Page 22 of Talk to Me
At the prompting, the girl with the glasses and the frizzy hair wiped at her eyes, sweat soaked her ruddy face and while she hadn’t stopped crying since I’d arrived, it hadn’t slowed her down.
She sniffled. “When Mr. McQuade moves, we move. When Mr. McQuade holds up his hand, we stop. When he drops his fist, we go low.” A choked sound escaped her and she sniffled again. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, crying is a good stress reliever. It’s letting you think. I’d rather you were teary and thinking than stoic and frozen.”
Surprise flickered over her face. In the distance, a scream of rockets whistled through the air. Their impacts were followed by more heat, more wind, and the char of death on the wind.
The invasion was driving steadily into the more populated areas. The conflict was old, and it was colonial. Some said downright tribal. Right now, I wanted the civilians out of the way.
“Jonathon?” The teacher prompted the gamer in their little group.
“McQuade is point. Mr. Maxwell is rear guard. We are never to get ahead of Mr. McQuade or fall behind Mr. Maxwell. Move in pairs. Help each other. Watch each other’s sixes and we’ll keep moving northwest to the water.”
Some of the spark Jonathon had for this had gone out of him. Grim reality was not a video game. Just being good at Call of Freedom didn’t mean you could handle it when it was real bullets whizzing through the air.
I checked my watch as another set of rockets arced through the sky. It was five to six volleys, then it would go quiet for about six to seven minutes.
It was that six to seven minute window we would use to move.
Patch and I had gone over four different exit strategies. I’d memorized the maps, the road layouts, and the general security patrols. Every single one of those had to be discarded for the emergency extraction plan on the Mediterranean.
The safe corridors closed too rapidly. I’d feel better about it if I had Patch watching my back, but communications were cut off. Cell towers were down and I’d bet anything they’d cut cables so not even WiFi or hard lines would work.
Patch had given me options and we’d gone over it until I could move in my sleep. It was better to stick to the plan and knowing her—she was probably tracking me with a satellite or something. That woman had her ways.
“Solid planning,” I said, sweeping my gaze over all of them before I went back to watching the road. We weren’t the only ones hunkering down. I’d seen a family a way up the street.
Wars had no pity in them.
Another volley of rockets. I waited for impact and the hot breeze to get hotter. It was like noon in the summer out here. The air was almost too damn uncomfortable to breathe.
“Masks,” I reminded the kids, dragging my own handkerchief up over my face. There was ash and smoke, and who knew what else out there. It was stinging my eyes and my face. We needed to shield our lungs as much as possible.
One more volley and it screamed a lot closer than I liked, hitting a building not more than fifty meters away. The detonation of the impact, and the sundering of the building facade, glass, and the crunch of metal as more of the building hit the road covered the girls’ screams.
Terrified or not, though, all of the kids kept their heads down and when I raised my hand, they moved. Mental clock running, I scanned the street as I led them across it and through an alley. The stench of smoke, burning oil, and the acrid bitterness of munitions wreathed the air.
Breathing through the handkerchief helped, but it couldn’t quite smother the foulness of it all. Movement ahead had me pressing flush to the building and I raised a fist. One hand touched the middle of my back.
A train, that was what I told them. They touched me when everyone was stopped together, it would let me know we were all accounted for. The movement faded in and out of the flickering light and smoke. Then the dog trotted on and I blew out a breath.
Poor beast. Keep going, I urged it mentally. I spared one look back and found Mr. Maxwell splitting his attention between me and what was behind us.
Good man.
Normally, I wouldn’t take on an extraction like this without backup. But no one expected the escalation to go as swiftly as it had. I was in country, and my backup wasn’t.
If I’d been able to find a safe place to bunker down with the kids until a team could get to us, I would have. Nowhere was safe in the city.
Not anymore.
I checked the V Seven Harbinger. I had a Sig Sauer in one holster and a Glock - 19 in the other. Right now, Harbinger and I were going to be besties.
“We’re moving,” I said, raising a hand and we were going. “Keep moving. We’ve got to cross a hundred and fifty meters to the next cover.”
There were abandoned vehicles, a burnt out school bus, and the husks of what looked like might have been shops once upon a time. Now they weren’t much more than rubble with an occasional frame where a door might have stood.
I kept my head on a swivel, checking the kids, checking our perimeter, and ahead. One of the girls stumbled, but Jonathon caught her and kept her on her feet.