Sol nods. "Mount up! Let's Roll!"
This Solomon cat is a confident leader; even the A1S men snap to at the command, jogging toward the vehicles. Harris is already halfway there; he's behind the wheel by the time we reach the blacktop. Seconds later, we're squealing away, and Harris is driving with the needle buried in the ass-end of the speedo.
No one speaks.
We're on the highway for less than ten minutes before Harris pulls onto an exit ramp, tires squealing and smoking as he drifts around the long curve, the big Suburban leaning heavily to one side. Down a long, narrow, two-lane rural highway, empty fields on both sides.
Puck tips his head toward the window, leans forward. Rolls his window down—now I hear it too: automatic weapons fire.
"Fuck, that's them," Harris growls. "Get ready, boys."
We check loads, tighten vests, and exhale a few times. Fiddle with the fire selector switches.
We approach a gas station in the distance, an island of light in the endless dark. Flashes of muzzle-burst bloom from one edge of the island—too many of them. You can't reliably count tangos based on muzzle-flash because people tend to move around during a firefight, but you can get a rough estimate. And my estimate is there's at least a dozen tangos out there, and Bryn is fending them off alone.
"One thing we should have mentioned," Solomon's voice comes across the radio. "Except for Lash, we Broken Arrows don't shoot to kill. We took an oath."
"The fuck?" Puck grumbles to himself, then, across the comms: "Operators who won't kill? Time for a new career, boys."
"Watch us, buddy," a different voice snarls. "Takes a fuckuva lot of skill to stay alive in a firefight while intentionally taking down but not outright killing people."
"What my brother is saying is that you don't need to worry,” Solomon answers. “We’ll hold our own. Just understand that we aren't missing our shots."
"Don't worry," I say into my comm. "We'll bag the lot of them for you."
"Arrows," Harris snaps, cutting through the cross-chatter.. "Form the center. Suppressive fire. Keep their heads down. RMI, flanks. Use the darkness to pick them off from the wings. Alpha team, get Bryn and the boy back to our side."
There's a chorus of affirmations across the comms. Taillights fade away and blink out behind us as Chico and the RMI blokes dissolve into the night. Our headlights wink off, bathing us in darkness; We creep forward foot by foot as the firefight continues. Although firefight is a loose term—it's massively lopsided. Closer now, I count at least a dozen tangos, hear overlapping chatter in Spanish.
"This is Mercado's men," someone says across the comms—a smooth, deep, accented voice—the Lash lad. The accent is European. Romani, maybe, though I'm far from an accent expert.
"So then what happened to Pugli?" Someone else asks—with so many new faces, I've no way of knowing who’s speaking.
"An excellent question indeed," says the accented voice—definitely Romani, definitely Lash; I did some…erm, extra-legal work with a Romani fella, a year or so back. Excellent chap. Sticky fingers, smooth talker. "Until you see that lice-ridden, cockroach-infested pustule bleeding out before your very eyes, you cannot ever count him out. He will make himself known in some manner, assuming Bryn evaded him but did not kill him.”
"Oi, mate," I say into the comm, "don't insult lice and cockroaches that way. They're just innocently following their natures. Pugli is lower than the stains left on the toilet bowl after you’ve taken an epic shit."
Laughs and snickers greet my comment, but not from Lash. "I appreciate the sentiment, but Pugl's evil is no laughing matter. I merely lack the English to fully and accurately capture the depth, breadth, and intensity of my hatred for Roberto Pugli." A pause. “He killed my wife and children.”
"Funny, mate," I answer, "Seems like you speak English better than I do. But point taken. Let’s just agree he's an evil fuck who needs killin' post-fucking-haste." My turn to pause. “Sorry for your loss, mate.”
“Thank you.”
I hesitate. “Wait…I heard a story about a guy who had info on Pugli…”
“That was me.”
I exhale. “Jesus fuck. No wonder you hate him.”
“No wonder indeed, sir."
"Sir, he calls me," I mutter to the men around me as we creep forward closer to the firefight—we're intending to surprise them from behind. "Ain't been called sir since I got busted down for insubordination."
"Rush?" Harris's voice float to me from the front of the Suburban.
"Yeah, mate?"
"Shut the fuck up.”
