Page 26 of Dozer

Simple math. Simple math that has just stopped being simple. "Down.” One hand is already on Kenzi's shoulder before I've finished the word, shoving her below the window line.

She goes down fast. She has good instincts; there was no hesitation or argument. But I feel the half-second where her whole body locks up solid, breath caught, eyes too wide for a person still processing the sound as gunfire instead of something else.

One beat.

That's all she gives the fear and then she's moving. She drops into the footwell, both arms wrapping around the case at her feet like it's the only thing that matters. Which, as far as the mission is concerned, it is one of two. She has whatever piece of evidence she found on the body in that case and she’s protecting it.

I wrench the wheel hard right, taking us off the road entirely and onto shoulder gravel that rattles every bone in the vehicle, both the living and the dead.

The move isn't pretty. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to keep us alive. Rounds slam into the rear panel. I count them as they fire off. Two, three, and then four. The flat, ugly sound of metal taking damage it's not built for.

Kenzi ducks lower. I can hear her breathing fast but controlled. She's scared, of course she's scared. Anybody who says they're not afraid when somebody starts shooting at them is either lying or hasn't understood what's happening yet.

But she's not panicking.

I put more pressure on the accelerator. "Malloy, status."

"Taking fire!" His voice crackles through the comms.

Then another burst of gunfire cuts through the radio. I check the mirror and see the lead vehicle is fishtailing across the road.

"Lead's hit," Reyes says, and there's something in his voice now that wasn't there ten seconds ago. "Driver's down. I've got it, I've got it⁠—"

He doesn't have it. I know that before he finishes saying it. The vehicle behind us loses its rhythm. The engine noise changes, it’s wrong. I glance in the mirror and watch it drift instead of drive.

Reyes is fighting a wheel that no longer has a driver actually steering it, which means we're about to lose the lead vehicle entirely and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

"Malloy, hard left at the fork. Now." I'm already recalculating the convoy's geometry in my head. "We’re compromised. Full evasive. Do not slow down for anybody."

"Copy." A round cracks against the side of our vehicle.

Kenzi flinches, but she doesn't scream. Doesn't freeze. Her head comes up just enough to see past the dashboard. Then her voice comes from the footwell. "There's a second position."

I look at her in the mirror. "What?"

"East ridge. Tree line." Her breathing is still fast, but her voice is steady.

"The muzzle-flash pattern's wrong for one shooter. There's a second angle."

I hadn't clocked it yet. She has. From the floor of a moving vehicle under fire, with her arms wrapped around the one thing she's trying to protect. I file that the way I file everything that matters.

"Confirmed." I adjust the angle, cutting us out of the second shooter's likely line before I've fully verified it myself. She doesn't sound like someone guessing. Kenzi doesn't just notice things, she sees them.

We hit the fork doing something close to eighty, Malloy makes the turn. We’ve switched positions in the convoy with the shooting, and we follow.

Reyes's vehicle doesn't.

I watch it in the mirror for exactly the amount of time it takes to understand what's happening and not one second longer. It goes off the shoulder, hits the tree line.

The sound reaches us a second later.

Metal.

Wood.

A hard, final crunch.

Then the vehicle stops being a vehicle in any sense that matters.