Struck in the head by the same instantaneous, fast-moving mechanism that had done in his fellow agent, Nadler was silenced immediately. He fell lifeless atop his colleague’s legs, the back of his head now a cavernous void of bone fragments and chunks of crimson matter.
August crawled frantically on his stomach to the far side of the fire ring to use the heated stones for cover just as another shot smacked the ground inches from his right hand, dispatching a cloud of dirt and sand into his eyes and mouth. He spit out what he could, coughed, and rubbed his eyes, then tried scanning the area for anything big enough close by to use for cover, the firepit appearing as his only refuge.
He went motionless and tried calming the panic in his breathing. A sniper was taking his men out one at a time from an unknown location concealed by the forest, and there was no way for him to fight back. If he moved anywhere outside his position of cover, he’d get a bullet to the head in reward for the effort. August was now cornered and defenseless.
He lay there a long time anticipating his fate, wondering when it would come, the destiny of Gil Norris and every one of the agents under his charge weighing on him. A great deal of time passed, and August didn’t know how much longer he would be able to stay here. He thought about distraction; throwing a stone into the woods might distract the shooter long enough for him to make a run for it, but even that decision could just as easily be the end of him. There didn’t seem to be any right answer to this. August began considering just giving himself up; then he heard a bloodcurdling cry from the woods.
It hadn’t come from any of his men, though. It hadn’t been a man’s cry. It wasn’t Gil Norris, and it couldn’t have been either one of the agents keeping watch. The scream had come from a female, as would a girl bellowing in anguish. August reached for his service weapon, drew it, and pulled himself to his feet, then scanned and searched for what he’d heard.
“Hey, guys! Over here! I got her!” Gil Norris shouted from not far away.
“Her?” Unnerved and in disarray, August hustled over to find him standing above a young girl, his service pistol pointed at her head. The girl was on her knees with her head lowered, gripping her forearm where a deep laceration seeped fresh blood between her fingers through her jacket sleeve. “What is this?”
“She had a rifle on you…gearing to take you out,” Gil began, panting heavily. “She crept by me, and I followed her in, stopped her just before she deaded you.”
“She’s bleeding.”
“I know, right? I got her good. My pants were down; couldn’t get to my gun fast enough. But my knife was right there.” He kicked the girl’s leg. “Worked pretty damn good, didn’t it? Sliced you right down to the bone, I bet.”
Gil had evidently caught her by surprise from a blind spot while she’d had August dead to rights and was preparing to fire.
“Where’s Travis and Ross?” Gil queried, turning to face his lead.
“What?”
“The two who were with you. Did she get them?”
Though he’d yet to see her eyes or her expression, August watched the girl. He couldn’t take his eyes off her nor the damage done to her arm for some inexplicable reason. “Yeah. She got them.”
His face reddening, Gil’s frown boiled over fully. He shoved his service weapon’s muzzle against the girl’s head. “You killed the others too, didn’t you? You had to; otherwise they would’ve seen you and cut you in half before you came in here to knock the rest of us off! But you fucked up trying that, didn’t you? Didn’t you?! You murdering little cunt!”
“Gil—”
“Chill out, August. Stand fast. Just let me handle this,” Gil said, his glower distorting into a wicked smile as he salivated. “The detention center’s at max capacity, we’re not taking any more prisoners, so this ends here for you. Bet you thought you had us, huh?” He locked the hammer back with his thumb, the sick smile on his face broadening. “You were dead wrong.”
In that moment, a thousand sequences flashed before August Carter’s mind’s eye, a thousand faces of death, all those of whom he bore responsibility for killing, of families torn apart and lives senselessly ripped to shreds. His objections to the life he’d been living and to this mission in particular had been mounting for a long while. He was done with this—all of it.
Acting without thinking, August started forward as if being drawn by a magnet. His gait became a sprint, and he yelled for his fellow agent to stop what he was doing, to lower the weapon while raising his own.
Locked on target, Gil didn’t budge. His grin only grew wider as the malice in the words he spoke to the injured girl on her knees swelled to epic proportions.
August focused on his fellow agent’s trigger finger. Time was almost up. Something had to be done. “Gil! Lower the weapon! Put it down, man! Don’t shoot her!”
He was yards away before he knew it. August fired twice.
The first shot struck Agent Gil Norris in the shoulder. It glanced off his shoulder blade, causing him to recoil, wince, and lose control of his weapon. Had it been the only round fired from August’s sidearm, Gil might have survived, but shot number two struck true in the agent’s neck, tearing away from it a chunk of unsalvageable flesh.
His eyes wide and desperate, absolute outrage dawning on him, Gil dropped to his knees and tried to speak, but no words escaped. He fell sideways to the ground, gasping and squirming, his hands reaching to stop the flow of blood
