The team was faltering.Ricky was limping, dragging his leg now, Bateman was almost out on his feet, and Marsh had a gash over one eye, blood streaming down his face.Dale’s heart hammered as he ran to Hogan, dropping down beside Marsh.
Marsh flinched and dropped low.“Fuck, Hogan.”
“We’re not losing anyone.”Dale’s voice was steel.Hogan was ghost-pale, lips blue, a makeshift bandage at his side soaked through.“He’s still breathing.”
Just barely.
Van skidded to a stop beside them.“Truck.Around the back.I can hotwire it.”
Dale looked up, blood still dripping from his own arm.“I’ll get it running.You drive.”
Marsh and Van started dragging Ricky and Hogan toward the back of the farmhouse as Bateman covered their rear with a shaky hold on his rifle.Dale bolted across the ruined kitchen, shoulder slamming through the half-hinged back door.Outside, a rusted Russian military transport truck sat crookedly behind the barn.
He scrambled into the cab, yanked down the fuse panel, and stripped wires with his knife.Sparks flew.Engine caught.It roared to life.
“Move!”he bellowed, leaping out, circling around the back.
Van leaped into the driver’s seat and reversed the truck with one hand, door open, shouting to Marsh.Dale climbed into the bed, helping hoist Hogan’s limp form in, then Bateman, then Ricky.Marsh jumped in beside Van, blood streaking his face.
Gunfire still cracked in the distance.The trees were alive with it.
Van gunned the engine, and the truck lurched forward, tires screaming over dirt and blood.
Dale knelt beside Hogan, one hand gripping the roll bar, the other pressing against the worst of the bleeding.“Stay with me,” he muttered.Hogan’s pulse was thread-thin under his fingertips.“You hear me, man?We’re not done.You do not get to die in this hell hole.”
The truck rattled under them like a dying beast.In the corner of his vision, amid the smoke and bullet-streaked shadows near the tree line, he caught a flash of movement—a figure dragging something heavy.Dale couldn’t make out a face, just the silhouette of someone in local militia fatigues, eyes locked on their fleeing truck.The man didn’t raise a weapon.He just stopped and watched them, dropping whatever he had been dragging behind him.
The truck roared through the smoke, wheels chewing gravel, but Dale turned to keep the man in his sights.He was unmoving at first, and then he raised his hand—not in salute, but in a slow, deliberate gesture—he pointed a finger at Dale, then pulled it back to draw a finger across his neck.Like he was slitting someone’s throat.
Hogan’s breath hitched, rattling, drawing his attention back to the problem at hand.
Marsh looked back from where he braced Bateman’s head.“How bad?”
“Bad,” Dale said.“Too much blood.We need to get him to extraction, now.”
Van shouted from the cab, “Fifteen clicks if this truck holds!”
“Then make it hold,” Dale growled.
The truck careened down the makeshift path, fire lighting the horizon behind them.
Dale didn’t take his eyes off Hogan.Not once.
And when his breathing stuttered again, Dale whispered, “I got you.I won’t lose you.”
Three of them down.One of them barely hanging on.If they lost Hogan—if the Pathfinders lost one of their own—it wouldn’t just break the team.
It would shatter them.
