10 Fatal Strike

by Shannon McKenna

  Miles put on a burst of desperate speed. “Connor?” He leaped over the rocks, and crouched beside his friend. Lara slid off his back and crawled to Connor’s other side. “Connor? What’s wrong?”

  “Head,” Connor rasped. “Pulling.” He jerked his hand in the direction of the house that hung on the top of the hillside above. Blood ran from Connor’s nose and down his neck.

  “Greaves,” Lara whispered.

  Miles scooped his arms beneath Connor’s armpits, trying to hoist him to his knees. “We’ve got to get out of that bastard’s range.”

  “Davy.” Connor’s voice was a breathless grunt. “Sean. Aaro.”

  Miles stuffed the fear he did not have the luxury to feel, and braced himself against Connor’s weight. It had never occurred to him that he was putting his friends in danger of this magnitude. They’d always seemed so invulnerable to him. Godlike, even.

  “Let me help,” Lara said.

  “Concentrate on not breaking both your legs,” he said.

  She wiggled her shoulder beneath Connor’s arm. Connor glanced at her, and shot an eloquent look in Miles’ direction “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  “Shhh,” Miles hissed. “Move!”

  They hustled toward the vehicle. Lara tugged the back door open. Miles heard noise on the hillside as he bundled Connor into the back.

  He shoved Lara down on the floor of the vehicle, then crouched down to listen and sniff the air. He had to pull something brilliant out of his ass, right now, but nothing was coming to him, and the sound of shushing boughs and snapping twigs was getting louder.

  Aaro. He couldn’t have said how he suddenly knew it was Aaro coming down the hill, but he did, and he almost wept with relief.

  “Look after him,” he said to Lara. “I’m going back for the others.”

  He sprinted toward the sound. They emerged from a grove of young firs. Aaro was half carrying Sean, and staggering beneath the other man’s weight. Sean’s nose bled. Aaro’s face was a rigid mask of endurance. He was hurting, but functioning better than Sean.

  Of course. He was shielded.

  Miles slid an arm beneath Sean’s shoulder, hoisting him up. “It’s Greaves,” he told Aaro. “Long-distance mind-reaming.”

  “Can’t talk,” Aaro ground out. “He’s squeezing me even through the shield. Oh man. Hurts. Fuck this shit.”

  “Amen,” Miles agreed fervently.

  A few minutes of frantic stumbling got them back to the car. Lara was holding Connor’s head, pressing a wad of pale cloth to his nose. Her eyes were big, shadowy pools. Haunted and afraid.

  Miles addressed Aaro. “Get yourselves out of range,” he said, hoisting the groaning Sean into the passenger side.

  Connor opened his pale green eyes. “Davy,” he wheezed.

  Of course it would have been Davy to volunteer to create the distraction. Davy was the best shot of all the McCloud brothers, which was saying a lot, since they were all kick-ass with both long- and short-range guns. Davy had gotten much closer to Greaves than the others had been. If they had been felled by Greaves’ mind-reaming, God knows how Davy had fared. Greaves was much stronger than Rudd, and Rudd had left Miles in a coma.

  “I’ll go for him.” Aaro’s voice was rough.

  “No,” Miles said. “I’ll go.”

  Aaro waved his hand at Lara. “Finish the job. Get the girl clear. I’ll do clean-up. I have a shield.”

  “My shield’s better,” Miles said. “Take Lara, Sean and Connor, and get the fuck out of range. I’ll get Davy. Give me my car keys.”

  Aaro glowered at him. “Getting bossy, punk?”

  “Yeah.” He waggled his fingers for the keys.

  Aaro was too messed up to argue. He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed. Miles snagged them out of the air.

  He bolted up the hill, chest pumping, every souped-up, tricked-out capacity he had bent upon calculating Davy’s location. The first window that had shattered was on the top floor, on the side, a vaulted picture window that faced the opposite hillside, not the canyon. Davy would have had to climb the hill to get that shot. He also would have hauled ass back down as soon as the job was done. Miles factored in the moment when Greaves’ mental attack had begun, which would mark the spot where Davy presumably stopped.

