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Just behind Zack he heard a noise, and he swung his pistol in that direction.
His red dot optic centered on the face of Kimmie Lin, and he quickly lowered the weapon.
She dove in off the sidewalk and was followed by one of the campus employees, and then the Navigator launched forward, racing off in the misty darkness.
FORTY
Anton moaned under Zack, repeating himself from earlier. “I’m shot!”
Zack rolled off the man, pulled him into a sitting position, holstered his weapon, and quickly began checking his body. “Relax. You just tripped, you weren’t shot. No gunfire came in from the front, and I was at your back. If you’d been hit, I’d have been hit.”
Zack continued checking Hinton for wounds, doing a sweep over the man’s entire body with his hands and turning up no blood. He held his hands up to demonstrate to Hinton that he was okay, but Hinton said, “My back, lower right.”
Zack rolled the man to the left, then checked the back of his chest rig, still just draped over his torso, with the thick canvas cummerbund loose at his stomach. He found a hole in the canvas on the lower right, then felt around, finding that the ceramic plate on his back had, in fact, taken a round. The ceramic itself was only scratched, indicating to the American that he was struck by a handgun round, not a rifle round.
“I got shot, didn’t I?” Hinton demanded. He didn’t seem to be in shock, but he seemed utterly bewildered by what had just happened.
“Your body armor was shot. You’re okay.”
To this Hinton said, “My right leg hurts. In the back, below the knee.”
Zack swept down low on the man’s right leg; he hadn’t checked here before because he’d been concentrating on critical areas of his body, but now he felt some blood on his fingertips. He lifted the man’s tracksuit pants and saw that he had, indeed, received a small wound on his upper calf.
Zack said, “Spalling. Bits of the bullet that hit the plate sprayed out, and you got a tiny nick on your leg.”
“So…” Hinton’s voice seemed confused. “I…I did get shot.”
He hadn’t been shot directly, but there likely was a tiny bullet fragment in the man’s leg. Zack just said, “We’ll get you a doctor when we get to La Finca.” He didn’t think Hinton needed a doctor; Zack himself could safely extract any tiny metal pieces from the man’s lean calf muscle, but he wanted to put Hinton at ease.
He turned his attention to Kimmie now. “You’re not hurt?”
Her eyes were distant. Unfixed.
“Hey!” he shouted now. “Say something if you can talk!”
“I’m…I’m fine. I just can’t…I can’t believe it.”
The other man in back was a computer engineer Zack had seen throughout the day. He was midthirties, balding, and he had an accent that sounded Scandinavian. “What about you?” Zack asked.
“I’m okay. I saw people dead back there.”
Zack had, as well, and he wondered about Gareth, although he didn’t second-guess his decision to get Hinton off the X and leave the others behind. Zack had his assignment, and he would do it or die trying.
The man behind the wheel of the Navigator knew how to drive, Zack was pleased to see, and they were making incredible time. The American kept his eyes on the hills and trees and buildings they raced past, his Staccato still warm in his hand.
Without looking down at the weapon, he exchanged the half-spent magazine with a fresh one. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered it quickly. “Yeah?”
“It’s Wren, mate. Attack is over. You get Anton safe?”
“Pulling up to La Finca in five minutes.”
“Good job, you.”
“What’s the damage there?”
“Fuckin’ mess here, is what it is. The army lost two dead, three wounded. Three restaurant employees shot. All should survive. Unfortunately, we lost two of our security men. Both KIA, and a third was injured.”
“Shit,” Zack muttered. “The main attack came from the rear?”
