Chapter 18
“I’ll be here, if I can be,” Lyle said.
The sky was only just beginning to brighten above the edge of mountains behind the cabin. We stood in the clearing, looking west down the slope of the mountain. That direction was dark gray in the half-light.
The headache built behind my eyes, a crawling, persistent ache. It was distinct from the hangover, which I’d eased some with coffee and aspirin. The caffeine and aspirin didn’t help this other headache. My herald. My reminder.
Not like I needed one.
I turned, stepped forward, and gave my son a hug.
“Dad,” he said, his chin coming to rest on my shoulder. “If I don’t see you again—”
“Lyle, don’t say—”
“Just, listen. It’s going to be almost forty-five years. Okay? I’m no spring chicken even now. So, let me say this. If I don’t see you again, know that I love you. You’re my father. Always have been, always will be. That’s all that matters.”
I closed my eyes, holding him close. He was thin and bony, wiry, and middle-aged. “We keep having to do this,” I whispered.
“Not for much longer.”
I stiffened. He wouldn’t be around for many more jumps. Or any.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was stupid.”
“It’s okay. I love you, too, and with everything I am. You’re keeping me alive.”
After another long moment, we broke apart.
We’d talked about what might happen if we stayed together.
If I held on to him when I jumped. It was, we decided, too risky.
We had no idea what would happen, if he’d come with me or something terrible would happen to one or both of us instead.
I hefted the backpack and slipped my arms through the straps, and Lyle handed me the helmet.
His eyes unfocused, then came back to me.
“Almost time. Less than a minute. Put your helmet on and start the rebreather.”
I gazed at him, the seconds ticking away, and I fit the helmet in place, the visor coming down and forming a barrier between us. I tapped the controls on the overcoat and heard the faint hum as the helmet started recycling my air.
Lyle stepped back from me, a single pace. “I’ll be here, if I can. Be safe.”
“I love—”
The world slipped.
“—you.”
I staggered as my feet crunched aside some bushes. I was off-balance. The weight on my back was gone, and I felt, rather than saw, the severed ends of the backpack’s straps fall off my shoulders and drift to the ground.
The backpack was gone, along with everything in it. All the extra survival gear and the Afrikaner rifle.
“Shit.” I looked up.
Five people stood before me. Or, rather, crouched before me. They wore black, militaristic clothes and held weapons. All wore dark helmets. Off to my left stood the sagging, burnt, and hollowed-out form of Lyle’s log cabin, a blackened skeleton with years of plant life growing over it.
“Well, plow me,” one of them said, a man’s voice.
“Scott Treder?” One of them stood. A woman’s voice came from the helmet. “Is that you?”
“Who the plowing hell else could it be?” the first man asked. They both had accents, the words coming out with a strange, lilting edge to them.
“I’m—”
“Contact, hot, six o’clock,” a third person snapped, cutting me off.
After that, everything happened at once.
The woman, apparently the squad leader, took a step toward me, one hand raised. “Get down!”
The other four soldiers brought their weapons up in smooth arcs, sighting into the forest behind them.
Then something with the force of a sledgehammer hit me in the chest.
I was on my back, the wind knocked out of me, staring up at the early-morning sky. I coughed as my diaphragm convulsed and my stomach muscles jerked. I remembered how to breathe and sucked in recycled air.
A crack of thunder rolled over me, though I heard it distantly.
The helmeted woman came into my view, looming over me, and she grabbed at my shoulder.
Her head jerked sideways, and the visor of her helmet cracked in a series of jagged, slanting lines.
I thought she was going to topple over, but even as the second roar of distant thunder reached us, she righted herself, raised the weapon, and started shooting.
A white muzzle flash a foot long burst from the end of her boxy rifle, streaking out.
The sound was like wet cloth tearing. Spent shell casings spun through the air, a torrent of them, glittering in the sunlight.
She held the trigger down for maybe three seconds, tracking the barrel back and forth, then snapped the rifle back to her side and grabbed me. With surprising strength, she hauled me to my feet. “Snipers,” she shouted at me, our helmets touching with a muted clank. “Get moving, we’ll cover you.”
“Where?” I said, still gasping for breath, but she was already pushing me and shooting again.
Her fellow soldiers were around us, firing into the trees.
