Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(106)

Not a single gun had been fired.

Isaac looked around. “Fuck. That was…that was easy.” For full, tense minutes, everyone held, guns at the ready, waiting to be ambushed.

But it didn’t come. Len put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, and the Scorpions came from the west.

“Okay, brothers,” Isaac swung to his back the AK he’d had ready. “Next part won’t be so easy. We ride south.

Becker nodded. “’Bout fifteen miles.”



oOo



The factory or plant or whatever it was sat in a low valley in a miles-wide expanse of beige dirt. The building itself was also beige and nearly windowless except for the front and for twenty feet back—where the offices had been when this had been some kind of legitimate business.

There were men patrolling around the whole perimeter, but there was no fencing—probably it would have drawn too much attention to enclose a non-descript factory in concertina wire. The few vehicles were parked at some distance from the building, making them useless as cover.

The Horde, Bulls, and Scorpions had come up from a two-mile walk and were at cover behind a dusty rise, about fifty yards from the front door.

Lying on his belly between Isaac and Badger, Becker leaned toward Isaac. His voice just loud enough to carry to the ears that needed to hear, he said, “Okay, last call. We’re trying to take as many men out as we can. There’s no way to that building under cover. Gil is going to ride straight up to the door—our van’s got some armor—then him, Terry, D.C., and Fitz will jump out shooting. Only cover will be that f*cking van and the building itself, so we have to hightail it, firing as we go. We are trying to take every motherf*cker down and get the Horde into the building.”

Isaac added, “Don’t think about how many men are down there. Think about the man in your sights.

Every one you take down hard is one you don’t have to fight again. Shoot to kill.”

Becker pulled his phone and dialed. “On my mark, Gil.” He paused; Badger tasted the adrenaline in his mouth—like burning rubber. “Mark.” He put his phone away. “When they turn in, we go.”

The Bulls’ grey van pulled down the empty road. A couple of guards noticed and watched but did not raise their weapons. Then Gil gunned it and turned hard, running both guards right over before they could do more than aim.

“NOW!” Isaac yelled, and everybody ran, over the rise and down toward likely doom.

Badger went away somehow—totally alert, totally alive, in sync with the plan, his senses firing faster than they ever had before, but also like he wasn’t there. Like he was watching this all play out from somewhere else. Not from above, not like he was hovering over the scene like some kind of angel or ghost, but like he was in another place entirely, watching a movie.

The air was so dense with gunfire that Badger was nearly deaf, and he now understood the phrase ‘hail of bullets’ vividly, because bullets were landing everywhere, making round puffs and divots in the dust. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, aimed and fired, with a clinical interest in everything that was happening.

A tally ran in the back of his head. Five kills. Six.

When he was punched so hard in the back he lost all breath and slammed to the ground, he was merely interested. But from a foggy distance he heard Show shouting, “Badge! Badge! Fuck!” And then Show was dragging him to the side of the building and standing over him, firing.

He looked down. “You okay, little brother?”

Badger tried to talk and had no breath. He inhaled—and that hurt. The pain brought him back. “What happened?”

Show fired again. “You got hit. Can you get up yet? Shoot?”

Badger lifted his gun and discovered that his arms worked. Thank God for Kevlar. Burned like fire to breathe, but he was not unused to working through pain. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Good. We need you up. Time to take the building.”



oOo



They got an unexpected and powerful boon in the form of an uprising from the people who were working, under duress, in the plant. Those workers took down nearly half the men inside, and then Zeke and Tommy covered them as they led them outside. When the building seemed to be clear, the Horde, together again, took a precious beat for a status check. Isaac called Bart—no Scorpions deaths. Diaz was down but not mortally. Isaac told Bart to join them and then called Becker.

There was no answer.

Isaac was about to hang up and then brought the phone quickly back to his ear. “Beck?...Eight B—oh f*ck. Fuck me. Who else?...Okay. Okay. Yeah. Hold the perimeter. Yeah.”

He closed his phone. “Becker’s dead. Terry and D.C., too.”

There was a moment of shocked quiet, and then Bart came in through the front doors, the glass of which had been shot out.

He scanned the Horde’s faces. “Fuck. Who’d we lose?”

Show answered. “Becker, Terry, D.C.”

“Damn.”

Isaac shook it off them all. “Let’s make it count. We got three more goons and Vega between us and justice. Vega walks from this. We need him to walk from this.”

“You said he was the one who emptied Hav.” Bart’s tone was acidic.

“He walks from this. He gave us this. He gave us Santaveria.”