***
The blast from the exploding helicopter felt like a giant hand pressed firmly into McDwyer's back. The air whooshed from his lungs as the hand gave a violent shove. He was airborne for perhaps ten feet, but kept his wits about him long enough to tuck and roll into the impact with the ground.
Still, stars exploded across his vision with the collision and he lay sprawled for a moment, stunned. The explosions had done something to his hearing. Everything sounded as if it were underwater.
When he got to his feet he was bleeding from badly scraped palms and a gash on his forehead.
He licked his lips and tasted blood. Nothing broken. He glanced over at the front steps of the Wasserman Facility. The girl stood there among the smoking ruins. A mini cyclone swirled about her head, blue lightning flashes rippling through black clouds.
The air temperature had plummeted to something approaching midwinter. And yet the fires still burned, and the heat coming off anything the girl's mind had touched was like the blast from a furnace.
He thought back to his years of training, clamped down hard, prayed to God for strength. He had never been so scared of anything in his life. All the reports he had read about her were nothing compared to this. She's some kind of demon.
When he felt the ground shake under his feet and the earth cracked open across the lawn, swallowing everything in its path, he turned and scrabbled across the road to the large, black suitcase that had come to rest near the curb.
He had to get to higher ground, get himself under cover, and find a place to take the shot. A small commercial building was located about a hundred yards down the street. He ducked and ran, moving behind parked cars and darting between open spaces. He heard men screaming, another explosion, things shattering.
The first floor of the building was a pizza parlor, or it had been at one time. Now it looked like a crack den. Two black women and a man with piercings through his nose and the tattoo of a dragon wrapped around his neck huddled against the back wall as he kicked through the door. "You stay away!" the man shouted. He was shivering and he held out a gun. "I called the fucking cops. It's World War Three out there. Who are they? Arabs? Are they gonna kill us? Why's it so goddamned cold?"
"Tell me where the stairs are, right now," McDwyer said, ignoring the gun. "And get the fuck out of sight."
The man hesitated a moment; then he must have seen something in McDwyer's eyes and lowered the gun. He led him to a door in the back room. McDwyer slipped quickly up the steps, past three landings and more closed doors, until he reached the roof.
Outside he quickly surveyed the scene: tar and crushed stone flat surface, three-foot-high walls all around. He had no time for testing, had to put things together fast and clean, take the shot, and get out. It was a good spot, plenty of room and the right distance. He could set up on the flat top of a steel vent cover and kneel on the surface of the roof to get her in his sights, all the while keeping himself almost completely concealed.
He set down his case, flipped the latches, and lifted the lid, then set out assembling the unit in thirty seconds flat. The "Light Fifty," or M82A1 A, was a .50-caliber, semiautomatic, air-cooled rifle with a Unertl 10-power scope. He would use M2 Browning Machine Gun cartridges in this case.
This was too far away to risk a dart shot, and it was too late for that anyway. They had done extensive research into the type of weapon that would be necessary to take the girl down. These rounds were large enough to kill an elephant. They should do the job nicely.
***
Jess Chambers watched the man from the helicopter as he ran down the street. At first she thought he was running away from them, but then she saw him kick open the door of what looked like some kind of restaurant.
He's carrying something nasty in that case. The noise had grown deafening all around her now, shrieks both human and inhuman, and particles of ice and dirt whipped at her face. But she did not take her eyes away from that building.
When she saw the wink of something peeking over the rooftop a couple of minutes later, she knew.
She screamed a warning into the wind.
***
The scope picked up everything, made it just as nice and clean and sharp as a fine sunny day at the beach. The air around her was thick with swirling dust and smoke, but McDwyer was used to conditions of blowing sand in 120-degree heat, and it didn't shake him now.
One shot, one kill. The sniper's motto. With the Light Fifty, he could punch a hole through a person's head from a thousand meters away. How far is her range? he wondered. Could she reach him here?
Enough of this nonsense. He was babbling inside his own mind. He settled her face in his sights, took a deep breath, and let it out in a slow hiss.
His hands were shaking. Why wouldn't they be still? He blinked and saw a little girl he'd never met. But this was no ordinary girl he was looking at. He had a job to do. Come on, you son of a bitch.
A woman was shouting and gesturing from the front steps, pointing. Inside the eye of that flat, cold scope, Sarah turned to look his way.
Predator to predator, like two lions crouched in the brush.
This time, that split-second difference went the other way.
***
Jess shouted Sarah's name again. There, over there. He's got a gun. At first the girl didn't seem to hear her, and then her eyes rolled and tried to focus. She glanced at the rooftop where Jess was pointing, and instantly a huge ripple of pure energy went tearing away from her, flattening everything in its path like the blast wave from a bomb, vaporizing the last remaining men where they crouched and hid, parked cars and light posts tossed into the air and tumbling like windblown leaves, as if something immense and invisible had gone lumbering down the street.
A bullet screamed past Sarah's face and her head snapped back; the bullet ricocheted off the wall of the Wasserman Facility, leaving a six-inch-deep crater in the brick. She moaned. Blood began to ooze from a furrow on the left side of her scalp. The thing that had wormed its way into Jess's mind clenched violently.
Jess caught another flash of muzzle fire from the roof, and a chunk of steps disintegrated at her feet.
And then the invisible lumbering beast reached the building.
Windows exploded inward as immense pressure came to bear against the walls. For a moment, the structure held, and then with a screech and horrible grinding roar, the lower floors gave way.
It was like a wrecking ball hitting a house of matchsticks. Bits of brick and wood exploded out the back, peppering the surrounding areas with white-hot shrapnel. The top two floors collapsed down into themselves, and a cloud of brick and concrete dust billowed outward and swirled in the wind.
Sarah screamed. She screamed again, as the strange blue fire licked up and down her body and the storm reached a fever pitch.
Jess felt the gathering pressure in her lungs, inside her head, as if she had been grabbed in a vise grip. She took a step forward, then two. Had she been wrong all this time? Was it too late, had they pushed it too far?
You're hurting me. Please. When we first met you asked for my help. Let me give it to you now. Let me make it better.
At first she didn't even realize she hadn't spoken aloud. But Sarah seemed to hear her. When she looked back on it later it was one of the many things she would puzzle over in wonder, but now she didn't think about any of that. She managed to get down the steps without falling and stood a few feet away.
Sarah was trembling. Blood ran freely down her face. Her eyes glittered blue fire in the deepening dusk. I can't stop. It's too hard.