"All clear back here," said David, scanning the street with his rifle.

When Nathan looked back toward the intersection, he saw Alpha's head lower behind the barrier. Nathan had no intention of raising his head any higher to check on the other operative. As the ba.s.s thumping got deeper and louder, Nathan flipped his visor up to take advantage of the one visual trick his synthetic daylight, night-vision system couldn't replicate.

The gas station disappeared, slowly rematerializing in the soft glow of approaching headlights. As the ba.s.s vibrations grew stronger, the light bathing the right side of the concrete barrier intensified. As the lights turned in Nathan's direction, he pulled Owen to the ground next to the curb, Keira and David dropping low with them. Light poured over the car hiding them, creating a moving shadow as the vehicle thumped past. He held his breath, waiting for the squeak of the brakes or the telltale red glow. He'd emerge gun blazing if the car stopped.

As the ba.s.s faded far to the north on Calle H, Nathan lowered his night-vision visor. Alpha had risen into view above the barrier he'd been hiding behind and was motioning emphatically. s.h.i.t. He wanted them to cross the intersection right now? There was no other way to interpret the signal. It was time.

"We're going now," said Nathan, pulling his son to his feet. "In three, two-"

"Not in the middle of the street, please," said David.

"Agreed. And we stay together," said Nathan. "Go!"

They ran together, at a swift, controlled pace, toward the intersection. Nowhere close to a dead sprint, because he didn't want his family spread out across the road-plus, his backpack hurt like a b.i.t.c.h when he ran. If his hurt, Keira's hurt. Nathan set the speed, constantly checking on their son's progress. So far, they looked fine.

When they hit the intersection, Alpha and Bravo raced into position on their flanks, matching the pace. A quick glance to his right down Avenida Zaragoza showed it to be empty of vehicle or pedestrian traffic. He never got to look in the other direction. A sustained burst of staccato gunfire boomed nearby, and he heard bullets snapping overhead and buzzing through their formation.

Nathan yanked his son and wife to the dusty pavement as several rounds zipped inches above them. Alpha landed on his back with a thud ahead of them, his fall far from intentional. Just beyond his family, Bravo lay on his stomach, frantically searching in a westerly direction for the shooter. David lay on his back behind them, clutching his left shoulder, rifle useless next to him.

"Is everyone OK?" Nathan said to Keira and Owen.

"I'm good," she said, pulling Owen closer.

"Buddy?" he insisted, receiving a nod from his son.

"Lie on top of Owen," he yelled, deactivating his rifle safety.

A seemingly endless succession of deep booms rippled across the intersection, and Nathan's visor system did something he hadn't noticed before. Small green circles appeared in the direction of the gas station, followed by a new symbol in the upper right corner. GNFR.

Gunfire.

"Where is it coming from?" screamed Keira.

"It's coming from the gas station!" he yelled, lining up the circles with the reticle in his rifle sight. The concrete barrier blocked all but the top quarter of his view of the squat building, but he caught movement in the window on the far right side of the gas station.

"Right corner window!" he said and repeatedly pressed the trigger. The rifle bit into his shoulder as his bullets exploded the top of the concrete barrier and punched visible holes in the stucco around the targeted window. He'd forgotten that his magazines were loaded with armor-piercing rounds.

"Cover me!" yelled Bravo, pushing himself off the ground.

Nathan fired at the top of the window, his rounds blasting the upper edge of the barrier into a cloud of concrete dust. He never saw where the rest of the bullets from his magazine struck. Bravo's rifle chattered, adding to the maelstrom of tungsten-tipped bullets striking the gas station.

Nathan yanked a fresh magazine from his vest and took stock of their situation, which appeared far from optimal.

David had rolled onto his right side, exposing a bloodied wound on his left shoulder. Alpha had turned onto his stomach and begun slithering toward the weapon he had dropped several feet away. Worse yet, they had stopped in the middle of the intersection and were completely exposed in every other direction. Only the concrete barrier at the corner of the gas station had kept the previously unseen shooter from unloading more bullets into the group after they had dropped to the street. He inserted the magazine and rose to one knee, depressing the bolt catch to charge the rifle.

"Pound the gas station!" said Bravo. "I'm going wide left to make sure this f.u.c.ker's dead." He took off in a full sprint toward the rusted car they had just left.

With a less obstructed view of the entire station now that the top of the barrier had been blasted away, Nathan aimed his rifle scope's reticle just to the left of the window and pressed the trigger, seeing a hole punch through the wall where he suspected the gunman might be hiding. He systematically st.i.tched the building with bullets, focusing his fire on the walls immediately adjacent to the doors and windows. By the time he'd expended the thirty-round magazine, Bravo had reached the far left edge of the building. s.h.i.t. He's going inside? Nathan ejected the magazine from his rifle and pulled a replacement from his vest. When he was ready to fire again, Bravo had disappeared.

