Page 52 of Delta (Alpha #12)

The enemy's return fire picks up intensity, becomes withering, forcing us to duck as their rounds smack into the body of the Suburban—it's armored, thank fuck, with heavy duty, bullet-resistant glass.

Rifle chatter from the flanks changes the calculus of the firefight as RMI makes their presence known.

I pop up, spray a burst their way, scanning the battleground: shadows move, shouts in Spanish echo, groans flutter. A shadow moves near the tail of a pickup; an arm slicing through the air. A dot-shadow arcs through the illumination of the gas station lights.

"Grenade!" I shout, scrambling around the bonnet of the Suburban.

The grenade clatters across the cement and skitters toward me, so I do the only logical thing—wind up and boot the thing as if this is the Emirates Stadium and I’m taking a corner kick for Arsenal.

I dart away as something hot snaps past my ear, whickers over my head, and buzzes angrily around me. Fuck, fuck. I'm out of cover, now, in the open. "RUSH!" Harris shouts. "Get the fuck back here!"

I dart the other way, but a burst of fire rakes the cement inches from my feet, forcing me to scramble the other way. More fire blatters at me, rounds hissing all around me like a swarm of hornets.

KA-BOOM!

The grenade detonates—good thing I don't play for Arsenal, though, as my kick was total shit. The thing went nowhere near the enemy, blowing up an air pump off to the side rather than the petrol pump I'd been aiming for.

Shrapnel dings and tinkles all around us, but no one pays any attention. No. They just shoot at me. Bullets snap perilously close to me on all sides, chewing up the concrete behind me, preventing me from returning to the protective cover of the armored SUV.

"RUSH!" I hear a blessedly beautiful voice call from the gas station shop.

Fuck this. Sometimes the only way out is through, yeah? So fuck it. Time to make a break for it.

I bolt forward into the teeth of the enemy fusillade, bullets whipping all around me, plucking at my shirt sleeves and trouser legs as I zig, jog, zag, and jig toward the shop.

A figure looms in front of me, an M16 leveled at me, the barrel a huge round hole.

I fire from the hip, catching the shooter in the thigh.

He buckles, goes to a knee, but still gets off a burst at me.

A sun-hot hammer slams into my left arm, jerking me around off-balance.

There's no pain at the moment, just the tremendous impact with crushing heat spreading to my shoulder, chest, and forearm.

I let my carbine go, and it swings from the clip attached to my vest. Draw my sidearm without losing a step, sprinting through the scrum of tangos—now no one dares shoot, not with me in the mix.

The tangoes don't want to hit each other, and our lot don't want to hit me.

Which means for a split second or two, the firefight is paused.

I use the lull to run even harder, until my lungs scream and my thighs burn and the pounding hot ache in my arm slowly becomes a pulsing mass of agony that I have no choice but to swallow.

I'm even with the tango who shot me, his eyes wide, teeth bared as he swivels on his arse in an attempt to bring his rifle to bear on me.

Too late.

I fire across my body—my pistol is in my right hand, and the target is on my left. I catch a glimpse of red blooming at his throat, and feel a little zing of pride. That was a good shot, if I do say so myself.

The shop is mere meters away now, and I feel a dozen pairs of eyes on me, feel iron sights settling on my back.

Instinct screams in my gut, that sense of danger.

You wouldn't think it would be helpful in the middle of a firefight, because obviously there's danger: motherfuckers are shooting at me.

But it's more subtle than that, if you care to pay attention.

This instinct is telling me to drop, now .

You don't survive in this job for long without those instincts, without the ability to react instantly to nothing more than a warning tingle in your bollocks.

You gotta learn to listen. I learned a long time ago—it's how I survived on the mean streets of London as a homeless little gutter rat and it's how I made it through all those missions when so many didn't. That and blind, stupid luck, of course.

This time, it's not luck. I feel the tingle in my nuts telling me to hit dirt, so I tuck my shoulder and cradle my rifle against my gut.

Throw myself forward into a roll. The concrete is unforgiving as I hit it, and the magazine jabs my diaphragm like a mule kick, and grit scrapes my cheek, bitter on my lips and dusty in my nostrils, stinking of old petrol.

My shot arm screams agony as I roll over it.

A long chainsaw rattle of automatic fire cuts the air where I'd been a mere heartbeat before, and now I'm rolling to my back and kicking myself along the ground toward the shattered doors of the station shop as hell breaks loose now that I'm out of the way.

