hate, when the chopper fired. The 30mm cannon struck him in the torso, depleted uranium shells exploding out his back in a shower of fragments and white light. Rocket pods launched, lancing fury under the overpass. The gasoline caught, flames tearing across the freeway, leaping back up into the emptying trailer, igniting the massive amount of fumes in a conflagration that was probably visible in Cazador.
A wall of heat and pressure rocked the van, blowing the rear windows out in a spray of hot glass. I covered my head. A killing wind smashed through the interior, super hot and stinging. The exterior paint caught on fire.
But we made it.
A roiling red-and-black mushroom cloud rose behind us, hundreds of feet into the air. Somehow I alone could see through the conflagration to see the ancient oni's final moments. Through the curtains of fire and smoke and howling wind, the beast hung by a fraying cable, false flesh boiling away, energy fleeing, until finally in a flash, he was consumed. The container was destroyed, freeing thousands of trapped souls as his body exploded into clay dust that was sucked upward into the flaming vortex.
'You okay?' I asked softly.
My brother had spent the last fifteen minutes doing CPR on the trucker. The two of us and the rapidly cooling body were the only ones left in the van. He had done his best, and his chest heaved from the stress and exertion. He smelled like evaporating gasoline.
After we had stopped the van, Gretchen had examined the man for only a few seconds, shook her head sadly, then walked away. If Gretchen had said nothing could be done, then truly, it was over. Mosh didn't know what I knew about her healing powers and had continued trying to resuscitate, pumping the man's chest over and over, stubbornly trying to work a heart that was just plain done, then filling the lungs with air and trying again.
The back of the van was bare. It made a decent work space for first aid. Mosh leaned back against the wall and rubbed a filthy hand over his face.
'You okay?' I repeated, a little louder this time.
The trucker was a big old boy with a Charlie Daniel's beard, with those kind of thick arms that bordered on fat but were amazingly strong, and he had LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles and HATE tattooed on the other. It was cheesy, but it didn't matter now, because he was dead, and it was my fault. College kids in Mexico, who knows how many innocents tonight, my family put in danger, and it wasn't going to stop… All because of me.
Mosh gave a sad little laugh. It was a pathetic sound. 'Hell of a night.'
'Yeah… Listen, dude, I can explain everything.'
He just shook his head. 'Shut up.'
'No, really. Everything you saw, I can explain.'
Mosh lowered his hand. His face was bloodstained and scratched. 'Just leave me alone right now, okay?' His eyes got a dangerous squint to them and just for a second I could see that family resemblance that everybody always told me about.
I nodded. I could understand. There was a — helicopter landing outside. This particular talk could wait. The back doors of the van were pulled open. Grant was standing there in his perfect black armor. 'Feds are here,' he stated, though it was pretty obvious with the black helicopter settling on the freeway a hundred feet away.
'Hey, Grant.'
'Yeah?'
I clapped him on the shoulder. It was kind of awkward. 'Good shot back there.'
Grant just nodded, his expression inscrutable. It was no secret that he disliked me. 'Just doing my job.' Saving my life was a professional courtesy, nothing more. 'I suppose that makes us even.'
He was talking about me pulling him out of DeSoya Caverns. Technically I figured I was still ahead by one, but I had broken his nose for that incident. 'Fair enough.'
The fire was still burning in the distance. We were parked on the bridge between Buzzard Island and Montgomery. State police, by order of the Feds, had blocked the bridge into town. This area was now quarantined, certainly as part of what Myers had referred to on the radio as a Level 5 Containment Event. Agent Myers, trailed by Agents Torres, Herzog, and Archer, approached as Grant and I waited. The Goon Squad looked pretty beat up. Archer had a black eye and a Sig 229 dangling from one hand. Skippy, Gretchen, and Edward were nowhere to be seen, which was probably real smart right about now.
'Pitt… Jefferson,' Myers addressed us, anger barely contained. I was waiting for him to explode. I was going to jail, if I was lucky.
'Myers,' I said gravely. 'Have you found Franks yet?'
'We will find him,' Myers stated matter-of-factly, somehow talking while keeping his jaw clenched. 'As for you…'
I waited patiently for my arrest.
Agent Myers hesitated, obviously waffling between having the cuffs put on or ordering his agents to just shoot me to get it over with. The look he gave me was a mixture of anger, frustration, and something else that I wasn't sure about. He turned from me, studied the surviving members of my protective detail one by one, and then scowled back at me, deep in thought. Finally he seemed to deflate. His teeth unclenched and then Myers just seemed like the tired, middle-aged, glorified bureaucrat that he was. 'You, I'll deal with later. Go home
…' He waved his hand. 'Just… go home.'
That was a surprise. 'Seriously?'
'But, sir!' Herzog shouted. 'He attacked us.'
'I never touched you,' I said, which was true. The orcs had beat the hell out of them-not me.
'He pulled a gun on Agent Franks.' Archer said. 'That's-'
'Enough!' Myers cut his subordinate off. 'Pitt, if I thought it would benefit my mission I'd have you locked up for eternity. Your actions jeopardized my men.'
I had no idea why he was letting me go. A smarter man would have kept his mouth shut, but my temper tended to run faster than my brain. 'You knew more about these oni than you let on. I had nothing to do with your trap failing. Did you expect me to just let them kill my brother?'
'You're a free man for one reason only. You're still our only in against this group,' Myers spat. 'Don't mistake my actions for mercy. I need all of my available men for this containment but I'll provide another protective detail shortly. We'll assess how tonight's setback affects our case against the Condition. Hopefully, the cultist your father shot will survive and we can get some information out of him.'
'How are my parents?' I asked.
'Fine. They're on a flight now.'
'Parents?' Mosh spoke up from behind Grant, concern evident in his voice. 'What happened?'
Myers gestured into the back of the van. 'One of your people?'
'That's my brother, the one you were going to leave to die,' I said, pointing to Mosh, who looked really exasperated.
Myers sighed. 'I meant the dead one.'
'Driver of the tanker.' Grant spoke for the first time.
'We tried to save him,' Mosh said.
'I understand.' The senior G-man nodded. 'Men, carry this body to the chopper.'
'What about Mom and Dad?' Mosh demanded.
'I'll explain later,' I said. Mosh scowled in a manner that suggested he was giving serious thought about attempting to kick my ass. I was bigger and had a lot more experience but I knew my brother was damn tough when he got angry. 'Chill out, dude. They're fine.' Mosh punched the side of the van and stomped away. I waited until the Goon Squad had picked up the trucker before returning my full attention to Myers. It took all three of them to hoist the body up and shuffle away, each of them telegraphing their distaste for their superior's decision not to haul me off. 'Any idea how many more dead?'
'Not as many as you would think,' Myers replied. 'We got lucky. Some civilians at the concert and I have four men dead and several more wounded.' I didn't know if he was counting Franks in that quantity. 'We got most of the cars stopped away from the tanker and the people stuck behind the crash were smart enough to run when they saw Force drop his invisibility. As far as we know, nobody else was caught in the explosion. In the meantime, I've got hundreds of witnesses and a slew of damage that I have to explain. Some idiot is going to talk about this and that means they'll have to be dealt with
…' He trailed off, finding the idea distasteful.
