Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11)

by Robert J. Crane

  So I picked up Gothric, taking care to keep his body between us, and heaved him right at Gaucho like a human javelin.

  I ran sideways as soon as I released the medic, trying to hedge by grabbing hold of Augustus in hopes he’d also make a good shield, but he fought me off, still half-blind, yanking his arm out of my grasp. It didn’t matter; Gaucho had apparently never had a teammate thrown at him before. Even more obviously, Gaucho had not practiced much in the way of physical combat, apparently leaning on his role as team meta-power eye-sniper to the exclusion of all else.

  Gothric and Gaucho’s skulls met in a beautiful symphony of skull-cracking that I was intimately familiar with by this point in my career. It sounded like a watermelon smacking on pavement, sick and cringeworthy. My strength wasn’t enough to burst them both open like overripe fruit, but they both went down with whimpers of pain, Gothric thumping along for another five feet or so in a limp roll. He didn’t move, probably just knocked cold, but Gaucho writhed in pain, holding his sensitive little head.

  “Medic!” I called, trying to have a little fun in spite of the clearly present danger I was facing. It was just another day, really, and this was the sort of shit I lived for.

  “You won’t need one in a minute,” Medusa said in a low voice, and I realized his hair was curling around me, slithering across the ground like some kind of psychotic plant growth.

  “Ewww!” I said, averse to some dude’s gross locks snaking over me. I peppered his hair with a burst of ashy flame, and he tensed, neck muscles swelling like he’d tried to pass a boulder. The hair snaked away, retreating back to its mommy, and I dusted him with an ash shot to the face just to be safe. He folded up and screeched, raking his own eyes to try and clear them. “You might need a few drops of Clear Eyes for that,” I said. “Some of the locals probably have some, it’s Colorado, after all—”

  The pavement exploded in a burst of gravel around me, and I knew Augustus had lashed out with his weapon of last resort. He’d reached into the very material that made up the tarmac and ripped the earth-based components out of it, spattering me—and himself—with debris like pellets from a shotgun barrel. A thousand little fires sprang up in my back and legs, and I dropped, landing hard on my elbows again as they broke my fall. Blood trickled down me, like sweat running down my back sides.

  Wolfe, I thought, desperately.

  I am hurrying, he said, with more than a little desperation of his own. But I knew it was too late as I writhed there next to Augustus, my remaining foes closing in on me, only shadows in my squinted, teary eyes, as they drew closer and closer, ready to end me.

  33.

  Scott

  Scott had hung back during the battle, watching it unfold as though it were something on a movie screen playing out in front of him, unreal, unrealized, blinking his eyes to try and spur himself into some kind of action.

  They’re going to kill her, some small part of his brain screamed, his fingers stroking the pistol grip of his HK MP5 submachine gun. He let it hang on its sling, his fingers tracing down to the Sig Sauer P226 pistol on his belt, then brought up both hands, wet with perspiration despite the dry, Colorado air. He had so many options at his fingertips—

  Good, came the other voice in his mind, let’s help kill her, but that same faint scream worked in the background over the sound of the flames cooking those loaded airplanes, burning like infernos on the horizon.

  People are dying.

  Let them die. Kill her.

  He blinked. This isn’t worth it.

  Yes, it is.

  “She’s down,” Rudey pronounced, stepping forward, his gun at the ready. He was ready to fire, Scott could see it as his finger tightened on the trigger and he lifted his Eastern Bloc rifle. Sienna would know what it’s called, Scott thought dully, and this spurred another lancing pain through his skull, as though someone had reached giant hands inside and started to play with his brain—

  Scott darted out in front of Rudey, in front of Booster, both of whom were stalking forward slowly, weapons ready. “Hey!” Rudey shouted, as nasty as ever, as Scott interposed his body between them and Sienna, cutting off their clean shot.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Scott said, his body jerking spasmodically as he walked toward Sienna’s fallen form. One of his legs was dragging in a limp, as though fighting him. Rudey started to move to the side and Scott increased his pace, trying to keep himself between the team leader and Sienna’s prostrate form. She wasn’t making any noise, but she was rocking slightly, and he could see hints of gravel slowly dropping against the pavement as her wounds healed themselves. His leg almost buckled beneath him, but he soldiered on, drawing closer and closer—

  Need to be close, that soft voice said. Danger close.

