Bone Rider (23 page)

Maureen’s pretty face darted across Riley’s field of vision, pale as the moon, eyes wide and glassy with fright. Riley sympathized, but didn’t move from his position next to the bar. He wanted them to go out front, not into the back where they’d be trapped. The way his day was going, those soldiers would blow up the freezer and come in shooting.

Business Suit, in true gentlemanly fashion, elbowed the waitress aside to get to the exit first. He hit the door running and slammed the wings open so hard Riley was surprised the greasy glass panels didn’t break. Maureen stumbled, flailed, would’ve fallen if the cook hadn’t grabbed her around her generous hips and steadied her. They hurried along together, out of the diner and into the sunlight. The rest were right on their heels, feeding off each other’s fear, some quiet, some shouting, until all of them were mindlessly running for their lives.

They poured out of the diner in a throng of panicked people and Riley tucked his gun back under his jacket and joined them. The wind stirred up by the helicopters slapped his face, made him duck his head and push forward against the resistance. Though they were not quite as near as the one in the back, they looked vicious enough to scare the crap out of Riley as they loomed over the lot, black metal and glinting glass, rotor blades cutting through the air with a deafening, chilling relentlessness. So much more alien than the creature currently clutching Riley’s bones and evaluating the scene through his eyes.

The baby was howling now and the little girl lost her grip on her mother’s skirt and shrieked, terrified by the hulking, roaring things that had looked so cool from the safety of the diner and so intimidating up close.

It was blind instinct that made Riley veer off course toward the child. He’d almost reached her when something hit his thigh like a fist. He staggered, more from shock than pain. The girl yelped then shut up abruptly. She sat down on her plump behind with a thump and a hiccup, stared up at Riley with swimming, too-wide eyes. A bright line of red had appeared on her tiny arm, the skin gaping like a slack mouth. Blood was spilling out, flowed down the dangling limb and dripped to the dirty concrete. Riley’s stomach turned.

Sniper
, McClane said, tightly.
In the helicopter. Run
.

Another smack, this time against his shoulder. The leather of Riley’s jacket ripped open as though it’d been sliced by an invisible knife. A flowerpot dangling from the awning in front of the nail and hair studio exploded in a shower of clay and earth. Riley barely felt the blow; just a tingle that traveled through his entire body. He didn’t have to check beneath the torn leather and fabric to know his skin was untouched. With a final glance at the girl who’d almost been killed by the first ricochet, Riley turned around and darted back into the diner, pulling the doors closed behind him.

“
W
HAT
. The. Fuck.”

Misha leaned forward in the passenger seat and stared across the street, mesmerized by the scene on the other side. They’d pulled into the parking lot only minutes before, picked up Kolya, and had been discussing how to best extract Riley when the shit had hit the fan in the most spectacular fashion. Misha was peripherally aware of Andrej’s presence next to him and Kolya in the back, and part of him wanted to glance at them to check whether they were seeing the same shit, but he couldn’t pull his gaze off the mess unfolding before his eyes. Helicopters. Soldiers. Screaming people running away into the congealing traffic. And Riley smack in the middle of it, under siege in a shabby little diner with a ridiculous number of guns pointed in his direction. It made Misha’s head spin.

“Should’ve detained him,” Kolya observed laconically, patently unimpressed by the madness they were witnessing.

“What the
fuck
?” Misha repeated, ignoring him. “Are they fucking out of their fucking minds?”

It was the only explanation he could come up with under the circumstances. This was Riley over there. Misha had only caught a glimpse of him before a few badly aimed bullets from above had driven the man back into the questionable safety of the building, but he would’ve known Riley anywhere. The way he held his head; the smooth, economic way of moving. Misha was achingly familiar with every line and flex of Riley’s body; he didn’t need to see Riley’s face to recognize him even in the midst of chaos. He only hoped Riley’s bad knee would hold up under the stress.

Jesus Christ. This was
Riley
in there. Sweet-tempered, laid-back, always-trying-to-do-the-right-thing Riley. Surrounded by helicopters and sharpshooters, holed up in a shitty little diner in El Paso, Texas, with three professional assassins across the street watching and wondering what the fuck was going on.

