Dead Six

We could hear police sirens in the distance. “What’s it gonna be, ace?” I asked calmly, continuing to back down the alley, pulling the young woman with me as I went. “Cops are coming.”

“Lorenzo!” the woman cried out, fear now obvious in her voice. I caught a flash of movement at the edge of the school. My revolver barked as I popped off another shot, taking another chunk off the corner of the building. Jill cried out again.

A couple of long seconds ticked by, and there was no response. Tailor and I made eye contact. I dropped the muzzle of my gun as he crossed in front of me, weapon held at the ready. He checked around the perforated corner of the school as I covered the opposite corner.

“He’s gone,” Tailor said, stepping back around the corner. He looked at Jill. “Guess your boyfriend got cold feet, bitch.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the situation. I yanked Jill Del Toro around and began to force her back toward our car.

LORENZO

I left her.

“Fall back, Carl. Fall back!” I ordered. The sirens were wailing. The security forces would be here any second. Everything was ruined. Jill had gotten herself captured. Dead Six had won. She was as good as dead. The mission was screwed. The only option left was self-preservation. I would have to figure out what to do about Eddie later. “Hurry.”

“I’m almost there!” Carl responded.

“Leave them!”

The van tore around the edge of the school. I waved both hands overhead so he’d see me. Reaper stomped on the brakes, and the van screeched to a halt. I yanked open the side door. “Back up, grab Carl, and let’s go.”

“Where’s Jill?” Reaper shouted.

“Go!” I bellowed.

But he hesitated. “She’s one of us.”

I froze, half in, half out of the van. My first inclination was to reach forward and smack Reaper on the side of his stupid head. In a minute we’d be fighting half the cops in Zubara. I was a thief. You run. That’s what thieves do.

But he was right.

Something snapped just then.

I couldn’t leave her.

Things had changed. She wasn’t just bait. Jill wasn’t just somebody I could use and throw away anymore. Reaper was right. She was one of us. “Son of a bitch!” I grimaced. Reaper must have seen it. Instead of putting the van into reverse like I had ordered, he stomped on the gas, narrowly avoiding running down a bunch of innocent bystanders, and headed straight for the alley.

“Carl, turn around and take them out!”

He was out of breath from running. “Make up your mind!”

The alley was probably forty yards long, five yards wide, and their car had to be parked either in it or on the exiting street. Trying to walk down that alley would get me killed, and shooting it out down the alley would only get Jill killed, and either way the cops were going to kill all of us in a second anyway. I needed to get on top of them, fast. The school wasn’t very tall at all. I had an idea. “Reaper, pull right up to the front door of the school.”

“What?”

“Just do it! Then back up and block that alley.”

He did as I said, actually crashing our bumper into the front steps. But I didn’t feel it as I was already out the side of the moving vehicle before impact. I stepped onto the bumper, the hood, the windshield, and finally onto the van’s roof. I ran, jumped, and caught the edge of the roof with my hands. Pulling myself up, I scrambled onto the roof of the school.

I ran up the angled tile of the roof, parallel with the alley. This was idiotic. Half of Zubara was probably watching this moronic stunt, and I was sure that I’d be nicely silhouetted for the police snipers. The STI materialized in my hand as I approached the edge. Glancing downward, there were the assassins. The tall one was struggling against Jill, trying to force her into the backseat of a car, while she was fighting like crazy, but he outweighed her by eighty pounds. The Southerner was watching back down the alley, wearing my backpack, 1911 extended, waiting for me to appear at the end.

“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Cops are coming. Just shoot her already!”

The tall one grunted a response that I couldn’t understand. He was hugging Jill’s arms tight, but she just kept swinging her legs and jerking her head back into his face. I had no idea why he hadn’t already shot her. Dead Six must have decided they wanted Jill alive for some reason. There was no time to think. The second Reaper appeared at the end of that alley, that psychopath was going to light him up. I punched my gun out, sights lining up on the Southerner’s head.

There was a door into the alley from the mosque. It swung open directly behind the man, and he instantly spun toward it. There was a kid, probably all of six years old, standing there, and the kid was right behind my target. I was putting two and a half pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger when I froze, thinking of the bullet that had passed through Jalal that was still throbbing, stuck in my vest.

I couldn’t kill a kid. I’d never killed a kid.

The child looked at the Southerner, at his gun, and then over his shoulder, right at me. The Dead Six operative instinctively turned, following the kid’s gaze. He saw me, eyes narrowed, and his gun flew up. Chunks of tile erupted skyward as I moved back from the ledge. Bullets just kept tearing through the mosque, searching for me, as he ran for the car.

At the end of the alley, our white van appeared, blocking their exit. They would cut Reaper to ribbons. I had to take them out now.

I took a few steps back, trying to remember the exact position of their car, hoped I was right, then ran forward and jumped off the edge.

VALENTINE

Jill Del Toro struggled mightily as Tailor snapped off several rounds at the man she’d called Lorenzo. I turned back to our Land Cruiser and, despite the girl’s thrashing, pulled the passenger’s door open. We had zip-ties in the glove box, and I was going to restrain the girl in my arms before I gave in to the temptation to shoot her. The terrified young child had disappeared back inside. We were out of time and had to get the hell out of there.

“Just shoot her and let’s go, Val!”

CRUNCH! I looked up in surprise as Lorenzo fell off the roof of the school. He put a dent in the roof of our Land Cruiser as he landed. He tried to do a shoulder roll to dissipate his impact but ended up rolling down the windshield and falling off the hood of the truck. He disappeared over the truck as he hit the pavement on the other side.

He reappeared a split-second later, pistol leveled at me across the hood of the truck. He was listing slightly to one side, and blood started to trickle down his face, but he had a killing look in his eyes.

“Lorenzo!” Jill screamed again. Before Lorenzo could turn around, Tailor was behind him, pushing his pistol into the back of his skull.

“Drop it, motherfucker!” Tailor growled. Lorenzo let his gun fall. Then there was more movement as someone ran up the alley from my left. I’d been so fixated on Lorenzo that I hadn’t noticed. Neither had Tailor, who, with a metallic CLANG, crumpled to the pavement as he was smacked in the head with a