The best part, Mole thought, was the fact that he and Alec now each carried an HK53 submachine gun. They would stay silent as long as possible, but at some point Mole expected there would be more serious trouble.
Still, he kept up his cigar-chewing bravado. Careful to keep his voice low, Mole growled, “And Max was worried about these punks?”
Alec shrugged. “She's a girl. She's a worrier.”
They edged forward through the woods and had managed another two hundred yards when five more guards surrounded them.
“Thought you had our back,” Mole said.
“Thought I did,” Alec replied.
Stepping forward, one of the guards said, “Put the weapons down . . . softly . . . carefully.”
So much for having machine guns.
They both set their HK53s down, bending at the knees to do so; then the transgenics exploded into action . . .
Sidestepping the one who had given the order, Mole went for the guard to his left, launching himself and hitting the guard in the stomach with his shoulder. The guard let out a whoomp, as all the air in his lungs abandoned ship. Both guards toppled to the grass, Mole rolling away and jumping up just as the leader's gun barked twice. Mole dodged right and felt a bullet graze his left side, the other bullet striking the guard he'd knocked down in the forehead, as the man tried to rise.
That would leave a mark.
Spinning back the other way, Mole unleashed a vicious side kick that knocked the machine gun out of the leader's hand. From the corner of his eye, Mole saw Alec leap, kicking out in opposite directions, each foot connecting with the face of a guard.
Three down, two to go.
The leader stepped in and delivered a quick left jab, followed by an overhand right, rocking Mole. As the lizard man staggered back, the leader kicked him in the solar plexus, driving the air out of him, knocking him off a tree, and leaving him dazed in a pile on the ground at the base of the trunk.
Struggling to stay conscious, Mole got to his knees, expecting the leader to be on him at any second . . .
. . . but no attack came.
His vision cleared and he looked up to see that Alec—who had dispatched the fourth guard—now had the leader in a full nelson. Before Mole could get to his feet, though, the leader dropped to his knees, pulling Alec over the top and rolling toward Mole, who grunted as Alec struck him and knocked them both to the ground.
The transgenics rose as one and saw the leader scrambling for the machine gun Mole had knocked away. Both of them took off as if fired from cannons, coming up behind the leader, each grabbing an arm and using the man's own momentum against him as they sprinted toward a huge oak.
They passed on either side of the tree, the leader meeting the trunk face first with a sickening crunch, his arms slipping from their hands as his momentum abruptly stopped.
The leader stood facing the tree for a moment, as if it were a door that had been slammed in his face; then, with no more consciousness than the tree, he flopped back on the ground, his face a mask of blood, his mouth hanging open, several of his teeth broken. Guy probably wasn't dead, Mole thought, but definitely out of the game.
Alec asked, “You all right?”
Mole looked down at his left side, stained dark in the half-light of dawn. “Never better,” he said, not wanting to tell his friend that it hurt like hell.
“Like Max says,” Alec said, “let's blaze.”
And they were running.
A pang of worry shook Max when she heard the shots from the other side of the island.
She hoped the others were safe, but—soldier that she was—she couldn't afford to fret about it long. Off to their right she saw a five-man patrol just as they saw her. The guards were only about thirty yards away and their guns came up instantly.
“Guns!” she shouted. “Run!”
She'd already taken off.
Zigzagging, she could hear Joshua crashing through the woods behind her as bullets whizzed past, snapping branches, thunking into trees, the five automatic weapons sounding more like a hundred.
Max and Joshua sprinted on, running for all they were worth, ducking, weaving, dodging, the guards giving chase now but keeping up the barrage. Only the transgenics' special gifts kept them from being gunned down, and Max wondered how long their luck and skill would hold.
Then, suddenly, Joshua went down!
Max heard it and sensed it and turned to see, but she'd lost sight of him as she skirted the bullets still flying at her. Rolling to her right, she popped up to see Joshua throw one of the guards like a football, the man splatting into a tree and sagging to the earth.
Springing to her feet, Max rushed one who was so stunned he didn't even fire as she ran toward him, leaped and kicked, her boot connecting solidly with his face. Blood spewed from his broken nose as he went down, unconscious.
She got a glimpse of Joshua throwing another one into a tree, and that made three down . . .
Another one shot at her, but the bullets went wide right, as she instinctively dodged left. Jumping high, she somersaulted and came down at the feet of guard number four, who flinched just before she decked him with a right cross that knocked him cold.
She looked around for Joshua, found him, then her heart lurched as she realized the last guard had avoided hand-to-hand combat as he tracked his shot and the man now had Joshua zeroed in . . .
Max yelled a warning, but it came too late: the guard squeezed the trigger and fired a single round. Joshua's eyes met hers for the briefest fraction of an instant, still long enough to share love, surprise, forgiveness, thankfulness, everything in that one bit of a second . . .
. . . then the bullet thwacked into the gentle giant's chest, and Joshua hurtled backward, his arms flying out, his eyes going wide, his mouth dropping open, but no sound came out and he disappeared into the brush.
In the next instant the shooter was turning toward where he'd heard Max yell.
