Comeback

by Doranna Durgin

  "Incoming," she warned Dobry, and flung her coat open to reach her own weapon, twisted and awkward and in no way steady. But she fired out the back windshield anyway, three rapid-fire shots that shattered it and sent the Kemeni skittering away.

  But not back to the rock formation, and that meant…

  An opening.

  Selena scrambled over the headrest, dragging the backpack along—she had the feeling she'd be reloading in short order. The remains of the back window gave way before it; she battered away at the rest of it.

  "Where are you…?" Dobry demanded, short of breath as he struggled to free himself.

  "Getting a better vantage point," she told him. "They're coming up from the left side of the road, and they've got a perfect target in the gas tank. If I'm right, though, they've got bad Luger knockoffs, and they'll need to be pretty close before they take a shot at it." She shoved away a last section of glass. "I'll try to take care of them—but if I were you I'd knock that window out and take a blind shot now and then, at least until you can get out of here."

  "Fuck," he muttered again, less explosively. "You're not leaving me here!"

  "I'm not," she agreed, hearing in his stressed voice that he truly wasn't sure of her. "Don't forget, Dobry—I overreact, not run away."

  Oddly enough, it seemed to reassure him. "Go overreact, then," he growled, and something tore as he applied her knife to tough fabric.

  It's a plan, then. But before she speed-crawled her way out the back, she rolled the door's window down as far as it would go, crouching beneath it with her feet jammed against the transmission hump. A quick look, up and down again, netted her the information that the Kemenis were on their way back again, their body language more confident with the silence from the car. "Bogeys," she told Dobry shortly, and popped up to aim several more shots their way. Without pausing to see how effective she'd been, she dropped to the back window, sliding out to the ground with the back end of the car between her and the Kemenis, though only for a moment. She rose up over the fender and gave them something more to think about—and then had to give them credit. They knew well enough she was firing wildly; they'd done nothing more than increase the firing angle, heading toward the front of the car to put it between them.

  Fine by her. In fact, perfect.

  Selena sprinted for the base of the rock, slingshotting behind it. Once they realized her intent they took some shots at her, but nothing so much as plucked at her billowing coat and then Dobry's gun joined the fray, a sharper, thinner report.

  The area behind the rock formation showed clearly enough that the men had been waiting, but not for any great length of time—only a single pile of donkey crap, not all that many cigarette butts, a shapeless canvas knapsack that looked like ancient military surplus. They were expecting us…but didn't have a lot of extra time to get into place. And on the heels of that thought, If they knew we'd be here, they must suspect Cole is here, too. Whoever "they" were this time. Arachne's people? Those who had been after Aymal all along? Independent Kemenis, out for revenge against Selena? But knowing could wait. What this moment demanded was an advantage.

  Selena jabbed her arms through her backpack straps and eyed the rock formation, assessing it. Two stories tall, steep but not impossibly so. Especially not if she started with speed and never faltered…

  She started with speed. She didn't falter. She sprinted upward, running with both hands and feet, leaving a constant trickle of falling stone behind her. She arrived at the top panting but with plenty of bottom left, and the first thing she saw was Dobry struggling to extricate himself from the car, not quite as suited to the gaping hole in the back window as she'd been. She squeezed off a shot to keep the Kemenis wary, and they froze, ducking down to the dirt in positions that only made them a bigger target from this angle.

  They hadn't figured it out yet, then.

  Good.

  Her Cougar's slide had locked back on that last shot and she slipped off her pack to rummage for another magazine, digging her sneakered feet into the slight projections of stone that kept her from sliding right off the back of the pointed formation. Juggling pack and gun, magazine and balance, she swapped out the clip and settled herself in for some more deliberate shooting.

  You should have run, she told them, carefully sighting in on the Kemeni whose position most exposed him to her, even as the man took a couple of quick shots at the undercarriage of the car. But the car failed to explode, and Dobry popped free from the other end, tumbling down to roll on the dirt and pick himself up in a crawl that kept the car fully between him and the Kemenis.