  KILL HER! the other voice screamed.

  “I’ve wanted … to … hurt you …” He was laboring to get the words out, both sides of him at war with each other, fighting to speak truth and pretense at the same time. “… To … make you … pay …” He reached her and leaned over, cutting off Rudey’s shot from the side as he grasped her at the shoulder, making ready to lift her up. He lowered his voice, meta-low, knowing only she could hear it, and said, “The … smiling … guy …”

  Sienna’s head snapped around and she did exactly what he would have predicted she’d do—exactly what she had trained to do, trained him to do—

  She drew Scott’s pistol as she flew to her feet, yanking him around to use as a human shield. She fired twice, and Booster went down first. Scott ignored the whiplash effect; she’d heard him, got what he was trying to say. More shots followed, quicker, four of them this time, and Rudey’s face dissolved into a mask of blood and bone as her accuracy and speed returned, along with her powers—

  She kneed Scott in the back and sent him to the pavement, hard. He landed on a shoulder and heard it crack in dislocation or fracture, casting a look behind him to see Sienna pointing the weapon right at him, barrel wavering as she turned the idea over in her mind—

  She apparently decided and launched into the air without firing the shot, disappearing over the hangar and out of sight. Lucky me, Scott thought, collapsing from the pain and from the wrestling of two sides of his mind that had battled for control, their conflict still unresolved as he passed into unconsciousness.

  34.

  Harmon

  I stared in near-disbelief at the real-time imagery from one of the Reaper drones on the far wall of the Situation Room. She’d defeated the entire team, killing at least one of the Revelen Spec-Ops people. I didn’t care to do names, but I was fairly certain he was the team leader. “I’m going to catch some hell for that later,” I muttered. No one heard me.

  “Sir,” General Forster said from the speakerphone, “she’s—”

  “Engage and destroy, general,” I said with a stab of impatience. I mean, really. Did I have to do all the thinking myself?

  Of course I did. That’s why I was in charge.

  “Aye, sir.”

  35.

  Sienna

  I’d caught that something was wrong with Scott. He’d just saved my life, but in doing so he’d acted so very weird that alarms were wailing in my head. As much as they could be given I was already under attack by ten metas who’d somehow—through that smiling weirdo—stripped me of the most of my powers. I hadn’t killed him, mainly because I’d been too panicked to do anything but flee once I had the shot. Well, that and point a gun at Scott as my brain leapt to some conclusions that had not been in evidence for a year.

  Someone had monkeyed with his mind just the same as they’d done to Reed and Augustus. Bazinga.

  That little factoid opened up some other questions, though, too, such as: where the hell were Veronika, Colin and Phinneus, who I’d paid to protect my friends? Where was Kat? And where was Ariadne?

  I might have agonized over these questions if I hadn’t suddenly become aware of an AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, in case yo
u were wondering) about thirty yards behind me. “HOLY SHIT!” I screamed, and fired eighteen small-scale light nets along with a few bursts of fire that I tried to direct at the missile behind me as I dove out of the sky like a dead bird. Except I went at more than Mach One.

  The explosion was a real eye-opener, as the missile collided with one of my fireballs and lit off. I’d trained for this, strangely enough, after listening to the agency’s drone operator, Harper, get drunk in a bar one night and explain exactly what happens to a target being pursued by a drone or a fighter jet. AMRAAMS sought out radar signature, not heat, so they were going to come after me, not any flaming blasts I sent out to try and distract them.