I crack off a shot with my pistol down the length of my body, and I'm rewarded by the muzzle-flash raking skyward as the shooter goes down.

A hand grabs my vest and pulls—I crack off shots in rapid succession, kicking my boots into the concrete to help Bryn pull me along, as there's no time to make my feet.

Rounds buzz and snap and hum all around us, and I glance up to see a tendril of Bryn's curly black hair jerk, wisps fluttering in slow motion down to me, severed by the round whickering millimeters from her ear.

I'm firing indiscriminately in the direction of the enemy, just trying to keep their heads down. Our lot are pouring fire on them as well, and I see one tango twist awkwardly as a shot from the flanks jerks him in a wild, ungainly pirouette.

Something sharp slices at my backside and the gap between vest and trousers—glass shards digging in as I half-crawl and am half-dragged across them.

A tango appears over the bonnet of a truck stopped between the pumps, black hair and brown skin, a blue kerchief tied around his mouth and nose. Bryn, dragging me with one hand, puts a slug right through the fucker's teeth.

And then I'm across the threshold and she's hauling me behind the cover of the clerk's counter, and the relative silence is deafening.

For a moment, it's all I can do to catch my breath, my oxygen-starved lungs searing with each breath, a stitch in my ribs stabbing me like a needle.

Bryn's face appears above me, her mouth moving. Blood roars in my ears, adrenaline pounding my veins, tinnitus ringing like feedback squealing from an amplifier.

"…Ush? Rush!"

I see the lock of hair that got shot away, and I reach up and pinch the severed end between finger and thumb. "Nearly had your number on it, this one." I'm speaking too loudly, I think.

"You're hit," she says—I read this on her lips as much as hear it.

“Yeah, I noticed," I say, grunting as I lever myself more upright against the counter. "It don't fuckin' tickle."

"Stay here," she orders.

“No worries, love, I ain't in no hurry to go back out there."

"Rush, sitrep." Harris's voice crackles across the comms.

I key the comms. "Yeah, yeah. I'm all right. Took one to the wing, but I've had worse. Bryn's alive. Saved my arse, too."

"The boy?"

I cast a look around, but all I see is scattered crisps from bags burst by stray rounds, cereal boxes trickling their contents, fizzy drink spraying and leaking, cans rolling this way and that.

"Bryn?" I call out.

She appears from one of the aisles, ripping into a first aid package as she hits her knees at my injured side. "Hold still, Rush. You're bleeding everywhere."

I pull my comm out of my ear and stretch it to her, and shove it into her ear. "Say hi to your dad, love.”

She lifts my arm, checking for the exit hole, grunting when she sees it. "Went through the meat. Good thing you've got a big-ass arm." A pause. "Hi, Daddy. I'm good. Yeah, I’ve got him. He's under a desk in the office."

She digs through the first aid kit and finds a package of gauze pads, rips it open, and presses one to the exit wound. "Hold that," She orders me. I do, and she presses another to the entrance, and then winds a bandage roll around it, cinching it as tight as she can.

"No, he's fine," she says. "I mean, physically.

He watched Pugli kill his mother, so mentally he's a lot less fucking fine, but he's a tough kid…

Pugli? No, he's alive, unfortunately. He has a vest on under his suit.

I shot him point-blank three times. Oh, he'll hurt alright, but he's alive.

I know. I know. Well, the situation here isn't good.

I'm down to…" She checks the load of her pistol.

"Two or three rounds. We have Rush’s rifle and his sidearm.

Rush, honey, how many spare mags do you have? "

I grin at her. "Honey, is it? Can't say I don't love the way that sounds, Gorgeous."

"Answer the question, you hopeless flirt," she snaps.

I check my vest pockets, locating two spares for my carbine and two for my pistol—a damned Beretta, since RMI didn't think to bring the right size ammunition for my Browning and neither did Harris's lot, so I've had to trade my trusty old Hi-Power for this shitty fucking Beretta.

Operators are particular about their sidearms, you see, and that Browning has been to every corner of Hell and back with me.

Bryn reports our ammo situation to her father, listens, occasionally interjecting an affirmative sound. Finally, she hands me the earpiece back. "They're gonna regroup and make a push. We need to get Ren out here so we can be ready to make a break for it."

"Go get him, then," I tell her. "I'll see what's doing out there."

"Rush," she says, hesitating. "I'm glad you're here."