by TAYLOR ADAMS
There had been a dreamy, soundless second when she’d clipped her shin on the zebra-striped hurdle. Then he watched her pile-drive into the ground and roll once, twice, three times. Not a murmur from the crowd. James had been in motion then, pushing people aside, bolting for the chest-high chain link fence cordoning off the oval track – but she was already back on her feet, standing dizzily, shaking off the blur. Both of her knees were slashed and thin rivers of blood raced down to her running shoes. She wavered once, looked at the crowd, and several hundred people waited in rapt confusion, like an airshow audience stunned by a fireball. Someone had said something about a medic – Here he is, he’s coming – but it didn’t matter because Elle DeSilva just dug her heels in and kept running. Three more jumps cleared on the final curve and she finished the hundred-meter hurdle with a gray face and a quart of blood staining the track behind her. Badass, James had thought. Badass – and he didn’t even know about her snakes yet.
She was that woman again now, and she could do it. Collapsed lung or not.
“Elle, go.” He pushed her away with his free hand, hanging tatters of tape.
She shook her head.
The Soviet’s motor change pitch and cycled lower, rougher. He was slowing down at the rim of the gully, preparing to get out and descend on foot. His brakes whined. Rocks crunched under tires. A dry stick broke.
There were so many things James wanted to tell her but there was no time: Run. He’s lost a lot of blood because of me, so he’ll be slow and easy to outrun. Keep moving, don’t stop, follow the riverbed where Tapp can’t see you. Keep putting boulders between yourself and the Soviet. When it gets dark enough – thirty more minutes, tops – you run out of here, up one of the valley walls, and race for Mosby. Tapp’s gun will be useless, but he’ll still search for you on foot. They’ll need to get in close to find you, though, and they never will because you’re fast. You’ll make it.
Or I love you. There was always that.
The Soviet cut his motor, not twenty yards up the hill behind them, filling the air with expectant silence. The last breath before the plunge, held with swollen lungs.
Elle was smiling now. She had an idea.
“What?”
She kissed him. Then she passed the shard of glass to his right hand like it was a prison shiv and whispered in his ear, shivering with adrenaline: “I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
He felt her fingertips brush his one last time, and then she was out the swinging door and running, a desperate silhouette against a graying sky, going, going, gone.
* * *
Elle estimated the arroyo to be twenty yards wide and ten deep. A calcified creek bed wove between limestone faces and patches of prickly pear, all dulling blue in the twilight. She wanted to look back, to know where the jeep was relative to the wrecked Rav4, if the Soviet was out of it yet, if his subgun was in his hand or under his duster or in the process of being reloaded—
Just run. Don’t stop.
Prickly pear everywhere. Dense clusters of the paddle-shaped cacti rising in bunny-ear patterns, most a yard deep but some approaching neck-height. The lowest reaches of the arroyo were filled with a rushing tide of green, cascading from one bank to the other and speckled with pink fruits like an alien garden. She couldn’t see the thin barbs but she felt them piercing her jeans, slashing her ankles, sticking to her Converse in messy clumps.
She heard a door slam, up the hill.
The air chilled. She knew the Soviet had to see her by now, had to be drawing on her, seconds from pulling the trigger and stitching a bloody line down her back. She veered left and right over the floor of chipped shale, taking a running leap over a thorny patch and crashing down hard on her left ankle. Every breath was punctuated by a stabbing pain, like a molten dagger buried in her chest.
Chase me. Chase me, you son of a—
The subgun barked. A line of splashing dirt, right to left, crossed the desert floor at her feet. She stumbled through the flying grit, missed a step but caught herself. She stole a glimpse over her shoulder at the Soviet, descending the lip of the arroyo. He was skidding on both feet for traction, slowing, and she knew it was so he could hold the little weapon with two hands, brace the stubby thing to his shoulder, and squirt off an accurate burst. Next time, he wouldn’t miss.
She stumbled, lungs burning. Ahead and to the right came a shadow of prickly pear. It was incredible, a towering pillar of outgrowths gashed with the whitened scars of a thousand frosts. Hundreds of paddles – some olive drab, some neon green, some standing rigidly, some sagging in tired pillows – all splintered with thorns. A cactus metropolis. If cacti had a nation, this would be its capital. Cactus legislation would be passed here, with cactus crowds lobbying outside for various cactus interests.
