by Titan Books
“Baron!” Henry jumped to his feet and ran toward the burning Jeep but the heat was too much for him, the heat and the smell, awful, sickening, and all too familiar from his time in the Corps, the smell that told him Baron hadn’t made it out with the rest of them.
And now Danny was pulling on his arm, telling him he had to back off, she knew, she knew, but he had to stay back.
“Are you hit?” he asked her.
She shook her head and kept on trying to pull him away from the burning wreckage. Henry looked around, his eyes stinging from the smoke, until he finally found Junior standing on the other side of the street.
In the light from the flames, Henry could see the storm of emotions on his face—horror, fear, guilt, disbelief, betrayal. It hadn’t been Henry’s chip they had zeroed in on—Junior had removed it. Henry felt his heart break all over again, for Junior, for Danny, for himself, and for Baron.
Junior’s eyes met his and for a long moment, something like a powerful current of energy ran between them, holding them there in the terrible light from the burning Jeep. Henry couldn’t move, couldn’t speak; he could only stare.
You should have run, Henry thought at Junior, and it was almost as if Junior really were his younger self and it was possible to tell the twenty-three-year-old Henry Brogan that it wasn’t too late to take a different direction. You should run for your life—your real life, not whatever this is. You should run and never look back.
And then, as if Junior had heard what Henry was thinking, he turned and ran into the darkness.
CHAPTER 19
Danny was sobbing as she yanked at Henry’s arm, trying to get him farther away from the Jeep still burning in the middle of Main Street. “Henry, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry but please, please! We have to go!”
Henry pushed her hands away, twisted out of her grip. “It’s my fault, I brought him into this.” He wiped his eyes, stinging from the smoke. The stench of burning tires mixed with that smell turned his stomach. “I told you to go home, man—” He broke off as he heard the sound of another vehicle approaching.
“Henry!” Danny bellowed, practically in his ear. “We have to go now!”
The headlights of a Gemini vehicle cut through the fire and smoke. As it got closer, Henry could see there were several Gemini soldiers hanging off it ready for action; mounted in the center was an M134 Minigun.
But it was the sound of gunfire and glass breaking behind him that stirred him into action. Danny had shot out the front window of a liquor store and she was dragging him toward it. She managed to pull him inside just as the vehicle came to a stop. The soldiers jumped off and fanned out on the street, taking aim.
He and Danny dropped as everyone opened fire.
Bottles exploded, spraying glass and booze in all directions, shelves broke and collapsed, the doors of refrigerated cases cracked and shattered, their contents disintegrating.
Keeping their heads low, the two of them belly-crawled toward the back of the place so that they were practically wiping the floor with their faces. Machine-gun fire shredded the walls, punching out chunks of drywall and wood to mix with the booze and broken glass on the floor. If they kept this up, Henry thought, the Gemini team were actually going to cut the building in half sideways. He and Danny had to get out of here before the entire structure collapsed in on itself.
He looked at Danny, brushed a scrap of wet paper from her cheek. Maybe the alcohol would disinfect any cuts they got from broken bottles. Maybe he could think up some other absurdities to help him avoid wondering how he was going to live with himself after what had happened to Baron.
Henry wrapped his grief for Baron into a tight little package and stowed it away next to Jack Willis and Monroe. He had to concentrate on doing everything he could to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to Danny Zakarewski, the exemplary agent who’d never gotten a demerit, recently undercover as a grad student in marine biology. She had signed up to serve her country and instead it was serving her up as toast. She hadn’t asked for any of this. Maybe she even wished she really was a grad student in marine biology; he certainly did.
She turned to look at him then and flashed him a grin as they continued to inch forward. He promised her silently that he absolutely would not let her buy it on the floor of a shot-up liquor store; he would get both of them out of there alive. Danny would go home and live a long and fulfilling life, while he was going to live long enough to shoot Clay fucking Verris in the fucking face.
They finally made it to the storeroom. The back door was heavy-duty metal. Yeah, this was a small town, all right—security door in the back, no shutters up front. Henry wondered if the owner was insured for damage due to domestic terrorism—probably not. Most insurance carriers wouldn’t cover war or so-called acts of God. No doubt Gemini would take care of all the damage and fix the new giant pothole in the road as well. It probably wouldn’t be the first time.
Henry heard more shelves collapsing out on the sales floor as well as the creak and groan of load-bearing walls that hadn’t been made to withstand heavy artillery and wouldn’t be able to bear their load much longer. He reached up for the door lever and a burst of machine-gun fire nearly took his hand off. He sneaked a quick look behind and saw it was only the Jeep out front now. The soldiers would have circled around to cover the back door. The bastards knew exactly where they were and wanted to keep them pinned down. If the building didn’t collapse and bury them alive, the soldiers would either ambush them when they came out or come in and finish them off.
Henry conveyed this to Danny in a combination of whispers and sign language, then reached for the lever a second time. Again he had to yank his hand back while bullets punched into the metal.
