Jason’s comfort, “what would you say if I told you you were right? And what would you say if I told you”—his dark eyes glinted with a madness McKay had seen for one brief moment in the face of a terrorist on Inferno before the man had gone down to a hail of bullets—“that there was five kilos of plastic explosives taped to my chest, and that this”—he produced, with the flourish of a stage magician, a small plastic box about the size of a comlink—“was the trigger?”
McKay’s hand froze centimeters from his handgun, his eyes focussing so tightly on that plastic device in Gomez’s hand that they could have been hooked to the RHN reporter’s camera zoom control. With his free hand, Gomez pulled up the hem of his shirt, revealing a large, grey lump of putty taped across the lower part of his torso. Beside him, Jason could hear Valerie’s sharp intake of breath and feel the vibrations as Glen began to shake uncontrollably. The RHN reporter lowered his camera and began slowly backing toward the door.
“It is an interesting feeling controlling one’s own destiny, Lieutenant McKay,” Gomez told him calmly.
Around them, as if on cue, three men emerged from hiding places in the bedrooms and kitchen, their hands filled with compact submachineguns. McKay didn’t turn his head but he knew the answer to his own questions before they were even fully formed. The gunmen had been able to conceal themselves from Vinnie and Jock’s sensors because they had somehow been able to acquire, probably through judicious bribes to cargo ship crews, heartbeat-masking stealthsuits and all-polymer weapons that no doubt fired caseless cartridges with non-metallic bullets. In other words, this had to have been planned very well in advance.
The gunmen began to advance on them, one approaching the cameraman while the other two headed for the table. Jason didn’t try to think, not on a conscious level. He’d been too well trained in Colonel Mellanby’s crash course for that. He knew everything he needed to know on a gut level. He had to act now, before the opposition got organized, or there would be no satisfactory end to this. And he had to watch for the opportunity that always presented itself, if only you knew where to look.
When things began to happen, they happened fast. The spark that lit the match was the eruption of a barrage of gunfire outside. Gomez and his people had to be expecting it, but even as Val and the others twisted around in surprise, so did the gunmen allow their attention to be drawn away for just a split-second.
And that was more than Nathan Tanaka needed. One second the Japanese bodyguard was leaning harmlessly against the wall, a still-life of utter motionlessness, as the nearest of the gunmen approached him; the next eyeblink, Tanaka was a blur that defied definition, and the unfortunate Salvadoran who’d been luckless enough to be less than a meter from him was lying on the ground with his neck at an impossible angle.
Gomez jerked around at the crack of the gunman’s neck breaking, but all of Jason McKay’s attention—all of his being—was focussed on the man in front of him. Faster than he thought he could ever possibly move, and yet so slowly it made his brain scream at him, Jason ripped his service auto from its horizontally-canted shoulder holster and blew off the top half of Carlos Gomez’s forehead.
Later, he wouldn’t recall seeing the pistol’s pop-up electronic sight extend, or noticing the targeting dot through its clear LCD image. He wouldn’t even remember actually pulling the trigger. To him, it seemed as if the gun had jumped into his hand of its own free will. But the ear-shattering explosion of the high-power 10mm being fired in the closed building jolted him back into synch with the passage of time.
Not rising from his seat, unable to hear Valerie O’Keefe’s scream as the blood and bits of brain splashed over her and Glen, Jason twisted around and fired a double-tap into the chest of the second gunman. The fellow was tall, with long hair that whipped wildly around as he jerked from the impact of the ceramic slugs, then fell like a puppet with his strings cut. McKay glanced around frantically for the remaining one of the three Central Americans, but saw that Tanaka had already taken care of Gomez’s other compatriot, who was writhing on the floor trying hard to breathe, but having a hard go of it with his trachea ripped out.