I’m not jumping into that. Nope.
But she was already running for it. She willed herself to enjoy this final half second of cool air on her cheeks. She didn’t give herself time to think. There was no time anyway. She forced another breath into her broken lungs and dove. Again the subgun rattled behind her, and at this distance she could hear the individual shots pumping down the barrel in a rhythmic BRAP-BRAP-BRAP-BRAP. As her feet left the earth she was vaguely aware of barbs sticking and breaking off in her palms, her stomach, her ankles, the back of her neck. Then the rock floor came rushing up to meet her and she let her knees bend in a controlled runner’s fall, tucked her shoulders, and rolled once, twice, to land on her back in a rippling sea of little bites. It didn’t hurt yet – too much adrenaline – but it would. Oh yes, it would.
She remembered when she was five and her mother had taken her to Fred Meyer’s, where she discovered potted cacti in the gardening department. Most were gnarly but some of them had no thorns at all, just little patches of yellow fur dotting the domed surfaces like pepperoni on a pizza. Nice cactuses, she called them, petting them like her aunt’s cats. Only when they reached the car did she realize what those little monsters were – their thorns were microscopic, leaving millions of hooked barbs in her fingertips. They hadn’t stung until then, but they really stung. Her mother had laughed, which made her cry harder, because the tweezers were at home and it was a long drive. She remembered sitting in the backseat with hot tears on her cheeks, unable to wipe them away because her hands had been transformed into itchy red claws, pin-cushioned with tiny quills. Nice cactuses, her mother had chuckled as she drove, making petting motions against the steering wheel. Nice cactuses, nice cactuses, nice—
The Soviet fired again.
She rolled on her side, her cheek against the cool rocks, her hands over her face. Bullets slapped around and above her, quivering cactus paddles, punching out fleshy gouges, showering gooey chunks, thorns, and warm juices. A tower of prickly pear broke and fell, letting in a burst of daylight. Finally the world stopped shaking and the rattling echo of the subgun raced from one end of the valley to the other. That, too, faded until there was only the distant wind.
She couldn’t see him. He hadn’t used his whole magazine, either – he had at least five seconds of sustained fire in that thing and that had only been three. He might be advancing on her again. She rolled over and elbowed up, pushed a shredded paddle aside with her fingertips, and scanned the riverbed. Just rocks and brush. No Soviet.
She rose further. Her hair was matted with sticky cactus blood. It had drenched her. It was in her mouth, coating her teeth like wax, bitter enough to make your throat seal up tight like Eowen’s disastrous attempt at an India Pale Ale—
There he was.
The Soviet was still at the edge of the riverbed – why hadn’t he chased her further? He was standing oddly, like a statue, duster stirring in the wind, his left leg slick with glossy black. Blood. Even with a two-inch butter knife, James had managed to inflict some damage. The man hobbled a bit, lowered his subgun, and scraped out the stick-shaped magazine. He made a sour face and palmed it back in.
Bullets, she realized. Thank God. He was almost out of—
/>
The Soviet turned around and walked a few paces back to the crashed Rav4. Where James was, duct-taped to the shifter. Helpless.
She screamed but the Soviet ignored her.
“No! Come back!”
He approached the Toyota where it had destroyed itself against lava boulders, headlights facing each other, windows blown out, tires bowed. The car didn’t look totaled (which it certainly was) so much as corrupted, twisted, like something out of Wonderland. The Soviet grabbed the bruised passenger door handle, subgun up and at his hip in a practiced close-quarters entry maneuver. Instead of the sterile professionalism of a SWAT team, he had a relaxed confidence that was a thousand times more frightening.
“Hey. Your drawings suck!”
The Soviet wasn’t listening. She wanted to stand, or throw something, or maybe futilely race up behind him to catch a machine gun spray in the chest, anything but nothing – and then it was too late. Life moves too fast, your window for the perfect comeback closes. The Soviet threw the door open, aimed inside, and she knew James didn’t stand a chance – This is my fault, I ran too fast and he lost interest—
Nothing happened.
