Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  “Detective Petrie, my name is Alex Aaro,” he said. “I have with me a person of interest in your case, involving the three dead guys that turned up behind Tony’s Diner yesterday.”

  “Ah.” Petrie paused expectantly. “And? Why is this person interesting?”

  “She just tried to kill me,” he blurted.

  Petrie made an encouraging sound. “Tell me more.”

  “I will, but I’ve got to take this girl somewhere. Are you at the Justice Center now?”

  “Ah, almost,” the guy replied. “Just have to park. Where are you?”

  “About ten minutes away. Look, could you meet me right out front, or in the lobby? I don’t want to have to look for parking with her.”

  “Ah . . .” Petrie hesitated, sensing the swiftly rising level of weirdness. “What’s wrong with this girl? Is she hurt?”

  “Just get her some coffee, would you? Or a pastry.” Aaro stared at Naomi’s grayish face, her chattering teeth. “Something with lots of sugar.”

  “Mr. Aaro, do you—”

  Aaro cut the connection and thumbed off the phone. His jacket had slid off her again and hit the floor. She vibrated against the seat belt. Maybe she actually was a junkie, and she’d mixed her fix.

  He picked uped, racing through red lights. God, how he wanted this to be over. He hoped Petrie would show up on time.

  He jerked to a stop on SW Third, right outside the imposing main entrance of the Justice Center, figuring he’d unload the girl and leave her with Petrie while he re-parked. Please, God. He took her purse for Petrie’s benefit, but the phone he wanted to look at himself, so he tossed it into the front seat for future study.

  He hustled her up the broad stairs of the entryway, through the bank of glass doors. She weaved and wobbled, dangerously unsteady.

  He glanced wildly around the place, trying not to look as desperate and harried as he felt, scanning for someone whose body type fit the voice from the phone conversation. There. Tall guy, thirtyish, big jaw, tousled hair. Lots of stubble. He held a paper coffee cup, a white paper bag. Good man. He’d brought sugar. His eyes asked Aaro the question. Aaro’s feet answered it, forcefully steering Naomi’s body toward the other man. “Detective Petrie?” he asked.

  The guy’s eyes flicked over Naomi, who was breathing with a strange, audible wheezing sound now. “Yeah, that’s me. Hey, looks like your friend there needs the emergency room.”

  “She’s not my friend,” Aaro snapped. “She just tried to kill me.”

  Suddenly, Naomi jerked, so violently she wrenched herself out of his grip. She vomited, a projectile fountain that rose into the air and spewed around in a nasty arc as she twisted, flailing her arms, her body jackknifing. The people nearby leaped back from the splatter with shouts of disgust. She thudded heavily to her knees, and then fell flat, her body twitching.

  Aaro knelt next to her, placed his finger on her carotid artery. He saw Petrie in his peripheral vision, crouched on the other side. He felt an irregular flutter . . . and then nothing. For many long seconds. Dead.

  The convulsions had snapped her spine.

  Someone elbowed him roughly aside as people gathered around Naomi’s curled-up body. Someone was pumping on her chest. Others were shouting instructions, suggestions. One guy was calling for EMTs on his cell. A woman was crying, noisily.

  Boom. The sound jolted him. From outside. Shouts, screams. Alarms began to squeal, at every pitch, a crazy, cacophonous chorus.

  Aaro staggered to his feet with the others and went to look out the door. He stared, barely surprised at what he saw, right outside, in the street. His Chevy. Windows blown out. Smoke pouring. Blown up.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He turned, looked into Petrie’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Is that your vehicle?” Petrie asked.

  Aaro nodded. “Second time in six months,” he said, for no reason that he could fathom. Like it was any of Petrie’s goddamn business.

  A short, fat guy who’d come to the door to gawk whistled appreciatively. “Oh, man. That’s gotta hurt. You must have an exciting life.”

  Aaro let out a long sigh. “You have no idea,” he muttered.

  “They are going to fuck you up the ass on the insurance now, you know that?” the short guy informed him, with unseemly relish.

  “Yeah,” murmured Aaro, bleakly. “I do know that.”

  “Let’s go have a talk while the EMT people come for your friend,” Petrie suggested.

