Chapter 9
Bleeding out
“What did you do to your hair, Blue?” Bruce asks.
But the other guy, the geeky-looking one with glasses, isn’t studying my appearance. His gaze travels from the weapon I’m holding, to the one Evyan is now pointing at them.
“Whoa,” Cameron says, holding his hands in front of him.
He has a bunch of papers in one hand and nothing in the other. As usual, Bruce has his Leatherman multi-tool clipped on his belt, but apart from that, neither of them appears to be armed. And they’re both dressed in civilian clothes, not the black jumpsuits which are the standard uniforms of the ASTA sniper cadet unit, where they were my teammates.
“Back up,” I tell them, stepping forward so the others can get out of the elevator.
“What the hell’s going on, Blue?” Bruce asks, taking in the weapons, the rest of our group, and Robin lying limply over Quinn’s shoulder.
“They snatched my brother and we came to get him, but Sarge shot him. We need to get him to a doctor, so don’t even think of trying to stop us.”
I keep walking forward as I talk, forcing Bruce and Cameron to back up. I can hear Quinn panting behind me, struggling under the weight of Robin.
“Sarge shot your brother?” says Bruce, sounding stunned.
“Yeah, and she shot him back, so just get out of our way before she shoots you, too,” says Evyan, waving her weapon at them.
“You shot Sarge?” Bruce asks me, his eyes round with shock.
“What, is there an echo in here?” says Evyan.
“I killed him.” The whispered confession is out my mouth before I can stop it.
“Holy shit!” Bruce shoots a glance at Cameron.
“Why?” Cameron asks.
“He had his weapon up and was about to kill Quinn. What was I supposed to do?”
“Couldn’t you just have wounded him?” Bruce says.
“I already did. It didn’t stop him. There was a shot to drop him, and I took it.”
“Jinx, we need to go!” Quinn gasps from behind me. “I can’t carry him much longer.”
“He’s still bleeding,” says Sofia.
I take a few more steps forward. Bruce and Cameron take two steps back. They’re both still looking at me with shocked faces.
“I had no choice, okay? There was no time,” I say, and my voice sounds like a plea.
Cameron and Bruce exchange a long look, as if they’re having some silent conversation.
“Things are going to get really bad, now,” says Cameron. “Even worse than before.”
“Oh, yeah. Much worse,” Bruce agrees.
“It’s now or never,” says Cameron.
“You think so, bro?”
Cameron nods.
Bruce clears his throat. “Right, we’re coming with you. Here, let me help you with that.”
He eases Robin off Quinn’s shoulder and slings him over his own as though he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes, spins around and heads for the door, with Cameron beside him.
“Wait, what?” Now it’s my turn to be amazed.
“We were leaving already,” Cameron says.
“What is going on here?” Evyan demands. “Whose side are these guys on?”
“We’ve been chucked out of ASTA,” Bruce says. “Well, technically I’ve been discharged and Cameron quit.”
“That’s true,” Sofia confirms. “Everyone was talking about it today.”
“Then what are you doing here?” I ask Bruce, as I follow him to the doors.
Through the glass front I can see the rain has started up again, harder than before.
“Discharge papers,” says Cameron, holding the door open for Bruce and Robin to pass through. I follow them.
“We were due to get a transport home in the morning, but Sarge said he’d be off base then,” says Bruce.
Yeah, he’d have been at the interrogation center, supervising Robin’s torture.
“So he told us to bring our discharge papers over here tonight so he could sign them. Hell, Blue, you really shot him? Sarge is dead?”
“He shot my brother and was going to kill Quinn,” I repeat. “He only missed killing Robin because he was shooting with his left hand. It was self-defense!”
“Justified,” says Cameron. “But …”
“Yeah, ‘but’,” says Bruce, shaking his head.
We’re all out of the building now. Quinn and Evyan stride ahead to the plumber’s truck. I pull up my hood against the pelting rain and run past them to the back of the truck. I open the panels on the flatbed and tell Bruce, “Lay him down, gently.”
