by P. R. Adams
My hands shook.
“I tossed the grenade in, waited for the explosion, then pulled another. That one went up the stairs.” I exhaled.
“And the gunfire stopped.”
Huiyin looked skyward. “How many was that?”
“Ten. Eleven if you count the baby.”
Her head snapped back to me. “You killed a baby?”
“Unborn. The place was a bakery or something. There was a family upstairs. Mother, father, some older person, two kids. The insurgents were using them as shields.”
“Animals.” She went back to inspecting her weapon.
“Yeah. What about you? How many?”
“Twenty-six.”
“That’s a lot. Does it still bug you?”
She inspected the submachine gun again, then set it down and pulled her machine pistol from a jacket pocket. Methodical. Practiced. “No.”
A branch creaked nearby, and a pinecone cracked against the hard dirt. Ichi balanced on a limb, almost invisible in skintight woodland camouflage. Her kills had been recent. Face to face. She would still be feeling them.
I waved, and she jumped up, grabbed a higher limb, built up momentum, and swung out of sight.
If it all went to plan, she would be killing more soon.
My data device buzzed. Chan’s face, shaded. The background: dark woodlands camouflage netting.
“Updates?” I asked. I knew the answer but needed Chan to say it.
“Six aircraft. Inbound. Military grade.” Chan’s cheeks shook. Anxiety. Drugs.
Dammit! “Other signals?”
A disbelieving stare.
“We’re ready for this, Chan. Any other signals.”
A glance down. “Four air vehicles. Cars. Probably ten on the ground.”
“Probably?”
“Well. Not sure.” The anxiety intensified on Chan’s face, trembling and muscles bunching that said something wasn’t right.
“We need to be sure.”
Chan’s head shook. “Can’t be. Things are…wrong. Different.” Different was a curse word for Chan.
Calm. Draw it out. “Jacinto? This chimera you mentioned?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“All right, can you tell me what you know?”
“Seven coming in. Three hanging back from them. Same signals. Sometimes. About a half mile back.”
Lilly Duvreau and her escort. “How long for the seven?”
“Couple minutes. For the helicopters.”
“Stay under cover, and be ready with your assault packet.”
“What if—” Chan swallowed, looked down. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will. I know you can do this. Chimera or not, you’re better than Jacinto.” I signaled the rest of the team to get ready and forwarded the data, then stood. We had expected military or contractor support. The Agency wanted us as dead as everyone else did. But six? Something told me they weren’t worried about the computing device anymore.
Danny’s voice was in my ear. “Um, Chan’s data?”
“I know. Six is a tall order. You have it?”
“Maybe. With some alterations.” He forwarded video of his position, dug in, looking down on the woods and a winding road. The smaller rifle he used all the time lay a few feet to his left. A tailor-made .50 cal he kept hidden away for delicate jobs was braced on a bipod, barrel tip pushing out camouflage netting. Somewhere out of sight, there was an antiaircraft rocket launcher and two shells, same as the one buried about two hundred feet from my position. Our own twins to match the El Salvadorian android twins. He held up two bullets, each as long as his open hand. “I’ve got some AP rounds, but I’m thinking these might do better with explosive-tipped.”
“Blow out the fuel lines or hydraulics?”
The distinctive whup-whup-whup of rotors slipped through his microphone. “Uh, we’ll know pretty soon.”
Shadows swooped over the treetops—two vees of three aircraft. And then they came into view. Black. Unmarked.
Contractors.
Like I used to be. But operating on American soil.
Danny settled at the sniper rifle, and he fed me the scope data. He targeted the lead craft of the forward group, tracking to the tail end of the power plant above the cabin, then back a little more.
“Power cables,” he muttered. “Hydraulics, fuel lines. Definitely.”
The rifle crack overwhelmed the audio connection. In the video feed, the targeted panel shattered, and particles and fluid sparkled on the opposite side. A thin tail of dark smoke sputtered out.
