Baxter: Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

On the way to the car dealership they split up, both stopping at several stores on the way, both buying hats, changing details about their appearance, hoping against hope to throw off the eyes in the sky. 

“So I said, shit, you hang onto it, fix it when the belt comes in, and in the meantime, we’ll just buy a clunker to get home. Give it to the kid when he comes home from college, he’ll be happier ‘n a pig in shit, right?”

The car salesman (call me Mark!) seemed far more thrilled to be starting off a day with a sale than worried about getting a cash deal. Barnes stood by and smiled when referred to and otherwise played the little woman to a T. Baxter even managed to get Mark to throw in a tank of gas. That required them to take the truck into the garage, where Baxter and Barnes climbed in, hoping to hide their ownership, at least temporarily. 

They wound up with the small Ford Ranger, a pickup with no delusions of greatness. The gear went behind the seats in the cab, which was handy, and the four-wheel drive might come in handy on the mountain roads.

“That was too easy,” Barnes said, as they pulled away. 

“No,” he replied, “that is what people are like outside the city. We talked the part, we looked the part, he bought the story. Sometimes it’s that easy. Not usually, but sometimes.”

“We’re still going to trade cars again in Bend, right?”

“Yes, and on my other ID, just in case. If we can find any long-term parking, I’m game to steal a car instead, so long as we get to Boise tomorrow. It’s not big, but it’s big enough to go to ground in if we have to.”

The highway toward Bend wound in a generally southern direction through woods and foothills. Every so often, Baxter would think of the drones and the hair on the back of his neck would stand up. He didn’t mention it again. She was probably right, but if she wasn’t, there was no point in arguing. 

After driving in silence, he tried the radio, but there was nothing but static and weak signals. 

“Will they put us on the news?” he asked.

“What?” she’d been staring out the window, half-tranced.

“Well, it’d be an easy way to run us down. Put us on TV, make us public enemies.”

“Smith would have to admit that you exist, someone would remember your picture, your face. So that would mean admitting he fucked up. He’s not going to want any public attention on this at all.”

“Well that’s good, right?”

“It means his resources are limited, any way.”

“And he’s got less soldiers than he used to,” Baxter grinned fiercely.

“That too.”

“What about ID scans?”

“That’s a better question. He has the IT resources to pull a lot of photos looking for us, so even once I have a clean passport, we shouldn’t use it. They won’t have the time or bandwidth to try to track us by cameras like we found you, but ID scans they probably always pull anyway.” 

“How did you find me?” he asked.

She barked a laugh and then covered her mouth, looking surprised at her own reaction. When the hand came away, her lips were tight, trying to hold her laughter in.

“You won’t believe it,” she said, and she told him. Poor little Frank Dixon who was just hanging out with his dad. The amber alert, the ATM photo, and Smith sending Falconer to do her second only official wet job.

“Now tell me why you got so lazy,” she demanded.

“I didn’t at first,” he admitted, and that was how he told her the second part of his story: the traveling, the settling down, the entertainment, the bad habits.

“I never thought of it as being lazy,” he said. “Mostly I felt like I deserved it because I’d spent so many years working so damn hard.”

The gently winding road eventually worked its magic, and Barnes was snoring softly, head propped against the window. Bend was only another hour or so, and Baxter realized he was starving already. 

Everything was 50/50 he’d told her, and that was always the way it felt to him, now that he understood it. There probably weren’t drones after them, or they’d already be a smoking crater. By now they’d thrown off the satellites or they hadn’t. They’d keep pulling tricks, just in case. It was all they could do.

He looked over at Barnes. He hadn’t thought about her in a long time, but partly that was training. Once he had been clear of his old life, he’d thought about it as little as possible, there was no profit in it. The scenarios where they’d come after him had fallen to the other side of the 50/50 equation, so he’d stopped worrying about them. Somewhere along the line it had become evident they weren’t going to come for him...and yet here they were. 

Pulling off the highway he picked out a Best Western where they could stay. Less than a mile away he found a mall. They condensed their possessions once more, carrying nothing but her Sig, a dismantled MP5, his extra ID, and his money. 

