The Survivor (44 page)

Around the corner, parked under the protective cover of a neighbor’s drooping sycamore, he had prepped everything. Danny Urban, with his militia-like sensibilities, had made Nate’s job easier by acquiring gear familiar to an army grunt. Nate had wrapped two blocks of C4 with tape, adhered them above the gas tank, and sunk a military-issue M6 electric blasting cap into the white putty. Then it came down to junior-high physics, creating a simple circuit.

There was no leg wire in the duffel bag, an omission owed to Nate’s haste in raiding the evidence locker. After pondering the dilemma, he’d removed one of the Jeep’s rear speakers and stripped out several lengths of radio wire, which he’d connected to the blasting cap and the car battery before laying the two ends well apart on the ground before the front bumper. From his pocket he’d removed the two soup-can tops and taped one lead to each. When the jagged metal circles touched, they would complete the circuit and the Wrangler would go apocalyptic.

Now he needed a piece of paper to buffer the soup-can tops until contact. He searched the Jeep, finding nothing. No flyers, no CD jewel case from which to pull a cover. The service manual was long gone, his registration tattered and thin, and the proof-of-insurance slip too small to risk. How was it possible that there wasn’t a single piece of sufficient paper in the vehicle? His concern mounted, edging on panic. He couldn’t imagine coming all this way and having to deconstruct the bomb, drive down the hill, and go paper shopping.

A young father approached with his daughter, laughing and splashing through puddles in their rain boots. As they passed, the man stared at Nate curiously. The wires, C4, and duffel were not adequately indistinct even in the darkness. Nate forced a smile and said, “Engine trouble,” and the pair hurried along.

Watching them leave, hand in hand, Nate felt a solution take shape. He reached for his back pocket, removing the two photographs. Cielle crouching beside her soccer ball, her grin punctuated by gaps. Janie laughing with him at their wedding. Closing his eyes, he kissed them each. Very carefully, he taped the soup-can tops around the pictures, sandwiching them, and adhered the makeshift pressure plate to the Jeep’s grille. A collision of any force would tear the photographs and push the metal circles into contact.

He’d seen this make of car bomb a half dozen times at checkpoints in the Sandbox, and he knew what the aftermath looked like. Two point five pounds of explosives supersized by a half tank of gasoline should be enough to open Pavlo’s front door.

Standing now at the end of the walk, his weakened arms straining under the weight of the granite, Nate said a silent prayer to Lady Luck and dropped the stone onto the gas pedal. The engine roared. Reaching across, he cranked on the radio, and Shithead Jason’s AC/DC disc spun to life, Brian Johnson wailing from the remaining car speakers:
“—won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives—”

Below, the front door cracked open, Valerik poking his head out, the stub of his sleek ponytail wagging into view. The heel of his hand rode the stock of an AK-47. They were ready and waiting.

But not for this.

Nate yanked the gearshift into drive, and the Jeep rocketed away, knocking his arm.

Valerik’s head reared back, the whites of his eyes pronounced, and the big door slammed shut.

The Jeep caught air off the first set of stairs, bounced off kilter, and hurtled toward the front door at a tilt, Nate already walking behind, tugging on the sling, rotating the assault rifle into his hands.

“Gonna take you to—”

The explosion was expansive, the front door and surrounding wall obliterated, the front windows turned to shrapnel. Nate kept on through the blowback, heat and wind scorching his cheeks, his dropped left foot shushing across the concrete. The air stank of gasoline and burned metal. He sliced through a billowing wall of soot and drifted into the crumbled foyer, the Angel of Death. Cloaked in the swirling cloud, rubble loose underfoot, he listened for sounds of life.

A gurgle.

Squinting, he cut through the dense air and found Valerik slumped at the base of a blown-out wall. The blast overpressure had ruptured the air sacs in his lungs, thick dark soup pouring down his chin, drenching his collar. Nate pictured McGuire in his green-and-khaki ACUs, joking over a failed suicide bomber rustling and gagging on a dirt warehouse floor:
Looks like homeboy won the wet-T-shirt contest.

Valerik burbled up at Nate.

“Hi there,” Nate said.

Crouching over him, Nate pulled the pin from the grenade and nestled it under his body so the spoon held. He jogged a few steps into the powdered air, hid behind a burning cabinet, and waited.