When he tried a third time, however, nothing happened. Henry couldn’t help grinning. Four thousand rounds per minute was lethal but it ate ammo fast. While the guys out front were reloading, he got the door open and he and Danny slipped out into the alley behind the store, still keeping low.
* * *
From where he stood on the gravel roof of the Masonic Hall in the very center of downtown Glennville, Clay Verris listened to status reports on his comm unit while he kept an eye on the action at street level. Using binoculars, he saw the soldiers had moved around to the back alley behind the liquor store, ready to greet Henry and Zakarewski if they managed to get out. He didn’t think they would, not without getting at least winged by the M134.
The back door of the liquor store swung open but Verris couldn’t see much else—Brogan and Zakarewski were crawling on their bellies. If they stood up, the soldiers would say hello. It would be a kind of Butch and Sundance moment, only not as cinematic—
His anticipated triumph cut off; underneath the four thousand rpm music of the M134, he heard the sound of police sirens. Glennville’s small-town police force was riding to the rescue. They took their police vehicles home with them; it was the sort of thing they did in small towns. After Glennville’s station house closed at nine, emergency calls were forwarded to Chief Mitchell’s home phone. It must have been ringing off the hook with panicky citizens reporting that World War III had broken out on Main Street.
Verris had intended to call the chief as soon as Henry Brogan’s plane had landed but Junior’s belated adolescent crisis had distracted him. It was crucial to keep Mitchell and the rest of his Barney Fifes from cluttering up his battlefield. If any of them got hurt, the county authorities would open an investigation and who knew where that would end. At the very least, it would be inconvenient.
Verris tapped a button on the comm set he was wearing. “Chief Mitchell? Clay Verris. I need your units to stand down. We’re engaging with a terror cell that has a weaponized biological capability.”
“Shit,” Mitchell said, in direct violation of FCC regulations governing acceptable language on police frequencies. Not that Verris was going to file a complaint.
“Federal authorities have been notified and are en route,” he told the chief.
“Yes, sir,” Verris said in his best just-doing-my-job voice. “Will report back to you shortly. Thank you.”
He clicked off before Mitchell could enlarge on how grateful he was that Gemini was on the scene to save Glennville from evil terrorists, or to tell him to call if he and his men could help in any way, although the latter was highly unlikely. If you wanted to keep civilians out of your face, all you had to do was say weaponized biological capability and they vanished as if by magic. They wouldn’t even ask if they could observe. Nobody in their right mind wanted to be within sight of people infected with Ebola—what if they sneezed while you were downwind? Mitchell was probably hiding under his bed with a ten-gallon bottle of hand sanitizer and a twenty-gallon barrel of Savannah Bourbon.
Now, where the hell was Junior?
* * *
Henry and Danny lay on the ground amid some overturned trashcans while the Gemini soldiers fired on them, keeping them pinned down. Maybe Verris planned to come and finish them off personally since Junior wasn’t going to do the job. In any case, it allowed Henry to figure out the position of each shooter just by listening. When he had pinpointed each one’s location, he conveyed this to Danny in sign language and was gratified to see she knew what he wanted to do.
He and Danny mouthed the countdown together silently: Three, two, one.
Go.
They rose up back to back, and took out their targets. Three, two, one.
And that’s why a machine gun is no substitute for someone who can actually shoot, Henry told the Gemini soldiers silently as he and Danny ran down the alley to the next building. This one was a lot larger than the liquor store and more substantial, not as easy to destroy with an M134. Henry shot out the lock but just as he opened the door there was a second shot. Danny cried out in pain and fell to her knees with a ragged, bloody hole in one thigh.
Henry looked back toward the liquor store and saw one of the soldiers had dragged himself up on the side of a garbage can and was taking aim, about to fire again.
Henry let out a wordless yell of rage and put a round through the guy’s forehead before dragging Danny through the door.
* * *
Junior’s shoulder hurt like hell. Rolling out of the Jeep had partially reopened the gunshot wound. He could thank the ham-handed medic on the plane for that.
He’d told her to just get the goddam bullet out and close up the hole but she’d tried to insist he get undressed and put on scrubs. He’d had no intention of letting his father see him in scrubs. The medic had kept arguing with him about hygiene this and sterile that and he’d finally gotten so frustrated he’d removed the goddam bullet himself with his combat knife. Then he’d told her if she didn’t want to close the incision he could handle that, too, with a sewing needle and some dental floss.
For a moment, he thought she might go off on him; instead, she gave a resigned sigh and told him to take his shirt off—just his shirt, he could put it back on later—and lie down. Even though she used glue instead of stitches, she had injected his shoulder with lidocaine before he could tell her not to. She gave him a couple of other injections she claimed were antibiotics but Junior knew there was something extra in them; he could feel analgesics at work.
The medic had probably thought she was doing him a favor. In fact, the drugs had screwed up his sensory control. The painkillers were starting to wear off and his usual techniques for managing pain weren’t working as well as usual. And of course she hadn’t given him any extra pills for later, expecting him to march over to the infirmary and see the doctor right after they landed as if he were some delicate flower of a civilian who needed to be hospitalized for a mere flesh wound!
