Comeback

by Doranna Durgin

  "You don't have to believe it," she told him. "Just do it." She finally found the change she'd been hunting, and dropped the coins in his waiting hand as she gave him the number, made him recite it three times, and then gestured him out of the wagon.

  And then she turned to Dobry. He sat propped in the corner, opposite his mercenary counterpart, and he looked purely terrible. His face took on a grayish-green cast under the streetlight; his breathing came in short, shallow efforts. "I don't get it," she told Cole, climbing over the back of the driver's seat to crouch by Dobry, who seemed barely aware of it. "I didn't think he'd been hit that badly."

  Cole followed her, much more slowly. He crouched beside her in increments, and then gave up and dropped to his knees. "It's got to be internal bleeding—I just can't figure what. It's not all that different than mine. I've decided to call it George, by the way."

  "Call what?" Selena opened Dobry's jacket and then his shirt, pulling the Velcro on the torso padding.

  "My war wound. The infection. George."

  She hesitated with what she was doing long enough to look over at him. "Just so long as we don't start naming other body parts."

  "Hey, some men do," Cole protested. And then, his eyes widened and his face was grim. "Holy shit."

  That's when Selena realized her hands were warm and wet, and she jerked her attention back to Dobry. The torso padding was sodden, heavy with blood. "Dobry, you fool." He had to have known. He'd been bleeding into the vest all this time, showing no sign of it from the outside. "We should have checked him—" But when she looked at the thick wad of bandages Cole had wrapped in place, the top layer was still dry. The bandage had come loose from around Dobry's abdomen, and the lower layer of the bandage had wicked off to the padding.

  "I did check him," Cole said, and shook his head. "Damn. If he'd said something—"

  Dobry's eyes dragged open. "Then you just would have had to make another hard decision. I made it for you. I…I got us into that mess. I've got nothing to complain about—"

  Selena said fiercely, "You want to be a black star on the Wall of Honor?"

  "Not…particularly."

  "Then shut up." She yanked her Buck 110 from her thigh pocket and held it by the blade, flipping it open to a locked position. The stout working blade cut through the bottom of Cole's abaya with only a whisper of noise. Cole might have made a surprised noise, but he didn't; he merely turned to make the work easier. And when she was done, he took the strip of material and worked it under Dobry as Selena supported Dobry's heavy weight, lifting him slightly. Together they tied it off, making a pressure bandage out of the whole thing.

  Not that it would really matter, if he kept bleeding internally. Dobry groaned a sigh as Selena released him. She said, "Look. We've made it to the capitol—it's just down the block. We've got a capitol security cop to get past—"

  "Didn't see him," Cole noted.

  "Trust me. There's at least one on this end of the street, even with the building officially closed. If I get past him, I've got a good shot at the stairs."

  "We," Cole muttered.

  "The point is, we're almost there. We're almost to help, for both of you. Dobry, just…hang on."

  "Give it…a try," Dobry breathed.

  Selena cursed under her breath and almost took the coat off to put it over him…she'd be warm enough, soon enough. But she still had to get past the local law, and she might well keep covered until she did. She twisted, looking down the street, pondering options. One cop between them and the building, others scattered around the grounds, unless Aymal was wrong about the low-key security for the event.

  They'd find out soon enough. First they had to tackle that one cop. She said, "I could just go ask for help, but…"

  "But it won't get you anywhere if he takes so much convincing that the action starts around us," Cole finished.

  Selena stood, jammed her hands into her coat pockets and encountered a day's worth of gatherings. The wig, the blood, the first sentry's gun…

  She looked down at her pocket. Cole looked at her pocket. And then they looked at each other, the same idea finding fruition at the same time. "Decoy," they said in chorus.

  "Decoy and tangle," Cole added. "Get him out of your way."

