by E. M. Smith
“Clear,” she said. “Steps going down. Somebody report when we know what’s upstairs. Let’s move, Juliet.”
*****
Our boots clanged on the metal stairs. There wasn’t any light coming up from below, so I kept my taped-up hand on the wall as we jogged down.
“What if it’s an ambush?” I whispered into my headset.
“It’s not,” Whiskey said. She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. “Feel that?”
A breeze. I nodded, then realized that was about the stupidest thing I could do in the dark and behind her.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Delgado’s running,” she said.
At the bottom, I did that thing where you try to take another step and end up half-tripping on the flat ground. I caught myself. Whiskey looked over her shoulder at me. My face got hot.
“I’m up,” I said.
She nodded, then took off running again. I followed.
We were in a tunnel, not a basement. The breeze was getting stronger, but there was still no light to speak of and the only sound was our boots echoing off the walls. The casing was still stuck in my left sole, clicking.
“Whiskey, this is Foxtrot, I have visual confirmation of Delgado on the second floor of the mansion. Repeat, visual confirmation of Delgado. Second floor.”
She stopped and I almost plowed into her.
“Repeat: Whiskey, this is—”
“Roger, Foxtrot,” she said. “Take him out as soon as you get the shot.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
While we waited, I leaned against the tunnel wall and tried to catch my breath. I was not ready for the return-run. Once the adrenaline wore off, I was going to crash. Hard.
“Got him,” Fox said.
Thank Jesus.
Then I heard it—a grunt somewhere down the tunnel. The kind of little-girl-grunt that comes right after the pouty-face and right before the eardrum-shattering tantrum.
I took a step toward it. “Eva?”
Right on cue, Eva started screaming, “No! Nonononononono!”
A smack. Eva wailed.
“Eva!” I shoved past Whiskey and sprinted.
“Dammit, Juliet,” Whiskey’s severely pissed off voice growled in my earpiece. “Mike, confirm Foxtrot’s kill. Is it Delgado?”
Who the fuck cared? My Babygirl Eva was somewhere down that tunnel with some asshole who better damn well hope he had a gun when I got to him.
“Roger. Checking the body,” Mike said. “Which room did you say he was in, Fox?”
“The hallway to your left. Straight ahead. Next door. There.”
“Son of a bitch,” Mike said. “It’s a lookalike. Repeat: lookalike. Delgado is not dead.”
The tunnel angled upward. I could hear Whiskey behind me, running, but I couldn’t tell how far back she was. Up ahead, the darkness faded into grayish light. I could see ladder rungs going up to a hole in the ceiling. Green leaves.
“It’s an escape hatch,” I yelled into my headset. I hadn’t meant to yell, but I was breathing too hard to whisper.
Now that I could tell I was making progress, my legs ate up the tunnel floor. I thought I heard Eva crying, but the wind had kicked up like crazy and I couldn’t be sure.
Almost there. I shoved the Berretta into the shoulder holster and chopped my steps.
“Stop, Juliet,” Whiskey yelled. “That is an order! If you set foot—”
I jumped and grabbed about halfway up the ladder with my good hand. My boots landed on a rung and I hand-over-taped-up-fisted it to the top.
My head broke the surface. Delgado was shoving Della and Eva into a helicopter. Eva had a red spot across her cheek and she was screaming.
I opened my mouth to yell to her, but a boot slammed into the back of my skull. My head snapped forward and my nose crunched on the metal rim of the escape hatch. The world exploded into white sparkles.
*****
When I opened my eyes again, I was hanging upside down in the ladder, choking on my own blood and snot.
“Juliet!” Whiskey was close by. Her yell echoed around me and in the headset, her voice distorted by the wind from the helicopter.
The helicopter. The girls.
“Dammit.” I had to do a hanging sit-up to get myself upright again and untangle my legs from the rungs. “Fucking shit fuckup.”
I pulled the combat knife out of my boot sheath.
