My radio was missing, probably somewhere back in the train. I still had my phone, but when I checked I had no service, probably because of Kat’s cyber-attack. On the bright side, it looked like the witnesses trying to call the gendarmes weren’t having much luck getting through either. By the time I reached the fence, the remaining witnesses had retreated. As pissed off and messed up as I was right then, I probably looked like death incarnate.
I clambered over the fence and practically fell over the side. My balance was all screwed up, but I got right back up and wobbled after Anders. Gun leveled, I approached the car, and sliced the pie around the trunk. There was blood there, but Anders was already gone.
He was out of sight, but had left a red trail for me to follow. I could tell by the smears he’d crawled across the asphalt, keeping the car between us. Then it turned to droplets as he’d stood up again. The dots got farther apart as he’d started running—I glanced around—into a construction site. He was bleeding bad, but Anders was slippery. If I gave him too much of a lead he’d hijack a vehicle or find some other way to escape, which meant I needed to hurry. Only he was also a malicious, clever bastard, he’d know I was thinking that, and he could be lying in wait to ambush me, which meant I was better off taking my time while his blood pressure kept dropping.
Except I wasn’t exactly in good shape either. I just wanted to lie down and pass out. Plus, for all I knew somebody had gotten through and the cops were on their way, and oh yeah . . . don’t forget the nuclear bombs speeding toward their targets. So I set out at a run toward the construction site. It wasn’t much of a run, but it was the best I could do since my chest felt like it was on fire and my legs were made of lead.
The construction site was still laying a foundation. It was nothing but dirt holes, footings, and rebar. If there were any workers here this early, they had better have seen Anders coming and gotten out of his way. Which was good, because if he’d taken a hostage, I was in a bad enough mood I probably would have just shot through them, and I had enough baggage already.
There was some shouting ahead of me, followed by a meaty impact. I moved around a stack of concrete forms and spotted Anders at the edge of a drainage ditch filled with muddy yellow water. He’d just brained a construction worker over the head with a stout length of rebar and was in the process of stealing his car keys. Anders looked like shit. He’d been cut by glass, fists, and teeth. The bullet had hit him low, through the side of his abdomen. It looked too shallow to have punched any vital organs, mostly just muscle and subcutaneous fat, but that wound was bleeding profusely and running down his leg. I’d been aiming at his center of mass, but in my defense, I could barely see my distant moving target, and Valentine’s gun hated me, so it had been good enough.
I stopped twenty feet away and aimed the revolver right between his shoulder blades. I cocked the hammer. It was just for dramatic effect. Even I couldn’t miss with this damned thing at conversational distance.
Anders slowly turned. His chest was heaving from the exertion. I wouldn’t say he looked defeated—I don’t know if a warrior like him could even understand the concept of defeat—but he knew I had him dead to rights.
“Do it then.”
“Tell me where the other bombs are, and I’ll let you walk.”
He laughed. Even I’m not that good of a liar. But the fact I’d not simply just blown him away told Anders he had something to bargain with. He pressed one hand against his bloody torso. “How about this, Lorenzo? I give you two targets, you let me drive away, then I’ll call and give you the other two.”
“I already know two.”
“Fuck it then.” Anders grimaced, as the blood continued to roll between his fingers. “I’m not that committed. I only wanted to take over Kat’s empire . . . I would’ve made a great crime lord.” Anders was acting cooperative, but he hadn’t let go of that piece of rebar or those car keys. “Then I’ll give you one more. You’d better decide fast. Paris, London, and Brussels, they’re rigged for a simultaneous detonation, and you’re running out of time.”
Exodus had stopped one at Evangeline. That had to be the Paris bomb. I could only hope Reaper and Bob had figured out the Belgian one. “And the fourth?”
