by S. S. Segran
The Sentry tumbled a few times before coming to a stop. Slightly dazed, he pushed himself up and rested on all fours. At the far end of the gulch, he saw Tegan and Mariah using the vines to scale the rock wall. They pulled themselves over, then hurried across the water. He swallowed, relieved.
A massive arm suddenly hooked around his neck and another around the back of his head, squeezing. The force cut off the air in his windpipe, choking him. Hajjar sneered into his ear. “I could do this the proper way and have you asleep in five seconds, but then there’d be no suffering. We’ve been watching you since Israel, you know? Of course you do. We see how those kids dote on you. Maybe I should wait till we capture all of them, then make them watch as I put a bullet between your eyes. That’d be fun. I’d love hearing them scream.”
Pressure grew in Marshall’s neck and built up in his head. His chest tightened and his sight darkened. He feebly tried to sink his teeth into Hajjar’s arm but the giant tightened his hold. “None of that.”
Losing what little air he had left, Marshall desperately kicked his foot back twice, rapidly, catching the giant in the groin and the kneecap. Hajjar wheezed, his hold loosening slightly. That was enough for the Sentry. He twisted away, gripping the other man’s wrist, and torqued the outstretched arm before driving himself into Hajjar’s shoulder.
The giant roared as his arm popped out of place and hung uselessly. His eyes reflected a frenzied light. The Sentry backed away. As Hajjar leaned in to follow, Marshall moved toward him, grabbed his drooping arm and yanked it back. The giant lurched forward and tripped over one of Marshall’s extended legs, landing roughly.
The second Hajjar rolled onto his back, the Sentry was on top of him, punches flying. The frustration of everything—the never-ending chase for the seeds, the rampaging virus, Reyor, the teenagers being forced into a prophecy they never wanted, Dominique, Kody sinking deeper into the grips of the disease—all came out in every blow he landed.
At last he sat back, taking in Hajjar’s barely-conscious, battered appearance. The Sentry had trouble breathing; the giant’s neck hold had taken a toll. His vision faltered, still dark around the edges. He toppled off Hajjar and onto his side, most of his energy gone. The only sound to be heard over his ragged breaths was the waterfall. He closed his eyes, taking in the reprieve, and hoped the girls were okay.
57
Tegan and Mariah shadowed the two mercenaries through the trees, moving quickly and silently. Even with the boys on their shoulders, the men walked fast as though they’d just seen specters. Tegan couldn’t blame them; she’d be unnerved, too, if she had to fight an enemy with abilities like the friends possessed.
Beside her, Mariah mopped up blood from her nose with her sleeve. She’d said that lifting the boulder hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought it would be, especially after her feat with the buses in Egypt, but clearly it still hurt.
Tegan was almost spent as well. Her stunt with the wild animals at the resort had severely drained her, but she was determined to push on. In the back of her mind, she hoped Marshall was alright. She’d reached out to him but he faded in and out as he assured her that he was fine.
The girls communicated via thoughts to keep their presence hidden from the mercenaries. Tell me when you’re good to go, ’Riah, Tegan said.
Mariah pinched her nose and tilted her head back. Give me another minute.
The two men retreated down the slope behind the gulch, evidently content enough with their catches to not check for followers. They must’ve had a rendezvous point pre-established, Tegan said, in case things didn’t go as planned.
Probably. Okay, I’m ready.
The girls broke into a run, rubber-soled shoes hardly making a sound, until they were within a few yards of the mercenaries. Mariah held up a hand and the gun slung around the body of one of the men jerked, its strap pulling him backward. He yelped as he fell, his hold on Kody lost. The boy dropped with a thud.
The second mercenary turned to help his partner but when he noticed the girls, he made a move for his tranquilizer gun. Mariah flicked her fingers and the weapon flew out of his holster toward her. She grabbed it, aimed, and fired. He collapsed and Aari limply rolled off.
