Liz nodded. "We can't know for sure, but this could be just the beginning."
A distant explosion reverberated through the terminal, the floor jumped beneath their feet, and from somewhere came the sound of shattering glass. "Oh, God," the sergeant said. "I think that was another plane."
Liz closed her eyes, hoping he was wrong, sensing he was not.
"We need to go," Hellboy said. He was still scratching at the wounds on his chest, slowly flexing his upper torso as if to work out the pain. "Tell your guys to aim for the necks. That's where they have their gas sacs. Or whatever." He cringed and rubbed one of the bullet holes. "Damn, this'll be sore in the morning."
"Er ... I'm sorry I shot you," the sergeant said.
Hellboy shrugged. "Good shooting. I can't hit the side of a barn."
The sergeant raised an eyebrow and looked at the dead dragon.
"Third shot," Hellboy said. "And look at the size of that thing."
The four of them walked past the burning beast and headed toward the vast check-in hall. The sergeants radio crackled once or twice — shouts, panicked mumbling, shooting — and he walked quickly, glancing back at Hellboy and Liz every few steps.
"What's happening?" he said at last. "Why us? Why here?"
"Reaping what we've sown," Hellboy said.
"I'm sorry?"
Liz nudged Hellboy and shook her head. "He's delirious," she said. The sergeant obviously doubted her, but he was not about to argue.
They walked past a vast panoramic window that looked out over the runways and other buildings, and the scene that greeted them stunned them to a halt. The airport was a war zone. The first crashed passenger jet was burning as fiercely as ever, but now there was an even greater conflagration a mile away across the concrete. It looked as though several parked aircraft and a hangar had been set alight, and the flames reached for the sky like the souls of the doomed jets. A dragon was buzzing the flames, drifting in and out as if reveling in the heat splashing across its body.
Closer by, several emergency vehicles had been attacked, and they lay scattered across a runway like a child's discarded toys. At least one had exploded, the force of the blast having extinguished whatever fire caused it.
"Look," the sergeant said. "Terminal Three." He spoke without emotion, because really there was little that could be said. Terminal Three, a mile away across the airport, was under attack by the other three dragons. One of them perched on the roof and coughed fire down between its feet, apparently trying to burn through like a blowtorch. Flames and gases erupted about its head, but it shook them away and gushed fire again. The other two lizards hovered at windows and holes in the walls, pouring flames into the building, moving back as part of a wall blew out. People fled the building in every direction, from this distance resembling little more than colored ants desperately trying to escape a cruel child with a magnifying glass.
One dragon took off, strafed the fleeing crowds with fire, then went back to its attack on the building.
"Bastard!" the sergeant yelled. He stepped back and fired at the window before them, shielding his face as the glass shattered outward and fell to the concrete thirty feet below. Then he braced the machine gun against his shoulder, aimed, and cried out in frustration when he realized how foolish his gesture had been.
His cry turned from anger to triumph when several war planes passed overhead.
"Oh, tell me they're not ... " Liz said, but she did not have time to finish. The missiles flew, the dragons moved out of their way almost lazily, and the west fa?ade of Terminal Three erupted outward in a ball of smoke and flame.
"Get me the hell out of here," Hellboy said. "Liz, we need to make contact with the embassy, and fast. I want to stay here, but we'll be more help talking to someone who can affect this."