Chapter 12 - Fire in the Night
The transition from silence to violence did not occur in seconds; it occurred in the space between two heartbeats.
I didn't try to squeeze through the narrow slit. That was a diversion Hayes and I had used in the Helmand orchards—a verbal feint designed to make an enemy look at the wrong opening.
Instead, I pulled a stun grenade from my belt, pulled the pin with my teeth, and dropped it cleanly through the concrete observation slit into the concrete bunker.
*Three.*
*Two.*
*One.*
The detonation inside the enclosed cinderblock space wasn't just a flash; it was a physical shockwave that blew the rusted steel exhaust vents off the roof and turned the air inside into a boiling fog of white light and overpressure.
"Breach!" I shouted.
Fifty yards away, Hayes’s carbine barked—three rapid, rhythmic cracks: *POP-POP-POP.*
The two guards outside the van, still stunned by the grenade’s blast, collapsed into the mud before their shotguns could clear their shoulders.
I rounded the corner of the bunker, my service pistol drawn, Bruno bounding beside me in long, three-legged leaps, his blue cast splashing through the yellow puddles like a war club.
The heavy steel entrance door was hanging open, warped by the pressure wave.
I kicked it inward with the sole of my boot and stepped into the smoke.
The interior of the bunker was a nightmare of ringing ears, drifting powder, and blinding magnesium smoke. Marcus Vance was on his knees behind two green wooden crates, shaking his head violently, blood streaming from his nostrils, his 9mm pistol wavering in his right hand.
In the corner, taped to a rusted metal chair with heavy silver duct tape, was Denise Alvarez. Her eyes were wide with terror, her lip was split, but she was alive.
"Vance!" I roared.
Vance blinked through the smoke, saw the silhouette of a woman and a three-legged dog, and raised his weapon directly toward Denise’s head. "I’ll kill her! I swear to God I’ll—"
Bruno didn't wait for a command.
He didn't have the leverage for a high takedown. His right shoulder was missing its original bone, and his left leg was encased in fiberglass.
So he used what he had: eighty pounds of pure, focused muscle and three hundred years of working-dog genetics.
He launched himself from four feet away, not at Vance’s arm, but directly into the man’s lower abdomen. The impact drove Vance backward over the wooden crates, his head striking the concrete wall with a sickening *CRACK*.
The pistol flew from Vance’s fingers, skittering across the wet floor toward my boots.
Vance screamed—a high, bubbling sound—as Bruno’s jaws closed over his right forearm, pinning the man’s limb to the floor with three hundred pounds of hydraulic pressure per square inch.
"Bruno, out!" I commanded, stepping forward with my pistol leveled at Vance’s forehead.
Bruno released the arm instantly, but he didn't back away. He stood over Vance’s chest, his left cast planted firmly on the man’s sternum, his lips curled back to reveal two inches of white ivory, his hot breath washing over the contractor’s terrified face.
"Don't... don't let him bite me again," Vance sobbed, his eyes rolling back in his head. "Please... General... please..."
"Move a finger," I said, "and I’ll let him finish what Tyler Mercer started."
Hayes stepped through the door, his rifle at the low ready, his boots crunching on the spent brass. He took one look at Vance, one look at Denise, and let out a long, slow whistle.
"Doc Miller’s gonna be pissed about that cast, General," Hayes said, nodding toward the mud-caked fiberglass on Bruno’s leg.
"Doc Miller can write a bill to the Department of the Navy," I said.
I walked over to Denise, pulled my combat knife from my belt, and sliced through the silver duct tape binding her wrists.
Denise fell forward into my chest, her arms wrapping around my neck, her whole body shaking with sobs she had held back for twelve hours.
"I knew you were coming," she wept into my shoulder. "I told him... I told that bastard my General wasn't gonna leave me in this hole."
"Marines don't leave their people, Denise," I whispered, patting her back gently. "And Bruno doesn't forget who feeds him."
Bruno turned his head, looked at Denise, and gave her cheek one long, rough, sandpaper lick.
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Outside, the sirens of the Provost Marshal’s Special Reaction Team were finally wailing through the rain, their red and blue lights painting the sagebrush hills of Camp Pendleton with the colors of a country that had just barely saved itself from its own rot.
***