Anders gave me a malicious grin. “Kat’s primary target, the council. That one left hours ago. Hell, I think some of the Illuminati leaders were actually riding on board with it. Those clueless fucks were heading to their fancy secret meeting. The whole cabal, all her competition, all in one spot, and the best part is they’re all there just to talk about what to do about her. Kat has a sick sense of humor that way. Toss your piece and I’ll tell you how to disarm all of those bombs.”
It had to be a trick. “You think I’m stupid?”
“You think I ever would have tried to escape on that train with one if I didn’t have a way to stop the countdown? I can transmit a code that will shut them all down.” Anders was hard to read at the best of times. Bleeding, in pain, and with nothing to lose, it was even harder to tell. “Let me go, and the code is yours.”
My gut told me he was jerking me around. He’d ended up on that train because they’d been surrounded, taking fire, and it was the one way out. “You’re lying.”
“You willing to take that chance, cowboy?”
I had to follow my gut. “You might not be that committed, but Kat is. With her there’s no backing down. No second thoughts, no cold feet. When she launched, that was it. There’s no magic code to take it back, because Kat knew if there was, then someone close to her might be tempted to use it. She’s willing to burn the world to get what she wants, but someone else involved might turn out to have a soul.” I shook my head. “No. There’s no code. She wouldn’t allow it.”
Anders eyes narrowed. Damn it, I had been right. “How’d you know all that, Lorenzo?”
“I made her that way.”
Cool as could be, Anders lifted the big chunk of rebar like it was a club. He was done playing games. He was going to go for it.
I pulled the trigger.
Click.
It was the loudest sound in the world.
Click. Click.
Valentine’s revolver was empty.
I hate this fucking gun.
Anders smiled. His teeth were stained red. It was the most murderous, bloodthirsty, confident expression I’d ever seen. And then he came over to beat me to death.
VALENTINE
There was an angel standing over me when I opened my eyes. She was speaking but I could barely hear her. Every sound was muffled, as if I were underwater, except for the rapid pounding of my heart. Am I dreaming? Am I dead?
I knew I had been here before, only that angel had turned out to be Ling, and she had saved my life. Not just there, but ever since. That had been Mexico, where we had saved Ariel. Now I was beneath the English Channel and had to save London.
This time the angel was speaking with Ariel’s voice, urging me to wake up, to get back in the fight.
Please, get up.
Then the angel was gone, swept away in the wind.
Groaning, I sat up. The main lights were out in the train car, but there were small orange emergency lights on the floor. From the screaming noise whipping past, all the windows had been blown out. The air tasted like smoke and copper. My clothing was hanging in tatters, and then I realized that some of that was my skin. I realized that there was a big chunk of metal embedded in my vest, and it was still hot. When I tried to pull it out, my right hand wouldn’t work. My fingers couldn’t close around the slick piece of frag hard enough to get it out. I had to put my gun down to pull it out with my left. Blood came welling out of the hole. That was bad. Probably should’ve left it in.
Then I noticed my right leg was worse. From the knee down, the flesh was shredded. My calf was a pulverized mess. I could actually see the bone. I was sitting in an expanding pool of red.
It doesn’t matter. Get up. You’re almost there. I was beyond Calm; I was serene.
Everythin
g hurt. I’d been flayed. There was so much pain that I should have passed out, but instead it just faded into a sort of background noise as I calmly opened the first aid kit in my cargo pocket and pulled out a tourniquet. I tied it just below my knee, cinched it up, twisted the windlass—spitting blood and spittle through gritted teeth at the agonizing bolt of pain—and locked it in place. That would keep me from bleeding out in the next few minutes. Long enough.
I picked up my gun and began to crawl onward. The interior of the car was a twisted mess. Kat’s last two men were dead, their bodies mangled and bloody. Above, the Chunnel flashed by at frightening speeds, as I followed the orange lights to my destiny.
Hurry, Michael. You are going to be a father. Don’t you want to meet her?
