Page 155 of Kingmakers, Year Three

My mother covers them with her rifle, but she isn’t firing. She knows any noise will draw the whole invading army down on us. She’s giving my father a chance to handle them quietly.

In tandem, my father and Efrem sneak up on the men. Efrem’s knife is already drawn. My father is bare-handed. He seizes the first soldier from behind, ripping the man’s own Bowie knife from his belt and cutting his throat in one slash.

Efrem’s opponent swings his gun around. Efrem is forced to drop his knife so he can yank the man’s hand away from the trigger.

My mother readies her rifle, barrel pointed directly between the soldier’s eyes.

Then an arm darts out from under the chaise, stabbing a letter opener down through the top of the soldier’s boot, pinning his foot to the floor. My sister rolls out from under the chaise, leaping to her feet. My father snatches up Efrem’s knife and finishes disposing of the second soldier.

My mother cracks the French doors, hissing, “Come on!” to the others.

Freya joins us on the balcony, followed close behind by Efrem and my father.

“What the fuck is happening?” she whispers to me.

Unlike my mother, Freya’s hair is pin-straight, barely a strand out of place despite her exertions. It gleams blue-black in the moonlight, a dark cap around her pale face.

My mother motions for us all to stay silent.

I can still hear fighting down on the grounds, on the west side where the helicopter is located, and also at the front of the housewhere we would have gone to access the garage. My mother was right—she’s always right.

Meanwhile, shouting and thundering feet seem to be coming from every direction inside the house. They’re searching for us, room by room.

My mother is already descending down the trellis. She’s light and nimble, as is Freya. I’m not sure the spindly wood will hold my weight. I hesitate, wanting to let the women get down first, but my father pushes me forward.

“Go, son,” he murmurs.

As soon as my mother’s feet touch the ground, she’s sprinting for the gardener’s shed, Freya close behind. She keeps her rifle ready. A soldier rounds the corner of the shed, and she shoots him between the eyes.

He falls backward, his finger jerking convulsively on the trigger of his AR. A burst of bullets fire up to the sky.

“Blyad,”my father hisses behind me.

Now I hear more shouting, and more men sprinting toward us. My father drops to one knee, calling to me, “Keep running!”

One of the soldiers points his gun at me, before being blasted off his feet by my father.

The doors of the shed burst outward as my mother drives right through them, bumping over the grass and screeching to a halt directly in front of me.

I jump in the open back of the Jeep, followed closely after by Efrem. As he’s leaping in, he’s shot from behind. He falls heavily onto my lap, a dark stain blossoming on his back with awful speed.

My father fires twice more, hitting the man who shot Efrem, then he leaps into the back with me.

“Go!” he shouts to my mother.

She floors the accelerator, speeding not toward the front of the house, but over the grass and through the olive trees toward the side gate.

Freya takes my mother’s rifle so she can cover our right side, while my father watches behind us. I try to prop Efrem up, ripping off my shirt so I can use it to apply pressure to the wound.

“I’m sorry,” he says to my father.

“It’s not your fault,moy drug,” my father says, with surprising gentleness.

It’s the kindness in my father’s voice, more than the horrible waxy color of Efrem’s face, that tells me my uncle is going to die.

I press harder against the wound, the wadded shirt already soaked through with blood.

Efrem pushes his Beretta into my hand. His dark eyes meet mine for a moment, and he tries to say something more through colorless lips. Instead, he lets out a long, rattling breath and his head falls back, his glasses slipping askew and eyes staring blindly upward at the night sky. Each bump of the Jeep jolts his limp body.

---