I’ll make this easy on you,” he said.
Nina’s breathing was still ragged from exertion. No time to think about anything else. She concentrated on his left eye.
He twisted the injector, exposing the needle. Then he gestured. “So where do you want it?” His left hand snaked out and pinched at her right inner thigh. “How about somewhere nice?”
“No!” Nina screamed, rearing up, bringing up her free hand.
George laughed, ducked back, and feinted to the right, then changed direction and jabbed the needle into her right calf muscle. As the dose of ketamine entered her bloodstream, Nina started counting, hoarding her strength.
But he did, he just stood watching. And Nina could feel the first wave of coldness like icy gloves and slippers on her hands and feet. But then he leaned forward and extended his hands, palms out toward her face. “This won’t hurt,” he said, “I promise.”
When he was within her reach she launched her right hand at his face. But the damaged muscles failed, the bloody, rigidly extended forefinger merely slapped his temple weakly and fell away.
George laughed. “See? It was a mistake to send a woman.”
As he leaned forward to smother her she put everything into one last explosive surge. She missed again but on the way down, her fingers snagged in the chain around his neck.
The muscles that extended her arm were shot, but she discovered that the contracting muscles still worked. Her bloody fingers found purchase on a medal attached to the end of chain, clamped tight, and yanked. George pitched forward. Immediately, she whipped her bloody arm around his neck, locked her elbow, and jerked him down.
Her biceps and parts of her forearm still worked. George wasn’t laughing anymore. Methodically, then desperately, his strong hands clawed to break the hold.
Nina tasted salt and copper and bile as she reached down deep to where the lizard lived. Pure primal instinct now, she embraced him, smelling his minty Binaca breath, the Vitalis in his sleek hair. Their faces almost touched. His dark brown eyes were no longer amused, or even angry.
Sobbing with exertion, she tightened her arm and drew him close enough for her parted lips to press against his throat. Almost erotic, she hunted for the pulse. Found it. Gauged the depth and bared her teeth.
She relished his scream, the frantic spasm as he tried to pull away. After the powerful bite, with the last of her strength, she tried to rip and gnaw. But her jaw went slack. The ketamine…
George’s scream ended in a wet slobber as he clamped one hand on his ragged neck. Triumphantly, Nina saw the blood pumping through his fingers. Spurts of it. Streams. But he still had the strength to grab at her encircling arm with the other hand. She was on empty and he stripped her arm away. His stiff hand came down on her throat and she tried to lower her chin, raise her shoulders.
But he was too strong. He shoved the powerful arc formed by his thumb and first finger down into her throat.
Cold bubbles filled her body with floaty pressure. She lost air. She lost light. Her extremities went numb as her chest filled with ice water. She was choking outside, drowning inside. Distinctly, she looked down on a last image of her own body locked in a death hug with George Khari.
Far away.
Chapter Forty-six
Broker woke up in the process of being bodily thrown into the backseat of the Red Wing cop car. His head throbbed, a knee slammed down on his chest as the car’s rear tires threw dirt, accelerating. He looked up. Yeager. Scrambling in on top of him.
“Sorry,” Yeager gasped. He was goggle-eyed, panting, shutting the door, looking out the rear window. Broker winced and felt the lump on the back of his head. Yeager held up an old-fashioned braided leather sap. “Me and Holly did a number on you to get you outta there.”
There.
Broker lurched up. The cop was hunched over the wheel, flooring it. Broker twisted. His vision spun, frantic activity to the front, the Black Hawk was airborne, gaining altitude. Everybody had their mouths open, one long yell. Him, too. He looked out the rear window as they fishtailed through the cyclone fence perimeter. Screened by the silver mesh, Broker saw the deserted site: the black billowing smoke of the dozer, Holly standing at the edge of the excavation pit, vigorously waving his arm next to the Deere and the bigger dozer. The gray domes loomed over the struggling yellow machines, dwarfing them.
The dozer driver was no longer hauling the Deere tractor. He had maneuvered it to the edge of the pit and was now trying to shove it in with the blade. But the two machines had tangled together, sixty tons of grinding steel. The driver stood at the controls, craning his neck to see Holly’s hand instructions. Working out some problem. They were mired in the mud, losing traction.
“Jesus,” Broker shouted. They were, what? — a hundred yards from the reactors?”
“Yeah, I know,” Yeager shouted back.
“How they doing?” yelled the Red Wing cop behind the wheel. His wide eyes filled the rearview mirror, a study in controlled panic.
“Trying to push it in and they got hung up in the mud,” Yeager shouted back.
“Not good,” yelled the cop, forcing himself to slow down, picking his way through a moving field of running people and vehicles. Headed for the parking lot.
“Hey,” Broker said as the Deere teetered over the edge. He saw Holly rapidly waving his arm-urging the dozer driver to drive his machine into the pit. Broker saw the driver jump as the dozer tipped in on top of the Deere. He landed on the ground next to Holly. They started to run…
Broker felt the concussion tug the fillings in his teeth-the day shivered, and in that split second Broker grabbed Yeager’s neck and pulled him down in the seat. “Duck…,” he yelled. Then they were slammed sideways. His mouth and eyes clogged with grit as he glimpsed, but did not hear, the rear window disintegrate. The seat of the cop’s pants appeared as he smashed forward over the dash, into the windshield. No one had been thinking seat belts.
Somehow the cop held on to the wheel, flopped back; bleeding from the head, face, neck, and scalp, he fought the wheel. No sound anymore, everything going fuzzy, then opaque with the rolling cloud of dust. They landed back on four wheels, skidded blind, and collided at about twenty miles an hour with something in the churning, silent gloom.
They came to a stop. Broker shook like a dog stepping out of a puddle. Cuts. Blood leaking through his mud- pie hands. Too quiet for all the stuff still flying through the air.
Must have burst his eardrums.
He groped toward Yeager, who was similarly attired in grime and bleeding cuts, tasted the particles of clay and silt and sand that coated his tongue, felt it embedded in his teeth. Just plain old dirt…
Then the sheer terror smacked him alongside the head.
Was that how it was going to be?
Yeager’s lips moved.
Broker shook his head. Pointed to his ears.
Lights probed the murky silence. Shadowy figures sleepwalking, fighting for their balance; cops in blue, firefighters in yellow. They were helping people to their feet. EMT was there. The white of dressings. The red of blood. Some people they left where they lay.
Broker had to know. He struggled out of the car, pushed aside the rescue workers. “Help him, help him,” he yelled, pointing to the barely conscious copper in the front seat. He lost track of Yeager.
