In the thick of it there is no time to think. Think and you're dead. There's only reacting. Find cover. Fight back. Let your body move to the memory of drills. That's why you train; so that when there's no time to think, you react. You survive.
-Peacemaker
1650 hours.
Peacemaker peered through the binoculars. The kid hovered at about 700 feet. The missiles were on target. Now to see if they did any damage. The seconds dragged into minutes as he watched.
What if it did hit? What if he hurt that kid? Sure, the suit was dangerous and the kid could be as well. But his gut told him otherwise.
Peacemaker forced his doubts down. Focus on the mission. There was too much that could go wrong.
The Reyes's residence was a one story brickhouse. It was the second to last on the street at the bottom of a hill. High residential area. Directly after, a street, then the ground lowered steeply to Highway 54. High traffic road. Any conflict would result in a lot of collateral damage. Best to take him out in one shot so they weren't chasing him all up and down the suburbs.
Peacemaker gaped and jerked the binoculars away. The land to air missiles broke off course. A mixture of relief and anger churned inside him.
"Missed," one of the pawns said. "How the hell?"
"Must have scrambled the targeting systems," Bordeaux said.
"It can do that?"
"Keep a lock on his energy signature," Peacemaker ordered as he bent for his primary weapon. "Don't let him get away.
"Sir, he's not running."
"Good." He hefted his weapon, a Barrett M82 with armor piercing rounds. Hello, baby. Daddy has a special job for you. Peacemaker braced it against the hood of the car and steadied his sights. Jaime hovered dumbly like a duck in water. Peacemaker breathed out, squeezed the trigger, and ...
He was grabbed from behind. Jerked back. At the same time, heat slammed him. He hit the ground. Gun flung away. His ears didn't work. He slowly sat up. The pawn who saved him was bleeding from a cut on her cheek. The van was a smoldering mass of wreckage.
Slowly, time regained momentum. Things pieced themselves together. The missiles. Somehow, they had been turned. Jaime had hacked them. Targeted the missiles at the van.
Smoke rose. Shrapnel cartwheeled. Peacemaker's ears started ringing. If that pawn hadn't grabbed him, he'd be gone. Dead. Jaime almost killed him.
Killed his men.
Peacemaker turned. His men. Knocked over by the force of the explosion. But their four bodies were moving. Rising. Falling back on their training. Getting cover. Waiting for orders. His orders.
Peacemaker stood and scanned the sky. Jaime was still there. Not running. He wasn't a kid anymore. He was the enemy. Peacemaker steeled himself. No more pity. No more doubts. Though the Texan was a speck at this distance, he felt their eyes lock. Jaime came at them in a dive.
Too much collateral. Already civilians were coming outside, too bewildered to use common sense and seek shelter.
"Lure him away," Peacemaker barked. "Get to the highway! Go, go!"
The soldiers piled into the Hummers, abandoning the smoldering van. Peacemaker hopped into the back of an already moving vehicle. Driving was the pawn who saved him. Bordeaux was in shotgun. She assembled a rifle while eyeing the fugitive in the side view mirror.
The Hummer shot down the hill. The Texan dove for Peacemaker. He threw himself flat. The other vehicle shot off cover fire. Barreling through an intersection, the Hummers shredded through a fence and plunged twenty feet into the highway. Shock absorbers cracked. The cars bottomed out, swerved, rained sparks, roared into traffic.
Bordeaux turned in her seat and steadied her rifle's barrel against a roll bar.
Peacemaker struggled to stand as the car swerved. He saw the muzzle flash of her rifle. Couldn't hear the shots. He was focused on the airborne Texan hurtling after them at a hundred miles per hour.
Glucose: forty-nine milligrams per deciliter. Ketone: 5.3 millimoles per liter. Heart rate: 87 beats per minute.
"Weapons. I want a weapon."
Warning. Aeronautic capabilities functioning below capacity. Energy levels: Reaching critical.
"Give me a gun!"
Scanning targets.
"I don't care about them. Peacemaker's the one."
Subject Bordeaux deploying -
"Peacemaker!"
Error. Unable to deploy evasive maneuvers. Synchronization: Incomplete. Data files: Corrupted. Recommendation ...
"All his fault. Kill him. I'll kill him for this."
Warning ...
"All Checkmate's fault. How could they do this!"
Subject Bordeaux opening fire.
"He's gaining on us. He's gaining on us!"
"Will you hold this thing still so I can hit it!"
Peacemaker yanked the tarp off the gun turret. The mounted Browning was a .50 caliber machine gun that let off 10 rounds per second.
The Texan was thirty feet up. Flying as straight as an arrow. Easy hit.
Peacemaker pulled the bolt into place and secured the grips with both hands. He lined up his sights and fired. The short bursts thrummed in his chest, filling him with the power of man-made destruction. His shots came close. The Texan veered. Peacemaker followed, closing in. Almost got him ...
"Bridge!"
He released the trigger just in time. An overpass flashed by, heavy with traffic. On either side of the highway, suburban homes. All around them, civilian traffic. What a nightmare.
"We need to get in a less populated area."
"Where?"
"We're in Texas," he roared. "We're surrounded by desert! Get us in it!"
A blue glow came from the Texan.
"Enemy fire!"
The Hummer lurched. The sonic blasts shredded the road behind them. Cars swerved. Horns blared.
"We need to bring that thing down, fast."
He signaled the other Hummer and the two vehicles launched into the emergency lanes around traffic. The machine guns pulsed in unison. The Texan veered up and dropped back. Then the target disappeared.