I shook my head. I kept hearing voices. I had lost a lot of blood. I was in shock. Soon I would lose consciousness, and then I would die. I was okay with that. It didn’t matter, so long as I stopped the bomb. As I dragged myself along, beneath the English Channel, alone and bleeding, I was at peace.
The bomb had to be in the next car, where Kat was waiting for me with that damned grenade launcher. I pulled myself up the stairs, trying to keep the snubby pointed ahead of me, hoping that I’d get a shot off at her fast enough. If nothing else, I was inside the arming distance of a typical 40mm grenade round. It wouldn’t detonate at such close range, a safety feature designed to prevent grenadiers from accidentally blowing themselves up.
She wasn’t waiting for me at the door, so I pulled myself up and looked through the glass. The lights were on in this car. It was similar to the other luxury car, except in the middle of the room was a big, green metal box. Katarina was pacing back and forth next to her bomb. I could tell she was scared, that she didn’t want to die and was trying to think of a way out. She hadn’t come to terms like I had. I thought that her line about getting off in London had been a lie. She had a ring of keys in her hand, and the safety lock on the side door was green instead of red.
Startled, she looked up when I slid the door open. Before she could do anything, I shot her.
Katarina Montalban took a couple halting steps. There was a red hole in her shirt, about where her belly button would be.
“It’s over.” It was a strain to say every word. “Now open the box and disarm that bomb or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
“Nothing’s over!” she shrieked. Katarina put her hands on her stomach. They were quickly covered in blood. Grimacing, she walked to the side and sat on one of the couches. “You shot me. It’s not supposed to be like this.”
“Shut it off.”
“I can’t stop the timer.” She was obviously in terrible pain. Good. “The train’s failsafe mechanisms have been overridden, and the controls are locked out. Even if we stopped, once in motion, if the bomb remains stationary for too long, it’ll detonate. I win no matter what.”
“There has to be a way!”
“No.” Blood was spurting from her body, and had rapidly formed a puddle on the couch cushions. Katarina was dying, just like I was. “This is the way. These men have controlled the world for too long. It is time for someone else to have a turn.”
Using the seats to brace myself, I hobbled to the case. The locks and latches on the box were heavy duty. Bullets would have bounced right off. Even if I had known how to disarm it, I couldn’t get to it in time. The box weighed a ton. It had probably taken two or three men to lift it off the cart.
Kat kept rambling. “But it was supposed to be my turn. All I ever wanted was what was mine. I worked so hard, sacrificed so much. Why couldn’t they just let me have what was mine? My father, Rafael, Eduard. None of them. Why couldn’t Lorenzo? Why couldn’t you?” Katarina stared at me. Her eyes were filled with anger, hate, but then her expression softened. She turned her head to look out the window. Her reflection stared back. “I’m tired.”
Anders had decoupled the cars, maybe I could find a way to separate us from the engine? Better for the bomb to detonate under the ocean than on land. Except Anders had used explosives. Just the metal-on-metal friction, at the speed we were travelling, would mean the cars wouldn’t separate without being forced. Even if there was a way to stop the train, or decouple the cars, I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t have time to figure it out.
Wincing at the almost unbearable pain, I undid the Velcro fasteners and lifted my armor vest off my head tossing it into the aisle. I was too weak to keep it on; it was slowing me down. My shirt was soaked with blood. Blood was running down my legs. I was so cold as I lurched to the door control and the now-green button.
Katarina’s voice was a whisper. “Look, a light . . . a light at the end of the tunnel. Watch the end of the world with me, Valentine?”
It was too late to make a difference, but no matter what happened, she wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her plans fulfilled. I raised the .357 and shot her in the side of the head.
There was only one way left to stop this bomb. I hit the button. The doors began to hiss open, but they had never been intended to open at this speed, and with a screech of metal, were violently torn open. Cold tunnel wind blasted into the car. I fell on my back.
