Yes, Tank fully admitted it made her a bitch, but being polite to the girl wasn’t exactly on her top ten list of things to do at that exact moment.
What she wished was that she had a direct phone number for the exfil team. Since her hands were a little full at the moment, she’d have to hope their lucky streak from LA to KC held out just a few minutes longer.
They raced down a straight road, less than three miles from the park now. She fished the gun out of her jacket pocket and laid it in her lap.
Torphin, who was still on the phone with Connell, looked over and screamed. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a gun. Dammit.” A glance in the rearview mirror showed their pursuers were back, just rounding a corner behind her.
“A gun? How long have you had a gun? She has a gun!”
“A gun or this gun?” Tank realized Torphin’s last comment was into the phone, to Connell. “Shit!”
Tank saw the problem even as Torphin announced it. “Oh, my god! He said the engine just died.”
“Hang on.” Tank cut a hard U-turn and punched the window button. Cold air streamed into the compartment as she pulled up alongside the pursuing car at the same time they pulled alongside Connell and Gatsby.
Her nine sounded like a dry fart compared to whatever they were firing at Gatsby and Connell, but she had in her favor the fact that they weren’t expecting her to blow out the driver’s window and take him out. He slumped over, swerving and nearly hitting her, and from the way the passenger jerked, she suspected he was hit, too, either by her round or the driver’s brain matter.
Sorry, guys. Survival of the fittest.
Sylvan and Torphin were both screaming as Tank hung another hard U-turn. The attacker’s car was still moving, even as two guys were piling out of the back doors and swinging their guns toward them.
“Down!” Tank yelled as she ducked and punched the gas. Several rounds hit the front of the truck and the windshield.
The sickening sound of bodies bouncing off the hood was nearly drowned out by the other two women shrieking in terror.
Tank slammed on the brakes, threw the truck into reverse, and blindly backed up, again silently apologizing as she felt them bump over at least one if not two people.
She threw it into park. “Do not get out.”
She opened the door, hesitating until no gunfire met that action. She got out, crouching low, gun ready. All sounds had already faded away from the first shot she’d taken. The world disappeared around her as years of training, survival games with her dad, came flooding back to mind. The last were conducted with paintball weapons, no padding or helmets.
Only when she’d gone twenty-five straight showdowns with him without taking a hit, and had “killed” him, had he let her get her learner’s permit to drive after she turned sixteen.
Longest damn year of her life, it felt like. All her friends already driving and there she was out in the woods with him every evening and on weekends, trying to earn that damn piece of plastic.
She wished he was there with her now.
Staying crouched, she headed around the back of the truck, looking under it and down the street.
Two men lay prone in the street ahead of them, one of them moving.
Racing down the passenger side of the truck, she came up to the men, gun ready. The one was either dead or dying, from the blood gushing from his neck. Despite the unnatural angle both of his legs were lying in relation to each other, and the exposed bone sticking out of his left pants leg, the surviving one had enough life in him that he tried to swing his gun up to shoot her.
“Sorry,” she whispered before she fired, putting a round between his eyes.
She crouched down and made her way up the driver’s side of the car, which had ended up stalled out and crashed into a pole on the other side of the street.
Both occupants were dead. Her round had gone through the driver’s head and into the passenger’s.
Traffic had started to pile up and she spotted the van ahead, now also stopped.
Connell and Gatsby were both dead. The girl in the backseat, Malyern, was sobbing, curled up in a ball.
Tank pulled the back door open and yanked her out. “Are you okay?” Tank yelled at her. The world slammed back into focus even as her hearing was still for shit from the previous gunshots.
Only nineteen, from the smell of it Malyern had pissed herself. But she wasn’t shot.
Tank reached past her and grabbed the two duffel bags that had been on the back seat next to her and shoved them at her. She pushed her toward the truck. “Get in back with Sylvan.” Fortunately, the men’s rounds had only starred the truck’s windshield and hit the hood, but it was still drivable.
Tank checked just to make sure, but yes, Gatsby and Connell were both dead. No chance of either of them being alive from the looks of their injuries.
“Dammit.” She holstered her weapon and walked around the front of the car, opening the driver’s door.
She popped the trunk latch and ran around to the back, grabbed the three bags that were in there, then jogged back to the truck and tossed them into the bed.
Getting behind the wheel, she slammed the door and ignored the terrified stares of the other women. She floored it and pulled past the van, hoping Ellsen was a quick study.
He was, falling in behind her and following her.
The shakes hit Tank about the time they pulled into the park. Two vehicles sat there, and at that time of morning it was either their exfil team…
Or she’d just driven them into an ambush, and they were all now dead.
She slid the truck to a stop in front of the vehicle closest to her, which was parked facing her. Throwing the truck into park, Tank jumped out, gun drawn and pointed through the driver’s side window at the now terrified looking woman. The driver’s window was down.
“Hands where I can see them, or I shoot her. Tell me who’s your friend?”
The men, one in the front seat and one behind the driver, kept their hands up. “We’re friends of Ax,” the front passenger said. “Someone call for an exfil?”