The first man recovered and jumped up but couldn’t withdraw his own tranquilizer in time. Tegan flung dirt into his face. As he angrily dusted it off, she grabbed one of his wrists and yanked it backward until he yelled. The gun dropped and he swung his other fist at her skull. She dodged beneath his twisted wrist and drove the top of her head under his chin. His head jolted back; she heard his teeth crack together. Sharp pain exploded in her dome and her eyes watered. Through the haze, she jammed the heel of her palm against his nose.
He staggered, recovering his footing, but by the time he made a grab for her, she’d already scooped up his tranquilizer gun. Her confidence skyrocketed at the unamused look he wore as she shot him in the shoulder. His legs buckled and he fell face-first.
The girls scurried over to Kody and Aari, grabbing them by their arms and dragging them toward the mouth of the gulch. On the way, Tegan found her downed eagle. She ran to it, hoping it was still alive, but the bird had died from the fall after its injury. She thanked it sorrowfully and the girls continued on. By the time they arrived at the gulch, their upper bodies were almost numb.
The Sentries were barely back on their feet. Marshall, his neck showing red welts from strangulation, was busy patching up Dominique with healing powder and a first aid kit. He got up when he saw the girls and pulled them into a tight hug. Mariah lightly touched the bruise forming around his left eye. He smiled wanly.
Tegan knelt beside Dominique. “How are you, Domi?”
The Sentry rocked her open hand from side to side. “Eh, I’m okay.”
Marshall was hoarse when he spoke. “Don’t even do that, Domi. I don’t think any major artery or bone was hit, but she did lose a lot of blood. The bleeding slowed, though, so the bullet might be helping to clog the wound. I told her that I’d rather not remove it just yet.”
“Now we just have to figure out what to do with the mercenaries,” Dominique said.
“We have an idea,” Tegan and Mariah said in unison, and Tegan continued, “There’s a hole in the ground behind the boulders we used. It opens up to a huge cave thingy. We could drop them in there.”
“A lava chute,” Dominique said. “That’s perfect.”
“That means we have to drag back the two mercs we left behind,” Mariah bemoaned.
“Three, actually,” Marshall said sheepishly as he finished patching up Dominique. “I dropped a guy on the rock wall.”
Tegan grabbed Mariah’s arm and they ran out of the gulley, Marshall in tow. By the time they returned with the men, Dominique, using a stick to help her get around, had destroyed every submachine gun except one, which Marshall took. He stuffed his cargo pants with all the ammunition he could find while Tegan tranquilized all thirteen mercenaries.
Dominique offered to push a boulder over the lava chute opening once the men had been slid in, but Marshall and the girls refused. They destroyed all the radios except Hajjar’s. A man’s voice crackled from the speaker, demanding a report about the situation. They didn’t respond.
“When we’ve got the seeds,” Marshall said as they headed back to the mouth of the gulley where Dominique had returned to rest, “we’ll tell Ajajdif where his men are.”
“Hey.” Mariah held up Hajjar’s electronic tablet. “This thing controls the drone. What should we do?”
“How’s much battery’s left?”
“Very little.”
“No use keeping it, then. Bring it down, we’ll destroy it.”
When the gray quadcopter landed in front of them, Tegan carried it to Dominique and the Sentry crushed it in her hands.
“Okay,” Mariah said. “What now?”
“We need to return to Carmel’s grave so when Aari’s up, he can find the seeds,” Dominique said, shaking her hands clean of drone bits. “We sh
ouldn’t waste time.”
Marshall snatched her walking stick away before she could use it to stand. She glared up at him and he returned the look. “You can’t walk back down, Domi. You’ll worsen the injury. Please, just—just don’t argue with me on this one.”
Tegan heard a heavy, underlying sentiment in his words. Is that… guilt?
The Sentries stared each other down, then Dominique grunted. “Fine. But you’re not well, either.”
“I’ll manage. It was just mild asphyxiation.”
“Mild, he says.”
Tegan rubbed Kody’s and Aari’s heads affectionately. “How long till they come ’round?”
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. “Maybe an hour or two? But we can’t sit here and wait.”
“Leave Kody with me and take Aari with you,” Dominique instructed. “Don’t worry about us, I’ll find somewhere for us to lay low.”