  “She’s not my friend,” he said again. “She just tried to kill me.”

  s bloodshozed at him. “OK,” he said. “Let’s go discuss how this relates to my case, then. You might as well take this coffee.” He held out the paper cup. “You’re going to be here for a while.”

  Bruno huddled in the brush, ears straining for the hum of the engine on the switchback. Sean McCloud hadn’t said much once they’d established radio communication. The guy was in his hiding place up the hill, in the zone, peering through his scope. Soon the purported bad guys would turn the hairpin and make the last pass to the bridge. And then, showtime.

  Stay up there. Be good. Do as you’re told for once in your life. Bruno punched the telepathic message toward the place where he’d left Lily, swathed in the smallest body armor that Sean had, which still swamped her, and a big camo poncho draped over it. He’d given Lily the Glock 19, with a full magazine and a chambered round, and strict instructions to hightail it up the mountain, and put distance between herself and the stunt that he and Sean were about to pull.

  She was supposed to wait on the bluff. If they didn’t come collect her, well, that was a real shame. In that sad case, she kept her head down and called Sean’s brothers on Bruno’s encrypted, dedicated cell.

  It comforted him, that she had on some Dragon Skin body armor.

  Lily didn’t like being stashed. Too bad. She was the one who’d nixed the flame fougasse option. He’d liked that scenario, the finality of it. Watching the full vehicle rise up into the air and gracefully explode, ah. Take that, you fuckers. But no. Couldn’t be that simple.

  The motor rumbled. He heard tires crunch. He gathered himself into a state of focused calm. He had a sense that Sean was in that state naturally. That part of his brain was permanently switched on, like Kev’s was. One of those weird McCloud things. Like being able to rig an ANFO bomb or a fougasse in fifteen minutes. Crazy shit.

  The last quarter hour had been a whirlwind tutorial in do-ityourself explosives. Under Sean’s direction, he’d feverishly taped and wired a stack of nine-volt batteries together in a series to multiply their voltage, rigged stun grenades with blasting caps, daisy-chained them with telephone wire to the battery and the cell phone. They’d duct taped the packed batteries and Sean’s doctored cell phone under the bridge, which spanned a dried-up torrent that splashed down the hill in the springtime, two hundred meters from the cabin. The flashbangs were hidden in dirt on the section of road between the bridge and the chain. A drift of pine needles barely covered them and the wire.

  Wheels crunched on rock. An engine revved, lifting the loaded vehicle over bumps, wells, and ruts. The vehicle appeared, a dark SUV, easing around the last narrow turn. It slowed, steering onto the narrow bridge, which consisted only of thick planks laid long-wise, just wide enough to perch the wheels of a vehicle upon them. The wood groaned at the weight, bowing and creaking as if the four-by-sixes would snap.

  The SUV cleared the bridge and slowed to a stop, blocked by the heavy chain, thick as a man’s wrist, that Bruno had strung across the road.

  The chain was attached to rings driven into two big posts made from creosote-soaked railroad ties. They’d been sunk into wells of cement, and over the years the ground had eroded around the wells so that they stuck out like grubby, warty pedestals. A gate had once hung upon them, but the hinges had rusted off long ago. Tony hadn’t bothered with a gate. He’d just strung the chain when he left. It wasn’t like there was anything to defend. Just the humble cabin.

 
; Bruno’s cell phone was in his hand, which was cold, shaking. Sean’s number glowed on the screen. The guy had contributed his cell to the cause, cutting a hole right over the vibrating device to insert the wires. When he pushed “call,” the tumblers would turn, the wires would make contact . . . boom. And the dance began.

  Even without a scope, he saw through the tinted windows that the SUV was full of people, heatedly conferring. The chain made them nervous. They didn’t like the road, either. The only spot on the road wide enough to turn was beyond that chain. Behind was just a narrow, crumbling track barely as wide as the SUV’s axel, and sheer drop-offs all the way down to the switchback. They had to go forward or else back all the way down in reverse. The rear driver’s side door popped open. A guy got out, wearing camo. Definitely not Great-aunt Betty out for a picnic.

  The radio crackled. “He’s packing an M4.” Sean’s voice was calm. “Three more inside. I’m taking the driver. Ready?”

  “Yes,” Bruno said.

  “On my signal,” Sean said.

