The Valkyrie Project (2 page)

Ana knelt, keeping her back to the bright blue and white waves coming in while scanning the dark green and black of the jungle. She was the hunter, yet still wary of being hunted. She could
pursue her prey and come back for the pilot later, but she wasn't sure exactly how much blood had flowed out around the piece of the ship's window lodged a couple decimeters above the pilot's knee, and she didn't want to risk leaving him to his death.

A groan worked itself loose from his vocal cords. Blood was still seeping from the wound. Ana dropped her pack to the sand and dug out the plastic hilt of a knife. The blade sprang out and she swiftly cut down the leg of the flight suit to fully expose the wound. She reached into the pack and drew out a canister of biofoam. Placing one hand on the edge of the metal, she positioned the foam with the other.

With a quick jerk, she ripped the piece of wreckage from the pilot's leg and filled the remaining hole with a thick line of foam spray.

The pilot's eyes weren't even full
y open as a left cross came surprisingly fast towards Ana's face. She jerked her head out of range, pinned the errant arm across his chest, and secured the other. His eyes were wide now, but his legs lacked the strength to assault her in any meaningful manner.

"I'm here to help." She kept her voice low, but firm. He stopped
struggling for a second and looked at her. "I'm here to help." She repeated the words to make sure he'd heard them.

"Who
—"

"I am Valkyrie 24." She tapped the emblem on her chest. "I was sent to retrieve you and," she thought of the dead escort on the ship, "your prisoner."

A look of painful awareness. "I don't know—"

"I'm sure you don't. But I will find him."

Ana helped him to sit up.

"I don't know how he got out of his restraints. All of a sudden he was just there."

"That's okay. We can sort out the details later." She scanned the tree line again, and returned to him. "Do you want to head back to my ship by yourself? You can come with me if you want. I can't guarantee your safety either way, so it's up to you."
His eyes followed the hand she'd used to indicate the location of her ship.

"It's not too far down there," she said. "Think you can walk on that?" She nodded at his knee.

"Let's see." He held out his hands and she shouldered him to his feet. He took a couple steps, and found good footing despite the soft terrain.

"Okay, so just head that way. It's right in the middle of the beach."

"He probably took some weapons from my ship."

Ana raised an eyebrow and a half-cocked smile. "Just probably?"

"You got any guns on your ship?"

"Not that you'll be able to get to."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"Okay, but don't think I'm going out of my way to save you when he starts shooting."

"Deal."

Ana started down the beach again, more cautiously this time. She followed the trail of footsteps left in the sand, working them like a crime scene, recreating the path that the escaped prisoner had taken and his thought process as well. The indentations grew ever so slightly closer together. The pilot wouldn't have noticed it, but Ana had.

"My name is Jrue, by the way." He had a careful, low, almost handsome voice. If a voice could be handsome.

"I know," Ana said without looking back. There was blood. Barely perceptible at first, like the shortening stride, but ahead there was more. And the footsteps headed for the water.

"Looks like he got injured too, eh?"

"Looks like it." She didn't mean to be so terse, but she was examining the details and trying to concentrate.

Yes, looked like he headed for the water to clean up.
Just after the footsteps intersected with the tide, they went straight into the forest.

The pilot
—Jrue—was still limping heavily, and Ana wondered how safe he would be pursuing the suspect into the jungle, no matter how injured the other guy was.

"You sure you can make it in there with me?"

"Beats baking out here waiting for him to double back and take me out."

So they headed up the beach side by side, and just as they stepped from sandy white onto lusher green, Ana heard the distinct whine of a MP-11.

It was one of a few pulse weapons with an entirely watertight casing. They were prohibitively expensive, so she hadn't thought that there might be one on the downed ship.

The Valkyrie
gave Jrue a smack to the head as she spun, hoping to knock him to the ground. With her other hand, Ana drew her gun and aimed at the noise. It was indeed a Maxplanck model 11, held by a man she recognized from the briefing as the missing prisoner. The MP-11 was aimed and ready to blow them—and all matter immediately behind them—into more pieces than one person would be able to count in a lifetime.

Actually, since her palm had driven Jrue down as she'd intended, he might be left with enough pieces intact to survive the
blast. Not that he'd necessarily want to have survived at that point.

"A Valkyrie
, eh? I must be worth more than I thought. Of course, now I have two people that the Agency would hate to lose. And I'm not talking about the pilot there, Ms. Valkyrie. I appreciate your efforts, but I could care less if he lives."

Ana's stomach turned at the glee that pervaded the man's voice.
She couldn't make out more than his hulking silhouette against the glaring sun behind him. The shadowy figure seemed to fit the sinister tones permeating the man's otherwise gravelly speech.

"Don't think that just because I know how valuable you are that I won't use this, though." He patted the barrel of his gun. "I am worth more to me than you'll ever be."

This time the evil joy came sputtering out in a high-pitched laugh. This show, though, only reinforced what Ana already knew. He was a highly intelligent egotistical maniac and the world would likely be a better place if she blasted him right there instead of racking her brain for ways to bring him—and hopefully Jrue—in alive.

The standoff lasted only a few moments before Ana lowered her weapon. She felt bad for a moment for forcing Jrue to the ground, but with him there it left him
fewer available options and made his actions easier to predict. With her palms out, she set the gun on the ground.

"The pack, too."

She dropped her bag to the ground next to her gun.

"You. Up."

