“J.J.—” I started.
“Way ahead of you,” J.J. said, clipped. “I’m tapping into Jamal’s feed and putting it on my screen. I have nothing on Fannon, though.” He looked up at me. “He’s gone dark on comms. Signal lost.”
I swore under my breath, then looked back at Jamal’s screen. “Find him.” The gunmen were edging closer to the plane. Another few seconds and they’d be close enough that any attempt to blow up the tarmac under their feet might cause damage to the plane. “Augustus, take these guys now.”
“Yep,” Augustus said, and there was a moment of quiet.
Then it sounded a little like an earthquake outside. The plane shook lightly—and only lightly, thankfully—and then a whole lot of screams started flooding in through the hatchway.
“Tangos down,” Jamal said. He wasn’t exaggerating. The camera view of the tarmac had shown what looked like a swarm of mosquitoes launching out of the ground for a second, then every single guy with a gun hit the dirt. The tarmac seemed to be alive, ripping their weapons out of their hands and swallowing them. I even saw the asphalt reach into their holsters and take their sidearms, the weapons disappearing into the black tar and gravel like they’d been eaten whole.
He flipped the screen back to Chase and Veronika, who were just wrapping up with the last couple of guys. Veronika had guns in hand and was slinging a couple more over her shoulders. “You bringing us presents?” Augustus asked.
“I didn’t have time to stop off at Harrods,” she quipped, “and I’m guessing after this trip, I won’t be welcome there anymore. Thanks for that, by the way,” she said acidly. “This is all the tourist memorabilia you get from this trip.”
“We visited York, UK, and all I got was this lousy submachine gun,” Scott said.
Veronika popped out of the office, Chase hot on her tail, and a few seconds later they appeared in frame on the airstrip. “I appreciate the chaos you’ve created here,” Chase said, tightly, as they emerged, heading back for us, “but I gotta believe this is going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“They were here waiting for us,” I said. “We’ve already attracted the wrong kind of attention.”
“You think this was a setup?” Veronika asked, huffing as she ran. She and Chase were picking their way over the fallen, writhing SWAT guys.
“How else did they know we were coming?” I asked.
“If this is a trap, you’d think they’d have laid it better,” Augustus said.
“Yeah, like with coverage from snip—” Kat started to say.
A booming crack echoed outside so loudly that it seemed enter the plane like a man kicking a door down. Veronika staggered in her run, and Chase caught her right before she stumbled. A hazy energy field appeared on Chase’s right-hand side, like a shield between her and Veronika and the harm that was coming their way from the sniper. She picked up Veronika with her left arm and flat-out ran for the plane. Another crack echoed, and Chase faltered. She tossed Veronika unceremoniously up the ramp, and then backed up it double-time herself, another boom lashing our ears as she came inside and hit the button to raise the stairs and door.
“You okay?” I asked, rushing to pull down the shades on the plane. J.J. and Abby were doing the same on the opposite side, and Kat and Scott joined in, trying to hide our bodies from clear view while doing so. It went quickly thanks to meta speed, but I didn’t draw a breath until it was over.
“Fine-ish,” Chase said, breathing heavily when she saw I was done. A bloody streak was cut down the side of her head, a slice that looked like someone had knifed her. She saw me looking and said, “One of the sniper rounds. My refraction shield isn’t strong enough to stop something like that. It just pushed it a little off course.”
“If it hadn’t, your brains would be all over the pavement right now,” I said, and then turned my attention to Veronika, who was clutching her side and bleeding all over the carpet.
“Yeah, no, it’s cool,” she said, wincing, as we stood there. “You worry about Chase and her little cut to the head. I’m fine.” She pulled her hand back from clutching at the wound, which was squarely in the middle of her chest. “Looks like they missed the heart by maybe a quarter inch, based on the bleed pattern.” She grimaced. “A little to the left and this would be a lot worse.”
“Kat,” I said, but she was already there, hands on Veronika and working to heal her. A muffled shot rang out from outside, and there was a crack in the cockpit.
“The pilot,” Veronika said, pain turning to panic. “Reed, our escape—”
I was on it. I vaulted forward, lurching toward the front of the plane. I opened the door and—
The pilot was dead, his brains sprayed all over the place, a spiderweb of cracks in the center of the windshield. The co-pilot was just sitting there, mouth agape, like he might die of shock—
His head exploded a second later, spraying me with red and opening another massive hole in the cockpit window.
I slammed the cockpit door and hit the deck, barely breathing.
“What’s the word from the front of the plane?” Abby called. She had a strain to her voice.
I swallowed heavily. “The pilot and co-pilot are dead,” I said, the realization I’d just led two innocent men into their deaths not quite hitting me fully yet. Colin was missing. Veronika and Chase had been shot.
And we were trapped on a runway, still surrounded by enemies…with no sign of Sienna.
37.
Sienna
I burst out of the safe house window pissed off, heart beating a mile a minute, reflecting on a few hard realities. First, it really wasn’t a safe house at all, was it, in either sense of the word? Like, it was a hotel, not a house, and it ended up being not safe at all, dammit.
Second…Rose was on my ass like white on Conan O’Brien, and that was, to understate things massively, not good.
I hit the ground and rolled, running toward a city wall that was just standing there in front of me. A few tourists were speckled along its length, and I didn’t even bother finding a staircase. I spider-manned my way up it with a good leap and by using the footholds provided by the uneven nature of the stones used to build the thing. My hands scraped and dug against the rough stone but I made it, vaulting above the crenellations at the top and onto a walkway.
An astonished tourist gaped at me. “You’re—”
“In a big damned hurry,” I said, pushing past him without doing him injury. Sounded Italian.
I ran down the wall at a furious clip, trying my best not to look back too much.
I failed.
Rose was easily keeping pace with me, just floating off about twenty feet, looking at me pityingly as I bolted along. There wasn’t so much as a fortification in sight, but there was a bridge ahead a little ways, and maybe I could—
“You can’t be serious with this,” Rose called to me, just drifting along, watching me. “Where d’ye think you’re going to go?”
“Well, I’ve made it to York,” I said, wondering if she was going to close in on me or just deliver color commentary until I died of boredom or exhaustion. It was feeling like it could go either way.
“I let you make it to York, darlin’,” she said, almost piteously.
“Yeah, okay,” I shouted. I was still heading for the river bridge. If I could make it…
Well, I didn’t know what I’d do next if I made it. But if I could submerge, slow Rose’s momentum down, take her fire out of play…
That’d just leave her with off-the-chart energy projection skills and the strength to squeeze me to death without much effort. Totally even odds.
Sigh.