by Todd McAulty
“I’m sure. Stop groping me.”
I laughed in relief. She was trying to sit up and reached out for assistance. I grasped her hand and helped her into a sitting position.
My hand slipped to her wrist, and I casually checked her pulse, making sure she wasn’t in shock. “That’s the only reason I invited you here,” I said, to distract her from what I was doing. “To grope you in the dark.”
“I knew it. You’re an asshole.”
Her heart rate was strong. “And you still came?” I said.
“I figured it was only fair. I chased you first.”
She sat up straight, looking over the tank. She watched the drone retreating to the east. It was at least a hundred yards away now.
“What about you?” she asked. “Did you get hit?”
“Just a minor wound.”
“Where?”
“My hip. The bullet went right through—”
“You idiot. There’s no such thing as a minor bullet wound. Show me.”
“It’s fine—”
“Show me.”
Her hands were reaching out, fumbling over my chest, my face. I guided her right hand to my left hip.
She drew a sharp breath when she found the wound. I swear I was fine until she started poking me and making a fuss. And then, Jesus, it started to hurt like blazes. For the minute that she fussed over me and made hissing noises through her teeth, I thought I was going to die.
“You’re right,” she said at last. “It went clean through.”
“Mmmm,” I said, waiting for the pain to subside so I could talk again.
“But we still need to get it cleaned. As soon as possible. There’s a med kit in the cafeteria.”
“Mm’kay.”
“Come on,” she said. She got to her feet, helping me stand.
“I can walk,” I said, feeling suddenly rather stupid. “I ran all the way here.”
“You only did that,” she said, “because you’re a goddamn idiot.”
We hobbled back to the stairs, with me leaning on her the whole way.
“You want to talk about who’s an idiot?” I said when we were almost there. “Only one of us took on a Godkiller drone with a pistol.”
“You think?” she said. “I was actually aiming at you.”
We got into the stairwell, and she eased me onto the stairs. I didn’t feel too bad once I stopped moving.
“Keep pressure on it,” she said. I could barely see her in the darkness. She was nothing more than a dark silhouette a few feet in front of me.
“The hell with that,” I said. “It only hurts when I touch it.”
The dark blob I assumed was her had moved to the door. “Where are you going?” I said.
“I’m going back to get Asis.”
“Are you crazy? That thing will kill you. And I won’t be there to save your ass this time.”
“I’m not leaving without him. If I do, Capitán Leon will just send another team down here.”
There was truth in that. I dug around in my pocket. The motion put pressure on my hip, sending a jolt of pain up my spine.
“Here, take this,” I said.
She took a few steps closer. “What is it?”
“It’s the drone jammer.”
She took it from me. “How do I turn it on?”
“It’s already on. You just keep it on your person at all times.”
I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure the jammer would work for her. But it wasn’t doing me any good here in the stairwell.
“What will you do if a drone finds you while I’m gone?” she asked.
“Wait for you to come back and shoot it,” I said.
“At least it’s a plan,” Van de Velde agreed reluctantly. “All right. But stay here. I won’t be long.”
“Van de Velde?”
“What?”
“Thank you. For shooting the drone. I’d probably be dead right now if you hadn’t. You’re crazy, but you’re all right.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. With that, she was gone.
It wasn’t easy sitting alone in the dark. Every little sound gets magnified in those tunnels, and in the long minutes I sat at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Van de Velde to return with her man, I heard a lot of strange sounds.
Weird echoes. The distant bang of pipes. Air, whistling through the tunnels like a stealthy tomb raider. Mysterious, unidentifiable noises. Something like the hoot of an owl, from deep in the tunnels. A faraway murmur. From the passageway overhead, a constant whisper, getting louder.
The whisper changed pitch and then location. It was behind and overhead and then ahead and to the left. The sound became crisper, more defined. Like the rotor blades of one of the Godkiller slave drones.
One of its search drones had just entered the stairwell with me.
I stayed perfectly still. I wasn’t so foolish as to think that it couldn’t see me just because it was dark, but there was no point in letting it know I was conscious and mobile. I listened to the thing, tried to fathom what I could from its movements.
It was hovering above and to my left. Then it was on the right, stationed over the door. Then it was harder to pinpoint.
Just sitting there was maddening. It was like being trapped in a car with an angry bee. I wanted to move, to swat the thing, but I stayed calm, motionless and listening.
Then: a new sound. A new, unidentifiable sound. A hissing, like the flow of sand. At first I thought it was coming from overhead, where the drone had entered the chamber, but then I realized it was in the tunnel.
There was light in the tunnel now. Unsteady light, which dipped and wavered, as if cast by something on the move. The hissing got louder. It was close . . . and getting closer.
I was too exposed at the bottom of the stairs. If the Godkiller returned, it could kill me from the tunnel with ease. I needed to get upstairs, out of range of its most lethal weaponry. At least make it a challenge for the damn thing to kill me.
That meant moving. The drone was back, hovering up and to my left now. It would detect me for sure, but that could no longer be helped.
