Dead Six

She was wearing a few necklaces, and right in the middle, riding on a fragile chain was the key. Grabbing the chains and ripping them off, I held it up to the light of the fires, other trinkets dangling below. Unlike its last holder, the key was undamaged.

I glanced at Valentine. He was badly injured, blood pouring from his head, staring, incoherent, smoking shrapnel embedded all over his armor. He’d be gone soon. I shoved Sarah’s jewelry into my pocket. The main fight was heading past me. There was a roar as Dead Six breached the west wall. Soldiers were swarming after them. I turned to leave.

Valentine stirred. He was dying, but he only seemed to care about the dead girl. He reached one blood soaked hand plaintively for her. It was the arm that I had slashed, red stain soaking through the bandage.

He was reaching for Sarah, but it felt like he was asking for my help. It was crazy. He was too out of it to know I was there.

Compassion. Criminals aren’t supposed to have any.

Screw him. But still, I hesitated. He deserves to die. But not today. Not like this. “Damn it.” I didn’t know why, but I grabbed the drag handle on the back of his web gear and jerked. Agony tore through my injured torso. I pulled him through the mud, back toward the hole.

It took the last of my strength to drag his unconscious weight through the breach. The Army had seen me run out, and not realizing who I was, welcomed me back. Dozens of Zubaran Army regulars were leaping from the backs of trucks, running into the compound to mop up the slaughter. I was so covered in blood, filth, and mud that I was utterly unrecognizable at that point.

Somebody saw the insignia on my collar. “Captain!” a soldier shouted. “What are you doing?”

“We need this one alive. Get him in the truck,” I ordered.

The American kid was unconscious on the seat beside me. A medic had done a competent job stopping his bleeding before we had departed, supposedly for the hospital. I had waited until we were out of sight of the compound and past several other APCs set up as a roadblock before I clubbed the driver and tossed him onto the road. I was kind of making this up as I went along.

“Reaper, I’m back.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m driving a Zubaran Army pickup south on the main road. What’s left of Dead Six?”

“Okay, I’m pulling back for a better view.” Reaper’s voice was intense in my good ear. “The last of them blew a hole in the west wall of the compound and moved south through the shanty town past the roadblocks. Looks like they’re in two army trucks. No sign of pursuit.”

They had to be going to a safe house. “Track them,” I ordered.

“They’re heading south on Balad.” He continued to give me directions as I drove like a madman, keeping the hammer down and blowing through roundabouts like they weren’t there. The windshield wipers couldn’t match the intensity of the deluge, and I could barely see. Headlights flashed behind me. Carl and Jill had caught up.

Valentine moaned. He didn’t look good, pale and shaking from blood loss, and I wondered if my act of kindness/stupidity would have been for nothing. Reaper informed me as the Dead Six trucks pulled into the back of a slaughterhouse a mile south of here.

“Lorenzo, what are you doing?” Carl asked. “Do they have the key or something?”

This was idiotic. I am an idiot. Why am I doing this?

I didn’t know, but it was too late now.

“No, Carl. I’ve got it. Just hang on.” I looked down at Valentine. “You owe me,” I whispered, even though he couldn’t hear. “You owe me big.”

I arrived a moment later. The garage door of the slaughterhouse was still closing, light leaking out from beneath. I laid on the horn, and after a moment the door stopped and then reversed its motion. Leaving the kid behind, I bailed out of the cab, and hobbled toward the headlights of Carl’s van. Armed Americans came out of the slaughterhouse and approached the still-running Army truck.

I slid into the passenger seat of the van, and it was moving before the door closed.

No amount of rain could wash Zubara clean tonight.

Chapter 21:

Nefarious Master Plan

LORENZO

May 12, 2008

The light streaming through the window was blindingly bright. Cringing as the bandages around my chest tightened, I raised one hand to block the sun from stabbing through my eye sockets.

“So, you’re awake.” Jill Del Toro smiled as she opened the curtains. “How do you feel?”

That was a stupid question. “Ever take a contact shot to the chest with a .44 Mag?” I asked rhetorically. My voice sounded funny. Sadly, I already knew that as bad as my ear was ringing, I had done some serious damage. When that ring went away, I’d have lost a range of hearing forever.

“Uh . . . nope. Can’t say that I have.”

“What time is it? How long have I been out?” After getting patched and stitched from the Dead Six gig, I had gone right into a fuzzy, painkiller-induced sleep.

“It’s five in the afternoon. Don’t feel bad. You looked like hell.”

I studied my left hand. Carl had taped all the fingers together. He was a decent doctor. He had certainly gotten enough practice on me over the years. “Well, I got pistol whipped with a ten-thousand-dollar Korth. Funny, it felt the same as getting pistol whipped with a Ruger. Who would have thought?” I looked under the sheets. I wasn’t wearing any pants. “Please tell me Carl’s got the key? Really intricate antique thing?” Jill nodded. “Oh, thank you.”

I’d done it. After all that, we’d gotten the key.

The gloating almost made up for the physical suffering. Good thing painkillers tipped the scale in gloating’s favor. “Has there been any backlash from our little escapade?”

“It’s all over the news. The police are saying it was a terrorist group and that they’ve been eliminated. The emir was murdered last night. General Al Sabah is getting all the credit for tracking the assassins back to Fort Saradia and eliminating them.”

I nodded. So, just like that, the bad guys had won.

She slowly sat on the edge of the bed, her manner serious, her voice somber. “I watched the video from Little Bird. I saw them die. I saw them all die.”

“Those kinds of things happen in this world.”

“Dead Six ruined my life. They murdered my friends. I didn’t think I would mind seeing them all killed, but