Peacemaker swore. "Eyes! Who's got eyes?"
"Where'd he go?"
"Holy -" the driver jerked the wheel. Peacemaker turned to the front just in time to see the road disintegrate. The Texan had flown ahead of them. The Hummer hit a pothole, bottomed out, dodged another blast, swerved, sideswiped a pickup, dodged again, careened onto an exit ramp, hacked through bright orange road work signs.
The Texan was forcing them off the road, straight at traffic backed up from construction. He wanted them stopped, vulnerable.
"Get us back on the highway!"
"I'm trying-"
A near miss with a minivan.
"There," Bordeaux pointed. "A break in the guardrail. Go!"
The pawn floored it. They clipped the rail, caught air, plummeted down a gravelly slope, and jumped railroad tracks with Peacemaker letting off hiccups of suppressing fire.
Incoming fire. Subject Peacemaker: Still mobile in lead vehicle.
"Closer."
Inadvisable.
"He's not getting away. Not after what he did."
Warning. Second vehicle initiating fire. Positioning offers tactical cover for lead vehicle.
"They're in my way."
Eliminate second vehicle. Recommendation: Concentrated ion blast.
"No. Save power for Peacemaker."
Recommendation: Environmental attack.
"I'll throw this. Right in their engine block."
Locking onto target. Calculating trajectory. Direct hit. Second vehicle disabled. Locking on to lead vehicle.
"Nothing to save you now."
Warning. Subject Bordeaux opening fire. Subject Peacemaker opening fire.
"Target him!"
Calculating trajectory.
In seconds things went wrong. The Texan speared his other Hummer with a lamp post. The Hummer died, rolling sharply to a standstill. Cars swerved it. Some clipped it. Then a semi barreled up from behind, tried to stop, and jackknifed right into it.
His men.
The Hummer dropped out of sight.
The Texan attacked ... hurt his men.
Vengeance, steely and cold contracted like a vice over his ribs. Peacemaker drilled the air with rounds. He might have been screaming. His ears were dulled with the furious pulsing of his blood.
"Incoming!"
The Hummer swerved. Peacemaker was flung to the side and would have been thrown if he hadn't hit a roll bar. A crash. This one rattled the whole car, knocking him to his knees. A road sign lay embedded in the metal. Peacemaker stared at the giant lettering proclaiming "EXIT 28B." It was lodged in the truck bed. That could have been him. Sliced him right in half.
The machine gun had been dislodged from its mounting and lay broken and useless. Peacemaker punched the sign. "Take the 601." The 601 superhighway should get them out of such a densely populated area.
A bridge shot by overhead. Then another, forcing the Texan to pull up.
"The others," the pawn said. "Where's the other car?"
"Focus," Peacemaker said. "Keep going."
Bordeaux scanned the sky on her scope. "Look alive. Coming in low."
The Texan was changing tactics. Using civilians as cover.
"Watch that aim," Peacemaker barked. "Keep it on the sky." Minimize collateral. He wouldn't hit civis if he could avoid it.
The Texan was closing the gap. Coming in low and fast. Man could that kid move. Peacemaker switched to a sidearm. This fight was going to get messy.
Dodging between lanes, the Texan let off potshots at their tires. One hit an axle and the Hummer jerked unhealthily. The vehicle climbed as they sped up and onto a bridge. Peacemaker took aim, but there were too many civis, even on the superhighway. The Texan wove like a snake between the cover of cars, inching closer, closer. He was advancing on their left.
"He's flanking us."
"On my count shootout that car's tires," Peacemaker ordered. Bordeaux readied herself. "Three." He tracked the Texan as he disappeared behind a green sedan. "Two." An enemy. He was the enemy. "One."
Bordeaux fired. The sedan's front left blew and it swerved off course. His cover was gone. Peacemaker shot three times. Hit twice. The Texan's face contorted in pain and he veered straight up. Bordeaux followed with more suppressive fire. Peacemaker didn't know where, but he hit the kid. Didn't know how bad. But judging from the Texan's distance, it was more than a nick. Good old teflon-coated armor-piercing rounds.
"Got ya." Peacemaker readied himself for the Texan to dive again. "More where that came from."
Assessing damage.
"He shot me!"
Amor integrity: 40 percent.
"That's it. Done with this crap."
Repairs: stalled until safety secured. Recommendation: Retreat, repair, attack when repowered.
"He's not getting away with this. With any of this!"
Prepping ion cannon. Energy levels: Reaching critical.
"He came after me. Tried to kill me. I'm ending this. Now!"
"He's under the bridge." Bordeaux swore. "Could come up anywhere."
"I got left. You take right." They posted themselves at opposite sides of the Hummer.
Seconds turned into hours. The tick of the concrete beneath their tires was like a countdown. Peacemaker's muscles cramped. A sweat built between his palms and the grip of his weapon.
"Do you see him? Where is he?"
Peacemaker repositioned his hold. "Come on. Come on. Where are you."
"You don't think ..." Bordeaux shifted, "that he can target us from under there?"
The bridge trembled. Then lurched, bouncing cars like a trampoline. Dust rocketed into the air. Road crumbled.
"Stop stop STOP!"
"Shit!"
"Bring it around. Turn it around!"
Brakes shrieked. The burn of rubber coated Peacemaker's mouth. The pawn spun the wheel. Cars screamed past them and disappeared. For a moment, they faced oncoming traffic and he thought they might make it. Then the car caught. The rear tires lost traction, spinning on air. Gravity clawed at the vehicle and it slowly tipped. They fell.