Krezi took a deep breath, and a tired smile broke across her face. “It’s not my first time.” As soon as she said it the smile disappeared, but she continued talking. “I killed a terrorist, back when I was assigned to my first unit, before basic training. I killed a guy who could fly—shot him right out of the air.”
Tabitha thought about that for a long moment. Krezi had killed four people in battle. A terrorist and three soldiers. In regular life Krezi would have been a freshman in high school; instead, she’d become a weapon. A lambda 5D, one of the rarest of the rare. The only lambda 5 in their squad, one of only eight in their training class.
Tabitha hated it. She hated what Krezi was going through. “I’m here for you,” Tabitha said to Krezi with her mind. She hoped it felt more personal that way. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”
There was a sound behind them in the trees, and the others appeared—Aubrey walking with a limp, one arm draped around each of the guys’ shoulders. She’d been injured?
“What’s wrong?” Josi said, rushing to them.
“Shrapnel in the leg,” Nick said. “It’s not bad, but we need to clean it up and get the hell away from here.”
Krezi moved to the backseat of the van and Aubrey clumsily climbed onto the middle bench, her back against the window and her leg up.
Nick looked at Krezi. “I don’t suppose you can just make something glow? I need a little light.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I make things glow and then they blow up. But I can light something on fire for you.”
“Good enough,” he said, and reached up into the glove box and found the van’s owner’s manual. He handed it to her. “Keep it burning.”
By the light of Krezi’s fire, Nick cut an X in Aubrey’s jeans just above the knee, exposing a bleeding wound—fresh, bright-red blood surrounded by brown, dried blood. Her pants were soaked dark, and in the firelight they looked black. He folded his knife, revealing a pair of pliers.
“This is going to hurt a lot,” Nick said.
Jack climbed into the front seat and reached out to take Aubrey’s hand. She squeezed tight, her knuckles white around his fingers. As Tabitha watched she wished she had someone on this mission—someone anywhere—who would hold her hand as she gritted her teeth against pain.
“It’s going to be okay,” Josi said, sounding confident, watching beside Tabitha.
“Yeah,” Tabitha said. “It’s going to be okay.”
Nick tugged and Aubrey grimaced as he pulled the shard of warped metal from her leg. Fresh blood poured from the wound and Aubrey let out a loud gasp, then closed her eyes and gritted her teeth again.
And then in an instant she was gone, and Tabitha didn’t know where she had gone or even what she’d been watching—why were they gathered at the door?
Then she was back, and Tabitha couldn’t be sure if she’d gone at all.
“What was that?” Nick said, an alcohol wipe in his hand.
“Sorry,” she gasped. “Keep going.”
He cleaned the wound the best he could, then mashed a stack of gauze pads onto it. “This will have to do,” he said. “I don’t have anything to use for stitches.” He wrapped a long roll of surgical tape around her leg four times, securing the gauze in place. It looked terrible, but Nick didn’t seem like he wanted to spend any more time on it.
“We need to get on the road,” he said. “And by on the road, I mean on the road with all the people. Everyone take off any military gear and leave it here.”
“Why can’t we wait for the power to come back on?” Krezi asked.
“Because we have a wounded soldier, and because I don’t want to be sitting in this van when someone comes around the mountain and finds a squad of dead Russians.”
Just as they began to set off, Aubrey turned back to look at Josi. “Did you get it? The intel on the BMP?”
Tabitha held her breath, but Josi only hesitated a moment. “We got everything it had.”
EIGHTEEN
JACK WALKED BESIDE AUBREY, HER left arm around his shoulders as she limped along. They were making their way down the side of the freeway, the cars beside them stopped and powerless. He searched for something to say to her, but he’d already asked the stupid questions: “Are you okay?” and “What can I do?” Of course she wasn’t okay, and there was nothing he could do.
He replayed the final moments of the mission in his head, matching them with the images of the dead bodies he’d seen after it was all over. Aubrey was standing over the four dead soldiers when he reached her, pistol still extended, the slide locked back and empty. The look on her face was one of such intense pain that he’d assumed her leg wound was far worse than it was. She was broken and defeated, torn apart from the inside.
She’d told him that she didn’t want to be an assassin, and that was when she was asked to drop a grenade into the BMP—when her target was just three men. She was also ordered to stare at a man, point-blank, and shoot him in the leg.
Three men. That number seemed so low now, but it was huge. He could understand exactly why she hadn’t wanted to do it.
That was the trouble. He could understand all of it. He just couldn’t do anything about it.
Suddenly he heard an engine, and then another, far away in front of them. He began to see taillights.
“Power’s coming back on,” he called back to Nick.
Nick nodded and kept walking.
Soon the cars around them lit up, and the people inside seemed thrilled as they revved their engines.
Why had the electronic interference been activated here? Had there been an attack somewhere nearby? Had American planes been sent in? Jack had eavesdropped enough to know that no American bombers were having success against this unseen device. And if what Rich found was accurate, the Russians weren’t immune to the electronic interference. The BMP lost power just like everything else.
