J-Hawk and A-Rod weren’t being discreet at all. Lieutenant Happy Hands and I had both been dragged into this situation so the amorous couple could knock combat boots in a real bed in our hotel, instead of sneaking trysts on cots or in the back of a helicopter.
A-Rod scooted off J-Hawk’s lap and tugged him to his feet. “Time for a little dirty dancing.” Her eyes flashed me a warning. “Don’t leave.”
Damn woman knew me too well. I’d purposely chosen a table closest to the exit so I could make a quick getaway. I hated being exposed from all sides-I preferred my back to the wall. I hated the crush of people surrounding me. Mostly I hated that I was unarmed. “Fine. But you’ve got thirty minutes, and then I’m outta here.”
She nodded, and they headed to the dance floor.
“You sure you don’t want to dance?” he asked again.
“No. But I’d take another shot.”
He ordered two more. After we chinked our glasses together, and knocked it back, he gave me a curiously disdainful look.
“What?”
“Are you a lesbian?”
The question might’ve bothered me if I hadn’t been asked it a billion times before. “You think I’m a dyke because I’m career military? Or because I’m not ripping off my clothes and yelling-‘Whoo-ee, take me right fucking now, you hot English flyboy!’”
“If the strap-on fits…”
“I like men. I like sex. I just don’t like you.”
His smirk faded. “Why the bloody hell not?”
“Because you’re too pretty. Too young.”
Indignant, he demanded, “So if I was old and ugly?”
I lifted my shot glass. “I’d do you in a heartbeat.”
Lieutenant Happy Hands scowled.
I sipped the whiskey and wondered how long the lieutenant would stick around now that there wasn’t a chance he’d get lucky with me.
He pushed to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Think I’ll stroll and-”
The rest of his words were lost in the explosion that shook the rafters.
I hit the ground and reached for my gun, only to come up empty-handed. Before I had a chance to process the screams competing with the blaring music, another explosion rippled through the building, louder and more intense than the first. Light fixtures crashed, becoming bombs of glass and gas. From my position curled on the floor, I saw the lieutenant’s polished dress shoes, which meant he was still standing.
Why wasn’t he ducking for cover? I screamed at him, but the sound was lost in another explosion.
The table wobbled. I managed to roll out of the way before it crashed and the marble top decapitated me, but the heavy iron pedestal table base pinned my lower torso to the floor. I tried to pull myself out of the path of people racing for the exit. My hair was stepped on, entire chunks ripped out by the roots. Several hard kicks to the head made me woozy. My ears rang. Blood trickled down my face and neck. People fell on me. No one helped me up, rather they used my body as support to scramble back to their feet and get the hell away.
The real horror of the situation hit me; I’d lived through countless battles and mortar attacks, I’d dodged sniper rounds, only to be trampled to death in a sleazy nightclub.
Through the pain and panic, I glanced up when Lieutenant Happy Hands attempted to shove the table off me.
Before I could mouth “thank you,” another blast rocked the building. Our eyes met and the words dirty bomb flitted through my mind as I watched nails imbed in him, turning him into a human pincushion.
The young flyboy dropped to his knees, blood gurgling from his mouth as he tried to speak. He fell forward, his big, heavy body landing on my legs. I reached for him, digging my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, intending to yank him away so I could finally free myself. Immediately, another bloody body riddled with shrapnel fell on top of me with enough force I felt my rib crack beneath the deadweight. Panic like I’d never experienced set in. My arms were pinned to the front of my torso as my fingers gripped a dead man’s shirt.
I couldn’t move at all.
I screamed until my lungs were devoid of air. I thrashed, but when I moved my head, a jagged chunk of fluorescent tubing dug into my neck, dangerously close to my jugular. Trapped like an animal. An ominous screeching followed a deafening groaning sound above me. I looked up through the haze of smoke as a steel girder splintered. Shards of metal whizzed through the air like flying razors as the remnants of the ceiling plummeted to the earth. The bodies piled on top of me took the brunt of the impact, as the roof joists bounced around me like pieces of a life-sized Erector Set.
My relief that I hadn’t ended up a shish kebab was short lived. Weirdly colored flames licked across the gaping hole above me. Debris floated down. Paper of all sizes and colors swirled in an industrial blizzard. At first the flaming pieces burned to ash before they hit, dusting my face with gritty powder. But the pieces got progressively bigger and were strangely warm when they landed on my skin. I squinted through the dusty air and realized the paper had been replaced by plastic.
Chunks of plastic backing that’d been attached to insulation floated down.
The pieces were getting bigger.
And I couldn’t move my head.
One piece of warm plastic landed on my lips, and I puffed out a breath. It floated away.
Okay. If I could just keep blowing away the plastic pieces, not allowing anything to cover my face, eventually somebody had to notice me. Eventually someone had to come by and rescue me, right? Firemen, police, ambulance crews, militia?
Where were A-Rod and J-Hawk?
They’d been on the dance floor when it blew up. What if they were dead, burned beyond recognition, wrapped in an eternal lover’s embrace?
I couldn’t think about worst-case scenarios because I was in one.
Warmth dripped down my cheek. For a second I thought I was bleeding. Maybe crying. But it wasn’t tears. It was water. I squinted at the ceiling. The flames above me were now tendrils of sooty black smoke.
Oh God. They were spraying something on the fire, and it was weighting down the plastic. Now the pieces were splatting like raindrops. Sticking like glue.
No! I screamed. Stop! Turn off the goddamn water!
But no one heard me above the pandemonium.
A wet chunk splatted onto my right eye. I pursed out my bottom lip and attempted to blow upward, like I had as a girl whenever my bangs hung in my eyes. I puffed out breath after breath until I was dizzy from lack of air, but the warm plastic had molded to my forehead.
Dread and panic created a lethal cocktail, and I debated the fastest way to die. Crank my head to the side and let the glass sever my jugular? Bleeding out wasn’t painful.