Tree limbs burst and pine needles exploded in green bunches.
I heard the snap-hiss of another sniper bullet pass me, inches from my head, followed a heartbeat later by the crack of the shot.
“Oh-six-twenty, two hundred meters at least,” one of the soldiers shouted. “Two or three shooters. They’re displacing after each shot.”
“Got large-body movement closer in,” another soldier said.
“Cover Treder,” the woman with the cracked helmet said. “Barrage-sweep, standard. Get him to the car, and we’ll make a break for it.”
I crouch-ran, stumbling through thick, tangled bushes to the skeletal remains of the cabin. I fell against the burnt logs. A bullet slammed into the blackened wood, the impact peppering me with sharp little fragments.
“Shit.” I fumbled under my overcoat and drew the SD-4. I couldn’t find the safety. I forced in a long breath and slowed down. I flicked the safety off with my thumb, then used the other switch to change to fully automatic fire.
The soldiers fell in around me, taking up positions behind the sagging remains of the cabin.
The leader thumped into the log next to me, rose, and let loose a burst from her rifle, spent casings flashing as they arced through the early-morning air.
She dropped back as return fire hit the log, throwing up geysers of dirt and bursts of broken wood.
“They’re advancing, dozen or so,” one of the soldiers said. He was calm. “Going to be a plowing cluster getting back to the car.”
The woman next to me pressed a button on her rifle and ejected a smoking magazine. She slapped a new one home and turned her cracked visor toward me. “You hurt?”
I gaped at her for a moment. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Good.” She peeked over the log. Rounds slapped into the wood, blowing up more blackened chunks, and she ducked down again. “Plow this like velvet. We make for the car before they flank us. Carl, Mary, John, you lead, formation beta. I’ll follow with Treder. Foster, you have rear.”
“Yippee plowing hurrah,” one of the men muttered through his helmet, presumably Foster.
“Go now,” the leader snapped.
Three of the soldiers jumped up and started running, firing their weapons. I heard the tearing sound of return gunfire from the trees. Bullets buzzed through the air and slapped into the cabin. One of the soldiers took a hit and stumbled, but he or she kept going, still firing.
The leader grabbed my shoulder again and forced me up. “Let’s go. And shoot that ancient piece of sag.”
We ran, half crouched, me stumbling over roots and bushes and other bits of overgrowth, the leader right next to me.
She fired her rifle in short bursts. I raised the SD-4 with one hand and held down the trigger in the general direction she was shooting.
The pistol coughed hard and bucked, spitting out four or five shots in an eyeblink.
I let go of the trigger, brought the barrel back down, and pulled the trigger again, spraying more shots toward the tree line.
I thought a few of the trees bursting apart and falling over in that direction might have been because of me.
We were sawing the forest down with bullets.
“Come on, plow it.” The leader grabbed me again and forced me to go faster.
I tripped and almost fell but she hauled me upright with one arm, despite all my weight coming down on her shoulder.
In the chaos of the jarring motion, I saw movement along the tree line.
Man-shaped figures emerged from the evergreens, most wearing black and firing guns similar to the ones held by the soldiers protecting me.
White muzzle flashes burst up and down the rough edge of the clearing.
Something with the force of a hammer caught me on my right side and kicked me sideways, almost sending me and the leader tumbling to the ground. She grunted, caught me, and threw me forward again. I managed to find my feet and stayed with her.
Then we were at the car, the first three soldiers crouching and firing, covering for us.
The car was a hulking, camouflaged armored vehicle, a cross between a tank and a Humvee, with six large tires and a multibarreled machine gun on the top.
The hatch on the side was open, the lower half folded down to form a stairway into the interior, the other half up like an extended wing overhead.
“Mary, drive,” the leader snapped as we ran up to the three soldiers. “Carl, on the cannon and start ripping. John, cover for—”
There was a brief whoosh of air and a flash of dark, rapid movement to my right.
Then a missile or rocket exploded where one of soldiers was crouching and firing his rifle.
The shock wave slammed me sideways and forward, and I barely got my hands up in time to stop my helmet from hitting the steps on the hatch.
Little chunks of wet debris slapped into me and fell to the ground.
It took me a disjointed, lurching second to realize the chunks were pieces of someone’s body, and the red stuff raining down was blood.