Stevens started walking straight toward the house, his back to his partner. He only turned around when he heard the slightest of sounds — by some basal instinct, a sound that sent a shot of adrenaline through his system. That was because he’d heard it before, although always from a different perspective. A muffled gurgling noise.
In the span of a few milliseconds, highlighted by a spill of stray light from the house, Stevens saw three things in sequence: Baumann falling toward him with a look of total surprise on his face. A wide dark figure behind him. And finally the blade.
If he hadn’t reached out instinctively to catch his friend, who was already dead, he might have been able to block, or at least blunt, the arriving knife. But his geometry was all wrong, and the blade arrived full force, just below his ribs and thrusting upward. As Stevens fell right next to his longtime partner, his last living sight was that of a hulking shadow moving toward the house.
“Do you think she’ll do it?” asked Freeman. “Go back to Alaska?”
“I don’t know,” replied DeBolt, “maybe. But I know she’ll try to help me.”
They were in the kitchen, the colonel boiling a pot of water to make instant coffee. They all needed a lift. “How much did you tell her?” he asked.
“Most of what I told you. She knows about the META Project. Knows you guys were tracking me.”
“But you didn’t give her any specifics on us?”
“Didn’t see a need for it.”
Freeman nodded, and said, “Thanks for that.” He searched through a cabinet, and pulled out a handful of sweetener packets, all either red or blue. “Damned feds — doesn’t anybody use real sugar anymore?” He pulled two coffee cups out of a different cupboard, and winced slightly as he set them down. Freeman flexed his hand open and closed, and looked accusingly at DeBolt. “My arm is still sore from when you whacked me with that damned fencepost.”
“It was a rail from the staircase — and if I hadn’t done it you would have shot me.”
“I still might if you piss me off.”
“So you don’t know anything about META?” DeBolt asked.
“Never heard of it. Our only contact was Benefield, and like I told you, the mission brief he gave us was about a terrorist plot involving biological agents.”
“But he never told you who was behind it?”
“He said it was domestic, not Middle Eastern. Looking back, he’d have to say that, wouldn’t he? You’d never pass for a Paki or a Saudi. Nobody working on this project would have.”
DeBolt nodded. “So you didn’t even know our names?”
“No. We were given the locations of the strikes, and a photograph of each target. There should have been more—I should have demanded it. Now the whole thing has been shuttered the hard way, Benefield included.”
“And you guys had nothing to do with that?”
The two exchanged a hard look.
“Benefield?” Freeman replied. “You’re accusing me of murdering my commanding officer?”
DeBolt shook his head. “Sorry — I guess I’m a little desperate. But if not you, then—” He was cut off when the lights suddenly went out.
The room fell to a frozen silence, until Freeman said, “Did you—”
“No!” DeBolt cut in. “It wasn’t me!”
A muffled thump sounded from the living room.
“Trigger?” Freeman called out.
There was no response. The darkness wasn’t absolute — an emergency floodlight, obviously battery powered, sputtered to life somewhere out back. It cast in through the windows, channels of light amid shadowed voids. A glow from a distant streetlight shone pale through the front windows, creating a no-man’s-land of illumination in the adjacent dining room. DeBolt saw Freeman glide silently toward the dining room, a gun materializing in his hand. “Randy!” he barked.
Nothing.
Freeman backed up to one side of the wall at the dining room entrance, and with rapid hand motions he pointed to the opposite side. DeBolt rushed over and put a shoulder to the wall.
The colonel peered around the corner, and whispered, “Shit!”
DeBolt ventured a look. In the living room he saw one of the other men — he couldn’t say who — splayed motionless across the couch. The sheen that glistened over his face and upper body was colorless in the dim light, but he knew it could only be red.
Freeman looked again at DeBolt, and was raising his hand for another command when all hell broke loose. The wall near Freeman exploded in a hail of gunfire. The colonel fell back, clattering to the floor, then scrambled onto his knees, still gripping the handgun. He was moving low in the doorway when a massive figure lunged through. Freeman was sent flying, and the two men slammed into a dinette, chairs and table legs splintering under their combined weight.
They began grappling in close quarters, and DeBolt dove into the fray, trying to disable the bigger man’s arms. A shot rang out, but nothing seemed to change. DeBolt had one of the attacker’s arms barred, but it was like trying to hold back a lever in some immense machine. Freeman suddenly rolled clear, and the assailant turned his attention to DeBolt, lifting him completely off the ground in a wrestler’s move and throwing him across the room. DeBolt slammed into a row of cabinets and fell to the floor stunned.
Another shot rang out, and this time DeBolt looked up to see the big man holding a gun and Freeman sinking to his knees. Clutching his chest, the colonel toppled face-first onto the tile and went still. The killer stood rigid and alert, his chest heaving like a steel-mill bellows. He was broad and powerful, his bald head glistening in a channel of light.
Freeman remained motionless, and DeBolt saw no sign of the other team members. That quickly, he was again alone. The attacker had his gun raised, fixed on DeBolt’s chest with only the narrow kitchen island between them. The man knew he was physically superior, and that DeBolt would have drawn a weapon if he had one. He had every advantage. So DeBolt did the only thing he could in that instant. He stood perfectly still. Anyone who didn’t know him would have viewed it as surrender. He waited for the gun to waver, for the man’s stance to relax. Neither happened.
With the lights already out, DeBolt could think of no electronic trick, no distraction he could manufacture using META. Without shifting his gaze, he tried to be aware of what was around him. He saw one possibility — on the front burner of the stove, the pot of water that had been on a rolling boil seconds ago, before the power had been cut. With his eyes locked on his attacker, DeBolt searched for the pot’s handle in his peripheral vision — which way was it facing? Such a simple thing two minutes ago. Now his life depended on it. He caught a glimpse — the handle was at the pot’s four-o’clock position from where he stood. Good. Not perfect, but good. All he needed was an opening.
“Who the hell are you?” DeBolt asked.
The man’s lips seem to quiver, as if he might speak, but nothing came. He raised a finger, telling DeBolt to wait. I’ll be with you in a minute.
Was he mad?
No. He was too determined, too efficient. DeBolt saw what he’d done to Freeman, and the man in the living room. He knew why no other team members had responded to the melee. This assassin had single-handedly defeated five of the most lethal soldiers on earth. DeBolt stood waiting, willing the man to come just a bit closer. Then the most incredible thing happened.
In the heat of battle, amid the killing and the blood, DeBolt had ignored the screen in his head. Now, for no apparent reason, it flickered to life with three words that stunned him to the core. He looked at the monster five steps away, then again at the message.