by Thomas Locke
“H-he’s okay?”
Charlie ripped open a third packet, covered the area, applied another bandage, then settled Brett back. “Too soon to say for certain. But he doesn’t appear to be critical. I want you to lift his head just in case there’s some leakage into his lung, help him breathe.”
“Can’t we do something?”
“Absolutely.” Charlie raised his voice. “Hector, 911!”
“On it!”
The guy by the front door shouted, more frantic now, “Charlie!”
Charlie started to rise and was reaching out for his gun when it happened.
Lena was moving to cradle Brett’s head in her lap as the first woman entered. Her hands were high overhead, which was possibly what caused her to wobble into the door frame. Lena thought she was drunk or drugged from the canted way she held her head. Her blonde hair was shellacked into place and mashed flat on one side. Bits of gravel flecked that side of her face. She leered at them, her grin as lopsided as her stance, and shrieked, “Hello, boys!”
The fog seemed to boil into the warehouse, surging around her like it was pushed in by an unseen wind. Only the fog did not dissipate. Instead, it fed upon the cordite fumes, sucking and heaving and growing into a form that Lena could actually see. The behemoth grew and mimicked the way the woman now stretched out her arms, the hands fashioned into the talons that tore through the air overhead.
Then the woman and the beast looked together, taking in the frozen soldiers and the guns that were held by numb fingers. And they saw the two bodies bleeding onto the concrete. The woman cackled and started forward. Bringing the beast of smoke with her.
Lena leapt up before the thought was fully formed. Her body responded to a primitive rage, the mother bear protecting her own. She tore the rifle from Charlie’s limp fingers, gripped the barrel’s hot metal, and raced forward. The smoking beast swooped down, the translucent talons aimed for her face. Lena swatted it aside and kept moving, until she was face-to-face with the leering blonde woman.
She rocked back, then forward, putting all her weight into the swing. The woman’s vision seemed to clear enough for her to show momentary dismay and raise one arm. Lena’s swing connected with her elbow, and the woman shrieked once more, only this time there was a human note to the distress. Lena took a two-fisted grip on the weapon and hammered the stock into the woman’s forehead. Her eyelids flickered once, twice, and she went down hard.
Lena raced past the still-prone guard and flew out. The three remaining civilians were clustered in the doorway, oblivious to the cordite stench. Lena smashed her way forward, using the rifle as a battering ram.
The three somersaulted back, then rose to their feet, swaying like partygoers long after the music has stopped. The mist boiled and wrenched about them as a guy with multiple piercings called, “Did you come out to play?”
The woman cackled like a bird of prey. The three started toward Lena.
Lena swung the rifle like a misshapen baseball bat, scything through the mist between them and her. “Get out of here!”
The other young man, a Latino, sneered, “You’re nothing but fresh kill.”
Then Lena heard the sirens.
63
As Reese entered the voyage, Kevin’s instructions were as precise as his voice. “Find the team and track them. Remain unseen at all times.”
The other voyagers had been given the command that Reese had outlined for the Russian named Jones. They were tasked with protecting the unseen periphery as Jones and his team attacked Bishop and Hazard. Reese was to report through Kevin the instant an enemy was identified. In fact, report to Jones before the attack.
Ridley held the Zulu-shaped shield in front of her, but there was no sense of opposing forces. Instead, she voyaged and Reese followed. Simple as breath.
They hovered somewhere above a rooftop in a derelict section of New York. Reese knew it was the fringe area of Hell’s Kitchen, because her team had identified the warehouse. The scene was exactly as the voyagers had described to her.
Jones’s team had taken up positions on two rooftops. The warehouse holding Bishop and the others was to her left. And inside the warehouse was Charlie Hazard. Reese was certain he was there. She tracked him like a predator sensing the unseen enemy.
She watched with genuine pleasure as the six attackers fired on the warehouse’s entry. She saw the wounded merc drag Bishop inside while Hazard and his team poured out withering cover fire. She knew in that first glimpse what she had suspected all along.
Jones’s cover was blown. The attack was going to fail. His team was already losing. Charlie and his team would survive.
As far as Reese was concerned, it had never been about defeating Hazard. That would have been fine, of course. But Reese had known this was not the time. Her team was splintered by the tasks handed down by their Russian puppet masters. Taking down Charlie Hazard would require careful planning and total focus. Victory at this stage was a forlorn hope.
Reese was all about escape.
Her aim was simple in the extreme. Disrupt the situation so effectively that the Russians were blinded. Then make her getaway. And take her entire team with her. Vanish in a cloud of smoke.
The question was how to make that happen.
As though responding to her quandary, Kevin read the next line off her secret instructions, the ones she did not want revealed to any watcher until it was too late. “You will find a means to create havoc.”
Even before Kevin finished shaping the words, Reese spotted the beast.
The monster was the one that had entered the departures lounge riding inside Esteban’s skin. Reese instantly recognized the fiend. It loomed massive and fierce, taller than the warehouse.
Reese realized the beast was not alone. Her vision expanded to where she could see a crowd of the fiends, hovering like vultures around the periphery.
