“Let’s go!” he shouted to Reggie, not even 100 percent sure if the journalist had survived the crash. Manny pulled himself up out of the open window and then reached his hands back, blind, into the jeep, while he scanned the sky around them. He felt Reggie’s hand, from his good arm, grip his own. It was wet with sweat, maybe blood, probably both. Manny squeezed, pulled him up. The two hopped down, quick as they could with their sundry wounds.

The drone had probably veered around and started another loop so it could build up the speed for one more accurate burst of fire. Manny couldn’t quite hear the buzz yet but he couldn’t hear much of anything over the sound of his pounding heart. Reggie pulled ahead of him in a lopsided run. Manny tried to pick up speed but his knee just wouldn’t let him.

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm–

Ah. There it was. He had three, maybe four seconds before that big gun opened up again. The treeline was only about a hundred feet away. So close, and yet too far for him to possibly make it in time. I really didn’t want to die here. I was so close to getting out. He thought of a picture he’d seen of the Bavarian alps, white snow-filled valleys and rich pine forests. I’m never going to see that. Or anything else.

Reggie looked back as he reached the treeline. Manny appreciated the hesitation. It was dumb as fuck, though.

“IDIOTA, RUN!” the fixer bellowed at the top of his lungs. The journalist didn’t hesitate this time. He bolted past the treeline and disappeared into the wooded thicket.

Manny felt a weight lift off of his shoulders. He was about to be torn apart by some nutfuck Martyr with an itchy trigger finger and a joystick. But he’d done his job. He’d gotten his journalist to safety. Well, not quite “safety,” he thought, but whatever. Best I could do under the circumstances.

The hum grew louder. Manny tried to coax a little more speed out of his wounded leg, even though he knew he was too far away now to make the treeline even at a dead sprint. It would’ve been nice to see Berlin. Or Paris. Ah well.

KRUMP! KRUMP! KRUMP!

He heard the thumping sound of heavy gunfire and braced himself for the instant of agony that would precede his end. But instead, he heard the sound of impact and crunching metal behind him, followed by a high-pitched mechanical whine. Something heavy and black crashed into the ground ahead of him.

He made it to the treeline, pushed through the underbrush, got perhaps twenty feet into the woods, and collapsed against a tree.