by Tom Clancy
"Down!" he yelled. "Down, down—"
He dropped.
Howard was still on his feet, staring at Platt.
One… two… three…
Boom!
The grenade went off, and metal sleeted through the trees and bushes, punching holes in leaves and bark.
Something burned along Michaels's arm. He frowned. What—!
A long time passed, a couple of thousand years, Michaels figured. Toni grabbed him, and he realized he was still alive. His ears rang.
He hugged her with his good arm, and watched his other arm bleed from the shrapnel gash on it. It didn't hurt, but it was putting out what seemed a goodly amount of red.
"Don't shoot!" Hughes said. He started to blubber, big tears streaming.
"Shut up," Howard said quietly.
Hughes shut up.
Howard moved to stand next to Michaels, holding his own arm, which was also bleeding. "Commander. You okay?"
"Yep. You, Colonel?"
"Better, now. Nice of you to drop by."
"We were in the neighborhood."
They looked down at Platt, who was still breathing. Platt said, "Damn. I can't believe it. A nigrah…"
Howard didn't say anything.
Platt stared at Howard. "I hate this fuckin' country," he said. "Kilt by a goddamned nigrah—"
Platt's last breath escaped and he collapsed.
Howard stared off into the forest. "He was right about the Germans."
"Excuse me?" Michaels said.
"I'll tell you about it later, Commander."
Behind them, Joanna Winthrop and Julio Fernandez were locked in a tight embrace.
"Well," Michaels said, "I hate to break this party up, but it would be a good idea for us to take our leave now."
"Amen, Commander. Amen."
Michaels bent, and with some difficulty, pulled the kris from Platt. He wiped it off on the man's shirt, then gave it back to Toni. "I think you are right, Toni. This is definitely a lucky thing to have around."
"Let's go, people! We got a helicopter to catch!"
They went.
Epilogue
Saturday, January 22nd, 8 a.m. Washington, D.C.
In his own bed, Michaels woke up slowly and rolled from his right side onto his back. The left arm was still little sore, but the medic had used skinstat glue and bonded the six-inch-long gash into a thin line they said would leave minimal scarring. A nice conversation piece at informal parties, they'd told him. Not everybody nearly gets blown up by an antique hand grenade.
The ride back from Guinea-Bissau had been relatively uneventful. The locals had never gotten around to finding the helicopters, at least not until after they were in the air. The flight from Banjul couldn't have been smoother. True, the director hadn't been thrilled with the operation, but nobody in Guinea-Bissau was going to complain about it, given that their President had received a hundred million dollars in stolen money. They might even let him keep it, the director had said, because maybe it was better that he was beholden to the U.S. government, given the unstable political situations over there. Better he felt as if he owed them a favor, should they need to collect it. But that was up to State, of course.
All in all, the director wasn't too upset. And everybody in the regular FBI and Net Force was happy to hear the great silence from the offices of Senator Robert White after his chief of staff was indicted for all those horrible crimes. White was too rich to have been involved in Hughes's little scheme, but there would be a little tar from that brush on his nice suit. Maybe he might even get unelected next time around. There was a nice thought.
Colonel Howard's arm needed a little work, but it would heal almost as good as new, so he was told. And apparently the colonel had picked up some kind of rare bacterial infection a while back that had been sapping his strength lately. It had been missed during his initial exam, but picked up while the knife wound was being treated. Once it was diagnosed, the medics were able to start Howard on antibiotics, and he'd been delighted to find out that the disease would be cured in a couple of weeks and he'd feel a lot perkier. Not that Michaels thought the colonel particularly needed that—he'd looked pretty damned perky when he'd been wrestling with the sociopathic racist bodybuilder.
So, despite a few glitches, things had turned out pretty well…
"Alex?"
He looked up. Toni, naked and gloriously beautiful, stood at the foot of the bed beaming down at him. "Hmm?"
"You want some coffee? I can go and make you some."
He smiled at her. "Maybe later," he said. "I've got something else in mind just at this moment."
"Oh? And what might that be?"
"Come here and I'll show you."
She did, and then he did.
That turned out pretty well too.
And the coffee didn't get made until almost noon.
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