They went shopping, buying entirely different outfits and changing. They bought extra changes of clothes and two new backpacks. They stopped at a drug store and stocked up on essentials. He also bought hair clippers and she bought bleaching kit and hair dye. He bought them a set of cheap prepaid phones.

They split up, her leaving the mall by one entrance twenty minutes before he left by another. They had lunch separately, both sitting by themselves in a corner of a fast food joint, watching for unmarked black cars to burst into the parking lot. 50/50, Baxter reminded himself. Nothing happened.

They reunited in the hotel lobby at an appointed time, and he checked them in as husband and wife. One bed, of course, wouldn’t do to draw attention. People sometimes remembered such things. 

They unpacked and repacked in their room, laying out the new outfits they’d wear the next day. The food he’d eaten was slowing Baxter down, and he eyed the bed.

“Go ahead,” she said, “I slept in the car, I can stay up for a while.”

He raised his eyebrows to ask “are you sure?” and she just nodded.

He didn’t question her, just took off his shoes, flopped facedown on the bed and let sleep take him. It wasn’t until after he woke up that, more than anything else, this clearly meant he trusted her. He wondered if she thought the same thing.

Baxter: Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

They were in a two-story parking building next to a mall, about the only parking lot in Hood Canal with a roof. There were only a handful of cars in employee parking, but no security cameras. 

“I think we’re gonna have to risk the bigger city,” Baxter told her as he popped the lock on a silver Taurus. “Anything we take out here in the sticks will be reported too soon for us to get very far.”

“And no time to repaint the car, and license plate won’t matter to the satellites. They’ll track the only silver Taurus that left Hood River in a certain window.”

“So we need to get to the city stat so we can get something from long-term parking and get a head start.”

“Or rent a car on one of your workings IDs.”

“Or both.”

“Or both.”

The Taurus turned over and he popped the trunk. She deposited their bags and wrapped guns and climbed in next to Baxter. 

“So we need a stopgap, something to slow them down, more than a switched car,” she said.

“The Dalles is nearby, it’s a bit bigger.”

“How does that help?”

“I don’t know. We could hole up for the day and steal a car which would give us overnight to run before it’s reported, but that would require us sitting tight for twelve hours in a small town, and it’s too risky.” He sighed. “Be honest, how hard do you think they’re looking?”

“Smith had both of us via satellite before the Blackhawks showed up. Ops told me we weren’t a priority, it took me until you were driving along the river to get you on camera. But maybe they were lying and had you the whole time.”

“Assume that.”

“Then they’re not going to let us go. We’re lucky they’re not us already.”

“We could buy a car.”

He looked at her. He looked at the clock in the car. “Wow, that’s pretty obvious. Cash up front would be suspicious, but we can sell a story. Be a couple hours before a lot opens. Should we risk it?”

“Risk it in The Dalles,” she said. 

He nodded. “Sold.”

He backed the car out of the parking space.

It took almost another hour to reach the Dalles. They found a Fred Meyer that was already open, and bought new outfits. Then they scouted and found an auto dealer that was not too big to pass up an unusual deal. They repacked their bags, partly dismantling the MP5s, and took everything with them. The silver Taurus was left in another cover parking garage and they left separately and by different routes. 

They met in the lobby of a hotel, entering via different doors. There was a cafe in the lobby and they skipped the buffet line and sat in a booth, both on the side that faced the main door. As soon as she was seated, Barnes slipped the Sig out of her waistband and placed it on the seat between them, covered with a napkin. 

They both ordered coffee, he opted for pancakes, bacon and overeasy, she went with a Benedict. When the food arrived, she ate first while he watched, then they traded. When they were finished, she watched while he drank more coffee and read the road atlas. 

“Depends on how fast we want to go,” he said, after flipping some pages. “We can go straight south of here, stay in Bend for a night. We buy another car to keep the trail cold, and then we either drive east to Boise, or go to Boise and keep heading south until we get to Reno.” He shook his head. “I guess Reno, it’s closer to L.A., and that’s the eventual target, right? We can’t take you on a plane with the ID you have.”

