Gun Metal Heart (37 page)

“You … wanna not … do that again,” she gasped, flexing her left arm. In stopping her fall, she'd jolted her rotator cuff.

Daria was surprised by the proximity of the blonde's voice. They were almost atop each other. She said. “Can you call them off?”

“Can I what?”

“The doctor's bag.” Daria levered herself to her knees. “Dr. Incantada's bag. Call off the drones.”

Viorica laughed. “Why should I?”

Daria rose to her haunches. Blood oozed from the long splinters in her shoulder. “You should call them off because there was only one explosion from Parliament. The hawks with the rockets stopped hunting. And if they can't get me with bullets…”

She waited.

In the swirl of dust and gloom, Viorica whispered.

“Oh, shit.”

Outside, another Hotspur glided past the three round openings, casting a rolling shadow from the ground floor floodlights.

Would the shadow, the threat of the rocket-hawks, distract Viorica? One way to find out.

Daria vaulted over the chalkboard, scrambling like mad. She spotted the blonde only a few feet away, standing on the precipice of a whacking great hole, almost two meters wide. The pebbled leather doctor's bag sat atop an overturned water heater.

Daria landed on the far side of the round hole, reached for hanging wires, and swung out over the emptiness. Her fist connected with Viorica's mouth.

The blonde spun as well as she could, one foot on a floor support, one leg outstretched, and the sole of her stolen sneaker on the jagged end of a copper pipe. Blood spurted from a split lip.

Daria swung on the overhead wires, drawing closer, fist flying.

Viorica ducked, threw a sharp elbow into the glistening blood seeping from Daria's bare right shoulder. Daria grunted. Hanging by one arm, she swung back to the far side of the six-foot hole.

Viorica grabbed another section of the overhead wires—they hung like a giant letter W—and swung toward the middle of the hole. She gambled that the wires would hold both their weight. She made a blade of the large, middle knuckles of her right hand, fingers tightly together, fingertips curled in toward her palm, and drove the knuckles into her enemy's side.

Daria felt a rib crack.

They swung over the precipice, both finding new footholds. If they had been at twelve and six o'clock before, now they were at three and nine.

They dangled, each from one arm, and eyed each other, looking for weakness. Both gasped.

Viorica swung out, kicking, going for Daria's gut. She missed, but by inches. Daria floated across the void, too, her elbow slamming into Viorica's ribs. They spun, hanging by one fist each, and scrabbled again for new footholds.

They stood, panting, feet finding precious little purchase, on separate sides of the vaguely round missile hole in the floor. They'd both gone halfway around the ominous hole.

They eyed each other on the far side of the gap.

Viorica wiped blood from her lip with the back of her free hand. “Suppose it ends here.”

“Suppose so.” Daria struggled not to inhale too deeply, her newly broken rib screaming at her. She let go of the overhead wires, half turning, both hands scrambling for purchase amid the overturned desks and chairs and trash bins.

Viorica took a gamble: she relinquished her overhead handhold, which provided reach and maneuverability. And she averted her eyes from the enemy. In a fight, doing that begs for defeat. But she reckoned the payoff was worth it. She hiked up her skirt and yanked at the Velcro holding together a black Lycra garter. Tucked into the band was an Italian switchblade stiletto with a hammered-steel blade and oxblood-red handle.

She grinned at Daria. “Round Two?”

Daria looked up from across the abyss.

And grinned, too. Her wolfish smile exposed her canines. She showed her left hand. It held the last of her meth-bombs. She shook the plastic bottle vigorously.

“You can't kill me with a bomb, Punkin. Not this close. You'll kill us both.”

“Might,” Daria shifted her weight. She revealed Gabriella Incantada's leather bag. It was open, in her other hand.

“Don't!” Viorica shouted.

Daria felt the plastic water bottle expand a bit. She stuffed it in the doctor's bag, snapped the bag shut, and hurled it back across the abyss.

In midair, the bag stretched comically, as round as a beach ball, and fire glowed from beneath the handle and the double straps. Streamers of fire began to emerge from seams. Viorica tried to spike it out of the air, but some of the meth clipped her forearms, fire spreading. She screamed.

