A half hour later

The girl had finally calmed. Lani stood next to her smiling. Michael kept watch for the truck that was coming to help them secure their stuff. The truck was only a half mile away, but the patrolling helicopter had found something to shoot at. One loud shot rang out as the gunner punched an oncoming engine block with his 50 cal rifle. Some small shooting sounds could be heard in the distance after the one big shot rang through the air.

Lani grabbed the M60 and carried it fifty meters from the road and aimed in the opposite direction from the oncoming box truck. Michael replaced his spent magazines with full ones before waving down the box truck and guiding them to the back of the suburban.

The truck was being driven by two men from Tom’s department, armed with M4’s and wearing level III vests. The back of the truck had four more guys in it that were originally intended to jump into a fight. These men were also armed with M4’s, but their vests had proper plates in them.

Michael walked to the back of the truck as one of the men in the cab tapped on a window. “It’s him,” the senior man in the cab said as one of the men in the box leaned in to hear. As Michael approached the back, the door popped open.

“Sir we got a firefight down the road,” one of the men said as they jumped out to load equipment.

“We’ll deal with that,” Michael replied, “I need every magazine, all ammo, all weapons, mine and theirs, loaded up. I’ll sort it when we get out of here but right now I need you out of harm's way.”

“Noble of you sir,” the man responded, “but we came out here with the sole intent of being in harm's way.”

Michael chuckled as he started grabbing things from his suburban and loading them into the back of the truck. One man stayed in the box to organize things as it was handed to him, one helped Michael get weapons out of his suburban, two of them gathered weapons from the two attack crews. The rest pulled security and waited for the confrontation to come their way.

The helicopter kept a distance as the gunner continued to fire shots at the disabled truck full of shooters. It was another F350 with hastily mounted armor plating, this one having six people in the back, and only two in the cab as this was a two-seater truck. They were armed with various rifles, some AK’s, a couple M4’s, and an M249 which was mounted to a pintle on the back of the truck.

The first shot had struck the engine block. The second shot from that 50 cal rifle took the first gunner of the M249 out. Other people had begun to fire on the chopper, causing them to take evasive action which prevented the gunner from taking a third shot. The chopper rotated and fired a few rockets at the truck. Two of the five rockets hit the truck directly, one landed in front, and the remaining two landed behind it. The team was obliterated.

Hearing the explosion, Michael started laughing. “Y’all don’t fuck around,” he said as he continued to grab equipment from the suburban.

One of the men nodded. “That gunner hates these guys,” he said with a stern look, “you haven’t heard what happened at our headquarters.” Before Michael could ask, another man turned around.

“Some enhanced cult motherfucker shot the fuck out of our fuckin’ front lobby!” he droned out as he started to heave.

“Dude,” the guy helping Michael said as he turned to his worked up partner, “chill, he don’t wanna hear you talk like that!”

Michael waved his hand at both of them. “Your fuckin fuck words aren’t what bother me,” he said calmly, “but what do you mean by shooting up the lobby?”

As one man calmed himself down and went back to pulling security, the man helping Michael load equipment took a breath and began explaining. “Some guys with belt feds ran an armored escalade through the front door,” he said softly, “opened fire on a barista and a couple security guards.”

“What about this enhanced thing I’m hearing?” Michael asked.

“One guy was enhanced. Tom shot it out with them and kept the enhanced guy occupied enough to let someone else put a hole in dude’s knee,” he started to chuckle a bit. “Once that happened, Tom beat the holy fuck outta the guy and broke his gun against the guys face.”

Michael shook his head. “You mean the boss man himself got blood on his hands?”

“Not the first time,” the man said with wide eyes, “and ain’t gonna be the last.”

After a few more minutes, they finished gathering every weapon, magazine, belt and bit of needed equipment from the vehicles. The identifying markings were removed from Michaels suburban, and they had loaded everything up. The chopper came back and landed. Lani threw her M60 into the truck and got on the chopper. While Lani was fixing the helicopter's M240B to a gunner's mount, Michael retrieved the girl from the suburban.

“You’re coming with us,” Michael said softly, “We’re gonna get you cared for and all that shit.”

The girl grabbed a hold of the shoulder strap of his chest rig and looked into his eyes. “Please tell her,” she whimpered, “if you tell her she might not kill me.”

Michael picked her up and carried her to the chopper. He sat her in a seat and fastened the harness to her. “Keep your hands off this harness,” he said to her with a stern voice, “We’ll be in a safe place shortly.”

Lani turned around and tapped Michael’s shoulder. “If she does that screaming shit I’ll knock her fuckin teeth,” she said with a menacing smile, “It’s the least-”

Michael waved her hand at her to cut her off mid sentence. “I absolutely understand,” he said loudly as the chopper began to get noisy again, “but we are not the monsters.”

Lani screamed. “You’re gonna fuckin tell me eventually what goddamn happened right!?”

Michael nodded. He knew she’d have to know eventually that this girl held information on the cult that had just started a war against everything and everyone.