The van is right there. Safety is right there.
Something twitches in my peripheral vision.
Movement. Right side. Between two trucks.
A shooter.
He bypassed the suppression fire. He’s kneeling, steadying his rifle against a tire. He’s invisible to Ghost and Brass.
He’s already raising his rifle.
Not aiming at me.
Aiming at the open van door. At the space Talia occupies.
There’s no time for a warning. No time to shout. No time for an angle.
It’s just math. Distance. Velocity. Trajectory.
The bullet hits her, unless I change the variable.
I throw myself sideways, twisting in midair as I reach the van, exposing my back to the shooter to close the angle.
Thud.
Thud.
Two impacts slam into me.
The first hits squarely in the back plate. The force is like being kicked by a horse. It cracks a rib, driving the breath from my lungs.
The second one misses the plate.
It catches me low, just above the hip, tearing through the soft Kevlar side panel and burying itself in flesh.
Fire detonates in my side. A hot, wet explosion of agony that overrides every other signal in my nervous system.
My vision stutters.
My legs fold. I crash against the van’s metal lip, half-in, half-out.
“Jackson!” Talia screams. Her voice shreds the air.
The shooter adjusts, cycling his bolt. Correcting. Finishing.
He thinks I’m down.
He thinks I’m dead.
He’s wrong.
Not dead. Not yet.
I roll onto my back through a haze of red agony. Every nerve protests. I raise the Glock. My hand shakes, then steadies. The shooter is framed in my sights, lining up his follow-up shot.
I exhale. I push the pain down into a box and lock the lid.
The world shrinks to my front sight post.