She dove for cover, rolled, and—possessed by a burning rage . . . no soldier ever forgave another soldier for doing his duty—she blasted forward, blurring into a zigzagging ghost, the shooter always just missing her as he fired off the whole clip. When he went empty, she swept his legs and dumped him on his ass. As he tried to kick his way back to his feet, Max caught him with a straight right that slowed the guard, but didn't hurt him.
A Familiar.
“Good,” Max said, and smiled a terrible smile. “Time we found out just where your pain threshold begins . . .”
He was a good six inches taller than her, and a good fifty pounds heavier, and if the muscles bulging through the fatigues were any indication, he was probably a good deal stronger than her, too.
The man growled, but it got cut off by the boot she planted in his chest. He backed up, then came forward trying to get in close, where his size would give him an advantage. Max sidestepped him, back-elbowed him in the head as he went by, then—as he turned—she leapt and broke his nose with her boot.
Incensed now, he charged again.
This time she held her ground and—when he hurled himself at her—Max simply went limp and dropped.
As the guard flew over her, she caught him in the throat with an uppercut. The guard sprawled onto the forest floor. He rolled and tried to rise, but it was clear he was losing momentum, his breathing ragged through the blood-filled broken nose, even as he choked from the last punch.
As he sat up, Max was on him again. Three quick rights sent him back down, groggy. When he lifted his head again, Max—tired of her new game, deciding this snake-cult son of a bitch didn't need to suffer, just die—took his skull in both hands and gave it a violent twist, breaking the man's neck like a celery stalk.
She let go of the head, and the limp dead form slumped to the ground.
She went off to look for Joshua and spotted him, spread-eagled about ten yards away, his eyes closed, his chest barely moving. She went to his side, knelt next to him and finally forced herself to look at the wound in hi
s chest. To her surprise, she saw no blood on his coat.
Max steeled herself to lift it back, but then Joshua moaned, opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and in a strangled voice barely above a whisper, asked, “What happened, Little Fella?”
“You were shot, Big Fella.”
“Took one for the team?”
“. . . Afraid so.”
Joshua swallowed thickly. “C-Cold.”
She stripped off her leather vest and covered him with it as best she could.
He moaned, and it almost sounded like a death howl.
“Does it hurt?”
“Hurt,” he repeated. “Like I got punched—hard.”
His hand went to his chest and she tried to pull it away, but he was stronger. Reaching under the vest and inside his coat, he drew out something red, and for the briefest moment Max had a vision of him pulling out his own heart.
But what he had in his pawlike hand was a book . . .
. . . the hard-back copy of Gulliver's Travels she had used to find Ray White in Appleton.
Slowly, Joshua sat up and looked at the blood-colored volume with a neat entry wound in the cover that went almost all the way through. When he riffled the pages, the bullet tumbled out.
“Are you mad, Max?” he asked.
“Mad?”
“Joshua ruined Father's book.”
Relief flooded through Max and she grabbed her monstrous friend in her arms and gave him a big hug.
“Ow!” he growled.
“Aw, did that hurt?” she asked. Pulling back and taking his face in her hands, she gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.
This time he didn't say anything, and when she let him go, a wide smile spread over his face. His eyes were glassy, and he wobbled for a moment.
Then he passed out.
“Big Fella,” she said, and shook him.
He was dead to the world . . . but not dead, thank God.
Plenty left to do tonight, and now she had two or three hundred pounds of dog-boy transgenic to haul out of these woods.
Still, it was a hell of a lot better than leaving his dead furry body behind.
Chapter Nine
* * *
MEET THE NEW BOSS
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
DECEMBER 23, 2021
Just twenty yards from the west side of the house, Mole and Alec huddled in the woods. Between them and the mansion lay the building's blue shadow, one last suggestion of night, even though ten minutes ago—on the other side of the massive, mausoleum-quiet building—the sun had broken through, bringing a not entirely welcome morning. And yet the chill of the night clung to them, as they squatted like oversize gnomes at the base of an oak.
“Where are they?” Mole asked, the reptilian face wrinkling with impatience. “What do you think? Should we go lookin' for 'em?”
“We should do what Max said,” Alec said, “and wait.”
“Mr. Frickin' Rule Book all of a sudden!”
Alec offered up his trademark smirk. “Is it my fault you ran out of smokes?”
Mole said nothing, just scowled.
Alec's smirk softened into a smile. “Relax, buddy. They'll be along.”
“They musta heard the shots.”
“Yeah—and we heard shots, too, remember? They maybe had a little trouble of their own.”
“They maybe got iced.”
“Maybe. But for now we wait.”
Mole sighed heavily and settled in. “All right . . . but it'd be easier if I had a damn cigar.”
“Life with you would be easier for me if you had a damn cigar . . . On the other hand, one look at the smoke and every goon and gun on the grounds'd be down on us.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. It's a frickin' moot point, ain't it, smart-ass?”
A familiar female voice cut in: “Why don't you two try marriage counseling?”
