Ice Cold Kill

by Dana Haynes

  She dared to glance around again. Asher looked right at her, lights flickering across the flat frames of his glasses. She saw what he saw: his childhood friend, his oldest extant acquaintance in all of the world, standing with a sleeveless hooded sweatshirt and cartoony boots shoulder-length apart, wearing a ridiculous skirt, hair gray with dust and asbestos, firing two-handed and paring his team by a third.

  Asher ducked into the crawlway.

  * * *

  Where are you, Sahar! Belhadj chanted silently to himself from his catwalk halfway up the grain silo. His ears still rang from the proximity of the flying gunship’s machine cannon. No way you are cowering under this assault. You have an “out,” you mongrel!

  He lifted his binoculars, thumbed off the night-scope status, and began scanning the now-bright streets in every direction.

  * * *

  Because of the tear gas billowing in the streets, the other two dozen soldiers under the baton of Colonel Céline Trinh held back. That left the tank-tread assault vehicle and Trinh’s own, boxy command vehicle on point, Le Tigre hovering over them by four stories.

  Trinh activated her headset. “Tigre! Bring it down! Disperse the gas! Ground forces: get ready to move in!”

  * * *

  The helicopter dropped straight down until it was even with the roof of the factory. Its propeller wash hit the tear gas, which began to billow and roil, rising and dispersing, clearing the way for Trinh’s ground forces.

  * * *

  With Asher’s team gone, Daria was the only one still being fired upon.

  It was just possible, she realized, that she had not thought this thing through as well as she might have.

  Shots were still flying into the ruined factory but from street level, not from the air. They also were coming in twos and threes, not the blinding clip of an airship’s rotating cannon.

  Still, blind though the shots may be, they were sufficient to keep Daria from making a dash for the trapdoor.

  She glanced around the pyramid of oxygen tanks. She had killed two of Asher’s men and wounded a third. That man was alive, blood glistening in a spreading stain above his belt. He was struggling to ratchet a new magazine into an automatic weapon.

  The French have a damn tank! Daria realized. She could hear its treads grinding up the street, turning it to loose gravel. The assault vehicle was the source of the random firing into the factory, which kept her pinned down. All I need is for one of their bullets to rupture another air tank, and there goes my cover.

  More heavy shells smashed into the room. A loud, low, resonant groan escaped from the very soul of the factory and three wooden support beams cracked and fell from the ceiling, smashing through the walls of the white plastic cube room and then through the rotting floorboards.

  Daria glanced around. A few weapons had been scattered about and abandoned, but nothing to match an urban assault vehicle.

  Near the trapdoor, the wounded Ivorian soldier pushed a magazine into his Sten gun and struggled to ratchet the slide. “You … will die!” he coughed, blood spewing from his lips. “You bitch! Fuck—”

  God, but the man had become annoying! She reached around the tanks and shot him in the head.

  First things first. Deal with the tank. Then chase Asher.

  She saw tool kits, acetylene torches, sawhorses, a makeshift toilet, tables with canned food, and Sterno heaters. Her eyes lit on a massive iron wrench as long as her leg. It looked more like a cartoon notion of a caveman’s club than an actual tool.

  Perfect.

  She tucked away the Glock and drew the spade-blade from her boot. She sawed through the two web belts that tied down the pyramid of oxygen tanks. The tanks themselves were lined up perpendicular to the ruined north wall. A camouflaged camp tent stood between the tanks and the wall. She had no idea what lay within the tent but didn’t much care.

  Daria dared to sprint out of the cover of the pyramid. She grabbed the massive wrench and dragged it back. The beast weighed at least a quarter as much as Daria herself. Blowing sooty strands of hair away from her eyes, Daria gripped the wrench with both hands. She huffed, gritted her teeth, and lifted the massive spanner over her head.

  Howling, she slammed it down on the release valve of the highest tank in the pyramid.

  The valve shattered.

  The high-pressure air blasted out of the broken valve exactly the same way that rocket propellant works.

  The tank flew. Not straight up, like a rocket. But straight out.