She frowned. 

“We might be able to get a train in Boise to Salt Lake, keep heading south, find another cache. But I don’t know if we want to be stuck on a train.”

“No, we want the flexibility of a car.”

“Well then shit.”

“The longer we’re on the run the further they have to assume we’ve gone. They won’t concentrate in Oregon anymore, they’ll have to look at Boise and Seattle and...Sacramento, I guess?”

“Right, then San Francisco, Vancouver, L.A., Salt Lake and Vegas.”

“And then the country.”

“Circle gets bigger.” She ran her hands through her hair and blinked. She looked tired. Her leg bounced, so she was still amped up, but it would catch up with her soon. She looked up at the clock near the entrance.

“I guess we can leave,” he said, “keep talking about it in the car. We have to get that and we have to leave town no matter what.”

“We shouldn’t go there when it first opens.”

“I’d normally agree with you, but this is a small town and we’re paying cash. Guy at the lot’s gonna remember us no matter what.”

“I guess,” she said. “Let’s go sell a story, then.”

Status Update

Whelp, the internet is out at my house again, so I may not be updating as frequently. I also got a bit of work that'll take the rest of the week, but I'm having fun with Baxter, so I will keep up to a chapter a day at minimum and I think I'll keep coming back to it just because I'm enjoying myself.

Tominda Adkins has become another patron since I last posted an actual blog here, and I'm incredibly grateful. Her name will crop up in the book as well. 

It's amazing how good an anti-depressant this book has become. I may not be chipper when I'm out and about, but even if I'm not motivated when I start, the work really buoys me when I'm actually at it, it's kinda of awesome. 

Anyway, Chapter 20 is up, which brings us to the end of the first balls-out action stuff, and the end of what I've written thus far. That was, as far as I'm concerned, the end of the first act, so that means the book is more or less 1/3 done (in my head at least). We shall see. 

Baxter: Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

“East or west?” she asked when they reached the bottom of the hill.
“Where’s your nearest cache?” he asked her.
“Oh, we’re on the same team now?”
“They want both of us, don’t they? You’re gonna need a new ID and money. If they killed my accounts, they killed yours, too, right? And burned your IDs. You might be worse off than me at this very moment.”
She shook her head, frustrated that he was right, but not ready to admit it.
“Where do we go?” she asked.
“We have to switch cars, maybe a couple of times, we need a mall or a big parking garage, just in case there’s satellite coverage. I’d like to think we’re not that important, but I think Smith just proved otherwise.”
“What’s close?”
“Fuckin’ nothing, that’s the problem. Portland or Vancouver, I guess, but I don’t want to backtrack.”
“I can look it up on my--” she froze, looked at the dashboard, where her phone sat neatly in a cradle. “Shit.”
Baxter pulled it out, opened the door, carefully placed it in line with the front right wheel. “Back up,” he said. She did, running over the phone several times. He found a bottle of water in the door and dumped it over the remains.
“It took two hours for the last chopper. Ground response will be on the way faster, but there’s still a delay. Turn left.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me.”
She didn’t, not anymore, not really, but they had to start somewhere. 
He found her road atlas and checked it intently. “There’s a bridge coming up, few miles at Hood River. There’s a small highway heading south. A few towns where we can switch cars and get lost in the sticks.”
“But if they manage to track us the whole way, they can trap us anytime they want.”
“There’s nowhere good to deploy from around Portland. We could make it very tough.”
“What about going back to Portland. There’s got to be another route...Highway 26, right? Go south from here, head back to the city.”
“You want to backtrack?” he asked doubtfully. 
“They’d assume we couldn’t possibly go back where we started, won’t they? I would.”
He thought about that. “Hopefully. We have to assume if they’re really coming for us they’ll have teams everywhere and it’ll be easier to hide in a bigger city. Plenty of malls to choose from, anyway. Priority one is breaking any tail we might have, which means a lot of chicanery for the next hours or day, and then we light out to...”
“Where?”
“Where’s your nearest cache?” he repeated. 
“L.A., I guess.”
“Not Seattle?”
“I never come to the West Coast, I think Smith has someone else. He sent me because it was you, remember?”
“L.A. it is then.”
“And how do we get there?”
“Same way everyone else does, we drive, we take a train, we fly, whatever.”
She looked at him. “You know it’s not that easy.”
“Sometimes it is. I did it.”
“No one was chasing you.”
“But I had to act just like someone was, just in case.”
“So, what, this is round two for you?”
“Except this time I know someone’s chasing us.”
“Is that why you’re not freaking out?”
“Maybe. Maybe I know it’s a waste of energy. How are you feeling, anyway?” he asked. 
“Really, really amped up.”
“You want me to drive?”
“No, it’d be even worse.”
“Okay. Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine!”
“It’s different when you know they’re Americans, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. 
Her eyes slid to him, but her head didn’t turn.
“That’s not what I was thinking about,” she said.
“You will.”
“Tell me how you did it.”
“A magician never tells--”
“Baxter!”
He stared ahead, and a sign for the bridge came into view. He took a deep breath. 
“I was late for work on 9/11,” he began. “And I had this briefcase with me...”

