Desperado (Murphy's Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 2), Kevin Ikenberry [reading the story of the txt] 📗

of the town would have been easy. Developing a way to attack and seize the town, though, would have been difficult.

I need to look at this like a soldier, not like a tourist.

Aliza fumed silently, staring at the mud and thatch roof above her for a long time. She focused on her breathing and tried to relax, but that allowed her mind to wander, too. The visual of the town faded. In its place came memories from Palestine. After the dreary winter of 1944, trapped inside Dachau, the chance to explore the Mediterranean coastline gave Aliza life. Ben Mazza told her they would find a place to leave the horrors behind. All they had to do was dream.

Just dream.

There wasn’t any dream, though. Their promised land was anything but promising, and it certainly was not guaranteed. Like everything, it had to be fought for and defended. She found herself wandering through images of her time in Palestine, pleasant and hurtful memories, until an hour before dawn. Surrounded by sleeping women, Aliza rose and dressed as quietly as possible. Without her housemates seeing, she carefully donned the belt and holster of her pistol, securing it to her thigh with a canvas strap. Making sure the folds of her desert garb covered it, she crept through the domicile and out the door into the empty street. She turned south, toward the gate of the Inner City. Once in the primary thoroughfare, she glanced over the roofs of a series of shops and low houses to the glacis above.

A group of four rough men were pushing a missile rack along the narrow walkway at the top of the wall. In several locations close by, rudimentary cranes reached over to the inside of the glacis. Pallets of ammunition lay below, waiting to be lifted. Aliza saw a pallet being moved along the walkway toward one enclosure at an external corner.

Ammunition and weapons systems on the wall. Noted.

As she walked, Aliza turned to her left and moved her eyes along the far side of the glacis to the west. At least one more weapons platform, something like a tank gun with a long, wide tube, rested farther down the wall. Try as she might, Aliza couldn’t see any ammunition pallets nearby. She strained to see them and—

Walked into a brick wall. Except it wasn’t a wall, but a large man with a weathered, tanned face. His dark eyes bored through her from beneath thick eyebrows and framed a wide, reddened nose. There was an odor of sweat and alcohol emanating from the scraggly beard touching his chest a few inches from Aliza’s face.

“Watch where you tread, woman.”

Aliza recoiled and stared up at the angry man. “So sorry.”

His eyes narrowed, and he studied her face intently. Aliza gathered her garment across her chest, lowered her eyes, and attempted to scurry away like she’d seen the other women do.

A rough hand shot out and grabbed her by the sleeve. “Where are you going?”

“To the fields.”

He growled. “What were you looking at?”

Aliza turned and pointed. “The eron. They are here every morning. Harbingers of good days.”

“Harbingers?” The man stared up at the birdlike creatures.

Hearing the remains of a clipped, northern accent, Aliza sensed an opportunity. “Do you not have them where you live?”

“Of course.” The man stared at her again. “In the north we do not see them as harbingers. Merely scavengers.”

Aliza tried to smile. “Aren’t we all, when the Sear is approaching?”

The man snorted, but his face did not break. Whatever charm she had momentarily exerted on him had passed. “You live here?”

“All my life,” Aliza lied. “You came from the north?”

The man said nothing and turned away from her, back to the men arranging the missile rack on the crane. Aliza walked away quickly. She turned once and saw the man glowering after her.

Person of interest identified.

Aliza turned back to the thoroughfare and made her way to the western gate. As she walked, Aliza kept her eyes forward and on the ground. The feeling she was being watched washed over her like a wave.

You’re a potential target now, Aliza. The voice was Ben Mazza’s. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Finish my job. Find out who that man is and what he’s doing here. If he’s a leader, maybe follow him.

As she neared the gate, a flurry of movement along the exposed rock of the plateau’s northern edge caught her eye. There were tunnels through and under the plateau’s protective eave, and while she’d seen them from a distance, she hadn’t explored them. Armed guards stood at every entrance and kept passersby from even looking down into them. As she watched, a group of twenty or thirty men were moving large, cloth-wrapped bundles out of the tunnel entrance and into the city itself.

What are they bringing into the city? And where did they come from?

But she could not stop and investigate without calling attention to herself. Aliza continued through the gate and moved toward the fields and the markets of the Outer City without looking back. Her mind was already set to explore the tunnels as best as she could, when she could. Whatever the men were moving into the city was either coming from spaces within the plateau itself, or had entered the tunnels through some other access point. Finding which it was, and the location of it, might be one of the most critical pieces of information she could pass to Bo, other than saying she loved him.

A man carrying a small crate dropped it in the thoroughfare near the tunnel entrance. He climbed atop it and put his hands on his hips.

“First ten people who want an extra kr’it tonight, come with me and unload our caravan.” He pointed emphatically down the tunnel. “I must secure the loads before the