recalled the daughter’s name.
‘Sophie. Sophie, don’t shoot!’
The teenager turned the muzzle of the gun on her, and Caitlin recognised the fugue state of close-quarter battle in her eyes. She was gone, lost in the killing.
‘Sophie. I came for your father,’ Caitlin shouted. ‘For … for Manuel.’
The gun stopped tracking in her direction. The girl looked confused and then upset.
‘Miguel,’ she said in a small voice. ‘My father was Miguel Pieraro. He was a good man. And this … this … Blackstone killed him.’
The hard lines and planes of the teenager’s face collapsed. It was like watching a burning tower go down. She was a pyre of vengeance and lone justice, and then it all fell in on itself, and Sofia Pieraro was a little girl in a room full of dead men and shredded bodies.
She gasped and dropped to the floor.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Jed grunted as his face struck the wet tiles of the bathroom. His arm was on fire, burning as though held in a furnace. A great crushing weight bore down on his chest as he gagged and struggled to draw air into his lungs. With his good hand, he raked at the breast bone, as though he might be able to tear through and wrench out his own heart. Fling it from his body before it betrayed him completely.
It was killing him, just when he needed to be at his strongest.
Another pile-driver slammed into his chest and he moaned as bubbles of spit foamed on his blue lips. The phone was close. He could see it, as though through a long tunnel. But in his rational mind, as clouded as it was by a descending premonition of doom, he knew, he absolutely knew, that it was within reach. If he could just get to it. Dial emergency. But he couldn’t move. Giant rubber clown hands had seized the base of his spine and started to squeeze. The grotesque sensation felt like a python running up his back, accelerating as it raced for the base of his neck. He felt the spasms close up his throat as though he were being strangled. Jed worked his jaws, as if to protest, but no sound came out, save for a gurgling moan.
Even in this extremity, his reptilian cunning did not desert him. For as dark wings folded over Jed Culver, he wondered, should he survive, whether having suffered a massive heart attack might count in his favour, win him a few sympathy points, when Kipper was deciding just how high to hang him.
*
Caitlin held up her cuffed hands where Sofia Pieraro could see them. She advanced, slowly, cautiously, even though every nerve in her body compelled her to turn and chase after Baumer.
‘It’s okay, honey. He’s gone. They’re all gone. You did well. You just need to put the gun away. Or give it to me. There’s another man here we need to get. Somebody working with Blackstone.’
The carnage and destruction were hellish. The girl had unloaded the better part of two clips into her targets at close range. The fresh, barnyard stench of slaughter, so familiar to Caitlin, was still so dense and surprising it caused her to gag. Blood, chunks of flesh, bone shards and viscera were all mixed in promiscuously and sprayed around the room as if thrown from buckets.
‘You’re done here. You have to come with me, now,’ said the Echelon agent, injecting as much authority into her voice as she dared. This girl could flip either way, dropping into catatonia, or turning the last of her ammunition on Caitlin and then herself.
She limped past the corpse of Jackson Blackstone. His dressing gown had come open, spilling the contents of his stomach over his pyjamas.
‘Can you give me the gun, Sofia?’ Caitlin asked softly. She listened for the howls of approaching sirens. It wouldn’t be long. Holding up both hands, still cuffed, out to the Mexican girl, she said, ‘I can get us out of here, Sofia. But we need to go, now.’
The teenager seemed to reach a decision. She snatched the AK-47 close to herself.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘This is mine. I keep the gun.’
‘Fair enough, then. But we have to get going. Follow me.’
‘Okay,’ the Pieraro girl said, seeming not to care what happened now as long as she had the gun. Before she moved towards Caitlin, however, the young woman took something from her pocket - three polaroids, it looked like - and dropped them on Blackstone’s corpse.
Caitlin didn’t bother to limp over and find out what sort of calling card she’d left. This chick was fucking crazy.
She did almost stop to pick up the handgun that Blackstone had used to wound her, until she remembered him firing without result at Pieraro. Emptying the magazine. She checked to see if the girl was wounded, but she appeared to have escaped without a scratch. Caitlin wasn’t surprised. It had been a long time since the Governor had seen combat, and he was firing wildly.
‘Why don’t we just go this way?’
Pieraro had stopped following her, and had turned back towards the French doors, and the darkness outside.
‘There is another man here,’ replied Caitlin. ‘We have to get him. He was a road agent,’ she added, improvising from her sketchy recall of the Pieraro file. The mere mention of the words ‘road agent’ galvanised a response from the teenager. Her face hardened and she strode up beside Caitlin, taking her by the arm and supporting her as the American hobbled along trying to keep up.
‘Be careful,’ Caitlin warned as Sofia led the way out of the library, into a hallway in the centre of the house. It was well lit, making good targets of both of them.
A blood trail led towards the front door, which stood open.
‘Oh no. You. Fucking. Don’t,’ growled Caitlin. She set her course for the exit and accelerated as best she could. Every step drove white-hot spikes of pain through her leg, arcing up her spine and into her head. To her surprise, Sofia ran ahead of her and loosed a short burst of fire out of the open doorway just before she ran though.
‘You! Stop now!’ cried the Mexican girl.
Another short, rattling bark from the AK-47 lit up the night outside as Caitlin hurried after the younger woman. She feared that after running from light into dark her night vision would be ruined, but she needn’t have worried. Sofia Pieraro stood on the front deck, levelling the assault rifle at Bilal Baumer, who had both hands in the air and was staring at her as if pursued by an apparition from the seventh level of hell. Porch lights bathed him in a soft, yellow glow. He looked slow, disoriented. Possibly concussed. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and that side of his face looked grossly misshapen. When he saw Caitlin emerge from the house, he started to move again, only stopping when the gun roared and plowed up the earth around his feet.
Caitlin pushed past the civilian and charged at Baumer, advancing on him in great, lopsided strides. He smiled.
She caught a glimpse of porch light on the blade that appeared in his right hand.
‘I will shoot him,’ cried Sofia.
‘No! Don’t!’
Caitlin put herself between them deliberately. Turning slightly side-on to Baumer, she faced him with her injured leg to the fore, placing most of her weight on the rear foot. Her hands came up in a guard position, using the chain-link of her handcuffs to ward off the knife, which came flashing in at her as Baumer cried out, ’
She was ready for his feint, and did not commit her block until he had switched the arc of his attack at the last moment, turning a backhanded slash into an overhead stab, aimed at the base of her neck. She pivoted on her good leg, keeping the turning circle as small as possible, parrying the stroke, and whipping her elbow back into his broken cheekbone.
He cried out in shock and pain. Caitlin reversed the flow of her defensive sweep, channelling her
Holding her body close to his, jamming his knife between them so that he had no chance to use it, she raked