  "It's a plan." Selena set the wagon brake and jumped out, snagging her backpack along the way. Cole followed more slowly. By the time he reached the street comer, she'd laid out the coat, rumpling it so the stiff material held a vague body shape. The wig sat atop the collar, the singed side toward the ground, serving as a head. And the blood…she spilled it out in the comer streetlamp, hoping that the poor light would obscure the odd clumping caused by the heat damage. "You ready?" she murmured, and Cole faded back into the shadow of the low, decorative wall on the comer.

  Selena checked her scarf, took the abaya Cole handed her and deliberately let herself slide into the fear that drove all her overreactions, all her barely controlled fight-or-flight. She hyperventilated a quick couple of breaths, and then she ran for the capital building. She ran with clumsy steps, arms in an excess of motion—and when she saw the uniformed patrolman, she came to a flailing stop fifty feet away. "Help me!" she cried to him in her perfect Berzhaani. "My sister! A man has attacked her! Help us—!" And she reversed course, staying just out of the light—just far enough away so he wouldn't see what she wore under the open-front abaya. "He hit her hard!"

  The man hesitated, but he followed her. His steps quickened as he saw the faked body, and it was an easy matter to shove him stumbling toward Cole. Cole loomed out of the darkness and spun the man right into and over the decorative wall—and by then Selena had shed the abaya and could pounce.

  In moments they'd secured the man with his own cuffs, a strip of duct tape from Selena's bag over his mouth and around his ankles. They tucked him away in the inside corner of the decorative wall. "It won't last," Cole said, not quite able to stand up straight.

  "It doesn't have to." Selena bent to look in the man's eyes, furious and glittering even in this poor light. "I beg pardon," she said, "but we don't have the time to convince you. I promise, we're here to save Razidae." Again. And they were empty words to a humiliated guard now worried about the security of the capitol.

  No time for anything more than regrets. Selena snatched up the coat and ran it down the street to cover Dobry, then started to work on the horse's harness. When Cole caught up, his own eyes glittering from fever and his ragged breath betraying his pain, his expression nonetheless lit up. "You're planning a grand entrance, I take it?"

  "I need something they can't ignore." She yanked a trace strap free of the wagon's trace hook while Cole more slowly did the same on the other side, and left him to coil up the leather while she freed the breaching straps and the belly band of the harness saddle just behind the horse's withers. The shafts drooped. She caught her side and waited for Cole to get the other, and they backed the wagon away from the horse, out of the light of the streetlamp.

  "Don't tell me," Cole said, voice strained with the effort. "You drove horses at that school of yours."

  "A time or two," Selena said, hating the sudden wobble in her voice. She returned to the horse and pulled the lines through the terrets on the harness collar and saddle, then slashed them short with her knife to make reins.

  The wobble knew the consequences of failure. The wobble knew the consequences of success sometimes weren't much better.

  "Hey," Cole said, and caught her hand as she tied a knot in the reins, resting it behind the bearing hook on the saddle piece. "Until you came along, this op was totally FUBAR. I've seen you in action and there's no one I'd rather trust to pull this off."

  Whoa. She hadn't expected that.

  Then again, she hadn't expected to fall into such seamless teamwork with him. He was the one with the experience, the one with all the moves. The one who took life so casually on the surface that she'd had to learn to look hard to see beneath, to the man who needed her as much as she needed him.

>   "It's not the same as it was," she told him, thinking of who and how she'd been before the hostage incident.

  "No," he said. "It's never the same. It'll be a little bit different after this one, too. For any of us."

  The truth of his words struck her, there at the side of the street, their hands connecting over the withers of a restless horse. At Athena, she'd learned confidence. She'd learned skills. As a legate, she'd honed those skills, and she'd had to use them. But nothing could have prepared her for facing off against the Kemenis, the only chance for a dozen young hostages and another dozen innocent adults.

  She couldn't ever be that young Selena Shaw again. But that part of her was still there. Changed, recast, but still there. The basic Selena. And the basic Selena could still use those qualities, building on to them with everything that had happened to her since.

  The good and the bad.

  Slowly, she nodded. "Okay," she said. "Time to go do this thing."