I stood up. The response from my hip was instantaneous: a piercing, tearing pain. I held the stair rail in a white-knuckle grip. You ran eighty feet not five minutes ago, I thought. Don’t you dare wimp out on me now. I took my first steps up the stairs.
Van de Velde appeared in the doorway. She was pulling Asis on the stretcher. The hissing was the sound of the stretcher, being dragged over the stone floor of the tunnel.
Light glared in my face, from the flashlight in her right hand. “Still alive?” she said.
I was about to reply, when she suddenly dropped the stretcher. Before it even hit the ground she’d drawn her pistol and fired up and to the right.
It was a fabulously lucky shot. I heard the drone spin out, hit the west wall. It bounced, then came careening to the ground, where it smashed itself to pieces. Spinning bits of metal danced across the floor.
Van de Velde had the light in my face again. “You couldn’t throw a rock at it? Something?”
“I’m a patient guy,” I said. “I knew you’d be back.”
“Was that one of the Dieu Tueur’s scout drones?”
“Sure looked like it.”
“Damn it. It will probably be here any minute.”
“It can’t fit into the stairwell.” I stepped down, hobbled toward her. “We need to get up the stairs. Come on, let me help you.”
She waved me away. “You can barely move. I can do this.”
“I can help.”
“Just get up the damn stairs. Come on, or I’ll leave your ass behind.”
That was no idle threat. She thrust the flashlight into my hands, slipped her pistol back into its holster, and lifted one end of the stretcher. Then she took big strides toward the stairs, dragging it behind her. A body bag was securely strapped into it.
She started taking the stairs two at a time. Even pulling the stretcher, she was movi
ng much faster than I was capable of.
I followed wordlessly. As I did, I stooped over and snatched up the biggest remaining piece of the drone and stuffed it into my belt. Then I climbed the stairs. One at a time and thin-lipped. I could feel blood trickling down my leg.
She was waiting at the landing, halfway up. “You going to make it, old man?” At least she had the decency to be breathing hard.
“It hurts,” I said. “But your love keeps me going.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “I wish I’d shot you so much right now.”
She let me lead up the second tier of stairs, while she caught her breath. When I reached the top, she muscled Asis up the last of the stairs in one quick run.
There was a rising wind down below, growing to a crescendo. We both knew what that meant—the Godkiller had arrived.
Van de Velde started pulling Asis down the hallway immediately. Ignoring the pain in my hip, I bent down and grabbed the back end of the stretcher with both hands, lifting it off the ground. Together we got forty feet down the corridor before she stopped.
“Set him down,” she said. “Hurry.”
“We can’t stop here,” I said. “Those damn spy drones will be here any second.”
“Now.”
I did as I was told. Van de Velde trotted to my side. She’d drawn her pistol.
“That’s not going to do much good,” I said. “The spy drones are much too small—and too fast.”
She ignored me. “Shine the light back that way,” she said. “Top of the stairs.”
I did. The stairwell was already filling with dust as the drone kicked up dirt from the tunnel. A second later, light stabbed up from below, illuminating the swirling cloud as it spread toward us.
“Steady,” she said. Her gun was pointed at the stairs, for all the good it would do.
Five seconds later, a dark mass spun out of the cloud. The dust seemed to part before it as it buzzed up out of the depths. It was a scout drone, bigger and more lethal looking than the compact ones we’d encountered so far, but clearly of the same design.
The moment it cleared the cloud, Van de Velde fired. She hit the thing dead center, and it flipped in midair.
“Incredible!” I said. “That’s two great shots in a row—”
She fired again. This shot shattered one of the rotors, spraying metal against the north wall. The drone crashed to the stone floor, breaking into multiple pieces, some of them still spinning.
I gawked in disbelief. “Wow!” I said.
I started to move toward it, ready to destroy what was left, when she grabbed my arm. “Wait,” she said.
Sure enough, a second drone emerged from the cloud not twenty seconds later. Another one of the scout drones, smaller and more difficult to hit.
But not for Van de Velde, apparently. She fired twice, and both shots struck their target. It was scrap metal before it hit the floor.
I stared at her in astonishment. “Damn,” I said. “You’re amazing.”
“The day I’m slower than a drone is the day I deserve to get shot,” she said with obvious satisfaction.
We waited another moment, but no more drones breached the cloud.
“We should move,” I said. “It can’t shoot us from there, but it probably has enough missiles to bring the tunnel down on top of us.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
We picked up Asis and hurried down the long corridor. Blood was flowing freely down my leg now. When we reached the pedestrian walkway, I was glad for the excuse to stop and scan behind us, looking for drones. The tunnel was clear.
“Let me see your shoulder,” I said.
“It’s fine.”
“Let me see it.”
Her shirt was matted with blood. She didn’t object while I unbuttoned it and pulled it away to examine her wound.
“Is this where you pretend to be a doctor?” she said.
I held the flashlight close. “I don’t need to be a doctor to see you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“I’ll be fine. We’re almost out.”
