But instead of finishing me off, Earnshaw whirled around and stepped to the side just as the bull lowered his head. His horn caught the side of her skirt. The fabric ripped, and he continued past, missing her and me.
The bull’s pass gave me time to recover, and I struggled to my feet before either he or Earnshaw could come at me again. Good thing I did. In seconds, Earnshaw was back to hunkering low, focused on me, as if the bull wasn’t a factor. Beyond her, I could see Heath unhooking the drag and returning to the truck cab, not lifting a finger to help defend his partner from the bull or from me.
Again I wondered what he was up to, why he seemed so content to let me live to cause trouble. Not that I could ponder long, as Earnshaw started toward me, looking for an opening.
I gave her a shifting target, relying on speed and footwork to keep my distance. Although I wasn’t in Earnshaw’s league, I had trained in judo. As a result, I could read her position and had enough of a feel for the way she would attack that I could avoid the traps she set.
Still, I was fighting from a totally defensive position. I needed to find a way to attack, or I wouldn’t last long. Since with each strike, I was offering her a foot or hand, kicks and hits were risky. I had to find a way to beat her at her own game.
The bull turned back around and lowered his head again, pawing at the ground.
She came at me executing morote-gari, going for my legs. My every impulse said to back away. Instead, I shifted to the side, stepping my right leg back and out of her grasp. At the same time I pushed her head down, drilled my full weight down on her shoulders, planting her on hands and knees in the dirt, only one of my legs encircled by her beefy arms.
The bull started his charge.
With Earnshaw holding my left leg, I had nowhere to go. “Bull!” I yelled.
She glanced up at me. Blood covered her mouth and chin, and when she smiled, her teeth glistened red.
If I released my downward pressure on her shoulders, she would be able to spring to her feet. But that didn’t mean she would try to escape the oncoming bull. In fact, she didn’t seem to care about the bull at all.
If I let her up, she would kill me. If I stayed I would be gored.
For a second, I thought about pulling out the grenade. The only problem was the explosion wouldn’t just kill Earnshaw and the bull, it would kill me, too, and maybe others. And once I was dead, there would be no one left to stop Heath.
My fingers closed over the bright red, orange, and green fabric of her skirt. I gave it a yank. The tear the bull had started widened and the seam gave. With one more mighty tug, I tore the garment from Earnshaw’s body.
Spotted gray-and-white barreled toward us, those sharp horns leading the way. A few steps more and…
I fumbled the fabric, gripping the waistband and holding the skirt out to the side.
The bull’s focus shifted toward the bright colors, and he plowed straight through, coming close enough for me to feel the radiant glow of his body heat.
“¡Olé!”
The cheer rippled through the crowd.
I hardly had time to notice, as I was soaring through the air from an Earnshaw toss. I landed on my back, hitting the dirt hard, then scrambling back to my feet. Just as I did, Earnshaw came at me again. Naked but for a peasant blouse and pink lace thong, she reached for the ceramic knife strapped to one thigh and charged.
I stepped to the side, avoiding her at the last moment, but this time pain ripped along my forearm followed by icy cold.
Shit. I was cut.
Letting the pain flow wherever the hell it wanted, I didn’t spare my arm a glance but kept all my attention on Earnshaw and the bull. If I couldn’t figure out a way to fend off both of the beasts and stop Heath, a cut on my arm would be the least of my problems.
Grasping the skirt in both hands, I whipped the heavy fabric around in front of me like a matador wielding his capote in a serpentine motion, my left arm compensating for the weakness in my right.
Earnshaw danced back and forth, looking for a window of attack through the whirling cloth. The bull stared at us and lowered his head for another charge, and in my peripheral vision, I could see the truck moving away from us, circling the perimeter of the ring.
Earnshaw struck first, charging with the blade, and I stepped to the side, letting her thrust behind me into the skirt.
