spotlights, and everything beyond those bright lights was darkness. He heard a crack of lightning, then realized it wasn’t lightning at all—because he felt a sudden pain in his gut, and warm blood began to pulse from his abdomen. He turned as the second shot pierced him, higher this time. The right side of his chest. Unable to bear the pain, his legs gave out, and he crumbled to the wet ground.
Lieutenant Madeline Haas had spent a restless night, waiting for the alarms to go off. She knew they would. She didn’t know what she would do, but she knew it would be something decisive: Either something that would mark her for promotion, or mark her for disgrace, but she wasn’t sure which it would be.
She left her room even before the alarms went off, not willing to wait, and stood by the entrance to the sleeping quarters, beneath an overhang that protected her from the downpour. When the alarms went off, she was the first one out, circling the plant, eying the exits. There were six exits from the main building of the plant. Three of them led to underground utility accessways that didn’t connect to the containment corridors at all, so Dillon would not come out of those doors. Two exits were in the main office wing, where Bussard’s office and quarters were. It was one of the best patrolled areas of the plant, so if Dillon went in that direction, he would be brought down in an instant. That left the loading dock as the only true chance of escape Dillon had.
She rounded the path to the dock, and stood behind a Dumpster, waiting, hearing others approaching. That’s when Dillon burst through onto the dock, slipping on the wet ground. The loading dock was like a shooting gallery. Even in the blinding rain he was an easy target beneath the floodlights.
What Maddy did next was a split-second decision, that might never have come to her had Dillon not already cleared her mind and brought her thoughts into fine focus. With other officers approaching behind her she raised her gun and fired, then fired again. Her aim was precise, as she knew it would be, and Dillon collapsed to the ground.
She ran to him. Blood was everywhere, pulsing into the flooded pavement, mixing with the rain, and spilling over the edge of the loading dock. Dillon tried to speak, but Maddy leaned down to him, holding her weapon to his face.
“Quiet!” she demanded.
He gasped his breaths, but Maddy ignored him. Her duty here was clear, and her purpose justified. She could not be sidetracked.
“I’ve shot your right lung, and your left kidney,” she told him. “Maybe your spleen and liver, too. Most people would die from it, but you’re not most people. Do you understand?”
He moved his jaw, but no sound came out.
“How badly do you want to get out of here?”
Still no words, but this time Dillon nodded.
Bussard’s career flashed before his eyes. The moment he was jarred awake by the alarm, and made aware of the nature of the emergency, he knew it was either him, or Dillon. If Dillon escaped, Bussard had enough enemies in the Pentagon to send his career down in flames. After thirty years of eating shit to get where he was, he was not going to let himself get shot down. His superiors feared Dillon—and that was an asset in this situation. They saw Dillon as an armed warhead— too useful to destroy, but dangerous to maintain. Dillon’s death would be unfortunate, but his escape would be catastrophic. The Pentagon would rather see him dead than on the loose, and there might even be a collective sigh of relief on word of Dillon’s death.
With his own gun drawn he fired orders left and right, making it brutally clear that if they could not catch Dillon, then they must kill him. When word came that Dillon was in the cafeteria, Bussard led the way, and he followed the sound of gunfire through the kitchen to the loading dock.
Shielding his eyes from the spotlights and rain, he found Haas kneeling over a blood-drenched body. Dillon. She held her hand to Dillon’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“He’s dead, sir,” Haas said.
Bussard tried to hide his own sigh of relief at the news. “Are you sure?”
“He turned as I shot, sir. He took the blast in the face, leaving a pretty big exit wound in the back of the head. Would you like to see?”
Bussard looked down at the pulp of Dillon’s face. His nose, and cheek had been shredded. Blood covered his chest and abdomen as well. Although Bussard was no stranger to gore, he had no burning desire to see Dillon Cole’s splattered brains either. Besides, he was already contemplating the report he would file.
Maddy kept a close eye on Bussard through all of this. She watched his eyes linger on Dillon’s inert form for a brief moment, but as soon as Bussard’s men began to arrive on the scene, Bussard began to delegate duties, refusing to give even a moment of respect to the passing of Dillon Cole.
“Haslovich, get to the control room, and shut off that damn alarm. Haas and Burns, get the body to the infirmary. Johanson, clean this mess.” And the rest he sent back to their quarters. “Show’s over.”
The contingent of officers began to break up, but Bussard didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. “Shouldn’t you get on the line to General Harwood, sir?” Maddy prodded.
Bussard sighed. He took one more glance toward Dillon, then nodded to Maddy. “You did the right thing, Haas. He couldn’t be allowed to escape.” And then he added, “You’re twice the officer I expected you to be. When this fiasco is over, assuming we still have careers, I hope I’ll have the privilege of having you under my command again.”
“Thank you sir.”
He pushed his way past Burns and Johanson, who were still tending to the body, and into the plant.
Once he was gone, Burns turned to Maddy. “Who was this guy anyway?”
Well, thought Maddy, if nothing else, Bussard had been successful at keeping the majority of his officers in the dark. “Nobody anymore,” she told him. “Tell you what—why don’t you two bring the gurney, and I’ll wait with the stiff.”
“Okay by me,” Johanson said and left with Burns, both probably happier to be out of the rain than away from the body.
As soon as they were through the door and out of earshot, Maddy got to work.
“Dillon? Dillon can you hear me?”
No response. She put her fingers to his neck. She had lied to Bussard, of course, about the pulse—she had felt a weak pulse a minute before, but she could not feel it now. Her own heart was pounding so furiously it defeated any attempt to feel Dillon’s. The blood had stopped flowing from his wounds. That either meant he was dead, or that he had begun his miraculous healing process. She had to believe he was still alive—and that the bullet had cut cleanly through his jaw and nasal cavity without splintering any bone back toward his brain. She had to believe it because she could not live with the alternative.
An Army-issue delivery truck was parked twenty yards away. It was the only port in the storm, and the closest thing to a plan she had at the moment. She hauled Dillon onto her shoulders and climbed down from the loading dock, splashing her way toward the truck.
The passenger door was locked, so she put Dillon down, and rammed her fist through the window. It hurt more than she expected it to. She undid the lock, pulled open the door, and when she turned to Dillon she was surprised to see him struggling to his feet, climbing into the truck under his own power. Seeing him alive lifted a huge weight from her. She even thought she could make out some features of his ruined face. He was already bringing order out of the chaos, undoing his wounds.
“Hey, Haas—what the hell?”
It was Burns. He and Johanson were out on the loading dock with the gurney. She thanked God that these officers were not too quick on the uptake, and tried to play on their dim awareness. “Change of plans,” she shouted back to them. “Bussard will explain it to you.”
But no sooner had she said it than Bussard came out onto the dock behind them, his bullshit detector finally