“I’ll stay,” Mariah volunteered. “Teegs, go with Marshall. He’ll need help carrying Aari.”
They quickly scrubbed themselves and the boys clean in the stream, then parted ways with the others. Tegan kept a watchful eye on Marshall as he carried Aari, and together they descended toward Carmel’s resting place.
58
From behind the driver’s seat of a sleek Buick parked by the packed shopping mall, Tony monitored his team’s chatter through his earpiece. The time on his cell phone read fifteen minutes to six.
Come on, Jag. You can’t hide in there forever.
The kid was smart—and seriously paranoid. Instead of loitering around the streets, he’d dodged into the mall an hour prior, preventing potential stalkers with weapons from following him through the security checks at each entrance. Tony cursed Israel’s uptight safety measures. It would have been impossible for his team to get past the metal detectors with their tranquilizers, so he’d sent in an unarmed operative to tail the teenager while the rest hung back outside and watched every exit.
He also cursed the fact that Beersheba was one of the safest cities in Israel, and probably the world. The country had already instituted stringent methods to contain the virus. With Beersheba tucked away in the Negev Desert, chances of infection were even lower, allowing the locals to carry out their daily lives with some semblance of normalcy. Precautions were still taken and businesses sometimes closed earlier than they otherwise would, but for the most part life continued as usual.
Which meant Jag could blend into crowded public spaces to avoid capture.
A woman’s voice sounded quietly in Tony’s earpiece. “He’s skittish, Mr. Cross. Always looking around. He’s like a frightened animal.”
“Obviously. Just don’t lose him. And don’t engage him.”
“Understood. And, Mr. Cross? The mall closes in ten minutes. What if he decides he has nothing left and approaches one of the guards at the exits? Tells them he thinks he’s in danger?”
“I may not have the entire picture,” Tony said, “but I have full assurance from the—I have full assurance that he will not involve the authorities.”
The operative acknowledged him doubtfully and returned to her duty. Tony rubbed his fingers over his bottom lip, contemplative brown eyes half-lidded. He was an inch away from either being reinstated to his original position by the Boss’s side or being in the Boss’s iron sights. Yet despite the magnitude of his mission, he felt oddly calm… and just a bit livid.
Jag had humiliated him the last time they’d met, locking him and his men in a shipping container on the Sanchez farm in Kansas. Then he’d been taken north to Canada and interrogated for months; he could still see the penetrating hazel eyes of his interrogator. Tony flinched involuntarily.
And then the Boss thought it best to demote me when I returned… Come out, Jag. We’ve got unfinished business.
In the driver’s seat of the Buick, a burly American not much older than Tony checked and rechecked his tranquilizer gun while speaking into his phone. He ended the call a minute later. “We’re good to go, Mr. Cross.”
“Is the pilot ready to leave at a moment’s notice?” Tony asked.
“Yessir. And your employer’s Gulfstream is fueled and waiting at Beersheba Airport.”
“The papers have been filed correctly? Israel’s insanely tight with security. We can’t afford any slipups.”
“All done, Mr. Cross. We’re lucky Israel’s airspace is still open. Restricted, but open.”
Beside Tony, another man, an Israeli, readied some nylon ropes. Tony watched him, then jumped when the woman spoke into his ear again. “You’re right, Mr. Cross. He bought a prepaid phone and made a call but he’s not going to the guards. He’s leaving. South exit. Moving fast.”
“South exit!” Tony barked.
The driver tapped on his own earpiece and the Buick took off past groups of people straggling out of the shopping center. Tony instructed his team to remain at a distance until the teenager was out of view of the mall’s security personnel. “Remember, we do this clean and quiet.”
Just as the full-sized car braced to turn left, a man panted into Tony’s earpiece. “He’s quick for someone with an injured leg! I think he’s making a break for the train station!”
The driver of the Buick pulled back from the turn and sped onward, racing past startled drivers. Tony rubbed his forehead. “Where would the train take him?”
“Nahariya, Tel Aviv, Haifa, take your pick,” the Israeli operative said. “It’s all direct links. Maybe he’s going for Ben Gurion Airport, fly out of the country from Tel Aviv.”