At that same moment, the fiend swept its talons downward toward a woman who appeared in the warehouse portal. She was smeared from face to knees with someone else’s blood, and shrieked a warrior’s cry as she met Esteban with the wrong end of a rifle.
All the surrounding beasts watched the assault. Which granted Reese the lone instant, tight as a racing heartbeat, to go on the attack herself.
Reese took the power of her rage and reshaped it. She fashioned a whip from her fury. Long and alive, a bullwhip with a serpent’s fangs at its tip. The whip shot tiny sparks as she moved, the snake hissing fire. Then a monster crouched on the nearest rooftop spied her.
The beast was mountainous, a looming gargantuan that bore down upon so many legs she could not count them. They blurred together as the monster reached ramming speed.
Reese unleashed the whip and screamed her welcome. The rage erupted from her mouth and her whip both.
The whip came down and through the monster. One moment she faced a doom beyond her senses. The next and the behemoth was gone. Not even smoke remained.
Ridley appeared beside her, only it was a Ridley transformed. Her right hand carried a flaming spear, and she shrieked her battle cry with such force it caused Reese’s vision to tremble.
Their communication, hers and Ridley’s, was instantaneous and total. Reese took one line of rooftops, Ridley the other. They screamed in tandem, Ridley shooting flames from her spear point and Reese snapping her lightning whip.
The beasts of smoke and fury turned away from their approach. And they stampeded.
Reese and Ridley drove them in a solid pack that filled the concrete valley. The three remaining midnight crew and their attached beasts turned and gaped at what only they could see.
Then Reese noticed the shooters. They had gone silent when Heather and the other midnight crew members had stepped from the warehouse doorway and reentered their line of fire. The Russian and Cuban assailants were all directly in the path of the invisible horde. Reese watched the shooters key their throat mikes and call to one another. Confused. Frightened.
Reese used her whip t
o snag one of the rearmost fiends. She tugged hard on her razor leash, redirecting it so that the beast ran straight through the line of armed assailants.
Down below, the three remaining midnight crew writhed in a unified spasm as the monsters they had joined with were caught up by the horde. Up above, the shooters became snared by the same violent flow. Only they had no idea what was happening. Just that some force, a cyclone of dire fury, ripped right through them. They shrieked and flung their guns aside and ran. One was so blinded by the onslaught he slammed straight into a wall and slumped down, unconscious. Another took a severe tumble down metal stairs, broke his shoulder, and still came up at full speed.
Reese observed the pandemonium from a position that suited her perfectly. She rode on the back of the last beast, shouting a gleeful hello at the shooters who most likely would have been the ones sent to take out her and her team.
Stressing a situation had never been so much fun.
Reese unleashed the fiend and snapped her whip a final time, sending it flying off with all the others, including those from the midnight crew. Ridley stood at the end of the city canyon, hands on hips. Reese could not hear her, but she knew Ridley shrieked with the laughter of pure triumph.
The gunmen broke from cover, screaming and flailing at what was now passed. Charlie Hazard and one of his team came out, guns at the ready, and knocked the assailants to their knees. Reese watched as Charlie’s teammate secured wrists and ankles with plastic strips while Charlie kept them all covered.
Reese studied her enemy with deadly intent, taking careful aim. The sirens howled as multiple police cars roared up and sealed the almost-empty street.
Then Carl tugged on her safety leash. Drawing her and Ridley back to base.
Reese cast Charlie a final glance before turning away.
It was only a matter of time.
64
The police were moderately kind, or so it seemed to Lena. After all, she and her team had brought mayhem to Manhattan. When the ambulances carried off Brett and Bishop and Hector, Lena begged to go with them. The police refused, but even here they showed some consideration. The detective interviewing her was a woman with a Marine officer’s voice, hard and cold and aware. But three times she had her partner radio the officer on duty at the ER. She relayed the information on Brett’s surgery to Lena, then continued with the questions.
Police took Charlie and his team away. Lena asked where to, but the detective merely continued with the questions. Lena felt mildly abandoned and extremely vulnerable. The detective used Lena’s isolation to pry out a great deal of information.
It was late afternoon when the detective finally released her. A squad car drove Lena to the hospital. Brett was out of surgery and his condition was classed as serious but stable. Bishop had been hit twice, in the leg and shoulder, and was expected to make a full recovery. When she asked about Hector, Lena was told his condition was a matter for the courts.
They had put Brett and Bishop in the same room so that a single police officer could stand duty over both of them. The two patients were zonked out when Lena arrived. The nurse gave Lena a few minutes to sit by Brett’s side, then guided her into the shower and kitted her out with a set of surgical blues. When Lena emerged, a meal was waiting for her on the bedside table. She ate everything, then was swamped by waves of fatigue. The room was overly cold, but she found a pair of blankets in the closet. The chair folded down flat, and the footstool could be positioned to make for a narrow bed. Lena stretched out, took hold of Brett’s hand, and within a pair of breaths was asleep.
Lena awoke to daylight outside the room’s narrow window. Her rest had been so profound she needed a moment to remember where she was. Then she turned her head and saw Brett watching her. And smiling.