Outside the Chinese embassy, in the warm, still air of Belgrade, the drones were robbed of their brains.

The Mercutio drones hovered in midair, awaiting instructions. They could stay like that for another ninety minutes, give or take. Then they would simply fall to earth.

The Hotspur drones still swooped. But now, blind and deaf. They smashed mindlessly into the Chinese embassy.

Daria leaped feetfirst into the hole in the floor. She could not see how far down it went.

Above her, the pyrophoric missiles housed inside the hawks detonated. A firestorm engulfed the fourth floor.

 

Forty-Nine

Chaos held the reins, dragging the Belgrade first responders and Serbian military and intelligence forces along for the ride.

The madness up and down Avenue Kralja Milana left civilian, municipal, and federal officials stumbling over each other. The main north-south thoroughfare became a parking lot, smoke roiling from the damaged Parliament building on the left; the upper floors of the long-abandoned Chinese embassy pancaking in on themselves to the right; and the city's political elite fleeing the U.S. ambassador's residence back on the left.

It didn't help that a large contingent of the nation's infamous and greatly hated White Scorpion gang had shown up at the Parliament building. They had been tipped off in advance that something would be happening. Some street fighting broke out with police.
Skorpjo
was there to stir up trouble. As if trouble needed any help.

Amid the police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and military vehicles parked randomly up and down the avenue, the biggest and baddest beast was a camouflaged Vystrel two-axel tank that roared up from the south, roof hatch open, a soldier in the black fatigues and black beret of Special Forces riding beside the roof-mounted, rotating weapons platform.

The Vystrel—a BPM-97 armored personnel carrier designed by the Russians—is a thundering leviathan: ten tons of armored hull, 240 horses, and large enough for a crew of twelve. This particular vehicle included a turret fitted with a 30 mm cannon and automatic grenade launchers. Every other responder with a lick of sense got out of its way that night.

The war wagon ground its way up Kralja Milana and stopped first in front of the U.S. embassy. The soldier who rode up above half emerged through the open roof hatch and deftly hopped down. The smoked, bulletproof glass of the armored personnel carrier obscured the remainder of the crew.

The soldier didn't walk, he stalked
:
shoulders straight and a little forward, chest out, arms straight, and never far from his low-slung belt holster. He was pale and blond. He wore a major's insignia. His hair was spiked with sweat and his athletic form was bulked up by a ballistic vest and a web belt. He exchanged IDs with police and U.S. Marines at the ambassador's resident.

Under armed guard, he took a handcuffed John Broom to the tank. Two U.S. Marines with a stretcher brought out a bandaged and unconscious Diego.

Captives in hand, the battle tank roared up the street to the gutted Chinese embassy.

Smoke curled out from the hulking ruin. Everything above the third floor was either crumbling or in flames. Most of the devastation was internal, so it wouldn't be until the light of morning that officials realized the damage there was far greater than that of the Parliament building.

The Vystrel chewed up tarmac, coming to a halt before the former embassy. A Belgrade police officer wisely rolled his cruiser back to let the military vehicle through. The driver whacked the partially open main gate of the security fence, then rumbled through.

Once on the grounds the side doors of the tank sprang open and two more soldiers, one a woman, joined the lead soldier with the major's stripes. The woman had roughly chopped black hair and moved as if she'd been born in combat armor. A dark-skinned man, as small and as compact as a bullet, dashed to the gate, machine gun in both hands, to keep out the police and fire trucks. The Special Forces soldiers' cheeks were blackened by angry slashes of charcoal, à la American football.

The taller man and the woman began a methodical search of the grounds, working quickly and concisely. They spoke little. They were disciplined and, more importantly, had worked together often enough to interpret each other's movements and silence. They moved like Army ants: all purpose, no distractions.

They found a dead man behind a tireless Russian truck with a four-foot slash across his face and chest. He had bled out. They found another man in a silver van with burned-out electronics. The inside stank, a nasty funk of melted plastic. He'd died of a leg wound.

