“Is she—”
“She’s fine. He didn’t have time to get off a shot.”
“Didn’t have time to get off a shot? Whitfield’s dead. Why didn’t you—”
“The gas is activated by my remote. I couldn’t get to it until that Deuce jerk stopped paying attention to me. Now let’s get out of here before he wakes up or those other people come back.”
Smith staggered over to the two men and collected his phone and their guns, stuffing a Sig Sauer and Randi’s Beretta down the back of his pants before handing the others to Marty.
“What do you want me to do with these?” he said as Smith struggled to get Randi into a fireman’s carry. Zellerbach always had exactly one backup for everything — thus the fact that they were both wearing masks and she wasn’t.
“Get rid of them,” Smith said, inadvertently slamming Randi’s head into the wall as he started toward the bathroom.
Zellerbach rushed to a massive metal cabinet and locked the guns in it before speed-walking awkwardly past him in the hall.
By the time Smith got to the bathroom, the tub was already on its edge and the trapdoor was sliding back.
“Does the tunnel get gased, too?” Smith said, remembering the man Whitfield had posted in it.
“Not just the tunnel. The house we come out in, too. I’m very thorough, you know. Very thorough.”
It took some effort, but he managed to get Randi down the ladder without dropping her. She was starting to stir, which was good. What wasn’t so good, was that so was the man Whitfield had left behind.
In fact, he was up on all fours by the time they reached him, shaking his head violently to clear the cobwebs. He made a move for his gun, but Smith swung a leg back and kicked him in the face hard enough to flip him on his back and send him sliding into the wall. He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon, if at all. But there was no telling how many more of them were out there.
Randi started to squirm and then struggle. He set her down and propped her near the ladder leading into Zellerbach’s other house — grabbing her wrists so she couldn’t attack him. “Randi! It’s me, Jon.”
Recognition came quickly and when it did, the adrenaline-fueled strength seemed to drain from her. He barely managed to catch her before she fell.
“What happened?”
“Not important. We’re going up this ladder and then we’re going to get the hell out of Dodge. Do you understand?”
A weak nod.
“I’ll go first. Can you make it up on your own?”
Another nod — this one a bit less convincing.
He looked at Zellerbach. “Come up last. Make sure she doesn’t fall.”
“Okay. No problem. No problem. I can do that.”
Smith ascended, feeling more steady every second. He opted for speed over subtlety, throwing open the trapdoor and going out gun-first.
The room was empty.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re clear.”
Once they were all safely up, he ran from the room and found a window, opening it a crack as Randi stumbled up behind him. She gulped at the fresh air while he surveyed the dark street beyond. After only a few seconds, her eyes started to sharpen.
“Watch her,” he whispered to Zellerbach and then pulled out his phone and initiated an encrypted call to Klein.
“Jon?” he said, answering on the first ring despite the late hour. “Are you all right?”
“No. Marty found something hidden in Dresner’s system. Whitfield’s dead. It—”
The unmistakable crash of a door being kicked in reverberated from the front of the house and Smith swore quietly.
“Jon?” Klein said. “What just—”
“Call you back.”
He severed the connection and gave Randi back her Beretta before throwing the window fully open and shoving her through it. Apparently, it was higher than he thought, and he winced at the dull thud of her back hitting the ground. Zellerbach went out next and he followed, grabbing Randi by the arm.
Zellerbach managed to outpace them, which suggested that the gas was affecting him more than he’d thought. Smith pulled off his gas mask and tried to call him back but got no reaction. Either he hadn’t heard or he was starting to panic. Probably the latter.
There was a flash about fifty meters to Smith’s left accompanied by the bark of an unsilenced weapon. Zellerbach pitched forward into the street and Smith used the Sig Sauer he’d taken to fire a couple of rounds in the general direction of the shooter before shoving Randi into a clump of bushes.
“Stay!” he said before breaking out into the open and sprinting toward his old friend squirming in the street.
The shooter got off a burst on full automatic but the rounds went well behind him. The chance that he was just a lousy shot or didn’t have a Merge to compensate for the darkness was fairly remote and when he looked back he saw exactly what he knew he would: Randi coming after him at about half her normal speed.
There was nothing he could do about her now, though, and he threw himself to the asphalt behind Zellerbach, pulling him closer to the curb. Randi landed a meter away, flattening herself on the ground as another volley chipped away at the edge of the concrete sidewalk.
“You think that’s the only guy they have left?” she said, sounding like she was thinking clearly again.
“We’re not that lucky. And unless I miss my guess, your friend Deuce is already back on his feet and looking for a weapon.”
The next shot was followed by a scream from Marty. “I’m hit! I’m shot! Oh, my God, I’m shot.”
While the curb was high enough to just cover Smith and Randi, Zellerbach’s bulbous behind was sticking up just enough for the shooter to graze it.
He looked like he was going to bolt and Smith grabbed his ankles while Randi held his shoulders and whispered soothingly to him.
Another shot created a second tear in the back of his pants and he screeched even louder this time. Neither wound was much more than a scratch, but they couldn’t just lie there while Zellerbach was whittled down inch by inch. The curb they were pressed against would only protect them from a fairly distant attacker to the east. From any other sidewalk, street, yard, or driveway, they were sitting ducks.
A siren became audible, approaching fast from the north. Either the neighbors had finally convinced the police to come or they’d heard the shots themselves. Either way, it was looking like their only chance.
“Start scooting back, Randi,” Smith said, flicking his gun out and shooting in the general direction of the man undoubtedly closing on them.
She did, dragging the whimpering hacker along with her. Smith slithered along behind, staying focused on the tall hedge they were closing on. It was thick enough to hide them even from a Merged-up soldier, but it didn’t leave a lot of options for which direction to run.
When they got to cover, he pulled Zellerbach to his feet and held on to him as they crashed gracelessly through the hedge. It put them in the backyard of a modern home built almost entirely of glass. A light went on inside just as Randi was starting to climb the fence on the north side.
“You’re next, Marty. Come on!”
“I’ve…I’ve lost too much blood, Jon. Just leave me. Just leave me here to die.”
“Shut up,” Smith said, wrapping his arms around the man’s thighs and lifting him chest-high against the fence. Zellerbach had just gotten his hands on the top rail when someone behind them spoke.
“Stop! I have a gun.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t the confident demand of one of Whitfield’s special forces men. It was the quavering voice of a homeowner who had heard the shots and seen three people run across his backyard. Smith glanced back and saw that the man was wearing a pink robe and speaking through a tiny gap in the bottom of one of the house’s windows. Not someone looking for a fight.