Dark of the Moon

more ammo.”
    Virgil tossed him three of the mags he’d gotten from the truck, and Stryker shouted, “I think Pirelli’s hit, he’s in the ditch on the other side.”
    “I’ll get him if you can dust off the house again,” Virgil shouted. “Let me get my kit.”
    Virgil crawled into the truck and got his first-aid kit, then back out, crouched in the ditch, and shouted, “Anytime…”
    Stryker popped up and unloaded a clip in one long burst and Virgil vaulted the narrow road, landing in the ditch on the other side, saw Pirelli with an M-16 shooting one-handed, blood soaking through his left shirtsleeve. Virgil crawled up and shouted, “How bad?”
    “It hurts. I think it broke my shoulder,” Pirelli shouted back. Everybody was shouting. Virgil could hear men screaming all around the house and hundreds of rounds pumping out. The house seemed to be falling apart, but there was still fire incoming.
    Virgil pulled a heavy pad and a roll of tape out of his kit, and he and Pirelli eased to the bottom of the ditch, Pirelli on his back. Virgil found a bloody wedge knocked out of Pirelli’s shoulder, just below the edge of his body armor. He jammed the pad under Pirelli’s shirt and wound two yards of tape around his shoulder, cinching it up tight, shouted, “No artery, don’t see any arterial bleeding,” and Pirelli nodded and said, “Reload me.”
     
    N OW THE FIRING from the house had stopped, and an agent launched himself out of the east-side ditch to the car where the third wounded agent had been lying, the guy who’d covered Virgil while Virgil dragged the dead man’s body. Another burst of fire from the house, but the agent made it, and the DEA shooters pounded the window where the burst had come from.
    Virgil, down in the ditch, reloaded Pirelli’s M-16 and then heard Stryker scream, “Watch out, watch out!” and Virgil looked up and saw, at the shed, Franks walking out through the shed door with a long revolver in one hand. He took three steps and shot at the agents behind the truck, no effort to cover himself, and the unwounded agent stumbled back away from the man on the ground, trying for his gun, and then somebody hit Franks with a burst, and Virgil could see his shirt shaking, but Franks stayed on his feet and fired another shot from the pistol and then he went down.
    Distracted by the appearance of Franks, Pirelli had half risen to his knees, shouting, and now another burst of gunfire spattered around them and Pirelli went down again, flapping one arm, and Virgil shouted, “Get down,” but it was too late; Pirelli had been hit again. Virgil crawled down to him, and Pirelli sat up and said, “Got me,” and dropped back on the ground. Two holes: one in a leg and the other in the right arm. The one in the arm was bleeding hard, but not arterially; the arm was crooked and surely broken.
    Virgil ripped open Pirelli’s pant leg: that hit was superficial, ripping away skin and a quarter-inch of meat.
    “How bad?” Pirelli groaned.
    “You’re not dead yet,” Virgil said. More tape to put pressure on the wounds; then Virgil said, “This is gonna hurt. I’ve gotta move you across the road and up the ditch where we can get you outa here.”
    “Do it.”
    He braced himself and grabbed Pirelli’s armor at the neckline, cocked himself, and shouted at Stryker, who said, “Ten seconds,” and disappeared, crawling down the ditch. Then Stryker flashed a hand, screamed, “Go!” and Virgil ran across the road, dragging Pirelli. Stryker popped up, twenty feet from his previous position, and burned another mag.
    Pirelli made no sound at all when they landed in the water on the other side. Virgil kept the motion going, dragging him up the ditch, through the muck, to the wrecked DEA truck. Five minutes, a hundred yards, Pirelli didn’t make a sound. They reached the truck, went another ten yards, and stopped. Virgil said, gasping for air: “Somebody’ll come and get you.”
    “That place is bunkered up. We didn’t know it, but it’s gotta be bunkered up,” Pirelli said. His face was pale as a cloud, his eyes unfocused with shock, but he was coherent.
    “Something,” Virgil said.
     
    A T THAT MOMENT, there was an explosion at the house. Not huge, but big enough. Then another one. A DEA agent had gotten a grenade launcher going, and hit the house with high-explosive rounds, and then with what looked like a gas round. And from behind the hill, to the northeast, where Virgil and Stryker