Meyerson’s fire went on-a sustained raucous ripping sound that lasted three or four seconds: he had emptied his magazine in one long blast of fire. A moment of silence, another-and then, even through the metal sides of the locker, Caine heard a roaring response that sounded like a horrible mix between a calliope and an immense, high-speed chainsaw. A rotary machine gun of some kind: good Christ. After a brief pause, it roared again-but was swiftly counterpointed by a whispering rush that ended in a sharp blast. The rotary gun abruptly fell silent, did not speak again.
Caine couldn’t follow much after that, as sporadic bursts of fire alternated with long stretches of silence. Eventually, the thin metal walls of the locker started to hum with the approach of something airborne and powerful-just before the lid lifted up and a hand came in to help him out. Again, Little Guy. Caine clambered out, saw another VTOL swing past, firing single rounds down at a nearby roof, although not the one from which the missile had been launched. He turned to Little Guy. “Where’s Meyerson?”
Little Guy shook his head. “He didn’t make it. Come on.” Yet another VTOL-a troop carrier-was skimming across the rooftops, approaching swiftly. Little Guy led the way back toward the elevator access doorway, put down another UV beacon. Again, the sudden shrill blast of thrusters as the VTOL rotated them into the vertical mode-so loud that the pair almost didn’t hear the faint scrabbling in the doorway behind them.
Caine rolled to the side; Little Guy spun, gun up so fast that it didn’t look like a human action at all. It was as though he went from cradling the gun to having it ready and aimed without any intervening motion of his arms or body.
A gasped “Hold…your fire!” stayed his trigger finger long enough to reveal that it wasn’t an assassin emerging from the shaft behind them. Not unless one of the assassins had disguised herself as a young woman in a drenched and clinging hospital gown, with blood staining the back.
Caine, doubled over to run low, reached her and helped her out onto the roof. The blood was not just a stain on the back of her shift: a steady trickle ran down the back of her right leg.
He uttered what he knew to be an idiocy: “You’re hurt.”
Her eyes followed his to the blood, and she smiled. “Hell, I think I was dead.”
She was going to add something, but just then the VTOL came down-loud, massive, ominous. Her almond-shaped eyes grew large and round. Little Guy whistled: Caine looked over. “You’re clear. And sorry about clipping you earlier.”
Caine grinned. “No problem. I’m probably alive because you did.” He started helping Opal over to the VTOL, looked back at Little Guy. “What about you?”
“I stay here, mind the store. See you safely on your way. We don’t want any more surprises. Go.”
Caine nodded and obeyed, helping the shivering woman up toward the hands reaching down from the passenger section of the vertibird.
As he climbed in next to her, finding and securing her belt, then his, he noticed that she was looking around, dazed and uncertain.
“Where are we?”
Good question, Caine thought. The thrusters roared: they swooped off the roof and swung upwards into the night sky. They could see more clearly now; off to their right were the unmistakable moonlit coils and windings of the Potomac. In a town always making news, Caine had the strange feeling that this just might make the morning edition.
“We’re near DC,” he said.
The young woman nodded, eyes now locked on a distant and immense white cubist finger that was accusing the sky, brightly lit by floodlights: the Washington Monument. Then, her pecan-brown eyes slid sideways, seeking Caine’s. “And when?”
Caine, not sure he had heard her, leaned closer, shouted over the thrusters, “I’m sorry: say again?”
She closed her eyes; when they opened, they were bright with tears. He felt his chest constrict as she repeated: “I asked you ‘when’: when are we?”
Unable to speak-silenced by seeing his own loss in her eyes-Caine reached out without thinking, placed his palm softly along her left cheek.
She smiled, eyes brighter and more liquid still, and held his hand there. Tightly.
Chapter Fourteen
ODYSSEUS
The perfect blue of it, Caine thought, watching the flawless surface of the Mediterranean dapple beneath the approaching security delta. It banked hard right until it came about, then its jets burned bright cobalt. The delta powered back out over deeper water, its small weapons blister rotating away from the Doric columns, which partitioned Caine’s view into a succession of eight tall, sequential seascapes.
In the center of the fourth seascape, framed between two columns, was a silver-haired man facing away from him. He was still in good shape, but there was a telltale thickening of the body, loss of muscle mass in the shoulders and neck. His posture-straight-backed and vital-almost concealed the physical changes, inviting an observer’s eye to remain fixed upon the distinctive military bearing. In all probability, he was older than he looked.
Well, that cinches it, Caine decided as he passed through the shadow of the temple’s still-intact entablature. According to five weeks of research while he was confined to a stateroom on the attack sub Nevada, only one man over sixty could both be the head of IRIS and boast that trim a physique.
Caine emerged back into the beating glare of the Aegean sun, drew abreast of the man, and stole a sideways glance: patient blue eyes were tracking the delta’s speedy disappearance into the horizon.
“Admiral Corcoran?”
Nolan Corcoran, unmistakable from the many photographs and film clips Caine had seen-first as a teen and then over the past five weeks-turned and smiled. “Hello, Mr. Riordan. I’d thank you for joining me, but under the circumstances that wouldn’t be a courtesy: it would be an insult to your intelligence.”
“True enough.”
“I do wonder if you might call me Nolan, however-and if I might call you Caine.”
Riordan shrugged.
Nolan looked back out to sea. “I don’t blame you for being angry-not one damned bit. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t trust anyone right now. I’d hate a few, though. Above all, I’d hate the person who’d been responsible for playing god with my life. Which means, in your case, hating me.”
Well, at least Corcoran wasn’t a bullshitter-and he seemed far more direct than Downing. Of course, maybe that was just a polished act. “Hate might be too strong a word. But I’m not a happy guy.”
Nolan’s response was a wry bend at the right side of his mouth. “A sense of humor-bitter or otherwise-is the hallmark of a survivor.” He turned, looked at Caine frankly-a casual, head-to-toe inspection. Checking the condition of the merchandise? But as Caine thought it, he also noted an oddly paternal nuance in Corcoran’s demeanor. “I’m glad to see that you are no worse for the wear.”
“How could I be? Not much was going to happen to me once you stuck me down at the bottom of the sea. And without so much as briefing: straight from the vertibird to a ship to a sub.”
Nolan nodded, made a motion to start walking; Caine angled to trail alongside. “Sorry about that, but after the attack in Alexandria-well, we were in a bind. We couldn’t figure out how the opposing team found you there in the first place. So we had to get you off the playing field right away. No time for explanations which, truth be told, would only have undermined our efforts to compartmentalize information as much as possible.”
“Well, you could have at least provided me with more entertaining company. The SEAL team that brought me on board and babysat me-they were a pretty taciturn bunch.”