Page 136 of Dash

My leg gave way. I pressed my back to the wall and joined Shaw on the ground. Wiping the blood on my shirt, I thought of the only thing that mattered. Thena. I had to find her.

The lock on the main doors to the dining room clicked quietly. I lifted the Glock and took aim. The doors cracked open. The muzzle of a carbine peeked in before Granite sidled in. Weapons up and crosshairs seeking targets, Bozeman, King, and Guzman slid, in barely making a sound.

“Friendly in the room,” I called out, raising my hands and showing my gun.

“Friendly in the room,” Bozeman repeated as the guys split and ran the walls.

“Clear,” Bozeman said.

“Clear,” King and Guzman echoed.

“Gotta improve those rapid response times,” I rasped. “You guys took for-fucking-ever.”

“We had a lot of tangos to hunt.” Bozeman’s eyebrows spiked as he fixed his stare on the blood pooling around my thigh. “Again? Same leg?”

“Get the fuck over here.” I gestured impatiently, trying to push myself off the floor. “We gotta find Thena.”

“Hang on.” Bozeman put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me down. He set aside his carbine and took out his med kit from one of the pockets of the tactical vest he wore over his suit. “Not gonna let you bleed out.”

“Be quick, will you?” I groused. “King, Guzman, find Thena. Try the gardening sheds.”

“On it.” Carbines up, King and Guzman stole through the French doors.

“Is that your doing?” Bozeman knocked his head toward Shaw even as he cut a hole in my pant leg at the thigh.

“Tried to get him alive, but the fucker wanted to die.”

“He betrayed us,” Bozeman stated somberly.

“No shit.” I huffed. “The others?”

“They all fought hard,” Bozeman reported. “Each man put their lives on the line more than once. I don’t think we have to worry about traitors anymore.”

That was somewhat of a relief.

“Speed it up, Bozeman.” My leg hurt like hell. “We need to go.”

“Working.” Bozeman applied a quick blot patch to my wound.

“Sitrep,” I demanded as he shot me with a preloaded syringe of antibiotics and pain meds.

“Got your message,” Bozeman reported as he applied another bandage. “‘Ambush’ spelled using the military numeric code. Primitive but effective. At the specific mention of Sandy and Cook, we took your suggestion to come out through the kitchen’s back door and turned the ambush on them. The enemy has been neutralized.”

“Enemy survivors?”

“None.”

“Casualties?”

“Twenty tangos dead and Rivera.”

“Rivera?”

“He was supposed to stick with the civilians, but when a tango crept up on Ferranti, he jumped to protect him. He took a round to the head.”

“That took guts. Maybe he was set up after all.”

“Maybe,” Bozeman rumbled, taping me up good. “Or maybe they killed him so he couldn’t rat them out.”

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