Interrupt (49 page)

The men from the bunker were almost on top of them. All of the Neanderthals turned slightly. “Bugle!” Drew shouted as he lunged for his pistol.

Roell spun back to confront him, swinging a wooden baseball bat in a crushing overhand. At the same time, behind the Neanderthals, the drizzle erupted with yelling soldiers and rifle shots.

Drew’s feet tangled with Emily’s legs as he slapped his fingers onto the pistol. He rolled away with it, knocking her downhill. His palm found the weapon’s textured metal grip.

Roell smashed his club into Drew’s elbow. Impact snapped the joint and sent a wave of agony through his chest. His numb hand released the Glock. Then another hunter loomed above him, a larger adult carrying a broken flagpole.

This is it,
Drew thought, rising a few inches. The feeble movement toward the larger man was the last thing he could do to protect Emily. She might escape while they killed him.

A bullet punched through the man’s head, shoving his body into Roell. The cold rain turned hot. Drew’s eyes were seared by the man’s blood. He couldn’t spare a hand to wipe his face. He wrenched himself onto his knees, lifting the Glock with his good hand.

The Neanderthal tribe had divided. Most of them charged the soldiers on the road above, but there was a third hunter who’d rushed Drew along with Roell and the larger man.

There were always three. Drew was already looking for him. He slowed the man with a wild shot, opening a superficial wound on the man’s hip. The man swung a pipe at Drew’s skull, but he was off balance. Drew dropped the man with two rounds in the belly. The pipe clanked into the ground.

On the hillside, P.J.’s hunters ducked through the brush and rock, sifting toward Bugle. Drew spotted his friend’s tall figure among the gunmen. Several hunters lay dead. Bugle’s squad had secured the high ground that the Neanderthals had wanted for themselves. Half a dozen M4s blazed from the roadside as Bugle’s squad leaned into the slope, shooting down at the tribe.

Some of the hunters were very close. Drew saw them where Bugle’s squad could not, hiding against every scrap of rock. The Neanderthals’ grasp of timing and patterns had led them through the soldiers’ few blind spots.

Drew couldn’t help. On one side of him was Roell. Behind him was Emily. The three of them were momentarily forgotten in the larger fight.

Roell stood up, but it was an awkward motion. He’d been wounded in the burst of rifle fire that killed his companion. Coursing with rainwater, his face had a gruesome white tinge. An exit wound gaped in the middle of his chest.

Drew retreated to Emily. His right arm throbbed uselessly. If he was going to grab her, he needed to holster his weapon—

Roell lurched as he attempted to lift his club, then fell. Even the Neanderthal super endurance had failed him.

Drew tucked his pistol into his belt and caught Emily.

Seconds later, more Neanderthal hunters ambushed Bugle’s squad from behind. Drew saw a small horde collide with the soldiers on the edge of the road, led by a familiar shape.

Marcus.

“Contact left!” a man shouted as the regular volleys of gunfire quit. There was a larger fusillade as Bugle’s squad let go with everything they had, and yet some of the M4s never rejoined the rest. Marcus’s attack eliminated a few soldiers. Then the rest were overrun.

Bugle’s squad disappeared from the roadside, falling back.

It was the opening P.J. needed. His hunters leapt up the slope, sprinting to reinforce Marcus’s group.

How many of Bugle’s squad were left? Eight of them? Less?

In desperation, Drew yanked viciously on Emily’s arm, needing to control her. “Run!” he shouted, driving her with his fury and his pain.

The fence surrounding the base was twelve feet high and topped with barbed wire. Drew might have been able to climb it with one hand, but not without letting her go.

He jogged four hundred yards to the nearest gate, wrestling Emily with each step. She didn’t like the wire or the buildings inside. She knew the base was man-made, and even without her intelligence she was a stubborn little sparkplug.

He worried about Bugle. He wondered if P.J. was alive. Minutes ago, the battle on the mountain had ended. Drew didn’t think Bugle’s squad had been wiped out. They’d fought their way back into the tunnel. The gunfire had petered out, but someone continued to take sporadic shots. Shouldn’t there have been more weapons in play?

Drew wondered if some of the Neanderthals had abandoned the fight at the tunnel entrance and were roving for survivors like himself. Their instincts were fantastic. Marcus had swiftly found his kin, perhaps meeting a trio of scouts from P.J.’s tribe. Then he’d guided them like a spear into Bugle’s flank.

“Get down,” Drew said, bending Emily’s wrist until she fell to her knees. His fingers had squeezed bruises into her skin.

Left-handed, it took him three shots to break the lock on the gate. Even if the Neanderthals had stayed by the bunker, the noise would be all they needed to locate him.

He couldn’t hold Emily and close the gate again, much less tie the chain into a knot.

“Move,” he said.

Maybe the two of them could come back with a new lock once she was wearing M-string. But then what?

They crossed the field where he’d buried Julie. Neither the bunker nor the mountainside had any soft ground, so they’d used this corner of the base. Six graves lay beside her. A lot of good people had given their lives delivering the civilian experts and supplies to the bunker, and Drew guessed at least twenty more had died today.

“We’re almost there,” he said gently.

Emily seemed to notice his change in tone. Her blue eyes flickered, almost meeting his gaze.

Hangar Twelve was secured like the gate. Drew spent two more rounds destroying the lock. His pistol was almost empty. Inside, the Osprey was a welcome sight. In some ways, the aircraft felt like home, but there was no way they could hide in it until the fight was over.