  * * *

  Colonel Céline Trinh activated the all-call button on her communications unit. “Everyone, move in. LeTourneau, take point. Duvaliere, bring your people—”

  A metal missile, six feet long, screamed out of the factory, missing the assault vehicle by inches.

  “What was that! What was that!” someone shouted over the comms.

  The gunship pilot’s voice sounded. “Taking fire! Taking fire! They have missiles!”

  Colonel Trinh tried to regain order. “Report! What’s happening What’s—”

  A second metal cylinder erupted from the factory’s ruined wall. This one connected to the left front-quarter panel of the assault vehicle. It did no serious damage. But the vehicle pivoted five degrees on its central axis, its treads grinding up the street. Inside, its crew was jarred and shocked, one man falling out of his seat, his head slamming into a console.

  Voices rose over each other across the communication arrays. “Artillery! They have missiles! Fire! Fire!”

  * * *

  From his vantage point, Belhadj saw a sewer grate pop open in a culvert. Men began racing away. One wore round glasses and had thinning brown hair. Belhadj tried to bring his long gun around by shifting his position on the tight, narrow platform. Not fast enough. Asher Sahar and his crew raced away from the culvert, around the edge of the silo, and were lost from Belhadj’s line of sight.

  Cursing God, his attention was drawn back to the street scene. Something exploded from the factory. Belhadj peered through his night scope.

  They were oxygen tanks! Oxygen tanks were being fired like missiles! Someone was—

  No, he corrected himself. Not someone.

  Belhadj grinned beneath the binocular grips. He recognized the insanity of it all. She lived. She was giving the French hell. And she remained Belhadj’s best hope of reacquiring Asher Sahar.

  Belhadj swung the silenced Sako rifle back around and lined up his crosshairs in Le Tigre’s rear stabilizer propeller.

  * * *

  The pilot pointed at the factory, his gunner bringing the rotating cannons back online. “Base, lining up for—”

  The gunship’s stabilizer blade shattered.

  Klaxons sounded in the cockpit. The yoke jerked in the pilot’s hands, a mind of its own, as the warbird began rotating on its central vertical axis.

  “Base! We are hit! We are hit!”

  The helicopter’s long, heavy tail section—shaped more or less like the striking surface of a hockey stick—had served to stabilize the flying weapons platform. Devoid of its propeller, the tail section’s mass threw off the gunship’s balance. She began spinning in place.

  Until the torque offset the uplift of the main, overhead propellers.

  When that happened, Le Tigre began dropping.

  * * *

  The firing from outside stopped after Daria had blasted her fifth oxygen tank. Good thing, too. Her arms felt like linguini and she doubted she could lift the monstrous spanner over her head a sixth time.

  More rafters cracked and plummeted from the ceiling, tearing down sections of the white plastic walls. Tear gas began billowing in. The huge support column, behind which she initially had ducked, splintered along its entire vertical length, the roof above it groaning and dropping a meter.

  From the corner of her eye, she noted the now-ruined, camouflaged tent fluttering away. Where it had stood she saw overturned medical equipment and two field hospital gurneys, both on their sides. Thick pools of clotted
brown liquid spread from them both. She recognized old blood when she saw it. She had caused enough such stains in her years.

  Daria had no time to ponder. She had bought herself a few precious seconds. She sprinted toward the bolt-hole.

  “W-wait…”

  A voice reached her. She noticed a man, down on his back, his right leg missing below the knee, a small pool of blood encircling his lower torso. The man wore expensive, well-tailored civilian clothes, even a lavender pocket square, and Daria caught a whiff of expensive cologne.

  “Please … God … please … don’t leave … me,” the man begged in French, his eyes bulging in panic.

  The well-dressed gentleman was completely out of place, like a crystal chandelier hanging in a latrine.

  This man had been of value to Asher.

  Daria checked the man’s leg. The heavy-caliber shell had gone straight through his leg, hot enough to partially cauterize the wound. It was the only reason he hadn’t bled out. Yet.

