Then I saw him straighten and his eyes went momentarily as dull as his men’s had. He stared right through me, but while the eyes remained dead and expressionless his mouth curled into a joyful and terrible smile.
“Sucks to lose,” he said, “doesn’t it? It hurts. It’s humiliating.”
He backhanded me across the face. Not a killing blow. It was punctuation and it was belittling. I tried to block it, tried to turn away, but my body felt like it was made of broken stone. Too damaged, too heavy.
“You don’t get to win this time, Ledger. You don’t get to be the hero and you don’t get to save the day.”
Another slap.
“You get to lose. But here’s the thing, here’s the fun part,” said Santoro in the voice that was not his own. “You get to watch. You’ll be there when the lights go out. You’ll be there when the screaming starts. And you’ll be there as all of those children start to die. You. Joe Ledger, America’s shining hero. Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll let you push one of the death carts. Maybe your penance will be taking all of those small, diseased bodies to the fire pits. Won’t that be fun?”
Another slap.
The world winked out for a moment. Maybe it was damage or maybe it was me wanting to crawl into a hole deep inside my head and not hear any of this. To not know any of it.
Then I saw the glazed look fade from Santoro’s eyes. He blinked and looked around, nodded to himself, and bent to pat me down, tear my pockets open, and basically mug me. My DMS gadgets and other items clattered to the deck. He looked down at the stuff, paused for a moment, then quickly bent to scoop something up.
Then he cut a look at me, smiled once more. “Adios, my friend. It’s been a pleasure, yes?”
His accent was back in place. I saw his foot move but there was no way for me to avoid the kick. It knocked me out of the world.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
When I forced my eyes open I was alone on the boat.
There was an engine roar to my left. My body hurt worse than I can describe but the leaden heaviness was gone, and when I dragged my bruised head and shoulders up high enough to see, I saw Esteban Santoro go roaring out of the gas dock in another boat. It was the XSR. It’s not a fishing boat or a motorized play toy. The XSR is a military interceptor, a British-built super-speedboat that can hit eighty-five knots. Santoro had stolen my keys and was roaring off in the boat, taking the drives with him.
The XSR kicked up a bow wave that threw the Picuda against the dock and sent me tumbling back down into the bottom of the cockpit.
There was a crackle of gunfire and I turned to see Top and Bunny, both of them bloody, firing at the XSR.
Firing and missing.
Missing by a mile.
Like they weren’t even trying to hit it.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
I staggered drunkenly to my feet, unsure of how badly I was hurt. Not giving much of a shit. The key to the Picuda was in the ignition.
The goons were all dead or dying. And Santoro was getting away.
All around the dock people were screaming. A minute ago they’d been mostly staring like zombies, now they were shrieking in pain, in fear, in horror. I couldn’t even count the dead and wounded. Everyone seemed to be covered with blood. Top stood there, shaking his head and blinking his eyes. He stared at the gun in his hands and then with a cry of disgust hurled it into the water. Then he slapped himself. Very fast and very hard. Again and again.
“Stop it!” I bellowed.
He froze, mouth open, teeth bloody, eyes filled with panic and pain.
“What did I… What did I…?” It wasn’t a statement he was able to finish. What he did lay bleeding and screaming all around him.
In the distance I could hear the wail of police sirens. Behind me was the growl of the XSR.
“Get in the boat!” I roared as I unwound the bowline.
Top lingered for a moment, still caught inside the bubble of horrified realization. Then he took a wobbly step forward. Bunny was a statue, gaping at the red inhumanity on the ground before him, the shotgun hanging limply from his right hand.
“What?” he asked. “What?”
“Get in the fucking boat!”
Like a couple of men woken from a drugged sleep, they came limping over.
Top jumped in and landed clumsily, hardly trying to break his fall. Bunny fell over the gunnels as I moved away from the dock. When the boat was clear I turned the wheel and hit the gas. The Picuda threw a bow wave high enough to drown the NO WAKE sign and rock every other boat at the dock.
I tried not to hear the sounds of misery and outrage that chased us from the dock. When we were clear of the dock I pointed her nose toward the water that still thrashed from the XSR’s passage, opened up the throttle, and went for it.
Bunny and Top clawed their way to their feet and pulled themselves along the rails, fighting the drag as I cranked the engine higher and higher. Top managed to get into the copilot chair. His face was streaked with blood. I had to shout to be heard over the engine roar.
“What the fuck happened?” he demanded.
But we both knew. Someone had been inside our minds. Someone who had access to the Dreamwalking technology, the Stargate technology. It was the worst kind of rape because the violation forced us to become complicit in murder and mayhem.
Top put his face in his hands and his shoulders trembled as heavy sobs broke like waves on the shores of his soul.
Out on the salt the XSR was pulling ahead.
“Top, we need air support,” I barked.
No answer.
“Top!”
Nothing.
I punched him hard on the shoulder. Once, twice. Finally he snarled and fended off the third punch. He glowered at me with eyes that were rimmed with red and filled with the awful awareness of things he could not undo. I think that if he still had his gun he’d have blown his own head off.
“First Sergeant Sims,” I bellowed, “get your head out of your ass and get me some air support. Do it right fucking now. That is an order.”
That got through to him. Don’t ask me how. Years of training, maybe. Or perhaps the mind intrusion was over, the invaders abandoning the minds they had wrecked, their job done. I don’t know, but Top bent instantly forward into the cockpit so the wind didn’t snatch his words away and tapped his earbud. I heard him yelling to Lieutenant Flaherty at San Nicolas. Then he straightened and turned to me. “They’re putting a couple Jayhawks up. Two more on deck if we need them. And I scrambled a team for cleanup back at the gas dock.”
His voice broke on that last part, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I punched his shoulder again. “Are you here?” I demanded. “Are you with me?”
He ran a palsied hand over his face, then nodded. “Yeah,” he gasped, then took a breath and said it with more conviction. “Yes, sir. I’m with you.”
I had the throttle wide open and the engine howled at us. Bunny was still sitting like a zombie except for the tears that ran down his flushed cheeks. Top turned and without preamble belted the big young man across the face. Bunny slammed into the wall, rebounded, and Top stopped him with a flat palm on the chest.
“You good, Farm Boy?”
Bunny started to say something, stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, then looked at Top. The glaze was gone. Only pain and confusion remained. And anger. So much anger.