by Tom Clancy
As they stepped out into the yard, the rain stopped. The heads up in Howard's helmet lit with a flash on channel tac-2. He toggled the second com unit on.
"E5, this is P1. We have secured the perimeter."
"Copy, PI. Keep half your unit there, and send a squad our way. We have one unfriendly loose and running around, armed and the worst of the bunch. Stay awake."
"Copy awake, E5."
Howard said, "Split up. Commander, you are with me. Cooper and Fiorella, you are with Fernandez. Do what he says. Let's go find him."
From where he stood, hidden by the outbuilding's corner, maybe five meters away, Ruzhyo could hear the American's voice, though he could not quite make out the words. Five of them, and more out in the fields and doubtlessly on the way. They were wearing body armor impervious to his weapon, and it was unlikely they would flip up their visors or remove their helmets, knowing what had happened to their men who did that the last time they had tried to take him. He was outnumbered, outgunned, and outflanked. Once upon a time, he would have considered those things a personal challenge. Not tonight.
He might bank a shot under a visor with jacketed bullets, but the.22s were soft lead and wouldn't bounce well, though they would spatter if they hit a hard surface. Possibly he could blind one, but that wouldn't do him much good.
The only other weak points were the gloves, which were of thin Kevlar so they could have relatively unimpeded use of their hands. But a broken bone in the hands would hardly be fatal.
No, if he wanted to live, best he take his chances in the fields. Run, and with luck get past the line and away.
He sighed. He could have run a long time ago. He could be back in Chetsnya by now. But that wasn't really home without Anna. Wherever she had been had been his home. With her death, he had been cut loose, adrift, a sere leaf blown by the winds of fate.
He sighed again. Enough of this.
He unfolded the trigger from the umbrella's handle and stepped out from behind the cover of the building and into a cone of light. The five were only a few meters away, backs to him.
"Save yourselves the trouble," he said.
They turned almost as one, all of their guns leveled at him.
"Drop it!" one of yelled. "Drop the — the umbrella?"
He saw them relax slightly. He had given up. They had him.
He snapped the umbrella up and started point shooting.
Howard felt the impact of the bullet on his weapon, and when he tried to return fire, the subgun fired one round, which was way low, then jammed. He let it go and snatched at his revolver.
He heard the others yelling, though he couldn't separate the voices in the LOSIR from each other or the people standing close to him.
"Shit!"
"Fuck"
"Ow!"
The S&W came out of his holster, the cover to the sight popped off, tethered to the holster as it was. He jerked the revolver up, too high, found the glowing red dot and brought it back down.
Why the hell wasn't anybody else shooting at him? He brought the dot down, centered it on the man's chest, and cooked off two rounds—boom! boom! — and watched him fall, crumpling in slomo.
The son of a bitch was smiling as he fell!
Howard ran to the fallen man, stood over him. Both.357 rounds had hit him square in the middle of the chest, heart shots, both, he was out of it, and even if the medics were here, they couldn't fix that.
The dying man looked up at Howard. "Anna," he said. That was all.
It was just about wrapped up. Fernandez came over, carrying the umbrella Ruzhyo had used. He held it so Michaels could see the gun mechanism inside. "Five-shot revolver, see? Ingenious little thing."
Michaels nodded. He also saw the bandage on Fernandez's right hand where the small-caliber bullet had hit it. It hadn't penetrated the glove, but it had smashed against it hard enough to keep him from shooting. Michaels' own weapon had been disabled by a bullet that hit the magazine. Toni had a small wound on her right hand like Fernandez's, and Angela's glove had failed to stop the bullet and it had broken her thumb. Howard's subgun had taken a round against the bolt.
The man called Ruzhyo had hit all five of them hard enough to keep them from shooting back, and it was only Howard's handgun that had finally put an end to it. It was amazing. Nobody here had ever seen anybody shoot so well. If he had had an armor-piercing weapon, he could have killed them all.
"Too bad he wasn't on our side," Fernandez said. "He'd have made a helluva small-arms instructor."
"You sorry he's dead?"
"No. And, well, yeah. Kinda."
Michaels understood that.
"All right. Let's get out of here," Howard said. "The party is over."
EPILOGUE
Friday, April 15th
London, England
Toni had taken another room, without discussing the situation with Michaels. As he headed to the lobby of the hotel to meet her, he wondered what she was going to say. They were supposed to go home today. The flight was booked. It would be a long trip if she didn't want to talk to him.
He took the stairs, wanting to be alone.
The case was over. The Brits had cleaned up the mess at Goswell's. There was nothing to tie the old man directly to anything. The witnesses who could have implicated him were all dead.
Bascomb-Coombs's miracle computer was also dead. Some kind of timed destruct code that didn't get turned off when he wasn't there to disarm it. The Brits had the machine, but they didn't know what it was they had. Maybe someday they could puzzle it out.
So, no international incident. Bad guys mostly dead. It could have been worse.
But there was Toni, standing near the big potted plant in the lobby. She hadn't talked to him about Cooper, had refused to listen to him say anything about it.
She looked at him, and her face was so sad he thought she might cry. So sad it wanted to make him cry. He had to fix this somehow.
"Toni, I'm sorry, I—"
"No," she said, cutting him off. "Not today. Your flight leaves in a couple of hours."
"My flight?"
"Yes. I'm staying here for a while."
"But—"
"No. I have a lot to think about, Alex, and so do you." She looked at him, and he saw the tears forming, starting to spill.
"Toni, you don't understand—"
"No. Not now. Don't say another word about it."
Tears streamed freely down her face now.
She didn't know he hadn't actually slept with Cooper. She must believe that he had. And when it got right down to it, did it really make that much difference? He had wanted Cooper. He had damned near had her. Lying naked on a table with a woman who was naked, did it really matter that they hadn't consummated things? He had to tell her, but the look she gave him froze the words in this throat. Would it make things better? Or worse?
Would she even believe him?
"Okay, sure, take some time, whatever you need. We can… deal with this when you get back to work."
"No, we can't. I'm not coming back to work. It's too much for us to have professional and private lives mixed together. I quit, Alex. As of today, right now, this minute, I'm no longer working for Net Force."
"What? You can't!"
"You aren't going to tell me I can't do anything right now, maybe not ever. Good-bye, Alex. I–I'll miss you."
With that, she walked away.
Michaels watched her leave, unable to speak, to move, even to breathe.
Oh, God, Toni! What had he done?
He stood that way for a long time, as if in a trance, and when he came out of it, she was gone.
Gone.
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