“Roger,” Jericho said, and kept moving.
“What did you get set up inside?” he asked Wade as they found cover behind one of the squad cars in the parking lot. It felt wrong to let the invaders enter the building, but that was the strategy they’d decide on, and it was too late to change it. Hockley and Montgomery were already in the parking lot, covering the front door from behind one of the unmarked sedans. Garron was with Kayla. He was too big, too slow, to be part of the mobile strategy.
“Couple tripwires, a kilo of C-4 each. Won’t have sight lines, so I didn’t use anything I’d have to trigger from a distance.”
The Humvees were coming faster now, the gunners spraying bullets in all directions. Jericho hunkered down, trying not to imagine one of those bullets finding his flesh. He’d been shot before, and he really, really hadn’t enjoyed it. So it was best not to think about any of that and just keep his mind on the job. The militia members who couldn’t fit in the Humvees were jogging along with them, using them for cover; it slowed the procession down a little, but not enough. Jericho found a target and squeezed the trigger, refused to look at the man as he fell, and shifted to find someone else to shoot at.
“They might go back the same way they came in,” Wade said, sounding like it was all an interesting academic puzzle. “Now that they’ve cleared a path, they won’t want to leave their vehicles behind unless they have to.”
“Shit.” If someone was going to change a plan, he wanted it to be him, not the enemy. He found a target and fired. Shit, shit, shit. “We still have to cover the other exit.” They couldn’t take a chance of letting the militia get to the school. “And Kayla’s got more guys coming in.” He glanced over and saw a familiar shape looming beside Kayla—her father had arrived and he’d brought his gun. Must have been in his truck when he’d gone to his meeting. “They’ll take care of the front way.”
“Okay,” Wade agreed easily. He took a shot, then another.
“Wait.” The Humvees were pulling up in front of the building, now, jumping the curb and rolling over the lawn just as Wade had done. “You got any toys left? Maybe enough to disable the vehicles?”
But Wade shook his head. “I’ve got a few grenades. But they won’t do much against armor.”
Hockley and Montgomery were firing, now, doing a fairly good job of keeping the militia away from the front door, but then the turret gun turned their way. They pressed themselves flat as the car they’d been crouched behind jerked and jumped and spat bits of metal from its newly perforated surface. There was a bit of a ditch at the edge of the lot, and it would give good protection even against the heavy gun, but there was a patch of open ground between it and them.
Jericho fired at the Humvee, but the turret was well-protected, of course. The DEA sedan was being torn apart, Hockley and Montgomery were flat on the ground, maybe dead already. But, no, Hockley raised his head, looked over at Jericho—and then Jericho felt movement behind him. Wade was standing, throwing, flopping back down. A grenade.
The explosion wasn’t as big as Jericho might have wanted, but it shut the turret gun up, at least temporarily. He and Wade both peered around their cover vehicle and squeezed off a few shots, and then Wade was up again, throwing again, and this time when he dropped down he jerked his hand at the agents, directing them toward the ditch.
They scrambled as the second explosion thudded through the air and were safely behind the wall of earth before the noise was gone.
And there, in the middle of it all, Jericho’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He had a nearly hysterical moment of wondering if it was a telemarketer, but when he pulled it out Kayla’s name was on the display.
“I quit,” he said into the mouthpiece.
Her voice was tight, almost a gasp. “Okay. Me too.”
That wasn’t what she should sound like. “You okay?” he demanded. “You hit? Why are you using the phone?”
“Ricochet hit the radio. You believe it?”
“Just the radio? The radio’s strapped to your shoulder, Kay!”
“My shoulder too. But I don’t think it’s bad.” She might even be telling the truth. “Nice aim from Wade—boy’s got an arm. But I think he just took out the gunner, not the gun itself. They’ll be shooting again in no time. And they’re keeping men in the Humvees—not everyone seems to be going into the building.”
Keeping men in the Humvees. So some of the militia were planning to make it out on the road. But that didn’t mean all of them would be.
“Can you handle this side?” Jericho asked. “We’ve got some time while they’re getting inside, and then getting into the holding cells . . . can we get the road reblocked?” He checked his watch. It had been less than ten minutes since the attack had begun; help was still far away. “Wade and I can handle anyone who goes out the back door.”
“Sure,” Wade said with an exaggerated nod. “Sure, we can handle them. Just the two of us. No problem.”
“You got a better plan?” Jericho demanded.
“Yeah—we could leave.”
“A plan I can go along with?”
“I can send a team around the long way,” Kayla said in Jericho’s ear. “They can rendezvous with you at the school. Sound good?”
“That is a better plan,” Jericho said, and ended the call. “She’s sending guys to meet us at the school.”
“I’m sure that’ll make all the difference.” Wade nodded toward the front door of the building. “Looks like they’re going to blow things open over there. The lock slowed them down, but it hasn’t stopped them.”
There was something about the way he said it that made all of Jericho’s senses switch to high alert. Something that let Jericho know that Wade wasn’t going to let the militia’s plan go off quite as tidily as they might have expected. Sure enough, Wade calmly pulled his detonator out of his pocket, twisted the dial on top, and depressed the trigger. Then he smiled, not flinching at all as the front steps of the office were lost in a cloud of smoke and fire. Jericho flattened himself against the shaking ground just before the noise rolled over him, the deafening thunderclap followed by the pings of debris hitting the parked cars.