  A few breathless minutes, slapping through the trees, chest heaving, legs pumping, and he almost tripped headlong over Davy’s prone body. The guy had made it fifty meters further down toward the rendezvous point than Miles had calculated. Typical McCloud.

  He fell to his knees. “Davy! Can you hear me?”

  Davy’s body was rigid. “Pulling,” he gasped. “Can’t move.”

  Miles dragged him upright, somewhat helped by how rigid he was. Good thing it wasn’t dead weight, considering Davy’s mass.

  It was impossible not to make noise crashing through the underbrush with Davy staggering beside him. Miles could hear their pursuers drawing closer. One was at about a hundred and twenty meters, another was at ninety. Probably in body armor, with infrared, and/or thermal imaging. Both moving much faster than he and Davy could. He eased Davy onto the ground, and put his finger to his lips. “I’ll go take care of our company,” he whispered.

  No time to answer the frantic questions in Davy’s eyes. He darted away, weaving low and silent among the scrubby trees and foliage.

  A shelf of granite protruded from the hillside, above the best probable path. If he was high enough, the man might not even look up to catch the heat signature with his thermal imager.

  Miles scrambled up the rocks, grateful for the intensive rock-climbing he’d done over the last several weeks, and stretched himself out on the lip of granite. It was barely wide enough. He was glad for the camo jacket, and the ski mask.

  The man emerged from the shadows of the trees. Silent, swift. Only Miles’ augmented senses could have picked him up in the dark. He listened to the soft pad of booted feet, the guy’s rapid heartbeat. He was bulked up with body armor, a helmet. And scanning telepathically. The probe slid right over Miles’ shield, not registering him.

  The realization slid abruptly into place. So that was why he’d been able to take them by surprise and penetrate the place solo. They had thought that they had the ultimate secret weapon, with their psi, that it made them invulnerable. But a weapon was a weak spot if relied upon with any kind of arrogance. The precise reason he’d always been ambivalent about guns.

  Miles emptied his mind of everything but the muted crunch of dry grass and pine needles, waiting . . . crunch . . . crunch—

  He dropped softly down behind the guy, and wrenched the man’s helmeted head around. Crack. Miles lowered his limp body to the ground, and picked up the short assault rifle. An H&K G36. He quelled the noise in his mind so he could hear the other guy’s approach. Time enough later to stress about having taken a human life.

  The other one was coming down from the left, on a collision course with Davy. He had some different kind of psi, more along the lines of coercion. Miles crept around the outcroppings, seeking a visual.

  He finally caught sight of him, armored and bristling with guns and gear. Still wearing infrared goggles, though, to Miles the dawn seemed as bright as noon.

  He positioned himself behind a fallen log. The guy had an armored breastplate, as well as a helmet, but Miles didn’t want to kill again. Not unless he had to. He dropped his sights to the guy’s thigh.

  Poised, inhaled. Sought the stillness between breaths.

  Bam. The guy jerked, and fell, thrashing on the ground with a muffled shout. Miles ditched the H&K, and raced back to Davy.

  “Fixed them,” he said, in answer to Davy’s questioning glance.

  He heard no other pursuers. Those two had been the vanguard. He heaved Davy onto his feet, and they recommenced their stumbling race. He still felt the pressure of Greaves’ furious attack, beating impotently around the armor of his shield. The guy still had a fix on them, as long as Davy was in his telepathic grip.
r />   Their staggering progress was agonizingly slow. The truck came into view when they turned the corner of the creekbed. The others were gone. He hoisted Davy into the passenger’s seat. The pickup bounced and groaned over rocks and young trees as he steered it through the forest.

  “I’ll get you to a hospital,” he told Davy, when they lurched back up onto the gravel roadbed.

  “He’ll watch the hospitals.” Already Davy’s voice sounded stronger. “He’ll be looking for anyone with brain injuries, stroke. That’s what I’d do, if I were him. Forget the hospital. Just put distance between us and that scumbag.”

  That was a plan he could get behind. He floored it.

  It was outrageous. Unprecedented. In spite of the psi stranglehold he’d had on their minds, in spite of his psi-enhanced soldiers, one of whom was now dead, they were slipping away from him.

