Page 41 of The Big Fix

“Oh-oh,” Garland announced happily. “There’s a duffel here. Maybe your friend Mr. Hawthorne had his man back there pack us some goodies.”

I waited while Garland unzipped the duffel.

“Yeah, see, Colonel, your friend gave us a small arsenal of automatic rifles and ammunition, and a handful of concussion grenades.”

Thank Christ Darius had always been the guy who was overprepared for every situation. He always planned for contingencies.

Garland retrieved an MK-17 from the duffel, brought it to where I was standing beside Jing, gave me a reassuring pat on the arm that I hated, and then went back to join Nam at the rear of the boat. A moment later, he yelled, “They’re about two hundred meters out, Colonel.”

“Jing,” I began, taking a breath. “If they get alongside us, they’ll cut us to ribbons.”

“I know,” she growled.

“So don’t stop, and try not to kill us.”

“Hilarious,” she muttered, pushing the powerboat’s engines to the limit, roaring to a new level of speed into the river traffic.

“A hundred meters!” Garland yelled again, his rifle tracking on the closest boat and gunman.

“Let’s take them,” I roared, adrenaline pumping now as I knelt down, trying to stay as balanced as possible.

The Demon, followed closely by three others, sliced through an armada of sputtering canal boats and overloaded ferries. We barely missed one and sent a small tidal wave over another. One of the gunboats at even pace with us came in from the right, the hull of the gunboat no more than five meters off our side. The gunman on the bow let loose, a bedlam of shells slamming into our sport craft. We had no time to avoid the barrage of deadly fire, and we all instinctively crouched, only Jing couldn’t, gripping the steering wheel and pulling it hard to the left, nearly ramming a low flat-bottom craft in the process.

Closing my mind to the chaos around me, I narrowed my eyes, focused, and fired on the gunboat. The rounds struck high, thumping into the bow shooter and boat captain in quick succession. The captain slumped, shunting the control pole hard to the right and sending the twenty-eight-foot craft barreling toward a slower-moving water bus. Fortunately, it missed, exploding alone in a roar of flame. The good news: no innocents were killed. The bad news: we weren’t exactly operating under the radar.

Jing maintained a zigzag course, concentrating on skirting the river traffic as we fired fast bursts in the direction of the two remaining gunboats to keep them at bay.

“Jared!” Jing shouted.

Moving back to her side in the cockpit, I peered over the bow upriver, seeing what she did—we had run out of cover. The channel was empty save for a lone tug towing a barge. Glancing at the speedometer, I noted that the needle hung at the seventy-five-knot mark.

“Keep ahead of them if you can!”

I knew if they got alongside us, we’d find ourselves in a heavy firefight, taking rounds from all sides and all of us surviving that was dicey.

“I’ll try!”

The boat hurtled upriver at full power. The gunboats swung wildly to the port of the sport craft at first, then flanked us on both sides and fired on us at the same instant. I threw myself on the deck, Garland and Nam prone as well, but Jing, again, could only hunch over the wheel and ride out the deadly assault as bullets gouged the bow and foredeck, shattering the windshield, bits and pieces of fiberglass debris bursting all around us. I would have taken over for her, but I couldn’t drive as well as she could, and our chances of survival were far better with her at the wheel.

Jing yanked the throttles back, lurching the powerboat’s bow deep into the water. The speed fell off so quickly, I was thrown forward against the cockpit counter before slumping to the deck. The gunboats overshot us, sending their shells whistling harmlessly over the bow.

Jing was leaning forward over the wheel, and I had a jolt of terror before I reached her. She turned to look at me, and I exhaled sharply.

“You scared the fuck outta me,” I barked at her, frightened and shaking. I realized then, suddenly, all at once, the real reason I couldn’t be in the field anymore—I cared.

I was over the place in my life where people could be sacrificed for the greater good. I couldn’t send soldiers up hills anymore as decoys so the bulk of the contingent could make it through a pass and capture an enemy stronghold. I had to save everyone now. I wasn’t a military man anymore. I wasn’t an intelligence asset anymore. I couldn’t lose anybody I cared about. Not Owen, not Jing, no innocents, no one. I had to do everything within my power to save everyone.

There was no time, but still, I grabbed Jing and clutched her to me.

“Aww, boss,” she teased me hoarsely, pressing her face to my chest. “You were worried about me.”

I was beyond that. I’d been terrified and had an epiphany all at the same time. It was overwhelming.

“Guys?” Garland interjected gently.

Miraculously, none of us had been struck by the shells.

Nam was giving me a wan smile. “No offense, but I really hate this.”