Steve checked his phone: 4:19 A.M. The battle had taken only nine minutes. In warfare, apparently, things happened fast.
He pulled his coat tighter and watched the hotel burn.
REUNITED
Gunfire. Flames. Yelling and screaming, the sounds of panic, of fury, all barely audible over a high-pitched ringing.
Tim lifted his head. His body felt numb.
Cooper Mitchell struggled to his feet. The man looked terrified and shell-shocked. Clarence was still down, unconscious. His gas mask was gone. A long piece of metal jutted out of his shoulder blade, blood trickling from his CBRN suit.
The sight of that blood brought Tim out of it. He pushed himself to his knees, scrambled across the rubble to Otto’s side. The shard hadn’t penetrated that far. There wasn’t time to do things properly, so he grabbed the shard and yanked.
Clarence twitched, moaned and rolled over.
Tim looked around for a bandage, a towel, anything remotely clean to press on the wound. Gunfire and the explosion had shredded his medical supplies, scattering them all across the burning lobby.
He helped Clarence sit up, waved Cooper over. Cooper stumbled toward them. Tim grabbed the man’s hand and pressed it against Otto’s wound.
“Keep pressure here,” Tim said. “Press hard.”
Clarence’s lip curled up, his eyes scrunched tight in pain.
“My weapon,” he said. “Someone find my weapon.”
Tim heard a shout above the unending din, a single word: grenade!
Something exploded across the lobby, close to the front door. A Ranger fell back crying out in agony. Tim stood and started toward the wounded man, but Klimas sprinted through the doors and cut Tim off.
“Feely, run! Take the package to the stairwell, move!”
Tim reached for Cooper, then saw Otto’s pistol on the floor. He snatched it up, shoved it into Otto’s hands, then pulled Cooper toward the stairwell door at the rear of the lobby.
Tim looked back, saw Klimas lift Otto to his feet and push him toward the stairwell. The SEAL commander suddenly wheeled, fired at three men who ran through the entrance: pop-pop, slight turn, pop-pop, slight turn, pop-pop. The three men fell to the floor.
Another explosion hurled shards of metal, stone and wood across the lobby.
Cooper reached the stairwell door first. He pulled it open as Tim rushed through and stepped on the landing. Otto reached the door, pushed Cooper inside hard, then held the door open with his body. He aimed out into the lobby and started firing his pistol.
“Klimas,” he screamed, “come on, get in here! Feely, take Mitchell upstairs!”
Tim again grabbed Cooper’s arm.
“Come on,” Tim said, then started up the steps.
And stopped cold.
One landing up stood Margaret Montoya.
Tim stared at her for a long second. She stared back. Both of them were too surprised to move.
Margaret reached for the gun strapped to her right thigh.
Save Cooper save Cooper save Cooper
Tim slid his body in front of Cooper, put his hands down and back, hemming him in.
Margaret raised her pistol, pointed it at Tim’s face.
Tim wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t — they stayed locked wide open. He wondered if his brain would be able to process the muzzle flash before the bullet ended his life.
Clarence stepped in front of him, his weapon aimed at his wife.
“Margaret! Put it down!”
Tim saw her face change, instantly morphing from a hateful, snarling-eyed visage to a soft expression of love and concern — like someone had flipped a switch.
“Clarence,” she said, “Tim is lying to you. I’m not infected, he is. Kill him before he kills us.”
The heavy stairwell door slammed open. Klimas came through, his weapon up and aimed at Margaret in a fraction of a second.
“Otto,” he said. “You got this?”
“I do,” Clarence said.
Clarence’s aim didn’t waver. Neither did Margaret’s.
Klimas turned, opened the stairwell door a few inches and fired into the lobby. He yanked a grenade out of his webbing, pulled the pin, underhand-tossed it through the small gap, then slammed the metal door shut.
Tim heard the grenade explode, heard men and women screaming in agony.
An army of psychos and monsters were closing in from behind. An armed and infected Margaret Montoya blocked the only escape. If Clarence Otto didn’t shoot his wife, Tim was going to die one way or the other.
SHARPSHOOTER
Cooper Mitchell was standing right there. Right there. Margaret had checked her suit, it was safe, had to be safe, the Antichrist was just a half-flight down and she couldn’t die not now, not now, not when her people were coming.
Clarence stood in front of Tim, who stood in front of Cooper Mitchell. The look in Clarence’s eyes: pained, yet committed to doing his job. He wanted to believe she wasn’t infected.
“Margaret,” he said. “Put it down.”
Why hadn’t she just fired right away? She’d frozen, surprised by Tim, shocked to see her target right in front of her. She’d missed her chance.
“Clarence, listen to me,” she said. “Honey, Tim is one of them. Why do you think he told everyone I was inf—”
A crack sound echoed through the stairwell as something slammed into her hand. Her pistol clattered against the wall, then hit the concrete floor. She took a step back, looked at her hand… blood, spurting all over her CRBN suit… her index finger… gone.
She staggered, slumped down the wall.
But he didn’t shoot, I was looking right at him…
Clarence ran up the stairs toward her. Down by the landing door, she saw Klimas, his rifle pointed at her.
A curl of smoke drifted up from the barrel.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Clarence grabbed Margaret’s pistol to secure the weapon, but there was no need — Klimas’s single round had blown the trigger clean off, snapped the guard into two jagged metal pieces.
He grabbed his wife by the shoulders, righted her.
“Margaret! Are you okay?”
A stupid thing to say. Her finger was gone She was bleeding all over the landing.
He heard voices, both in his headset and from the people around him. He heard Klimas urging Tim and Cooper up the stairs, telling them to head to the eighth floor, heard feet hitting concrete.
Margaret looked stunned. Blood spurted from her finger stump. Clarence holstered his weapon, knelt before her and grabbed her right wrist.
“Hold on, baby, this is gonna hurt.”
He squeezed down on the stump. Direct pressure. He had to stop the bleeding.
A man ran past behind him, then another.
Margaret looked at him. No sense of pain in her eyes, just a dull shock. Shock… and hate.
“Otto, get out of the way.”
The voice of Commander Klimas.
Clarence turned quickly, keeping his body in front of his wife.
The SEAL commander had his weapon pointed slightly off to the right so it wasn’t aimed directly at Clarence’s chest.