She nodded.
As Coldmoon gathered himself for a dash, Pendergast rose and fired once over the hood at the soldiers, forcing them to take cover again. Coldmoon dashed to the next vehicle, then readied himself to cover Pendergast and Alves-Vettoretto as they made their own dash. The gate was just two vehicles away now, and Coldmoon watched as Pendergast dropped another of its guards.
Coldmoon let loose with several bursts of suppressing fire as Pendergast scurried across, pulling Alves-Vettoretto along as he sprayed the gate with a dozen rounds of his own, dispatching its last two guards. Now all the klieg lights were on them as they crouched by the side of the last truck. It was brighter than day. More soldiers were surely on their way to the firefight.
“Ammo?” Pendergast asked.
He swiftly checked his magazine. “Christ, only one left. You?”
“One also. But the gate is clear.”
Just as he spoke, Coldmoon heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie on the far side of the gate. Shit. And behind them, he could see the soldiers in the parking lot moving toward them, spread out, darting from cover to cover.
“We’re surrounded,” Coldmoon said. “Only two rounds, and the bastards aren’t likely to let us surrender.”
“They’re going to kill us?” Alves-Vettoretto asked.
“What do you think?” said Coldmoon sarcastically.
There was brief moment of silence, a pause, as they stared at each other.
“Well,” said Pendergast, extending his hand. “You’ve been a fine partner.”
“You weren’t half-bad, either.”
They shook hands.
“You won’t tell anyone I said that, I presume?” Pendergast asked.
Despite their situation, Coldmoon laughed. “You wouldn’t have told me that if you thought I’d have a chance to repeat it.”
Another burst of fire tore into the truck they were crouching behind as the soldiers in the parking lot made a coordinated rush. Pendergast said, “Get ready,” and aimed his rifle, not at the approaching soldiers, but at the truck’s gas tank. He fired a round into it.
“What the—?” Coldmoon scrambled back as the truck erupted in fire, ready to blow. Pendergast grabbed Alves-Vettoretto and ran past the smoke and flame through the gate, Coldmoon following, firing his last round into the darkness ahead. As they came out the other side, into the old courtyard, a voice rang out.
“Drop your weapons! Hands up! Now!”
They had practically run into a squad of soldiers stationed just outside the gate, arranged in a semicircle, their weapons aimed squarely at the little group of three. Coldmoon looked around in a panic for a way to escape. Broken walls of weathered stone rose on two sides amid pallets of bricks, long forgotten and covered with kudzu. The gleam of the searchlight cast a ghostly pallor over everything. They were trapped.
“Drop your weapons!” barked the voice. “I won’t ask again!”
Pendergast and Coldmoon placed their now-empty weapons on the ground. Then they raised their hands over their heads. Behind them, Coldmoon could hear soldiers from the first squad coming through the parking lot and past the gate.
They were surrounded, with approximately twenty weapons pointed at them.
The figure that had spoken stepped forward. He was tall and muscular, with an acne-pitted face. Unlike most of the other soldiers, he wore the markings of a full-bird colonel, along with a name tag: Kormann.
He looked from Pendergast, to Coldmoon, to Alves-Vettoretto, with a mixture of disdain and hatred. “Which one of you shot Harrigan?” he asked, jerking one thumb toward a prone figure directly behind him. Coldmoon noticed the colonel’s boots were freshly splattered with what must have been the dead man’s blood.
“I had that privilege,” Coldmoon said.
The man named Kormann stepped up to Coldmoon. He smiled lazily. Coldmoon smiled back.
Kormann lashed out with a fist, catching Coldmoon on the jaw. Coldmoon staggered under the blow but didn’t fall. As he raised himself back to full height, the colonel spat in his face, then buried the fist in Coldmoon’s gut. He doubled over, groaning, and Kormann connected with a wicked haymaker that knocked him prone.
Pendergast must have made some attempt to intercede, because Coldmoon, as if from far away, heard the clatter of weapons and an order from Kormann: “As you were.”
There was a brief silence. Then Kormann laughed. “You’re the one called Pendergast, aren’t you? Well, look at you now.”