  Selena aimed one last, resentful thought at the Kemenis. I had never killed anyone until you stuck yourselves in my life. Not until the hostage incident, when in the space of one savage day she'd killed enough men to have lost exact count. Here we go again. She squeezed the trigger.

  Her target cried out in surprise and wobbled on hid feet, dropping to his knees with blood blooming in the center of his torso. Not a heart shot—too hard at this distance, and there were plenty of major arteries to hit just below the breastbone.

  The man's companion cried out in anger and lost his composure, risking a glance to confirm Selena's position before darting in closer, coming within range to bravely fire a volley of shots at the car. Dobry took the hint; he scrabbled away from the vehicle on all fours, climbing to his feet on the way but never fully straightening. Probably a good thing; it kept his profile low as the car finally exploded, the nearly empty gas tank going up in a ball of black-edged flame. Dobry hit the ground on one side of the car; the Kemeni hit the ground on the other, sprawled in a perfect target.

  Selena made sure he wouldn't get up again.

  To her astonishment, Dobry ran back toward the car, hesitating at the edge of heat-distorted air until Selena shouted down at him, "Get away from there!"

  Even then he hesitated, and she suddenly realized why. She had her backpack, but his case of many disguises was still in the back seat of the car.

  "Leave it!" she called to him, and gestured widely to indicate the other side of the car. "Check them out!"

  She stayed put as he nodded, warily circling the burning car, a conflagration already waning. She could have come down from her perch…but she didn't. Not until she was certain these men had no lurking backup.

  Within moments Dobry stood, holding two weapons up for her benefit. Selena took another few minutes to examine the road in both directions, finding nothing as the sun peeked fully over the eastern horizon, painting stark shadows across the harsh landscape and filling this valley with light.

  In one direction, Suwan was no longer visible. They'd come around the point of the foremost ridge to enter the valley. In the other, Oguzka was clearly visible, a cluster of homes, a temple, a handful of merchants and the small, crowded daily marketplace. Ashaga watched over it, spare outlines of rock and shadow weighted by history and portent.

  Just a short jog away.

  Down below, Dobry waited. Flames still licked around the edges of the car windows, but the violent fire had quickly consumed the vehicle's combustibles and now sullen smoke smudged the sky above it. The donkey lay in a heap near the car, dead. Poor animal. Of the men Selena had shot, one also seemed dead—the first one. Dobry had his foot between the shoulder blades of the second, and he gestured at her impatiently.

  She gave her descent a quick assessment and decided for a controlled backward slide on feet and hands, using the backpack to protect her hands as best she could. She ran to Dobry in a near sprint.

  "He's got a thick dialect of some sort," Dobry said. He'd removed his foot from the man's back, apparently no longer deeming it necessary. "I can't understand him."

  "What have you asked?"

  "Who sent him. It would be nice if we could get to the bottom of that particular question. Arachne isn't an answer."

  Not for you.

  Selena crouched to assess the man, lifting the bloody fabric of his shirt to locate the bullet hole�
��lung shot, if nothing else. His struggle for air seemed to confirm it. He snarled something feeble and rude at her for presuming to touch him, and she ignored it to ask, "You have a phone in that gear of yours?"

  After a hesitation, he said, "Radio."

  Not something that would do them any more good than their cell phones. When they were ready to risk exposure, they already had a way to do it. She glanced at Dobry. "His gear is behind the rock. We might as well let him call his people once we're on our way."

  "You must be kidding." He was definitely peeved at the loss of that case. Like Selena, he'd taken a myriad of scratches and bruises, and his reddened face made her think he'd gotten too close to that fire after all. And were those infamous Goff eyebrows just a tad shorter?

  She rested her arms on her thighs, letting her hands dangle—letting the Kemeni see that she still had a gun. "I don't think there's any scenario under which he can get medical care in time. And you know if he's got back up, they're already waiting to hear—if they don't, they're going to come in anyway. There's nothing to lose by offering him a little humanity." She eyed the man, who'd rolled slightly away from her so he could eye her back. "Or at least in dangling it in front of him while we're asking our questions."

