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!"
