A second beginning, p.8
A Second Beginning, page 8
“Movement at the warehouse!” Dylan shouted. “Everyone, find cover!”
A single thought popped into Jenn’s mind: This is Camila’s fault. Then a spike of adrenaline sent her into soldier mode. Instinct tugged her behind the nearest pipe, and Dylan dropped to a knee on her right. A second later, the bark of weapons fire erupted from the west.
The squad!
Frantically, she glanced south and found Quinn, Tanis, and Nick safe behind a pipe. Beau and his grunts had spread out among two others. Through the wreckage, she spied Aiden and his team hunkering down.
She breathed out in relief and considered what she knew: people from the warehouse had opened fire on the convoy—at the worst possible time. They must’ve been watching, waiting for an opportunity. Who they were, she didn’t care. What they wanted, she had a hunch: the trucks and everything inside them.
“You got a headcount?” she asked Dylan.
He adjusted the image on his tablet. “Drone’s counting eighteen so far, but others are coming out. They’re in the lot with the trailers.”
That many? She’d expected eight or ten, not two squads’ worth. If they spread out and attacked the convoy from the flanks or the rear . . .
“Return fire!” Dylan shouted into his radio, and rifles crackled all around her. More fire came from Freddie’s squad to the north.
She aimed her M4 at the trailers and sent six rounds at three figures darting left to right. One fell but scrambled to his feet. Then a shot pinged off concrete near her face, and she pulled herself back behind cover. It took her brain a half second to feel fear. Another few centimeters and that bullet would’ve killed her.
Dylan waved at the trucks on the south side of the wreck. “Over here, over here!” he barked into his mic. “Go, go, go! Everyone else, cover them!”
The team leaders echoed his order so the grunts without radios knew what to do. All down the line, the volume of fire rose to a steady roar.
Jenn toggled her carbine from semiauto to auto, then pressed her teeth together, aimed at the semitruck trailers again, and fired controlled burst after controlled burst.
After fifteen shots, she checked the trucks. Zander reversed toward the convoy. South of the wreck, Olivia was the first to turn around. Driving fast, she flew between the pipes, but not without adding another dent to her truck’s front bumper. Kaydence followed her closely, and Jenn noticed bullet holes in the rear driver’s side window.
Yikes. This was getting ugly, but the GMC was in the gap. Once it was through, Jenn and her team could scram and take a dirt road—like they should’ve done in the first place.
She picked a trailer by the warehouse and fired until her mag ran dry. As she swapped in a fresh one, a loud pop erupted from the south.
Wyatt!
The GMC’s front-left tire had gone flat. No, it was shredded. Sparks flew from where the metal wheel rubbed against the road. Wyatt swerved, braked, then hit a concrete pipe hard enough that Jenn felt the impact in her feet.
Back up! she mentally shouted at him.
Wyatt reversed, fast, and backed into another pipe.
She growled and grabbed her mic. Screw the truck. Wyatt had to ditch it. Had to save himself. “Wy—” she started, then stopped when she saw Dylan with his tablet. “What are you doing?”
“Calling in the cavalry.” With a single tap to the screen, Blue, the legged combat drone in the GMC’s bed, came to life and stood tall to see above the wreckage. In less than a heartbeat, its AI located targets, and the .50-cal on its back swung toward the warehouse with unnatural speed and precision. Its staccato boom was thunder in Jenn’s chest but music to her ears.
The GMC lurched forward. A pipe took off its driver’s side mirror, but Wyatt made it through the gap. Jenn had a second to be happy for Tanis before Dylan ordered over the radio, “First Squad, fall back! Aiden, you first!”
Aiden’s fire team crouch-ran to the GMC. Beau’s team went next, and Jenn poured in suppressive fire. She couldn’t find a target, so she would pick a random trailer, fire three shots, pick another trailer, and fire three more. Rinse and repeat until, when her mag was almost empty, Dylan grabbed her jacket and dragged her out of cover.
They joined the others at the GMC. This close, Blue’s .50-cal was deafening. Slowly, Wyatt drove toward the convoy. The squad ran alongside him, using the truck as cover. Jenn counted heads: Seven, eight, nine. She and Dylan made ten and eleven, and the drivers made fourteen. That was everyone, the whole squad. Great, but this fight could have been avoided. It should have been avoided.