That was important information—vitally important information. Josi was wrong to think they had done this mission for nothing. Now they knew that when the Russians turned off the lights they turned themselves off, too.
“Hold on, guys,” Nick said.
Aubrey and Jack stopped and faced him. The cars on the freeway hadn’t started moving yet—it might take an hour for this endless traffic jam to get rolling again. Nick pounded on the door of a semitruck.
The driver rolled down his window, and Nick hopped up on the step.
“I don’t have room for passengers,” the grizzled man said tiredly.
“We’re not hitchhiking,” Nick said, his voice low. “We’re US Army doing recon, and we’ve got a wounded soldier. Can I use your radio?”
“You’re a bunch of kids,” the driver said. His voice wasn’t angry, just skeptical.
“I’m Sergeant Nick Sharps, Green Beret ODA nine-one-one-nine.” He rolled up his sweater to reveal a tattoo on his arm—Jack couldn’t see what it was. “We were on special assignment. Undercover.”
The driver didn’t look like he was entirely convinced, but he slowly nodded. “It’s not like you’re wasting my time, I guess. We’re going nowhere fast.”
Nick hopped down and the driver opened the door. A moment later Nick was in the driver’s seat and Jack could hear the click of a knob being turned.
“Breaker breaker,” Nick said. “This is Nightingale, how ’bout ya, Harlequin?”
There was a pause, maybe five seconds, then a voice crackled through the radio.
“Copy you, Nightingale, this is Harlequin. How’s the road?”
“Clean clear to Flag Town, come on?” Nick said.
The driver snorted. Jack didn’t know why.
“Road’s clear up here,” Harlequin responded. “You have a full load?”
“Yep. I’m about to put the hammer down.”
“Copy that, Nightingale. See you in a short, good buddy.”
Nick clipped the radio back, and switched the dial to its original position.
“The Green Berets use radio code from C.
W. McCall?” the driver said, a smile in his voice.
Nick reached out to shake hands with the man. “The Green Berets were never here, okay?”
“Gotcha,” he said. “You need anything? I’ve got food.”
“You have any Gatorade?”
There was movement that Jack couldn’t make out, but he heard the sound of a plastic cooler opening.
“Thanks,” Nick said, and then he climbed down from the cab of the truck and handed a bottle of apple juice to Aubrey.
“Good luck,” the driver called.
“Thanks,” Josi said, and Tabitha gave him a wave.
“Drink that,” Nick said to Aubrey. “All of it. You need the fluids.”
She nodded and unscrewed the cap before putting her arm back around Jack’s shoulders.
They started walking again.
“What was that about?” Rich asked.
“Helicopter’s on its way,” Nick said quietly.
Aubrey drank the apple juice slowly, tasting each mouthful for a long time before swallowing. Jack used to think it was gross that he could hear the sound of the inner workings of everyone’s bodies, but he was used to it now. Aubrey’s heart rate was up. Everyone’s was, except Nick’s. But Aubrey’s heart was pumping harder than the others. She’d lost a lot of blood, and that might be the reason. Or maybe she was still full of adrenaline.
“How are you doing?” he asked her for the hundredth time.
“Okay.”
He wanted to press her, to find out what was really going on inside her head, but he didn’t know how to do that—especially with all these people around.
“How’s the leg?”
“Not as bad,” she said, and then she forced a smile. After a moment she added, “At least I didn’t get shot in the head.”
Jack touched the mark above his ear. The scar tissue was soft and slick. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“This is going to limit my choice of skirts in the future,” she said.
“We’ll get you stitches back at the base and it’ll heal up fine,” Jack replied.
She looked at him doubtfully.
He gazed back at her, at her gray eyes that were so full of hidden color. “I mean it. My scar hasn’t limited my choice of hats.”
She let out a small laugh, and he thought it was the biggest victory of the night.
They walked in silence for another five hundred yards or so before she spoke again. “It was bad, Jack.”
He pulled her tighter against him. “I know.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
How could he respond? She was right—he probably had no idea.
“So tell me,” he finally said.
Aubrey didn’t answer immediately. She swallowed the last of the juice.
“I don’t think I can right now,” she said.
“You need to talk about it.” He tried to keep his voice as soothing as possible. He didn’t want to pressure her, but he knew she was going through something terrible. If she wasn’t going to talk to him, she needed to talk to someone.
He drew in a deep breath. Flowerbomb perfume. That scent wasn’t regular Aubrey—it was warrior Aubrey. Soldier Aubrey. It smelled like danger and trouble.
And underneath it was the salty, copper scent of blood.
“I did it all wrong,” she said, and he could hear the tremble in her voice. “I didn’t follow orders. I thought I knew better.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
“No,” she said sternly. “Don’t make excuses for me. It all went to hell back there, and I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do.”
He opened his mouth to say something—to tell her that the mission went to hell because the power went out, which made the soldiers go into defensive positions—but he knew she didn’t want to hear it. And he didn’t know if it was true.
“Maybe if I’d—” she began and then stopped herself. “Maybe . . .”
“You can’t second-guess yourself.”
