Page 39 of Delta (Alpha #12)

I laugh. "Nah, nothin' like that. He was former SAS like me doing security work. Pugli came later, when the more above-board work dried up and it was take the offer or start working the grease baskets at the local chippie."

Zurich, 0700 hours. Bryn is asleep against the window, mouth slightly agape as she snores softly.

We've chased this fuckstain from Geneva to Zurich and now we've lost him in Zurich—he played a trick on us, using several identical decoy cars in a game of shuffle.

I'm exhausted, irritable, hungry, and antsy for the boring fucking slow chase through the lush Swiss landscape to be over.

We make a turn onto a narrow side street, guided by Lear's instructions piped into our comms via some sort of techno-wizardry.

"Shit, shit, shit," Lear mutters. "Stop. Go back. I don't like this."

I sit up, roll down my window and lean my torso out to see ahead of us around the lead car—we're second in the line.

Black SUVs are parked across the road a hundred meters ahead.

I crane around to see behind; our parade slows at Lear's instructions, but it's too late.

Two more SUVs squeal to a stop, blocking us in.

"FUCK! Ambush!" Lear shouts.

Everyone reacts instantly. Our cars brake to a skidding halt, angled across the narrow street to provide cover. Bryn blinks awake, stretching and yawning. "Where are we? We catch up yet?"

I roughly cup her cheek, tugging her lower lip with my thumb. "We’re bein' ambushed, love. It’s bang-bang time.”

She's fully awake almost instantly, shaking her head to clear it of the sleepy cobwebs as she tightens her vest and checks her rifle—eject mag, check load and replace, hit the charge handle. "Ready." She’s an old hand already, going from asleep to gung-ho in seconds.

That's when all hell breaks loose.

Automatic weapons fire rattles and chatters from every direction, glass shatters, and rounds thunk into metal.

On either side of us, apartment or condo buildings rise three and four stories, full of innocent bystanders.

This is where they choose to ambush us? Where the chance of collateral damage is highest?

Fuck these bastards.

"TIGHT CLUSTERS, LADS!" I shout. "WE'RE SURROUNDED BY CIVILIANS!"

I wrench open my door and hit my knee behind it, pop up and squeeze off a quick trio of rounds at the enemy SUVs—my shots put silver holes in the driver's door and shatter the glass.

I see a muzzle flash and drop to my knee again as rounds zip overhead with a vicious buzz, one shattering my window and showering me with glass.

I tip my head forward and shake like a dog.

Bryn is huddled at my back, crouched and facing the opposite direction.

I hear her carbine bark thrice in quick succession—more like three individual shots in close succession rather than a true three-round burst, but this is a firefight, not a training exercise.

I hear a grunt from the other side of the SUV—an RMI operative drops, a round through the throat. Fuck, this is bad.

Rounds zing, zip, whip, and buzz back and forth, shrieking as they ricochet off the ground and smack into the stone facades to one side or another.

I glance up at a window and spot a woman peering down at us, face pressed to the glass; I press my flattened hand downward as I hold her gaze, and she vanishes from view.

Just in time, too: a stray ricochet shatters the glass where she was standing moments before.

Bryn's rifle goes crack-crack-crack behind me, pause, crack-crack-crack . "Eat that shit, fucknut," I hear her mutter.

"Drop one, didja Gorgeous?" I ask.

"Well, his ugly-fuck face exploded, so hopefully, yeah."

It shouldn't be arousing, watching Bryn work, but it is.

She's fucking magnificent. No wasted movements.

Just pure grace and lethal efficiency as she pops up, rips off her burst, and hits the deck again, never in the same rhythm.

I take a moment to watch her shots, as well, and her clusters are goddamned brilliantly tight.

It’s awfully bizarre having a chubby in the middle of a firefight, but here we are, ey?

The next time she drops back down, I wrap a hand around the back of her neck and kiss the hell out of her.

She laughs in surprise. "What was that for?"

I laugh as well, leaning around the edge of the door this time, firing with the rifle tilted at a 45-degree angle—a tango appears in the V of a doorway, his rounds slicing air where I would have been if I'd gone up instead of to the side.

Thus, he misses and I do not. His head jerks back with a burst of red-pink spray.

I pull back and grin at her. "Cuz you're bloody fucking amazing, that's why, and I had to kiss ya."

She grins back, opens her mouth to respond; a bloodcurdling scream cuts through the chattering chaos of the firefight—a woman in absolute terror.

