Looking outside, they saw Ronnie moving purposefully back to the vehicle, pointing and gesturing to others on the way. This looked like a bigger deal than just getting the combined convoy on the road, it looked like Ronnie was shifting back into warfighter mode.

That was confirmed when she opened the door and stopped Rebecca when she tried to ask her what was going on. "Wait one, kiddo," Ronnie told her gently, but quickly, as she picked up the vehicle's radio handset. "Victor Romeo, Victor Three Six online. Tell Actual we're on the move, over."

The reply came back with no crackle at all, so it must have been from the operators right here in the camp. "Copy, Three Six. First platoon needs to maintain security, but second will accelerate preparations as your QRF, ETR two-zero minutes. Two Six will update on this channel. You are clear to proceed, over."

"Copy, Victor Three out." Then, Ronnie switched channels. "Three Six to third platoon, priority. Situation change, original objectives are delayed. Drone recon has sighted a disturbance near our route, there may be civilians in need of assistance. Vehicle commanders, formation unchanged except Golf Three..." (which Rebecca knew was the big cargo truck) "... shifts behind Golf Six and in front of Golf Seven. Assemble at the main gate ready to move to nav Alpha. Three Six out."

Sam hastened to get her seat belt on and make a quick check that she knew where all of her gear was. She noticed that Ronnie shifting into "all business" mode seemed to have a similar effect on Rebecca — when Sam glanced over, she saw Rebecca's lips tighten, her jaw set as she cinched her helmet and armor straps.

She was right. Rebecca felt some of the familiar contradictory calm tension push away her anxiety, coming back from her time posted in sniper nests or creeping through tunnels with her mentor. Something deep inside her tapped the accumulated trust and loyalty, and she knew she had to pay attention to what Ronnie said and needed, that she'd be set on the right course. Her tone was even as Rhonda set down the handset and peered through the windows to make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to.

"What's the word, boss?"

"At least one burning vehicle that wasn't there yesterday, with lots of movement nearby. It's a couple blocks off the route so I don't think it's related, but we're not ruling that out either."

"Shit, okay." Rebecca started to sit back, wanting to stay out of the way, but Ronnie held a conventional civilian map back over her shoulder while she was looking at another more cryptic one.

"You probably know the area best. The blue X near our route, what's the best way there for this many vehicles, surprise, and deployment?"

Rebecca took the map and sat back with it, eyes flickering over the streets as she tried to remember what they looked like. She paused briefly at a familiar intersection, realizing it was where the convenience store she and Jaime first stopped at during their flight to safety months before, before refocusing on the task at hand. "Flanking, pincer, direct?"

"Room for us to maneuver. We don't know the situation there yet, if there're badguys and they want to run instead of square off with us, that's fine."

"Got it. Uh... left on Harris two blocks then north on Elm. There's a shared turn lane all the way down Elm, so it's three lanes wide."

Rhonda found it on her map, then flipped that down to look at an aerial photo behind it. "Harris has some obstructions on it. Jefferson?"

Rebecca caught her balance on the back of Ronnie's seat as they went around a turn, and then frowned at the map again. "Uh... yeah. I guess going the wrong way down a one way street doesn't matter anymore."

"Rules of the road really are more guidelines these days." Rhonda studied the aerial photography for a moment more. "I like it, thanks."

Rebecca folded up the map and passed it back over, resettling in her seat as Ronnie started issuing orders to the rest of the convoy, supplementing street names with those cryptic military grid coordinates again. Yay, being useful! Sam's quick encouraging smile when she glanced up from fiddling with her gear seemed to support the sentiment.

The convoy moved faster than before, and soon Rebecca started to see vaguely familiar streets, overgrown and detritus-filled as they were. Their condition pretty much made for peak surreality, so when Rebecca glanced up at the "Do Not Enter Wrong Way" signs as they turned off of the four-lane road onto Jefferson, it didn't feel much weirder.

