Authors: J. Fally
It was hot, hotter than outside in the merciless southern sun. The fire was licking up the sides of the serving hatch and nosing into the room, and with it came blistering heat and suffocating smoke. Misha’s eyes were watering, his lungs seizing as he rooted through the wreckage. Something bit into the back of his hand and tore through his thin glove into his skin. Blood seeped from the wound, slicked his fingers. He ignored the discomfort and kept right on digging, dizzy and breathless, anesthetized by grief and stubborn purpose. He bulldozed on until his fingers suddenly touched something yielding and then he must’ve blacked out for a bit, because he couldn’t for the life of him recall how the hell he’d moved half the countertop.
The first thing Misha noticed as he staggered closer was that Riley looked surprisingly good for a corpse. He was in one piece, which was more than Misha had dared hope for, wasn’t bloody, not even particularly dirty. A little bruised, maybe. Pale beneath his tan, long lashes dark against ashen skin. He was curled up protectively, head pillowed on his crumpled hat, his chest rising and falling slightly with… every… breath….
Misha’s world reset.
Surround sound kicked back in. Numbness evaporated under an overwhelming wave of relief that sent him to his knees in the dirt. He tugged off his gloves, shoved them into his pocket, even this thin barrier too much to handle. His hands shook when he reached out and stroked Riley’s cheek (smooth, warm, alive, thank God, alive), trembled hard when he ran them over the familiar frame, checking for cuts and breaks, finding nothing obvious. He had trouble seeing, could feel tears run down his face and soak into the much-abused material of Kolya’s shirt, and he didn’t even try to blame them on the smoke. He touched Riley’s face again, just to feel the delicate caress of those precious, gentle breaths against his battered and bloody fingers.
Something popped and crackled in the flames, snapping him out of it. Misha realized his coughs had gotten worse, that he was starting to feel nauseous and lightheaded despite the protection of the improvised mask. No time to linger, not even to make sure Riley didn’t have internal injuries. If moving Riley did cause damage, Misha would have to deal with it once they were safely outside, because they were minutes from being choked and devoured by the smoke and flames. Misha wasn’t about to go out in a kitchen fire. To imagine flames licking at Riley’s dead body had been unbearable; the idea of him burning alive was a thousand times worse. Misha had to get them both out of this death trap as fast as possible and hope his first assessment had been correct and by some miracle Riley had merely been knocked senseless.
He lifted Riley out of the debris as carefully as he could, scraping his hands worse than before and not caring. He could deal with a few more scratches if it meant Riley wouldn’t have to suffer any additional pain. He’d rather see Riley stained with his own blood than with Riley’s. For a second he just knelt there, cradling the unconscious form against his chest, unable to move, to let go. He could see the pulse flutter beneath the fragile skin of Riley’s bared throat, could feel the living warmth of him, and he heaved a single breath that was painfully close to a sob. Jesus. He was a mess. They both were.
He wanted to pick up Riley and carry him bridal style in case Riley had indeed suffered internal injuries, but he knew he couldn’t. Riley wasn’t that much smaller than Misha, and he was heavy, much heavier than Misha remembered. It’d throw off Misha’s balance, block his view of the floor, and they couldn’t afford that with all the debris lying around. Reluctantly, he slung Riley over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and staggered to his feet.
It was reflex that made him catch the gun that slipped from beneath Riley’s shirt at the motion. In contrast to its owner, the H&K was lighter than it should’ve been. Empty. Misha stared at it briefly, wondering why the fuck Riley had his father’s pistol with him instead of at the bottom of his bag as usual and why he’d decided to face Armageddon with an unloaded gun.
Later
, he thought. He could ask Riley when he woke up. Because Riley was going to wake up. He was going to be fine. He’d want to have the gun back, too, so Misha shoved the weapon into the back of his own pants, grabbed Riley’s hat, and got going.
T
HE
smell of blood and gunpowder drifted through the air, almost but not quite concealed by the biting scent of melting Formica and charring plywood. The ground was littered with shell casings and painted with smears of red that slurred into black oil spills and growing puddles of gasoline that spread between the bullet-riddled shapes of parked cars.