  “They’re almost out of range,” Greaves huffed to Silva, as the man pounded along beside him toward the garage. “Get everyone mobilized. Two vehicles going north, two going south.”

  He flung open the passenger side of the Jeep. Silva leaped into the driver’s side, bawling orders into his wristcom.

  The engine revved, the vehicle backed out, picked up speed . . .

  The car dragged. Tires thudded heavily, scraping.

  Silva cursed under his breath, braked, leaped out. The cursing got louder, with an edge of fear. He kicked the back tire. “Slashed,” he said. “Both back tires.”

  “Another vehicle, then,” Greaves said, from behind his teeth.

  But no. The back tires of all six of the parked vehicles had been slashed. His staff scurried to change them, but it would make no difference now. Seconds had counted. Those seconds were lost now. He would not even bother to accompany them once they ventured out.

  “Sir, I’m so sorry,” Silva ventured.

  Greaves ignored him, maintaining a flat, fatalistic calm. Just a tendril of his consciousness stayed connected with those hardy souls who had somehow crept into his inner sanctum, and proceeded to fuck him up the ass. The contact grew thinner, fainter . . . and it was gone.

  Bumping up against the limitations of his gifts felt like an insult.

  He walked back into the house with a slow, measured tread, calling for Levine on the wristcom.

  “Yes, sir?” Her voice was suitably subdued.

  “Do we have any staff with strong telepathy in their profile in Kolita Springs, or south of here on Wheeler Road? Before any of the highway exits.”

  “Ah . . . ah, yes, I think that Coburn and Mayfield could—”

  “Get them in place, fast, to monitor all the highway exits. Unless these bastards take the back roads, we’ll pin them and identify them as they get onto the highway. They’re moving fast. We have maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.”

  Greaves strode into the house. His staff had found their wits again. The wounded ones had been transported to the infirmary.

  Greaves peered inside, watching the medics examine the bloody lump on Anabel’s head, the bullet that had sliced through the meat of her thigh. The battered face and broken ribs of the whimpering Hu.

  Worthless trash. Worth keeping only until they had been questioned about the invaders, the contents of their pathetic brains laid bare. Everything that they had seen and sensed, even subliminally.

  Four out of the members of Geoff’s rotating medical team were hard at work with the injured. Two of them attended his son at all times, in eight-hour intervals. Geoff and his med team accompanied Greaves everywhere, in a vehicle that seemed an RV from the outside, but was actually a high-tech, cutting-edge hospital room. Each one of his residences had a special room for Geoff—climate controlled, disinfected, filled with all the equipment his son needed to stay alive.

  He was at a loss for something to do with his anger. Every outlet had been blocked. He had difficulty breathing. They had slashed his tires, shot his windows. Beaten and shot his employees. Taken Lara, his beautiful prize. And ruined an excellent meal.

  The rudeness. How he hated rudeness.

  He punched the code into the keypad of Geoff’s room. Inside, Maura and Daniel were dutifully massaging Geoff’s wasted limbs.

  Geoff’s skin was a pasty, blue-veined, grayish white. His long form was skeletal. Assiduous massages, stretching, and electric stimulation kept his tendons from tightening and turning him into a clawed, hunched cripple, so that when he finally did consent to come out of his mental fortress, his body would be ready to receive him. As ready as his father’s will and resources could render it.

  Seventeen years he had been like this. Seventeen endless years.

  “Leave us,” Greaves said.

  Maura hesitated, wary of a trap to test her dedication. “Ah, there are still sixteen minutes left for this massage session, sir,” she said. “You told us that we must not for any reason skip or shorten—”

  “I said, leave us! I will finish the session myself. Out!”

  Dan and Maura peeled off their latex gloves and scurried out.

  Greaves approached the padded table, with its sheepskin covering. Soft and yielding, to constantly stimulate Geoff’s mottled, prone-to-ulcers skin. Geoff was continually turned, continually massaged, disinfected, and exfoliated, his skin hydrated with carefuly formulated unguents to improve his circulation.

  Greaves stared down at his son’s skull-like face. His thin, fragile skin was pulled taut across strong cheekbones. The slack mouth, the sunken eyes, the eyelids a fragile, veined blue-violet.