It took Tank a moment to breathe again before she slowly lowered her gun. She slipped it into her holster and held her hands up, backing away as men poured out of both vehicles, and another woman out of the second vehicle.
The driver she’d drawn on remained where she was, looking terrified out of her wits.
Civvie.
“We have to move,” Tank said, hearing how shaky her voice sounded. “Now. We just lost two guys to a team on our asses but there might be more of them following.”
The man from the passenger side approached, a carbine in his hands now but pointed at the ground. “You good to drive?”
She couldn’t look him in the eye, but she nodded. “Yeah. I just need a minute.” It felt like an eternity had passed, even though it was less than ten minutes from when the other car had died and their world shifted.
Fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Zed’s heart started beating again when the woman holstered her sidearm and held her hands up as she backed away. He’d hate like hell to have to shoot the girl, but she’d pointed that gun at Leta as if she knew how the fuck to use it. This was supposed to be a group of fricking computer geeks, not goddamned soldiers.
In the truck sat three other young women, all looking equally terrified, and at least eight or nine men and women in the van that’d pulled up behind them.
The driver still had her hands up but wasn’t backing away from them any longer.
Zed and Uncle closed ranks to keep themselves between her and Leta. “You don’t look okay,” Uncle said.
“I just fucking killed four guys trying to kill us, okay? They killed Gatsby and Connell and would have killed the rest of us. Nearly killed Malyern. She was in the car with Gatsby and Connell, in the backseat. She’s damned lucky she didn’t get shot.”
Behind them, Zed heard the SUV door open.
Shit.
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Before he could stop her, Leta had ducked around them and was talking to the woman.
“I’m a doctor. Are you hurt?”
The woman had finally lowered her hands, but Zed noticed she was making a point of not reaching behind her, keeping her hands out in the open, where they could see them.
“No, I’m fine, but please check out Malyern. She’s in the backseat with Sylvan.”
Zed reached out and grabbed Leta’s shoulder before she could move again, waiting until Uncle and the others had cleared the vehicle’s occupants to let Leta go take a look at her.
“We really need to move out. Now.”
Zed turned, surprised at the woman’s low, lethal tone. When he stared down at her, despite her outer appearance the weary, hardened eyes of a warrior stared back at him.
“We need to get to Topeka,” she softly insisted. “We have to get them all to safety.”
“We will, ma’am. We—”
“Tank,” she insisted, staring past him to where Leta, now closely supervised by Uncle, was talking to the three distraught women. “Or Tanaka. We use last names or nicknames.”
“I’m Zed,” he said. “That’s Uncle. The doc is Snarky.”
“I didn’t hear her speak enough to judge that.”
He smiled. She had a good, fast sense of humor. “Snarky is her code name. But then, if you’re asking Bubba for an exfil team, you’d know we have code names, wouldn’t you?”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t know shit, mister.”
Gooseflesh rippled down his back. It was like he was now talking to a totally different woman. Hell, a girl, a college kid, even though he’d have sworn from the way she’d come out of that truck just moments earlier that she was a battle-hardened soldier.
His gaze narrowed as he reappraised her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two, man. Too young for all this. People blowing up Barstow. Killing innocent people. We’re just trying to tell the public what’s really going on.”
The pulse point on the left side of her throat looked like it was trying to independently do a rumba out from under her skin.
“We need to go, Snarky,” he called to Leta, not taking his eyes off Tank. “Move out.”
“She can’t drive that,” Chief called over. “Any cops see it, they’ll pop her for the windshield and see the bullet holes in the hood.”
Fuck.
Uncle took over. “We’ll leave it. Transfer them and their gear.”
“We can take them,” Lima said. He and Niner and Chief started getting everyone moved around.
Zed kept his gaze fixed on Tank. Now she had her arms crossed over her chest and she stared down at the ground, refusing to meet his gaze. “You good?” he asked her.
“Yeah, man.” She walked over to the truck where she grabbed a messenger bag and a couple of other bags.
Uncle stepped closer to him as they watched her head to Lima’s SUV.
“What’s up with her?” Uncle asked.
Zed slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, for sure.”
“We going to disarm her?”
Zed stared at him. “You disarm her. She looked like she knows how to use that damn thing.”
“Fuck it. Let her keep it.”
“At least we’ve finally picked up another stray who can shoot.”
“Amen.”
Zed had one more thought. He walked over to Lima’s SUV. “How’d you know this was us sitting here?” he asked Tank.
She shrugged, hands jammed deep in the pockets of her jacket, a sullen look on her face. “Only two cars in the park this time of day? Who else, except maybe the guys chasing us. This is where we were told to come. Sorry about the gun. I had to be sure.”
“Just don’t do it again.” He didn’t miss that the other three women looked terrified of her, like they were trying to avoid getting any closer to her than necessary.
He nodded and walked toward the front of the SUV. He leaned in close to Lima. “Keep an ear out.”
He grinned. “Why? Because you let a teenybopper get the drop on you?”
