Page 67 of Duke

“Hide in the bathroom and lock the door.” I guided her toward the bathroom, gave her the walkie talkie, and emptied my pockets of shotgun shells. “Shoot first and ask questions later. If it’s me or Anselm, we’ll identify ourselves. Anyone else, blast ‘em.”

“I don’t know how to shoot a gun!”

I was already backing out of the bathroom. “Keep a good grip on it, that fucker kicks like a howitzer. Tuck the butt tight against your shoulder and squeeze the trigger. Don’t close your eyes, don’t try to aim. Just go for the belly and you’ll get close enough.”

“But…but, Duke! I—I can’t—don’t leave me!”

I leaned back in and kissed her quickly. “You can. You have to. There’s too many of them out there for me to have the luxury of thinking about you. You’re safe in here. I’ll have a radio too, but don’t contact me unless you have to. Okay? You’ll be fine, I’ll be fine, everything will be fine. But I gotta go.”

Anselm’s Barrett was blasting nonstop, and I heard return fire, small arms, mostly. There was the sharp crack of a .308, which worried me.

Anselm was too good to be caught in a sniper’s crosshairs, but it meant they’d seen the muzzle flash and had a lock on his position. Which meant I really had to move—I’d already wasted too much time.

I cursed myself for getting so caught up in Temple that I missed their arrival, but really, deep down, I couldn’t regret it, not after what we’d shared.

I scrambled for the AR-15, then ripped open the duffel bag and slung the HK MP7 over my shoulder. I had magazines in my pockets for both and another flash bang. I wish I had my body armor, which was back at HQ—I thought Anselm had gone to grab it, but I guess he got sidetracked. I grabbed a radio from the rack and set up the earpiece and throat mic, then peeked out one of the front windows, using the frame as cover. A Suburban was hauling ass toward the house, still a good half-mile away, just emerging from the shroud of trees that lined the fence, followed by one of the big tricked out Wranglers like I’d stolen, plus what looked like a Hummer. There were more vehicles behind those, but I couldn’t make out what they were, and it didn’t really matter.

I heard the Barrett, and the hood of the lead Suburban crumpled, the front end slamming down into the dirt road. The Wrangler behind it gunned its engine and veered around it adroitly. The Suburban flipped, twisted, and rolled to one side, glass shattering.

“I need your backup now, Duke,” Anselm said over the radio. “The fun is about to begin.”

“How the fuck did they get here so fast?” I demanded. “And how’d they get in the gate?”

“It’s been an hour,” Anselm said, a note of amusement in his voice. “I left your gear by the kitchen door.”

“An hour?” I exclaimed. “I had no idea. I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, running for the kitchen.

“It is not so surprising you couldn’t hear me. You and the lovely Miss Kennedy were rather…occupied.” A pause, and then another blast of his rifle, and then his voice in my earpiece. “They brought explosives, blasted the gate open.”

That explained the first explosion I heard.

He’d brought my body armor, a bandolier of grenades, and my favorite personal weapon, an M4 carbine with the M203 grenade launcher attached to the rail. Fuck yeah. I tossed the AR-15 aside and checked my rifle—loaded, grenade in the chamber, charged, plus a stack of pre-loaded magazines. I geared up in record time. My armor had double handgun holsters already attached, so it was a matter of stuffing the nines from holster to holster, and then I was out the kitchen door.

Anselm was still cracking off shots. I trotted around to the front corner, took a knee, and scanned the scene with the optical scope. Anselm was picking off the survivors crawling out of the Suburban, and he’d also taken out the Wrangler, but there were still two…no, three…shit,fourmore vehicles behind that. The Suburban held eight, most of the others four or five…Anselm’s estimation of twenty or thirty was on the nose.

The four remaining undamaged vehicles skidded to a halt three hundred meters from the house forming a U with the opening facing the road. The doors opened and operatives in full gear poured out, each armed with carbines or HKs. I still heard that .308 cracking, but couldn’t see where it was coming from.

“You have a lock on that rifle?” I asked, the throat mic keying to pick up the vibrations when I spoke.

“Nein,” Anselm answered. “But he is only guessing at my location, and I am in motion. He is no worry—I will find him. You worry about evening the odds.”

I tilted the rifle and squeezed the trigger of the 203—the carbine gave a hefty kick and there was a hollow metallicthunkas the round left the chamber, then a pause of a few seconds, and then the centermost vehicle, a Hummer, exploded with a deafeningcrump. Orange flames billowed and the vehicle rocked skyward then crashed back down. Men shouted and screamed, scattering—making my job easier. I pinned the optics on a running operative, squeezed off a few rounds, and then shifted aim, fired again.

Anselm had set a pattern: fire three times, move positions, and fire three times. I knew his patterns, and knew he wouldn’t be moving in any predictable patterns, sometimes running a hundred meters to a new spot, and sometimes just shifting half a dozen or so meters. We worked in synch, then, Anselm plugging operative after operative, one shot one kill, then going silent as he moved to a new position. While he was moving, I’d open fire, picking a target and firing in three-round bursts.

It took nearly a minute for Cain’s mercenaries to figure out my location—and then they opened fire on the house almost as one man, rifles chattering, rounds smacking into the wood siding. Sloppy bastards, taking that long to peg my location. I ducked back out of view, switched mags, loaded another round into the launcher, and scanned for a secondary firing position. Harris had cleared the area around the house, so there wasn’t much; this was intentional, meant to put anyone approaching the house from any direction out in the open, but it also meant there wasn’t much cover for me either.

Nothing for it. I’d have to just make do with what I had.

I edged to the corner again, peeked, and then rolled out to squeeze off a couple bursts, rolled back behind the corner. Rounds thunked and whizzed and buzzed, plunked into the grass under foot, smashed a window. The Barrett barked, the .308 cracked twice, and then I heard the wood siding splintering, which meant their shots would start to punch through soon. Time to move.

I broke into a run, circling around behind the house to the opposite corner. I hadn’t made it even halfway when I heard Anselm over the radio.

“They are going into the house,” he said. “If your girlfriend is in there, she is in trouble.”

“She’s got a radio,” I said. “Temple, you hearing this?”

“Y-yeah.” Her voice was shaky and quiet. “I hear them.”