I crawled to the bomb. The physics package from the Topol warhead we had recovered in Yemen was heavy, the metal case added even more weight. I put my shoulder against it and shoved hard. It barely scraped an inch across the carpet, but it moved.
My body was shutting down, but I kept pushing. My blood was all over the metal, making it slick. I drew myself back, and then flung my body against it, again and again. It slid further and further. There was more blood, but the wind was closer. The end of the case was through the gap. I was freezing, shivering, but sweat was pouring out of me, cutting tracks through the blood.
I could see the light now, too. I didn’t know if it was the end of the tunnel, a hallucination, or the afterlife waiting for me, but I kept pushing. The case began to tilt. Everything was fading into oblivion. My vision went dark, and I drifted away.
LORENZO
France
The first blow hit me in the upper arm. I tried to get out of the way, but Anders still hit me with the chunk of rebar across the shoulder. It sent me spinning over the edge. I landed in the mud and rolled, splashing into the drainage ditch.
Desperate, I tried to stand in the knee-deep slippery muck, but Anders was already sliding down the bank after me. He was bleeding badly from the gunshot wound, so with his heart pumping this hard, he’d weaken eventually. I just needed to stay alive however long that took.
Anders brought the rebar down hard. I barely got out of the way as it sent up a plume of yellow water. He had a reach advantage on me anyway, giving him a three-foot length of metal wasn’t helping. In the muck, I couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way, and he caught me flat on the chest on the back swing.
I hit the water again. That had to have broken a rib, but I thrashed my way back up beneath a pouring drainage pipe. He was splashing after me. Trying to negate that length advantage, I threw myself at him, and wrapped my arms around his waist. He kneed me in the chest, and now I was sure that rib wasn’t just broken, but might actually have just punctured a lung. He broke away and shoved me back. I ducked as the rebar whistled past my head.
As I tried to get up, Anders brought the rebar down across my back. I can’t even begin to explain how badly that hurt. Then he kicked me in the stomach, flipping me over, deeper into the ditch.
“You should have let me go, Lorenzo!” Anders swung his club, barely catching the edge of my scalp. It split my head open, but my skull escaped in one piece. I was down. He put his boot on my chest and shoved me beneath the surface. The water was hip deep here, but pinned beneath him, it might as well have been at the bottom of the ocean.
He was still shouting, but I couldn’t hear him. There were only bubbles and the sound of my own heart pounding. I thrashed and fought, clawing at his leg, trying to get free. He was going to drown me in a few feet of water.
> Desperate for air, the sound of my pounding heart was replaced by something else. Incomprehensible whispers. The whispers wanted me to give up. They had always wanted me to fail. My damaged vision was turning black as the Pale Man’s prison. I’d been to hell once before, and I was about go back, only there wouldn’t be any escape this time.
Why won’t you die, Lorenzo?
Because fuck you is why.
I’d forgotten something, probably because I thought of it as a souvenir, merely a letter opener, or toy, more than a weapon, but at that brief moment in time, my life hanging in the balance, it might as well have been Excalibur. I let go of Anders’ leg, reached for my pocket, and by some miracle, the little switchblade Decker had gifted me in Africa all those years ago was still there. I got it free, pushed the button to release the blade—I could only hope that it would still pop open under water—and then I slammed it upward into Anders’ leg.
I ran the blade up his thigh.
The boot came off my neck. The pressure was gone. I sat up, bursting out of the water, and gasping for air.
Anders was standing there, staring in disgust at the blood pumping out of his leg. I’d been right about the cheap little Italian knife. The blade had broken clean off the first time it had gotten some serious use . . . but not before it had sliced through several inches of muscle and his femoral artery. There was no stopping that here. Sever the femoral and unless it was clamped off, it meant death in a matter of minutes.
He knew it. I knew it. Anders was a dead man walking.
“You killed me,” he stated, so matter-of-factly, it was like we were talking about the weather. “Fuck.”
I could only cough my response. “You deserve it.”
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 41