started the car, slammed it into gear, and punched it up the road, through the police barrier tapes, and right through the chain-link gate at the top of the drive. Accelerating too fast, she nearly lost it on the first curve. They topped the hill leading down into the industrial area, going fast enough to lift the car off its shocks and then bang it down on the concrete. She started braking when she saw the searing glare of burning phosphorus in the valve pit and heard the thumping reports as the .45 let go. The boiling thermite fire turned the wreckage of the arsenal into a vision of hell, throwing grotesque demon like shadows onto the stark concrete shells of the buildings. She felt the car lose traction on all the loose gravel and concrete bits in the street, the tires scattering debris like shrapnel. She instinctively braked hard, too hard, whipping it around in a 360-degree spin, and then the next thing she saw was that big black hole that led down into the Ditch right in front
of them. She started to scream, but then the car hit the pile of pipes, steel straws clattering along the sides of the car, and then it plunged through them and into the hole, slamming both of them into the windshield. Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she really should have put on her seat belt.
Kreiss dropped the empty .45 down into the street and came down the ladder. Misty stood there in full field gear, with an IR goggle headset pushed back up over her hood. She held what looked like a miniature camcorder in her left hand and a Colt Woodsman .22 semiautomatic pistol in her right hand. As he reached the street and dropped onto all fours in the gravel, he saw that the camcorder was really a video projector. A green-lighted human silhouette was bouncing around the adjacent walls as Misty walked over to him.
“Put out your hands,” she ordered.
“Let’s just get it done, why don’t we?” he said.
“Get what done? I’m not going to shoot you. This is a retrieval mission.
Put out your hands. Fingers joined together.”
He crouched there for a second, considering his options. Her expression confirmed what he already knew: He didn’t have any options. He put out his hands. She dropped the projector and brought out a small cylinder, from which she sprayed capture curtain all over his joined hands. It felt cold and then warm. His hands disappeared into a glob of latex.
They both heard the car coming at the same time. Kreiss turned to look, hoping she would look also, but Misty never moved as she kept that Woodsman pointed at his face. The car sounded as if it were out of control coming down the main street, which was now out of sight behind Misty. They heard the brakes squeal and then the sound of tortured tires losing traction. The car hit something solid. The engine raced for a moment before stalling out. Then silence.
“Your cavalry?” she asked.
He shook his head. He desperately needed to distract her. His hands were glob bed up, but he still had his feet. As if she sensed his intentions, she moved back a step. There was an ominous silence behind the building where the car had hit something.
“Well, it’s not mine, either,” she said.
“So let’s go see. Sounds to me like they fucked it up. You first.”
He complied, holding his hands out in front of him to keep his arms free. He didn’t want the sticky stuff enveloping his hands to touch
any other part of his body. He could see from the shadows thrown by the subsiding fire that Misty was behind him, but he could not determine how far back she was. It smelled as if some wooden boards were burning back in the valve pit. The wood smoke was a pleasant contrast to the poisonous stink of burned phosphorus. He kept looking for an opening, but Misty wasn’t likely to give him one.
They came around the shattered front wall of the building and saw the car. It looked to Kreiss like a Bu car, with those two whip antennas on the trunk. It was nosed down into that same big hole Carter had driven into before. Carter? Could Carter have come back here? And then he had a really bad thought: Had she brought Lynn with her? No, she wouldn’t have been that dumb.
They approached the car carefully. He had the sense that Misty was even farther behind him. Maybe he could jump past the car down into the Ditch. But then he remembered how far down it was; he’d break both his legs.
“Stop there,” she ordered. He complied.
“Get down on your knees.”
He didn’t move. There was nothing moving in the car, which he could see now was held in place by a lone steel pipe bent under its frame. The nose of the car was below street level, kept from falling all the way through into the Ditch by the pipe that was jammed up under its left front wheel well. No one was visible inside.
“Get down on your knees or I’ll wrap you. Then you’ll get to roll all the way to the van.”
He sighed and got down awkwardly onto his knees, his hands still held out in front of him. His arms were getting tired, but he was determined not to get his hands tack-welded to his body if he could help it. The firelight behind the building shell was dying out, and the street was slipping back into darkness. Misty was moving around him, staying at least ten feet away, the gun still pointed at his head while she examined the car. Then he thought he heard distant sirens.
Janet awoke into a red haze with a splitting headache. Getting tired of all these goddamned headaches, she thought irrelevantly, and then she tried to open her eyes. They were stuck together by some warm sticky substance, which she finally realized was her own blood. Her forehead was covered in blood, and she could feel it dripping down her chin and onto
her chest. She moved sideways and tried to wipe the blood out of her eyes.
She wiped the blood off her hands and felt around for her Sig, then I remembered it was in her holster. She looked over to see what had happened to Lynn, but the girl was not visible. Then she was, a crumpled I white-faced form scrunched into the space between the dashboard and ; the front seat. No, not white-faced—red-faced. She, too, had hit the windshield and was bleeding profusely from a scalp cut. Janet swore softly and tried to untangle herself from between the front seat and the steering wheel. Then she heard something outside, sat up very carefully, raised her head, and looked through the shattered windshield. There was just enough light coming from the fire to reveal Kreiss on his knees in the street, and a tall black figure with a gun moving slowly toward the car. She recognized that figure, and she moved her hand behind her to draw the Sig. Lynn moaned from under the dashboard, but she did not move.
“It’s your cavalry all right,” Misty said.
“She drives like she shoots, though. Nice going, Special Agent.”
Janet shook some more blood out of her eyes as she struggled to get more upright in the seat. She glared at Misty through the open side window.
She saw two Mistys, then three, then one, and blinked her eyes rapidly to clear her vision. She held the Sig just out of sight below the windowsill, her fingers sticky with blood. Misty was stepping closer, but her gun hand kept that Colt aimed right at Kreiss’s head as if it had its own fire-control system. Janet looked over at Kreiss. He appeared to have a ball of fabric wrapped around his hands, which he held out in front of him as if praying.
“We’ve come for Kreiss,” Janet said.
“We? We? Got a mouse in your pocket, there, Special Agent?” Misty was smiling wolfishly.
Janet swallowed to relieve the dryness in her throat. She thought she heard distant sirens, but she dismissed it as wishful thinking. Then she saw Misty’s expression change. Damn it, she did hear sirens.
“Here’s the deal,” Misty said.
“He’s going with me. You try to interfere, I’ll execute plan B.”
“Plan B?” Janet repeated stupidly.
Misty gave her a patient look but said nothing. Janet figured it out.
Janet tried to think of something to say, a move to make, but she was staring at an impasse here and she knew it. God, her head hurt. Her teeth hurt and her eyes hurt and she was feeling a little nauseous.
She felt the Sig in her hands, and wondered when she’d managed to draw it. Misty smiled as if reading her mind.
“Whatcha got there, Special Agent?” she said in a taunting voice.
“Got your gun, do you?” She stepped closer, her weapon still pointed unwaveringly at Kreiss. Janet definitely heard sirens now, but they were getting closer not nearly as fast as she wanted. Lynn groaned again behind