  She grabbed the man’s lapel with her left fist and jumped down into the ripe drainage pipe below, dragging the dapper civilian behind her, leaving a wide blood trail. He landed like a sack of onions.

  The ceiling above them continued to collapse, meaning the tunnel was no safer than the floor they had abandoned. Daria began backpedaling as quickly as she could, dragging his ass and one and a half legs behind her across the boards that had been laid down for traction.

  Somewhere beneath the soot and dust and grime and sweat-slick hair, Daria Gibron’s eyes sparkled.

  Nineteen

  The gunship didn’t plummet; it retained enough lift to retard its descent. It still landed hard on the urban assault vehicle, ruining both.

  Nearby, the roof of the factory collapsed into the third floor, and the third floor began its now-inevitable collapse into the second floor.

  The destruction was too close to the piled-up ruins of the two attack vehicles for Colonel Céline Trinh’s comfort. But she wasn’t willing to ask a soldier or airman to do something she, herself, wouldn’t do. She strapped on her own sidearm, buckling the belt over her narrow hips. “Captain LeTourneau! Meet me at Le Tigre! Bring Renault and Gilbert!”

  She ripped off her headset and threw open the rear door to the UPS-style truck. She leaped down into one of the grooves that the assault tank had left in its wake, concrete turned into rough coffee grounds.

  Her two communication techies joined her. Where their colonel went, so did they.

  Trinh didn’t look three months past fifty-five as she raced toward the devastation, her lace-up boots tearing up the distance, her senior officers arriving from the opposite direction.

  The factory shuddered and upper-story windows exploded, creating glittery rainbows of moonlight over their heads. Trinh ducked, arm up over her short-cropped hair, as glass shards rained into the street.

  The acrid stink of tear gas permeated the scene and reminded Trinh of spoiled eggs. The rotor wash from Le Tigre had dispersed enough of it, but some of her men donned bandannas across their mouths and noses.

  Trinh turned to one of her communications people, who followed her everywhere. “Headlamps!” she bellowed over the roar of everyone and everything else on the street. “Tell everyone: Cars, trucks, get this scene illuminated!”

  The strong strobe of Le Tigre lay smashed against the top of the assault vehicle. A bar of five high-power LED lights atop of the command vehicle provided an anemic alternative, and, coming from street level, threw elongated shadows everywhere.

  The colonel turned to the ruined factory. Her eyes were watering now.

  For a brief time they had had thermal images of the interior, but the insertion of tear gas had degraded that capability—the dense gas tended to mute temperature variations. And besides, like the strobe, the infrared camera lay in a smoldering heap on the street.

  She’d come looking for Belhadj and Gibron. Her airship had revealed an estimated ten to twelve hostiles on the ground floor of the building at one point. And she knew Gibron had been in the building. Belhadj? No one had seen him at all.

  She had no doubt that the attack had neutralized whatever terrorist war party Belhadj and Gibron had formed inside the factory. But the building looked far too unstable for a follow-up raid. The job now would be to get a mobile camera and transmitter in there, and to start identifying the bodies.

  At least the building hadn’t caught fire. Trinh counted that as a minor blessing.

  She reached the downed gunship just as the pilot kicked open the port-side door. It took three kicks; the door was stuck in the bent airframe. He held his broken left arm pinioned against his flank.

  One of her senior officers dashed around the wreckage. He was bleeding from his leg.

  “Paul! Get the gunner!” Trinh shouted, hauling the pilot’s good arm over her shoulder and half-carrying him away from the disintegrating factory.

  Men emerged from the ruined urban assault vehicle, shaken up, banged up, but alive.

  Céline Trinh stepped over a six-foot-long metal tube lying in the street. It was one of the “missiles” that had attacked the assault vehicle. She realized now that it was an oxygen tank with a smashed valve. As weapons go, it had been all but useless. But as diversions go …

  With the big man’s arm over her shoulder and his weight against her hip, Colonel Trinh took another look back at the factory.