  Geoff’s bone structure was so like Greaves’ own face, but the resemblance was no longer possible to see, his son was so pitifully thin. Geoff used to have Carol’s glorious golden hair, but it had thinned to a sparse, colorless fuzz, unsavory flakes of dead skin suspended in it. Geoff lay on his side, clad in briefs, his limbs twined with the snaking tubes that were permanently lodged in his orifices.

  Greaves ignored the large box of sterile latex gloves mandated for the medics to use when they handled his son’s body, and scooped up a handful of the thick unguent, going to work on Geoff’s left leg. The slow, rhythmic, familiar movements soothed him. He massaged Geoff often.

  His son seemed even thinner than usual. He should tell the medics to up the caloric load in the IV drip. Or to increase the duration of the muscle stimluation sessions, though the sessions he dictated were already many times over what any physiotherapist would recommend, or even consider useful.

  But why not? It wasn’t as if Geoff had anything better to do. Greaves had no constraints of budget or time. He could hire a staff of fifty or five hundred to work on Geoff around the clock. And would do so, in a heartbeat, if only it would help.

  His anger bubbled up, over, and out. “You were unfair,” he announced, as his hands slid up and down Geoff’s shriveled calf. “You and your mother both. You refused to listen to reason.”

  The silence that answered him was eloquent. Carol had been a master of the speaking silence, since he met her back in middle school in Blaine, Oregon, and Geoff had inherited her gift. He had always read the subtext of Carol’s silent protests with ease. Even before the brutal experiments that had jolted his psi to life.

  It was one of the things she had loved about him, at first, when they were young and madly in love. Him, heading off to Germany, a private first class in the army. She, already pregnant with Geoff, stuck back in Blaine, in her mother’s trailer. He’d sworn to break her out of that place someday, as if it were Alcatraz. It hadn’t proven to be so easy.

  Then, one day, on the base in West Germany, he’d gotten the call. He’d been chosen for a special assignment. A secret training protocol, run by the legendary Colonel Holt. A small group of soldiers had been selected, based on some rare gift that testing had revealed. Colonel Holt had explained that if these gifts could be developed, they would be incredible assets for their country. The training was rigorous, and he would be moved to another facility, isolated from his buddies, unable to tell his
family back home what he was doing, or where. But his family would be well taken care of. Until he could see them again, which might be quite some time.

  Of course, he’d consented. Who didn’t want to be an incredible asset for one’s country? Particularly if it benefited Carol and Geoff.

  He couldn’t have known what the “training” would be. The pain was crushing. The blood vessel-bursting, crazy-making agony of those torture sessions with Colonel Holt had almost driven him mad. Each one had left him helpless, unable to move, speak, even turn his head. He spent weeks unable to do anything but rock in his cot, hiding from the light, flinching at the faintest sound. He’d hoped for death, but he didn’t die. He’d healed. And changed.

  Oh, how he had changed.

  Gradually, he’d discovered that he could do those things that Colonel Holt wanted from him, and more. He also realized quickly that he had to underplay his abilities, out of self-defense. He was quite sure that no one had ever intended for him to develop this much power.

  Colonel Holt clearly had suspicions, but that didn’t stop him from using Greaves for years to conduct intelligence missions, using his telepathy to gather crucial intel for national security. Greaves never let on about his growing capacities for telekinesis and coercion, or his burgeoning ability to organize, multitask, assimilate, and organize information. There were other talents, too, hard to pinpoint or define.

  His cognitive ability skyrocketed. He could learn a language in a few days, sound like a native, and retain the knowledge like a bear trap. One dull weekend, he’d taken on the stock market and all of its tricks and games, and over the following weeks had earned a fortune by investing and deftly reinvesting his earnings.

  Fun at first, but not all that interesting in the long run. Money was useful, but over a certain sum, the number of zeros on the bank balance ceased to matter.

  Carol and Geoff saw little of him, but they were well provided for. They wanted for nothing, lived in a beautiful Victorian house on the lake in Blaine. Geoff could have art and music lessons and go to an exclusive prep school. But on Greaves’ visits home, things were not as they should be. Carol could not hide her inner tension from a telepath.