“Yes, I can,” she said. “I have to.” Aubrey was crying now. “Nine men are dead because of me. Maybe they didn’t have to die. And don’t tell me this is war. I know what war is, and it’s not all about who can massacre the most people.”
Massacre. Jack thought about the word. About what she was accusing herself of. About what it must be doing to her.
When she spoke again her voice was tense and strained. “So tell me what I’m supposed to do, Jack. If I’m not supposed to second-guess myself. Am I supposed to accept that I’m a mass murderer? Because I was there, and what I did wasn’t heroic.”
NINETEEN
IT HAD TAKEN THE BETTER part of seven hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic for Alec to cross the Snowqualmie Pass, from Seattle over the mountains to Yakima. It was the worst traffic jam he’d ever seen, even worse than the mass exodus out of Denver when the terrorist attacks started.
Alec was driving a stolen Honda Civic. He wasn’t worried about them checking the registration at any of the American checkpoints. He could always lie his way through that.
What he needed was an American army uniform. A poor refugee fleeing a bad situation was one thing, but a soldier could feed all sorts of bad information up the chain of command.
He leaned back in his seat, knowing that he could fall asleep right there if he let himself. He’d been awake for how long—thirty hours? Thirty-six? But he was determined to prove his worth to his commanders, show them that he was better than just a terrorist—that he was a real soldier.
Ahead of him, Alec saw an American roadblock, and he knew this was his first big chance. The men guarding the roadblock were all probably low-ranking grunts, but so much the better. It would be hours before his lies got sorted out.
He crept his car forward as the army checked each vehicle for bombs and guns and hidden passengers. When he reached the front of the line, Alec started working on the man’s mind before he’d even rolled the window down.
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys,” Alec said. The soldier was wearing an American uniform that had the two chevrons of a corporal. He was followed by six men who began searching the car, without reading any rights or seeming to care about them. “It’s chaos back there.”
“Who are you with?”
Perfect. Not “Who are you?” but “Who are you with?” Alec’s memories were already beginning to take hold. He rattled off a unit number.
The American corporal saluted. “Is there anything we can get you, sir?”
Alec spoke without looking at any of the men, as though they were beneath him. “Inspect these cars more thoroughly. Another roadblock said they found RPGs in an undercarriage. Someone even found explosives behind a bumper. Take your time. Do it right.”
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal. “What I mean is, we are, sir. Did you not hear about the attack on one of the forward outposts?”
“Word travels fast,” another man—a private first class—said. “Especially stories of the mutants. We thought we were the only ones that had them in our military, but there are more.”
“Where can I find your commanding officer?”
“Two hundred yards back behind us,” the taller of the two men said. “They’re guarding the road in case we tell them there’s trouble.”
Alec was still working on the corporal’s mind. There was so much fun he could have—he could make the corporal believe the private was a spy who needed to be killed. He could alter the man’s brain so quickly between pain and pleasure that eventually he’d take his own life to stop it. But none of that would help his goal—disrupting the enemy lines. Alec would save his tricks for the commanding officer.
TWENTY
IT WAS ANOTHER MILE OF agony—mental and physical—before they walked across the median and onto the empty westbound freeway. A Black Hawk was setting down, and they hurried to get inside.
Aubrey’s leg hurt, but at least the pain had distracted her from her thoughts. Now that she was in the helicopter and able to move her
leg into a comfortable position, there was nothing more to keep her mind from replaying what had happened.
She’d shot two men, aiming for their necks and faces to keep the bullets above their Kevlar vests. She’d run to the BMP and dropped a grenade into the turret.
Why hadn’t the Russians closed the turret? Shouldn’t they have done that if they were under fire? Three men—the driver, the gunner, and the commander—were dead because they were too stupid to close the turret and block her grenade. She wouldn’t have been able to kill them if they’d just closed that damned turret.
And then she’d run around to the other side, and unloaded her gun on four men who were huddled together for safety. Four men who had no idea that anyone was looking at them. Who couldn’t even know where the bullets were coming from. Her gun held fifteen rounds, and she’d used every one. It was like an executioner’s firing line.
Aubrey felt a tear roll down her cheek. She’d thought she was being so clever by starting the fire with the stolen cigarette. If she’d followed orders—if she’d made one of the guns appear to misfire and hit a soldier in the leg—then maybe the Russians would have stayed on the far side of the BMP. Maybe they never would have come near Josi and Rich. Maybe no one would have had to die.
It made so much sense now. A real diversion—a distraction that actually meant something to the soldiers. Nick had known what he was talking about, and Aubrey had thought that she knew better. That she was smarter. She had smiled when she’d done it—joked about flicking the cigarette away.
She’d even been smiling when she was holding a flashbang grenade instead of a real one. Granted, she hadn’t been ordered to use it, but would it have made a difference? Would it have saved lives? Would it have made her less of a murderer?
Aubrey looked at Jack. She couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness, but she could tell he was smiling at her. She didn’t deserve that smile.
She focused on Nick, who was leaning back in his seat, his head tilted so he was staring at the ceiling. It was his orders she’d disobeyed, and he’d have to explain why the mission had gone to hell.