Free Cody's Army by Jim Case Page A

car.
    Ali cleared his Beretta of its leather and fired a round that caught one of the men in the chest.
    The policeman, who had jumped from one of the back doors of the car, flew into a wide-armed backward fall to the pavement.
    Screams of hysteria and surprise erupted from the touristy crowd that began scrambling in every direction for the nearest
     cover.
    The policeman from the opposite rear side of the car, and the plainclothesman who had been driving, returned Apodaka’s fire
     at the same time, and so Tahia could not tell whose bullets sent Christus’s driver slamming backward into the side of the
     van, projectiles coring his body, splashing his guts across the lettering that read Christus Imports.
    Christus dodged behind the van, undercover.
    Tahia saw the policeman she had guessed to be in command raised his pistol on Ali. She started to bring her own weapon up
     and shouted a warning to Ali at the same time.
    The policeman fired a single shot that drilled Ali through the stomach, jackknifing Ali al-Hassan to the ground, where he
     spasmed into a fetal ball.
    “Oh!” Tahia shrieked. ‘Wo!”
    She rushed over to Ali’s side while Hallah stepped forward, his Ingram MAC-10 tracking toward the police car.
    “Get him in the van!” the youth screamed at her. “We’ve got to get out of here! Najib, help her!”
    Hallah triggered a nonstop burst from the Ingram MAC-10, the automatic fire spewing wildly at the police care and beyond.
    The police car’s windshield shattered under the fusillade that pockmarked the frame of the car and began toppling people across
     the street among the wildly scattering crowd of pedestrians.
    Tahia and Najib scrambled to each lift one of Ali’s arms around them, tugging the wounded man between them toward the back
     of their van. Tahia caught one glimpse of the gruesome horror that was her lover’s abdominal area. She averted her eyes with
     a small shriek, fighting off panic while one small part of her mind kept telling her no, no, this was not happening, though
     the noisy chatter of Hallah’s MAC-10 spraying everything in sight was a fearsome reminder that yes, the world had gone crazy
     around her.
    She and Najib lowered Ali onto his back upon the floor of the van, then she turned to Hallah, yelling, “He’s in…let’s go!”
    Najib jumped into the back of the van, slamming shut his side of the back doors, pressing himself to the floor of the van,
     a look of naked fear across his face.
    Tahia crouched and pulled her door most of the way shut with one hand. Steadying herself, she opened fire with her pistol
     on the police car.
    Hallah ran to the driver’s seat, hopped into the idling vehicle and upshifted so abruptly that Tahia was almost pitched out
     of the van, but she kept on firing.
    The police, who had not shown themselves from behind their cover during the twenty seconds or so that Hallah had them pinned
     down, now realized that the incoming fire was from a weapon of less firepower, and the three surviving cops showed themselves
     at the same moment that Tahia’s pistol clicked on empty.
    Projectiles pierced the back-door windows, zinging high through the van.
    She slammed shut her side of the van’s back door as the vehicle sailed away from there. She threw herself across Ali, who
     lay on his back, tremoring with terrible shudders, holding his stomach wound. His blood smeared her.
    With everything happening, she forced herself to keep in mind what was most important of all.
    “Ali…dearest,” she whispered close to his ear. “Tell us where to go…where is Farouk?”
    She placed her ear close to his red-specked mouth and listened as he told her. She realized tears were pouring from her eyes,
     down her cheeks. She cried out the address to Hallah as the police gunfire from behind them died down.
    She placed her arms around Ali as the van rocketed away and then hugged her lover to her, knowing he was dying; knowing that
     the tears and the killing would not