Mole swung around and there was Max, coming up a path between trees, an arm around Joshua's waist, walking him along like he was drunk. To Alec, the smile on his friend's furry face was even a little dumber than usual, as well as inappropriate, considering the circumstances.
“What's up with Furballs?” Mole asked.
“He was shot,” she said.
“What? Jesus—” Mole said, getting to his feet.
“You mean he was stabbed,” Alec said, frowning, also getting up. “We all saw it, Max.”
Helping the beast man along, she said, “That was then . . . this is now—but he'll be okay.”
Mole was helping her with Joshua, who they walked over to the base of a tree, sitting him down.
“Where'd he get it?” the lizard man asked.
“In the front cover,” she said, and quickly filled them in, finishing, “But he took the full impact of the slug—he's pretty shaken.”
Joshua said, “Max kissed Joshua's oowwie,” and grinned stupidly.
Alec and Mole exchanged lifted-eyebrow glances, then Alec said, “I don't even want to know.”
Mole, amused, leaned toward Max, saying, “I got shot, too . . .” Then he puckered his lizard lips, as much as lizard lips could pucker, anyway.
And Max said, “You wish . . . Let's see it.”
Mole showed her where the bullet had cut a crease in his vest and his side; the bleeding had stopped.
“Get over yourself!” she said. “I nick myself worse shavin' my legs.”
Alec and Mole reflected on that image perhaps a beat too long, and Max snapped, “Can we get to business?”
Alec gestured through the trees. “I know about your cat-burglar background and all, Max—but how do you intend to get inside that dollhouse?”
The three-story antebellum mansion made, as before, an intimidating adversary, hedge in front, at least three windows on each floor on each side of the house . . .
“Windows,” Max said.
“What about them?” Alec asked.
“That's our way in.”
The X5 frowned. “We're not going to try to take out the alarm system? Those things'll be as wired as Sketchy on Saturday night. Not very subtle, Max.”
“This from the guy who shot up the whole damned island on the way in.”
Alec looked hurt. “They started it—anyway, I heard way more gunfire from your side.”
She arched an eyebrow, a fist on a hip. “What, are you afraid alarms will alert them to our presence?”
Alec smirked humorlessly. “Well, maybe the gunshots already did that, yeah.”
Mole cleared his throat.
They both turned to look at him.
“Anybody got a cigar?” he asked.
“No,” Max said.
“Of course not,” Alec said.
“No,” Joshua said, and suddenly the Big Fella was standing next to them.
Mole made a mock-gracious “after you” gesture, half bowing. “Then can we just do this shit, please? So I can find my way back to civilization and some frickin' tobacco?”
They each came in from a different direction, breaking through a first-floor window—gloved hands punching a hole and reaching up to undo the latch—and rolling in, into a combat stance. No audible alarms were triggered, though silent ones would no doubt be registering in some security center.
Max had assigned Joshua—seeing as how he'd been both stabbed and shot recently—to go in on the west side; the window Max selected for him was toward the back, probably a study or den. Alec went around to the east side and came in through a dining room window. In the back, Mole barged into the kitchen, while in the front, Max rolled right into the living room. If you're gonna crash a party, Max thought, might as well really crash it . . .
Two guards waited for her, and when she came up, one hit her high in front while the other hit her low in back. She dropped, hit the floor hard, feeling like a gong somebody had sounded, and wondered for a moment if Alec might not have been right about being a little more circumspect in their entrance.
They were big and well-built, both with short, dark hair, and they wore
black TAC fatigues. One was a few inches taller than his partner and had a short, crooked scar on his right cheek. But they were not smart: they should have immediately attacked a second time instead of waiting there, poised as if some invisible referee were counting Max out.
And of course Max wasn't about to be counted out . . .
Bouncing to her feet, she hit the nearest one, the scarred sucker, with a straight, powerful right, a punch that could have put a hole in a wall . . .
. . . and he didn't flinch.
Goddamn Familiars, she thought.
The other one kicked her in the back, but she was braced for a blow and took it well, only when she moved forward the scarred one karate-edged her in the stomach and doubled her over.
And unlike a Familiar, an X5 like Max—for all her superior attributes—could feel pain, all right . . .
Like an overeager dance partner, the scarred boy spun her around, jitterbug style, one hand on the scruff of her neck, the other on her backside, and ran her at the open window. With no more effort than it would take him to toss his jacket on a chair, the big man threw her through the window, over the hedge and into the yard, where she hit with a thud, rolled a couple of times, and stopped in a sprawl.
Standing in the window, the two Familiars grinned at her. Max got up, dusted herself off, and with a toss of the head, flung the hair from her eyes.
“Fellas—I been thrown outta better places, by better people.”
Like an ugly family portrait in the frame of the broken window, the two guards just kept grinning at her. The scarred Familiar said, “You're always welcome here.”
And he gestured with a little “com'ere” curl of the fingers.
Max smiled. “I think I will make another visit. Only this time, just for a change of pace—I'll kick your asses.”
“Go,” the scar-faced one said, and the rest of the phrase presumably would have been “for it,” only Max didn't let him get that out. Instead, she launched herself back through the window, taking both men down with her in a wide generous embrace.
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