Collateral Damage (29 page)

One of them looked over his shoulder at her. “Can’t see the shooters,” he said in a quiet voice. Satisfied he wasn’t part of the attack, Honor moved closer. She and Smithers approached the soldiers at the door and snuck a peek outside, Ipman trailing behind. Through the window in the door she could see groups of soldiers were running around but she didn’t hear any more shots. Was the threat neutralized?

She wasn’t going to risk it. “Have to get weapons,” she said to the others. “Let’s go.” With that she shoved the release bar and the door swung open. Immediately the volume of screams and yells increased.

Ignoring everything but getting to the arms room, Honor sprinted to the next building, pausing only to ensure there was no gunfire before hurrying to the next. The others followed. She leapfrogged her way across the base, pushing back the numbness that wanted to overtake her. Her soldiers needed her. They—

She gasped and stumbled, staring in horror as something hit the ammunition holding area. The building erupted into a towering column of fire and smoke, shaking the ground with the force of the explosion. The blast wave knocked her down and she barely had time to throw out an elbow to save her head from slamming into the ground.

“Jesus, they blew up the AHA,” Smithers muttered in disbelief. He was scraped all over his hands, arms and face, bleeding from at least a dozen cuts, his eyes wide.

Shaking, Honor pushed up onto her right hip and opened her mouth to reply just as smaller, secondary explosions started to go off.

Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom
as the ammunition and weapons detonated from the heat of the fire.

Their firepower had just gone up in smoke. “Shit,” she breathed and twisted her head to check behind her. Where the hell were the freaking missiles coming from?

Confusion had reigned before but now the energy shifted toward panic. Rather than hunker down behind cover, people were running for their lives now, fleeing the burning armory and scattering in every direction.

The vehicles trying to reach the PT field ground to a halt as a wave of people clogged the roads. Honor saw men and women carrying babies, frightened children crying as they clung to their parents.

She climbed to her feet and saw the retreating wave of humanity draw up short and stumble back in their direction. It took a moment for her to realize they were being shot at. She couldn’t hear the gunshots over the exploding munitions, only realized what was going on when she saw people start to fall.

Oh my God, how many more?
“
Go
,” she yelled, and once again pushed to her feet. Shit, where did they go now? They needed cover. Somewhere far away from the shooting so they could regroup and come up with another plan.

“Right behind you, ma’am,” Ipman shouted. He, Smithers and a group of three civilians—two women and a middle-aged man—ran with her back to the previous building and skirted along its back side.

The young woman holding a little boy no older than four stared at her with stricken eyes. “What do we do now? Where do we go?” Her voice broke and she buried her face in her son’s neck, clutching him to her.

“The hangars,” Honor decided. They could get to the hangars and access the weapons locked up there. Only a couple of pistols and maybe one rifle that she knew of, not enough for everyone following her, but it was better than nothing. She was the ranking officer of the group; these people were her responsibility. She needed to get the civilians safely behind cover before she and her soldiers could go after the weapons.

Pausing behind a storage building, Honor darted a glance around the edge of it. Through the fleeing crowd she checked the route she’d decided on, didn’t see any shooters. “This way. Don’t stop running, no matter what. If the shooting starts again, just find cover and stay low.”

With that she tore across the open space, her pulse racing, thighs burning as she ran full tilt to the access road that would take them to the hangars. She dodged people and vehicles, the cries and screams of the wounded fading in the background, overtaken by the wail of approaching sirens.

Overhead the distinctive scream of a fighter jet split the air. Glancing up, she caught the flares of its engines as it did a steep climb then banked eastward. Go get them, she urged its pilot. The crowd thinned for a moment then thickened. She bounced off a male soldier’s shoulder, righted herself then swerved left.

The others were still with her. She veered around a fire truck heading toward the burning AHA, and finally the hangar came in sight. A distant beat of rotors told her air support was finally arriving. She risked a glance into the twilit sky, searching for the aircraft, but couldn’t see anything.