Still, he probably shouldn’t have parkoured his way up to the roof of the Masonic Hall with his shoulder in that condition. But he knew his father would be up there watching everything and it was the only way to get to him without some bodyguard tipping him off in advance.
It wasn’t really that the pain was too much—he had managed to get the better of it so it was now background noise rather than a blaring siren. But it had put him in a foul mood, too foul to tolerate his so-called father’s son-I-love-you horseshit. Especially not after that RPG.
Just the sight of Verris standing there looking down on Glennville like he was a heroic general overseeing a battle to decide the fate of the world made Junior want to kick his ass.
Fuck it, he thought and drew his sidearm. “Stand your men down, Pop,” he said. “Now.”
Verris turned, saw the gun in Junior’s hand, and looked positively delighted. “You did the right thing,” Verris told him happily. “Getting away from Brogan—”
“I did the cowardly thing!” Junior shouted at him. “And it makes me sick!”
His so-called father shook his head. “I was asking too much of you,” he said in a soothing, reasonable tone. His father was handling him again; it made Junior want to punch him. “I see that now. But that doesn’t mean you—”
“He deserved better than a missile fired at his car, Pop!” Junior said angrily. “They all did!”
“ It doesn’t matter what he deserves. He has to die,” said Verris, his voice still relentlessly reasonable but with an undertone that suggested Junior was starting to try his patience.
“Are you gonna call these clowns off?” Junior demanded. His shoulder was throbbing like a second heart, pumping angry pain all through him.
“No,” his father said. “But you can. All you have to do is fire that sidearm and take command.” He spread his arms; there was a radio in his left hand.
What. The. Fuck? Junior looked from Verris to the radio and back again. Was his father telling him to shoot him—kill him? Junior had thought he might have to fight Verris and subdue him. But kill him? Was this really what his father wanted? It didn’t make any sense.
Over the years, Verris had been harsh, rigid, immovable, domineering, tyrannical, and sometimes unforgiving, but everything had always made sense—granted, a very twisted kind of sense, like Verris wanting him to kill Henry. That was pretty demented—the whole clone thing was batshit—but he had always been able to follow his father’s thinking. Not now, though; he didn’t get this at all.
Verris spread his arms a little wider: I’m the target, shoot me. “Well?” he said.
Junior had never done anything that didn’t make sense to him and he wasn’t going to start now. He holstered his weapon.
Verris’s hopeful expression turned to disappointment. Junior decided he could live with that. If this was his idea of being a good father, God only knew what the man thought a bad one would do.
But he could show Verris that a good soldier could do the right thing without shooting his own CO. Junior approached him slowly and reached for the radio he was still holding out to one side.
Verris seemed to move impossibly fast as he reached around Junior, put his free hand inside the back of his shirt and yanked hard, pulling him down onto the gravel surface of the roof.
“I don’t think so,” he said, stepping back from him easily, lightly, almost as if he were dancing.
Junior pushed himself to his feet, trying to ignore his screaming shoulder and the feel of blood oozing from the wound, which had opened a little more.
“A loving, dedicated, present father,” Junior said, making it an accusation.
Verris darted forward and gave him a hard right that rattled his teeth. Junior staggered back a few steps but managed to stay on his feet. Before he could get his fists up, however, Verris pounced again and got both hands around his throat. Junior returned the favor.
It was like grabbing a handful of writhing snakes made of cartilage and muscle, all fighting to get away from him. The old man was in exceptional condition and crazy-strong—his fingers felt like steel bands. If he couldn’t break away, his dedicated, loving, present father was going to crush his throat, and then maybe pitch his body off the roof.
His vision started to dim. If he fell over, Verris would land on top and that would be the end. Fortunately, his sense of balance was still functioning—he let his hands fall away, then stamped hard on Verris’s instep while simultaneously punching both the man’s forearms upward, breaking his hold. His father staggered back and they locked eyes.
Felt that, didn’t you, Junior thought at him. Come at me again, you’ll feel worse.
But Verris didn’t come at him. He gave a short laugh and pointedly turned his back to look down at the street again, letting him know he was too busy to waste any more time teaching him a lesson he should have already learned.
Junior lowered his head and charged. The two of them went down hard, their bodies plowing a shallow trench in the gravel. Junior felt a hot spike of pain in his shoulder and clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out. Verris twisted around underneath him, grabbed him, and dug his thumb into the wound.
He flung himself away from Verris, who was on him immediately, trying to grab his shoulder again. Junior heaved him off, rolled away, and started to push himself to his feet when his side exploded in an agony that made the world disappear in a momentary whiteout. For a second, he thought his father had used a cattle prod on him, then realized it had actually been a hard punch to the kidney.
Junior fell over and Verris gouged his injured shoulder with his thumb again. Blood saturated the bandage and soaked through his shirt as the wound opened a little more but Junior still refused to cry out. He hit the back of Verris’s elbow, forcing him to straighten his arm and let go. Junior grabbed for him, intending to put his arm in a bone-breaker, but Verris’s other hand came up and threw a handful of gravel and dirt in his face.