Coldmoon, full consciousness returning, saw Kormann turn to one of his men. “Let’s take them back to the barracks—and have some fun.”
Coldmoon grabbed a stone from the rubble-strewn ground and, half rising, tried to smash Kormann with it. But the colonel dodged the blow easily, kicked him brutally back onto the ground, and then—with a brief laugh—began to close in.
68
COLDMOON—DAZED AND bleeding—could only turn his face from the crushing blow he knew was coming. But there was nothing. Instead, a strange silence fell, a hush, like a collective intake of breath.
“Well,” he heard Kormann say. “And just what the fuck do we have here?”
The hush was broken by a low murmuring among some of the soldiers. Everyone had turned to look at a curious figure standing in the ruined archway at the far end of the courtyard.
Coldmoon blinked the blood out of his eyes and tried to focus. He wondered if he was seeing things. It looked like some woodland elf, petite, girlish, smeared with mud. Bits of leaves and plant fronds were plastered here and there, one fern flapping back and forth in the wind. The figure itself remained motionless, in a posture that seemed easy and confident, even relaxed. It held a dagger in one hand.
“Who’s this?” Kormann said. “Catwoman to the rescue?”
One soldier laughed. The rest remained tense, on guard.
The figure had been looking around the courtyard, as if memorizing it. Now it stared directly at the colonel and spoke. Coldmoon wasn’t sure what he recognized first—the violet eyes or the voice: calm and unusually deep for such a small frame.
Constance Greene.
“Let them go,” she said.
This was so ludicrous a demand, so unexpected, that several soldiers laughed this time.
Kormann issued a sarcastic laugh of his own. “Is that all?”
Constance remained impassive.
“Is there anyone with you? Batman, perhaps, or a squad of SEALs?”
Constance shook her head.
“In that case, I’d be happy to release them,” Kormann went on. “There’s just one thing.”
“Yes?”
“You forgot to say ‘please.’”
More snickers from the soldiers. Coldmoon used the moment to rise to his feet. This unexpected interruption, he noticed, had diffused a little of the tension and perhaps lessened their own immediate danger. As astonished as he was to see her, it was still a futile and almost ridiculous situation, surrounded by twenty soldiers, with more surely on the way. He looked at Pendergast to see his reaction, but his face was, as usual, unreadable.
Still, she just stood there. Constance…He had no idea what she might do next, armed with only a thin-bladed knife. What the hell was going through her mind? All she could do was provide a little sport for the soldiers before dying. But there was something catlike about her, an apex predator.
“I don’t beg from cowards like you,” she said. “Men who are all swagger and tough talk—all very easy when backed up by thugs with automatic weapons.”
Nettled, Kormann said: “Why don’t you come in and join your friends for their final, painful moments on earth?”
“Not quite yet,” she said—and then, with a sudden flash of movement, she disappeared.
This caused almost as much consternation as her initial appearance. Except for a few soldiers, who kept their weapons trained on Pendergast and Coldmoon, everyone was staring out through the broken archway, now empty.
And then, abruptly, Const
ance reappeared. Only this time she was lugging something heavy across her shoulders, and also awkwardly carrying two ammo boxes. Coldmoon looked on, incredulous.
A murmur, like a rustling of grass, swept through the platoon.
With a grunt of effort, Constance put down the two ammunition boxes—green, with the standard yellow stenciling—and shrugged what was obviously a weapon off her shoulders, staggering as it slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground.
At the appearance of the gun, the soldiers instinctively trained their weapons on her, and one fired a shot that whined past Constance. Coldmoon stared; he recognized the thing she’d dropped as a military machine gun, an M240 hybrid with an integrated bipod assembly. One of the cartridge boxes was open, its belt already fed into the M240.
“Hold fire!” Kormann said. He could, of course, take her out at any moment, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He smiled, as if ready to play a game. “Well, now,” he said mockingly. “So Tinker Bell has gotten herself a machine gun.”
“I found it on my way up from the river,” Constance replied. “I hope you don’t mind my appropriating it.”
