“Move, Perry! Evasive,” the major barked. “I’m reloading.”
The Sherpa picked up speed. It wove back and forth while Sauvage fed a new chain of ammunition into La Nana.
Raindrops hit the machine gun’s superheated barrel and hissed as Perry took a right around the near high-rise. The major was already locked and loaded when the corporal took another right that put them in a long U-shaped space, with buildings to either side and a third at the far end.
Many of the rioters had regrouped in the common area. As Perry closed the gap between them, Molotov cocktails flew through the air and exploded. Then one of the rioters fired an AK-47 that damn near killed Sauvage. He heard the sound barrier break when the bullet blew past his ear.
The mob turned and fled as one.
“Full pursuit, Corporal!” the major ordered.
Perry sped after the rioters. Sauvage triggered his microphone and said, “Captain Mfune, I have armed AB-16 sympathizers heading your way.”
He heard nothing in return, but his focus was on that gang of thirty or forty rioters running in the Sherpa’s headlights toward the apartment building that formed the bottom of the U. They did what he thought they’d do: split into two groups. The majority went left, back toward the entrance. But about twelve of them broke to the right, including the one carrying the AK-47.
“Cut the small group off!” the major shouted.
Perry swung the Sherpa hard right, accelerated, and got out in front of the escaping rioters before skidding to a stop in the narrow gap between the buildings. Two of the rioters turned on a dime and took off the other way.
Seeing Sauvage training La Nana on them, the ten others, including the rifleman, dropped their weapons and threw up their hands.
The major noted the fear and loathing in their faces, and then pulled the trigger, mowing them all down in a single three-second burst.
“Major Sauvage!” Perry screamed. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”
Sauvage ignored him, wriggling out of the turret and jumping off the roof. With his back to the corporal, the major walked ten steps toward the bodies.
“Jesus, Major,” Perry choked out the open window. “They gave up.”
Crouching, Sauvage picked up the AK-47 amid the twitching corpses, pivoted, and aimed at his young driver.
“Sorry it had to be you, Perry,” he said. “But this story needs a saint.”
Terror registered on the young corporal’s face before Sauvage put two rounds through the driver’s forehead and six more around him through the open window.
The major reached into his pocket to tug out a handkerchief to wipe the Sterling down. He caught motion back at the open end of the common area.
He looked closer and saw Jack Morgan running back toward the entrance to the project, his arm in a sling. Even at this distance, the major could tell from his body language that Morgan had seen him turn the gun on his own man and maybe more.
Sauvage threw the Sterling to his shoulder, found Morgan in his sights, and fired just before he made the corner.
Chapter 107
BULLETS SMASHED OFF the wall five feet from me and sent me into an all-out sprint to get away.
Even with one eye patched, I’d seen it all, from Sauvage’s Sherpa cutting off the rioters to them dropping their weapons and throwing up their hands. I saw the major open fire. I saw him slaughter ten young men, many of them teenagers, unarmed and in surrender.
It had unfolded so surreally that I had just stood there in shock and disbelief, shoeless and with mud dripping off my pants, watching Sauvage jump down, pick up the gun, and shoot his driver in cold blood.
Nothing had prepared me for that. Nothing could have.
My will to survive kicked in then. I’d started running in my muddy stocking feet, and Sauvage had tried to kill me. Safely behind the building, I kept running, not toward the wetland I’d used to access the housing project but toward the main entrance. As I ran, I dug in my pocket for the cell Louis had given me not fifteen minutes before.
I hit send, then speaker, and dodged out into another common area, this one with children’s jungle gyms and swings in it. I took a quick look right, expecting to find Sauvage flanking me. But there was no one, and I ran on. The phone started to jangle weirdly. It wasn’t working for some reason.
I had to get back to the street. I had to get to protection. I had to tell someone what I’d seen.
Breaking out from behind the building closest to the street, I cut toward a sparse grove of trees that separated me from the entrance. I reached the narrow road that divided the housing project and was forty yards from the exit when Sauvage stepped out from the shadows to my right, his cheek welded to the stock of the assault rifle.