Danny slid another round in. “I like that. Right call, I think.”
The scope shifted to the aircraft on the right; Danny fired again.
Dark smoke bubbled out of the first aircraft, and the second veered off to the right, quickly losing altitude.
The helicopters broke off, two banking left, two right. The lead aircraft continued on, slowly descending, smoke trailing over its tail boom and swirling around its tail rotor.
Another round, and Danny whistled. “Now comes the fun.”
The scope tracked to the closest of the helicopters, which seemed to be trying to swerve and twist. He found his target.
The gun cracked again, but the round went low. Fluid misted and gushed down the fuselage skin.
“Huh.” Another round. “I guess that’s even better for the hydraulics.”
The remaining helicopters climbed and came around. They had an idea of where he was now.
I could clearly hear the rotors. They were close. “Try to keep them off of us, but watch out for their snipers.”
“Yeah.”
Chan cut in. “Ground cars! A minute out!”
How many had there been? Seven? Figure three per vehicle…twenty, maybe as many as twenty-five. Until Lilly Duvreau and the rearguard committed.
Huiyin signaled she was heading out, then sprinted into the woods to my left.
I closed my eyes, remembered the purity and calm of the place when we’d arrived a few hours earlier to prepare for our supposed meeting with our government buyer. There had been drones waiting, watching for us. Capable drones. But we knew to look for them. So we made like good contractors and prepared for the meeting—loaded guns, selected good ambush spots, and patrolled.
Now violence was coming. Desperate, ruthless violence. And there was no way to know that we had prepared enough.
I headed up the path I’d worked out previously. Not the path I’d taken earlier in the day for the drones to record, but the one I’d found the day before, when I’d buried the rocket launcher. Up a steep slope, then down into a low gulch that ran beneath spruce trees, blocked from overhead cameras for all intents and purposes, physically blocked even from thermal imaging. My steps echoed off raw stone as I sped toward the point where a trail would give them access from the road.
“Twenty seconds to the trailhead.” Chan sounded close to panic.
They were moving fast. Maybe they were finally starting to figure out that we weren’t clueless yahoos. I kept my pace. Anything faster was too risky with such treacherous footing.
About fifty feet ahead, a tree fall blocked the gulch, and the canopy thinned. I would be exposed for a few seconds.
I jumped onto one of the stone walls, then jumped out of the gulch and into the woods. At best, a thermal sensor might pick me up and flash that as an alarm for someone in one of the cars. But the drivers were heading onto the trail fast. Too fast to safely brake or maneuver. And what I needed wasn’t far away.
The trees around me bowed, dropping needles and leaves, then gunfire ripped through the canopy. Fast cycle, low caliber. Chips of branches fluttered down, like thick sawdust.
I sprinted for the only cover I could make out—a waist-high mound covered by vines. “Chan! Air limo!”
“What?” Panic. Not close to but full-on panic. It was like being in VR again. Chan whimpered. “S-see it. Advanced defenses.”
The bullets tracked me, tore through tr
ee trunks with a sound like woodpeckers on speed. I fell behind the mound. Dirt rained down on me. The fan wash from the car sucked up dead leaves that had been driven into the moist earth.
Something banged against my legs—bullets. They were getting closer, tearing through the mound.
“Chan!”
The fans cut off. Almost immediately, the gunfire stopped. A deep, muffled crash, then a groaning and snapping of tree limbs. Then there was the impact against the ground—a loud popping of glass and crunching of whatever composite they were using to form the car’s shell. The sounds repeated as the car rolled.
I popped up from cover, scanned, spotted the wreckage about sixty feet away, nose pointed almost right at me, wheels down. This was almost like a conventional limousine: a driver’s area, a small rear area.
The occupants would be shocked, not dead. The gull-wing door closer to me hung at an odd angle, nearly torn away.
Sniper. Gone now, probably fell out on impact with the trees.