Keeping alert for any more threats she locked her gaze on the back entrance to the hangar. Once she reached it she punched the access code into the keypad. The door unlocked and she shoved it open, holding it for the others as they all rushed past into the darkness beyond. As soon as the last person was inside she jerked it shut with a metallic clang that echoed through the air.

Ragged breathing filled the dim, cavernous space. Everyone crouched down and hugged the walls, staying away from the windows.

“What the fuck, what the
fuck
?” the middle-aged man muttered in a rough voice, running his hands over his head.

“I know. Everyone just sit tight until we can get a reliable SITREP,” she told them. Then she sent him, Smithers and Ipman to each corner of the hangar with instructions to alert her if they heard more shooting.

Leaving the two women to comfort the little boy, Honor took position at the east door, her back to the wall beside it, being careful to stay below window level. Next she yanked her cell phone from her pocket and checked for messages.

Nothing.

She dialed her superior, got his voicemail and left a message alerting him to what had happened and where she currently was. Then she texted Liam. She knew he was out on exercise but he’d know soon enough what had happened, if he didn’t already, and she wanted to reassure him that she was okay.

For now, at least
, she thought grimly.

She’d just slipped the phone back into her pocket when Ipman called out in a loud whisper from the southeast corner. “I hear more shooting to my eleven o’clock.”

Everyone tensed and the hangar became eerily silent. Sure enough, the distinct sound of more automatic fire came from the direction noted, seeming to grow louder every second. So did the sound of the inbound helos. She prayed they were gunships.

Honor pressed her lips together. If the shooter or shooters were coming their way, they were sitting ducks.

She whipped her head around, looking for possible weapons to use. They could bar the doors shut and prevent someone from entering, but they couldn’t render the place bulletproof. “You guys brace the doors. Ladies, help me start building a barricade around that Huey.” She indicated the old chopper in the center of the hangar.

Everyone rushed into action. They took whatever they could use: equipment and spare parts, tools and even storage shelves off the walls and floors, then piled it around the fuselage of the old Huey in a low wall. The relic had probably flown soldiers to safety back in Vietnam; now it would provide refuge for them if the shooters tried to storm the hangar.

As she dragged a compressor over to the pile they were assembling, her cell rang. Yanking it out, she saw it was her superior calling. “Sir,” she answered, ordering everyone into the Huey with a hand signal, “what—”

“We’re being hit with drone strikes,” he said before she could get another word out. “Someone’s hijacked military drones from Boeing Field and using them to attack the base. We don’t know how many shooters are involved. It’s a fucking nightmare.”

Honor swallowed. “Is the President alive?”

“Don’t know. You’re secure where you are?”

She glanced around the makeshift bunker they’d created. Everyone else was inside the Huey, watching her. “For now, yes.”

“Air support is inbound. Security forces have located and engaged several of the shooters, but there could be more out there. How many people are with you?”

Honor updated him as quickly and succinctly as she could, half her attention on the sounds of those shots growing ever closer. She climbed inside the Huey with the others, seven of them now crammed into the small space. The little boy whimpered and his mother made a crooning noise, rocking him gently.

Sweat dampened Honor’s face and beneath her arms as she added, “Sir, as soon as it’s safe to move, I need to find us some weapons.”

“Understood. Do what you have to do and keep this line clear.”

“Yessir.” She hung up and checked her battery, relieved to see she was at eighty percent. In the silence everyone’s breathing seemed over-pronounced. She and the men sat watching the door of the hangar anxiously. One woman was texting on her phone, likely contacting loved ones.

Outside the shooting drew nearer still. Multiple weapons from the sound of it, given the sudden upsurge in volume of fire.

“Someone’s shooting back,” Ipman murmured, his tone confident, and Honor hoped he was right.

Her whole body was tense. She fought the anxiety gripping her, forced herself to draw a deep breath. As she waited to see what would happen her mind flashed back to Liam. To the way he’d held her yesterday on the beach. His greeting smile when he’d met her down in Kandahar. The absolute love in his eyes when he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

Her throat constricted at the memory. So many things she wished she’d done differently. She should have fought for him harder, for
them
.