It was a bit like being back in the war, Nick Young mused as he took in the postbattle destruction surrounding him. Any war, really, what with the adrenaline buzzing through his veins, but mostly like that one time he’d gotten his ass captured near the Pakistani border. It hadn’t stayed captured for long—Young was nothing if not resourceful and plenty deadly with or without a weapon—but the situation had been disgustingly similar to his current predicament. Put on his knees with his fingers laced behind his head and his men flat on their bellies on the hot concrete. His ears still ringing from the close-range gunfire, his mind seething with anger and humiliation, fear for his men, and honest confusion about who the hell had crashed the party. Surprises. God, how he hated them.
He’d thought they had everything covered, had planned for anything the alien could throw at them. They’d kept it away from possible hosts and hostages, hadn’t gotten close enough for it to jump them or cut them, and had had the advantages of home ground, top equipment, and supposedly exclusive knowledge about the nature and location of their target. Nobody had anticipated the possibility of a third party involvement, and even if they had, Young certainly wouldn’t have expected to be ambushed by three yuppies gone bad in El Paso, Texas.
Who were these fuckers?
Young had never before been taken down by people wearing expensive shoes and tailored suits… not physically, anyway. He’d gone up against plenty of sharks in Washington DC, but even though some of them probably wanted to, they didn’t tend to shoot at him. These three were nothing like them, no matter how well they wore their suits. Their clothing wasn’t their uniform, it was camouflage. Take off the masks and latex gloves, and the only thing that might’ve drawn attention to these men in a city crowd would’ve been that one of them wasn’t wearing a shirt… and even that could’ve worked as a fashion statement given the chiseled body beneath the jacket. Apparently he’d donated the shirt to the cause: those weren’t bandanas hiding the lower half of their faces. The attackers were fit without being overly muscled, well versed in violence, obviously trained, and armed with suspiciously familiar-looking army-issue weapons, which might just mean the fuckers had steamrolled Young’s troops starting out with nothing but a nasty disposition.
He’d tried to talk to them, mostly because he’d wanted to see how they’d react. They had ignored his overtures, refused to engage. It didn’t make Young happy, but neither was he particularly surprised. They were professionals, not that easy to distract, hard to sound out. They mostly communicated with body language and hand signals, similar to military sign language but different enough to make it hard to follow. The shorthand of an experienced team. How likely was it that a trio of seasoned specialists just happened to be at the site of a top-secret military operation involving an extraterrestrial entity?
Yeah. Not very.
It grated that he couldn’t do anything without risking the lives of his already thoroughly demoralized men. Even those of them who hadn’t been hurt looked a little shell shocked. Maybe two minutes had passed since the first shot had been fired, though the adrenaline-fueled time distortion had made it seem decidedly longer. It had happened so damn quickly, had been over before any of them could really switch gears from “home ground snatch-and-grab” to “warzone extraction.” Young thought it was probably the home-ground dissociation that had thrown them the most. Even after 9/11, even trained as they were, there remained that stubborn kernel of belief not even soldiers could shake that home was supposed to be
safe
.
“Tell your backup team to disarm and come out with their hands behind their heads,” one of them told him, voice flat and muffled by the improvised mask, the faintest hint of a New York accent in his words. Young decided to call him “Armani,” because his suit was still almost pristine after the firefight, only a few artful rips marring the fine fabric. You could barely see the blood spatters. The bastard looked like a model for an expensive label instead of a cold-blooded killer. Until he opened his mouth, that was. “Send the helicopters away.”
Young stared at him and then at Shirtless, who looked back with cool, emotionless eyes and wordlessly pressed his weapon against Staff Sergeant Hollis’s head.
Young gave the orders.
It didn’t matter if he let them have this. The three-man hit squad was brazening it out, but the numbers were against them. Young was going to get the upper hand sooner or later; he could wait for his chance. He was nothing if not patient. No need to ask what Shirtless and Armani were waiting for; their leader had walked straight into the burning building as soon as the shooting had stopped. They knew exactly what they wanted, and Young hated to speculate whom they worked for, who was going to get his hands on the most sophisticated armor system on the planet. Well, trying to, because there was no way Young was going to allow it. He’d gotten out of worse binds. He’d stopped tougher SOBs.