Baxter: Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

The Jeep and the smoke husking seemed to fill their line of sight. The corners of the yard were visible past it, but it lined up perfectly with the entry way, and it seemed like all there was, a panorama of destruction. They’d seen, and created, much worse. 

There was a string lying on the wood of the deck, leading into the house. She bent, grabbed it, yanked. The cranky old shotgun, hidden under the house, managed a single loud bang, although apparently nothing else. It might buy them another second. 

“Draw right, after three shots, I’ll target left.”

“Double it up, go reverse the second time.”

She hesitated, but only for an instant. “Roger that.”

Baxter approached the right side of the smoldering Jeep, knowing there were four armed men behind it somewhere. He checked his footing, looking for tell-tale dig marks where he’d laid to rest his ugly Serbian surprises, the primer of a shotgun set to explode upward like a tiny landmine when someone stepped on it. It fired a burst of fire, overfilled with powder, as well as a handful of shot. The fire ignited the gas that soaked the ground around the improvised mine, so the wounded would fall into flame. Ruthlessly effective. 

He was about to step around the edge of the Jeep, at the trunk end, when he saw the suppressor on the barrel of a submachine gun. He dropped one pistol, reached out and shoved down, the shoulder strap pulling the soldier’s head into view. Baxter shoved the remaining Glock into the space between helmet and flak vest, firing three rounds into throat and neck. He ducked, picked up the spare gun, and popped around the corner, into the open, firing wildly at whatever he might find. 

What he found was another soldier, trying to back away from the immediate violence visited on the guy he was following. Baxter and soldier saw each other at the same instant, but Baxter’s instincts were better, more deeply ingrained. Or maybe he was just better. 

Baxter dropped to his knees and leaned back at the waist, muscles protesting, and the three-round burst from the MP5 went right over him. In return, one Glock round hit the soldier in the groin. The other just missed the opening at the top of his vest, and as he crumbled, Baxter turned to cover the sight line to his right. No one. He grabbed the fallen soldier, pulled him close, popped him in the throat, stripped his submachine gun. 

He went back the way he had come, but she wasn’t behind the Jeep anymore. He hadn’t registering her firing when he had, as agreed, but he hadn’t really put out a burst of distracting fire, either. The soldiers had made a pincer, perhaps in anticipation of their aggression or perhaps seeking the same edge. 

“Clear!” he shouted, his voice loud, his nerves crawling.

“Clear,” she said in return, but it was weaker. 

He backed away from the Jeep, leaned around to scope past the hood, and then walked into view. The unfortunate soldier who had discovered the bear trap was sprawled flat, limbs at awkward angles, half his leg torn away. Someone had shot him. 

“Yeah, I put him out of his misery,” she said, “second I heard you fire. Then this asshole was right on top of me.”

“Yeah I got one--” Baxter turned and really looked at her for the first time. A soldier was slumped over her, blood was all over her face. “Jesus are you--” 

“I’m fine, it’s his blood. He’s just too fucking heavy. Hurry up.”