“Maybe he got involved with terrorists or something?” Andrej offered weakly.

The notion was so moronic Misha finally managed to avert his gaze and look over at his friend, if only to glare at him.

“How the fuck would Riley get involved with terrorists?”

Andrej smiled crookedly, but without real amusement. “Well, there is a precedent. He did fall for a syndicate enforcer.”

“Point,” Kolya piped up from the backseat. He looked ridiculously rested despite his rumpled suit, sprawled out cat-smug as he took in the show. Tie askew, stubble on his cheeks, the smell of coffee and old sweat about him, but not a trace of fatigue in his cool, watchful eyes. Give the order and he’d be off like a shot, the original energizer bunny, hit man edition. It was almost as reassuring as it was aggravating.

“He didn’t know,” Misha snapped. He wanted to smack them both for implying Riley might have a thing for bad boys. Riley didn’t. He wouldn’t have let Misha anywhere near him if he’d had access to all of the footnotes. Anyway, their situation had been totally different. “He wouldn’t have had time to hook up with anybody anyway,” he added.

“Doesn’t take much time to hook up,” Andrej insisted, playing
advocatus diaboli
as he always did, but with a lot less delight than usual.

Misha snorted. “You know Riley” was all he had to say about that, and it shut Andrej up nice and fast, because, yes, Andrej did know Riley. He’d been there when Misha had fallen hard, had mocked endlessly when it had taken Misha—who’d never really had to work for it before—a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get in Riley’s pants, because Riley was so goddamn slow to trust. Irritatingly self-sufficient, unapologetically picky, and not capable of giving up as much of his iron control as it took to have sex with a stranger, much less a terrorist who’d put him on the military’s radar.

The chances of Riley making the same mistake twice, getting involved with anybody without double and triple checking their background, were slim to none. Hell, the chances of anybody going to the trouble to
convince
Riley to make the same mistake twice were practically nil. Riley was a civilian with no strategic value whatsoever except for his worth to Misha, and that had nothing at all to do with the military.

“Mistaken identity, then,” Andrej said, trying another explanation on for size. “Bad intel.”

“Alien possession,” Kolya suggested, and Misha didn’t have to glance in the rearview mirror to see his smirk, but he did it anyway. No defending Kolya and his annoying habits again, ever.

Andrej, bless his heart, didn’t acknowledge the joke. He merely frowned, mystified. “Fuck if I know how this happened.” He perked up for a moment. “Are you absolutely
sure
that’s Riley in there?”

“Yes,” Kolya and Misha said in unison, one offended by the implication he’d fucked up a simple (or even not-so-simple) surveillance and the other by the insinuation he might’ve mistaken any one cowboy for his cowboy.

Proving once again he had a healthy survival instinct, Andrej backpedaled hastily, then changed the subject. “Okay, it’s him. Question is, what do we do now?”

And then they were staring at Misha, both of them, with matching expectant looks on their faces. A pair of Rottweilers waiting for orders. Only Misha needed more than two attack dogs; he needed a whole pack. They were outnumbered and outgunned, no reinforcements available, and he couldn’t have called them in, anyway, because there was simply no way to get them there in time or to justify taking on what looked like a platoon of legitimate US troops. His father would kill him, and rightly so.

What could they do?

Nothing
, Misha thought, and his belly cramped a little with a queasy feeling of helplessness. Right now, they could do jack shit. Their only option was to sit on their asses and wait for an opportunity to present itself.

For the moment, Riley was on his own.

“
B
ITCHIN
’
body armor,” Sergeant Stokes observed as he lowered his rifle and watched the cowboy hightail it back into the diner.

Young silently agreed. Watching those high-velocity projectiles just ping off like pebbles made it abundantly clear Leandra Butler had a point about the possible benefits of catching the fugitive extraterrestrial alive. The force of impact alone should’ve been enough to slam the man to the ground, yet he’d barely staggered under the onslaught. Soldiers protected by this armor wouldn’t have to worry about much, and the metal clearly didn’t restrict the wearer’s movements. Hell, the cowboy hadn’t even lost his hat. If Young hadn’t had all the information he did have… damn, he would’ve been all over this.

