The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(81)

Ghost just looked at him blearily.

Alil grinned. “Don’t worry. This is crazy-easy duty. We’re two cordons back from where we’re seeing contact. Keep your eyes peeled, though. Maybe the LT really does got a lead on something. We don’t want any more of these FOs slipping through. And don’t get overconfident. Civvies sometimes get feisty when you search them. Got stuff they want to hide.”

Ghost nodded and tried to pay attention. After their ambush with the FOs and the 999, he couldn’t afford to lose track of what was going on around him. He wouldn’t be overconfident ever again. Hell no. That’s what got you dead like… Pook?… Was that his name?

Ghost was disturbed that he’d already forgotten the name of the boy who had trained him. Tubby? No… Gutty. Right. ’Cause of his gut. ’Cause he’d been fat, once. Back when the peacekeepers were around.

“Mouse?”

Ghost turned, surprised. The voice was familiar.

Something blasted past him, piling into his friends. They went into the water with a huge splash. Ghost stood frozen, staring at what stood before him. Mahlia. Real as day. Not a hallucination. Not some hangover memory. Mahlia. For real.

“Mahlia?”

She grabbed him and dragged him into a building’s shelter, pulling him close. She was talking to him, saying things, but Ghost couldn’t stop staring at her face. She had the triple hash, right on her cheek, burned in good.

“When did you get recruited?” he asked, and then all hell broke loose.

Mahlia hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

She’d been looking out the windows of her family’s old apartment, just killing time, waiting for dark so they could start moving again. She knew she’d eventually have to expose herself and leave her lair, but not yet. She’d wait, and then she’d find Mouse’s platoon. She’d look for that Lieutenant Sayle and his soldiers. The boys all had call signs, and she could make her way to them. Lieutenant Sayle, Hi-Lo Platoon, Dog Squad. She’d be a runner. A messenger. And if that didn’t seem workable, she’d come up with something else. They were inside UPF lines now. In the dark, with a hat over her eyes, and most of the castoffs long dead, she thought she could pass.

One step at a time.

And then she saw Mouse coming down the floating boardwalk, jumping around splintered bamboo spans—him and a couple of other soldier boys, but practically alone.

She stared.

Was it him? Was it really him?

He had scars on his face, the full triple hash of Glenn Stern, just like she’d burned into her own cheek, and his ear had some kind of brownish bandage on it, but it was him. He had an AK slung over his shoulder, and she had to look at him twice more before she was absolutely sure that he wasn’t just another soldier boy, but no, it was Mouse.

He was there. Right there.

“Tool,” she whispered. “I see him.”

Quick as a knife, Tool was there, looking down. “Only three.”

“Two,” Mahlia corrected. “Mouse doesn’t count.”

Tool didn’t say anything to that. He saw the world differently. But Mouse wasn’t going to shoot them. “I’ll talk to him,” she said.

“Not with those two.”

“If he sees me, he’ll break off.”

“No. They are together. None of them will separate. They are patrolling. Even these boys know that much about their duties. They are nothing in comparison to a real army, but they have that much training at least.” He studied them. “Were either of the others at the village?”

Mahlia stared down at them, trying to remember. There’d been a lot of them. “I don’t know.”

“If they were, they will recognize you, and they will kill you.”

She couldn’t be certain. She’d seen a lot of soldiers, but she had no way of knowing how many had been there, and if they had seen her, and she’d been distracted. It definitely wasn’t the sergeant she’d worked on. Or Sayle. Or that one who had wanted to hurt her.

“I don’t think so.”

“Not good enough,” Tool said. “I will neutralize them. You get Mouse.”

And just like that they set up the ambush. It was easy. The soldier boys walked right into it.

Mahlia and Tool waited in a broken bay window of the building, a nice wide one that would let Tool move easily and that they could step right through and onto the boardwalk… waiting, waiting… and then as the soldiers came close, Mahlia called out to Mouse.

She felt a blur of wind as Tool shot past her and piled into the soldier boys. They went into the canal with a splash. Mouse turned. His gun came up.

Mahlia backed off. “Mouse?” Fates. Was he going to kill her? “It’s me. Mahlia! We’re here to get you out!”

The gun came down. Mouse looked from her to the water. A few bubbles rose.

“Mouse?”

The redheaded boy looked puzzled. He stared at the water, then back at her. In a minute Tool would have both of them drowned. Mahlia almost felt bad for them, knowing what that felt like. Being held down by a half-man while you drowned. Those two didn’t stand a chance. She pulled him into the building.

“When did you get recruited?” Mouse asked.

He was still confused, and then Mahlia remembered her own mark. “No! Fates, no!” She shook her head. “I’m just here to get you out.”