cry is stifled, turns to a choke, his nose shattering, and he staggers back.
Bell presses, pursuing, trying to put his fingers through the man’s trachea. But the Tango is swinging the submachine gun up, wild, and the weapon begins to speak and spit even before it’s in line, and Bell throws his left forearm up instead, blocking the swing. He’s inside the man’s guard, drives his right at the Tango’s throat, hits his chin as the other man instinctively tries to protect his neck. Still surging forward, smashing the Tango’s back against the bars of the cage. The jaguar within roars, meal threatened.
The MP5K shouts again, another rattle of shots, wild, deafening in Bell’s left ear. He shifts, moves from the waist, gets his right onto the Tango’s wrist, slips to a finger, twists and pulls, feels bone snap. The Tango shouts as he loses his weapon, pounds his left down, trying to catch Bell at the back of the neck. Misses, the punch just low, hitting the spine and the mass of muscle. Bell grunts, right forearm rising to cross, again going for the throat, and now each man has a grip on the other; Bell can feel the Tango’s fingers clawing at his face, straining for his eyes even as Bell tries to force the man’s head back, tries to crush his windpipe with his arm. The Tango drops his weight, Bell’s purchase vanishes, and he feels half his wind rush free as his back collides with the cage. Punches with his left, hard and fast twice to the man’s midsection, and the Tango takes both punches and is now trying to crush the back of Bell’s head against the bars, through the bars. The jaguar roars again, and Bell feels a searing heat blossom at his lower back.
There is an awful clarity, a pristine knowledge, that comes to Jad Bell then and there. He is getting old, he is getting tired. He is a hard man, a warrior soul, a soldier, but this man, this Tango, is younger and faster and maybe stronger. This Tango, he fights like they taught Bell to fight; he fights dirty, for his life, and to win.
Jad Bell is about to lose this fight.
He strains to move his head against the Tango’s pressure, turns his mouth enough to find the meat at the side of the man’s hand, bites. Tastes sweat, copper, feels his teeth tearing skin, struggling to meet. This time, the Tango screams, uses his other hand to punch Bell in the face, breaking the bite, lurching backward. Bell lunges, again trying to press his small advantage, and the two are grappling again, out of the pen, into the open, clutching at each other, pulling at clothes and flesh.
Tango twists, using Bell’s momentum, trying to shake him, swinging him about. Bell hangs on, lungs burning, gasping for breath. This much exertion, sweat is pouring off him, pouring off the other man. World spins, peripheral information, all the things that fight-or-flight take in when fight is at full. He can discern the velvet-like fabric of the black curtains, sees a new set sweeping wide, revealing another Tango, armed, cage behind him. People in that cage.
He thinks he sees Amy.
Then they’re gone, out of sight, heavy fabric enveloping him, opening, as he and the man trying to kill him spin into a new pen. The Tango brings his knee up, sharp, catches Bell in the hip, frees one hand, follows the blow with another attempt at the neck. Bell shields, catches it on the jaw, light sparking behind his eyes and blood spilling in his mouth, and his grip is gone and he smashes into something hard and smooth. Feels it give way and an instant later, the shattering of glass.
He hits the concrete, feels the abrasion on his cheek, the weight of the Tango falling on him as he tries to roll. Vision clearing, and he snaps an elbow back, catches the other man a glancing strike to the head, too high for the temple. Rolling over broken glass, hearing it snap, and Bell sees dirt and rock and branches spilled on the ground, the cases on their stands, the snakes in their cases.
He’s on his back now, the Tango over him, feels his vision burst again, a rock-heavy impact and another, punched twice more in the face. Trying to bring one leg around, to lock the other man, but he doesn’t have it left in him, there is not enough air, there will never be enough air, and sweat stings, drips off this Tango into Bell’s eyes. Feels the hands at his throat, the cloud pressing into his mind, slowly trying to blind him. He flails, right hand straining amid the debris at his side, broken glass beneath his fingertips.
Something hisses like steam escaping a relief valve, the hood of a cobra spreading in the corner of Bell’s eye. The Tango’s grip loosens for a moment, the man looks, he can’t not, and the shard of glass is cold under Bell’s hand. He feels it cutting his palm as he takes hold, pours all the strength that remains into his right arm, striking up and in, feels the sadly familiar sensation of stabbing a living body. The Tango’s eyes snap wide as Bell shoves the piece of glass into the man’s neck, driving it upward, carotid, jugular, trachea, twisting it to make the wound crueler and quicker.
The Tango dies, blood pouring out of him and down Jad Bell’s arm. He goes to dead weight, and Bell wants to stop then, wants to stop there, hurting and breathless and aching, knows he can’t.
Because there’s one more Tango, and he thinks there’s Amy, too, thinks he can hear her voice calling for him.
He hears the cobra warning him again, angry, and Bell shoves the dead man off him, toward the snake, struggles to his knees. More broken glass on the ground and no weapons but for the knife on his person, and he’s about to go for that when the cobra rises, swaying, swings toward the curtains that are suddenly sweeping apart, reacting to the sudden motion. The remaining Tango, another MP5K, searching, seeing them.
In one move, Bell grabs the cobra above the tail, flings the snake at the Tango even as the creature tries to arch, to snap back at his hand. Flies through the air, a writhing length of cord, the Tango panics. His weapon hits the ground, hands coming up, trying to shield and catch and backpedal all at once, through the curtains. Bell dives, finds the submachine gun with both hands, sliding forward, beneath the edge of the curtain. Sights and fires, a three-round burst that lands groin, gut, thorax.
The remaining Tango drops, still holding the cobra, the snake’s fangs latched at the man’s collar, pumping venom into a corpse. Bell thumbs the selector down, aims, and takes its head with a bullet.
There is an aching, awful silence, broken at first by his ragged breathing.
He hears Amy.
“Jad! Jad! God, please, Jad! Answer me!”
Bell knows what she’s going to say next. Knew it the moment he saw her, but didn’t have the time to realize it. What has to be, because she’s here, knows it the same way he knows that these two Tangos thought putting the hostages in the gazelle’s cage, and putting the gazelle in with one of the jaguars, made perfect sense.
Makes perfect sense.
“Oh, God, Jad.” Amy, hidden from view, and her voice, trying to stay steady even as the words themselves betray her. “They have our baby, Jad. They have Athena.”
Chapter Twenty
When they lost them at Valiant Keep, Gabriel considered going into the tunnels in pursuit, but he didn’t consider it for long. He’d spent too much time beneath WilsonVille already, and the thought of a gunfight down there wasn’t just stupid, it was suicidal. He’d either end up playing cat and mouse, or pouring his people into a fatal funnel. Less than three hours into the operation already, and he’d lost five of his men. He didn’t want to spend any more of them unless he was certain of the result. Army tactics: engage the enemy on your terms and your grounds, pick your battle.
Fighting fair gets you killed. So you don’t fight fair.
That meant waiting, hard to do already, harder still after he’d heard the gunshot, after he knew that one of the hostages had been killed. He was making his way back to the command post, Hendar still on coms, Gordo and Betsy still on surveillance, watching for a sign of Jonathan Bell and his friend, but after the execution, Gabriel had to ask.
“Who was it?”
“Some woman,” Hendar said. “Dressed like one of those bears, you know, from China?”
“Xi-Xi.”
“Whatever.”
Whatever, Gabriel thought. Whatever.
And then he thought that maybe he knew this Xi-Xi, maybe they had exchanged words in some changing area, or backstage at some show. Shared a joke, a drink of water, maybe bitched about management, and he stopped that line of thought as quickly as he could.
