Gun Metal Heart (14 page)

The newcomer lost his footing. Daria shot out of her stance, hauling ass to her right. Toward the flaming pillar and closer to the gunman.

The man quickly regained his balance, but tracking Daria meant turning his dominant eye toward the flame. He got a shot off. He expected her to keep running in that direction—back toward the hotel. But Daria stopped after two steps, bent low, scooped up one of the circular saw blades from out of the wood chips, and hurled it Frisbee-style.

Her sandals skidded a bit in the sawdust. She skittered backward, reaching clumsily for the Makarov she'd dropped. She heard the laughing blonde scramble for her weapon, too.

Daria hit the floor with her shoulder and hip.

A bullet panged off the now much abused table saw. The blonde had won the arms race.

The woman's second shot slapped into the warped floor and threw up wood chips and dust. Daria grabbed the Makarov, fired toward the woman once, then rolled onto her back, brought her arms down, and shot between her raised knees, back toward the man. She raised both arms over her head and rolled yet again, chest down now, and got off two more quick shots to where the woman should be.

Shielded by the remains of the table saw, she took a little gamble. “Is this … Viorica?”

A beat, then she heard a musical laugh. “Ooooh, honey! I was hoping you'd heard of me.”

Daria shouted, “We run in the same circles.”

Another laugh. “Just us girls!” And two more shots panged off the table saw.

Daria waited. The fire crackled. No more shots.

Daria dared to look up again. She peered around the darkened floor, weirdly lit by flaming pillars like some sort of Viking great hall.

The laughing blonde was gone. So was the doctor's bag with the stolen technology.

Daria rose to her feet and turned her attention to the burning pillar. The tall American man was down but not out. He was on all fours, trying to gather his wits.

She glanced behind the insulation. The Asian American was missing part of his face.

Daria turned back to the blond man and noted the Glock by his side. A much better weapon. She tossed her stolen Makarov away and went to her haunches, retrieving the man's American-made .45 auto.

His left arm caved, and he toppled onto his shoulder. Daria studied his face. She had cut him badly with the thrown buzz-saw blade. Blood flowed from a wound that ran across his left cheek from the edge of his mouth to his ear. The left ear itself was bisected and bleeding badly.

One eye was clotted with blood. The other looked both dazed and crazed.

Daria patted him down and found a wallet. She found a temporary Italian driver's license and a passport. Owen Cain Thorson.

He gasped. “You…”

Daria stared into his good eye. She studied his face. “You look familiar. I'm sure we've met. Where do I know you from?”

His good eye bulged. His hands clamped into fists. “Fucking”—he gasped—“hate you!”

“You'll have to narrow it down.”

She drove her elbow into his temple and his one open eye rolled upward, the white suddenly glowing from the overhead fire. She tossed down his wallet.

The building groaned again, the sawdust and wood chips on the floor dancing.

She turned and sprinted for the rubbish chute, pausing to grab the machine gun.

Daria got to the opening of the tough, plastic chute, held one arm out, barrel down, and emptied the magazine straight down. It was a simple enfilade. She didn't aim. She just let loose with a hailstorm of bullets.

When the machine gun clicked empty, she hiked one long leg up into the circular wooden opening, then the other, then leaped and slid, sliding blind, loving it.

 

Sixteen

The gathered men and women watched the many screens in the American Citadel subbasement. Fire spread upward through the Hotel Criterion de Medici. Smoke and debris billowed out of the windows and doors into the tight alley, then boiled upward into the sky.

Different lenses highlighted the images from each Mercutio drone: visible light, glowing green night vision, infrared. By glancing from one to another the Pentagon officials and the honchos from corporate could piece together what was happening to the hotel.

The hotel had not dragged down the livery building yet, but that was looking more and more likely.

On one of the screens the illustrated image of Daria Gibron faded and was replaced by a surveillance photo of a woman with a heart-shaped face, straight black hair, and extremely dark eyes. That photo showed just her head, neck, and shoulders. Smaller photos began popping onto the screen: the same woman, here in T-and-jeans, here in a dress; here running and here sitting at an outside cafe and laughing with someone unseen.