Tony clenched the driver’s headrest as the car swung left. “If he gets on that train, we’re done. He’ll get off inside the airport with security crawling all over the place. We need to get him, now.”
“So much for clean and quiet,” the American said.
Another operative chimed into Tony’s earpiece. “I’m on your six, Mr. Cross.”
Tony looked through the back windshield at a lime-green sport bike catching up to the Buick in the empty lane. “Visual,” he confirmed.
The white-and-tan train station came into view on their right. A handful of locals strolled over the pedestrian crossing toward it. Tony picked out Jag a few meters behind them, limping fast. As the Buick neared the crossing, the driver powered down his tinted window and grabbed his gun. Tony’s hand touched his door handle, ready to pounce the moment Jag was tranquilized. Beside him, the Israeli’s door was already slightly ajar.
The driver hit the brakes. The Buick screeched to a halt in front of Jag as he passed the middle of the crossing. The teenager’s eyes widened when he saw the barrel of the gun pointed at him. It was a clean shot.
Tony heard the pop as a dart left the gun. The projectile should have embedded itself in Jag’s chest. Except it didn’t. If Tony had blinked, he would have missed the teenager flicker into a split-second blur. The dart sailed past Jag and struck a chubby man about to cross the road; he fell moments later.
The driver of the Buick started. “What the ever-loving—”
He didn’t get to finish. Jag stuck his hands into the open window, snarling, and hauled the beefy man out as easily as if he were pulling an oversized stuffed animal. The Israeli beside Tony dropped profanities like bombs.
“I got him!” someone hollered in Tony’s earpiece.
Tony turned to see the operative on his sport bike skid to a stop behind the Buick, take aim at Jag, and shoot. But the teenager moved impossibly fast, spinning the big American into the dart’s trajectory. The driver sagged. Jag hurled him at the motorcyclist, knocking the man clear off and toppling the bike, then ran between the vehicles.
Tony was halfway out of the car when Jag saw the entire team of operatives converging on foot, blocking his route to the train station. The teenager swiped the black helmet off the dazed motorcyclist, picked up the fallen but idling bike and roared past the Buick.
Whatever composure Tony harbored dissipated in an instant. He leapt behind the car’s steering wheel and tore after Jag, tr
usting his team to clean up the mess behind him. The Israeli clambered into the passenger seat. “Did you see how he pulled Anderson out like he weighed nothing?”
“No, I was busy giving myself a pedicure,” Tony snapped. “The hell kind of question is that?”
“Who is that kid?”
“Someone you don’t want within arm’s reach of you if you can help it.”
Jag followed the line of vehicles turning right at a traffic circle before going around it and exiting to a road on the left. Tony pulled the wheel to intercept Jag before he got onto the main road. He cut past the splitting island and into the path of an oncoming transit bus. The bus blared its horn and swerved, narrowly missing the Buick. It side-swiped a thirty-foot lamppost on the corner. The post buckled with a groan and tilted slowly toward an open parking lot. It landed with a resounding bang, destroying cars, and would have crushed a family of three if they hadn’t evacuated their minivan.
Jag saw the Buick about to cut him off. Instead of plaiting through the line of cars, he veered onto the sidewalk, brushing against a bright orange lotto stand. The bike wobbled but steadied as he accelerated. Tony pursued closely from the road.
As they neared the junction, Jag suddenly pulled away from the pavement toward a small park with wooden benches in front of several office buildings, leaving an unsightly trail in the grass. Tony wove surgically between the double lanes before screeching right at the junction. Just ahead, Jag whizzed past a row of parked cars, constantly checking over his shoulder.
“Where’s he going?” Tony muttered.
“He might be trying to get to the 406,” the Israeli said, loading another dart into the tranquilizer gun. “When we get out of the city, it’s all highway to Tel Aviv.”
“But 406 is parallel to us. Where is this kid going?”
The Israeli lowered his window. “If you’re able to pull closer, I could take a shot.”
“Negative. I need him alive. You shoot him on that bike and he might—”