Bryn stands full upright to look, and I follow suit.

A little girl, no more than four or five, has somehow managed to appear in the street, right smack in the middle of the kill zone.

Bullets whip this way and that, snapping and buzzing, zinging off the blacktop and smacking into the tube frames of bicycles.

The girl is standing stone still, frozen in terror, screaming, hands fisted out to the sides and shaking. Her hair is a messy mass of blonde curls. Her mother is huddled in a doorway, reaching for her helplessly, sobbing.

All I see is my Eliza, and there’s no choice but to do something stupid.

"Fuck me," I snarl. "Bryn, down."

She glares at me. "Fuck that. The girl!"

"On it, love." I suck in a quick breath. "Cover me!"

Bryn pops up and rakes a long burst across both SUVs while an RMI operative does the same the other way, keeping the enemy's heads down.

I lurch into a sprint, skidding around the hood of the SUV and diving for the girl.

At that moment, a tango rises over the hood and pulls a bead on me.

I see it happen in slow motion, and there's not a damn thing I can do.

I've got the girl in my arms, my rifle hanging by its strap behind me.

I drop to a crouch and turn my back to the shooter, curling my whole body around the child.

She's gone silent but I feel her shuddering uncontrollably.

CRACKCRACKCRACK ! Something hot sears past my left ear.

Another round creases the outside of my left arm.

The third digs into the blacktop near my left knee.

CRACKCRACK —

Overlapping reports conflict, one burst cut short.

An elephant kicks me in the back, shattering the air out of my lungs and sending me toppling forward.

I curl my arms in a vise around the girl and twist my torso as I fall, taking the brunt of the impact on my shoulder, log-rolling several times toward the doorway where the mother huddles, still screaming hoarsely in an extremely Swiss mixture of German and French.

I can't breathe, can't draw in a breath. Spots dance across my vision. My limbs won't cooperate. I can feel my toes, at least, so I'm not fucking paralyzed, but this shit is not fucking fun.

I hear Bryn yelling my name, but it's all I've got to force my body to obey, shoving a knee under me as I gag for oxygen, mouth flapping emptily, vision blurring and narrowing. The girl has my vest clutched in her little fingers, face buried in my throat. For a moment, it's Eliza.

"I've got you, sweetheart," I whisper—or at least, that's the intent. All that comes out is a hissing croak.

A horde of bees swarms past my skull. I've got to move.

Through sheer stubborn determination, I force my body to move despite the lack of oxygen.

I lurch to my feet and stagger forward, half-tripping on the low kerb.

I slam into the door beside the girl's mother, mouth working as I struggle to suck in a breath.

The mother is speaking, but I can't hear anything over the roaring in my ears.

My knees give out, and I sink to my ass, panic bubbling in my gut as I feel darkness welling up inside me—how long have I been unable to draw a breath? Thirty seconds? Longer?

I still have the little girl in my arms. I look down at her. Big, frightened blue eyes meet mine. A tiny soft hand touches my cheek. Her little mouth moves, asking me a question, but the roaring in my ears drowns it out.

I fight the panic, draw my knees up to my chest and push my stomach out slowly, focusing on trying to force my diaphragm to move.

Pull my belly in, force it out. When you've had the wind knocked out of you like that, especially as hard of a hit as I took, you have to learn how to do something that goes against everything your body is trying to tell you—you have to forcibly relax yourself.

Don't panic, get your diaphragm moving, and try to get little sips of air as you can.

Very, very slowly, my breath comes back.

At first, it's like wetting your lips when you're near dead of thirst, and then drawing in enough to coat your tongue, and then finally allowing a full swallow.

Bit by bit, my lungs start to work again, and the roaring in my ears fades, and the crackle and chatter of the firefight return.

" Hallo? Herr? Bist du verletzt? "

"Nein, nein." I look down at the little girl, addressing her in German. "You're okay. You're not hurt."

She shakes her head, patting my cheek with her warm little hand.

I can't help but hug the girl tightly, until she squirms.

"I have a daughter," I say to the mother.

She gathers her child to herself, her tear-wet eyes wide. She doesn't say thank you, too busy weeping and kissing her daughter, but she doesn’t have to. I see it in her eyes, the gratitude, the relief. I look out at the scene, assessing what's happened while I was fighting for my breath.

Enemy bodies lay slumped by tires and beneath doors—I count six. We've lost three RMI guys, but I see two of them still moving so hopefully they're just wounded.