deep in the bone of his shoulder blade, but he could move his arm and shoulder. He recognized that he was lucky it had not hit him harder. Three inches deeper, and the bolt would have pierced the top of his heart and he’d be dead already, lying facedown in the alleyway where he took the hit. He guessed the bowman must have shot him from a great distance, or else it was a woman or a young boy; otherwise, the sharp projectile would have surely penetrated all the way through him.
It stung like hell, but it wasn’t killing him, though he was certain it would not be long before he accidentally slammed the protrusion against a wall and really ruined his morning. Again he tried to reach back and grab the arrow, but again he could not quite get his hand to it. He thought briefly about having one of the locals help pull it out of his back, but right now he just wanted to get the fuck out of town, and he absolutely did not want to pause for what would surely be a slow and delicate procedure executed by a person he would not trust to do it correctly.
Soon the soldiers in the road were gone. Court nodded to the patriarch of the family, an ineffectual show of gratitude for not making trouble and a show of contrition at the inconvenience, and then he was out in the road again with Oryx. They made it to the car; it was parked where Zack said it would be parked, and Court got Abboud in with no trouble, then ran around to the driver’s side. It was difficult for him to crawl into the seat with the arrow in his back and his backpack still in place; he had to lean forward and let the backrest down and turn slightly to the left. Finally he turned the key, and the engine started.
He felt his shirt, wet with blood, sticking to his back.
As he shifted the little two-door into gear, the helicopter flew right over their heads at no more than one hundred feet. The noise was so loud, the whump-whump of the rotors so malevolent, that Court ducked low in his seat.
The chopper moved on, directly towards the gunfire from Whiskey Sierra’s battle a half mile to the north.
He released his boot from the clutch, pressed on the gas, and they lurched forward. The motion caused him to bump the arrow hard into the seat behind him.
“Fuck!” he shouted, the pain a jolt of blue flame in his back and up his arm and into his neck. Screaming, he made eye contact with the terrified president. Court shouted at him, the adrenaline and anger of the moment getting the best of him. “What the fuck, dude? What kind of a backwards-assed, piece of shit country are you running here? A fucking arrow? Seriously?” Court’s right hand left the steering wheel, formed into a fist, and punched Abboud in the face. In doing this, he brushed the arrow again against the seat, and again he screamed.
Whiskey Sierra had broken out of the office building and into the alleyway to the east. They then leapfrogged as a team through a neighborhood of tents and shanties, burlap and canvas or corrugated metal and rusty car parts turned into the barest of housing. By zigzagging towards the northeast at each opportunity, Zack and his men were both changing their direction to throw off their pursuers, as well as slowly making their way towards the water. The helicopter was overhead, but Whiskey Sierra ducked under overhangs and stayed tight against the walls of the structures and kept running. If it was a Hip—Zack hadn’t seen it to be sure—then it might have air-to-ground munitions mounted to its hard points. Even if it did not have ATG ordnance, it could still carry two dozen combat-outfitted troops, more than enough to make trouble for Whiskey Sierra.
Their run through the slum was slowed significantly by Milo. His right leg was bloody, and his foot wasn’t cooperating. He was down to a hobble, weakening by the minute, and it was just one more thing Sierra One could not do a damn thing about.
Zack was losing blood himself, but his arm wound didn’t even rank in his top ten list of priorities at the moment.
Still, it was remarkable how easily they had managed to break contact with the GOS forces. The warrenlike layout of the shanty town, with