"And that?" I say, jutting my chin at him.
"He was well fucking hidden," he answers, pauses to pop up and fire off a burst. "I stumbled over him, literally. Ended up a hand-to-hand fight, and he had a knife."
"You won, clearly."
He grins. "Please,meu amor. I was winning knife fights before I had fuzz on my lip ."
I know for a fact he isn't kidding or exaggerating. Growing up a street rat in the violent favelas of Rio, his life was one of violence from the time he could walk. We spoke of these things at length in the brief, beautiful delirium of teenage love,whispering to each other in stolen moments, sharing dreams and nightmares and histories with the wide-eyed wonder of youthful, wild, hormone-fueled desperation.
We take turns popping up and firing, dropping down and reloading, but the numbers are against us, and no matter how many we drop, they keep progressing closer to us, pouring withering suppressive fire at us as they make their rush. I hear a shout from above—a sound of wounded male rage.
"Who's hit?" I demand over the line.
"Toro," comes the reply. "My arm.No es anda. I am alright."
"Sounded bad," I answer.
"I do not enjoy being shot," comes his answer.
“Pussy.” Fonz says, “It's my favorite fuckin' thing."
"Because you are a strange little man."
"Enough chatter," I snap.
"They are getting very close," Toro says. "You should fall back to the door or you will be overwhelmed."
Lorenzo pops up and fires, drops back down. "He's right," he says to me. “Fall back. I'll cover."
My instinct is to argue that he should go first, but I swallow it—now is not the time to bicker. I sprint for the door, yank it open—rounds bite into the wall inches from my face, spraying me with stinging flecks. I slip down a few steps and drop prone with my rifle barrel on the top step. I fire beneath the SUVs, and at least one man falls, gripping his ankle. I lock eyes with him for a moment, and then my next burst erases his face.
"Go!" I snap. "Now!"
Lorenzo creeps backward, firing, blindly trusting me to stop him from toppling down the stairs. He has a bloody red line creasing his ass horizontally across the middle. I stop him with a hand on his back when he reaches the lip of the stairs.
"You have a second ass crack," I say as he slips down beside me.
"Don't tell the others," he mutters back. "They will give me some stupid nickname like Double Crack or Two Butts."
I cackle at this, and he glances at me with an odd expression.
"What's that look for?" I ask.
He snipes a tango as he passes between two SUVs, and then we both have to worm down further as return fire snaps over our heads. "You. You have smiledandlaughed in the last hour." He grins at me, and then pops up to crack off a burst. "I like it."
I frown at him. "It isn't so strange." I take his place as he ducks down a few steps; the number of leg pairs still milling beyond the rings of SUVs is concerning. I key my mic. "How many are left, topside?" I ask.
"Perhaps twenty," Taj says. A pause, and then his voice, frantic. "Flashbang! Take cover!"
Lorenzo and I both scramble down the steps and away from the opening—just in time, too, as a cylindrical device clatters to the top step, rolls, wobbles at the edge, bounces, bounces, and then—
BANG!
Even with my eyes shut and my fingers plugging my ears, I'm disoriented and blinking and my ears are ringing. A hand yanks me backward with such unexpected force that both feet leave the ground; I’m airborne for a heartbeat and then my ass hits the floor with enough of an impact that the breath is jarred out of my lungs.
I blink away the rotating, flashing, coruscating lights to see Fonz on one knee in front of me, rifle at his shoulder, firing burst after burst up the stairwell.
Bullet holes pock the floor where I'd been had Fonz not yanked me backward.