This time when I poked my head out of the escape hatch, I was ready. The big guy—who I assume kicked me the first time—tried to stomp me back down. I stabbed. The knife scraped off his shinbone. He howled and jerked away. I planted the blade in his other boot. That knocked him over, then I pulled the Berretta and put him down for good.
The helicopter was just starting to lift off. I hadn’t been unconscious long, praise Jesus.
Delgado saw me taking aim and pulled Della into his lap. I saw her little mouth move. Delgado grinned at me and hugged his human shield close. The helo kept climbing. Two feet. Three. Six.
“Son of a bitch.” I took a step toward the helicopter. “He’s got ‘em.”
“I’m coming up,” Whiskey said. “Hold position until—”
I dropped the Berretta, ran, jumped, and grabbed onto the runner. The whole thing tilted crazily. I thought it was going to shake me. Then we swung back and leveled out. I let the momentum swing me up and hooked my legs over the runner.
“Goddammit, Juliet,” Whiskey screamed in my ear. “You fucking listen to me when I give you an order or I’ll fucking shoot you myself!”
“Go for it,” I mumbled. My gun was gone. My knife was gone. My nieces were literally in the hands of some psycho and I was a million feet in the air. “I fucking hate helicopters.”
I grabbed the floor of the bay with my taped-up right hand and started to pull myself onto the top of the runner. Delgado tried to grind my fingers into paste, but those fingers were taped too tight to feel much and his fancy shoes had smooth, flat soles. Metal cleats probably wouldn’t have been enough to make me let go that high above the ground, anyway.
When I hooked my left arm around the bench leg, Delgado started kicking. I threw up my newly free right arm to protect my face. Delgado was still holding Della in front of him. Behind them, I could see Eva strapped into a seat harness.
“Uncle Jamie,” Della screamed. “Quit hitting Uncle Jamie!”
Delgado stopped kicking and stared at me.
“Uncle?” he said.
Della started fighting.
“Stop it, Della,” I hollered at her. I was scared to death Delgado would drop her out of the helicopter. “Quit your squirming!”
“But that’s bad! He’s being bad!”
“Stop!” Right after I yelled at her, it dawned on me that that I couldn’t think of one time in Della’s life that she’d actually done what she was told to.
This time instead of holding still, she sunk her teeth into Delgado’s arm.
“Motherfuck,” he yelled.
I got my feet on the runners and hauled myself up into the bay. Delgado was too busy slapping Della off his arm to stop me. He dropped her. My heart stopped and I let out something like a shriek, but Della just fell on her butt, not out of the bay.
“Della, get your ass on the seat!” I yelled.
“I was already going to,” she sassed.
“You don’t know,” Delgado said. Then he pulled a gun from inside his jacket. He grabbed Della by the hair and pointed it at her head.
My voice cracked when I yelled, “Don’t!”
Delgado laughed like I’d just said the punchline to some big joke.
“Pick one,” he said, pointing the gun back and forth between Della and Eva. “Which one gets to live, Uncle Jamie?”
My hands itched for a gun, a knife, anything. “You pull that trigger and you’re fucking dead.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I have a parachute.”
Then he shot his own fucking pilot in the back of the head.
Alarms screamed in the front of the helo. Eva covered her ears and started yelling, “Too loud!” over and over again while Della yelled at her to shut up.
Delgado got one hand on my throat and used it to push himself off me. He had plenty of time to jump.
Instead he reached for Della again.
Before Delgado could touch her, I tackled him. We fell out of the helicopter, me wrapped around his front.
“Let me pull the cord,” he hollered. “Let me pull the cord! We’ll die! Let me pull the fucking—”
I head-butted him. He flailed and kicked, trying to push me off, trying to find the parachute’s ripcord. I kneed him in the balls.
People assume I’m stupid because I make decisions without thinking about the consequences, but if I had stopped to think about how I was killing myself along with Delgado, I would’ve been too late. He would’ve grabbed Della and gotten away. Even if he hadn’t grabbed Della, he would’ve just pulled his ripcord and walked away without paying for what he’d done to Owen and Talia.