Pain stitched through Emily’s head. “Oooh,” she said, squinting at the interior of the plane. She was sitting down. Drew held her, cradling her in his lap as she suffered through vertigo and nausea. She hated for him to see her retching, but she was glad for his hand on her hip. The gesture wasn’t brotherly. It was intimate and possessive.

“Try to breathe,” he said.

“How long were we outside?”

“Thirty minutes. Longer.”

A neat mesh cap covered her head. Drew had placed his own armor on her, using a flight helmet to secure a roughly cut sheet of M-string
on himself. Tasers and a submachine gun sat beside them on the flight deck.

He told her about Bugle, P.J., and Marcus. “I don’t know if any of them are alive,” he said.

Emily closed her eyes, searching for every last reserve of strength. “Let me put some kind of a brace on your arm before we go back outside,” she said, and Drew smiled sadly.

“I love you,” he said.

“Don’t joke about it.”

“I’m not joking. I love you.”

Emily seized his good hand. She was filthy, hurt, and utterly wrung out, and yet the fire curling through her heart was worth it. She glanced at the paired rings on her finger. Maybe it was time to remove them at last.

“I love you, too,” she said.

They strode back through the gate like a pair of killers, jangling with equipment and weaponry. Emily wore an Army jacket that was too big for her. Inside it, she shivered with cold and adrenaline. She carried the M249 submachine gun. Drew had an M4 slung from his shoulder with his good hand steadying its grip. Both of them wore sidearms and Tasers. Her backpack and his belt held extra stun guns.

Emily also carried a walkie-talkie. “Seven Four, this is Romeo One,” she said. “Seven Four, do you copy?”

Her transmissions were almost certainly futile. Drew had tried to contact the bunker from inside the Osprey, using the aircraft’s much stronger radio. Even at a distance of a mile, the pulse was too strong, but they might catch a break if the interference let up for a few seconds.

“Seven Four, this is Romeo One,” she said.

Drew had told her they’d run into Beale AFB through the same gate, which was why the lock was shot out. It was a secondary entrance
to the base. The road was only a lane-and-a-half wide, and there was less open space on either side of the asphalt than they would have liked. A brown swamp covered the earth. Dead brown trees and dead brown brush rose from the water, partly concealing their view of the mountain.

The wind and the rain rushed at their backs as they edged forward together. All around them, branches rubbed and scratched. Raindrops whispered in the swamp.

“Stop here,” Drew said.

Emily nodded. She’d walked through the gate for P.J. Drew’s motives were different, and she accepted that he was right. If the two of them had any expectation of not being jailed or banished, they needed to bring Marcus to justice. But she’d walked through the gate for P.J.

“Seven Four, Seven Four,” she said.

She nearly dropped the ’talkie when it answered: “Who is this?”

“Bugle?” Her feelings for him were especially confused, but she let him hear her joy. “You’re okay!”

His voice was rigid. “Are you alone?”

“No.” Emily held the ’talkie to Drew, who said, “Not so loud.” He never took his eyes off the swamp. She lowered the volume. He said, “This is ROMEO Agent Andrew J. Haldane, authorization code Quebec Hotel Four Golf Niner Four.”

“It’s too late for that,” Bugle said as the ’talkie squealed with white noise.

This must be so hard for him,
Emily thought.
For both of them.
She turned to watch the trees and mud.

“I have Priority One targets outside,” Drew said.

No reply.

“Bugle, do you copy? Marcus Wolsinger is outside. I repeat, Marcus Wolsinger is outside and he killed most of our people in the bunker!”

No reply.

Long minutes passed as Emily called again and again. At one point, she was certain she heard a blip of a voice through the static.

The longer they waited, the more her shaking increased. She held her M249 in both hands, steadying the weapon against her ribs, but she couldn’t let go of the ’talkie and it clattered against the weapon’s dark steel. She didn’t think she could have walked more if Drew had wanted to march farther from the gate.

“The Neanderthals will come from two sides,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Keep your eyes moving. Don’t assume it’s safe behind us. They might climb over the fence anywhere in the base.”

“Yes.”

“Remember I love you.”

“Yes.” Even that answer was rote. Her stomach churned, weakening her. The two of them were bait. Standing in the open should bring a trio of hunters for sure.

Drew wanted the entire tribe. “Nim!” he bellowed. “Niiiiim!”

“Someone moved on the hill,” Emily said immediately.

“I see four people,” Drew agreed. “Five. Six.”

Emily slipped the walkie-talkie into her pocket and lifted a pair of binoculars. “There’s Marcus,” she said.

“Good.”

“He looks… more verbal than anyone else I’ve seen. He’s giving orders.” Emily couldn’t make out his face, but his body language was confident. He gestured and the other men moved like puppets, dividing into two groups. Marcus led the smaller bunch to one side.

Emily exchanged her binoculars for the walkie-talkie again. “Bugle, are you there?” she asked. “Bugle!”

It issued only static in her hand.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

I
f I say so, run for the plane,” Drew said as six men hurried through trees in front of them.

Emily pointed. “There’s P.J.!”

The boy lingered behind a screen of two hunters, near enough to create a trio, yet far enough behind that his small, ruined body wasn’t a weakness for an enemy to exploit.

“Please try not to kill him,” she said. “Can you shoot his legs?”

He might die anyway,
Drew thought. In the movies, people blasted someone in the thigh or the foot to bring them down. In reality, a leg was packed with arteries. The feet were 80 percent bone. If he shot P.J. in the thigh, the boy could die. If he shot him in the ankle or the foot—if P.J. lived—he would have a bad limp to go with his crippled arm.