Pushing the thought aside, she started to run.
Davenant saw a woman leaving through the backdoor, but it took him a moment to realise that she was his target. The briefing hadn’t suggested any combat training skills — either military or civilian — yet she had been a reporter. Situational awareness would have been hammered into her head while she was being taught how to sniff out news — and, more importantly, who to avoid. And she’d grown up in an inner city, according to the briefing. She would know when to listen to her instincts.
Ignoring the waitress, he pushed forward and into the kitchen, glancing around quickly. A door was half-open on the far wall. There was no other place to hide. Starting forward, he was surprised when a pimply-faced kid got in the way, glaring up at him with mute defiance. Davenant didn’t have time to deal with him, or talk his way past. Instead, he slapped the kid’s face with the back of his hand and didn’t stop to watch the boy fall to the ground. The sound of someone screaming in pain — and someone else calling for the cops — came from behind him as he ran through the doorway and into an alley. His target was right at the far end. She glanced behind her, just once, but it was enough to realise that he was on her tail. Davenant’s powerful feet propelled him forward, one hand clawing at his pistol. The ID he’d been given would answer any questions anyone dared to ask.
Turning the corner, he saw the girl running as fast as she could. It was impressively fast, but Davenant had yet to see the person who could outrun a bullet. Targeting her legs, he fired two quick shots in succession. The woman crumpled to the ground.
Jayne didn’t register the shots. There was only a hammer blow that slammed into her legs, sending her flying forward, carried by her own momentum. She hit the ground, feeling something cracking under the impact. Pain surged through her body; it was a moment before she realised that she’d been shot, twice. Her body was a useless jangled mass, almost impossible to move. Blood was pooling all around her.
A strong arm rolled her over and she found herself looking up into the face of her killer. He was looking down at her, a cold dispassion on his face that she found infinitively more terrifying than anger or hatred. He’d killed her and yet he almost didn’t care. She was nothing to him. Something bubbled up in her mouth and she realised, with horror, that it was blood. Had one of the shots hit her somewhere else and she’d simply missed it in all the pain?
He stood over her, his gun pointed directly at her head. Jayne almost laughed, despite knowing that it was almost certainly the end. Did he really think she could still hurt him? Maybe a Special Forces soldier, like one of the ones she’d interviewed, could have kept going despite being so badly hurt. Jayne knew better than to think that she could even move. There was nothing she could do to escape. And no one, even on Washington’s streets, would be able to help her.
Oddly, she found that certain death boosted her determination. “You’re too late,” she said, half-choking on her own blood. Even shaping the words was difficult. “The world already knows what you did. It’s too late.”
Her killer looked down at her, and then his gun barked once. There was a brief moment of sound and lightning, and then nothing.
“Armed police! Drop the gun!”
Davenant swore under his breath. He hadn’t expected anyone to dare intervening, even if the policeman had been too late to save the bitch’s life. Maybe the Washington PD wasn’t as cowed as the aliens had promised, or maybe this one hadn’t realised that he was working directly for the aliens. And he had Davenant bang to rights. Sighing, Davenant let his pistol drop to the ground and raised his hands. There would be time to explain himself once he was no longer in danger.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said, calmly. “If you will allow me…”
“Lie down on the ground, spread your legs and arms,” the policeman snapped. Davenant complied, reluctantly. The policeman was on edge. That was clear from his voice alone. A single mistake could set him off. “Don’t even think about moving without permission.”
He stepped closer, looking down at Davenant. “Put your hands behind your back and cross your ankles,” he ordered. A moment later, Davenant was securely handcuffed and the policeman was searching him roughly, removing a set of weapons and tools that would have alarmed anyone. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a federal agent and that woman was a wanted fugitive,” Davenant said. “If you’ll check my ID…”
He felt a boot on the back of his neck. “Damn collaborators,” the policeman said. The pressure increased to the point where Davenant felt his neck beginning to break. “You’re all scrum.”
There was a terrifying crunching sound, somehow shatteringly loud inside his skull, and then Davenant fell into darkness. The last thing he felt was the policeman removing the cuffs and preparing to move his body. No one would realise what had happened until it was far too late.
The Colonel hadn’t told his son — or any of his other children — that he was moving to Washington. None of them needed to know. The information Toby had slipped down to the farm had been relayed through a team of human agents, all of whom knew no more than they actually needed to know. If the aliens had the patience — and a lucky break — they might be able to track the messages to their destination, but the Colonel knew that fear and suspicion could not be allowed to paralyse him. The aliens would win if he gave up the fight believing that they could track him whatever he did. Besides, there was Gillian’s bug detector to ensure that they were not followed or detected.
General Thomas had been moved up to a location near Washington two weeks ago, where he’d been making contact with military deserters and a number of former military personnel who had realised that it was in their best interests to go underground. The aliens and their pod people — and their collaborators — had been expanding the round-ups, tracking down and arresting everyone who had any military experience at all. It made perfect sense, the Colonel knew; people with military experience presumably knew how to be dangerous. The aliens, given what they now knew about alien society, might not realise just how many guns were in civilian hands. And, now that they’d wrecked most of the federal government, they had no way of knowing how much unregistered weaponry was in the hands of the resistance.
“We begin the operation in three days,” General Thomas said. Once, he would have been forced to use PowerPoint slides, creating a dog and pony show for bored officers and civilians who wanted to feel that they were at the heart of military operations. Now, nothing was written down and no records were kept. The aliens had busted one underground cell because they’d made the mistake of keeping records. No one else would make that mistake. “We hit the collaborators — not the aliens — as hard as possible.”
There were nods from the grim-faced men gathered around the table. They all knew what happened when aliens were killed; their bodies disintegrated in a massive explosion. Worse, the aliens didn’t seem to care how many of their collaborators were killed, but they launched massive reprisals against any civilian settlements anywhere near where one of the aliens were killed. The Colonel wasn’t particularly surprised. There were only a limited number of Snakes, after all, and they weren’t expendable. Humans were expendable. They could always make more pod people.