Dead Six (ARC) PDF
Preview Dead Six (ARC)
DEAD SIX-ARC Larry Correia & Mike Kupari Advance Reader Copy Unproofed Baen Books by Larry Correia Monster Hunter International Monster Hunter Vendetta Monster Hunter Alpha The Grimnoir Chronicles Hard Magic Spellbound DEAD SIX This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Copyright © 2011 by Larry Correia & Mike Kupari A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3758-8 Cover art by Kurt Miller First printing, October 2011 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Acknowledgements Far more people help in the creation of a novel than just the authors. The story that would become DEAD SIX began as an online serial at www.thehighroad.org titled Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler. Thank you to the good folks of THR for letting us play in their yard. We would like to thank Chris Byrne and the Gun Counter for fixing the ìcomputer situationî. Their generosity is much appreciated. Special thanks go to Marcus Custer for his technical/tactical advice, he’s like having your own personal Jack Bauer, only without all the yelling and whispering. John Shirley helped out big time on knives as did Ogre Rettinger on information security and Jeff More on the border . Once again, Reader Force Alpha rode to the rescue with their proofing, critiques, and vast stores of useful knowledge. Thank you all. DEAD SIX “And by thy sword shalt thou live . . .” Genesis 27:40 Chapter 14: Anger Management VALENTINE I grabbed the woman’s arm with my right hand, crushing her thin wrist as roughly as I could. I used her momentum, vaulting her around the corner. She cried out in surprise as I wheeled her around a full two-hundred and seventy degrees, and gasped for air when I smashed her against the wall of the mosque, my forearm on her neck. In the same instant I brought my own gun up, leveling it between her eyes, and I froze. The veiled woman was now staring down the barrel of my .44 Magnum, dark eyes wide with fear. Her right hand went slack, and the little Makarov pistol clattered to the pavement. She stopped struggling, and I asked myself why I hadn’t already fired. I couldn’t find an answer. Tailor asked what was going on. I didn’t answer him either. I reached forward with my gun hand and ripped the woman’s veil off of her head. The black veil covered a very pretty face. She was young, with tanned olive skin and night-black hair. She was Hispanic, or maybe of Philippine ancestry, and she looked . . . damned familiar. Holy shit, I thought, suddenly remembering where I’d seen that face. “Jillian Del Toro?” I asked cautiously. Her eyes suddenly went even wider, and the color flushed out of her face. I couldn’t believe it. It was the woman Gordon had put out the BOLO on. I noticed something out of the corner of my eye: movement. Everything moved in slow motion as I watched, my consciousness still enveloped by The Calm. The man with the soccer jersey was approaching from my right, weapon drawn. He was running straight at me, hoping I wouldn’t notice him in the mass of panicked, fleeing shoppers. I yanked Jill Del Toro’s arm forward as hard as I could, twisting to the right as I did so. She gasped in pain again. I let go of her hand and clamped my right arm around her neck. I pulled her against me and tightened my arm as I brought my revolver over her left shoulder and leveled it at the son of a bitch in the soccer jersey. “Lorenzo, look out!” Jill Del Toro screamed. I tracked him with my gun and fired. Jill winced as the gun discharged a foot from her face. He dove aside. The .44 slug smacked the corner of the school, smashing a small piece of brick into a cloud of dust. I tightened my grip on Jill and hunched down behind her. The man in the jersey, Lorenzo, hovered just around the corner, where I couldn’t get a shot at him. He didn’t seem willing to risk a shot at me under the circumstances, either. Tailor was coming up behind me, pistol drawn. “Just let the girl go,” he said from around the corner. He spoke flawless, generic, unaccented English. “We can all just walk away.” “Listen, asshole,” I growled, slowly backing down the alley. “I’ve had just about enough of you today. Why don’t you come out so we can finish this?” “Yeah,” Tailor said, “we got your girl and your money bag. Having a bad day?” We could hear police sirens in the distance. “What’s it gonna be, ace?” I asked calmly, continuing to back down the alley, pulling the young woman with me as I went. “Cops are coming.” “Lorenzo!” the woman cried out, fear now obvious in her voice. I caught a flash of movement at the edge of the school. My revolver barked as I popped off another shot, taking another chunk off the corner of the building. Jill cried out again. A couple of long seconds ticked by, and there was no response. Tailor and I made eye contact. I dropped the muzzle of my gun as he crossed in front of me, weapon held at the ready. He checked around the perforated corner of the school