“No, because her three ‘friends’ look pants-shitting terrified of her.”
He walked back to their SUV and nodded toward Uncle. “You drive. I want to talk to Papa before we meet up,” he said as he got into the passenger seat.
Leta had already climbed into the backseat.
“What’s up?” Uncle asked him once they were all inside. Lima would lead the way with them bringing up the rear behind the van.
“I want to give Papa a heads-up about what happened.”
“You think she’s not legit?” Leta asked.
“No, she knew the code. She’s who she’s supposed to be.”
“You’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking,” Uncle said.
“Yep.”
Leta’s tone sounded frustrated. “What’s the problem, besides the fact that Bubba didn’t warn us they had someone armed?”
“I don’t know,” Uncle said. “Just my gut instinct.” He looked at Zed. “And you remember what happened last time I had one of those feelings.”
“What happened?” Leta asked.
Zed snorted. “We met you.”
* * * *
Leta could only hear Zed’s side of the conversation, but it disquieted her that her men were both wary of the young woman. Once the obvious fright was over, Leta didn’t understand what their problem was with Tank. Clara and some of the others could shoot.
“Packages acquired. Need to meet up. And there’s a possible issue… They picked up a team. Lost two of their people. Here’s the kicker, one of them’s armed. A woman, Tank. Ax’s friend. She says she killed the team… Yeah. The whole team… Four. She came out of that truck ready to light the world up before we gave her the code… Roger roger. We’ll see you there.”
He ended the call. “He’s going to call Bubba and talk to him and get some background. He and Alpha will meet up with us. Everyone else is buttoned up.”
“What?”
Zed glanced back at her. “Secret base. Totally black ops. Regular military doesn’t even know it exists.” He frowned.
“What’s wrong now?”
Zed looked at Uncle. “Did we mention Topeka to the group?”
“I…” He looked confused. “I don’t know.”
“What now?” Leta asked, feeling frustrated.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe Bubba told her.”
“Told her what?”
“When you went to go check out that other girl, Tank mentioned we needed to get to Topeka. How’d she know that’s where we’re going unless someone told her?”
Uncle shook his head. He looked exhausted. “I don’t know, but I hope there’s time for a nap in our immediate future. I’m about ready to collapse. I didn’t need that little adrenaline jolt back there.”
When they returned to the shopping center, Zed’s phone rang. “Roger roger,” he said after listening to the caller for the better part of a minute. He hung up. “They’re watching for a couple of minutes. We’re to hang tight.” He got out and walked over to Lima’s SUV to tell him, then over to the van to inform the driver.
Leta noticed his amused smirk when he returned to their SUV.
“What’s so funny?”
“Those kids in the van are shitting-their-pants scared out of their wits. So are those other three girls.”
“Three?”
“Except Tank. She’s just sitting there, staring out the back window in the cargo area. By herself. The other three girls, they crowded into the middle and back seats. Tank crawled into the very back and sat with the gear instead of in a seat.” He looked at Uncle. “Now what do you think about that?”
“I think there’s something about her.”
“Papa said he talked to Bubba. She’s a military brat. Both parents still active. Officers. But she’s a student.”
“Oh, well, there’s your answer,” Uncle said. “Obviously they taught her stuff.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You don’t sound convinced,” Leta said.
“I’m not. My own damn fault for being caught by surprise, though.”
“Once they’re settled,” Uncle said, “I’d love to hear her story of how a student took down four trained guys.”
“Yeah,” he said. Then he looked back at Leta. “No offense, babe, but I don’t want you hanging around Tank alone until we know more about her. Around any of the students. Keep some space between you and them.”
“Why?”
Uncle piled on, too. “He’s right. Let’s get them in, make sure they don’t have any other weapons on them, and hear the full deets of what happened.”
“You don’t trust them?”
“I don’t trust anyone right now until they prove themselves,” Zed said. “Except from our group. It’s sort of what’s kept us alive since we had to go OTG.”
After about ten minutes, another vehicle slowly approached. Leta recognized Papa and Alpha before they even got out and walked over.
“Stay here,” Uncle told her as he reached for the door handle.
“What about you guys?”
“I guarantee you he’s got Annie up on a roof somewhere around here.”
The men got out and joined Papa, Alpha, Lima, and the others. She remained in the SUV as they got all the students out and talked to them.
She noticed that all of the students seemed to give Tank a wide berth even as they appeared to defer to her. The young woman reminded her a lot of Panda, and not just because of her almond-shaped eyes and straight, black hair, which was pulled into a ponytail on the back of her head. Slim, maybe five four, if that, she seemed to wear an air of confidence despite her body language. She had her arms crossed over her again, practically hugging herself as she leaned against the front of Lima’s SUV and listened to the others talk. Her gaze remained focused on the ground, although her head almost imperceptibly cocked toward whoever was speaking at the time.
Leta watched her two men watching the woman, their hands resting on the butts of the nines on their hips. In fact, Chief stood within feet of Tank, her focus never wavering from the young woman.