  Chapter 22

  I can't believe I'm going to do this.

  Mr. Secret Agent Man, about to watch his Secret Agent Wife head off into the middle of it. Alone.

  But Cole assessed himself, painfully honest…and just plain painful. Fire branded his back. He couldn't pretend any longer that the chills he'd so far hidden from Selena were from the cool night air, or that the racing pattern of his heart came from anything he'd actually been doing.

  Doesn't matter. We're almost done. And Dobry…Dobry was dying fast. If he didn't get help soon, it would be too late.

  "He might not be used to this," Selena said, making some final adjustment to what remained of the horse's harness, glancing at her watch. "Hang on to his head, will you?"

  Cole reached for the reins directly beneath the half-cheek driving bit and giving a reflexive glance at his own watch face. They still had time. She could do this her way.

  Selena vaulted onto the horse's back with the athletic fluidity of practiced skill. The animal was typical of those Cole had seen in the area—wiry, capable, not terribly big. Selena's legs dangled along its sides. She gathered the reins and shifted around to a secure place behind the harness saddle, ignoring the horse's jigging as it adjusted to the new situation. "I'll send someone out as soon as—"

  Staccato gunfire cut into her words.

  Cole lip-read her succinct curse well enough. The party had started early, and that changed everything.

  Everything.

  When the horse surged forward, Cole kept a hand on the reins, stopping it suddenly enough to evoke a little rear. "I'm coming with you."

  "You can't—"

  "I'm fine—" he started and, at her patent disbelief looking down at him, shook his head. Regretted it, fighting a surge of dizziness, but persisting. "Okay, I suck. But I'll take care of myself."

  "Let go of the reins!" She fought him for them, unsuccessful only because she took care not to hurt the horse's mouth.

  "Lena!" He leaned into the animal's shoulder, risking those shod hooves and the potential impact of the hard, bony knee. The horse snorted loudly and wetly and Cole raised his voice over the gunplay. "You're not going in there without me! You think I can't stop this horse? You think I'm not perfectly capable of letting this thing play out without us? You've done this alone once already…but not this time."

  "Cole—"

  "Let me cover your back, dammit! Don't you dare leave me behind to hate myself the rest of my life if—"

  "And what about me?" She glared. "I'm supposed to just live with it if—"

  "Trust me." Cole released the horse and held out his hand, the one she'd need to take to help him up behind her.

  "Dammit" she snarled, and grabbed his forearm, sticking out her foot to act as an erstwhile stirrup.

  Cole swung up behind her. Not graceful; not even remotely impressive. Little Joe Cartwright, he wasn't. He reached around Selena's tight waist to latch onto the harness saddle—and when he clamped his legs around the horse's flanks, it gave a startled grunt and flung its butt in the air. Cole's nose hit the back of Selena's head and she said, "Lighten up!" before she used her own heels more appropriately, sending the horse forward. A few strides of jarring trot were enough to shoot sparks all the way up Cole's back. Then the horse broke into a lurching canter, not at all the gait of an experienced saddle horse. Cole clutched the hard leather of the harness saddle, working so hard to stay on that narrow back that he barely realized they'd arrived at the base of the capitol, gunfire everywhere, bodies everywhere, and damned if my Browning's not stuck between the two of us and then damned if we're not going right up the fucking stairs—

  With only one hand on the reins. He realized it as Selena took aim to the side and ahead, a carefully considered shot that must have found its mark—the horse made an ungainly leap over the body that rolled into its path. Cole had a flash of black and khaki—Kemeni—and the horse floundered to find its footing on the stairs again.

  They lurched, forward and up and lurched again. Selena took another shot while Cole quite literally covered her back. Not what I had in mind, dammit. His own back cramped, moments away from total seizure here on the once-bloodstained steps of the Berzhaani capitol. Get off before you fall off.

  And cover Selena's back for real.

