Edge of War

Jing Yo saw the limousine to his right as he drove up the narrow space between the row of cars and the barrier dividing traffic on the bridge. He was just past the first tower on the bridge. The cars were bumper to bumper, with no space to get between them.

It didn’t matter now. He had him.

Jing Yo continued on for several car lengths until finally a large panel truck blocked his path. He hopped off the scooter just behind it, pausing for a moment to get his bearings and plan his route to the limo.

The driver of the car next to him was talking on a cell phone. He looked up suddenly, just as Jing Yo’s eyes turned in his direction. The man’s expression was one of profound fear.

The look of a hen before the hawk struck.

Jing Yo felt a wave of disdain. He leapt onto the hood of the man’s car, pulled up his grenade launcher, sighting for the limo. He saw it, and pressed the trigger.

* * *

Mara saw the flash and smoke, then the streak toward the limo. The missile crashed into the front of the car. In the same moment, there was a loud crack and an explosion. Flames appeared, giving way to a white cloud that turned brown in the next second.

“Josh!” yelled Mara, raising her gun and firing in the direction the grenade had come from.

* * *

Josh felt the rush of a tornado as the grenade blew up the limo. The bridge vibrated madly.

The cone of white-hot gas and metal that had been the warhead set the inside of the vehicle on fire, filling it with flames and hot gas. Glass shattered, body crinkled, the limo started to disintegrate into bits of molten metal and evaporating plastic.

“The gas tank!” yelled Josh. He saw Grasso and Jablonski on the other side, stunned, lying next to a damaged car.

“Get off the bridge!” Josh yelled. “Go that way.” Josh pointed back toward the Queens side. “Go! Get away from the car!”

He glanced at the vehicle, knowing there were two more men inside. But they were beyond hope now. He started to follow Jablonski and Grasso on his hands and knees, then saw Mara running up through the cars, gun drawn, coming for him.

* * *

Jing Yo felt the bullet hit him in the right thigh, the sting of a bee on an early summer day, a diversion, an attempt to shake his focus. He concentrated on the limousine, working the stream of bullets into the front of the car, firing until a second shot grazed his left side and pushed him off the car, sent him tumbling to the pavement.

Jing Yo scrambled to his feet, a little wobbly but still able to move. He dropped the box from the P90 and fished another from the pocket of the coveralls. It took him a moment to fit it into the unfamiliar gun.

Someone began firing from the right, near the divider. Jing Yo slammed the magazine home and returned fire.

* * *

Mara saw Broome go down as the Chinese assassin fired in his direction. She fired two more shots even though she couldn’t see the gunner, hoping to distract him. Realizing it was futile and that she wouldn’t be able to reload, she stopped.

Josh and the others were up ahead somewhere. She started crawling for them. People were jumping from their cars, rushing to get off the bridge. The smoke and dust were so thick she started to cough.

Bullets crashed into nearby cars, punching through the metal and plastic. She flattened herself on the pavement and glanced around, trying to locate where they were coming from.

* * *

The gas tank in the limo exploded, the flames from the interior igniting the gas fumes. The force of the explosion pushed the car into the air; it slammed down on the hood of the car behind it, setting it on fire. Fortunately, the driver had already fled.

A plume of smoke enveloped the bridge, a thick cloud of soot, dust, and debris. Josh started to sneeze.

Panic gripped him. He started to get up. Something hit him, pushed him back against the car — a woman, running from the chaos.

Josh fell to the ground, smacking his head on the bumper of the car. He was back in the past — not Vietnam, but the distant past, a child again, running from the men who had killed his parents.

It was the same paralyzing fear, an emptiness at the center of his body, a certainty that he was going to be killed. He was a little boy again, desperate for life, desperate to live out the dreams he’d started to imagine for himself, half-formed wishes to be a hero, to accomplish something, to be a great man.

Rather than a coward. Rather than a dead boy cowering.

He was not a coward.

Josh pushed himself to his feet, scrambling across the back of another car. He ran through a knot of dust, angled westward along another car, then turned behind a pickup truck.

The cement barrier was a few feet away. He sneezed, put his arm over his mouth to block out the smoke and took a deep breath, then jumped over it. As he went over, he saw a body lying on the ground, next to the barrier, on the eastbound side of the road.

The image didn’t register until he was over the cement, on the other side.

Broome, lying on the ground. Wounded or dead.

* * *

Jing Yo realized it was just a matter of time now. No one was firing at him anymore. All he had to do was walk down the line of cars and find the scientist.

Assuming he was one of the people who’d gotten out. Jing Yo wasn’t sure. The limo was on fire now.

Jing Yo steadied himself against the vehicle stalled next to him. Most likely the scientist was already dead, but he had to make sure.

And then?

It was his duty to try to escape. He was not seriously wounded. He would run until he was cornered, and then he would have an honorable death, a fulfillment of his fate.

The next life would take care of itself.

His leg dragged as he walked, his injured thigh holding him back.

Someone was moving forward from the line of cars. He raised his gun and fired, but he didn’t have a good enough angle. He climbed up on the hood of the car next to him, then got up on the roof. He still couldn’t see. The car had crashed into the rail, trying to get away. Jing Yo sidestepped toward it, still trying for a good angle. His balance shaky, he reached up toward the bridge support. But it was too far away.

The height of the side of the bridge would give him the right angle.

If he hadn’t been wounded, he could have easily jumped up. He leaned now instead, clambering up.

There was a woman with a gun. He twisted himself in her direction and fired.

* * *

Mara realized a half second before he fired that she would be in the gunman’s sights. She ducked down, then raised the pistol, firing blind.

A burst of submachine gun bullets told her she’d missed.

She stayed down, crawling to the side of the car and looking up toward the limo. Where the hell was Josh?

* * *

As soon as Josh heard the gunfire, he rolled back over the divider, landing on his side. He pushed forward, moving almost like he was swimming, crawling toward Broome.

Broome was breathing.

“You all right?” Josh asked.

“Brother, I’m good. Stay down.”

“Give me your gun,” said Josh.

“What?”