“¡Olé!” the crowd cheered. And just for the hell of it I executed a rebolera—a flourish where I swished the skirt behind my back.
Now it was the bull’s turn. I kept the skirt at chest height, performing a pase de pecho as the bull breezed underneath. He bucked his head upward as he passed through the skirt and barely missed Earnshaw on the other side.
“¡Olé!”
Earnshaw circled me, her center of gravity low, the knife ready. I kept the makeshift capa moving, fabric whirling between us as my shield.
Voices erupted, not just cheers this time, but menacing yells, and I saw uniforms gathering on the other side of the main gate into the ring, and the bull doing a rollback and heading our way.
Earnshaw struck high this time, her hand finding my shoulder, her hip turning into me, as if she intended to use a harai goshi throw to take me down. I grasped her shoulder in an attempt to stay on my feet, still gripping the skirt, the colorful fabric billowing over her shoulder.
The bull lowered his head and plunged his horns into the skirt.
Breath exploded from Earnshaw’s lungs and she was ripped away from me and thrown to the dirt. I flew to the side, falling to a knee before recovering to see the bull bucking his head, drilling his horns into her, then under her, tossing her in the air as if she weighed no more than a supermodel. She landed on her side, her head twisted and looking up at the sky, her eyelids fluttering, still alive.
The bull raced a few meters before turning for another pass.
Launching into a dead run, I scooped Earnshaw’s knife from the arena floor. In one motion, I slashed her throat, severing carotid, trachea, and esophagus.
The bull started his next charge, and this time, his target was me.
The truck lurched to a stop in front of me, barely missing Earnshaw’s body. Heath flung open the passenger door. “Get in!”
I leaped into the truck.
The bull slammed into the door, making the vehicle shudder.
“Go, go, go!” I yelled, but I needn’t have bothered. Heath was already stomping the accelerator. The wheels spun and swerved, dirt spraying behind us. The truck shot for the gate.
We hit the barrier without slowing down, slamming it open. Security officers and police who had gathered outside jumped to the side, a few squeezing off shots after us, apparently unconcerned about hitting the crowd.
I hoped none of those bullets had penetrated the tank in back.
Rubber screeching pavement, Heath raced through the plaza and rocketed out onto the street. He wove between traffic like a racecar driver suffering from dementia, making me grip the door and dashboard, willing the truck to not roll and cover the streets with Ebola. Amazingly we didn’t suffer even a fender bender, and by the time the cops had a chance to get to their cars, we were long gone.
We hit the highway, the fastest track out of the city and into the surrounding mountains.
“You…” I struggled to catch my breath. “You came back for me.”
“Of course.”
“Why not kill me? Or let the authorities deal with me?”
“I don’t want to kill you, Chandler. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Of course I had. I just hadn’t nailed down why. Or maybe the question wasn’t why. Maybe it was more about what. Namely what he wanted me to do for him.
Now that made sense.
“You used me to kill your partner.”
“It was convenient.”
I thought about my warning to him that The Instructor might be setting him up. “And you needed a fall guy.”
“Yes.”
The last piece slid
into place in my mind. It was so obvious; I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.
“Because if I got my hands on the virus, I would destroy it. If The Instructor believes I took it, you think you’re home free.”
A smile curved his lips, wind from the broken driver’s window playing with his hair.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so arrogant. Except maybe my sister Hammett.”
“She must be a lovely girl.”
“She’s a psychopath,” I said. “He’ll find out eventually, you know.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “By the time he does, I’ll have my boot on his throat and it will be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Him and his power grab. The power will be all mine.”
“Heath, what are you planning?”
His smile grew until it was an all-out beam. “Querida, I am going to change the world.”
Hammett
“Sometimes anger is the only thing keeping you alive,” The Instructor said.
Hammett slid on her chest over the side of the blimp, caught a glimpse of the rope ladder as she fell, and managed to snag it with her good hand.