“You’ll need stitches for that,” I said. But she was right. Her shoulder didn’t look too bad. The cut was long, but it didn’t look deep, and the bleeding had almost stopped. She’d have a hell of a scar, though.
“How is your hip?” she asked as she buttoned up her shirt.
“Better than your shoulder,” I said.
“You’re a liar.”
We lifted Asis and moved into the pedestrian walkway. From there we made our way toward the escalator. For a moment, as we pushed past the collapsible fence, I got a little light-headed. Everything blurred and all I could see were dots.
“You okay back there?” Van de Velde asked from the front.
“Super,” I said.
Getting to the escalator seemed to take forever. My left sock was drenched with blood, and I was probably starting to leave bloody footprints. My hip, which had been raging with pain when we started, now throbbed with a dull ache.
“There it is,” she said. I’d been plodding along, just putting one foot ahead of the other, but when she spoke I lifted my head and saw that she was right. The escalator, lit by light from above, was just ahead.
When we reached it, we laid Asis next to López. Then we just rested for a few minutes, me with my hands on my knees, trying to regain my strength, Van de Velde leaning against the wall, her head on her arms.
I was the first to stir. “We should get upstairs,” I said. When I stood up straight, my vision blurred again. That meant my blood pressure had dropped, which wasn’t a good sign.
“In a minute,” said Van de Velde. “I want to look at your hip.”
“We’re five minutes from medical attention,” I said, gesturing up the escalator.
She shook her head. “I don’t want Capitán Leon’s men examining you.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because he’ll use it as an excuse to detain you. He’ll transport you to a field hospital, get you doped up, question you for forty-eight hours. I’ve seen him do it.”
That seemed a little too plausible for my liking. “What do you suggest?”
“We left the med kit in the cafeteria. Let me patch you up. That will hold until you get back to the hotel. One of the medics there can look at you.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t mention your injury when we get out. Don’t give the capitán a reason to detain you.”
“Understood.”
“When we get out, make yourself scarce. Walk back to the hotel if you have to. And when you get there, stay out of sight for a day or two.”
I nodded.
We left the stretcher at the bottom of the escalator for retrieval and walked to the cafeteria. The med kit was right where we’d left it. Van de Velde had me lie on the table, and she sliced a six-inch hole in the left side of my pants.
“It’s still bleeding,” she said. “A lot.”
“Yeah.”
She dug around in the kit, handed me a bottle of thin yellow fluid. “Drink this. All of it.”
I did as instructed. It tasted like crappy lemonade, but who knows what it actually was. “Ow,” I said, nearly spitting out the last of it as she jabbed me with a sponge. “What are you doing?”
“It needs to be cleaned.”
“Can’t a doctor do that?”
“Don’t be such a baby. It looks like it’s just a flesh wound. I don’t think the bullet hit your hip bone.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because you’re still walking.” She poked at me a bit more. “I can close this,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Stitch you. I can stitch this closed.”
“Hell, no. I’ll have that done once I get some painkillers, thank you.”
She laughed at me, holding up a thin tube. “I can numb you long enough to get it done. Do you trust me?”
It was an interesting question. I was already trusting her with a great deal. With the
greatest secrets I had. Quite literally, I was trusting her with my life. A little field surgery seemed small by comparison.
“All right,” I said. “On one condition.”
“What?”
“Tell me your first name.”
She lost her smile. She shook the can and sprayed my hip. For an instant it burned like blazes, but the pain quickly abated, leaving only a deep ache. She took an antiseptic spray from the case, applied that liberally as well. Then she got to work sewing my wound closed, quickly and efficiently.
As she was putting in the fourth stitch, she said, “Noa.”
“Noa? That’s a pretty name.”
She didn’t respond immediately. She finished the tenth stitch and cut the polymer thread. Then she dressed the wound.
“You can call me Sergeant Van de Velde,” she said as she packed up.
“Okay, Sergeant,” I said as I sat up. The numbing agent she’d sprayed in my hip didn’t seem to have lessened the feeling in the rest of my leg any. I slid off the table, took an experimental step, then another. Everything seemed to be in order.
I was about to say as much when she turned and faced me. Her right finger jabbed out, with just enough pressure to nudge me off balance, knocking my ass back onto the table.
“Two things,” she said. “Before we go topside.”
“Okay,” I said.
“One. We’re not going to be friends. Got that? Not friends. Not lovers. You’re an American spy. Or Canadian, or British, or whatever. I honestly don’t give a damn who you work for. My men are dead because of you. You risked your life to save us, and in return, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But that’s all I owe you. Sooner or later, you’re going to do something truly goddamn stupid, and you’re going to get caught. And on that day I will buy a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau, and I will celebrate. You and I are enemies. Understand?”
“Understood,” I said, keeping my expression even.
“And two,” she said, “for the record, I don’t wear big-girl panties.”
For a second, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Until I remembered standing in front of her in the hotel, telling her to bring a gun and wear big-girl panties.
“Yeah? What do you wear?”
She leaned forward, putting her hands on the table on either side of me. She slid even closer, until her cheek brushed mine. Her warm body was up against me, and her lips were next to my ear.