They approached the rapidly disintegrating Chinese embassy. The soldiers could see that the building was nearing imminent collapse.

They reached a wide, vertical gap in the wall, acrid smoke billowing from within.

A form stepped out.

The soldiers drew closer, machine guns raised.

It was a woman. She stood with her feet planted far apart for balance. She held something in both hands. The major moved forward and peered into the greasy bank of smoke.

The woman held twin power cables.

“English?” Her voice rasped, smoke damaged. “French?”

The major stepped forward and nodded. “English.”

“I've disconnected the building's main generator. It won't explode. If I reconnect the power … well, then we shall see.”

The soldiers apparently understood. Both slung their weapons, hands raised, palms up.

Daria stepped out of the smoke. Blood soaked the left side of her face and her right shoulder. She was sooty and bruised. She had kohl-black eyes.

“Weapons down. I need your vehicle.”

The male and female soldiers exchanged looks.

“Now!” Daria brought the two power cables within an inch of each other.

The major turned to look at the massive tank, then back at Daria. He shrugged.

And when he spoke, it was with an American southern drawl.

“That old thing? Name your price, darlin'.”

The woman soldier rolled her eyes. She sounded British. “Pay him no mind, love. The Viking sent us.”

*   *   *

Daria dropped the two power cables. They turned out to be random bits of heavy-duty wiring connected to nothing.

The “soldiers” all but carried her to the stolen armored personnel carrier. The darker man dashed to the cab and the engine roared to life.

Daria found John Broom sitting inside, shirt and arms brown with dried blood.

Diego lay on a gurney, bandaged, sedated, and breathing.

The man up front revved the engine and hit the vehicle's red and blue flashers that were embedded behind a steel grille.

John hugged Daria. She hissed in pain.

“Sorry!” He pulled back, studied her bloody temple, her ripped shoulder. She was gasping, eyes dilated, swaying as the ten-ton Russian rhino smashed its way out of the embassy grounds and back onto the avenue.

Daria eased herself down, sitting on Diego's gurney. John supported her, and she let him. She had tucked a bundle of black cloth into her belt, into the indentation before her hip. John noticed but didn't ask.

Daria peered around the darkened interior, lit by red combat lights. “My.”

She recognized the soldiers now. They appeared to be about a decade older than she'd initially thought. She'd met them less than a block away. The blond man with major's insignia no longer looked like a surfer. The woman had lost her long dishwater dreadlocks. The dark-skinned man driving the Russian carrier like a race-course professional no longer appeared aboriginal.

They'd lost their Australian accents, too.

“The sunglasses,” Daria said, and now, away from the rumble of the dying embassy, they could tell she was slurring her words. “The ones you gave me on the street. Trackers?”

The woman removed her black beret and, with it, the poorly cut black wig. Strawberry blond hair was pinned in tight to her skull. “Sorry about that. Kitschy, I know.”

The blond man smiled, and it immediately changed the contours of his face. He was rakishly handsome behind the grit and sweat. “The captain's turned off the seat belt sign. You're free to move about the tank.”

He sounded like he came from the deep American South. He studied Daria. “You doing okay, sugar?”

Daria shrugged, although that, alone, caused blinding pain.

“You saw Viorica?”

Daria leaned against John. “She was inside. Might've made it. Dunno. Didn't see her die.”

John felt her body tremble as her wounds began to take their toll. He thought she sounded concussed. He said, “Look, guys. It's not that we're not grateful. But do you mind telling me how we're getting out of Serbia?”

The British woman gave him a crooked smile. She unpinned her strawberry locks and shook them free. “Never fear. Ever hear of the Black Harts?”

John said, “Nope.”

The man winked. “Which is as it should be. Anyway, we'll get y'all out. And all for a fairly reasonable fee.”

Daria leaned back against John. Around her, the red interior lights faded and the voices grew tinny. She felt herself melt against John's side.

She said, “Tell Viking … I'm good for it…”

And blacked out.

 

Fifty

A great many things occurred next.