“Can’t say I think much of your wheels, Jinx,” Bruce says, eyeing the truck dubiously. But he lifts Robin over the side panels and, muscles bulging, deposits him carefully on the corrugated base.
“Neil said his sister’s a doctor, we’ll go directly there. Evyan can call him on the way to alert him, and to get the address,” Quinn says.
Sofia climbs into the back of the truck, jamming herself between Robin and the side, pressing the ball of fabric hard against his wound. Evyan hands me Sarge’s sidearm then gets behind the wheel and starts the engine.
“Why were you thrown out? Why do you want to come with us?” Sofia asks Bruce and Cameron, when they hop into the back of the truck.
“They can explain on the way. We need to hurry!” I urge, swinging off my rifle and climbing inside after them.
“Hang on. Just one sec,” says Quinn, from where he stands in the pouring rain at the foot of the flatbed. “Jinxy, do you trust these guys?”
I glance quickly at Bruce and Cameron, but there isn’t time to think it through logically. I go with my gut, like I should’ve when we were upstairs, instead of allowing Quinn to persuade me into merely wounding Sarge.
“Yeah, I do.”
“With our lives?” Quinn presses.
“You heard her, dude,” Bruce says.
“I think so. Yes.”
In truth, I’m not sure who I can trust. I just know we have to get Robin to a doctor. Now.
I squeeze myself in between Bruce and Robin. We’re all soaking wet and jammed in the back like five sardines lying side-by-side in a can, with me in the middle. If we get stopped again, there’ll be no way to hide us, we’ll have to fight. As Quinn closes the panels, shutting us in the darkness, I hand the submachine gun to Bruce, and Sarge’s sidearm to Cameron. I hang onto Leya’s Ruger and place my rifle on the floor of the truck, with the bags.
With a lurch that jerks a moan of pain out of Robin, the truck moves forward out of the lot in front of PlayState and down the drive to the main entrance. A minute later, it stops — we must be at the gate. We strain our ears above the rain drumming on the metal flaps above us to hear what’s happening outside. Bruce, Cameron and I engage our weapons and tilt them up in readiness, but the guard must just wave us through, because a moment later we’re off again.
“Safeties back on,” I say.
Bruce sniffs. “It stinks in here, man. You think this Royal Flush dude washes his equipment before he chucks it back here?”
I retrieve my small flashlight from my pocket and turn it on. Robin’s eyes are closed, but his face is screwed into a tight grimace of pain, so he’s not unconscious. I can see Sofia has his uninjured wrist under her fingers, taking his pulse.
“How’s he doing?” I ask her.
She moves her head in a gesture which could mean anything, and says, “This is soaked through. Does anyone have something else we could use to staunch the wound?”
Oh God, how much blood has he lost?
Our bags are back behind our head, but they won’t be easy to get into. I twist around and manage to wriggle out of my hoodie and hand it to Sofia, who folds it tight and presses it against Robin’s shoulder. I turn onto my side, facing Robin, so I can check on him.
“Many’s the night I’ve dreamed about having you lying next to me in the dark, squirming up against me,” says Bruce. “Bu
t I never thought it would be in the back of a stinking plumber’s van.”
I shine the flashlight directly at him. “My brother is bleeding out beside me, Bruce — do you think you could just control yourself for once?” I snap.
“Sorry,” he says, sounding chastened and holding his hands up in apology.
The beam of the flashlight glints off something metallic at his wrist. “Your ID bracelets!”
Bruce gets such a fright that he sits up, banging his head on the metal panel above.
Cameron curses softly.
“Get them off!”
“Chill, Blue,” Bruce says, retrieving the multi-tool from his belt.
“Don’t tell me to chill,” I say. “They could be following you even now.”
Was this intentional? Did I make another mistake in trusting my two ex-cadets?
Bruce fiddles with the attachments until he finds the wire-cutting extension. He cuts through first his own and then Cameron’s bracelets and is about to feed them through the crack between the side of the truck and the roof panel when Cameron lays a hand on his arm to stop him. Cameron takes the bands and wraps them through and around a short piece of PVC piping, then he inches back and hammers a fist loudly on the partition between the truck’s back and the cab. We brake suddenly, and even before we’ve come to a complete stop, Cameron opens a panel and leaps out of the truck. Bruce and I sit up to watch as he runs into the rainy darkness. A minute later he’s back and we’re moving again.