I ran forward, pistol out, tracking the forms inside using thermal imaging. Just two, both up front. Pilots, drivers—whatever. They moved slowly. I ducked into the gap left by the gull-wing door and put a round into both of their necks.
Then I was back on my path, seconds lost, but I still had a chance.
I darted between trees, sprinted in the straightaway, then slid as the landmark I was looking for came into view. “Chan, I need video of the trail.”
“Check display sliver.” Chan sounded calmer.
I pulled my sleeve back, and a composite of a dozen overhead cameras showed the trail the cars had taken. Whoever they’d hired to drive was good. Half the cars were already out of range.
I pulled the detonator from underneath the loam pile where I’d hidden it, then flipped the trigger.
Once again, the relative peace of the woods was shattered, this time by a series of explosions. On Chan’s cameras, doors crumpled inward slightly, and glass sprayed out. Heat flashed through the vehicles and windows: ball bearings, probably some flesh and blood.
Improvised claymores. They should have brought this to a quick end.
I headed for the trail, cutting hard in pursuit of the cars that had gotten through. Someone staggered out of a vehicle ahead of me—black pants and shirt, shredded, bloody, no doubt disoriented and blinded. It could have been a man or a woman.
A bullet to the exposed face ended their misery.
The cars were too far ahead of me. “Huiyin, they’re coming to you.”
Huiyin’s breathing came over the channel first, then her voice. “I see them.”
Gunfire ahead. Her weapons wouldn’t be able to punch through the car bodies and whatever armor the security people wore, but that wasn’t the intent.
Brakes squealed. Metal shrieked.
The cars had stopped.
More gunfire. They were engaging. I could barely make out the tail end of the group at the edge of Chan’s camera range.
“Chan, parking area!” I tried to dig more speed out of a body that was already starting to quiver from too much exertion after losing so much blood.
“Look now!” Chan sounded almost excited. Good.
The video showed different cameras, different angles. The vehicles had stopped well short of where our own car was parked. Two bodies lay half in a car, half on the ground. Huiyin’s bullets had been more effective than we could’ve hoped for. Seven other people—all in black—were pressed against the cars for cover, returning fire.
An eighth moved toward me, crouched.
The drones. They were still getting information on us.
I slowed, got off the trail.
Then I heard it: high-pitched, something between a whistle being blown inside a plastic bag and a kettle boiling over.
“Missile incoming!” I dropped flat and covered my head.
Almost immediately, the whistle stopped, and I thought I might have heard a pop just before a concussive wave shoved me. Heat followed on its tail.
Saplings snapped and collapsed, sounds I couldn’t hear over all the noises.
And then the explosion was done, replaced by a pounding sense of pressure in my head and a painful awareness of silence.
And ringing. Inside my head.
I rolled and swatted at my clothes, then took a desperate look at the display sliver.
The gunman who had been coming at me was down, rolling around groggily. The cars had done okay, but most of the gunmen were slumped, getting to their feet slowly. Huiyin was down, moving slower, smoldering.
I got onto the trail, managing what speed I could. Balance was tricky. The gunman between me and the others got two bullets, just to be sure.
Then my legs wobbled, gave out. Cybernetics failing?
No. Not my legs. Me. Crashing.
Two of the other gunmen got to their feet. Brought their pistols up.
My arms were too slow, too clumsy. I should have forced more of the gel down my throat when I’d had the chance.
Something dropped from the trees, onto the roof of the center car. Brown and green. Powerful. Graceful.
Ichi.
The gunmen turned.
She leapt just before they fired, somersaulted, and landed on the shoulders of the farthest one. She pulled her wakizashi from his eye socket just as it registered in my sluggish brain that she was holding a weapon.
The second gunman turned as she rode the first body to the ground, but he was still slow and clumsy. He fired, the first round tearing away the side of the dead gunman’s face, the second round burying in the dirt about six inches away, just shy of Ichi’s left foot.