The soldiers were on edge, but her retort only seemed to goad Kormann on. “What are you going to do now, Tinker Bell?” he asked. “Shoot us all with that thing?” As he spoke, his hand crept down, unholstering his handgun. “You can’t even lift it. You could never hold it steady long enough to get off a single burst. Besides, you probably don’t even know which end to point.” He paused. “But touch it again, and we’ll open fire.”
Constance looked toward Pendergast. “I’m sorry I couldn’t arrive sooner, Aloysius.” She nodded at the machine gun. “He may be a Neanderthal, but the brute’s right about one thing: this is heavier than I expected.”
A mocking tone had entered her voice. Kormann flushed, turned toward Pendergast. “Aloysius, is it? So you know little Tinker Bell here?” He stepped toward the FBI agent. “She’s awfully young to be out playing in the swamp with guns. You should spank her. I mean, you must be her daddy—right?”
Pendergast said nothing.
“I asked you a question!” And, raising his arm, the colonel dealt Pendergast a savage blow across the face with the back of his hand.
“Don’t,” Constance said instantly.
Several of the men laughed. Emboldened, Kormann leaned in closer. “So. Are you her daddy? Her sugar daddy, maybe?” And he slapped Pendergast again, harder. A trickle of blood appeared at the edge of the agent’s mouth.
“Don’t,” Constance said again, in a voice that would freeze steel.
“I knew it,” Kormann said, spitting at Pendergast’s feet. “You’re her sugar daddy. A sugar daddy who likes his pussy extra sweet.” And he drew his hand back for another blow.
In a blur of motion, Constance raised one hand—the gleaming tip of her stiletto appearing between her fingers—and whipped the knife at him even as she appeared to drop straight down and out of sight.
There was a moment of stunned disbelief, a fresh rattling of weapons, several shots fired into the darkness where Constance had stood. And then silence. Nothing seemed to have happened—until Kormann staggered slightly and made an odd gesture, lifting his hand to his throat. And it was only then Coldmoon made out the handle of Constance’s stiletto. It was buried to the hilt in Kormann’s neck, just beneath the jaw.
Kormann tried to speak, but only a gurgling noise emerged. He took one step and crumpled onto the stone floor of the courtyard.
69
THEN ALL HELL broke loose.
Instantly, the soldiers opened fire at the spot where Constance had been, all their attention focused on the archway. It gave Pendergast and Coldmoon a split-second opening. Pendergast grabbed Alves-Vettoretto and yanked her toward the broken wall, while Coldmoon followed, all of them diving over it and taking cover behind.
The courtyard was a scene of mass confusion, the soldiers firing indiscriminately through the archway as they rushed forward. But then, to Coldmoon’s infinite surprise, the M240 suddenly opened fire, its bark deeper and slower than the chattering assault weapons of the defenders. It enfiladed the courtyard, mowing down some and sending others into a panic, diving and scrambling for cover, including two who, mortally shot, tumbled over the low wall and almost into Coldmoon’s lap.
He seized one of their weapons and poked his head up. To his right he could see Constance flat on the ground behind the machine gun, in a depression that gave her cover, gripping the weapon with furious purpose, her entire body shaking as the disintegrating links of the belt-fed cartridges flew away in a gathering pall of smoke. In a flash, he realized that Constance, while pretending to lose her grip and drop the gun, had instead contrived to set it atop a hummock that acted as a natural revetment, exposing only its barrel and bipod. He and Pendergast, who had grabbed the gun from the other dead soldier, fired from behind the wall, further decimating a panicked mob of soldiers within, running and scrambling in every direction as, one after another, they were shot to pieces.
But many other soldiers had taken cover and began shooting back in a more organized fashion. Coldmoon could see that Constance, with the barest of cover, wasn’t going to last long against the increasing rain of fire.
It seemed Pendergast realized the same thing, because he locked eyes with Coldmoon, then glanced over their covering wall. Immediately, Coldmoon understood. They leapt over the wall together, firing across the courtyard to where the soldiers were taking cover behind pallets of bricks.
