“You now have fifteen seconds,” the lady holding him said. “Don’t make me count them down; it’s so melodramatic.”
Then the gun was in his hand and he did not hesitate. He knew what to do. He was a soldier.
The gun kicked in his hand when he fired; he almost dropped it. The bullet ripped through the lady’s abdomen and exited her lower back, the slug burying itself in the dusty sofa cushions. The noise was very loud in the small space, and Cassie cried out: For an awful second, she must have thought it was the lady’s gun that went off.
The shot failed to drop the Constance lady or break her hold on his neck. Her grip loosened, though, at the shock of impact, and Sam heard the tiniest of gasps, a startled huh, and before he could blink, Ringer was flying over the coffee table, arm drawn back, hand curled into a fist. Her knuckles grazed his cheek before landing against the side of Constance’s head, and then a hand he didn’t see flung off the arm around his neck and he stumbled free. His sister reached for him, but he spun away, holding the gun with both hands, and Ringer yanked Constance completely off her feet and swung her body high into the air like an axman cutting firewood, smashing her down onto the coffee table. The table exploded, wood and glass and pieces of jigsaw puzzle spewing in every direction.
Constance sat up; Ringer rammed the heel of her hand into Constance’s nose. Pop! You could hear it break. Blood burst from her open mouth.
Fingers clawing at his shirt: Cassie’s. He pulled away. Cassie wasn’t part of a squad. She didn’t know what it meant to be a soldier. He did. He knew exactly what it meant.
No mercy ever.
He stepped over the broken pieces of the table and pointed the gun at the middle of the lady’s face. Her bloody mouth pulled into a soulless snarl of a smile, bloody lips and bloody teeth, and then he was back in his mother’s room, and she was dying of the plague, the Red Death, Cassie called it, and he was standing by her bed and she was smiling at him with bloody teeth, face stained with bloody tears; he saw it so clearly, the face he’d forgotten in the face he saw now.
In the instant before he pulled the trigger, Sammy Sullivan remembered his mother’s face, the face they had given her, and the bullet that tore down the barrel held his rage, bore his grief, contained the sum of all he had lost. It connected them as if by a silver cord. When her face blew apart, they became one, victim and perpetrator, predator and prey.
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39
RINGER
THE BLOOD SPRAY blinds me for a second, but the hub retains the data of Nugget’s location and the precise position of the gun. By the time that second expires, his hand is empty and mine isn’t.
At the end of the next second, the gun is trained at the face of Evan Walker.
Walker is the linchpin, the fulcrum upon which our survival rests. Alive, he’s an unacceptable risk. Pulling the trigger might cost my own life; I know that. Cassie—even Zombie—might kill me for killing him, but I don’t have a choice. We’re out of time.
None of them can hear it yet, but I can—the sound of the chopper bearing down from the north, loaded with Hellfire missiles and a squad of Vosch’s best sharpshooters. The loss of Constance’s signal can only mean one thing.
“Ringer,” Zombie cries hoarsely. “What the fuck?”
A tiny figure rushes from my right. Nugget. I pull the punch so I don’t break his sternum, but the blow sends him flying off his feet and into Sullivan’s chest. They plop to the floor in a sprawl of arms and legs.
I stay focused on the target.
“Ben, don’t,” Walker says calmly, though Zombie hasn’t moved. “Let’s hear what she wants.”
“You know what I want.” Finger tightening on the trigger.
There’s no question that Walker has to die. It’s so obvious, even Nugget would agree if he knew the facts. His sister, too. Well, maybe not. Love blinds more than it reveals. Razor taught me that.
“Ben!” Walker shouts. “No.”
Zombie doesn’t dive for a weapon. He doesn’t leap toward me. He takes two very slow, very deliberate steps to put his body between me and Evan Walker.
“Sorry, Ringer,” Zombie says. Incredibly, he’s decided to whip out the slayer smile. “Not going to happen.” He raises his arms as if to offer a better target.
“Zombie, you don’t know . . .”
“Well, that’s a given. I don’t know shit.”
If it were anyone else.
Sullivan, even Nugget.
What is the cost, Marika? What is the price? “Zombie, there’s no time.”
“No time for what?”
He heard it then; they all heard it; it had come within range of normal human hearing. The chopper.
“Holy shit,” Sullivan gasped. “What have you done? What the hell have you done?”
I ignore her. Only Zombie matters. “They don’t want us,” I tell him. “They want him. We can’t let them have him, Zombie.”
If Zombie would just dip his head a half inch. That’s all I need, half an inch. The 12th System will do the rest.
I’m sorry, Zombie. There’s no time.
The hub locks in. I let loose the round. The bullet smashes into Zombie’s thigh.
He’s supposed to go down to clear the way for the next round—the kill shot to Evan Walker’s head. He doesn’t.
Instead, he falls back into Walker’s chest and Walker wraps his arms around him, holding him up or using him as a human shield. Beneath the faint sound of the rotors outside, an even fainter sound, the thu-wapp of a parachute deploying. Then another. Then another. Thu-wapp, thu-wapp, thu-wapp, thu-wapp, thu-wapp. Five in all.