Panicked voices, feet pounding a staircase, then creaking overhead. Pavlo, retreating to safety.

Nate was about to press on when he heard ragged coughing coming from the kitchen, followed by hoarse cries. “Valerik? Valerik?”

Gun in hand, Dima jogged by, his form resolving briefly from the dust, though Nate couldn’t risk stopping to aim and fire, not with his weakened left hand slowing his reaction time. He kept his back to the cabinet, the AR-15 at the ready. It was a low-end model—single-stage trigger, uncollapsible stock, and no floated barrel—and he reminded himself to use it calmly and carefully.

There came a moist choking as Valerik tried to warn his friend, and then a blast blew a tunnel of clear air through the foyer and partway down the hall. Shrapnel studded the cabinet and the adjoining wall. Nate heard Dima’s body strike tile, then the sound of scrabbling limbs. He was up, moving; Valerik’s body must have shielded some of the blast.

Nate pivoted out from behind the cabinet, fire licking at his sleeve, and headed toward the kitchen. Dima staggered away, a bobbing run, his silhouette framed by the lights sparkling through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the house. As Nate approached, Dima turned, broad chest flexing as he tried to lift the gun, and Nate stitched a line of bullets from groin to clavicle. Dima flew back against the blinds, knocking them flat, the bright skyline beyond disappearing. His body stood propped against the glass. Taking no chances, Nate unleashed a torrent of bullets into the standing corpse, the pane shattering, the blinds stretching to hold the body’s weight and then ripping free. Dima tumbled through, vanishing into the abyss of the canyon, followed by a cascade of glass pebbles.

Nate released the mag, letting it clatter to the floor, and slammed in another with his quaking left hand. He was just starting to turn when it happened.

He felt the impact first, a sledgehammer swung into his shoulder blade, and he staggered forward, a bent knee barely supporting his weight. Ellipses of blood, his blood, sprayed the kitchen floor, giving off a pleasant shine. The sound of the gunshot registered vaguely, an afterthought. The AR-15 had flown from his body, sling and all, to spin at the kitchen’s edge near the blown-out glass.

Nate pitched forward to the floor, bracing himself from total collapse with his one functional arm as Yuri approached from behind, chuckling. Nate could feel the handgun pressed into his belly, but his left hand was useless, his right bearing all his weight. If he dropped fully to the floor, freeing his good hand, Yuri would put a bullet through the back of his skull.

He closed his eyes, focusing through the throb in his shoulder. The Glock 19 in his waistband had no thumb safety, and the trigger pull was the same every time out. No extra double-action resistance at the front end. Which meant a quicker first shot.

Yuri said, “Now we can begin.”

Nate whipped his right hand off the floor, his torso falling even as he grabbed for the gun at his waist. Through a miracle he hooked the handle properly, yanked, and twisted, squeezing off a shot before his bloodied shoulder struck the floor and sent a lightning bolt through his torso. The Glock bounced free as Yuri reeled back, one arm pinwheeling, and hit the floor. The big man’s black guayabera grew even darker at his side, blood seeping through. Injured, handguns out of reach, they lay panting, staring at each other across the glass-strewn floor. The AR-15 still spun listlessly a few feet from them both by the window’s edge, rasping quietly as it wound down.

Their stares pulled to the assault rifle. Back to each other.

They both scrambled for it, lunging and crawling. Four hands grabbed the barrel simultaneously. Not letting go, Nate pivoted, kicking Yuri, who slid to the edge, his movement slicked by the round pebbles of glass rolling beneath him. Yuri’s grip firmed on the AR-15, and then one leg went over the brink, the weight tugging at him. His eyes widened in that swollen face. His other leg poured over the brink, then his hips, and then he grunted and sank into the open air, pulling Nate with him, the two men bound by their death lock on the assault rifle. Nate was dragged toward the edge, the tips of his shoes scraping across the tile, and he was just about to let go when they reached some magical equilibrium of friction and muscle and halted. His head and arms dangled over the lip. His left shoulder screamed in agony. Broken glass bit into his chest. But he kept his grip. The assault rifle was completely vertical, aimed straight down off the ledge.

Hanging on with bloodless hands, Yuri swayed back and forth, bucking and yelping, the canyon falling away beneath his feet. Then he stilled, realizing suddenly which end of the assault rifle he’d wound up with.

