Malin rose up beside her, his hands over his head. As he did, Elna noted that he deliberately stepped in front of the device and put his feet together, blocking it from the mercenary’s sight. “We don’t want any trouble. We’ll come quietly. No need to shoot. We’ll tell you everything we know—though that’s not much.”
“Well, I’m just going to take those handguns off you,” he said. “Don’t you dare move. Got it?”
As he took a step toward them, the two-way radio in Elna’s shirt pocket suddenly barked. Static came through, and then a familiar folksy voice!
“Hey there, Malin and Elna,” he said, speaking loudly—so damned loudly. “I don’t know if you guys tried to radio us or not, but we’ve got a signal now. It’s working! You did it, guys. Good job. After this, we’ll have to make you honorary Marines.”
Elna’s heart sank, and a slow smile crept over the mercenary’s young face. “Malin and Elna,” he said. “What nice names. And they’re going to make you honorary Marines. How cute. Well, I guess I know what I have to do now.”
But even as he was speaking, Malin rushed at him. There were only a few feet separating them, and he closed the gap in two long strides. The mercenary started to turn the rifle toward him, but Malin stretched his right arm out and batted the rifle aside. As he did, the mercenary pulled the trigger. Elna heard the bullet whip by her and then ricochet off the rocks behind her. She flinched and reached for her handgun.
The mercenary tried to reposition his rifle, but the slope added to Malin’s momentum. He slammed into the mercenary, shouldering the rifle aside, and they both fell. The mercenary landed hard on his back, his breath leaving him in one violent expulsion. He lost his grip on the rifle, which went clattering off across the rocks. Then Malin and the merc, grasping at each other, tumbled down the slope toward the fence.
Elna got her gun free, but it did little good. Malin and the mercenary had merged into a single multi-limbed monster, flopping about wildly as they picked up speed. They hit the fence so hard it ripped some of the fence ties away from the posts and sent a large section of the chain links crashing to the ground on the other side. Malin and the merc finally slammed into a tree and broke apart, falling in two different directions.
Elna hurried down to the broken section of fence. Both Malin and the young mercenary were sprawled in the grass. She reached the mercenary first and saw instantly that he was gone. It seemed his face had taken the brunt of the impact with the tree, everything from his chin to his forehead was dented in. Blood poured freely from his nostrils and mouth, from the corners of his eyes, from his right ear.
She went to Malin and dropped down beside him. He was on his stomach, his arms spread out to either side. Elna tucked his right arm in and slowly rolled him over. As she did, he groaned. She feared the worst, but when she finally saw his face, he had only a few superficial cuts and scrapes on his cheeks and forehead.
“Dude cushioned my impact,” he said, reaching up to touch one of the larger scrapes on his forehead. “Where’d he go?”
“I think he’s dead,” she said. “Or close enough. You can’t do crazy things like that, Malin. Do you know how dangerous that was?”
She helped him sit up as he grimaced and bared his teeth. “Not as dangerous as getting shot,” he replied.
Elna hugged him. “That was too close. Please be more careful.”
“At least the device is working,” he said, as if to change the subject.
“Yeah, and our buddy Golf almost got us killed,” she said. “Not that he meant to. Come on. Let’s get back to the bunker.”
They dragged the merc into some dense brush and tried to hide the body as best they could. Elna checked for breathing or a pulse and found neither. Before they left him, Malin looted his tactical vest of ammo and retrieved the AK-47. It was banged up pretty bad.
“I’ve heard these AKs are pretty durable,” Malin said, running his thumb over a large dent on the side of the stock. “Maybe it still works. Worth keeping.” He handed the backpack to Elna and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Elna heard a single gunshot as they headed back down the hill, but there was no screaming this time. Descending the slope was much faster, but it hurt her back and shoulders just as much. She was wincing now with every step.
“I don’t understand how he spotted us,” Malin said, easily keeping pace with her.
They were making too much noise. She knew it, but she couldn’t help it.
“He might’ve been in the house and saw us pass in front of a window,” she replied. “We were careless. He snuck up to within a few feet of us. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve picked us off from a distance, and we would’ve been dead before we knew what happened. The only reason he didn’t, I imagine, is because he figured his commander would want to question us about the location of the bunker.”
“The guy must’ve been moving super quietly,” Malin said.
“Or we were making way too much noise,” Elna replied.
They reached the bottom of the
