I had run out of metaphors.
I had also run out of cigarettes. Somehow, though, I had no craving for smoke. I just lay there gazing at her, a golden treasure.
I was having a difficult time finding the right words to say. Despite the reputation my profession has received as lusty villains in popular thrillers, an assassin almost never gets involved with women. Except perhaps as tools. My affairs had always been just that-affairs. A short farewell, if any.
I'd never made love to a friend before.
Tough guys aren't supposed to think about such things as love and warmth and worship and forever. Dell Ammo was a tough guy. Dell Ammo never worshipped a woman. Or a man. Or a God.
What did I worship, then? Anything? Could I fool myself into thinking I worshipped justice? Yeah-I could sprain my arm patting my back over that. Dell Ammo, assassin. Crusader for justice. It had a cozy counterfeit ring to it.
Ann interrupted my thoughts by pulling me closer.
'Do you still see me?' she asked.
'Like a dream I carried over into waking.'
'You're no thug,' she said, stroking my hair. It had grown out jet black again, as it had been years ago. 'You're a sensitive, brilliant man.'
'Rats, doll, you've blown my cover. All these scars are fake. I'm actually John Donne.'
'That was no island,' she said. 'That was a continen-'
The air rumbled around us. Ann stared at me. A dull, stunned expression spread across my face. The library swirled about me and snapped like wet silk.
I floated in a totally black realm. From somewhere in the darkness, Isadora screamed out a warning. The library returned to my vision, her words reverberating in my head.
'
' she cried. '
'
22
Blastoff
'Let's go!' I shouted to Ann. The throbbing sound around the library grew louder as we threw on our clothes. I grabbed my Colt from beneath a pile of abstracts and pounded down the stairs, Ann seizing her handbag and following inches behind.
Something
against the side of the building. The subsequent concussion knocked us against the wall.
'Ecclesia!' I yelled in answer to a look from Ann. We scrambled over scattered books and shattered bookcases toward the northern exit.
Instead of the door, though, we clambered out of one of the windows-I figured the bushes outside would serve as cover.
Six unmarked blue Hughes Cayuse helicopters roared over Old Downtown like movie Indians around a wagon train. The tenement capping Auberge flared savagely-a blazing funeral pyre. Thick columns of smoke rose overhead, chopped apart by the copters' propwash. The crowds pouring from the Auberge exits were greeted by machinegun and air-cannon fire.
One of the air-cannon rounds burst a section of the hill away to reveal the crumbling interior of the Auberge Hilton. Bodies lay sickeningly still inside the ruins.
A chopper roared above us, too swift for it to have seen us. It closed in on Bunker Hill. From somewhere within Auberge, the defense systems were retaliating.
Fifteen-millimeter machine guns opened fire on the aircraft. A couple of brave souls crawled to the surface armed with TOW missiles.
'Can't they use their interruptors?' Ann asked.