  "I can get behind that," he agreed with a grumble, and dusted his tunic off as he turned away—an ineffective effort on behalf of the once-white garment.

  Selena turned her attention back to their captive, noting the bloody froth at the man's lips, the bluish color of those lips. Not getting enough air, that was for sure. You started it, she thought fiercely at him, unable to avoid a pang of guilt.

  She'd done what she had to, in the moment she'd had to do it. She made her voice hard as she asked, "Who sent you?"

  He stiffened, drawing himself up with an obvious pride. "We sent ourselves."

  She hesitated, sensing the truth of those words behind the thick regional accent Dobry had mentioned. Then you asked the wrong question. "All right," she said. "Why did you send yourselves?"

  "Retribution." He probably would have stood to sing the Kemeni version of the Berzhaani national anthem, had he been able.

  "Pretty full of yourself for someone who failed," she noted.

  "Do you have a car any longer?" he asked. "Do you have anyone to turn to? Do you think this is the end of it?"

  "For you, probably." She still tried to make her voice hard; it didn't quite work. It might have been the barely perceptible waver that actually convinced him. His eyes widened slightly and he wiped at his mouth, noticing the blood for the first time. Probably no time to waste, not with the shallow way he struggled to breathe. "Retribution for what?" But as his mouth opened, she instantly held up a hand. "Not the whole laundry list of the all the reasons I deserve it," she told him. "Just the most recent."

  "Stupid bitch," he grunted, and his voice had gotten wet and gurgly. "For the killing in the street two nights ago."

  "That's hardly fair." Selena stood, looking down on him. She glanced over to see Dobry on his way back. She wanted to wrap this up before he got here—before he heard enough to wonder about Arachne. "I didn't even kill him. Not that he didn't deserve it."

  He tried to spit at her but ended up with bloody drool on his chin.

  "If you can't breathe, you can't spit," she told him. "Did Arachne send you?"

  He swiped ineffectively at his chin. "No. We work for no one. We uphold the goals of the Kemeni—you're wrong to think us scattered. We're as powerful as we've ever been, and soon you'll know that for truth."

  "Posturing's just not effective when you lose and you're dying." She stepped back, angling her body to include Dobry in the conversation. "Here's my partner, and he's got your radio. The radio on which we'll let you call your buddies, and maybe you won't die after all. Either way, I'd say it's going to be a close thing, so if I were you I wouldn't waste any more time. Quit making me ask questions and put it together for us."

  "We don't work with them," the Kemeni said, his voice even thicker. "But we know of them. You told the driver of the taxi that you wanted the car to go to Oguzka. He contacted me. And we came for you, of our own intent. Because you killed one of ours…and because you killed Ashuerbeyli."

  She hadn't done that, either. She might have, given the chance—the intense, charismatic terrorist leader had certainly earned it—but she hadn't had that chance. She didn't bother to correct him; he wouldn't believe her. "Nothing worse than a sore loser," she muttered to herself, stepping back from the man so she could cover him while Dobry dug into the lumpy old pack and came up with a very spiffy new radio. Satellite radio at that. Impressive, for a member of a dead organization. There was indeed someone new behind them, she'd bet on it. Delphi needs to know it…To Dobry, she said, "I think this was a little revenge action for the Kemeni who died the other night. Just to confuse things."

  "Did a hell of a job of that," Dobry grumbled. "The inside of that suitcase is probably slag. But I want it anyway. "

  "Then go see if you can pull it out of there," she told him. "We won't be alone for long, and we've got another mile to go before we have any chance of hiding from this guy's pals."

  "Might gain us a few minutes if we don't give him the radio." Dobry's short, harsh words came of concern more than anything else, she thought—and besides, he hadn't actually handed over the radio yet, even though the Kemeni lifted an unsteady hand for it.