One by one, the fire teams of First and Third Squads loaded up, and the convoy ripped north, away from the warehouse and the wreck. Away from Buckeye.
As the feet turned into yards and the yards became a mile, Jenn’s adrenaline faded and her blood began to simmer. Her team had walked straight into a trap. A trap that she’d anticipated.
All because Camila had said the road was clear.
12
Jenn’s hands quit shaking when, fifteen minutes after burning rubber away from the wreck, the trucks turned onto a dirt road. In the skies above the warehouse, the Albatross watched the bandits. They hadn’t left their hideout. Blue and his heavy machine gun must’ve convinced them the convoy wasn’t worth pursuing. They might’ve thought otherwise if they knew the LCD only had 186 rounds of ammunition.
Deeper in the desert, with Sun Valley Parkway two or three miles in the rearview, Dylan ordered the trucks to stop. “Fire team leaders,” he said over the radio, “set a perimeter. Freddie, meet me, Ruiz, and Jansen at the GMC.”
“Roger,” Freddie replied.
Nick’s sigh sounded like his first breath in minutes. “Well, that was intense.”
Yes, but Jenn had seen worse. A lot worse. Before today, though, Nick hadn’t heard live fire outside of training. She knew exactly how he felt: the knee-weakening mixture of terror and excitement. It brought her back to her first real firefight, the one at the hospital in north Phoenix, when Rusty the LCD tore through the Major’s men like they were paper.
“You did good,” Quinn told him. “Really good.” She let out a sigh of her own. “Now let’s go. There’ll be time to rest later.”
Tanis made an exhausted noise but followed Quinn and Nick. In the driver’s seat, a pale-faced Wyatt turned off the truck.
“You did good, too,” Jenn said. “I’ll make sure nobody ever questions your driving skills again.”
Without answering, he opened his door.
She noticed the ringing in her ears and realized it must be ten times worse in Wyatt’s; Blue had been banging away a few feet from his head.
“Wyatt!”
He flinched, turned toward her, and stuck his finger in his ear. “What?” he said, loudly, like he was wearing earmuffs. “Did you say something?”
“I said you did good. Nice work back there.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Sorry about the truck.”
She almost laughed at him. “I don’t care about the truck. You didn’t get hurt. That’s what matters.”
His expression was stonier than usual, more serious. That brush with death must’ve shaken him. It would’ve shaken her, too. Selfishly, she was glad Sam had stayed home.
“You better get going,” she said with a nod toward Quinn, Nick, and Tanis. “I’ll check up on you later.”
He gave her a thumbs-up, then joined the rest of his fire team. Jenn grabbed her M4 and hopped out of the truck. In every direction, her and Freddie’s squads moved into the desert, weapons raised. Pride swelled in her chest. Flagstaff didn’t need the Army when it had troopers like these.
Freddie loped over, as pale as Wyatt. “I was not mentally prepared for that when I woke up this morning.”
“Me neither, but it could’ve gone a lot worse. We got lucky.”
Behind him, Camila came this way, M7 in her hands, helmet on. Its fancy visor glowed faintly green.
Jenn’s anger had been festering. With the grunts out of earshot, she let it boil over. “You . . .” She pointed a stern finger at Camila. “You said the road was clear.”
“To the best of my knowledge, it was.” Camila’s voice was even, but Jenn heard condescension in every single word. “We reconnoitered, anyway, and assumed defensive positions. When the engagement began, we established fire superiority. Then we withdrew without losses. The situation was handled like it should’ve been.”
“Without losses?” Jenn waved toward the GMC. Bullet holes marred the rear driver’s side door, and the wheel with the flat tire was bent and deformed. “Wyatt almost died, and that’s not all.” She popped open a panel on Blue and peered inside. “Yep, like I thought. Empty. All 186 rounds, gone.”
Camila said nothing, just squared her feet and pushed back her shoulders. Behind the translucent green visor, Jenn saw cold, emotionless eyes. Remorseless eyes.
Her anger bordered on fury. An accusation rushed into her mouth: You don’t care, do you? We’re not Army, so screw us, right?