Snow's voice came over the PA system: “Interpol has her.”

Statistics began scrolling beneath the array of photos. Daria Gibron was Israeli. She had served in the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence. Later, in the States, with the FBI, DEA, and ATF.

Brevidge kept thinking this nightmare couldn't get any wore. Holy crap—they'd nuked a fed!

But he read on, and now the two guests were beside him, reading, too.

This Gibron woman was
formerly
attached to those agencies. These days she was
wanted
by those agencies.

General Cathcart and Colonel Crace studied the on-screen data. Then turned to each other. They seemed to communicate silently.

The general turned and glared into the eyes of Cyrus Acton until the thin man flinched away. The general turned, and this time glared at Todd Brevidge. Brevidge held the look.

Cathcart let his head swivel, taking in the room.

“Does anyone … anyone … doubt our next course of action here?”

One of the American Citadel managers raised a tentative hand. “I hope you're not thinking about—”

Colonel Crace interrupted the plump man. “Nobody likes an ultimatum, sir. Nobody wants to be told what to do by a psycho and a goddamn thief. But you can see for yourselves.” She pointed to the scroll of data on the screen. “This Daria Gibron has been red flagged by the CIA. Even her own Israeli intelligence people won't touch her. She's screwed with U.S. interests before and, like it or not, the blonde was telling the truth. Gibron is, right now, right here, a threat to U.S. interests.”

General Cathcart said, “Agreed.”

After the shortest of beats, Cyrus Acton said, “Yes. Agreed.” And of course Todd Brevidge quickly capitulated.

The general turned to them. “Well, then?”

Florence

The first thing Daria noted as she climbed out of the Dumpster was that the loquacious blonde was nowhere to be seen. She had called herself Major Arcana, but Daria had heard of her a few times over the years, working under the name Viorica. A mercenary and thief who often hired out to paramilitary groups. She had a fierce reputation.

The second thing Daria noted was that the Dumpster had been filled with soft foam packing peanuts. The blonde had had this exit well planned. The third thing she noted: about eight seconds after she climbed out of the Dumpster and was still pulling staticky foam peanuts and wood chips out of her hair, she heard a high-pitched
ping!
and turned to see the giant metal bin reverberate and shudder about half a foot.

The blonde had warned her about drones.

Daria sprinted down the alley, still seeing no sign of the tall woman. She got to the end of the alley, hung a quick left, and dashed through crowds that had gathered, wide-eyed, cell-phone cameras at the ready, to capture the destruction of the hotel.

A few caught a glimpse of the semiauto in her fist and shrank back.

Half a block from the narrow alley, a Birra Moretti parasol over an outdoor table splintered in two and toppled away. One of the tourists under the umbrella fell straight backward, a spiral of blood arcing in his wake.

Daria took a moment to check over her shoulder for a helicopter. She saw none. She dodged a cluster of Japanese tourists following a woman walking backward and talking into a minimicrophone and shoulder-slung speaker. She juked left around a newsstand, then right, pivoting quickly into a doorway.

The newsstand seemed to explode, lurid tabloids wafting into the air.

Inside the doorway Daria shouldered her way past a busboy, whose tray of dishes clattered to the floor. She saw stairs ahead of her and hit them hard, arms pumping, taking them two steps at a time. At the top of the stairs she found a perpendicular hallway lined with doors. Apartments, she thought, as she bounced off a wall, taking the brunt on her shoulder, and raced down the corridor.

The busboy behind her began cursing, then screamed. She heard his body hit the stairs.

Fucking hell!
she thought, rising up, one foot out, and kicked a door at the end of the hall with all her weight and momentum. The cheap lock splintered and the door banged open. Daria was in, hurdling over an ottoman and shouldering aside an obviously drunk man with a massive belly and a Homer Simpson T-shirt. The man fell as Daria hit his kitchen, found his refrigerator, and slammed into it hard enough to bruise her shoulder. She opened the fridge door as wide as she could and sank to her haunches. She reached into her backpack and snagged her cell phone. She hit Diego's speed dial number and listened to it ring.