She watched in dumb silence. The Soviet leaned inside the mangled car, checked the back seats, and leaned out. He paused, placed his hands to his hips like a disapproving mother, and spat in the dirt. She could hear the glob land from fifty yards.
Her heart pounded. She saw rotten blasts of color in her vision. James is alive. He’s okay. He wasn’t inside the Toyota, he ripped free of Roy’s duct tape while the Hello Kitty Man chased me. My plan worked. I was a decoy. An excellent, five-star decoy. James is fine. He’s somewhere else—
Where?
The Soviet kicked the passenger door shut. He misjudged and stumbled instead, slapping a hand to the Toyota’s yellow quarter panel and leaving a print of sticky red. He had to be hurting by now. He’d lost a lot of blood. That made Elle happy; happier than she ever thought she could be about blood loss.
She prairie-dogged further up and scanned both ends of the arroyo for James. She couldn’t see him. Or Roy. There was a lot of winding terrain, though, and an exceptional amount of visual cover. You could play hide and seek down here. Which, to be fair, was the goal right now.
The Soviet tucked a hand under his duster and paced back up to his jeep, and then he threw open the black door and climbed inside, disturbing a handful of rolling rocks. He closed the door and sat there for a long moment, barely visible in the dimming red sunlight. Then he kicked the engine into gear and . . . skidded back up the rise.
He was leaving.
Like the evil birds in that old movie she had watched once with James – They’re flying south? Really? – the villain was swiping a timecard and leaving because, well, that’s the end. Why now, in real life?
He’d lost a lot of blood, she figured. He was probably seizing the opportunity to bandage his wound while Tapp’s still-functioning scope kept them safely corralled in the arroyo. After all, when darkness fell, all bets would be off. Best to resupply now.
She felt her adrenaline high tapering off, but knew this wasn’t the end. This was just a breather. The Soviet Cowboy would certainly be back before full dark. How long then? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? Until then, she was trapped in this crevasse in the center of Tapp’s valley like a soldier pinned in a trench. She knew Roy was down there, too. If he wasn’t, the sniper would have already blown his head off.
So where was James?
* * *
James was hanging underneath the Soviet’s jeep.
He wished he wasn’t. He was already regretting the idea. He braced both arms around some sort of lateral bar and tucked his feet up to what he guessed was the transmission case. This was the most familiar he’d ever gotten with the underside of a car. It sucked. He couldn’t tell how much clearance he had with the rushing desert floor below and he honestly didn’t want to know. He really, really wished he hadn’t done this.
On the subject of wishes – he also wished the Soviet had left a gun in his unattended jeep. That had been James’ first priority after he’d cut himself free and bolted to it, wincing while gunshots thumped from the gully. He had checked the Soviet’s glove box, the console, under the slashed seats. Nothing. Just a sweaty jeep with three stiffening bodies in the back. No keys, either – the bastard carried them on that jingling ring. Before James had been able to think of anything else, he had heard Elle shouting and seen the Soviet doubling back to—
Jagged rocks scraped his back. A big one, then two smaller ones. Then a vicious one that felt like an ice pick in his collarbone, drawing warm blood. He gasped and his front teeth scraped against dirty steel, like biting a chalkboard. Everything hurt. His elbows quivered with Charlie Horse tightness, he badly needed to pee, and the muscles in his stomach threatened to burn through his skin. He adjusted and readjusted his feet but found no firm traction, only temporary holds and a slow slide. Gravity was a patient enemy that would never tire. James was already exhausted.
The Soviet stomped the gas and the engine snarled a few inches from his face. Smothering air stung his eyes. He tasted burnt oil. Dirt clods pelted the sides of his head, kicked up by monster truck tires. He felt like he was breathing into a hair dryer. All the while, the vehicle shuddered up and down over every imperfection in the terrain, threatening to slip free of his sweaty hands.
Yep, this was a bad idea.
