She didn’t see what struck his head, hard enough to whip it back, too fast, too hard. He slumped, boneless—and his armor vanished. She found herself holding a two-hundred-plus-pound unconscious German in her lap. The ghost steel couldn’t protect against everything—like getting knocked out inside the helmet.
In a panic, Kate felt for a pulse, looked for injuries. She didn’t see blood, no obvious marks. She shook his shoulders. “Lohengrin? Lohengrin! Klaus!”
They were in the open, totally exposed, and that guy was still out there with a gun. But the rain of fire didn’t come. She threw another stone.
And at that moment the gunman emerged and revealed what he was doing. He’d set down his gun and was pulling the pin from a grenade. But he wasn’t facing toward them. He’d turned to the tangle of pipelines, the wells, the pumps that held back the pressure of oil and natural gas.
He threw. The grenade sailed up.
She turned her missile toward the grenade. Didn’t know if this would work. Was she good enough, fast enough, clever enough? Had to believe she was. Good enough to get this far, couldn’t hesitate now.
She wondered what would happen the time she wasn’t good enough. It would only take once.
Her missile, glowing red-hot, sailed in a straight line toward the grenade, which was falling toward the pipes.
Squinting, she could barely see her target. But she could see it in her mind, follow the arc. She reached toward her missile, her arm taut and trembling, guiding it faster, still faster. She let out a cry of rage.
It sped up, then slammed into the grenade from the side, carried it forward some twenty yards, and exploded. Both projectiles vaporized. Nothing else happened. Nothing broke, nothing ignited. These oil fields wouldn’t burn.
The gunman—young, wearing plain trousers and a T-shirt—screamed in his own fit of rage and ran toward her, waving a handgun, a weapon of last resort. He fired at her again and again in an obvious suicide run. She picked up something—stone, a piece of plastic from the destroyed control room. Didn’t matter, because it was solid in her hand, and her arm burned. She pitched.
The missile went through him, all the way, just like a bullet, complete with the spray of blood, a splatter raining from the front, a gory mess spilling from his back. He exploded from the inside and fell like a stone.
She stared, almost smiling with satisfaction.
Lohengrin tried sitting up, shaking his head, blinking until he managed to focus on her. “My lady! I am in your debt.”
She pursed her lips.
Blue helmets ran toward them. The UN team, with machine guns. They were shouting.
“Curveball!” one of them called. French accent. She couldn’t remember his name.
“Help me get him to the chopper!” she shouted, trying to lever Klaus to his feet. He tried to pull away.
Everything moved quickly. Two soldiers were suddenly there, taking Lohengrin’s arms, pulling the big ace away from her. She scrambled after him. “He’s hurt, we have to—”
“Curveball!” the French peacekeeper said again. He pulled her to the helicopter. In moments, they were airborne and getting the hell out. But the soldier wouldn’t let go, and she started to get angry, especially when another soldier started tugging at her left arm. What the hell were they doing? Between the two of them, they pinned her to the seat.
“What—”
Lohengrin was the one who said, “Kate, your arm!”
She stared at him, blank-faced, confused. Then she looked at herself.
Her left arm was covered with blood. Her own blood. The soldier was swabbing at her with an alcohol wipe, searching for the wound. She hadn’t even felt it. Why couldn’t she feel it?
“Just grazed. You’ll be fine,” the medic said, poking at her biceps.
He did something—and every nerve lit with pain. She clenched her teeth and pressed her head back while he wrapped a bandage around the arm.
She thought, despairing—what if it had been her right arm?
A few long, terrifying moments of shock passed. After sunset, they arrived back at the tent city that served as their local base of operations. Kate ended up in the infirmary, on a lot of painkillers, sitting on a chair and looking away as a medic stitched the wound in her arm. Eight stitches. She’d have a scar to show for this.
Lilith, still managing to look suave and stylish in black fatigues, regarded her.
“Don’t tell John about this,” Kate said. She didn’t want him to worry. But God, she wanted to see him. Wanted to fall into bed with him and sob about the close call. But he’d try to send her back to New York. “I’ll call him later. I don’t want him to get distracted because of me.”
“You’re loopy on drugs,” she said. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
Kate gritted her teeth. “Lilith, I know we don’t get along. But please don’t tell him just to spite me.”
Lilith stepped close and glared down at her. “After everything we’ve been through together, you don’t think I’d go out of my way to spite you, do you?”
Of course she would. Spite was her bread and butter. “Bitch,” Kate muttered.
She tsked. “Dear, don’t aggravate yourself. And you really shouldn’t call me names when you want me to do you a favor.”
Kate closed her eyes and tried to settle herself. She didn’t have anything on hand to throw.
“What are you going to tell John?” she said softly.
Lilith shrugged. “What I have to.” She swirled her cape and vanished with a hiss of air.
“Funny. The guys all seem to get along with her just fine.” DB pushed through the tent flap.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him just now. At the same time, she was relieved to see a friendly face. He pulled a chair over with one hand, tapped a patter with another. After sitting, he just looked at her for a long moment. His face was a picture, a conflict of emotions. Shadows darkened his eyes. A multicolored bruise melded with the ink of tattoos on his rib cage. He hadn’t slept since his own disaster. Hadn’t smiled, either. Together, the two of them must have looked war-ravaged.
“Christ, Kate, when I heard you’d been hurt—”
“I’m fine—”
“Would you listen to me? After everything that’s happened, all the shit that’s come down, I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
“Michael. I’m not sure I can handle that sort of thing from two sides.”
“Is it so fucking wrong that I care?”
“No. Of course not. But—”
“But you’ve got John. I know.”
Incredibly, she felt her lips turn in a smile. He stared at her. “What? What’d I do?”
“You didn’t call him Captain Cruller. Or Beetle Boy.”
For a moment it looked like he might spout obscenities. Then he ducked his gaze and chuckled. She reached for his nearest hand and squeezed. Friends in a tight spot. She didn’t want to lose that. He wrapped three of his hands around hers. All she had to do was say the word, and he’d wrap his whole, immense body around her like that, smothering her with warmth and affection. She didn’t say the word.
Sighing, he said, “This mission is completely fucked up.”
She pressed her lips in a line. “I know.”
That evening, Kate found a TV that picked up CNN and watched John’s mission go to hell even worse than this one was. The footage of Sekhmet the Lion shrugging off gunfire and tearing the treads off tanks left her nauseous. That was John in there, she kept telling herself. The Committee hadn’t stopped a genocide. They’d ignited a war. Reports of injured Committee members were sketchy—all anyone knew was that there were injuries. Calls to John weren’t getting through.