When Delgado and I smacked the leaves at the top of the canopy, I started praying to Jesus that the girls would survive the crash, even though Della wasn’t strapped in, and that Whiskey would find them fast, and maybe Mike could stitch them up if they needed it—but please, Jesus, don’t let them need it. Mike seemed like he’d be good with kids if the scars didn’t scare them.
That was the last thing I thought before I bounced off a branch and everything went black.
*****
Then everything went white.
“There he is.” That did not sound like an angel. Not the kind of angel I wanted to stare at for all eternity, anyway. It sounded like Mike.
The light disappeared and my eyelid snapped closed. My chest jerked and the Kevlar vest opened. It felt like a weight lifting. Then my belt came loose.
“Throw it here,” Mike said. “I’ll use it for the splint.”
A second later, my legs straightened out. Bone splinters ground together where my spine used to be. I gritted my teeth, but I couldn’t keep from screaming.
“I know it hurts like hell, Juliet, but that’s actually a good sign. Means you’re not paralyzed.”
“Put him under.” Whiskey.
“Who’s the medic here? Then get back and let me do my job.”
A needle stabbed into my thigh. I could feel the medication force itself into a knot in the muscle, then spread out. It got hard to yell. Then I didn’t need to yell as bad, anyway, because the pain was easing up.
“Lift on three. One. Two…”
*****
“C-cold.” I couldn’t stop shivering. “Jesus.”
Everything was lurching, side-to-side. I was back in Delgado’s helicopter. I groaned.
“Can you hear me, Juliet?” Mike asked. “Do you feel sick? Let me know if you think you’re going to throw up.”
“Girls—okay?”
“They’re with Romeo,” Mike said. “Get your end a little higher, Bravo.”
Bravo grunted.
“You better fucking live, bitch-boy. I ain’t carrying your ass all the way back to the rendezvous for nothing.”
I hoped my left hand was giving Bravo the finger, but I couldn’t tell.
*****
“Told her ‘Get your ass in the seat,’ but…wasn’t seatbelted…”
“Hey, Juliet,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s cool. The girls are okay.”
“Della…seatbelt…”
“They’re right here,” the voice said. “Girls, tell him.”
“It okay, Uncle Jamie. Me okay.”
“You have to say it like this,” Della told Eva. “Say, ‘I’m okay.’ Can you say, ‘I’m okay’?”
“Me. Oh. Kay.”
I think I started to cry.
*****
Tapping. I just wanted to sleep, but somebody was making too damn much noise. What were they doing banging on shit in the middle of the night, anyway?
“Stop.” I sounded drunk off my ass. “Trying sleep.”
“BP cuff will be done in just a minute, honey, then you can go right back to sleep.”
I opened my eyes. A half-lit hospital room. A thick little white-haired nurse was nodding at some numbers on a rolling vitals machine.
She saw me looking at her.
“Didn’t I tell you you’d be back on track in no time?” she asked. “A pulse-ox like that? We should all be so lucky. Now, on a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?”
“Where’s the girls?”
“Focus, honey. Scale of one to ten.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t dream they were okay, did I?”
“I’ll call in your team leader in a little bit. First, I need you to tell me on a scale of—”
“Zero. One. I’m fine.” I tried to move, but I couldn’t. A set of wires and slings were holding my legs in place. “What the fuck?”
“For the compression fractures in L1 and L2,” the nurse said. “We’ll give the cement another hour to set, then we’ll take you down. Don’t really need traction anymore now that everything’s back together again.”
“Back together?”
“Humpty-Dumpty you’re not, though you wouldn’t know it by looking.” She pointed at the cast on my left leg. “A rod for the transverse in the femur.” Then she tapped her pen on my right arm. It was casted from the elbow down. “Six pins to put your radius and ulna back together again. I’m thinking I’ll write all this on your whiteboard so we don’t have to go through the list every day.”
“Every day?” I had to get up. “How long—” A spasm rolled down my back, shooting white hot hell in every direction. I yelled.