Baxter grabbed the shoulder of the flak vest and hauled the soldier off Barnes, feeling a twinge in his back at the action. He’d pay for it later, he was sure. 

The got behind the Jeep, feeling more secure behind it than open to the field. 

“Where’s the last one?” he asked.

“How many did you get?”

“Two on my side, so there’s one soldier, and two pilots, I guess.”

“Side arms for the pilots, fuck ‘em, this isn’t their job.”

“Hey, pilots!” Baxter roared, and he heard a crow caw in response. “I don’t care where you are, but don’t let me see you and don’t even think of shooting at us. Just wait for your ride home. Fire a round into the air right now if you can hear me.”

There was a long, pause, and the silence after the shooting and the yelling and the rush of blood in his ears was astounding. Finally there was the pop of a handgun.

“Good move!” he yelled again.

They were kneeling in the lee of the Jeep, she was reloading. 

“Do we wanna smoke the last guy out?”

“Well he didn’t shoot at us when I came to get you, that’s a good start. He could have run, he could be waiting for instructions. Grab that gun, we’ll both hose down the trees and make a run for the car.”

She mopped at the blood on her face with a sleeve and considered. “There’s two bodies on your side of the Jeep?”

“Yes.”

“Strip at least one for parts before we run.”

He did, dragging both soldiers, one, and then the other, behind the car. His back protested again, and he could feel how hard he was breathing, and for truly the first time in his life, in defiance of grey hairs and middle-age spread and everything else Baxter thought, “I’m old.”

With fresh magazines and a spare each, they readied themselves. He pulled the pin on a stolen grenade and held it. He looked at her. She nodded. 

“Way easier than Herzegovina,” he said, heard the ping of the spoon as it popped out of the grenade, and he threw it. After it blew, they charged out into the yard, splitting at the fresh brown explosion pothole. In controlled bursts, he shot right, she shot left, and they laid suppressing fire over the trees, ran, fired, and reached the road.

“I’ll cover,” he said, turning his back on the road, and walking slowly back. He changed the selector on the gun, firing one round to the left, one to the right.

“Go!” she heard him yell from behind, and he turned and ran as she took on cover duties. He ran past her, slid in the dirt.

“Changing!” he said, and switched magazines. Then he rolled onto his stomach and took over covering. “Go!”

She ran past him, and a moment later he heard the car turn over. He got up to one knee, still popping single shots to either side. The bullets could be a colossal waste, or it could be all that prevented the final soldier from getting the drop on them. The horn honked, he climbed up on his feet, fired a final shot, and climbed into the car. 

He didn’t look back, just slid down in the seat to make a smaller target. 

“Huh,” Barnes said, and an instant later, there was a hollow bang and Baxter saw the soldier bounce off his window. “Guess he did a runner.”

“Pussy,” Baxter said, drawing himself up in his seat. He looked at her. “Want me to get that off you?”

“Please,” she said. 

He undid a snap-clip at the butt end of the MP5 where it rode on her hip, and slowly drew it over her lap and away. He put the safety on, placed it in the backseat, then put the safety on his, drew it over his seat, and put it with the other. He shrugged awkwardly out of his plaid shirt and draped it over the hardware. 

“Got your Sig?” he asked her.

“I’ll hold onto it.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“It’s kind of halfway down my pants now.”

The car reeked of cordite from the guns and from their clothes. There was a hint of gas fumes as well, and a soupçon of something else, maybe burnt tires. 

Baxter writhed in his seat, reaching into a too-tight pocket. He pulled out a miniature radio headset, stripped from one of the bodies. 

“Ops, come back.”

“This is Ops, sound off.”

“Negative, this is the mark, not the team. I want you to tell Smith that I don’t have what he wants. Repeat, he thinks I have something. I don’t know what it is. I don’t have it. Tell him to back off.”

“I don’t--”

Baxter rolled down the window and dropped it out.