She loved that she still held his hand.
Bishop’s bed was down prone and his eyes were closed. Lena decided that was about as close to privacy as they were going to get. She raised her chair back and whispered, “How are you?”
“Awake. Alive. With you.” He paused, then added, “Thirsty.”
Lena lifted the cup and fitted the straw into his mouth. Brett watched her as he drank. When he finished she said, “There is something we need to get straight right now.”
Brett nodded. “All right.”
“You are part of two people now. Which means certain things you could get away with while single won’t work anymore.”
“Lena . . .”
“No. I’ll tell you when it’s your turn to speak. Right now your job is to pay attention. You can’t risk your life like that ever again. If you feel like you don’t have any choice, that it’s absolutely the right thing and you’re on point, you can come and ask my opinion. And I’ll tell you, ‘Don’t do it.’ And what are you going to do?”
He nodded again. “Stay safe.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. Because if I’d heard any other answer, I’d have been tempted to go ask the cop outside our door if I could borrow his gun. Now tell me you’ll remember this conversation.”
“I will remember every moment.”
“And even when your guy genes are electrified and your adrenaline is maxed out, you won’t forget.”
“I have an eidetic memory,” Brett replied. “I don’t forget anything.”
Lena felt the hot pressure against the back of her eyes as she recalled, “When I knelt by you on the floor and watched you bleed . . .”
Brett reached over with his free hand, though the motion caused him to wince. He touched her face and asked, “Do you think it’s time we kissed?”
Lena sat and held Brett’s hand until he drifted off again. Then she retreated to the bathroom and took another long shower. She dressed in a fresh set of surgical blues because they were all she had. The bloodstained clothes she had arrived in had hopefully been taken away and burned.
When she emerged, Bishop’s bed was angled so he could sit upright. The breakfast tray was drawn up in front of him, the meal untouched. He glanced at her, but his eyes remained blank. Almost as though he could look straight through her. Almost like all he had room for was the havoc his invention had caused.
Another breakfast tray was set on the table beside her chair. Brett remained deeply asleep. She seated herself and whispered across to Bishop, “The service in this place is wonderful.”
Bishop gave no sign he heard her at all.
Lena whispered, “Any word about Charlie and the others?”
Again, no response.
As she was finishing her meal, the nurse came in, checked on the patients, then reached into her pocket for Lena’s phone. “This thing kept buzzing, so the night nurse took it to the station.”
Lena thanked her and took it outside. She found she had sixteen messages, nine of them from Robin, which she took as a very good sign. Lena decided to return two other calls first.
Gabriella Speciale answered on the first ring. There followed a warm conversation between two women who were glad for the chance to weep together over the safety of their men. When she cut the connection, Lena sat on the bench in the hallway and waited until she regained control. The nurse on duty at the central station glanced over and smiled, but did not bother to ask if Lena was all right. Clearly tears were an acceptable component of life in the wards.
Then Lena placed the second call, which was enough to leave her wanting to weep all over again, but for different reasons.
She recovered more swiftly this time, and when she was ready she returned Robin’s call.
Robin came on the line with, “We’re all over the news.”
“Forget that. How are you?”
“Fine. Well, not fine. But I haven’t been arrested and I’m home. Charlie just called from the lockup. When he couldn’t reach you he phoned me. He’s lawyered up and should be out this afternoon.”
“I just got that news from Gabriella.”
“Are you safe?”
“There are cops at our door.”
“T
he attack is big news. So are you.” Robin’s voice carried strain. “They even mentioned you by name.”
“So give me the flip side.”
“Maybe it should wait.”
“Tell me now, Robin.”
She sighed. “Chester phoned. I’ve been sacked. Roger was on TV, saying you are no longer affiliated with his group.”
“I know.”
“You know? Since when?”
“Yesterday. About five minutes before things got very hot.”
“So . . . we’re out of a job.”
“No, Robin. We’re not. Nothing’s changed. Well, it has, but it hasn’t.”
“You know that doesn’t make any sense.”
“We’ve been offered something a whole lot better,” Lena said. “If you don’t mind moving to Denver.”
Robin breathed in, held it, then said, “Get out.”
“I just spoke with Charles Farlow himself. He wants me to run part of his financial operations. I can bring the whole team. And he’s agreed to take Bishop’s project on as a major component of my new division.”
Robin did not respond.
“Are you there?”
“Give me a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute. Are you in?”
“Am I . . . You’re serious.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Lena said. “Start packing.”
Lena nodded to the police officer and reentered the patients’ room. Brett was still sound asleep. Bishop was exactly as Lena had left him, seated upright in bed, the breakfast tray still untouched. His gaze shifted slightly, then he resumed his fixation upon the opposite wall. A flat-screen television was connected to a wall clamp about five feet up. Bishop stared at the blank screen with the intensity of a man who supplied his own visuals and running commentary.
Lena stepped up close to the bed and waited. Three minutes passed, four, then finally he turned her way. He still did not look directly at her, but rather focused upon a point just beyond her left shoulder.