  Which meant I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  I cranked up the speed, catching a glimpse of another AMRAAM coming in hot behind me. Given slightly more time to react, I launched countermeasures again, but more carefully aimed. This time I caught the missile in a hard light net, and it glowed brightly as I splashed the AMRAAM, the explosion somewhat buffered by my net.

  I might—maybe—have been able to outrun the drones (and I was pretty sure it was drones rather than active combat jets) that were firing at me, but I wasn’t confident enough to stake my life on it. So I swung around and poured on the speed, flying right back into the teeth of the tiger. Another AMRAAM came zipping by and I tossed a fire behind me as we passed. The explosion warned me I’d hit my target.

  I was past Denver proper, about ten thousand feet up. The drones had followed me far enough out of town that I felt comfortable engaging them, knowing that whatever debris I sent raining down was going to end up in mostly unpopulated areas. Apparently that wasn’t much of a concern for my enemies, which sent another charge of anger through me as I realized that Scott, in his capacity as task force leader, couldn’t have ordered a military drone strike over the United States.

  “Harmon,” I growled as I picked out a flying dot in the distance and came at it head-on, screamingly fast.

  As I drew closer, I realized I’d only slightly miscalculated. I’d expected them to be using the old Predator drones, but no, this one, at least, was one of the new Reapers. Fortunately, they hadn’t built them for close-in dogfighting, and while this one had another missile tucked under its wing, it was one of the Air-to-Surface (a.k.a., can only fire at ground targets) Hellfire missiles.

  I blasted the drone to smithereens, turned north toward another shape on the horizon. I reduced another $17 million dollars of the US Air Force’s budget to scrap, and then closed on a third, smoking it out of the sky. “Nice plan, el presidente,” I said to myself as I made the turn back to the west and hit my afterburners, blasting into supersonic speed. “Too bad you forgot to send out the sheepdogs to mind the flock.” I doubted they’d make that mistake again.

  36.

  Harmon

  I stared at the screens, which were throwing off static along with the simple words “Signal Lost.”

  Sienna Nealon had destroyed all three of our drones, and most likely escaped.

  “We have eyes on target,” a voice announced over the conference call, and another image sprung up on the monitor. It was a satellite image, looking down from space, and it zoomed in to give me a slightly blurry view of a human figure jetting across the sky, heading west.

  “Loss of visual approaching,” that same voice said again. It wasn’t the general. It was probably one of his inferiors, watching with him in the Pentagon’s situation room. Sienna flew out of the frame, out of the range of our satellite, and that same voice announced, “Loss of visual contact with target.”

  “I don’t suppose we have another satellite up there, just looking down at …” I lifted my hands up. “What is that? Utah?”

  “Yes, sir,” the general broke back into the line. “We have another satellite in place over western Nevada and will be able to re-establish contact should she … come out the other side.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “So long as she’s not planning to stay anywhere in the Mountain Time Zone, we should have her, then.” I felt my sarcasm was warranted.

  “Ahh, well … yes, sir.”

  I hung up on the general and his staff and got out of my chair. “If only everyone thought like I did …” I mused, not for the first time. “It’s so hard to find competent people.” I stared at one of the wall-hung television screens and reached out to polish a smudge on it. It was a minor thing, but I needed it to be perfect. “There,” I said to the empty room, and then headed for the door. I needed to find Cassidy, to impress upon her the importance of correcting this miscalculation immediately.

  Either that … or finding a solution to the other damned problem I had her wrestling with. Because if she’d just get one or the other done, Sienna Nealon would no longer be a problem.

  37.

  Scott

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Reed asked, his teeth bared as if he’d turned into an animal-type meta.

  The tarmac of Denver International Airport was still a burning hellscape, though police cars and fire engines were now dealing with some of the chaos that had been unleashed during their operation.

  “I was thinking I was going to shoot her,” Scott lied, his face flushed, shoulder still aching from where she’d hurled him to the ground. “It’s this dream I’ve had in my heart for, oh, I dunno, a year or so while you were off kissing her ass—” He jabbed that hot poker into Reed, figuring he’d see what sort of reaction he could stir up.