The wrong end.

Nate slipped his finger through the trigger guard. Yuri stared helplessly straight up into the bore, inches from his eyes, and, adjusting his grip, Nate discharged the assault rifle through the other man’s head.

As Yuri plummeted, Nate jerked away painfully from the edge. He grabbed the Glock, stuffed it back into his waistband. It took a full minute for him to get up onto his feet, but then he was limping toward the stairs, leading with the AR-15. His weak left arm, further compromised by the gunshot at the shoulder, could do little more than prop up the barrel.

As he came up onto the concrete plain of the second floor, the vast open space with its walls of windows caught Nate off guard. Minimal cover. In fact, aside from a giant mattress with heaped sheets, several pillars, and a floating staircase, the great room was bare. Not a sign of Pavlo or Misha.

The staircase led to a hatch thrown open to the night air. Had they already escaped to the roof?

Nate made a snap decision to clear the floor before moving on. Breathing hard, he hurried behind the first pillar. Moonlight tumbled through the huge skylight, laying a distorted block across the concrete. Motes swam in the shaft of faint light. Every direction was pale, silver, gray, the red silk sheets on the mattress providing the only splotch of color. The walls of glass and evenly spaced pillars created a hall-of-mirrors effect.

The strain of holding Yuri’s body for all that time had cost him, his right arm, too, now weak and tingling. He waited, listening. Was that the faint sound of breathing he heard off the concrete and glass? Someone else’s or his own, thrown back at him?

The pillars were broad, industrial; Pavlo could even be hiding on the opposite side of the very one Nate had shouldered into. Bracing himself, he pivoted around the corner and then the next, keeping an eye out for movement behind the other pillars as well. His left foot dragging, his shoulder complaining with every jolt, he broke cover, running to the next pillar. He made the same painful progress around it. When he sprinted for the third, he heard footsteps somewhere else in the room, echoes disguising the source. Gunshots blew out the windows behind him, and he arrived at the far pillar, panting, the fresh draft chilling the sweat on his face.

“I’m here, Pavlo,” he called out.

No response.

The AR-15 rattled in his grip. Blood streaked down his left arm, dripping off the elbow. Each limb, skewered by pinpricks. He looked down at his fingers, willing them to hold on. A spate of light-headedness came on in a fury, then departed just as abruptly.

He risked a glance across the enormous space. Three equidistant pillars marked the long stretch of the opposing wall as well. The glow of the moon through the skylight cast ghostly reflections off some of the windows. Peering out, he studied the glass behind the far pillars for mirrored images, finally spotting a shard of a figure, barely visible given the angle. Narrow build, cap of blond hair, gun held in both hands, pointing at the floor.

Misha.

Which meant Pavlo was on the roof.

With the blood loss and the state of his muscles, Nate wouldn’t have much time before he was too weak to be useful. Quietly, he withdrew the light Glock from his waistband. The AR-15 slipped in his left hand, almost clattering to the concrete; he’d have to do everything with his right. He set the Glock silently on the floor beyond the pillar, the handle positioned for a quick grab. Then he switched the assault rifle to his right hand. Easing from behind the pillar, he knelt in a shooter’s position. Using his remaining strength, he tossed the assault rifle to the side of the pillar.

Before the gun reached the peak of its trajectory, he snatched up the Glock, doing his best to steady the pistol in his right hand. Insensate as a slab of meat, his left hand pressed to the base of the handle, propping it up. Static fuzzed his vision, and he blinked it away, and then everything went down in three quick claps.

The assault rifle striking the floor.

Misha darting from behind the pillar, firing at the blank air above the rifle.

And Nate squeezing the trigger.

Misha spun, a spray of blood painting the window behind him, then struck the floor, half concealed by the pillar, his shoes twitching.

Grunting, Nate started across, each step a fresh agony. His limbs felt so weak that it seemed he was moving himself with his core, dragging his feet along with his stomach muscles. The cold air of the room smelled of spicy cologne. He passed the mattress, rotating the gun barrel from Misha’s feet to the square of black sky atop the floating staircase.

Step, pause. Step, pause. Keep moving.

To his left he heard a whisper of fabric, and, too late, he realized.