun in my hands needing something, anything, solid to hold on to. My vision shook, or maybe it was my grasp. Maybe it was my whole body.

We were too late. The MM had set an ambush and used Tucker as the bait. And DeWitt, who’d led us to believe he’d sent a team to help, had done nothing.

There was no time to think about it now.

I crouched behind the counter, locking my jaw as I removed an icicle-shaped piece of glass an inch wide from my side. My mouth opened in a silent scream, but though the beige tunic blossomed red, the pain numbed instantly. I pressed down on it to slow the bleeding.

“Chase,” I said between my teeth. “Do you see him?”

Tucker had managed to free his waist from the chair, though his ankles and wrists were still bound.

“Find something sharp!” he ordered.

I grabbed the closest thing I could, the piece of glass that had been embedded in my skin, and crawled over to him, keeping as low as I could. I sawed at the tight ropes around his hands.

“Don’t move!” I snapped at him when he strained against the ties.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he chanted.

The shots continued outside, and when I heard a grunt, and a drawn-out groan of pain, I dropped the glass and shoved past him, ducking low to see who had been hit.

A soldier kneeled out in the middle of the street. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder too slowly, and in the time before he fired he was hit three times across the chest. He fell back, motionless. I didn’t see the shooter until Jesse streaked by toward the cover of the shipyard.

Another window shattered. Tucker, hands now released, grabbed my arm and ripped me back. He returned to frantically trying to cut the rope around his ankles.

“They followed me,” he said. “I didn’t know. I swear.” His eyes, green and glassy, met mine. “I didn’t think you’d come.”