“What did you do with them?” I ask him.
“Storm-water drain,” he replies.
“Good idea.”
With this deluge, the plastic pipe and its wrapping will float down the drains and into the Chattahoochee river, and with any luck will be halfway to Florida by the time they locate and retrieve it. It’s a great decoy.
I turn onto my side so I can keep an eye on Robin. When I shiver at the cool metal pressing into my side and the wind whistling through the gaps into the truck, Bruce snuggles up behind me. I tense, but he doesn’t take advantage of the situation to grope or make any more off-color quips, so I don’t push away his warmth.
“So Sarge is dead? You really killed him? Man, I can’t get my head around that,” Bruce says. “I dunno what I feel, even. Sad or angry or just stunned.”
I ignore Bruce’s comments about Sarge, even though they pretty much mirror my own, and instead ask, “So, can you two explain why you’re in here with us?”
Bruce does most of the talking, with Cameron tossing in the odd laconic phrase.
Turns out ASTA has changed radically since I went AWOL. Security is up, freedoms are down, and all R&R weekends home have been cancelled. Two new cadets joined the sniper unit to replace Leya and me. Bruce and Cameron suspect one of them, a guy from Memphis, of being the new mole in the unit.
“He’s a little guy — shorter even than you, Blue.”
“I’m not short.”
“I reckon they thought he’d look like a teenager.”
“He’s older,” says Cameron.
“He’s twenty-five,” says Sofia. Being in the intel unit, she would’ve had access to his file.
“That figures,” grunts Bruce. “I think he’s a marine or something, man, he’s too good.”
From which I conclude that he outperforms Bruce on the shooting range.
The other new cadet is a girl, and she’s eighteen, according to Sofia.
“She could also be the new rat for Roth,” says Bruce.
“Can’t shoot,” adds Cameron.
“Can’t shoot for shit,” agrees Bruce. “Got tits out to here, though.” His hand comes over the side of me and protrudes a good half-foot in front of my own chest. “Maybe that’s why she can’t shoot — her puppies get in the way,” he adds thoughtfully.
“So you quit because you think there are more moles?”
“Not just that, man. I told you — the whole place has changed. They search our rooms, they stopped Dasha selling cash cards, cut off our internet access. Plus, what they did to you when you were detained — I’m still pissed off at that.”
The truck bounces and rattles, and a cry of pain escapes Robin’s gritted teeth. I want Evyan to drive fast, so we can get Robin help sooner, but I also don’t want him to suffer even more pain. It’s killing me to see my brother like this.
I wipe a cool hand over his sweaty face. “Hang in there, Robin. We’re going to get you help soon,” I tell him.
“Tests,” says Cameron.
“What tests?” I wonder if Cameron’s intentionally trying to keep me distracted from my fears.
“Oh, I forgot about that!” says Bruce. “They’ve been taking all the cadets, unit by unit, to this medical center and running a bunch of tests on us. We had fitness tests and weird stuff, too — brain scans and testing us on virtual reality sims while we had wires stuck on our heads.”
“FMRIs and EEGs,” Sofia says.
“Did they do it on y’all, too?” Bruce asks her.
“Not yet. We’re only due to go the week after next. But I know about it because three of the other intels are working on analyzing the data.”
“Jeez, man. They control everything we do, and now they want inside our heads too.”
“But I never figured you’d quit, Bruce,” I say.
“Yeah, and I never figured you’d kill Sarge, Blue,” he retorts. “Besides, I haven’t told you the worst of it.”
Chapter 10
Outraged
“There’s more?” I ask Bruce.
I want all the details. Concentrating on this story keeps me from sliding into full-on panic over Robin.
“Two days ago, Sarge and Roth called me in. Sarge said nothing.” Bruce pauses, and I know he’s still trying to grasp the fact of Sarge’s death, just as I am.