"What's our status?" grumbled Alpha, raising himself to a knee and leveling his rifle toward the station.

"Bravo is clearing the building," said Nathan, scanning the front of the building with his scope. "You all right?"

"Took a hit in the chest. Vest stopped it cold but knocked the s.h.i.t out of me."

Two pops echoed from the gas station.

"That should be the end of it," said Alpha, pausing for a moment to listen to Bravo's report through his helmet's comm system. "Confirmed. Hold your fire, he's coming out."

Bravo appeared in the center doorway and took off in their direction.

"We stumbled across a cartel sentry station. Two guys, Bravo said. One was already missing half his head. Nice shooting," said Alpha.

"Probably wasn't me."

"Still a nice job. You're cleared hot from here on," he said. "David? You still with us?"

"I'm fine. Grazed my upper shoulder," said David, digging through a pouch on his vest. "Bleeding like a mother, but I'm good. Nathan?"

"We're good," said Nathan.

"Clear the intersection," said Alpha. "After a minute or so of quiet, people will start peering through windows to see what happened."

Nathan lifted their trembling son to his feet, hugging him tight. "We're fine, buddy. I promise."

"I'm scared," he whispered.

"Me, too, but we have to keep going. We'll be safe soon enough," he lied.

Keira stood behind Owen, staring down Calle H in the direction of the route they had taken to reach the intersection. "I think we might have a problem," she said in a raised voice.

Nathan followed her gaze. Several blocks away, a car sat in the middle of the street. Probably the same car that pa.s.sed them before they tried to cross the intersection. He lifted his night-vision visor, seeing two faint red brake lights in the distance.

"Patch yourself up later, David," said Alpha. "We need to get moving."

Bravo reached them a moment later. "What's up?"

While Nathan watched, the red lights turned white. "s.h.i.t!" he yelled, flipping his visor back into position. "They just went into reverse!" He grabbed his son and started to pull him toward the southern side of the intersection, but Alpha grabbed him.

"We can't run. When they see what happened here, we'll have a hundred cartel soldiers on our a.s.s."

"I'm getting my son out of here," said Nathan, pulling free of his grip.

Alpha scanned the intersection. "Safest place is behind the gas station barrier. We'll hit the car farther down the street."

"Headlights inbound!" yelled Bravo.

"Go!" snapped Alpha, pushing him toward the gas station.

The two commandos and David vanished down the street as Nathan's family ran for the gas station. When they reached the concrete barrier, he got his first close look at the devastating power of the armor-piercing bullets. The top of a two-foot-wide, one-foot-thick section had been chewed to jagged pieces by the tungsten-tipped 6.8-millimeter bullets, exposing the metal rebar embedded in the concrete. Glancing at the bullet holeriddled station, he wondered if the rounds had pa.s.sed entirely through the building, hitting the homes behind it.

A revving engine drew his attention back to Calle H.

"Lie flat and watch our back," he said to Keira.

She unslung the MP-20 and sandwiched Owen between herself and the barrier, pointing the submachine gun toward the street behind them. Nathan nestled the forward grip of his rifle against an unbroken section of concrete, pointing the barrel over the barrier. His visor indicated a significant, continuously rising change to the distant light measurement. The car was getting close. A rapid discordance of m.u.f.fled gunshots erupted just out of sight on Calle H where Alpha and Bravo had been heading. When the fusillade ended, the wide sedan appeared between the last parked cars on the street, barreling through the intersection. Nathan tracked the car with his rifle as it swerved nose first into a utility pole on the diagonally opposite corner, launching the driver through the windshield and onto the sidewalk. The car's back end lifted several feet into the air and slammed down, crunching the rear b.u.mper and spraying plastic light cover pieces into the street.

"Empty your magazine into the car!" he yelled.

He and Keira fired methodically, flattening the tires and shattering the few intact windows in an instant. Most of the bullets punctured the doors and trunk area, warping the metal inward as the frames collapsed. Nathan's magazine emptied first. When Keira's weapon finally fell silent, the car resembled a sc.r.a.p metal cha.s.sis, its former shape barely recognizable. n.o.body could have survived that. Nathan reloaded and swept the street in both directions for additional threats.

"Uh, I think you got 'em," said David, appearing above the barrier on the other side.

"I just hope I didn't kill anyone on the next block. These bullets are crazy," said Nathan.

Bravo side hopped over the barrier, landing a few feet from where Nathan lay.

"Jesus! That's one way to do it. Everyone in that car was dead before it hit the intersection, by the way," said Bravo.

"I wasn't taking any chances," said Nathan.

"Apparently not," said Bravo, turning to David. "How's the shoulder?"

"I just need to wrap it in hemo gauze to stop the bleeding."