“Yeah, sure, zero. Okay, tough guy, I’ll be right back with the happy juice. Why I bother asking you people…”
I wanted to cuss and scream at her until she told me what the hell was going on, but it hurt too much to get the words out. When she finally got back and shot the morphine into my IV, all I could do was thank her.
*****
Whiskey came by the second day I was conscious—which, according to Regina, the fat little smartass nurse, was the eighth day I’d been laid up—and that wasn’t nearly soon enough. Nobody would answer my questions and paranoia was starting to creep in on me.
“Where’re the girls?” I asked before Whiskey could open her mouth.
“With Talia’s mother,” Whiskey said. “As their closest living relative, the state awarded her custody.”
“That’s not right,” I said. “Owen and Talia made me their godfather. It’s in the will.”
“Jamie Kendrick is in the will and Jamie Kendrick is dead. He ran when the cruiser transporting him to the Arkansas state holding facility wrecked. The troopers at the scene attempted to subdue Kendrick, but he resisted, reached for an officer’s firearm, and was shot twice in the chest. He died at the scene.”
It took a minute to sink in. The guy in the jumpsuit and hood.
“You guys killed him? For real?” Then I realized—“My prints are on record. My mugshot. Tattoos, birthmark, teeth. They’ll know that guy wasn’t me.”
“Do you think this is the first time NOC-Unit has helped someone disappear?” Whiskey asked. “All records of Jamie Kendrick match the man who was shot attempting to escape. He is Jamie Kendrick.”
“Every cop in the Holler knows what I look like,” I said.
“You’re not seeing this for what it is,” Whiskey said. “Even if you had stayed in that backwater and against all odds been proven innocent in a court of law, the only thing you ever would’ve been was the man who got away with brutally murdering his family. NOC-Unit gave you the opportunity to rescue your nieces. You took it. You succeeded. Because of that, I’ve been authorized to offer you a spot on my team.”
I shook my head. This was too much. “Bulls
hit—to everything. Especially the girls. A helicopter crash in the middle of nowhere and they’re just fine? My busted ass. They’re dead, ain’t they? Just fucking tell me the truth.”
“Miracle, fluke, exception that proves the rule.” Whiskey shrugged. “Your nieces are alive and they don’t have a scratch on them, whatever you want to call it.”
“I called it bullshit. I want to see them.”
Whiskey took a long breath in and let it out slowly like she was about at the end of her patience with me. Then she got out her phone.
*****
An hour and a half later, the door to my hospital room slammed open.
“Uncle Jamie!” Della ran in and climbed up to stand on the chair by my bed. She moved okay, like nothing on her was hurting. And I didn’t see any scratches or bruises.
“Hey, girl. Where’s your sister at?”
“With Gramma. They’re just coming.” Della scratched at my arm cast with her thumbnail. “Why do you have this on?”
“I got hurt.”
“Because you didn’t sit your ass down,” she said.
I tried to keep a straight face. How the hell had Owen and Talia managed with this kid?
“Della, ‘ass’ is a bad word. Uncle Jamie shouldn’t even say it, so you don’t, either, a’ight?”
“Jesus don’t like it.”
“No, he don’t,” I said.
“And if you say it, you’ll get spanked,” she said.
“So will you.”
“Gramma said she won’t spank us. Even if we’re bad.”
“Then I’ll spank you. Don’t say it.”
The door opened again. A graceful-looking older black lady carried Eva in. Eva buried her face in the woman’s neck.
“No, now, that’s your Uncle Jamie,” the woman said. “He’s fine, sweetheart. See? He’s just fine.”
“Come on, look at me, Babygirl,” I said. “Don’t you want to see something cool?”
Eva turned her head just enough that I knew she was peeking.
“See these here?” I nodded down at my casts. “They’re for drawing on. I bet one of them nurses can find us some markers. Want to color on me, Babygirl?”
“Yeah,” Eva said. She sounded like she’d been crying.
“I could draw you a tattoo,” Della said.
“Yeah, you could,” I said.
The woman who’d brought them sat Eva down and dug around in her purse.