Page 10 of Savage Little War

I grin and shake my head when he offers the cigarette to me. I breathed in enough as a child when my father smoked at the kitchen table. “I’ll get you a cigar once we put Paolo in the ground.”

Luca grins. “I like the sound of that. I don’t think that he even deserves a burial, though. We should just tie a cinderblock to his foot and dump him in the sea.”

As long as we don’t get traced to his murder, I don’t care what we end up doing with his body. I’d toss him in a trash compactor if possible.

“Hey!”

Luca and I whip around to see a large man standing right outside of the hangar door. Luca exhales, smoke curling into the air. “Shit.”

I draw my gun at the same time as the Italian, but I pull the trigger faster, hitting him right in the chest and knocking him backward.

Voices erupt in my ear.

“They know we’re here. Wrap it up and run!” I say into the microphone before nodding to Luca.

Luca tosses the cigarette at the side of the building, which burns enough to cause a tiny flame at the base where the metal meets the dirt. It doesn’t take long for the fire to start spreading across the bottom of the building.

“Come on!” I tell Luca before running toward the first car nearby. We dive behind it just as more Italians pour out of the building with their guns drawn, smoke already lifting toward the sky as fire spreads on all sides.

“Over there! Behind that car!” one of the Italians shouts.

Luca ducks his head just as the window a few inches above him shatters. He gives me a sheepish look. “I didn’t think one of them would decide to take a smoke break too.”

“Just stay down,” I tell him before lowering myself onto my stomach. I peer under the car, seeing three pairs of feet heading toward us. Stretching my arm out, I aim and fire from beneath the car, shooting one of them in the foot.

“Ow! Fuck!” he cries out as he falls to the ground, blood spilling from his boot.

“Now!” I tell Luca.

Luca and I stand and point our guns over the car, aiming at the remaining two men. I shoot, the bullet piercing the leftmost guard in the shoulder.

He shouts in pain and misfires, the bullet striking the back window. Glass shatters and I duck. Still, some of the shards hit me in the side of the face making me stumble backward.

I hear another gunshot and a body hit the ground, but I don’t see who it is. My cheek burns, but I don’t think any glass got in my eyes.

“Luca? Luca!”

“Get down!” Luca says from behind me before his body slams into mine.

We both hit the ground right before another shot rings out. Luca looks over and sees the cuts on my cheek. “Shit. You got lucky.”

My face stings like hell, but at least I wasn’t blinded. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Yeah, we do,” Luca replies before grabbing my arm and yanking me up to my feet. He suddenly cries out and drops down to his hands and knees, the sound of gunfire ringing throughout the night.

I whip around in time for a stocky Italian slam into me, tackling me down to the ground a few feet away from Luca. The air leaves my lungs, making my chest ache and burn as I try to breathe.

The bastard drives a heavy fist against my cheek, snapping my head to the side.

Blood wells up in my mouth, pain radiating throughout my entire face from the blow. I’m dazed for a second, but I quickly focus back on the man ready to kill me. I strike upward, hitting him on the underside of his chin.

His head flies back from the impact, his balance thrown off.

It’s enough for me to shove him off so that I can roll to my feet, blood staining my lips as I spit it out of my mouth. This was supposed to be a quick and clean operation!

The son of a bitch runs for his gun that he dropped on the ground, but I’m faster at grabbing mine nearby.

I shoot once to drop him, then again to make sure he stays down.