The last quarter hour had been a whirlwind tutorial in do-ityourself explosives. Under Sean’s direction, he’d feverishly taped and wired a stack of nine-volt batteries together in a series to multiply their voltage, rigged stun grenades with blasting caps, daisy-chained them with telephone wire to the battery and the cell phone. They’d duct taped the packed batteries and Sean’s doctored cell phone under the bridge, which spanned a dried-up torrent that splashed down the hill in the springtime, two hundred meters from the cabin. The flashbangs were hidden in dirt on the section of road between the bridge and the chain. A drift of pine needles barely covered them and the wire.
Wheels crunched on rock. An engine revved, lifting the loaded vehicle over bumps, wells, and ruts. The vehicle appeared, a dark SUV, easing around the last narrow turn. It slowed, steering onto the narrow bridge, which consisted only of thick planks laid long-wise, just wide enough to perch the wheels of a vehicle upon them. The wood groaned at the weight, bowing and creaking as if the four-by-sixes would snap.
The SUV cleared the bridge and slowed to a stop, blocked by the heavy chain, thick as a man’s wrist, that Bruno had strung across the road.
The chain was attached to rings driven into two big posts made from creosote-soaked railroad ties. They’d been sunk into wells of cement, and over the years the ground had eroded around the wells so that they stuck out like grubby, warty pedestals. A gate had once hung upon them, but the hinges had rusted off long ago. Tony hadn’t bothered with a gate. He’d just strung the chain when he left. It wasn’t like there was anything to defend. Just the humble cabin.
Bruno’s cell phone was in his hand, which was cold, shaking. Sean’s number glowed on the screen. The guy had contributed his cell to the cause, cutting a hole right over the vibrating device to insert the wires. When he pushed “call,” the tumblers would turn, the wires would make contact . . .
boom
. And the dance began.
Even without a scope, he saw through the tinted windows that the SUV was full of people, heatedly conferring. The chain made them nervous. They didn’t like the road, either. The only spot on the road wide enough to turn was beyond that chain. Behind was just a narrow, crumbling track barely as wide as the SUV’s axel, and sheer drop-offs all the way down to the switchback. They had to go forward or else back all the way down in reverse. The rear driver’s side door popped open. A guy got out, wearing camo. Definitely not Great-aunt Betty out for a picnic.
The radio crackled. “He’s packing an M4.” Sean’s voice was calm. “Three more inside. I’m taking the driver. Ready?”
“Yes,” Bruno said.
“On my signal,” Sean said.
One second. Two. Three—
Bam.
A bullet punched through the windshield. Red spattered the windows. Bruno hit “call,” covered his ears.
The vehicle doors burst open. Armed assholes came boiling out.
Bam,
one of them slammed hard against the SUV, bouncing—
Boom-boom-boom.
The stun grenades went off. Blinding flashes.
The guy who’d fallen against the SUV stumbled and pitched into the ravine, sprawling against the tumbled boulders.
Bam,
the guy who had investigated the chain was suddenly flat on the ground at the roadside, clutching his leg.
“Body armor,” Sean said tersely into his ear. “Go for the thigh.”
Bam. Bam.
Sean kept firing, but Bruno couldn’t tell at who.
He stared at the wounded guys on his side of the vehicle. The guy who’d checked the chain was clutching a wet red wound in his thigh. The other was trying to climb up to the roadway. Bruno took a breath, let it out, aiming for the climbing guy’s leg . . . squeezed the trigger.
Bam.
The guy shrieked. He’d hit his target, amazingly.
Now the hard part. “Going to cuff them,” he muttered.
He hauled the plastic cuffs out and burst out of his hiding place, leaping, skidding, and sliding down the slope toward the fallen men.
18
Z
oe scrambled for cover, gasping. She’d taken
a shot to the SAPI trauma plate that had slammed her down and knocked out her wind. Cracked a rib or two, maybe. It hurt to breathe.
Those scheming
pricks.
She was so angry she could bite out her own tongue. Her neck had been prickling since they stopped at the chain. Now Hal was dead, his head half gone. She was splattered with his blood and brain tissue. The rest of the team was likewise fucked.
Jeremy and Manfred were down, whimpering. So accustomed to being unbeatable, they had no idea how to manage themselves when compromised. She wanted to shoot them herself to make them shut up. She peeked around a boulder, scanning for movement.
Yes.
Thee, in a camo poncho, oozing toward her downed team members. She squeezed off a shot. Ranieri jerked but kept scrambling.
Zinggghh,
the sniper returned fire and forced her back down.
They had body armor, too. The cunts. She should have known when she saw the chain. She hadn’t seen a chain in the satellite photos.
Of course not. That’s because there hadn’t been one, bitch.
So arrogant. So stupid of her to think she could manage without an armored SUV. So sure her elite, superbly competent team could handle it, with all their firepower. And now they’d been slammed.
