seethed with a hunger to revenge himself on this cocksucker for all of the trouble he caused, he also recognised there were larger questions in play. There was no point taking Blackstone down if he pulled down the temple around him.
And there was still Monroe to consider. They had no idea why Monroe, or at least the locator chip tracking her handset, had suddenly crossed Fort Hood and come to rest in Blackstone’s residence.
A terrible thought occurred to Jed. Terrible, and yet heavy with possibility. It brought his acid reflux surging up painfully, all but unbearably.
If Monroe had proven to herself that Blackstone’s link to Baumer was not just incidental, might she have decided to settle any perceived personal debt with Mad Jack, in spite of his own direct order to the contrary?
He actually laughed at that as he stepped into the shower and let the hot water play over his head; an unkind, braying bark that did as little to improve his mood as the shower did to make him feel any better physically. He was really suffering. It was starting to worry him. But not as much as Agent Monroe.
Had she done to him what he’d done to Kip? Namely, acting with a semblance of obedience for the sole purpose of arranging events to suit herself.
He scrubbed at his scalp as the stinging hot water battered away at the edges of his hangover and his illness. He was having trouble swallowing, and wondered whether he might be coming down with the flu. There was a monster flu bug getting around Seattle right now, like something out of Stephen King. Be just his fucking luck to get it when he could least afford to. He leaned both hands against the wall and let the hot water massage the back of his neck. His belly hung huge and low over his thighs.
He was going to have to get back into shape when this was done. Been promising Marilyn for months that he would do something about his weight and his fitness, but there was always some reason, some excellent excuse for not taking that first step. Another meeting, another crisis, another fire to put out. How the hell was he supposed to look after himself when he spent every waking hour, and then some, looking after the country. And if a guy couldn’t reward himself at the end of the day with a decent drink and a lousy fucking pizza … well, fuck. What was the point?
His stomach rolled over again. He gritted his teeth and promised himself he would do something as soon as he could. Marilyn was right. He’d really let himself go.
First, however, first he had to finish Blackstone, and deal with whatever Monroe had set in train down there. Maybe Kipper had been right about her. Maybe she was the wrong tool. A tactical nuke, when a stiletto was more appropriate.
She’d done something similar in the Federation, he recalled, after breaking Luperico out of that detention centre. Caitlin Monroe had taken what she needed for her mission, in that instance, and then taken a man’s life of her own accord.
How would she play this one? he wondered.
54
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
She launched herself at him.
Even with her hands cuffed behind her, Caitlin flew at Baumer in a blur, as straight and swift as an arrow. An armchair stood in the way, a deep, club chair, clad in dark brown leather and studded with burnished brass stud buttons. She mounted it as though running up a set of steps, kicking off as she pivoted on one foot and lashed out with the other, aiming a flying side kick at his throat. She meant to crush his larynx with the blade of her foot.
Baumer was ready for her, and had begun to dodge the impact even as she mounted the chair. He slipped sideways, executing a creditable sidestep that she noted as having all the hallmarks of some karate training. Caitlin turned the pile-driver of her flying
Even so, the broken bone absorbed enough of the blow to ward off the worst of the impact on his skull. She felt a glancing, dissatisfying impression of her steel-capped boot cracking his cheekbone, but before the energy could transfer itself into his brainpan, he had spun to the floor. Baumer, she knew, had some hand-to-hand skills - basic attack and defence methodology stolen, ironically enough, from the Israeli-developed
Pain, a bright white neutron star of pain, exploded in her chest, as McCutcheon kicked her away from the man she intended to kill. He appeared within her peripheral vision just as she thudded down on a thick Persian rug, after executing the attempted kick to Baumer’s skull. Caitlin landed on her side, exhaling, dropping as much hip and shoulder as she could into the fall; but she remained at a disadvantage to a man on his feet, with the length of a whole room to line up his attack. McCutcheon drove a snap kick into her centre body mass and she flew into the bookshelf, grunting as it forced the last of the air from her lungs.
‘Enough!’ he barked, quickly backing away, holding a gun on her.
‘I probably wouldn’t have done that in your position, Miss Monroe,’ said Blackstone. ‘After all, you’ll be leaving with young Billy Bob in a few minutes. And now you’ve simply exacerbated the bad blood between you.’
‘What the fuck …’ said Caitlin.
Blackstone shook his head. ‘Please, harsh language isn’t necessary. Ty, could you attend to Mr Baumer? I suspect he’s going to need a medic. If you pass me your gun, I’m sure I can persuade Miss Monroe to behave herself.’
The appearance of six TDF troopers at the French doors drew Caitlin’s attention away from her long-time nemesis.
The men looked anxious, uncertain as to whether to come barging in or to wait outside when they saw Blackstone holding the pistol and obviously still in control.
‘Might be an idea if we had the fellows wait in here for a few minutes,’ said the Governor. ‘Miss Monroe has a reputation as a difficult woman. I can see it’s well deserved.’
His aide nodded before limping over to the doors to let them in. He’d hurt himself kicking her. But he’d hurt Caitlin even worse. She could feel a couple of cracked ribs grinding against each other as she found her feet.
Baumer looked ashen, his previous confidence entirely gone. He fixed her with a glare, suffused with murderous intent.
‘Gonna pay for that, whore.’
‘Now then, where were we?’ said Blackstone. ‘Oh yes, you were traducing my honour, my patriotism and my judgment.’
He shot her in the leg.
She registered the roar of the handgun before the shock of the bullet tearing into her thigh. Caitlin screamed an obscenity as she went down, the leg snatched away from beneath her as if by a giant hook. She had been shot before, but it never got any easier. The pain and trauma and sense of violation were new, every time. Still, her training ran deep, and she controlled her collapse towards the floor, screaming to empty the air from her lungs, again, and tucking both arms around her wounded ribs and her chin into her chest to save herself a concussion should her head hit the floor. The impact wasn’t so bad. The bullet had stunned her nervous system and she was still numb. It would be a few seconds before she felt the real pain.
Echelon’s senior field operative found herself down at the same level as Baumer, who was still struggling to recover from the kick to his face. His arms seemed weak and rubbery as Ty McCutcheon, having returned from opening the doors, bent down to support him, and haul him back to his feet. If Caitlin could have dragged herself over to put out his eyes and choke the life from his body, she would have. But she knew that Mad Jack would put a bullet in her head before she got close. The debilitating rage of being so close to the man who had sent killers after her husband and child, of being within killing distance herself, but being unable to act, was nearly as crippling as her wound.
Then the shock of the bullet gave way to floods of pain coursing through her body. She sucked in a mouthful of air, tasting blood and bile as she propped herself up against a dark leather couch, the companion piece to the single-seater she’d used as a platform to fly at Baumer just now. The lounge was covered in lush, ornate splatters