  It worked. Reed flushed scarlet and took a step toward him but was held back by Augustus, who was bloodied from his play with the gravel explosion. “Easy, big guy,” Augustus said, flatter and with less care than usual. “You’d want to shoot her in the head if you had a chance, too.”

  “I would have shot her if I’d had a chance,” Reed said, the hostility burning out of him like waves of fire. “I wouldn’t have thrown away my shot!”

  “Yeah, you proved that yesterday,” Scott said, but it provoked no response.

  “Rudi is dead,” Ferko said, his hair restored to its place over his shoulders, secured by the barrettes. Scott looked at him for barely a second, unable to much stomach the weird, snakelike movements. “Because you walked in front of us—”

  “This is my hunt,” Scott said, not putting too much argument into it. “Maybe if your boss hadn’t been so busy asserting his dominance by trying to lead the field, he might still have a face.”

  “Are we gearing up for another fight?” Mac asked, still sporting red, blotchy skin around his eyes where Sienna had burned him. “This time among ourselves?”

  “She wasn’t as easy as we’d thought she was going to be.” This came from Joaquín the Gaucho, who was sporting two black eyes and a bloody nose. Scott couldn’t remember if he’d spoken before or not; he didn’t think so, based on the way the others of his team halted and listened to him. An aura of palpable discomfort passed between the five who remained, and Scott tried to keep his mildly exuberant glow buried deep within. It wasn’t hard, as he was both hurting and still experiencing some sort of split personality feeling.

  “I had her turned down to minimum,” Booster said, his grin gone. Scott had wondered what it would take to wipe the smile off his face. “She still took out—what, all but three of us?”

  “I would have killed her if this lunkhead hadn’t gotten distracted by his baby boner and thrown at me,” Reed seethed, looking at Friday. “Does your brain lose bloodflow when you’re bulking up or were you just thinking with the wrong head?”

  Friday stood very still, head swiveling between Reed and Scott. “I was—she just—she said—”

  “We all heard what she said,” Augustus said, “but none of the rest of us froze in place when she said it. You did that.” He adopted a pained look as he picked at a wound, using his powers to extract a tiny piece of stone. “And unfortunately, you didn’t even take much of a hit before you went down like Glass Joe in Round One.”

  “Settle down,” Gothric said, putting a
hand on Augustus’s head.

  Augustus stiffened at the touch, and then his eyes rolled skyward in rapture. “Ohhh, damn. You know, this is better than the last massage I paid for.” His wounds started to close up before Scott’s eyes, and he finally realized the purpose of the medic patch on Gothric’s sleeve: Persephone.

  “Well, boys,” J.J. announced as he came out of the hangar, “that was an ass-kicking of the sort I have seldom seen.” He didn’t seem gleeful about it, Scott realized as he pulled his neck left and right experimentally. It hurt in both directions.

  “You’ve worked with Sienna for years,” Scott said. “You’ve seen her deal out all manner of ass-kickings.”

  “Yeah, but usually not twenty yards from where I’m sitting,” J.J. said. “I mean, I was right over there, peering around the corner, seeing you get whooped on in real time. Very different experience.” He shrugged. “Anyway, while I’m sure we’re all stinging from this seeming loss—” He seemed surprisingly buoyant now, eyes sparkling, “—it’s not all bad news.”

  “She got away,” Reed said simply.

  “True,” J.J. said, and Scott started to tingle with the faintest hint of worry, “but we had a satellite overhead, watching her vector on approach and exit.” He didn’t smile, but he looked at them with satisfaction. “We know which way she fled, and we know how long it took her to get here after the news broke, which means …” now he did smile, but coldly, “…we have a follow-up move.” He held up his fist, closed tight. “Next time, we just need to take what we learned, and make sure she doesn’t get out alive.”