She dangled there, unable to pull herself up, barely able to take a breath with so many broken ribs. Her arm hurt as bad as anything she’d ever felt, and there was so much adrenaline buzzing in her system, she couldn’t concentrate enough to push the pain away.
Hammett considered letting go. It would be a quick, certain death. She’d have failed the mission, but the more she thought about it, the more an Ebola outbreak appealed to her. Human beings didn’t deserve this world. Let the dogs have it.
She peered down at the ground, ready to drop, but she couldn’t force her hand to open. Her will to live was too strong, her training too ingrained.
Before she could try again, she was being lifted. That asshole, Tristan, was hauling her up the side of the blimp.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he said, blood from his forehead gash dribbling into his closed eye.
Hammett smiled. “That just sweet talk, or can you man up and show me?”
He put his hands around her throat, and she lashed out with her good hand, slapping his head, smearing blood into his other eye and trying to blind him. He continued to squeeze, cutting off her air and the blood supply to her brain.
Hammett blacked out.
When she woke up some undetermined time later, she was on her back and Tristan was tugging at her belt.
Seriously? This moron was actually going to try to rape her on top of a blimp? It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. It was also a serious mistake. Tristan had forgotten who he was dealing with.
Hammett was happy to remind him.
She chopped at his neck, which was like hitting a tree, and then caught his left ear and pulled with all she had.
Hammett was strong. So was Tristan. But you didn’t lift weights with your ears, and she managed to tear part of it off.
That seemed to dampen his ardor, and bellowing, Tristan punched Hammett in the face.
She managed to lift her head up in time, his hard knuckles meeting her hard skull. Her skull fared slightly better, and through the disorientation she tried again for his holster, locking her fingers around the butt of his .45, pulling—
—only to discover his holster was snapped closed.
She quickly changed targets, finding his groin, squeezing hard enough to crush walnuts, and even with all his training, he made the male mistake of lowering his hands to protect his junk.
Hammett jammed her finger up into his bloody nose, punching the tip through the cartilage and hooking her knuckle around Tristan’s septum. Then she yanked his face to the side, pulling herself up by his nose, and bit into the bastard’s neck, going for the jugular.
Hammett’s mouth filled with blood, but she didn’t get much more than skin. Her bite had the desired effect, though. When someone was chomping on your throat, the natural tendency was to push them away, and Tristan shoved himself off of Hammett and fell onto his ass.
Free of his weight, Hammett kipped up to her feet, snapped her hips, and reverse-kicked Tristan in the jaw. Then she leapfrogged his kneeling form, twisted around behind him, and unsnapped his holster, removing his .45.
“On second thought,” Hammett said into his remaining ear, “I’m not in the mood.”
She flicked off the safety and emptied the gun into the back of Tristan’s head.
For a moment, Hammett knelt there, almost expecting him to get back up even though most of his skull was gone. But he was dead, a fatal victim of his ego and the little dude in his pants.
Men. What idiots.
She fought an overwhelming wave of pain from her injuries, got it under control, then patted him down with her functioning hand. Hammett found a wallet with a few hundred in cash, fake ID, and a condom he’d never had the chance to use. He also had a radio, keys, a Swiss Army knife, and, as she’d hoped, a tactical flashlight.
Hammett pocketed the knife, and walked, on her knees, over to the hole she’d made in the blimp. Using her new flashlight, she once again peered inside. Grabbing the suspension cable would be tough, especially with only one arm and no real handholds.
Handholds. Hmm…
Hammett crawled back over to Tristan’s corpse, then laboriously dragged him to the hole, scooting on her butt, pulling with her legs and back. When she got him there, Hammett let his arm dangle into the opening. Then she put the flashlight in her teeth, took a deep breath and held it, and locked her legs around his biceps, shimmying down his arm as if it was a rope.
When she ran out of arm length, her handhold literally became a handhold, and she clutched his dead fingers and swung for the cable like Tarzan on a very thick vine.