"Wrap it on the run, Marine Corps!" yelled Alpha, rushing up to the group. "We need to clear this area right now. This bought us some time, but every motherf.u.c.ker around here has a cell phone, with their friendly neighborhood cartel boss on speed dial. They're calling this s.h.i.t in as I run my mouth. We're jogging from here."

A few seconds later, they crossed the intersection at a slow trot. The backpack cut cruelly into Nathan's shoulders, weighing him down with every step. He hoped Alpha wasn't serious about jogging the rest of the way.

CHAPTER 21.

Keira vomited near the corner of Calle H and Marmoleros. It wasn't the stomach-pitching, fire-hose event she expected, but it still sucked. She felt a second wave coming and resumed her position on the curb-legs spread, hands on her knees. For some odd reason, she felt bad about puking on the dusty, oil-stained sidewalk. Her stomach heaved, launching a small mouthful onto the street. Not so bad this time.

Nathan crowded her on the left. "Try to breathe slowly and deeply."

She wanted to push him away. It was a little hard to breathe when ejecting your stomach after jogging more than a mile with a forty-pound backpack. Instead, she nodded from the uncomfortable position and spit a few times, trying to get the taste out of her mouth before standing upright.

"I'm fine now," she said.

"I told you to lay off the chili mac," he said.

She laughed, standing up slowly.

"If you're not puking, you're not trying," said David, crouched on the street several feet away, aiming his rifle down the street they had just traveled.

Car tires squealed nearby, drawing Alpha across the street from a hidden position between two cars.

"Break's over. Jose said there's a ton of radio traffic on cartel frequencies. Give me one more minute, and I'll give you all the time in the world to puke," said Alpha. "We're almost there."

"You said we were almost there ten minutes ago," said Keira.

"Now we're really almost there," he said. "It's just down the street."

"I knew you'd say that," she said, reaching out to her son. "How are you doing, sweetie?"

She knew the answer. Nathan had carried him off and on since they'd started Alpha's forced march after the gas station ambush, Owen spending more time in his dad's arms than on his own feet toward the end. She was amazed Owen had made it as far as he had. The combination of heat, stress, and Alpha's merciless pace had taken a toll on all of them.

"I'm OK," he said. "I'm sorry I made Dad carry me."

"Don't be silly, Owen. Your dad doesn't mind," she said, glancing at Nathan, who moved sluggishly into place behind the two commandos.

She wasn't sure how Nathan had managed to carry Owen. She'd tried to give him a break early in the forced jog before quickly realizing she could carry either the backpack or Owen, but not both. She put him down after taking no more than a dozen labored steps, her legs rubbery after half of them. Nathan carried him the rest of the way without complaining. It made her feel better about their chances of survival. He looked determined and capable-adapted to their new reality. If they were going to survive, she'd have to make the same transformation. They couldn't survive on Nathan's att.i.tude alone.

"A few more minutes, and we'll be in a car the rest of the way. Promise," she added. "Catch up with your dad."

Owen nodded and marched off to join Nathan. She took another moment to catch her breath before falling in line behind the already moving group.

"You sure you're all right?" said David, shuffling in her direction.

"As long as Alpha isn't full of s.h.i.t about the time, I'll be fine," she said, noticing the tightly stretched gauze covering his lower left shoulder. "How bad is your shoulder?"

"Not bad, but this stuff only stops the flow," he said, gesturing for her get moving.

She took one more deep breath and jogged after her son, hearing another long tire screech somewhere within the neighborhood. How in the h.e.l.l did they hope to get out of here by car? On foot they could hide, kind of. Surely driving the streets would draw a ton of attention.

One step at a time. They had to get to the cars first.

Her stomach in a tight, painful knot, she lumbered behind Owen, thigh muscles tightening. This would be a s.h.i.tty time for a leg cramp. Another car engine revved nearby-somewhere behind them-causing her to pick up the pace. Real s.h.i.tty.

Ahead, Alpha kicked a metal gate, crashing it into the yard next to them.

"Get inside and stay low," he hissed.

They quickly filed through the gate, sliding down the inside of the shoulder-height stucco wall bordering the sidewalk. Alpha pushed the squeaky gate shut and crouched on the other side of the opening, opposite David. The m.u.f.fled engine sounds grew louder until she heard a worn brake squeal nearby.

"They're at the corner we just left," he whispered, raising his rifle and sliding its barrel a few inches through the closed gate.

Would they see her vomit on the side of the street and put two and two together? She hugged Owen tight as the deep thrumming crescendoed. For a brief moment, the sound level fell, indicating the car had pa.s.sed, before it started to rise again. s.h.i.t. Were they backing up? She let go of Owen and slid the MP-20 into a ready position across her tactical vest.

"Second car," whispered Alpha.

She grabbed Owen again and held him until the second car pa.s.sed. As the sound of the engines faded, Alpha peeked over the top of the wall. He stared down the street until it fell quiet.