As it was, Young simply was grateful the bullets had distracted the alien and chased it away from the little girl before it could jump hosts and turn this op into a complete disaster. Bad enough the kid had been caught in the crossfire; the last thing they would’ve needed was for her to end up possessed by a hostile alien that had already hacked one man to death and undoubtedly killed a few others before that and maybe since. Talk about a nightmare scenario.

“Want me to see if I can blow off his head next time he pops up, sir?”

Stokes was still watching the diner through the scope of his rifle and sounding unconcerned by the lack of lasting impact his shots had made. Apparently, he hadn’t realized armor this good hadn’t been invented yet.

It might’ve been an interesting experiment to see if a sniper could take the alien by surprise, hit it before it could shield its host, but their current position made accurate shooting almost impossible, and seeing as the place was crawling with civilians, stray shots and ricochets would do more damage than good. If the creature tried to sally out, they’d have to take potshots at it, anyway, but Young preferred to keep the situation contained if at all possible. So far, his plan had worked; the alien and its host were separated from the crowd and cornered in an enclosed space. Bravo team was making noise in the back to keep it from slipping out that way and the lookouts in the helicopters were watching the roof, just in case. The alien was exactly where it was supposed to be.

“No,” he told Stokes, snatching up the rope and clipping into the rappel device with the locking karabiner. “Stay here and stand by.”

“Yes, sir,” Stokes confirmed, eyes front and fingers steady on the rifle. His spotter glanced up at the general and gave him a nod as well.

Satisfied that his primary sniper team had things well in hand, Young pushed off over the edge and slid down to the parking lot smoothly, years of training and experience making it look like rappelling down from a helicopter was something he did every day. There was a new measure of respect in the eyes of the squad leader when he approached the general to brief him on the situation on the ground, but no real surprise. Young’s reputation tended to precede him.

Good news was that crowd control was proving to be relatively easy even though traffic had all but stopped, with the rubberneckers getting their kicks and people milling closer to get a better look at the action. For the most part the spectators kept their distance, at least for the time being. They were taking pictures and filming, but the troops were all wearing balaclavas and neither the police nor the press had arrived yet, so Young wasn’t too worried about it at the moment. Good news number two was the confirmation that the diner was indeed empty. Nobody in there but the still unidentified cowboy and his alien abductor. The comic book store to the left of Dotty’s Diner hadn’t been opened yet, so no civilians there. The hair and nail studio to the right had been cleared out. Staff and customers were huddled behind a big red truck at the edge of the parking lot, pointing and gawking while struggling to keep their hairdos out of the wind and grit kicked up by the rotor blades.

Bad news was that even close-range radio reception was shitty and the growing heat in the kitchen area made it difficult to get accurate thermal readings, which meant they hadn’t been able to precisely pinpoint the host’s position yet. Also, according to their medic, the little girl they’d saved had apparently been injured by a ricochet, not a blade. The military’s cover story had better be good, because the press would be all over this… and God knew there were going to be enough YouTube videos of it to make the public relations department hop even without the added professional news coverage. Young could already see the headlines.
Friendly Fire: Military Maims Preschooler! Child Shot by US Troops on American Soil!
And beneath, of course, a picture of the munchkin with blood on her pretty dress. She was a cutie too. The president wasn’t going to like this. Nick Young sure didn’t.

He peered through the dust and the dirt that clouded the air, tried to see through the glass front into the diner, maybe catch a glimpse of the man trapped within. Part of him wanted to negotiate, thought he should at least
try
, because the press would be right about one thing: this
was
American soil; the people involved were American citizens. He knew the cowboy hadn’t asked to be overpowered by the creature, or armor system, or whatever it was. If the man was still awake in there, if there was a chance Young could convince the entity to come quietly… but there was no safe way to approach the host and little chance of surrender. Butler was right; they’d fucked that up when they’d fired the first shot.