T
HE
screech-bang of a doorframe being kicked open drew everybody’s attention back to the diner. The smoke rising from the building thickened and whirled in the sudden air current, obscuring the view of the inside and adding to the already pervasive stench of burning plastic. The kitchen must’ve been completely ablaze now, and probably most of the seating area as well. The leader of the three materialized from the inferno like a mirage, a surreal firefighter in a business suit carrying an unconscious victim over one broad shoulder, his face hidden behind a dirt and blood-stained outlaw bandana, his steps sure and unfaltering as though he wasn’t affected by the heat or the poisonous fumes at all. One arm was hooked across the cowboy’s thighs to hold his limp form steady; the other swung loosely by his side, a dusty black Stetson clutched in his fingers. He marched down the steps and across the parking lot toward his men without sparing a glance at the subdued soldiers or Young.
“Bring insurance. Blow up the car,” he ordered as he passed by, and there was that same trace of a barely-there New York accent in his voice, diluted by the suggestion of a Louisiana drawl so faint most people wouldn’t have picked up on it.
Oh, what the fuck,
Young thought.
Let’s see where this goes.
“Stay down,” he told his troops, because he’d lost too many men already that day and damned if he was going to let these assholes walk away unsupervised with his alien entity. If he had to allow himself to be taken hostage to stay close to the prize and gather more intel, well, it wouldn’t be his first time. Wouldn’t be the first time his abductors regretted their choice, either. Young was career military. He had no family to worry about him if this went south, only a pissy ex-wife and a couple of overfed fish, but if he succeeded, he might be able to avert a disaster. Young was all for disaster-prevention. He vastly preferred it to cleanup duty.
So he didn’t fight when Armani ushered him up and expertly tied his hands behind his back with a belt, and he trotted along gamely when the little hit squad took off across the parking lot. Shirtless made a beeline for the cowboy’s black truck. He screwed off the license plates and tossed them to Armani, who tucked them away under his jacket before Young could get a look at them. Shirtless then jimmied the lock, snatched a duffel bag from the backseat, and tossed in two grenades instead, which made everybody in the vicinity get the hell down or behind cover. Young would’ve, too, but Armani pushed him into a fast run toward the street instead. Under different circumstances, Young probably would’ve tripped him, grabbed his gun, and kneecapped the leader, but the prospect of an imminent explosion was enough to keep him moving.
They were pounding across the street when the pickup detonated. The cars parked around the truck helped contain the blast, but the shockwave still drove the men forward. Apparently, all of them had enough experience with this kind of ordnance to keep a pretty accurate mental countdown once an explosive device was armed, because they compensated easily. Even Young, with his hands tied, and the leader, hampered by the dead weight across his shoulder, barely faltered. The alien and its unwilling host truly must’ve been out cold, because they never twitched or tensed at the boom or when the leader’s wide shoulder dipped for a second. Young tried to make out the host’s face, but it was hidden against the leader’s flapping suit jacket. The only thing he saw was a head of short, darkish hair, streaked with soot, plaster dust, and blood—and only parts of that under the folds of a leather jacket that had bowed to gravity and slipped down the broad back to reveal a black T-shirt and a strip of pale skin at the hip. Basically, it wasn’t much better than the satellite picture. Only less grainy. Damn it.
Young would’ve done damage to his captors if there had been a trunk involved, but it turned out the car was an SUV. He smirked as he slid into the passenger seat, though Shirtless sat down behind him and gently tapped the muzzle of his gun against the headrest in a wordless warning. Killer yuppies in a soccer-mom car. It did have that certain
je ne sais quoi
.
D
URING
the following twenty minutes, Nick Young learned several things.
One, as indicated by the bastards’ previous performance, this was definitely not their first rodeo. Armani had them out of the immediate area and on the highway long before the local police decided to screw their orders and moved in, and he never once so much as broke the speed limits. He kept an eye on the mirrors, but he didn’t appear overly worried, and neither did his partners. It was a very smooth, very disciplined getaway.