But he couldn’t drop to the ground and let the jeep pass overhead. Not an option anymore. The Soviet had chugged too far uphill. The vehicle was now certainly within Tapp’s eyeshot – if James dropped or fell off the chassis now he would find himself exposed and very dead. It wasn’t dark yet, either. Dusk, yes, but not dark.
At least Elle was still alive.
And so am I.
He shuddered with raw excitement, a guilty nervous glee he hadn’t felt since he was twelve and grimacing at the acid taste of vodka in his friend’s basement, as he imagined Tapp’s thousand-dollar scope sweeping over the roof of the Soviet’s jeep without knowing his prey clung underneath. Bad idea or not, this was a big step. For the first time all day, William Tapp didn’t know exactly where James was.
He only thought he did.
Squeezing his eyes open, he saw the setting half sun rotate behind his left elbow and realized the jeep had changed direction from north to south. The bumpy ride had improved, too. The Soviet was back on the packed dirt of Shady Slope Road and was . . . yes, he was driving toward Tapp now, straight toward the sniper’s side of the valley. Even better. Straight to the marksman’s den as the night descended, where the coward was roosted and vulnerable up close. It was almost too good to be real.
James felt a tormented grin crawl over his face.
I’m coming for you, Tapp.
You may own every inch of this valley, but you can’t own the night.
18
NIGHT VISION, read the military-style polymer case.
Tapp popped both latches under the wet thump of his own heartbeat. This gadget cost over three thousand dollars and he had operated it only once, last year. It was still an unfamiliar thing which he kept stashed in his nest the way one would keep a fire extinguisher, and he now wished he had thought to bundle the instruction manual with it. He was lousy with manuals anyway, often leafing through them once and discarding them to discover the subtleties with his own hands. Right now, those hands were shaking.
His BlackEye X3S wasn’t military spec anymore, but it was damned close (close enough for some Brazilian SWAT teams, and at least one outfit of red beret hand-choppers in Nigeria). It was a bulbous optic swollen with curves and knobs. He thumbed in the silver disc battery and closed the trapdoor like a sewer lid. He couldn’t peel the covers off and look through it yet – not quite dark enough. Fifteen more minutes, tops. The tech had come a long way from those primitive Starlight scopes in Vietnam, but light overload could still destroy a night optic. Although the BlackEye online ad boasted an automatic shutdown featu
re to save the image intensifier tube from such damage, did Tapp really trust it? Nope. No, sir. He was gravely protective of his nice things and this third generation night scope, capable of spotting a human at two miles in moonless darkness, was one of his nicest.
This particular model – the X3S – worked its magic by gathering whatever ambient or infrared light it could soak up and squeezing it through a photocathode tube, which turned photons into electrons. These electrons were multiplied thousands of times through a micro-channel plate and then reconverted back from electricity into visible light through a phosphor screen, creating that trademark green-tinted night vision that penetrated every shadow’s secrets.
This is definitely a . . .
He tried to make another pun; something about the situation being a sea change, referencing the fact that the BlackEye allowed him to see in the dark, but it just wasn’t happening. His heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his heart was slamming against his ribs like a dryer with a brick in it. Slippery panic welled up inside him and every time he pushed it back down, it came up stronger. He just wanted to go home. Finish this shit show and hit the road and go to bed. Yes, sir.
Something growled downhill.
Clear to his naked eye, Svatomir’s jeep was humming up the incline three hundred meters away. That Mac-11 had to be dry by now, so Svatomir was making a trip to the supply shed (the bungalow, Tapp affectionately called it) to retrieve his Saiga 12 – a chunky Russian 12-gauge mated with an AK-47 receiver. Picture an Osama bin Laden-style assault rifle that fired shotgun shells. Aiming optional. Two quick pulls would turn most creatures from solid to liquid. Birds become showers of red feathers and snakes become stringy clots of scales. Svatomir loved the Saiga 12 because it was the firearm equivalent of an ‘easy button.’ Tapp loved the Saiga 12 (right now) because it had an LED torchlight mounted under the barrel. With it, Svatomir could scrutinize every nook and cranny of the sheltered arroyo, while every other square centimeter of the valley would belong to Tapp and his BlackEye night vision. So yeah, the situation was under control.