The fridge door rang like a chime and leaped, one of two hinges springing free. At her feet, a jar of pickles smashed to the floor, brine spraying.

Diego's number rang and rang.

The fridge door chimed again, and this time the bullet penetrated, two inches above Daria's head.

She shoved the Glock into her backpack. She smashed the door closed and sprinted for the kitchen window, phone in her fist, and sprang for the balcony. Another alley below. There was an old-fashioned collapsible fire ladder, and she kicked the ratchet release, watched the ladder clatter noisily under its own weight, and once it was down, turned and scampered down it not caring that the sundress was probably the wrong attire for climbing into an alley in sight of the half-dozen tables of the nearest restaurant. She heard someone whistle a catcall and applaud as she hit the pavement. She ran, hard, for the next street.

She paused long enough to turn and spot, not one, but two hummingbirds in the alley behind her. And now she remembered seeing them outside the Hotel Criterion. They hadn't registered before. As she watched, a hawklike figure, maybe thirty meters up, arced into the alley and a flicker of light erupted under it.

Daria turned as the brick wall by her head cratered and debris pecked at her hair.

Several blocks away, Diego's cell phone lay amid the shattered display of bathroom products, in the window of a pharmacy. Smashed in two, it didn't ring.

Twenty meters away, amid the dust and debris of not one, but
two
burning buildings, an American named Jake Kenner dragged Owen Cain Thorson clear. Thorson was bleeding heavily from his cheek and ear, and his boots barely scraped the asphalt. Kenner hauled him toward their white van.

 

Seventeen

John Broom, Calvin Pope, and two of the four interns stood around the congressional office. John's laptop was perched on a filing cabinet. They were watching a live stream from Al Jazeera English. Sitting next to it was Calvin's laptop. It was tuned to Sky News.

Both showed the fire and destruction of a hotel and adjacent building in Florence, Italy.

Calvin pointed to Sky News. “Russians are saying they lost some military attachés in the explosion.”

One of the interns, Bryce, said, “Terrorism?”

John shrugged. “Looks like it.” He glanced at Calvin Pope.

“Look. Just because your source called yesterday and said something was happening in Florence, doesn't mean—”

John's phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and noted the international extension.

Italy.

“John Broom.”

Instinctively, he put it on speaker. As he did so, Senator Singer Cavanaugh appeared from his office, wearing his bow tie and suspenders but no jacket.

“
John! It's Daria! The hotel attack—”

They heard a clatter and rumble but her words faded. Singer stepped into their midst. John said, “Daria? Hello? Hey, we're watching it now. The Hotel Criterion. Is that the thing you—”

“They're drones, John! Micro-drones!”
She sounded out of breath.
“Never seen anything like them. Hummingbirds for surveillance. Hawks have missiles and bullets! John, listen! They can track—”

The line went dead.

“Daria? Daria!”

John looked at the senator. The man looked grim but not overly emotional, as if his staff received such calls every day. He turned and barely gestured toward Clara, his longtime secretary. The elderly woman hobbled over without Singer having spoken and handed him a cell phone.

Calvin Pope whistled. “Is this for real? Micro-drones?”

John said, “There's no such thing. On drawing boards, maybe. But not in the field. Not from any country.”

“Then what…?”

The senator spoke into the phone. “This is Senator Singer Cavanaugh. I need the White House chief of staff. Tell him it's a national emergency.”

John's phone rang. A different phone number displayed but with the same international prefix. He answered and kept it on speaker.

Daria Gibron shouted, “
Bad guys are Serbs! Buyer in Belgrade! I'm going after them. There's a man called Diego. He's here, he'll help! Ask the Viking!
”

John said, “Daria? Can you find the U.S. embassy? Get there! Get inside! We're sending—”

“
John! The drones have my voice pattern and face recognition! They can track cell phones. I'm trying a land line! They're … shit—!
”

Everyone stood, eyes locked either on John's phone or on the devastation appearing live on the two laptop computers.