Page 49 of Peace Under Fire

The question had barely hit his mind when the first Humvee, one of the two in front of the main building, flew straight up in the air. Nothing hit it. At least nothing visible. It simply shot straight up in the air, along with the six black garbed figures using it as a shield. The vehicle and men hovered there… in the air…for a full ten seconds—he knew, because he was counting the seconds off in his head—and then they flew straight back the way they’d come. Twenty, thirty, fuck—fifty feet. And then the whole lot of them—men and vehicle—exploded.

“Fuck.” Brick’s voice was faint, like he couldn’t catch his breath.

Squish knew the feeling. Suddenly Tex’s strange reaction made perfect sense. He reached out to replay the footage. He couldn’t have seen that right. But Brick stayed his hand.

“There’s still twenty minutes left. Tex would have cut it off if that was all to see,” Brick said. His voice had regained its strength, but there was still shock in his eyes.

“That Humvee, combined with those bastards who were hiding behind it, is a hell of a lot bigger and heavier than a refrigerator,” Squish huffed out, putting into words what was in both their minds. Plus, they had exploded, which meant two of Mandy’s sisters had been working in tandem. One hurling the men and the vehicle, the other exploding them.

He expected the second and third Humvees to follow the first one’s fate. But they didn’t. Instead, their occupants huddled behind the vehicles and waited. Probably for the gas to take effect. The fact the rest of the attackers and their Humvees didn’t get thrown back and blown up was a good indication that at least two of the women inside the building had gone down.

Suddenly, the sky turned black. A turbulent, whirling black cloud overtook the white haze magically appearing from nowhere. It took him a few seconds to recognize what he was seeing. Birds—hundreds and hundreds of birds—crows, ravens, hawks, bald eagles, owls, and a shit-ton of smaller winged things. Too small to see what they were. The avian flock was so immense it looked like a thunder cloud had blotted out the sky.

“What the hell?” Brick sounded breathless again.

But at least he could still speak. Squish was pretty sure that if he opened his mouth, nothing would come out. Absolutely nothing.

The birds fell upon the men hiding behind the vehicles. Dozens of birds ganged up on each man. Swooping in, they raked the men’s heads, and when their targets turned around, they slashed at their faces with their talons and beaks. They were going for the eyes, Squish realized, his skin crawling in horror. They were trying to blind and maim. The men windmilled their arms, trying to knock the creatures off. They hunched over, arms wrapped around their heads, as they tried to protect themselves. The birds just kept coming, kept striking, until the men were rolling around on the fluffy white ground, which was spattered with blotches of dark liquid.

Blood. He knew the look of it. There was blood everywhere.

Without sound to accompany the images, the whole thing looked eerie as hell. The men’s mouths were open. They were screaming. Squish was certain of it. Those men were screaming.

And then it was over. As suddenly as the avian attack had started, it stopped. The birds wheeled up into the air, circling, like they were confused, and then slowly flapped off, until the air was clear and white again, the ominous cloud gone.

“How much you want to bet that—what’s the name of the sister who can communicate with animals?” Brick wheezed.

“Jayla.” Squish found his voice.

“Yeah. Her,” Brick said. “How much you want to bet the gas just knocked her out?”

Squish wasn’t about to take that bet.

He’d had trouble wrapping his mind around what Mandy had told them earlier. Now he found himself almost convinced. There was nothing like seeing something happen with your own eyes to make the impossible suddenly possible. Assuming the video hadn’t been manipulated.

He totally got Tex’s weird reaction.

The men in the video slowly gained their feet, hands going to their faces as though checking for damage. Some of the hoods and masks had come off, but the men were still impossible to identify. Where once there had been black, tactical fabric, there was now blood and ripped flesh. And snow, the snow was coming down harder than ever.

An argument broke out. Or it looked like an argument. Two of the big bastards squared off. Mouths were moving. One of them pulled a gun. The other guy dropped and just lay there, a dark stain melting the snow beneath him. Probably dead.

After that, the remaining men headed for the front door, carrying a thick steel pipe by its handles on the top. The point man hammered the door open and the whole lot of them vanished into the building. As they disappeared, another vehicle arrived.

This one was a white, nondescript cargo truck, its wide tires spitting up clumps of snow and mud. It maneuvered around the burning debris from the crumpled Humvee and its fried crew without stopping and parked between the surviving vehicles. The back door rolled up and people spilled out. This group of people looked different than those who’d occupied the Humvees. They were still dressed in black tactical gear and wearing gas masks, but they were less bulked up, and they didn’t carry weapons. They had what looked like first aid back packs instead. And stretchers.

“Medical personnel?” Squish leaned in closer, trying to get a better look.

“Hard to tell,” Brick muttered, doing some leaning in of his own. “Could be though. Probably want to make sure the takedown didn’t damage their prizes.”

The new batch of people hovered in front of the buildings for a few minutes, as the snow came down thicker and harder, before disappearing inside the main structure with their stretchers.

Within minutes, people carrying stretchers began to emerge from the building. The soldiers were easy to differentiate from the medical personnel. For one thing, their faces were bloody and torn. For another, they were on each end of the stretchers providing the muscle. Although some of the medical guys and gals were on stretcher duty too.

He zoomed in for a closer look at the stretchers’ still occupants.

The women were lying on stretchers and wearing what looked like oxygen masks, or maybe sedation masks. Their hair color was all over the map—red, blonde, brunette, jet black. Even with the plastic masks in place he could tell a couple looked Asian.

None of them looked like Mandy.

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