  SELENA HAD AIMED THE STARTLED HORSE at the steps before it had time to think about what she was asking, before it had time to refuse. Cole clutched at the harness, hot against her back. A Suwan cop already lay dead at the base of the imposing steps. Another sprawled at the edge, halfway into the neatly groomed shrubs that hadn't been here the last time. She got a glimpse of statuary and understood, then, that the changes were a memorial for those who had died on these steps.

  No memorials for you, she snarled silently at the Kemenis charging up the steps just ahead of them. The suicide charge, with one man already at the top of the steps and struggling with the door. A door he should have had no chance of opening without the access code.

  With the horse making an honest, gallant effort beneath her, Selena overtook a straggler Kemeni and shot him down, giving the horse its head so it could flounder over the falling body. And then the man just ahead—but the horse stumbled and the bullet skimmed the man's neck—he reflexively threw himself to the side and Selena overtook him in an instant, leaving him at her back. At Cole's back.

  Except Cole chose that moment to release his grip on the harness, his voice briefly in her ear. "I'll cover you."

  And then her back was cold and exposed—and ahead, the Kemenis gave an exultant group cry and shoved one of the massive double doors open.

  Gunfire behind her left no doubt as to Cole's activities, and as three men and their Abakan assault rifles rushed into the capitol, Selena saved ammo by simply mowing down the man ahead of her—no longer trying to stop the several men left on the steps, but heading for the doors themselves. Once the Kemenis hit the fancy dining room, they could shoot down the entire assembly.

  Gunfire behind her, gunfire ahead—the two-beat stutter of the Abakans interspersed with the weapons of the fast-arriving Berzhaani security, the powerful report of Cole's Browning behind her.

  And here she was, riding a befuddled cart horse into the Berzhaani capitol for a bizarre reunion, caught up in the moment with her body and mind in full accord—no doubt, no hesitation, no regrets.

  And so it was that she burst into the capitol with a fierce grin on her face and a whoop of intent filling the lobby right along with the horse.

  A whoop cut short as she ducked, taken unaware by the newly positioned security arch. She pressed herself against the horse's neck and they blasted through it, but Selena's feet caught, forced back along the horse's flanks. The horse grunted in offense and switched to crow-hopping, buck-running past the dead security guard. Selena rode him through it, thighs jammed up against the harness saddle as they came up behind a Kemeni. Just rode, making no attempt to calm the animal—until they closed in. She pressed a rein against his neck, lifted the other slightly, and rubbed that heel
across his ribs as though she had spurs on. And the horse, every bit as over the limits of personal endurance as she suspected, flung his hindquarters out in mid-hop and splatted the Kemeni against the wall.

  The next closest man whirled to check on the noise, the hoofbeats, his expression primed for pure disbelief. Selena tucked the left rein around her right thumb and lifted her pistol, too close to miss. Too close altogether, for as the man went down the horse couldn't avoid him, and stumbled wildly before righting itself, its breath huffing audibly from more stress than effort.

  But just one more…

  One more, and they fail. Again.

  The sound of gunfire lured her on as clearly as a trail of bread crumbs, and the screams jolted her into speed. She gave rein, urging the horse into the choppy canter it could manage in these halls, straight for the dining room—straight through the doorway.

  As soon as she'd cleared it—as she found the Kemeni posturing to her left and the assembled staff and dignitaries to her right—she bailed. She sent the horse between the gunman and his targets, and she pulled a tuck-and-roll dismount, taking carpet burns regardless. Tuck and roll, until she stopped herself at the Kemeni's feet.

  He towered over her, treelike, his attention so focused on the astonishing presence of the horse that she had plenty of time to bring her gun to bear, aiming straight up at his crotch—plenty of time to wait for just the right moment.

  "Bang," she said. "Wanna die?"

  Chapter 23

  Security appeared as if from out of the woodwork—an actual possibility, unless that feature had been changed in the reconstruction—latching on to the Kemeni so roughly that Selena suspected he'd soon wish he'd taken her up on her offer. Outside, the gunfire had stopped, changing into rough shouts and nearly screamed demands for surrender.