  * * *

  Grunting, her muscles screaming, Daria backed out of the drainpipe, moving from pitch-black to night gloom, into the culvert by the railroad tracks. She sucked cold, clean air into her lungs and fell on her butt. The well-dressed man’s head and shoulders thumped down on to the winter-hardened ground between her spread legs.

  She sat, huffing, and wiped gritty hair away from her face. Her hand came away chalky with sweat, dust, and asbestos. She hawked up a gob of particulate and spat on the ground. Her arm muscles twitched with fatigue.

  The civilian—Asher’s well-dressed civilian—hadn’t bled out yet. He moaned, unconscious.

  Daria struggled to her knees and whipped off her stolen black hoodie, leaving on the white undershirt, now a grimy gray. She twisted the sweatshirt into a tourniquet for the man’s severed leg. She realized she should have done that inside, but with the building under assault, she’d risked waiting.

  A sweep of headlights raked the culvert, dazzling her. Brakes squealed. Her night vision obliterated, Daria twisted on her knees, drawing the Glock, aiming for the headlights. Now what? She squinted into the light.

  A voice boomed in Arabic. “Get in, idiot!”

  She lowered the auto. By all the sinners in hell.… She groaned. Surrounded by enemies, outmanned, outgunned, and who shows up for the rescue but Khalid Fucking Belhadj!

  * * *

  Belhadj helped her carry the deadweight civilian into the back of the tall, boxy truck. They set him down on a gridded metal floor, none too gingerly. Belhadj raced forward to the cramped driver’s seat.

  “Asher…” Daria gasped, on her knees. “I saw him.”

  “Escaped. Same route as you.” Belhadj jammed the truck into gear and the tires squealed. “Who is this?”

  Daria hacked a wet cough and pushed the Frenchman over enough to retrieve his kid leather wallet. She thumbed through it.

  “Georges Rabadeau. Doctor.”

  “What is Sahar doing with a doctor?”

  The truck veered around a corner and Daria braced herself. “Don’t know. They had a field hospital set up inside an airtight room.”

  Daria idly pocketed the doctor’s eight hundred euros—waste not, want not—and added it to the wad she’d stolen from enforcer girl. She fingered a laminated rectangle from the doctor’s wallet. “La Société Européenne de la Pathologie.”

  “My French is not—”

  “Pathologist.”

  Belhadj’s face clouded over. “Foreboding.”

  “A bit.” She rocked as the truck took another corner, and a thought hit her. “Did you bring down
that attack helicopter?”

  Belhadj shrugged, eyes on the road. “Yes.”

  “Cobra?”

  “No, a Tiger.”

  “Tiger? They’re good.”

  Belhadj grunted. “Did you hurl oxygen bottles at a fully armored assault vehicle?”

  Daria wrinkled her nose. “Well, it seemed like a good idea before you said it out loud.”

  Catching her breath, she took in her surroundings, the banks of computers, the monitors, the bolted-down chairs, subway-style support straps hanging from the ceiling, the weapons cabinet. Slowly, she smiled.

  “Cheeky bastard! You stole a command vehicle!”

  Belhadj didn’t turn around, but she could see from his shoulders that he was preening a bit.

  “Not bad,” she conceded.

  “Thank you.”

  “Fast. Armored. A weapons cache. Computers…”

  The Syrian allowed himself a smile over his right shoulder. “Well, I—”

  “Not as impressive as the one I stole. But, you know…”

  The big man gave her a surly glower and drove.

  Twenty

  North Bethesda, Maryland

  John Broom met up with Major Theo James of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. They met at a mom-and-pop diner with a décor right out of Happy Days. John hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but it wasn’t the barrel-shaped Irishman in khakis, Notre Dame sweatshirt, and denim jacket. The major’s smile brightened a lumpy, slightly square face beneath a receding, red hairline.

  “Major. Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “Theo will do. You want something?”

  John ordered decaf coffee, since it was going on 7:00 P.M. While Theo James ordered regular coffee with cream and sugar, and a slice of apple pie. “Little-known fact: there are no calories in apple pie if my wife doesn’t hear about it. You don’t have to look it up. I’m a doctor.”