  One second. Two. Three—

  Bam. A bullet punched through the windshield. Red spattered the windows. Bruno hit “call,” covered his ears.

  The vehicle doors burst open. Armed assholes came boiling out.

  Bam, one of them slammed hard against the SUV, bouncing—

  Boom-boom-boom. The stun grenades went off. Blinding flashes.

  The guy who’d fallen against the SUV stumbled and pitched into the ravine, sprawling against the tumbled boulders. Bam, the guy who had investigated the chain was suddenly flat on the ground at the roadside, clutching his leg.

  “Body armor,” Sean said tersely into his ear. “Go for the thigh.”

  Bam. Bam. Sean kept firing, but Bruno couldn’t tell at who.

  He stared at the wounded guys on his side of the vehicle. The guy who’d checked the chain was clutching a wet red wound in his thigh. The other was trying to climb up to the roadway. Bruno took a breath, let it out, aiming for the climbing guy’s leg . . . squeezed the trigger. Bam. The guy shrieked. He’d hit his target, amazingly.

  Now the hard part. “Going to cuff them,” he muttered.

  He hauled the plastic cuffs out and burst out of his hiding place, leaping, skidding, and sliding down the slope toward the fallen men.

  18

  Zoe scrambled for cover, gasping. She’d taken

  a shot to the SAPI trauma plate that had slammed her down and knocked out her wind. Cracked a rib or two, maybe. It hurt to breathe.

  Those scheming pricks. She was so angry she could bite out her own tongue. Her neck had been prickling since they stopped at the chain. Now Hal was dead, his head half gone. She was splattered with his blood and brain tissue. The rest of the team was likewise fucked.

  Jeremy and Manfred were down, whimpering. So accustomed to being unbeatable, they had no idea how to manage themselves when compromised. She wanted to shoot them herself to make them shut up. She peeked around a boulder, scanning for movement.

  Yes. Thee, in a camo poncho, oozing toward her downed team members. She squeezed off a shot. Ranieri jerked but kept scrambling.

  Zinggghh, the sniper returned fire and forced her back down.

  They had body armor, too. The cunts. She should have known when she saw the chain. She hadn’t seen a chain in the satellite photos.

  Of course not. That’s because there hadn’t been one, bitch.

  So arrogant. So stupid of her to think she could manage without an armored SUV. So sure her elite, superbly competent team could handle it, with all their firepower. And now they’d been slammed.

  She’d thought this through so carefully, weighing the need for speed against the safety of a larger team. The only other trained operatives in the area were the losers Hobart and Melanie, and that opportunistic whore Nadia, who was in any case too busy fucking Aaro. It would have taken days to get more people, and it was so important to move today, while Parr and Ranieri were alone, relatively exposed. If she’d waited, they’d have been swept behind the protective wall of the McCloud family, which raised the stakes, the price tag, and the risk of exposure exponentially.

  And look at her. Wasting time justifying her mistakes.

  She’d felt so superior to Reggie, but she’d made his exact error. Underestimating those sneaky, steaming pieces of shit. Again.

  She’d had several different possible plans in place. She’d been ready to jump in any direction, but she’d favored the simplicity of positioning snipers above the road to pick them off like rats.

  Exactly like they’d just done to her own team.

  She slithered through wells between huge tumbled boulders and found a crevice to peer through. Ranieri was already jerking plastic cuffs tight around Jeremy’s wrists. She estimated him at forty-five meters. She leaped up, took aim.

  Bam. Her aim was off. The shot caught him on the torso, center mass. With body armor, that did nothing more than knock him backward. He hit the ground, scrambled for cover.

  Bam, bam, McCloud forced her back down while Ranieri crawled toward Manfred. Her best chance was the thicket in the ravine.

  She crawled into the brush-choked gully, scrabbling in rocks and roots and spiny foliage. Up over the edge of the drop-off. She wiggled through scrubby brush until she found a place to look down. A hundred meters, maybe a little more. Fuck, her chest hurt.

