The air was hazy with gun smoke. Nothing moved. Amidst the blood and shell casings lay five bullet-riddled bodies.
Luther had killed them.
Didn’t mean more weren’t coming.
Liam turned to Luther. He didn’t have the strength to turn him over. He didn’t have to. The gruesome exit wounds gaping from his lower back told the grim story.
James Luther was dead.
Liam wasn’t. Not yet.
But it was coming for him. He could feel it depleting his strength, leaching his vitality, sapping his lifeblood.
Death marched toward him, determined to take its due.
69
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Fifteen
“Be careful of tunnel vision!” Bishop said. “Keep moving so they don’t zero in on you!”
Terror filled Quinn. She felt stunned, shell-shocked.
“Quinn!” Bishop whipped around and grabbed her arm. “Are you okay? Are you with me?”
Quinn managed a nod. “Yeah.”
“Retreat!” Jonas yelled.
“Stay close to me!” Bishop pushed her ahead of him, and they broke into a run.
Hayes’ team covered them as they sprinted back the way they’d come, boots pounding across the bridge, a barrage of firepower at their back.
Focus, focus. Jaw clenched, she fled. The explosive rounds screamed overhead, jarring her bones, rattling her teeth. Stay alive!
Her boots slapped pavement, legs like pistons, panting from exertion. Half expecting a bullet to the spine, flinching at every salvo of gunfire.
Someone to her left jerked and fell. Dallas Chapman toppled to the ground. Quinn couldn’t afford to look, couldn’t afford to do anything but run.
The rifle so heavy in her hands. Her biceps ached. It felt like she’d been holding it for hours. It weighed a hundred freaking pounds.
When they reached Friendly’s, Bishop ushered her inside while he spun and knelt in the doorway. Two others stacked up on the opposite side as they laid down covering fire for the first teams to fall back.
Quinn took a concealed fighting position, kneeling behind a pile of sandbags stacked below a window in the employee break room which held a good view of the approach road.
Dawn lit the sky in pale sickly light. The entire world painted in shades of gray. Smoke and dust everywhere, swirling like fog.
Everyone aimed their fire at the bridge. Poe’s trucks kept coming. Those manned with turrets and gunners shredded the barricade, ripping through their defenses, pushing closer and closer.
Three hundred yards away. Then two hundred.
A Fall Creek shooter took out one attacker only to have ten more take his place. They kept coming and coming and coming. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Automatic fire battered their position. Slugs flew above her head, chewing desks, office chairs, and bookcases to splinters. Plaster and concrete dust swirled thick in the air. It clogged her nostrils, her throat. The entire room flashed like a strobe light.
Her slide locked back. Hurriedly, she stripped the empty magazine and seized a fresh one from her battle pouch, hit the slide release, and sent the bolt home.
Up on her knees, she braced the rifle and peered through the scope for targets.
Movement to her right. Dozens of flashes of muzzle fire.
Horror jolted through her. An enemy element had swum across the river. They swarmed up the bank, using the berm as cover to fire at them on their western flank. Too many to count.
A burst of gunfire peppered the sides and front of the grocery store. She ducked, forced to seek cover. On her knees, gasping, head filled with static.
Behind her, someone screamed. Someone else was crying, begging for mercy.
Bodies on the ground outside. Bodies down inside. The stink of blood mingled with cordite. Dust and plaster coated her tongue, her throat.
It was happening. The worst possible scenario.
The enemy was still a couple hundred yards away, but they couldn’t keep them back for long. They were pinned down. Trapped on multiple sides. No way to fall back further with the enemy flanking them, firing on them from every direction, tightening the noose.
Fall Creek was about to be overrun.
Bishop’s radio crackled. She could barely hear a thing over the roar in her ears, the constant pounding overhead.
A voice broke through the static. “This is Major Charlie Hamilton with the United States Army. Do not fire upon us. I repeat, we’re friendlies! We’re coming up on your six. I repeat, stand down!”
Quinn blinked, stunned and half-deaf. She must not have heard right. Her frantic mind wouldn’t put the words together. Everything jumbled and hazy in her head.
She crouched low behind the sandbags and glanced over at Bishop.
He looked back at her, the same shell-shocked disbelief plastered to his dusty, sweaty face. She couldn’t make out his features but for the whites of his eyes.
“I repeat, we’re friendlies!” Hamilton said. “Confirm!”
As if coming out of a trance, Bishop shuddered. He ducked down from his firing position and went for the radio. “Atticus Bishop here. Copy that! Glad to hear a friendly voice.”
“Take cover! We’re coming through to light these mothers up!”
“Thank God!” Bishop whirled and gestured to Jonas, who crouched behind him. “Send runners! Tell those with radios to pass it on. The Guard is on our side. Everyone take cover!”
Jonas and two others leapt to their feet and took off. Bishop returned to the radio to alert everyone else. “Friendlies on the way! Fire mission inbound!”
A minute later, there was an abrupt pause in the relentless barrage. As if the air itself had inhaled a startled intake of breath.
And then everything exploded.
A cacophony of high-powered firepower ripped through the night. Blast after blast. Rockets screamed overhead. Artillery fire. Louder than she’d ever heard. So loud it thrummed through her cells.
Quinn risked a glance over the sandbags through the window.