They divided, and Coldmoon ducked down behind a pile of stones just as a series of high-velocity rounds ricocheted past him. Constance apparently took notice, because the deep thunk of her weapon turned his way and he saw a fusillade of 7.62 mm NATO rounds stitch a line along the wall about five feet from him, cutting down two soldiers who’d been aiming in his direction. They fell to the ground, jerking like spastic marionettes as the bullets tore through them. Another soldier rose to return fire, only to get torn apart by the M240, blood and brains mushrooming against the courtyard wall.
“This way,” he heard Pendergast shout, barely audible over the din.
They dashed across an exposed area to another pallet of bricks about twenty yards from the archway. Together, they rose just high enough to see over the pallet, then sent off twin bursts of fire at the soldiers, dropping two more.
Coldmoon noticed that Constance was firing in bursts, pausing every few seconds to choose a new target before firing again. Now and then, a tracer round from her gun flashed across the courtyard. Consciously or not, she was pacing her shots; but even so, he knew the barrel of her weapon would overheat within minutes. The soldiers were firing at her now in a more coordinated fashion, bullets striking all around her, throwing up gouts of dirt. Coldmoon heard one round ricochet off the half-empty cartridge box.
A few more bullets whined over his head, hitting the pallet of bricks. Pendergast popped up and fired off several bursts of his own, suppressing their fire. The incoming rounds stopped, but now Coldmoon could hear fire from somewhere else, above, pattering around them like hail—the tower. Pendergast turned and fired upward, burst after burst, and it abruptly grew darker as some of the klieg lights were shot out. Finally, with another burst, darkness fell completely, the only light now coming from the indirect glow of the complex.
Coldmoon risked another glance over the bricks. The courtyard looked like a slaughterhouse. Bodies lay everywhere: sprawled over terraces, slumped against walls. Blood ran in rivulets across the old stones. A soldier was dragging himself through the courtyard, crying out for help.
Suddenly, the deep bark of Constance’s weapon ceased. For a second, Coldmoon heard the patter of spent casings falling in the foliage around her. Then that, too, stopped. For a moment, he thought she’d been killed. Then he realized what had happened: she’d expended her two-hundred-round belt, and the ammunition box was empty.
Quickly, he glanced back over the courtyard. A dozen, perhaps more, soldiers were out of
commission. But there were still several who were taking advantage of this pause to find better defensive positions—almost all of them behind and atop a stone parapet on the far side of the courtyard. With its advantage of height, and crenellations for shelter, that wall made for a formidable firing position.
Constance was almost entirely obscured by smoke, but Coldmoon could just make out movement. She had risen from her prone position and, as he watched, he could see her—barely more than a shadow—open the weapon’s cover assembly, sweep out the feeding tray, then start loading in a fresh ammunition belt from the second cartridge box. She botched it and, with an impatient gesture, started trying to feed it in again. If he could only get around to help her…but there was open ground between them, sure suicide.
A burst of fire came from the broken wall, more gouts of dirt spitting up all around Constance as she struggled with reloading. The remaining soldiers were organized—and they were shooting from an elevated position at the increasingly exposed figure fumbling with the gun.
“Cover me,” Pendergast said.
Coldmoon laid down suppressing fire while, in a sudden break, Pendergast ran at a crouch across the courtyard to get a better line to the parapet. Rising himself, Coldmoon also took aim at the parapet. The shooting from the soldiers temporarily abated while Constance cleared the feed tray and succeeded at reseating the belt. Out of the corner of his eye, Coldmoon saw her close the cover and yank the charging handle into position. A moment later, the deep, powerful cadence of her weapon began raining death upon the parapet. Huge pieces of stone fell from its walls, like an exhalation of ruin, a web of cracks spreading as the wall itself began to crumble. And then, abruptly, the entire structure collapsed, sending soldiers and stones alike down into a cloud of brick dust and powdered mortar.
“Move,” said Pendergast. They both leapt up and, trading off suppressing fire, ran along the edge of the courtyard until they reached the ruins of the archway, then took up positions on either side, flanking Constance.
Crooked River Page 34