Jrue got to his feet, giving the evil eye to both Ana and their captor. She'd given him two chances, and he'd thought he'd be better off with her. He'd have to deal with the way she worked. Of course, they'd have to work together at least a little now if they were to reverse the situation that had them walking into an unfamiliar jungle in front of an MP-11 as well as Ana's stash of weapons and supplies.

Jrue went first, followed by
Ana, clearly the larger threat, followed herself by Johnson—their captive turned captor—and his mini arsenal. There wasn't an identifiable path through the trees, and she was fairly sure their captor didn't know the island any better than either of them, so she was trying desperately to figure out what his plan for them was—provided there was one more elaborate than just taking them deep enough into the woods to make their bodies harder to find. He knew who the Valkyries were, but was that knowledge extensive enough to know that she carried a tracking device not just in her bag and body armor, but also beneath the skin just below where the humerus connected to the scapula in the shoulder joint?

Pieces of fallen branches cracked and ground cover crumpled softly as they marched into the stand of trees. The air grew more wet
the deeper they went into the forest, while the canopy filtered out more and more of the natural light, and the number of trees seemed to grow exponentially.

Jrue weaved a path through the old growth, and Ana considered him leading the way a definite advantage for them. About the only thing they had going in their favor at this point. Ana's mind had not stopped concocting scenarios to turn the tables, but she also hadn't stopped kicking herself for getting put in this position. She was lost in thought when Jrue tripped over a thick root and went sprawling to the ground.

A foot came down on her knee and she also hit the ground as Johnson came around, putting the huge barrel of the MP-11 to Jrue's head.

"Get your ass up! I'm not about to wait around for a gimpy pilot!"

Ana got back to her feet and considered charging Johnson, but that would probably just get her and Jrue stuck to a hundred different trees. Plan B was her voice.

"
Johnson, you've already been convicted of grand larceny. You don't want to add a murder charge to your record, do you?"

"I don't, actually. Especially once I get my pardon."

Ana couldn't help the ‘oh really?’ look that popped onto her face like a jack-in-the-box. She shoved it back quickly, but he'd seen it before her negotiating poker face returned.

"You don't honestly think I just crashed my transport ship on some random island, do you?"

He had a plan. Or did he? Was he bluffing? This time Ana held her face muscles still.

"The thought had crossed my mind."

"And here I thought the Valkyries were renowned for their superior intelligence and not just their physical abilities—or appearance."

A quick shudder ran through Ana's muscles. An escape plan she could deal with, but an appraisal of her appearance should not have been part of any getaway attempt.

"Don't worry. I'm sure I'll surprise you yet."

"You may, but this guy won't if he doesn't get moving right now."

"He did have a piece of the ship that
you
crashed in his leg, so maybe you can cut him a little slack."

"Maybe if I take his head off, I won't have to worry about his leg."

"If you even try, I'll be on you in a second. Then you'll have to kill me before I kill you, and when I'm dead you won't have much to bargain with."

"Really, Ms. Valkyrie? You'd give your life for this pilot?"

"I'd give my life to make sure you get back to prison, Johnson. How long do you think it'll be before the Valkyrie Project comes looking when I don't check in?" The Agency would be notified by the tracking device as soon as her vital signs hit the floor, even with the interference established by the anomaly that was the Keys. But she was probing a little to see if he'd know that.

Johnson let Jrue get up. He started walking again. Ana took that as a
'not long enough.'

Johnson waved Ana past him with the MP-11 and so she followed. They continued their trudge through thick vegetation, the air
still warmer and denser as they went. On the beach, where there had been a breeze, Ana had been comfortable running at high speed, but with the forest blocking the wind and trees trapping the heat from any sunlight that managed to get through, she was sweating even with their relatively unhurried pace.

In front of her, she could see Jrue sweating as well as he struggled to limp through the tangle of roots, bushes, and undergrowth. His suit was beginning to stick to his skin. She'd already deduced he was in good shape from the cut of the suit itself, but she could now make out stron
g muscles bulging from his back, legs, and butt. Too bad he'd been injured so severely in the crash or he could have been a great asset for the mission.

Ana's mental clock ticked off another twenty minutes before they reached what she had feared: a dilapidated wooden shack. It would have been considered a relic of an age gone by if it were in any more populated an area. But it seemed strangely appropriate here in the middle of a forest
on an uninhabited island. The tropical vegetation had started encroaching, but the building was raised off the floor enough to keep it protected. Whoever had built it had cut down the fewest number of trees possible in making room for it. The taller trees around it had grown over, protecting it from intruding satellite photography. When combined with the 'static' from the remaining radioactive hotspots that gave the Keys their nickname, the little hovel was well-protected from any sort of infrared sensor as well.

"Welcome home!" Johnson said as he opened the door. A layer of dust covered everything in the single room. There was a bare
-bones kitchen in one corner, a cot with a rolled-up pad in another, and a communications station in a third. It was outdated equipment, but it had been top of the line at one point, and it would suffice for his needs as well as hers—once she could get her hands on it.

Jrue and Ana were ushered in and told to sit on the cot. The MP-11 stayed trained on them
—at least close enough to take out a part of them—as Johnson fished electrocuffs from a trunk that looked like it might have been around since pirates had sailed the seas using only wind. The cuffs were modern enough though, just barely. Jrue put them on Ana, and then Johnson did the same to him. The criminal definitely wanted her to think he had it all planned out. It didn't really matter if he was bluffing or not—she'd find out soon enough.

"You got a bathroom in this dump?" she asked.