as I covered the opposite corner. “He’s gone,” Tailor said, stepping back around the corner. He looked at Jill. “Guess your boyfriend got cold feet, bitch.” I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of the situation. I yanked Jill Del Toro around and began to force her back toward our car. LORENZO I left her. “Fall back, Carl. Fall back!” I ordered. The sirens were wailing. The security forces would be here any second. Everything was ruined. Jill had gotten herself captured. Dead Six had won. She was as good as dead. The mission was screwed. The only option left was self-preservation. I would have to figure out what to do about Eddie later. “Hurry.” “I’m almost there!” Carl responded. “Leave them!” The van tore around the edge of the school. I waved both hands overhead so he’d see me. Reaper stomped on the brakes, and the van screeched to a halt. I yanked open the side door. “Back up, grab Carl, and let’s go.” “Where’s Jill?” Reaper shouted. “Go!” I bellowed. But he hesitated. “She’s one of us.” I froze, half in, half out of the van. My first inclination was to reach forward and smack Reaper on the side of his stupid head. In a minute we’d be fighting half the cops in Zubara. I was a thief. You run. That’s what thieves do. But he was right. Something snapped just then. I couldn’t leave her. Things had changed. She wasn’t just bait. Jill wasn’t just somebody I could use and throw away anymore. Reaper was right. She was one of us. “Son of a bitch!” I grimaced. Reaper must have seen it. Instead of putting the van into reverse like I had ordered, he stomped on the gas, narrowly avoiding running down a bunch of innocent bystanders, and headed straight for the alley. “Carl, turn around and take them out!” He was out of breath from running. “Make up your mind!” The alley was probably forty yards long, five yards wide, and their car had to be parked either in it or on the exiting street. Trying to walk down that alley would get me killed, and shooting it out down the alley would only get Jill killed, and either way the cops were going to kill all of us in a second anyway. I needed to get on top of them, fast. The school wasn’t very tall at all. I had an idea. “Reaper, pull right up to the front door of the school.” “What?” “Just do it! Then back up and block that alley.” He did as I said, actually crashing our bumper into the front steps. But I didn’t feel it as I was already out the side of the moving vehicle before impact. I stepped onto the bumper, the hood, the windshield, and finally onto the van’s roof. I ran, jumped, and caught the edge of the roof with my hands. Pulling myself up, I scrambled onto the roof of the school. I ran up the angled tile of the roof, parallel with the alley. This was idiotic. Half of Zubara was probably watching this moronic stunt, and I was sure that I’d be nicely silhouetted for the police snipers. The STI materialized in my hand as I approached the edge. Glancing downward, there were the assassins. The tall one was struggling against Jill, trying to force her into the backseat of a car, while she was fighting like crazy, but he outweighed her by eighty pounds. The Southerner was watching back down the alley, wearing my backpack, 1911 extended, waiting for me to appear at the end. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Cops are coming. Just shoot her already!” The tall one grunted a response that I couldn’t understand. He was hugging Jill’s arms tight, but she just kept swinging her legs and jerking her head back into his face. I had no idea why he hadn’t already shot her. Dead Six must have decided they wanted Jill alive for some reason. There was no time to think. The second Reaper appeared at the end of that alley, that psychopath was going to light him up. I punched my gun out, sights lining up on the Southerner’s head. There was a door into the alley from the mosque. It swung open directly behind the man, and he instantly spun toward it. There was a kid, probably all of six years old, standing there, and the kid was right behind my target. I was putting two and a half pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger when I froze, thinking of the bullet that had passed through Jalal that was still throbbing, stuck in my vest. I couldn’t kill a kid. I’d never killed a kid. The child looked at the Southerner, at his gun, and then over his shoulder, right at me. The Dead Six operative instinctively turned, following the kid’s gaze. He saw me, eyes narrowed, and his gun flew up. Chunks of tile erupted skyward as I moved back from the ledge. Bullets just kept tearing through the mosque, searching for me, as he ran for the car. At the end of the alley, our white van appeared, blocking their exit. They would cut Reaper to ribbons. I had to take them out now. I took a few steps back, trying to remember the exact position of their car, hoped I was right, then ran forward and jumped off the edge.
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