She’d thought this through so carefully, weighing the need for speed against the safety of a larger team. The only other trained operatives in the area were the losers Hobart and Melanie, and that opportunistic whore Nadia, who was in any case too busy fucking Aaro. It would have taken days to get more people, and it was so important to move today, while Parr and Ranieri were alone, relatively exposed. If she’d waited, they’d have been swept behind the protective wall of the McCloud family, which raised the stakes, the price tag, and the risk of exposure exponentially.
And look at her. Wasting time justifying her mistakes.
She’d felt so superior to Reggie, but she’d made his exact error. Underestimating those sneaky, steaming pieces of shit.
Again.
She’d had several different possible plans in place. She’d been ready to jump in any direction, but she’d favored the simplicity of positioning snipers above the road to pick them off like rats.
Exactly like they’d just done to her own team.
She slithered through wells between huge tumbled boulders and found a crevice to peer through. Ranieri was already jerking plastic cuffs tight around Jeremy’s wrists. She estimated him at forty-five meters. She leaped up, took aim.
Bam
. Her aim was off. The shot caught him on the torso, center mass. With body armor, that did nothing more than knock him backward. He hit the ground, scrambled for cover.
Bam, bam,
McCloud forced her back down while Ranieri crawled toward Manfred. Her best chance was the thicket in the ravine.
She crawled into the brush-choked gully, scrabbling in rocks and roots and spiny foliage. Up over the edge of the drop-off. She wiggled through scrubby brush until she found a place to look down. A hundred meters, maybe a little more. Fuck, her chest hurt.
Jeremy lay on the ground, trussed and helpless in a pool of blood, but still writhing. Ranieri had cuffed Manfred, too, but he was bleeding out. It was a very long shot from here with a Beretta Px4 pistol, but the other M4s and the M110s had been packed into the vehicle out of reach. She’d improvise. She focused on Ranieri’s dirt-smeared face, took careful aim, relaxing, focusing, but the filthy bastard was a blur of constant, restless movement. She dogged Ranieri with the Baretta as he hoisted the writhing Jeremy under his armpits, dragging him over and throwing him right next to Manfred. Jeremy saw his colleague, the gaping leg wound, the blood. Manfred’s slack face, his staring eyes.
The realization of what was about to happen hit Jeremy the same moment it hit Zoe. He jerked up, arching and straining—
Boom.
She flinched as Manfred’s cell phone blew up, flipping his and Jeremy’s bodies both into the air. The cell had selfdestructed shortly after the cessation of Manfred’s heartbeat.
That blast had to have killed Jeremy, too. Zoe braced herself.
Boom,
the other phone went off as well. She peeked out. Only the still, broken bodies of her team were lying there. So Ranieri had not been killed. He’d taken cover. Hiding like a lizard in the rocks. Cowed.
He must be so bewildered. So confused.
Her body shook with silent giggles. So funny. She hadn’t even considered those phone self-destruct mechanisms as a danger at all. They were accustomed to easy, smooth victories. No losses. No contest.
What a shame Ranieri hadn’t been crouching over her colleagues when they blew. That would have been so funny, she could hardly . . . even . . .
stand
it. And the laughter was hurting her broken ribs. She groped for her personalized dose of Calitran-Z. Peeled off the adhesive, pushed the business side against her wrist.
She was alone now and cut off. She carried only the pistol, the thermal goggles around her neck, and—
wait.
Hold everything.
Excitement pumped hotly through her body. Parr wasn’t with the men. They wouldn’t have left her in the cabin. They would have given her an escape route to maximize her chances of survival. But Parr was emotional. She’d bonded with Ranieri. Probably fucked him left, right, and sideways already. And she was tough, too. No rabbit.
Parr had heard the shots and explosions. She’d creep back, worried and curious. The woods were thick, and she was probably shrouded in camo. No problem. Zoe lifted the thermal goggles and quartered the hillside, scanning for that rainbow-tinted glow. If she could cut Parr off, she could pick off Ranieri and McCloud when they came running to Parr’s aid.
Yes.
Fifty meters up. Invisible to the naked eye, but Zoe’s eyes were anything but naked. Parr glowed in the woods like an opal.
Zoe’s blood-spattered cheeks hurt from grinning.
Keep it together, Parr.
It was hard to follow her own stern advice. Her hands were slick with sweat, clamped on the butt of the Glock that Bruno had given her along with terse instructions.
Point and click. If you don’t want it to go bang, don’t pull the trigger.
Clear enough, but her heart thudded so fast she was dizzy. She hadn’t been this scared on her own account, but the thought of Bruno, lying on the ground, bleeding—oh, God. Her knees almost buckled.
She couldn’t do what Bruno had ordered her. She couldn’t run and hide. Not after she heard the noise. She had a gun, she could pull the trigger, like anybody else.
She shuffled down the hill, scared to her guts of what she might find there. She crawled down below the cliff’s edge, under a crumbling overhang, looking for a good vantage point with cover.
The long silence was scaring the crap out of her.
Wind sighed in the scrubby trees that clung to the rocky slope. She huddled under the overhang, and—oh
God—
Bats burst out, fluttering. She jerked back, almost lost her balance—
Zhingg,
a bullet smacked the rock wall, right where her head had been. She slid and tripped. One leg slid off the ledge, sending a shower of dirt clods and rocks bouncing down the hill. Where the
hell . . .?
