with his eyes for everyone to understand. “I’m not saying we leave everyone no matter what. If the circumstances are right, and you can get some of them out without risking the rest of your group, then do it.” That seemed to appease some of them.
“In the meantime, keep your eyes open. If we know what they’ve done with our people, we can plan to get them out later on. Does everyone understand?”
I saw heads nodding as they reluctantly accepted the harshness of our situation.
Ken relaxed visibly. “Good.” He looked away from the group for a moment, staring into the town. Rejas was eerily silhouetted by a few burning buildings. “Leeland, you still have that radio?”
I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it. “Got it right here.” I pulled the little transceiver off of my belt and started to hand it to him, but he stopped me with a shake of his head.
“Just turn it on and see if we can tell what’s going on in there.”
As I flipped the switch, an unfamiliar voice was speaking over the static. “… in. We should… ny more trouble…”
“All ri… if you mess th… I’ll hav… for it!” Troutman’s voice was barely recognizable over the static, but he sounded as if he’d had better days.
“… don’t, we can… ill… st ’em… tanks.”
Ken shook his head. “Too far away. This dinky radio isn’t much better than a kid’s walkie-talkie. Might as well save the batteries ’til we get closer.”
I clicked it off. The tiny bits of conversation had been more tantalizing than informative.
“All right, people. Divide into your groups and hit your targets. This has priority. Get as many of those supplies to the plant as quickly as you can.”
All hell broke loose.
The sudden sounds of gunfire had me scrambling frantically for cover. I dove for the shelter of the nearby tree line and saw most of the others scattering in all directions. Behind me, someone stood in the open like an idiot, shooting in the direction of the enemy fire. I couldn’t tell who it was, but he didn’t last long. A line of bloody holes stitched themselves across his chest within a matter of seconds, and he fell to the ground thrashing horribly. From my spot behind a huge Texas pine, I saw that two more had been caught in the attack. Dead. How had they found us?
Many of our group began to return fire, aiming in the general direction of our attackers. I looked, but couldn’t see a thing. The sounds of machine guns firing at us told me about where they were, but I wasn’t confident enough about their location to risk wasting bullets. I put my back to the tree and tried to calm down enough to think.
My heart hammering with instinctive fear, I assessed the situation. Hiding behind a tree at the edge of the forest a half-mile out of Rejas, enemy firing from somewhere between myself and the town, three of my companions down, presumably dead, and the rest of the group scattered, disorganized, wasting bullets on an opponent they couldn’t see-not a very reassuring predicament. Then I caught a glimpse of furtive movement in the trees off to my left. Ken.
Just as I recognized him, he began speeding through the forest, skirting the edge of the tree line; I realized he was attempting to flank our attackers.
It was time to piss or get off the pot, as Jim was fond of saying. “Oh, hell,” I muttered. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Ken.” I took off after him, bullets singing their terrifying song through the trees, accompanied by the distinctive scent of cordite wafting through the air.
Running through the trees, leaping over scrub that appeared out of nowhere in the darkness, I wrestled with my fear. I was probably more frightened at that moment than I had ever been in my life, and it took a major effort to get a grip on my emotions. Finally, I convinced my pounding heart that, though the trepidation was natural, I had no time for it. So I continued the insane race through the trees, chasing the elusive ghost that was Ken, and concentrated on clamping down on the cold knot of fear deep within my abdomen. Ultimately, I managed to fan it into a cold, resolute anger. By the time I left the trees, I was furious.
Ken was just ahead, thirty, maybe forty feet at most. With his black BDUs, I could barely make him out by the light of the crescent moon as he ran through waist-high grass, jumping over small scrub bushes, plowing through others, and then, abruptly, he was gone. He just wasn’t there. A moment later, the ground gave way beneath my feet, and I flailed wildly, involuntarily beginning a yell that was choked off as I hit the icy black surface of one of Rejas’s many springs.
“Damn, Leeland!” Ken hissed from the bank. “Shut up and quit all the splashing. You want to get us killed?” He reached forward. “Here, take my hand.”
“What happened?” I asked stupidly, as he helped me out of the water. We were in the bottom of a small ravine that had been carved out over the years by the flow of water from a nearby spring. “How’d they find us?”
“They must have night-scopes or starlight goggles.” He pulled me out of the water, through the slippery mud of the streambed, and over to hug the embankment as he listened to the sounds of the battle raging to our right. “I didn’t think of that, or I would have kept us back in the trees until we were ready to move out.” He cursed under his breath. “I’m the one that’s supposed to know this kind of thing. How many did they get?”
“Three that I saw. I think all the rest of us made it to the trees.”
Ken’s head sagged. “I only saw one before I hit the ground.” Sounds of the ongoing firefight punctuated the night as he sighed. “Jenna… she took one in the neck.” I saw his fist curl in the faint moonlight. “All because I didn’t think of a simple thing like night goggles.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head back to rest against the muddy drop-off. “I might as well have killed them myself.”
I grabbed his arm and shook it to get his attention. “It’s not your fault, Ken. We all made the same choice tonight.”
He didn’t reply, just sat there with his head leaned back against the dirt, eyes and ears closed to the battle above.
“Ken?” No answer. “Ken? Don’t you zone out on me!” I hissed. “I need you here. We all do!”
His eyes opened and locked with mine; for the first time, I could see the age in them. I saw the tired and haunted look of a man who had lived through this, and worse, and had managed to put it behind him to get on with his life. Now war had come calling on him again, and he was forced to answer. He nodded wearily, accepting the responsibility. “Yeah, I hear you.”
Ken turned away for a moment, and I was afraid that I had lost his attention again. Then he jerked his chin downstream. “This bank stays pretty high, and the gully curves around behind the clearing out there, about five hundred yards or more to the south. It ought to hide us well enough to let us get behind whoever is doing all the shooting up there.”
“Sounds good. Any idea how many of them there are?”
“I only hear eight or nine. That doesn’t mean there aren’t more, but there are only a few guns firing right now.”
“Just eight?” The gunfire had sounded like a small army to me. From our protected position in the streambed, though, I could tell that Ken was right. I could hear our people in the trees to the west firing like crazy, but the return fire from downstream was relatively small.
“You got an idea?” I asked “or were you just planning to run up and try to take them from behind?”
“Actually, I’m open to suggestions,” Ken said with a sheepish look. “’Cause that’s pretty much what I had in mind. What are you thinking of?”
I shook my head. “I was hoping that you had some brilliant plan in mind.”
He frowned. “Well, sometimes the best plans are the simplest ones.” He took one last deep breath. “Let’s go.”
Ken’s words didn’t inspire much confidence, but we began our run, splashing and sliding through the mud and water, slowly curving around and drawing constantly nearer to the sound of enemy gunfire. A few minutes later, Ken slowed and held up one hand, signaling me to a stop.
He pointed to his eyes, then to top of the bank. I nodded. He was going to peek over the edge. Picking his footing carefully, straining to keep from sliding, Ken climbed the dozen feet to the top. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his head over the grassy crest of the eroded stream embankment. Standing motionless, hanging