She touched it with her heel on the first attempt, but couldn’t reach. On the second try, she locked her legs around it.
Here we go…
Hammett released Tristan’s hand and began to rapidly slide down the cable.
Friction burned through her pants, making her thighs feel like she was holding coals between them, and when Hammett reached up with her good hand to slow her descent, she got a nice tear across her palm. But she managed to slow herself down enough to not die or break anything else when she reached the bottom. Unfortunately, she did knock the wind out of herself, the flashlight popping from her mouth and spinning off into the envelope.
Hammett had a lot of practice being without air, but the body’s desire to breathe trumped every other need it had. She managed to get on her knees, seeking the fallen light, but only crawled a meter before her reflexes overrode her wishes and she sucked in a breath of pure helium.
Her oxygen-deprived brain began to immediately shut down, and Hammett figured, if she was lucky, she had fifteen seconds before she was unconscious, death following shortly thereafter.
Fleming
“If you’re outnumbered,” The Instructor said, “don’t be outgunned.”
Submachine gun fire pinged off of her steel enclosure, and Fleming had been unprepared for the noise, like being inside a bell during a hailstorm. She shut out the pain in her ears and aimed at the first group rushing at her, emptying a Skorpion magazine, killing four men before they knew what was happening. Turning manually with her hands, Fleming then motored toward the entrance ramp, near one of the loading docks.
The others had taken quick cover, in doorways, around metal Dumpsters, one poor sap who hid behind a Loading Zone sign no wider than his wrist.
Fleming took the guy unaware of his own girth out first with a fresh burst from the Skorpion, shooting him a dozen times and completely missing the sign. Then she used fléchettes to punch through the Dumpster, grouping her shots to ventilate any target behind it bigger than a jackrabbit. Since the men behind it were many times bigger than rabbits, Fleming witnessed proof of her success by the copious amount of blood that ran in rivulets from the Dumpster corner into the sewage drain.
She reached for the
piranha rounds, loading them by feel, squinting through her eye slit and watching the guards return fire from the doorway, and more from another door a hundred meters north. Fleming pegged them as private contractors based on their ages—older—and group dynamic—every man for himself. She unleashed another torrent of piranha rounds, which ate away their hiding spot until they were exposed, and then ate away at them until they were dead.
Fleming hoped that was the last of them. If not, she crossed her fingers that they wouldn’t have anything stronger or higher caliber than what they currently used, because her armor was working just—
A high-velocity round pinged through the top of her enclosure, penetrating the steel as easily as a wet finger through a slice of white bread, missing her face by a few inches.
Sniper rifle. And Fleming didn’t see where the shot came from.
She gunned the engine, no choice but to go forward, needing to close the distance because she was too far away to hit him with her guns. Her eyes were focused on trying to find the sniper’s position, and the only way that would happen was if he fired again.
He did, the slug piercing her armor and stripping off the outer layer of skin from her neck, leaving her feeling as if she’d been burned with a hot iron.
Fleming opened the hatch, and unloaded the rest of her Skorpion mag at the doorway the shot came from, still barreling forward. Out of ammo, she switched to the shotgun, shooting round after round as the sniper returned fire, turning her steel plating into Swiss cheese.
She finally caught him in the leg, and he dropped the rifle and pitched forward, howling and trying to scramble away on three limbs until she finally rolled up and ended him.
Since he conveniently left the door open, Fleming rolled inside, her modified chair barely fitting through the doorway. No other guards attacked her, but she got a big surprise just the same.
The factory was no longer abandoned. Fleming saw men and women in lab coats running around, heading for a dozen cars parked inside on the south side of the warehouse, hidden from prying eyes outside. On the north side was a gigantic blue plastic tarp, which looked a lot like those children’s bouncy castles, complete with several industrial-size blower fans. But Fleming knew it wasn’t a trampoline inside the plastic. Instead, it was an enormous positive airflow chamber.
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 94