Baxter: Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

The Blackhawk landed, it didn’t hover. There were two pilots in the cockpit and four black-clad, heavily-armed operatives in the rear compartment. The chopper landed facing the house, as Baxter predicted, and the four soldiers deployed, two at a time. Two dropped to one knee, the others ran forward, took up a new position, dropped to one knee, and the first soldiers advanced again. As they did that, Lindsay Barnes, nee Falconer, lined up her first shot. 

It hit directly in front of the pilot on her right, but the canopy denied the bullet, and a spark flashed in the rotors from the ricochet. The pilot’s hands flew up in panic, but that was all. As she adjusted her shot, she saw him talking into his mic, and she knew she’d draw fire any moment. The second rifle shot hit the base of the rotor the chopper made an angry noise in response. 

“No one leaves,” she murmured, and dove for cover. 

Gunfire rattled and whined against the siding of the house, mostly focused on the top windows. On that signal, Baxter rose up in the living room and concentrated his fire on one soldier. There was no good shot to get through the armor, but that wasn’t the point. Three shots mid-mass put him on his ass and the others dropped. An instant later, there was a mist of pink around the fallen soldier and Baxter heard the report of the rifle from above him. 

One down. 

Behind the fight, the chopper tried to lift off, and a haze of oil spilled into the rotors, causing an abstract, messy swirl. Baxter dropped for cover as the soldiers recovered, taking cover behind the Jeep, returning fire with their MP5s. 

Baxter pulled the end off a flare he’d found in the trunk of her car. It burst into blinding life, and the threw it out the window. 

He thought he heard a screamed command, and two of the soldiers dove away from the vehicle, up and running as the fire from the flare ignited a puddle of gas, which streamed up the side of the Jeep. Baxter dove down again, hands over his ears, mouth open to keep his ear drums from bursting.

The gas tank was pretty empty by this point, but it did the trick. The gas tank combusted with a whump and the Jeep rolled over on its side, away from the house. The soldier who wasn’t as fast had his leg pinned beneath the Jeep, and his teammates, mercenaries apparently based on their reactions, were content to let him burn and scream instead of pull him free. 

Barnes popped up and covered the copper for a moment, unable to find the soldiers through the flame and smoke. The helicopter had rotated about 30 degrees, enough to maybe wing the pilot, but both of them were spilling out the door on the far side, using the chopper as cover. 

There was a swirl of smoke as a downdraft swept it away from the smoking Jeep in the yard. What little gas remained was burning off. Another Blackhawk swept overhead, and she felt the vibrations more than she heard it through her ringing ears. She saw ropes drop from it. 

The two soldiers on the ground fired blindly at the house to cover for their compatriots, but Barnes was confident she tagged one of the soldiers waiting to rope down to the ground before she retreated to cover again.

At more or less the same moment, they both wished that they had headsets to talk to each other. There was no way to form a plan together now, it was all improv, and Baxter feared for Barnes’ keeping up, and Barnes just accepted they were dead. 

They had never considered this possibility, they’d been too focused on the fight they knew was coming to imagine a bigger one. And of course, they’d believed Smith, goddammit, of course they had, and of course he’d lied. 

Three or four more soldiers were on the ground now for a total of...six, there were six. Only six, she specified. That was all. No big deal.

She heard the bark of the Glock from below her and stood up, matching his shots with her Sig. She saw a soldier coming around the Jeep on the left side, so close he must have been roasting, and he slapped a hand to his thigh and fell over. As he hit the ground, it erupted up beneath him, and suddenly there was blood and he was on fire. 

Neither of them saw the soldier who came around the right side of the Jeep step in the bear trap, but even through their partly-deaf ears, they heard his scream when it closed over his ankle. Two more down, almost as quick as thought, and just like that, the odds were back to the original equation. The two of them, four enemy combatants. But maybe only half the ammo now. She wanted one of those MP5s. 

The gunfire fell off as the soldiers regrouped. They were in the shelter of the Jeep, covered by the smoke, coming up with something. And as soon as they had time to think, as soon as they had a plan, the home team advantage would evaporate. 

She ran down the stairs, bringing the rifle and the spare Glock with her. 