Before she could say it, Dylan walked over from the Tacoma, a torque wrench in one hand, a toolbox in the other. Finally, backup. After that near disaster, for sure he’d admit they made the wrong call.
“We shouldn’t have tried going through,” she said, more to Camila than him. “We should’ve gone a different way.”
Dylan sucked in air between his teeth. “It was a calculated risk, Jansen. We came up with a plan and attempted to execute, but it didn’t work out.”
“Sorry, what?” She couldn’t believe it. He was backing Camila? The same Camila he met yesterday?
Freddie asked, “What about the envoys? Did they make it through?”
“Yes,” Camila said. “If they’d been attacked, they would’ve withdrawn, just like we did.”
Jenn’s mouth was moving on its own. “Isn’t it possible that twenty-whatever bandits could’ve overwhelmed them?”
Camila didn’t hesitate to answer: “No, it’s not.”
Her arrogance made Jenn want to scream. “We had two squads and an LCD with 186 rounds. Salinas had, what, seven—”
“Enough,” Dylan cut in. He turned to Freddie and Camila. “Freddie, watch the perimeter. Ruiz, you too.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Freddie said and jogged off. Camila’s cheek twitched, but she followed him without a word.
Dylan watched them go, twirling the torque wrench like a baseball bat. Then he looked at Jenn, and his eye contact made her take a step back. His lips were drawn in a flat line, his eyebrows low, forehead creased. In a blink, he’d gone from being her friend and CO to being just her CO.
“All right, Jansen. This is how it is.” He spoke slowly, with a hard tone. “In hindsight, yes, we should’ve found a back road, but according to our intel, Sun Valley was clear. Based on that intel, I made a call. Sometimes, your intel is accurate and things work out as planned. Sometimes, it’s not, and things work out anyway. Other times, like today, the intel is wrong and things go pear-shaped.” He breathed out through his nose, and she braced herself for a dressing-down. “You can’t pin this on Ruiz. It isn’t her fault. What’s done is done. I need you to drop it and move on.”
She took it as an order, not a request, but as far as dressing-downs went, this one barely qualified. Counting herself lucky, she said, “Roger that. Moving on.”
“Good.”
As he broke eye contact, his demeanor relaxed, became less formal. Just like that, he was her friend again. She was relieved to have him back.
“I hope the envoys are okay,” she said. “You really think they got past the warehouse?”
“I do.” He set down the toolbox and the torque wrench. “Exfiltration’s easier with a smaller unit. First sign of too many hostiles and, boom, you’re out of there. Quick and easy, no messing around. And if there was a fight, Salinas would’ve come back to warn us.”
That . . . actually made sense. Jenn still had a lot to learn about military tactics, apparently. “Why do you think those bandits attacked us but let the envoy through?”
“Saw us as a bigger score, maybe. Eight trucks instead of three. I’m more curious who they are and what they’re doing out here. I doubt many cars are driving on Sun Valley Parkway these days. They could be part of a larger group.”
“A group defending Buckeye?” The possibility made Jenn shiver.
“Maybe.” Crouching, Dylan ran his fingers along the GMC’s busted rim. “We aren’t going anywhere on that.”
“It got us here. It was noisy and kinda rough, but it did the job.”
He stood up and put his boot in a deep, jagged pothole. “You hit one of these on your bum wheel, you could wreck the whole axle. I don’t want to lose any of you in a stupid car accident.”
“I also don’t want that.” She eyed the bags and gear in the GMC with Blue. “Gonna be a tight squeeze.”
“We’ll make it work.” He ordered the LCD to the Tacoma. They each grabbed a duffel bag and followed it. “That was smart, having everyone get out of the trucks and sending them in one by one. And keeping the charging trailer behind. We would’ve had one hell of a time getting that through the wreck while we were under fire.”
“Thanks. I’m glad it worked. Mostly.” She opened the Tacoma’s tailgate. “So what do we do next?”
Dylan dropped his bag into the bed, then looked down the dirt road. “Keep following this, see where it goes.”
So, what Jenn had wanted to do all along. She tried not to feel bitter. “Works for me. There’s dirt roads all over the place out here. One of them should eventually spit us out onto I-10, hopefully close to Buckeye.”
And Cornscape Genetics.