  "Yeah," she agreed. "But he won't get it until we're good to go." She wasn't even sure the man could complete the call. She checked the pack for weapons as Dobry headed for the car, dancing with the heat for a few long moments before he pulled off his coat, wrapped his hand and arm in it, and ducked his head away as he dove for the case.

  He emerged with it, but Selena wouldn't call it any kind of triumph. Misshapen, melted…she couldn't imagine anything inside had actually survived. She gave the Kemeni his pack, including the radio but minus the extra faux Luger that had been stashed within. Then she shrugged her own backpack into place, walking briskly down the road to meet Dobry. Her knee ached in a way she hadn't noticed until now, and her face stung in a dozen pinpoints of ouch. Minor annoyances, unlike the dying man behind her. She looked back one more time, hesitating to leave any man to die alone.

  But no. They had to get away from here…and they had to find Cole before someone else, drawn by their very presence, beat them to it.

  Dobry hefted the case, his hand still wrapped. "Too much evidence of our affiliation," he said, and she had to admit to herself that she hadn't even thought of it. Too caught up in the conflict…in the results of the conflict.

  But she just nodded at him, glancing back one last time—this time at the car. "Well," she said, "we were going to ditch it right around here anyway."

  To her surprise, Dobry snorted in amusement. And when she picked up a brisk jog, he matched her pace. Running to Oguzka.

  Running, she hoped, to Cole.

  And to the man who could save schoolchildren.

  But not for long. Because they'd only gone a matter of paces when Selena heard that for which she'd been listening all along—the high-pitched whine of a jeep engine under stress. Too soon, too close to have been the results from a man who had probably died with his hand around the still-closed radio. Already on the way—probably since one of the dead failed to answer a crucial call.

  Dammit, sometimes it's not good to be right. She exchanged a look with Dobry, saw from his expression that he'd heard, that he'd come to the same conclusion.

  They ran.

  Chapter 15

  Cole jerked awake in complete disorientation. "What!"

  Maybe someone answered; maybe not. Cole floundered, wrapped around the pain that radiated up his back and squeezed out a grunt of a curse. By the time he opened his watering eyes again, he pretty much had it. Oguzka. Doctor's digs. Hard little bed. Stupid little wound. Aymal.

  And when he did open his eyes, Aymal said calmly, "We're at the doctor's home. He's out treating someone else. You
fell asleep. And you look like dung, and should eat something."

  "I'm fine," Cole said, because he didn't want to think about the consequences of not being fine.

  Aymal glanced at him. "Good," he said, one eyebrow raised as if to say how stupid do you think I am. Hescooped up a bite of a rice-and-meat dish in a piece of flatbread. "Then join me in this meal the doctor's wife has so graciously provided us."

  Cole eased up from the bed and over to the small table at which Aymal sat, never quite straightening all the way. "She speak Russian?"

  "She appears to understand some of it. She is a modest woman, and has not emerged from the next room. Her young son brought the food to this table."

  Cole took in the room for the first time. It was barely big enough for the table and the bed and a few wicker storage drawers, though herbs hung from the ceiling and a shelf lined the walls above window level, crammed with jars of medicinal this and herbal that.

  "It's a start," he said. "We just need to find someone who knows a good place to hunker down when we're done here."

  "Eat," Aymal said, and pushed the plate to the middle of the table, passing Cole a piece of flatbread. Cole tore it in half and contemplated the food, gone beyond the simple pain to hot and queasy. The bread shook in his grip. He scowled at it and scooped up some of the rice and meat, and then could only bring himself to look at it for a moment.

  "It's lamb," Aymal volunteered. "Very tasty indeed." He took a tiny spoon from the plate and dipped it into a sauce cup, letting the contents drip over his food. "If you aren't feeling so well, perhaps I should take custody of the—" and he gave a meaningful wag of his eyebrows and the faintest tip of his head to the next room where the woman of the house could overhear them.

  Cole straightened, narrowing his eyes. "That's staying with me." That was the last thing they needed, Aymal with the gun inside some innocent family's house.