She glanced behind them through her window as they made the next turn onto Elm and saw the cargo truck and two Humvees drop back, keeping the truck out of danger and securing the intersection behind them.

She heard the radio from the front seat... "Three Six, this is Golf Zero. We see the vehicles. At least two on fire, one crashed into a storefront."

Ronnie replied, mic already in hand. "Copy Zero, slow your approach. Conserve ammo for the forty if you can. Golf One, move alongside and support."

"Copy that, top."

"Three Six, One copies."

Rebecca figured Ronnie probably wanted to save the rarer grenade launcher ammunition if they could. The Humvees in front of them split from single-file to share the street, almost abreast in a shallow echelon, and she could see the turret on Golf One moving as the gunner panned the fifty cal back and forth as they advanced the final blocks through a light commercial district. Soon, she got a better view of the crash site the lead vehicle had described — the back end of a van sticking out of a demolished boutique, while remnants of an SUV or pickup truck with a shell on it smoldered and burned with low flames in the street, There was another hulk beyond it, the leaves on the trees above both blackened and curled from the heat.

"Gunny, Zero taking fire!" The man's voice from the lead vehicle was startled, and Rebecca could hear swearing from the vehicle's other occupants in the background. Hopefully whoever was shooting wasn't equipped with the kind of gear Black Tusk had, the Humvee's Desert Storm era armor should protect them relatively well against small arms...

Ronnie's voice was calm, but her volume elevated as she replied into the radio. "Herringbone, odds left! Return fire. Does anyone have eyes on?" Ronnie glanced over her shoulder as their vehicle swerved abruptly to the right, bounced one wheel up on the curb, and halted. Directly to Rebecca, she gestured to the right side of the vehicle, away from the action. "Both of you dismount that side!"

Rebecca nodded, slapping the radio earmuffs closed over her ears and yanking on the crude door latch. Ronnie shouldered her door open and flowed around it, leveling her rifle across the hood and using the high roofline as cover.

"Six, Golf One." Rebecca heard the fifty cal start thumping in odd stereo, through the radio and ambiently vibrating through her ear protection. "Contact front, ten plus, can't ID. Ground level, in cover on both sides of the street."

Ronnie's followup orders probably wasn't entirely necessary, but Rebecca thought they did add more crackling and banging to the partial platoon's return fire. Probably made it more organized, at least. As she helped Sam scramble over her seat and out of the door, she glanced up and saw the lighter machine gun on the blue, black, and grey Humvee on their flank across the road twitch to a target and start firing up the middle of the street, angling between the two lead vehicles at something (someone) in front of Golf Zero. The grenadier's turret was moving slightly, probably back and forth at potential targets, but must not have seen anything worth expending a precious round yet. Soldiers from the vehicles behind them were starting bounding rushes, covering and advancing in turn.

Once Sam was clear, Rebecca leaned back in to grab the end of Felicia's soft case from the cargo bed, and then dragged it back out after her. She was reassured to see Sam already aiming down her Vector, sweeping back and forth as she checked buildings and cover spots behind them. The .45 caliber pistol rounds the SMG fired didn't have a lot of range or penetration, but twenty or thirty of them in the span of a second would definitely make someone duck. Setting down the rifle bag, she unclipped and shoved her P90 onto the seat, then knelt down beside the bag and unzipped it.

Her mind was moving quickly enough to note the flush of warm affection as she opened the case — odd for an inanimate object, but it was a tool obtained doing something positive, that had already served her well helping people, and liberated her from something soaked in dark, painful memories. And, once again, they had work to do.

She left the bipod folded — it would be too long — and pulled the handle to chamber a round from the lower profile 20-round magazine that was already inserted. Scooting back a couple of feet from the Humvee and peering beneath, she had a good line of sight down the street. She hit the deck, braced her elbows on the ground, and popped the caps open on her scope. After a quick peer and sweep, she glanced up to Ronnie, not pressing the transmit button on her mic. "Ronnie, call my shots if you need to."