“Take it!” Glocks have no safeties, so she didn’t throw it, simply slapped the second gun into his hand. The rifle stayed over her shoulder. “Reload and cover me!” she yelled, and although his face registered surprise, Baxter, old and unfit as he was, didn’t hesitate. He slapped a new magazine into one gun, checked the load in the new one, and followed her out onto the front porch. 

Baxter: Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

After she finished sharing her ideas, Baxter threw out a few of his own. 

“So, the kitchen sink,” she said, when he finished.

“Little bit of everything,” he agreed.

“You know we’re probably gonna die, right?”

He shrugged. “You wanna just sit here and wait for them instead?”

“No.”

“Blaze of glory it is, then.” 

They got to work.

The Jeep was moved directly in front of the house, about fifty feet away. It could serve as cover for the attackers, but it would prevent them from landing right next to the house. Her car was moved to the driveway of the first house, a fall back retreat option. 

At Baxter’s urging, she broke down and ate something. It wasn’t optimal, but it was better than nothing, and she knew she would need to be alert. 

Baxter siphoned some gas from the Jeep’s tank, and then went to work in the yard with a metal dustpan from the kitchen, using it as an improvised shovel. He had a big spoon for detail work. He dug small holes on both sides of the Jeep, extending it’s effectiveness as a barrier. 

They couldn’t afford to waste ammo or draw attention by test-firing the shotgun and they only had six shells left after Baxter’s mad science experiment. She loaded both barrels and put the shotgun in position. Then she double-checked the .30-06 and took it upstairs to her sniper’s nest. She put furniture, books, cushions, and anything else she could find against the wall beneath the windows looking out over the yard for protection. As soon as they knew where she was, they’d concentrate fire on her position.

When he was finished with the yard, Baxter piled stuff in front of the living room window to shield his initial position. While he was doing that, Barnes came back inside, filthy from crawling around under the house. She dropped a heavy wrench in the kitchen. 

“Gas is off,” she said. Stray bullets puncturing propane lines was not something they wanted to deal with. The fridge and stove would stop working, but it didn’t matter anymore.

The knives were still all over the house where Baxter had set them, and his second Glock went upstairs as a fallback option. 

“Okay?” she asked, looking around.

He thought for a moment, wondering if they had missed anything.

“Best we can do,” he said. 

They did a walk through, checking the preparation, looking for holes. They stood in the yard, turning in opposite circles, trying to think like the enemy.

“So,” he said, repeating salient points, “they’ll infil by chopper, and we have to figure they’ll land over there,” he said, pointing across the rough road. “Not enough space otherwise. Human logic dictates they’ll land facing the house--”

“--if they land at all.” 

“Right, if they land at all. If they don’t, two less guys to worry about. If they do, odds are they’ll land facing the house because that’s the way the mind works, and they’ll be sitting ducks.”

“Best case scenario they’ll land because they’re not expecting an attack, and they won’t be at full readiness. At least one free shot.”

“Best case.”

“Worst case, they drop in ready for action, and there’s two less guys and one less chopper to worry about.”

“And no matter what, we have to assume they’ll get an emergency broadcast out, which means reinforcements and a cleanup team within another couple of hours.”

“You don’t have another boat stashed somewhere, do you?”

He shook his head. “You got my best effort.”

“It was pretty good,” she acknowledged.

They looked at each other, years of shared experience resurrecting between them. 

“Just like old times?” he suggested.

“We’ve had worse odds, but we usually had better equipment.”

“True.”

“Feels like Herzegovina.”

He nodded, “What did we have, one grenade, two clips and a broken AK?”

“And you painted all those broomsticks black and put them in the windows so they just couldn’t be sure how many guns there were.”

“Odds were worse then.”

“You were better then,” she said, but she was smiling when she said it.

“I make up for youth with age and experience.”

“You make up for youth with ten years of being a lazy bastard.”

“You win,” he said. “That, too. Buy you another warm Coke?”

They were turning for the house when they heard the soft whipping of helicopter blades.

“Too late,” she said quietly. They both looked down and realized they’d grabbed each other’s hands. They didn’t look at each other. He squeezed her hand once and dropped it.

“Game time,” Baxter said, and they ran for the house.