Flashback

when it exploded.

“Fuck it,” he breathed.

Grunting like a pig, he rolled Sato over onto his back.

What would be the best plan here? To get Sato’s red helmet and other armor off? Check for a pulse and see what other wounds the big man had? If Sato was dead, it would mean a lot less work for…

Suddenly Nick realized that the sand and gravel around where he crouched over the big man were leaping up in the air as if there were giant sand fleas there.

Or like someone’s shooting at me.

Nick peeked around the bank at the burning truck and then looked in the opposite direction, toward the riverbank on their right.

Someone in light body armor, not one of Sato’s four ninjas, was firing an automatic weapon at Nick and Sato from about thirty-five feet away. The person was holding the weapon out at arm’s length and spraying back and forth, the way Nick had seen in videos of the hajjis in Yemen or Somalia or Afghanistan. The Old Man had once said that this was the way untrained assholes fired their weapons. But sooner or later this mook might get lucky.

The soil on the bank a foot above Nick erupted, throwing sand over his helmet.

He removed the 9mm Glock from his hip, went to one knee while using his left arm and hand as a brace, and shot the guy three times center mass.

The shooter dropped the assault rifle and fell rolling down the riverbank. But the 9mm rounds hadn’t penetrated his cheap chest armor. The guy staggered to his own knees and started to rise, reaching for his rifle.

Standing now and walking slowly closer, Nick shot the figure again in the chest, once, this time from about twenty feet away.

The shooter went down, rolled, and got to his knees again, gauntleted hands flailing sand while trying to reach his weapon.

Every time the guy tried to get closer to his gun, Nick shot him in the chest again, slapping him rearwards onto his ass or back. The shooter’s last attempt had his gloves missing the stock of the rifle by just a few inches. Nick had been shot in such simple Kevlar-3 armor before and knew it felt like getting hit with a baseball bat. But the shooter staggered to his knees again, arms reaching for his dropped rifle. The little fuck was tough.

But he wasn’t wearing a combat helmet, Nick saw now, only a sort of Kevlar motorcycle helmet with a regular Plexiglas visor.

Counting his shots—he’d fired six and had nine left in this magazine—Nick braced himself and put a bullet through that visor from seven feet away. Blood and broken plastic and the shooter went down, face-first this time.

Nick rolled the dead shooter over with his boot, saw through the sharded Plexiglas face shield that it was a woman, and, adrenaline surging, fought the daemon-urge to put another round into the bloodied face.

Nick felt the adrenaline peaking and knew he’d have the shakes in a few minutes. Before it hit, he clambered up the riverbank to get a look over the edge. The shooter, through her rolling and grabbing as she fell, had made a sort of rough stairway in the dirt for Nick. He gingerly poked his head above the roots and grass and weedy edge of the bank.

There were twenty or thirty more shooters—light infantry, maybe, but very irregular—just forty or fifty feet behind this first one he’d killed. In a long line behind them, scores more, all carrying weapons of some sort. Several started firing at Nick in the instant before he dropped down out of sight, allowing himself to slide until he came up against the young woman’s body.

Tanks. He’d seen at least two fucking tanks behind the skirmish line of fighters. Big fucking tanks with big fucking tank guns swiveling, hunting for a target. Hunting for him.

This isn’t right, thought Nick as he sprinted back toward Sato and his duffel bag of weapons. I am—was—a goddamned homicide detective, not some mercenary or soldier. I am—or was—a private detective, a flatfoot, a dick. I’m in my forties, for Chrissake! I’m too old for this shit. And I’m in the wrong movie!!

Nick stopped running and stood there vibrating in shock. Sato was alive and on his hands and knees, favoring his broken arm and crouching like a three-legged dog. His helmet visor was up and the big man was vomiting silently into the sand.

“No time for that,” said Nick, shoving his own visor up so Sato could hear him. “Infantry closing in. And tanks, Sato. Tanks!!”

“You’re welcome, Bottom-san,” said Hideki Sato and retched again.

Nick stared. Did this man have the stupidest sense of humor of anyone alive, or was he only semiconscious and a little bit nuts from the shelling?

It didn’t matter.

Four figures with guns appeared on the riverbank above the woman’s body and began firing at them. They were also members of the spray-’n-hope school of marksmanship. But with that many rounds hitting the bank and riverbed above them, below them, and next to them, one of the idiots was going to get lucky soon.

Nick crouched and fired, hitting two of them in the visors. He whirled before their bodies fell, threw his heavy duffel bag over his shoulder, and grabbed Sato with his free hand, dragging the big man back around the bend in the riverbank and out of direct line of sight of the two attackers behind them.

There were twenty or thirty more figures with guns between them and the burning vehicles, most watching the flames. But some noticed Nick and the red-armored giant—it was hard to miss seeing Sato in the early- afternoon sunlight—and that dozen or so turned and started firing.

Sato used his left hand to reach across his big belly, pull the heavy Browning Hi-Power MK IV semiautomatic pistol from his clip, and then crouched as he began firing. Nick shot three of the distant figures through their visors and dropped them before the others started throwing themselves down and scattering, still returning heavy fire. Left-handed, Sato dropped three who were slow in finding cover.

“Got any…?” gasped Nick. He turned and looked around the corner of the bank and immediately jerked his head back as automatic-weapons fire churned up the dirt and roots there. There were at least twenty-five hostiles with them in the riverbed now, approaching cautiously.

Nick threw himself on his belly, swung his head and both arms around the corner, and shot four of them. The others dropped to prone position or scattered, but most kept firing at him.

“… ideas?” finished Nick.

“Hai,” grunted Sato. The security chief’s face was blood-covered, although it seemed to be due to cuts from his head banging around in his helmet during the initial explosion.

That’s it? thought Nick. Hai? The dry riverbed was about a hundred feet across to the north side from which they’d come. There was no real cover out there except for one dead cottonwood trunk, washed downriver long ago, possibly in the spring when there’d been enough water here to wash things downriver. But it was a small-diameter tree trunk, rotten at its core, and Nick knew that slugs from the attackers’ assault rifles would go right through it.

Still, it would be harder to be flanked out there. Nick pointed to the fallen tree, grabbed the heavy duffel, and crouched in preparation for the sprint. Odds were excellent that he’d be hit before he got to the trunk.

“No,” grunted Sato. “Stay here, Bottom-san. Fight.”

“That’s the fucking plan?” demanded Nick. He’d meant to put a little irony in the statement—devil-may-care irony if possible, Beau Geste irony—but it came out as a pathetic combination of squeak and whine and squeal.

More infantry were dropping down in front of them, ignoring the last of the ammo cooking off from the burning Oshkosh. The attackers were aiming more carefully now, their slugs kicking up dirt all around Sato and Nick. For some reason, Nick found himself more worried about the guys behind him around the corner of the riverbank. Nick realized that it had always been the unseen that scared him most, not the obvious threat.

Nick handed an egg crate of grenades to Sato and then tugged the bulky Negev-Galil flechette sweeper from the duffel bag. It felt to Nick like it took him forever to rummage around in the bottom of the bag before he came up