Page 107 of The Triangle

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR - ALEC

Unlike Danny, I do have a secondary escape route. Wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have an artillery bastion without a way to maneuver forth from it without being seen.

The biggest problem right now is that I haven’t actually spent much time here. So, when it comes to knowing all the particulars of this compound, I’m less well equipped than I would prefer. The only thing I feel I can count on is that I still know it better than does whoever is here for us.

And that’s when a cold chill skitters down my unshirted back. Do I? Do I know it better? The fact is that someone does know we’re here. And there are a very precious few people who even know this place exists. So that we’ve been discovered…

But before I can think about it any further, Danny stops short. We’ve made it out of the back exit of the house and are well hidden by the copse in which we now find ourselves.

“What?” I ask, almost bumping into him.

“There,” he says.

Up ahead I count at least a dozen armed men. Maybe fifteen to twenty. A fokken lot, that’s all I can be sure of. They are all wearing proper tactical gear. A fully organized, military-style assault.

This morning at Danny’s apartment was nothing compared to this. This morning was a pinprick compared to this. My instinct tells me that the morning was something akin to a fact-finding mission. If they could have killed us then, so much the better. But ultimately it was a test balloon. Getting us out here where no one will find us and where we can just be… disappeared from the planet. This is preferable.

I only know one person who checks all the boxes necessary to make something like what’s happening now happen.

But why?

Several more of our attackers are now venturing into the house through the broken glass. Scouting. Seeking. Laser sights flashing about in the now-dark forest.

There are a handful of lights still on inside, and there is a bright, harvest-like moon overhead. Just enough illumination to make out the figures as they continue on their hunt. They are all wearing faceplates. I don’t reckon so much to shield their identities as to try to keep a bullet from piercing their fokken eyeballs.

There’s little possibility that our shooting at them now is going to help our situation. Christine is somewhere we don’t know, and we are outnumbered and under-armed. All shooting will do is give away our position and invite them to kill us quicker. I’m trying to consider our options when Danny mounts the RPG on his shoulder.

“Fok are you doing, bru?”

“You have a better fuckin’ idea right now?”

It’s as if he was reading my bloomin’ mind.

“No, man. I don’t. Fokken shoot, I reckon.”

He turns around, faces the murder of assailants now exploring the property and conferring about where to look for us, fiddles with the locks and safeties and triggers for a moment—one must assume that Danny has never actually shot an RPG before—and then when he’s got it all sorted out, he pulls a firing trigger.

The thwomp sound calls to mind for me someone blowing on a didgeridoo. The sound of the explosive landing in the middle of the circle of unknown enemies and blowing them to smithereens is somewhat less quaint.

The blast knocks Danny back about three feet. We still do not know how many men—or women; impossible to tell with their faces covered—are left alive, but we simultaneously decide that the prudent move is not to wait to find out. We take off on the run, maneuvering out and around where a small handful of still-mobile attackers is charging to find us.

And as we flee the area, I glance over my shoulder to my right and I see…

Christine.

Running.

She’s made it out of the house and is, coincidentally, charging in the direction Danny and I are headed right now.

Aweh, man! I cannot believe that we are going to fokken get out of this kak! We are! We’re going to make it! All three of us! Ayoba, man!

That is the thought that should be running through my head at present. It should be. But it is not.

Because running behind her is another masked figure. Someone who was not hit by the blast. Someone who seems hell-bent on catching her. Catching her. Not killing her. Not shooting her in the back. Why?

Someone who has a familiar gait. Whose graceful, galloping stride is recognizable to me instantly. Someone whose body moves in a way that I know well.

Well known because his stride, his gait, his movement, his manner…