Lily stared out at the grayish brown foliage. She leaned forward—
>Zoidth="1em">
Zhhingg,
another bullet whizzed past her ear, hit the cliff face, exploding in a stinging shower of rock and dirt. So close.
She was pissed. Enough of acting like prey. She’d hunt that dirty rat bastard right back. She slithered on her belly, one hand awkwardly clutching the pistol, and dragged herself up between two big towers of striated black granite. She spotted the gunman scrambling up the hill.
Smaller than she’d expected, dressed in camo gear. Loping up the steep mountainside with the grace of an Olympic gymnast doing a medal-winning routine. He looked up. Their eyes met.
Holy
shit!
That was no man. That was Miriam! Howard’s nurse!
Miriam gave her a big smile and swung up her gun. Lily ducked.
Zzhhing,
a bullet ricocheted off the rock where her head had been.
Lily clenched muscle, teeth, fists.
Not today, bitch. You’re not going to get me today.
Miriam was crawling hand over hand. Lily scrambled to use the moment of grace, crawling frantically up over the ledge and into the trees. She belly crawled, as quietly as she could, but still snapped twigs and thwacked boughs. Her heartbeat alone had to sound like distant thunder. An ancient tree had fallen years ago, and its whitened root system towered into the air like a skeletal fan. Best cover she could find. Also the most obvious. Too bad. Miriam would arrive any minute.
Her heart’s drumbeat made it hard to hear anything. She coiled herself behind the base of the fallen trunk and strained to listen.
A soft crunch, a
shush-shush.
Her ears reached for the sounds, straining to catch more sound waves out of the air. She wondered if those goggles Miriam wore could see her behind the spreading tangle of roots.
She pretended to be empty air. There were ragged holes in the splayed root system, she noticed, where the roots were smaller and finer. She could see the sky through them. Like lace.
“I know you’re there, Lily.” Miriam’s tone was gently mocking, maybe five yards away. “Behind that fallen tree root. Just stand up. Let’s finish this. I promise I’ll make it quick.”
Lily dragged in a slow breath through chattering teeth.
Think. Think.
The woman was a cat type. Cats played with their prey, disemboweling them before they ate. It was a big, fat lie that she meant to kill Lily quickly. She would want her fun.
“W-w-will y-you t-t-tell me one th-thing first?” She made her voice small, pathetic. Cowering mouse. Whiskers quivering.
Miriam chuckled, indulgent. “Sure, honey. Ask me anything.”
Lily positioned the Glock pointing straight up, under one of the holes in the root system, and rose until her face showed.
The woman waited, attentive, her gun leveled at Lily.
“I just, um, wanted to know . . .” She blinked, rabbitlike.
Miriam’s full, sensual lips curved. “Yes?”
Lily tilted the gun horizontal, pulled the trigger.
Bam.
The recoil flung her arms up, sent her stumbling back, tripping over rocks. She hit the ground, scrambled to her feet, took aim again.
Bam.
Miriam lay on the ground, struggling to rise.
Lily tried again.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Twigs and leaves and trees snapped.
Bam.
The bullet tore a hole in the fallen tree. Wood chips flew. Her arms shook. Her fingers were numb.
And Miriam rose up, like some immortal demon spawn. “Is that all you’ve got for me?” she wheezed. “You stupid fucking whore!” She laughed, her lips peeled back from her teeth, and swung her gun up.
Bam.
A huge blow to Lily’s chest slammed her to the ground.
The gun flew from her hand. She struggled to rise, groping in the underbrush for the Glock, her chest a well of fiery agony. “You crazy bitch,” she gasped out, fighting for air. “What’s your problem with me?”
Miriam aimed. “Just that you’re still breathing.”
Crack, crack.
Lily jerked, stumbled.
It took a beat to realize that she wasn’t shot. It was Miriam who spun and was flung down onto her side. Her gun hit a dead branch, flew into the bushes. The woman lurched to her feet, looking around for it wildly. She spotted Lily’s Glock the same moment Lily lunged for it.
She let out a shriek and ran at Lily like a charging bull.
The impact knocked her backward, and they tumbled over the rounded edge of the ravine, sliding in a clawing, screaming, grappling ball, thudding, rolling, jolting down that rough, steep slope.
Closer and closer to the edge of a sheer rock face below, where it was ten yards of freefall to the creek bed below.
Lily snatched at small trees as they rolled by, but hers and Miriam’s combined weight made them rip and shred through her hands, thwapping at her face. They fetched up against an outcropping at the edge of the cliff. Miriam’s back hit it first. Lily took advantage of that stunned second to tear herself loose, scrabbling for something to hold.
The first thing her groping hands could clutch was an old root from some ancient tree, still jutting from the hillside. Her other hand grasped a bunch of saplings, no more than two feet high. Shallow, tender root systems on a hard rock face. They wouldn’t hold for long.