he turned and fired another burst through the opening they’d blown in the back wall.
“We’re clear!” Boxers yelled from the bottom. “Twenty-eight rungs.”
As Jonathan backed toward the opening in the floor, he let the M27 fall against its sling and he ripped open two of the big flaps on the front of his vest. Each held a fragmentation grenade. He lifted one out, and in one continuous motion, he pulled the safety pin with a sharp twisting motion and tossed it through the hole he’d blown in the concrete. It incited exactly the panic he’d been hoping for, people yelling and pushing to get out of the way.
Out front, someone took a shotgun to the lock on the door as Jonathan dropped chest-deep into the tunnel entrance.
Compared to the other explosions of the night, the grenade blast wasn’t much to listen to, but the effect of a bajillion high-velocity fragments on human tissue and psyches could not be overstated.
With a second grenade clutched in his right hand, the pin pulled but the arming spoon clamped tight, Jonathan waited for the tactical entry through the front.
As soon as they kicked in the door, he lobbed the grenade into the opening and dropped out of sight.
Captain Palma had never experienced this level of combat, never fully understood the level of carnage that a few people with weapons could inflict on greater numbers. In his experience, his opposing force caved at the mere sight of his soldiers. The few who dared to fire on him were quickly dispatched.
But this enemy-these men-were killing machines.
And the grenade had all but wiped out his force. It had landed in the perfect place at the perfect time. He’d just gathered his men to coordinate entry with the larger team in the front when the tiny bomb sailed through the blasted hole and skittered across the floor.
There’d been pushing and shoving, but when it exploded, it left no one standing, including Palma, though he was one of the lucky ones. Three of his men had literally been torn apart by the blast, in the process absorbing more than their fair share of the kinetic energy and fragments.
Palma himself felt burning stabs in his neck and face. While a wipe with his hand produced a smear of blood, and he could feel the torn margins of his skin in two places, he didn’t believe his wounds to be life threatening.
He’d barely processed the fact that he was still alive when a second grenade ravaged the front entry team.
All around him, the world had devolved into chaos.
With his own squad too wounded and demoralized to continue, he could only imagine how little interest he could muster from the local emergency forces to follow these murderers underground.
If someone didn’t follow, they would all get away.
If they got away, the life left for Palma wouldn’t be worth living.
As voices around him called for doctors and ambulances, he realized that he had no choice but to follow on his own.
The air in the tunnel smelled like wet dirt.
Tristan fought the blooming sense of panic just as he fought the urge to run ahead. None of them knew exactly where this passageway would end, but the smoothness of the floors and eight-foot ceiling height spoke of impressive engineering.
He wanted to talk about it, to ask questions, but that would just be more noise.
Noise to cover the horrible sounds that Maria made.
The Big Guy had resumed carrying her over his shoulder, so since Tristan was second in line in this underground parade, that put her face just in front of his. She smelled of blood and vomit, and she begged to be left to die.
“Please,” she whined. “It hurts so much.” She made a raspy, gargling sound as she spoke.
Every time the Big Guy adjusted her on his shoulder, she shrieked in agony. And apparently, even somebody as strong as the Big Guy had his limits, because he was slowing down.
“We need to keep moving,” Scorpion said from behind.
The Big Guy stopped and, as gently as possible, lowered Maria from his shoulder onto the ground.
“What are you doing?” Scorpion snapped.
“She’s gonna die,” Big Guy said, “unless we do something to stop the flow of blood. Look at me.”
The front of his vest shimmered crimson from his shoulder down.
“We don’t have time for this,” Scorpion said.
“Then just leave her,” the Big Guy snapped back. “Seems stupid to me to go through all this effort just to carry a corpse. Let’s see if there’s something we can do.”
“There’s a lot of ground left to cover,” Scorpion said.
“My point exactly. Now give me some light.” As he spoke, the Big Guy pulled up Maria’s shirt to reveal a gaping hole in her midsection, where stuff that was supposed to be tucked in was hanging out.
Tristan looked away.
Maria was going to die. Jonathan hadn’t realized that her wound was so extensive. Or maybe he had but hadn’t wanted to believe it. Either way, they couldn’t just leave her here.
“Thank you,” Maria said. Her voice was a thready shadow of what it had been. “This feels much better.”
“We’re not done yet, Maria,” Jonathan said. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
“Leave me,” she said.
“We don’t leave people behind,” Jonathan said.
“Please.”
“Absolutely not.”
Her eyes had taken on the grayish hue that meant she was bleeding out. She forced a smile. “I am dying, am I not?”
It was a question to which Jonathan had pledged long ago to always give a truthful answer. “Yes.”
“Then let me die here. This hurts less.”
“This isn’t a time for heroics,” Jonathan said. He put his arms under hers to lift her, but she wriggled free. The effort made her yell, and Jonathan jerked away.
“I am not a hero,” Maria said. “The Lord in Heaven knows that I am not a hero. I am a coward who fears pain. Please let me die here.”
“But if Hernandez gets ahold of you-”
“Dead is dead, Mr. Scorpion,” she said. “In Mexico or in the U.S. With you or with Felix. It really does not matter. I am already paralyzed. My heart is racing. It won’t be long.” As she said that last part, she winced against a slice of pain. “Could you leave me a gun though? Just in case. I seem to have lost mine.”
Jonathan shot a look to Boxers. If they left her a weapon, she’d use it to commit suicide.
“It’s not for me,” Maria said, reading his thoughts. “But if they come, maybe I can spend my last moments fighting. I can spend them helping the people who tried so hard to help me.”
Boxers cleared his throat. “She’s right, Scorpion.”
Anger flashed. He shot to his feet. “We do
“She’s not our PC,” Boxers said matter-of-factly. “And if we don’t listen to her, we’ll unnecessarily risk losing the one who
“Oh, no,” Tristan said. “Don’t make this about me. Don’t leave her to save me.”
Jonathan wanted the answer to be different from what it had to be. “Tristan,” he said. “Give your weapon to Maria, please.”
“Like hell!” Tristan said. He wasn’t going to have something like this on his conscience for the rest of his life. They’d all suffered through this together. He had no more right to live than she did.
“It’s the only way,” Scorpion said. “I know it sucks, but it’s the only way.”
“And we don’t have time to dick around,” Boxers said. “If you make me carry
How could this be happening? How could it be right that out of all of his friends and the chaperones and now Maria, he would be the only one to come home alive? What had he done that was so important that he deserved
