'Jefe…'he gasped. 'You're bleeding.'
'Later,' Saxon said, and bent down to gather Duarte up, hauling him to his feet. The other man grunted with a deep hurt as he put weight on his right leg, and Saxon frowned. 'Can you walk?'
'Not on my own,' came the reply. 'Madre de dios, where the hell did that drone come from?' Duarte looked around, blinking. 'Where…
Where's Kano and the others?'
Saxon could smell the burned meat stench on himself and he couldn't say the words; his silence was enough, though, and Duarte shook his head and crossed himself. 'We have to move,' said Saxon. 'You got a weapon?'
The other man shook his head again, so Saxon drew the black-anodized shape of a heavy Diamondback. 357 revolver from a holster on his belt, and pressed it into Duarte's hands. 'That vulture, he'll be coming back,' he said, checking the loads.
Saxon nodded, casting around, scanning the drift of wreckage. He'd lost his FR-27 in the crash, but the veetol had been carrying cases loaded with extra weapons for Operation Rainbird. He spotted one off to the side and made for it.
Rainbird. The mission had been blown before they even reached the target zone. Saxon's mind raced as he ran through the possibilities. Had they been compromised from the start? It was unlikely. Belltower's mercenary forces were the best paid in the world, and there was an unwritten rule that once you wore the bull badge, you were part of a brotherhood. The company did not tolerate traitors in the ranks. Belltower policed itself, often with lethal intensity.
He reached the case and tried the locks, but they were stuck fast. The knife came out again, and he worked the tip into the broken mechanism.
'The intel…' Duarte said out loud, his thoughts mirroring those of his squad leader. 'The mission intel had to be bogus…'
'No,' Saxon insisted.
'No?' Duarte echoed him, his tone changing, becoming more strident. 'We had a clear highway, jefe! You saw the data. No drones for twenty miles.'
The lock snapped and Saxon cracked the case. 'Must've been a mistake…'
'Belltower intel never makes mistakes!' Duarte snapped, coughing. 'That's what they always tell us!' He tried to lurch forward on his one good leg. 'Whatever happened, we're screwed now…'
Saxon shot him an angry glare. 'You secure that crap right now, Corporal,' he said, putting hard emphasis on the young man's rank. 'Just shut your mouth and do what I bloody well tell you to, and I promise I'll get you back to whatever barrio rattrap you call home.'
Duarte sobered, and then gave a pained chuckle. 'Hell, no. I joined up to get out of my barrio rattrap. I'll settle for just getting away from here.'
'Yeah, I hear you.' Saxon dragged a bandolier of shells from the case and pulled a heavy, large-gauge shoulder arm from the foam pads inside.
The G-87 was a grenade launcher capable of throwing out a half-dozen 40 mm high-explosive shells in a matter of seconds; the Americans called it 'the Linebacker.' He cracked open the magazine and began thumbing the soda-can-size rounds into the feed. He was almost done when he heard the low whine of ducted rotors overhead.
'Incoming!' shouted Duarte, and the soldier stumbled toward a twist of wreckage.
Saxon looked up and shifted the optics to low-light, instantly painting the whole sky in shades of dark green and glittering white. He caught movement as something ungainly and fast wheeled and turned above them. The wings of the drone changed aspect and folded close to the spindly fuselage as it dove at them. Saxon glimpsed a ball festooned with glassy lenses tucked underneath the nose of the robot aircraft as it turned to single him out.
He broke into a run and vaulted away over fallen tree trunks just as the clattering hammer of heavy-caliber bullets ripped into the place where he had been standing. Saxon rolled, hearing the deep report of the Diamondback as Duarte fired after the drone. The aircraft's engine note throbbed and changed as it went up into a stall turn and came about.
'The trees,' Saxon shouted, working a dial on the grenade launcher.'Get to the trees. We stay in the open, we'll be cut to shreds!'
Duarte didn't reply; he just ran, as best he could, half-staggering, half-falling. Saxon looked up, finding the drone as it came hunting once more.
He pulled the G-87 to his shoulder, almost aiming straight up, and squeezed the trigger. With a hollow grunt, the weapon discharged a shell in an upward arc. The dial set the grenade fuse for a half second, but even as the drone passed over him, Saxon knew he had misjudged the shot.
The shell exploded and the robot flyer bucked from the near hit, but maintained its dive.
His blood ran cold as the aircraft put on a burst of speed and fell toward Duarte, like a cheetah zeroing in on a wounded gazelle. 'Sam!'
The soldier twisted and raised the revolver, the bright stab of discharge from the muzzle flaring in the low- light optics. The heavy cannon, slung in a conformal pod along the length of the drone's ventral fuselage, opened up with a sound like a jackhammer-and Sam Duarte was torn apart in a puff of white.
'Bastard!' Saxon rose from cover, screaming his fury at the machine as it looped and turned inbound once more, preparing to finish the job at hand. He broke out and ran as fast as he could toward the steeper slope where the trees were denser, the grenade launcher bouncing against his chest, his every breath a ragged, gasping effort. The cannon started up again as he reached the perimeter of the tree line, and Saxon turned as he ran, mashing the trigger. The remaining three rounds in the magazine chugged into the air one after another, exploding barely a heartbeat apart at a height just above the canopy. The drone's delicate sensors were blinded by the flashes and the scattering of shrapnel, and it lost its target. The flyer drifted off course and clipped a tall tree; in seconds it was spinning and coming apart, shredding into a new firestorm of burning metal. The detonation sent Saxon sprawling and he lost his footing. The soldier slipped over the lip of the hill and tumbled headfirst down the steep, crumbling face, bouncing hard. Unable to arrest his descent, he fell pinwheeling over the edge and into the muddy waters of the creek below.
Washington Hospital Center-Washington, D. C.-United States of America
Sensation returned to her by degrees, assembling itself piece by piece, line by line. She had the sense of being in a bed, the cotton sheets pressing against her legs, the prickly feel of the mattress cloth beneath. Her lips were cold and dry, a steady breath of oxygen flowing from a plastic mask resting on her face. Anna felt worn and old, broken and twisted. Her body seemed dislocated from her; she expected pain. Why wasn't there any pain?
With difficulty, she turned her head on the pillow beneath it and felt warmth on her face. Licking her lips, she tried to speak, but all that emerged was a hollow gasp. It was dark all around her, a strange dimensionless void that she couldn't grasp.
Then footsteps, people nearby. A voice. 'Anna? Can you hear me?'
'Yes.'
'Okay, just lie still. You're in the hospital. Try not to move.'
The oxygen mask was pulled away and she licked her lips. 'Why… is it dark?'
'Okay, nurse, thank you.' Someone else coughed and she heard the familiar shuffle of expensive Italian loafers, a door closing. 'Hey, Anna. It's me, Ron. I'm here with Hank Bradley from Division. Just take it easy.'
'Ron?' Agent-in-Charge Ronald Temple was Kelso's supervisor, a decent guy with a long career in the Secret Service. She hadn't expected to hear him. 'What's wrong?'
'Agent Kelso…' The next voice was Bradley's. Anna didn't know the man as well as Temple, just by hearsay and reputation as something of a hard ass; he was a senior agent working liaison with the Secret Service and the Department of Justice. His presence underlined the gravity of what had happened. 'I'm afraid we had to take your eyes.'
'What?' Her hand automatically reached upward. Pads of gauze covered her face, and in a sickening moment of understanding, she realized that the orbits of her skull were empty. Something hard and plastic protruded through the bandages from one of the sockets.