  Jeremy lay on the ground, trussed and helpless in a pool of blood, but still writhing. Ranieri had cuffed Manfred, too, but he was bleeding out. It was a very long shot from here with a Beretta Px4 pistol, but the other M4s and the M110s had been packed into the vehicle out of reach. She’d improvise. She focused on Ranieri’s dirt-smeared face, took careful aim, relaxing, focusing, but the filthy bastard was a blur of constant, restless movement. She dogged Ranieri with the Baretta as he hoisted the writhing Jeremy under his armpits, dragging him over and throwing him right next to Manfred. Jeremy saw his colleague, the gaping leg wound, the blood. Manfred’s slack face, his staring eyes.

  The realization of what was about to happen hit Jeremy the same moment it hit Zoe. He jerked up, arching and straining—

  Boom. She flinched as Manfred’s cell phone blew up, flipping his and Jeremy’s bodies both into the air. The cell had selfdestructed shortly after the cessation of Manfred’s heartbeat.

  That blast had to have killed Jeremy, too. Zoe braced herself.

  Boom, the other phone went off as well. She peeked out. Only the still, broken bodies of her team were lying there. So Ranieri had not been killed. He’d taken cover. Hiding like a lizard in the rocks. Cowed.

  He must be so bewildered. So confused.

  Her body shook with silent giggles. So funny. She hadn’t even considered those phone self-destruct mechanisms as a danger at all. They were accustomed to easy, smooth victories. No losses. No contest.

  What a shame Ranieri hadn’t been crouching over her colleagues when they blew. That would have been so funny, she could hardly . . . even . . . stand it. And the laughter was hurting her broken ribs. She groped for her personalized dose of Calitran-Z. Peeled off the adhesive, pushed the business side against her wrist.

  She was alone now and cut off. She carried only the pistol, the thermal goggles around her neck, and—wait. Hold everything.

  Excitement pumped hotly through her body. Parr wasn’t with the men. They wouldn’t have left her in the cabin. They would have given her an escape route to maximize her chances of survival. But Parr was emotional. She’d bonded with Ranieri. Probably fucked him left, right, and sideways already. And she was tough, too. No rabbit.

  Parr had heard the shots and explosions. She’d creep back, worried and curious. The woods were thick, and she was probably shrouded in camo. No problem. Zoe lifted the thermal goggles and quartered the hillside, scanning for that rainbow-tinted glow. If she could cut Parr off, she could pick off Ranieri and McCloud when they came running to Parr’s aid.

  Yes. Fifty meters up. Invisible to the naked eye, but Zoe’s
eyes were anything but naked. Parr glowed in the woods like an opal.

  Zoe’s blood-spattered cheeks hurt from grinning.

  Keep it together, Parr. It was hard to follow her own stern advice. Her hands were slick with sweat, clamped on the butt of the Glock that Bruno had given her along with terse instructions. Point and click. If you don’t want it to go bang, don’t pull the trigger. Clear enough, but her heart thudded so fast she was dizzy. She hadn’t been this scared on her own account, but the thought of Bruno, lying on the ground, bleeding—oh, God. Her knees almost buckled.

  She couldn’t do what Bruno had ordered her. She couldn’t run and hide. Not after she heard the noise. She had a gun, she could pull the trigger, like anybody else.

  She shuffled down the hill, scared to her guts of what she might find there. She crawled down below the cliff’s edge, under a crumbling overhang, looking for a good vantage point with cover.

  The long silence was scaring the crap out of her.

  Wind sighed in the scrubby trees that clung to the rocky slope. She huddled under the overhang, and—oh God—

  Bats burst out, fluttering. She jerked back, almost lost her balance—

  Zhingg, a bullet smacked the rock wall, right where her head had been. She slid and tripped. One leg slid off the ledge, sending a shower of dirt clods and rocks bouncing down the hill. Where the hell . . .?

  Lily stared out at the grayish brown foliage. She leaned forward—>Zoidth="1em">Zhhingg, another bullet whizzed past her ear, hit the cliff face, exploding in a stinging shower of rock and dirt. So close.

  She was pissed. Enough of acting like prey. She’d hunt that dirty rat bastard right back. She slithered on her belly, one hand awkwardly clutching the pistol, and dragged herself up between two big towers of striated black granite. She spotted the gunman scrambling up the hill.

  Smaller than she’d expected, dressed in camo gear. Loping up the steep mountainside with the grace of an Olympic gymnast doing a medal-winning routine. He looked up. Their eyes met.