The roar of his own handgun still ringing in his ears, Jason couldn’t be sure if the gunfire outside had stopped or not, but he wasn’t about to leave his command to fight that battle alone… or leave Shannon alone. The fierceness of the latter conviction surprised him. He turned back to the ruin that had once been Carlos Guzman and pried the bomb trigger loose from the corpse’s hand, stuffing it into his pocket before he rose from his seat. Pushing past the RHN reporter, leaving him to stare in abject horror at the corpses around him, Jason scooped up one of the terrorist’s submachineguns—they’d never had the chance to fire them—and paused at the doorway to fix a look at Tanaka.
“Keep them in here,” he told the bodyguard, seeing him nod before he turned back to the door.
Crouching beside the entrance, he shoved his pistol in his belt, grasped the handle in his left hand while his right held the appropriated weapon. He yanked the door open and threw himself out of it. Landing on his shoulder, he rolled back into a crouch, brought the subgun to the ready…
And found he’d arrived at the party too late. A half-dozen bodies littered the ground between the farmhouse and the flitter, but none of them belonged to his team: five were obviously in league with Gomez, by the look of their weapons and the black Stealth suits they wore; while the other was the security guard who’d accompanied them from the mansion. Vinnie, his flechette gun tucked in the crook of his arm, still stood over the man’s body, checking his carotid pulse. Jason rose from his crouch, letting the submachinegun hang at his side.
“Is everyone okay out here?” Jason asked, eyes on Shannon, who still held her compact handgun at arm’s length.
“All aces and eights out here,” Vinnie reported, standing. “The merc bought it, though. Took a bullet for the suit.” He jerked a thumb toward Eberhard, the governor’s representative, who was on his knees beside the flitter, puking into the sand. It was obvious from the tone in Vinnie’s voice that he thought it had been a bad trade.
“Call in a support team,” Jason told Shannon, tossing the machine pistol in the dirt and reholstering his own weapon. “And get the flitter warmed up—I want to get O’Keefe and her people out of here before anything else happens.”
Behind him, the door to the farmhouse opened and the RHN reporter looked cautiously around before stepping out, his camera still hanging forgotten at his side. He walked numbly yet deliberately up the ramp into the flitter and sat down, his gaze staring a thousand meters through the bulkhead. From the shell-shocked look on the man’s face, Jason figured he probably wouldn’t come out until the vehicle landed at the governor’s mansion. The others trickled out after: first Valerie and Glen, both still splattered with blood, the horror evident in their eyes as they partially supported each other; after them, Tanaka followed close behind, his face as impassive as if he’d just eaten lunch and was ready for a short nap.
Jason regarded him for a long moment, trying to figure out what went on behind that unreadable gaze.
“Why’d you trust me to take him before he could blow us up?” McKay asked him with open curiosity.
“Why did you trust me,” the bodyguard replied with a shrug, “to create a diversion?” Jason just nodded and let the man escort Val and Glen toward the flitter.
Last out of the house were Jorge and Carmella Mendoza, nearly forgotten in the confusion. Carmella looked nearly as anxious as she had before, nearly in tears, but Jorge seemed to project a sense of resignation to his fate.
“Please,
“Is that right, Jorge?” Jason looked the man in the eye. “Is that the way it happened?”
Mendoza saw in McKay’s eyes that he was being given a way out, and nodded gratefully.
“
“All right.” McKay took a long look around at the Wastes, at their house and back at them. “You know, Jorge, things may not look that good for you here. Things may seem pretty rough. But I want you to remember: it could be a lot worse.” He shook his head. “It could be a hell of a lot worse.”
He turned and left them there, walking slowly toward the flitter, feeling around in his pocket until he found the trigger switch. Shannon fell in step beside him as he examined the small, plastic box with its inset controls, and wondered if it was real.
“What’s that?” she asked him.
“Back in there,” he said, jerking his head toward the farmhouse, “you’d better tell the support crew that Gomez has about five kilos of plastic explosives taped to his chest. Tell ’em to be careful with it. And you’d better take this.” He extended the control box to her, and she accepted it with widening eyes. “I don’t think I can hold it much longer,” he explained, looking down at his hands. For some reason, they just wouldn’t stop shaking.