None of that mattered now though. She couldn’t undo the mistakes she’d made before. All she could do was be honest about what was in her heart now.

Taking out her phone again, she sent him another message.
I love you. Never stopped. Need you to know that.

Just in case,
she added to herself as she hit send.

Honor’s head whipped left at more shots, much closer this time. Maybe only a few dozen yards away if her guess was accurate.

“Ma’am, we seriously gonna just sit here and wait?” Ipman whispered, rubbing his good hand up and down his thigh in agitation.

“They’re too close,” Honor replied with a shake of her head. “Can’t risk moving right now, we’d be sitting ducks.” And the civilians even more so.

“Hang tight, I think they’re moving again.”

At Smithers’ low words Honor lifted her head and strained to hear what was going on outside. Before moving to aircraft maintenance the master sergeant had done six years as an infantryman, so for damn sure she was going to listen to him now.

The volume of fire had decreased slightly, she realized a moment later. As she listened, the shooting seemed to move to the left, away from the hangar. The spacing between the volleys lengthened. Then stopped abruptly.

They all waited, holding their collective breaths. In the distance more emergency vehicles wailed past and the helos were almost directly overhead now.

Honor cocked her head and kept listening. There was only silence.

She waited thirty seconds, then a minute before whispering, “They’ve either been taken out, or moved on to another target.”

Smithers nodded, his profile barely visible in the dimness of the Huey’s belly. “I think we’re clear.”

The others all expelled relieved breaths. Honor wiped the back of her arm across her damp upper lip. “You can all stay here if you want, but I’m finding a weapon. There are some in my commander’s office in the next building.”

“I’ll go with you,” Smithers answered instantly.

“Me too,” Ipman said. The male civilian said he’d come as well, while the women chose to remain behind and wait it out a while longer.

“Everyone coming with me, let’s get going.” Honor climbed out of the Huey and stayed below the windows as she hurried to the far door. Smithers came up beside her and tilted his head as he listened.

He shook his head. “Don’t hear anything.”

“I’ll take a look,” Honor said, reaching for the release bar.

Smithers planted a solid hand against the metal surface. She looked up into his face in surprise, read his fierce expression. “
I’ll
check,” he insisted. Before she could argue he pushed her aside and crouched on one knee to push the door open a crack. He peered through the tiny opening, checking each direction before replying. “We’re clear.”

“Okay, on three,” she whispered. “One. Two.
Three
.”

Smithers pushed the door wide and Honor darted out, taking the lead in the sprint to headquarters. Several bodies lay crumpled a few dozen yards away, one of them holding a rifle in his outstretched hand. A shooter? Or a soldier who’d managed to find a weapon and return fire?

She didn’t stop to check as Smithers picked up the weapon, just kept running, intent on reaching the safety of her headquarters. The nape of her neck prickled as she ran but there were no more shots as she covered the last few yards. Relief slammed through her when they got inside without incident and shut the steel door behind them. She hurried through into her CO’s office, halfway between the front and rear doors of the building.

Sighing, Honor allowed herself to sink to the floor with her back to the wall and wiped a hand over her sweaty face. The civilian, Ipman and Smithers did the same, all of them breathing hard.

Smithers checked the weapon. “Fuck, it’s empty.”

Either the soldier carrying it hadn’t gotten to the AHA before it exploded, or he’d been a shooter and run out of ammo.

“Think it’s over?” Ipman asked, casting an anxious look at the door.

“Hope so,” Honor said. She got to one knee, started to push to her feet and go to where the pistols were locked up when her cell buzzed again with an incoming text. Grabbing it, she anxiously scanned the display.

Not Liam, as she’d been hoping. Her CO.

The message on screen made her stomach drop. Lowering the phone, she looked back at the others. “The President’s dead.”

Smithers cursed and Ipman lowered his head, shaking it back and forth as if he couldn’t believe it. Honor wouldn’t either if she hadn’t seen firsthand the damage the first two drone strikes had done.