Audacious

54

Gunnery Sergeant Brown stayed under the white dinosaur while the glass settled from the huge explosion in the rotunda. Only when the deadly glass shards finished tinkling off the cars did he risk rolling out and carefully looking around.

Darkness was back, though his eyes would hold the memory of that flash of bright light for a while to come. There was sporadic fire for a few moments. Some dude was always late getting the word. But it wasn't long before even they woke up—or died—and silence broke out in all its glory.

And the quiet stretched and grew and Gunny knew that it was good. Anything was better than the unshirted hell they'd been in for…he glanced at his watch.

Only the last thirty minutes!

That was impossible. He raised his watch to his ear. It was still ticking. A fine old windup watch handed down from father to son for more times than Gunny wanted to think about.

It still ticked and insisted his eternity in hell had been little more than half an hour.

He shook his head.

As the quiet stretched into something that was almost a delicious peace, Gunny glanced over his shoulder. In the distance he could just make out the revolving lights of dozens of emergency services vehicles.

Why weren't the ambulances moving?

He turned back to look for his fastest runner, someone he could send back there to get the lead out of that bunch…

And spotted dark figures skulking out of the north wing of the Gallery.

Not being an officer, Gunny might not know all the important stuff. But he knew the stink of rats leaving a sinking ship. Especially the stink of rats leaving a ship they had done their best to hole.

A slight change of plans here.

Gunny caught a runner's eye, but sent her off to bring back the sniper team on the south end. Then he motioned to his own fire teams in the center to start their movement north.

The northern sniper team was led by Corporal Donovan. She never needed to be told where the action was. She and her partner were already up and doing a slow, low walk from car to car, headed north.

But Gunny needn't have worried about his rats getting away.

They didn't go all that far, maybe fifty yards, before they stopped at a tree surrounded by stone flower pots.

Half a dozen faced out. Four or five talked among themselves in the center.

If that wasn't a well-organized rally point, Gunny hadn't spent twenty years in the Corps.

And they waited.

That was what professional troops were supposed to do, wait to see if anyone detached or just lost showed up at the rally.

But after that last explosion and fire, the place was pretty quiet.

Gunny sure would have been tempted to keep the bugout boogie going.

But that looked to be an officer doing the look-around from the center, so good NCOs were waiting, just like they should.

Which gave Gunny's team time to catch up, overtake, and pass them. Gunny spotted several good ambush sites and smiled.

When that bunch of rats moved north again, it would be right into his waiting arms.

As the seconds flew and Gunny's Marines set up their kill zones, he watched the one he took for the senior NCO exchange words with the guy who had to be the senior officer.

Gunny heard not a word, but he knew the drill.

''Sir, we should move on. We can't afford to lose a second.''

But the officer only glanced at his watch. Who was he waiting for? Gunny would bet money the officer knew personally the one who was holding them up—likely had served under him as a junior officer.

Maybe, another time, waiting would have served a purpose. Today, Gunny was prepared to make sure it didn't.

And Gunny made up his mind.

He signaled to the crew in sight of him. Sleepy darts.

And they passed it along.

Sleepy darts were a risk, but Gunny was one of the many NCOs who were getting sick and tired of Greenfeld pukes doing this or killing that and no one living to tell the tale.

The officers might be happy not having to face the hard truth about the undeclared war they were in, but all the dancing around the truth made an honest fighting man just want to puke.

This call was Gunny's to make, and he was making it.

These rats were beaten; he could see it in the hunch of their shoulders. They were walking into an ambush put in place by good Marines.

These dudes were going to wake up with a roaring headache tomorrow morning, and they were going to sing, sing, sing.

And kings and captains could just bite themselves if they didn't like what a sweating, cursing Gunny Sergeant had done to them.

The enemy officer took a final glance at his watch. A final glance at the Gallery. Nothing moved out of it.

He signaled to his troops and a scout pair led off, quickly followed by others as the outer guards of the rally point folded themselves into a traveling column.

It was a beautiful work of art that Gunny was fully qualified to appreciate…unlike much of the crap hanging in the now-smoking building.

But they were moving right into his ambush. His work of art.

Gunnery Sergeant Brown grinned and drew a sight picture on the officer. He and his Marines were artists in their own right.

Come and see the art we do.