She pivoted on that foot, driving the heel of her other foot into the second gunman’s jaw. The gunman’s face slammed into the side of the car, and he fell to the ground dazed. Ichi tumbled toward him.
I didn’t need to see the rest. They were all seconds from being dead.
I headed into the woods, reloading, then holstering my gun. Huiyin’s jacket was torn, still smoldering. I tore it off of her, grunted at the foolishness of the sheer shirt she wore beneath. If it had been some sort of lightweight armor, it wasn’t any use against concussion and heat. Parts had burned away, some of it melted into her flesh in red welts. I tugged the shirt remnants away, wishing I’d brought water with me. I had to settle for pulling the fabric from the welts with shaking fingers.
“Danny?” I shook my head, but everything felt off-center and unreliable. At least the ringing was fading. “There’s a bird up there.”
“Um, three, actually.” Danny whistled. “Two of them have me locked down. One’s losing power, but the other one—”
It sounded like a rocket exploded somewhere close to him.
“Danny?”
“Yeah. Just…the fire’s the problem. Burning away my camo. Shit! I’m pulling the big gun out.”
Ichi crunched to a stop a few feet away, flicking blood from her blade, eyes on Huiyin. “Will she live?”
I threw Huiyin over my shoulder. “It’s mostly cosmetic. We need to move.”
The sound again: a missile incoming.
I dove onto Ichi and covered them both as well as I could while protecting my head. My ears popped from the pressure, and once again, the heat was on me, digging into my flesh like a lover with flame for fingers. It roared on and on, pushing me down against the two of them, consuming the air, cooking me.
And then it was gone.
I rolled off, gasping, screaming, deafened, heart pounding, expecting my body to shut down at any moment.
But I was alive.
Ichi coughed, then groaned. Smoke rolled up from her camouflaged bodysuit. She screamed, rolled, then began tearing it off. Charred…something hit my nose. It took another second for me to realize that I was on fire.
I peeled my jacket off with blackened fingers. My cheeks were sunburned, tender. I swatted the fire out on my pants, then did the same on Huiyin. Her chest rose slowly.
Ichi dropped next to us; I looked away, then
got to my feet.
She grabbed my hand, pressure that seemed minimal, like a child. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a helicopter up there. It’s going to kill us if we don’t move.” I needed to get to the rocket launcher, but it was half a state away. “Can you carry her?”
Ichi stood, cradling the smaller woman in arms blackened by charred clothing. “She is hardly anything.”
“Yeah.” I pointed in the opposite direction from the rocket launcher. “Northwest. Fast. Stick to cover.”
Ichi shifted Huiyin to a fireman’s carry and turned without a word, then jogged away.
Find the strength of that kid. If she can do it, you can do it. I staggered past the cars, caught smoke spiraling up from them, then tried to put at least a little bit of direction to my stumbling. A small part of my brain wished for someone to put me out of my misery, but that would have meant death for Ichi. And Chan. And Huiyin.
I picked up speed, held my arms out for balance, then pulled them in for more speed. The wicked slant the world had taken after the first explosion started to even out. I was back in the woods. Jogging.
“Chan?” I sounded funny to my own ears but understandable.
No reply.
“Chan?”
Had I missed an explosion? Had they found—
“She’s out there,” Chan whispered.
“She?” I almost stopped.
“Assassin. Maribel.”
Shit! Sure. Why not? Maybe they could drop a nuke on us while they were at it! “Where?”
“Not far. Saw her moving around. Searching.”
An android or a helicopter. What did I focus on first? “Can you stay low?”
“I am.” Whispered even softer.
The sound of the rotors grew distinct, clear. My choice was made for me—the helicopter had chosen me.
Good!
I scraped against a tree trunk, regained my balance, fought against a renewed sense of the world turning upside down, and ran into deeper cover. The helicopter drew closer. Louder. A distant explosion echoed through the mountains; Danny dropping the final helicopter that had been firing on him.