—
Jenn zipped up her jeans and trekked back to the convoy. Desert stretched to the horizon in every direction, but in the distance, an old sign for a hotel and gas station peeked above a thicket of sagebrush. Interstate 10. It took three hours and a half dozen wrong turns, but they’d made it. Buckeye lay due south. Once the Albatross had enough juice in its battery, Dylan would fly it toward Cornscape Genetics.
Her squad ate lunch while Freddie’s watched the perimeter. “Feel better?” Aiden asked from the open tailgate of a gaudy gold Voltex pickup.
“Much, thank you.”
Beside him, Beau pulled the lid off a Tupperware bowl. The dry bread inside made her stomach rumble; she hadn’t eaten anything since the beans, tomato, and avocado last night. She plucked out a chunk, held it up in cheers, and ate it in a single bite.
Quinn paced the length of the truck, rifle over her shoulder. Every few seconds, she’d glance at the Albatross. A thick black cord ran between it and the charging trailer.
“You okay?” Jenn asked. “You’re kinda wearing a hole in the ground.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Quinn said like she wasn’t okay at all. “Just anxious to get a look at Cornscape. The warehouse has me worried someone’ll already be there.”
It had Jenn worried, too. Those bandits might not really be bandits. They could belong to an army defending Buckeye. An army in control of Cornscape Genetics and all the farmland around it.
Aiden took a sip of water from a plastic bottle. “If there are people living down here, and they’re organized enough to defend the roads into Buckeye, wouldn’t they have made contact with Flagstaff by now? Or Prescott?”
“Maybe they don’t want to,” Beau said, chewing on a piece of bread. “They could be afraid of us.”
“Of us?” Quinn sounded shocked. “Why? We’re the good guys.”
“‘Good’ is relative.” Beau picked a crumb from his teeth and flicked it onto the road. Gross. “The Great Khan saw himself as the good guy, doing Gaia’s work. We got in his way. Hence, we were the bad guys to him.”
“He’s right,” Jenn said. “They have seed, farmland. Up north, there’s thirty thousand very hungry people in Flagstaff. Double that, almost, if you count Prescott. From their perspective, that’s a pretty big threat.”
Quinn tugged her earlobe. “Okay, so what if we do find someone and they don’t wanna trade? Then what?”
Nobody answered, but Jenn knew what Beau, Quinn, and Aiden were thinking; she was thinking the same thing. Would Flagstaff take what it needed to survive? Steal it? Jenn would rather starve, but she wouldn’t let Sam, Maria, or Gary die. How far would she go to keep them alive? She didn’t want to find out.
For the next hour, Beau and Aiden slept while Quinn paced. Jenn tried to read one of Val’s spicy romance novels, but her brain wouldn’t shut up. She thought about Sam and how he could’ve died today if he’d come along. About Maria and how empty life would feel if she were gone. About home and her parents, about how close they were right now. About Camila. Ugh, Camila. A part of Jenn wished that girl had stayed in Mexico.
A few minutes before three o’clock, as she patrolled the desert around the convoy, her radio crackled with Dylan’s voice. “Jansen, drone’s ready to go. Meet me at the charging trailer.”
Finally. Time to get a look at Cornscape Genetics. “Roger that. On my way.”
Freddie and Dylan pushed the Albatross away from the trucks. Camila watched them, helmet off, short hair flat to her scalp. She offered Jenn a curt nod but no hello. That was fine. Jenn didn’t feel like chatting, either.
The tension hung thick between them until Dylan said, “Stand back. This’ll get messy.”
He took out his tablet. After a few taps to the screen, the Albatross’s rotors whirred to life. They kicked up so much dust that Jenn had to shield her eyes and hold her breath. Soon, the drone was airborne and flying south toward Buckeye.
She, Freddie, and Camila crowded around Dylan and watched the drone’s video feed. It crossed I-10 and cruised over winding roads and houses with brown roofs. Fields of dirt—old farms?—separated subdivisions and neighborhoods. Then came an expansive warehouse structure like the one on Sun Valley Parkway, complete with a lot full of semitruck trailers.
“Whoa.” Jenn pointed at the screen. “You see that?”
Dylan zoomed in, and she noticed people moving on the warehouse’s roof.
“Think it’s the same group who attacked us?” Freddie asked.