“And Roth?” I prompt.
“She was all smiley-like. Which makes her look pretty scary, let me tell you,” Bruce says. “Tells me she needs a new set of eyeballs on the unit now that Leya has been redeployed to other duties.”
“She asked you to be a mole?” That would not have gone down well with Bruce.
“Yeah! Can you believe it? She genuinely thought I’d be pleased to be her new pet rat! And Sarge just sat there, not objecting or anything. So I told Roth — I thought that’s what the new cadets were for, but she just laughed and told me not to be paranoid. I didn’t know what to think. Either she didn’t trust the others and wanted me to spy on them, or she didn’t trust me and was testing me, and would compare my reports to the ones from the others.”
“So you refused?”
“Of course I did. I told her nothing would make me spy on my squad. And she was all, ‘Nothing? Really?’” Bruce simpers in imitation of Roth. “‘Then we have no use for you in the program, cadet. Either you follow orders, or you can pack your bags and leave.’ Just like that.”
“Huh.” Just like Zonia was with me, when I refused to shoot President Hawke for the rebels.
“So I told her where she could shove her orders, and she told me I was dismissed.”
“Then me,” says Cameron.
“Yeah, we figured Cameron would be next, so he saved her the trouble and quit. And now with you icing Sarge and snatching your brother, I reckon they wouldn’t even have let us leave tomorrow.”
“Lockdown,” says Cameron.
“Yeah, they’d seal the whole place and we’d be stuck tight as spam in a can. But I’m not too bummed about leaving, to be honest. I was getting cabin fever — we were hardly even going out on missions anymore.”
Ah, missions. “Guys, there’s something you need to know.”
“Why you went?” Cameron asks.
Perceptive, watchful Cameron knew there was something really wrong those last days I was at ASTA. He’d told me that whatever I was planning to do, I wouldn’t be able to do it alone. And that when the time came, he’d want in on my plans.
“Are we about to hear the real reason you went AWOL? Because they’ve
told us a stack of crap about you, Blue,” Bruce says.
“About me?”
“They said you’d run off to join the terrorists and are behind a bunch of attacks at government sites, and are planning to assassinate the president.”
“Never. Not Jinx,” says Cameron, his voice confident with conviction.
I’m touched by his faith in me, but I squirm a little. The story about the planned assassination, at least, is not completely groundless.
“Yeah, Cameron and Mitch and I didn’t believe that, no way.”
“And Tae-Hyun?” I ask, wondering what the remaining member of our unit thinks of me now.
“He never said. Mind you, he spends most of his time drooling over the new girl’s assets, and showing her how to hold her weapon. I bet he wishes he was showing her how to hold his —”
“Bruce.”
The truck corners sharply, turning Robin onto his injured shoulder. He whimpers and passes out. I bat away the plunger that rolls up against my head and ease him onto his back again. Sofia and I exchange fearful glances, but neither of us knows what more we can do.
“Yeah … so we reckoned if they would tell us such BS about you, they’d lie about anything, and we couldn’t trust a thing they said.” Bruce pauses for a moment, then lays a hand on my upper arm and asks softly, “You haven’t joined the terrs, have you, Blue?”
“No!”
Behind me, Bruce gives a deep sigh of relief. Then he asks, “So why did you run away?”
“I found out something — something bad — and Sofia checked it for me. Guys, we’ve been shooting M&Ms. Maybe even terr suspects.”
Cameron sucks in a quick, shocked breath of comprehension and mutters, “Not acceptable.”
But Bruce says, “Yeah, and?”
“Killing them, Bruce, not darting them. Those M&M rounds were filled with poison, not tranquilizer. Some of the darts for suspects too, for all I know.”
Bruce lets loose with a stream of curses and complaints. He’s not so much appalled at the realization that he’s been killing plague victims and perhaps suspected terrorists — Bruce has always believed that both those groups should be “neutralized” — but he is outraged that he’s been doing so without his knowledge, that ASTA have been lying to him about more and for far longer than he ever suspected.
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