Rhonda didn't answer, but the slightest of head nods as she popped off a shot of her own and then looked for more targets through her conical slightly magnified sight.

Rebecca turned her head the other direction, to talk to Sam. "Everything okay behind us?"

"Yeah, we're clear for now. I've got your six, sugar." Sam's professionalism slipped just enough for a quick twinkle at Rebecca before her eyes locked back down her gun barrel.

Rebecca tried to wipe a smile from her own face as she lined back up with her scope and hunted for targets. She actually recognized the shape of one sputtering muzzle flame as from the standard flash hider on M4's, and felt a moment's hesitation, wondering if this might be a misunderstanding with some former police or military — their vehicles weren't exactly a uniform collection after all. But, she decided anyone like that would already have been in contact and on someone's radar, just about the same time she realized that another flashes' shape and timing looked like it was from a civilian gun with unvented barrel tip. The next time she saw someone fire, she returned it, first with one aimed round, then two more in quick followup. Unfortunately, firing under the vehicle, the concussion from her shots stirred up a lot of dust from its undercarriage and the street, so picking out hostile fire or movement and dialing in on it took longer than she would have liked as she moved from target to target.

Her eyes widened when a gout of flame blossomed and rose from the ground in the street, followed by another just a few yards short of Golf One. She realized the second came from a shattering glass bottle, and was horrified at the thought of that Humvee's open turret. Crap, she had to find whoever was throwing those and deal with them before something awful happened... but Ronnie saved her the trouble.

"Zero, go loud!"

Rebecca hadn't heard a grenade launcher fire before or since the night Black Tusk attacked. Even that had been mixed in with a lot more noise while she was in an armored vehicle, so she was surprised by how much quieter it was than the fifty cal it shared a similar slow rhythm with. Unlike the fifty, its stolid short thunking bursts were echoed moments later with matching stanzas of explosions down the street. They weren't the spectacular roiling propane fireballs Hollywood imagined them to be — or a certain trap Sam would never let her forget accidentally igniting.

Instead, the detonations were a thunderous ripple of brief flashes and sharp concussions, more smoke, dust, and debris than fire. Rebecca figured she was pretty sheltered low and behind the Humvee, but she sensed Sam flinch, scrunching up her shoulders and huddling closer to the rear wheel. She was tempted to try to reach over and comfort her with her left hand, but... without a bipod, she couldn't let go of her rifle as she tried to scan the street between chest thumping fusillades. Regardless, she wondered what the minimum safe distance was on those things!

Ronnie's voice reached her from above and to her right. "Bex! Blue sedan, left side! Guy behind it looks like he's in charge. Pin him down, wing him if you get the chance."

"Copy!" Rebecca tried to yell back without lifting her cheek away from the rifle, and obediently swept her view along the cars on the left side, back to where she remembered seeing a blue one. She caught a glimpse of movement beyond it, but nothing she could hit, so she put a few sporadic shots through the windows to try to keep their head down. At the roughly thirty degree angle she was firing from, she didn't think her rifle had enough punch to make it through two sides' worth of sheet metal... so after trying to rain some safety glass on the guy, she shifted aim to the wheels and fired at them. Maybe the noise of tires popping and the vehicle's weight abruptly shifting would be intimidating?

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, because of her fire or not, the figure behind the car rose just as Golf One's gunner raked it with the heavy machine gun. He stood up into the burst and abruptly crumpled back out of view. It probably didn't matter anyway, the fifty caliber M2's rounds would definitely go through both sides of the car, possibly even the engine block along the way, and a wall or two behind it. Talk about overpenetration.

Things ended pretty quickly after that — the belt-fed grenade launcher on Golf Zero crashed out two more long volleys before falling silent (probably running out of things to pulverize), followed by the fifty and small arms fire tapering off several seconds later. Ronnie didn't have to call a cease fire, it seems everyone just ran out of things... people, Rebecca reminded herself, not wanting to get too distanced from the reality of things, even if it was an ugly truth... to shoot at.