Don't Let Go (16 page)

“Ugh!” Peter exclaimed, covering his nose and mouth with his hand. “What the hell is that stuff?”

“Phase two,” Loki said, his eyes alight. “Nerve gas. Wow. I wasn’t a hundred percent certain that would work.”

“Nerve gas?” Peter’s voice shot up an octave. “You know they’ve got masks, right?”

“Yeah, but no oxygen tanks,” Loki said with a wicked grin. “It’ll definitely slow them down.”

“We have to get going,” Noa prodded. Loki seemed far too interested in witnessing the effects of his booby traps firsthand. Their escape window was closing; Pike’s men were nothing if not highly trained and resourceful. They were probably already fleeing the tunnels.

Plus, the gas was getting thicker; she was starting to feel light-headed.

“Best not to breathe it in,” Loki advised. Out of nowhere he produced a gas mask and slipped it on with practiced ease.

Peter yanked his T-shirt up over his face. “Don’t suppose you have two more of those?”

“You’ll be fine. Just . . . try not to breathe too much. Almost forgot.” Loki pulled a couple of handheld radios out of his pack. “Take these.”

“What for?” Peter demanded.

“In case we get separated,” Loki said with a frown.

“Thanks,” Noa said, taking one from him. It was strikingly similar to the radios her unit had used, she thought with a pang. Peter held his like it might bite him. She motioned for him to hang it from his belt. He rolled his eyes, but complied.

Loki inhaled deeply, then shut the laptop. He cast a longing look back down the corridor and said, “So long, Serenity.”

Noa awkwardly patted his shoulder, both to console him and to keep him focused on leaving. In her head, a familiar voice was urging,
Go go go. . . .

“This place was awesome,” Peter said. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Me too,” Loki said thickly. He eased the door open until there was a wide enough gap to squeeze through. Keeping one hand on the door to prop it open, Loki waved for her to follow. Noa drew a deep breath and slipped under his arm.

He’d been telling the truth: A thick mesh of brambles extended like a cage around the door; sunlight sifted through the branches that arced over the exit. Noa pulled on her sunglasses, wincing against the glare.

There was a narrow three-foot-wide clearing directly in front; as Peter joined them, they were forced to crowd together. Loki closed the door, then hit some buttons on a keypad beside it. A hiss, followed by the sound of a latch engaging.

For better or worse, they were out of the silo.

Noa maneuvered carefully to her knees and peered beneath the branches. A foot-high path ran under the bush, the dirt scuffed like something had been dragged across it.

“That’s it,” Loki said in a low voice. “I keep it clear.”

“You fit through there?” Peter said dubiously.

“Watch and learn, kid.” Loki dropped to his belly and started wriggling through the crawl space.

“Man,” Peter muttered, tightening the straps on his pack. “This guy never stops surprising me.”

“Hey!” Loki hissed from the other side of the hedge. “You coming or what?”

“Be right there,” Noa muttered. Lowering herself to the ground, she commando crawled forward, inch by inch. Stray branches snarled in her hair and dragged along her spine and legs. She gritted her teeth and kept moving forward. When she got close, Loki reached out a hand and grabbed her wrist, hauling her out the rest of the way.

“Thanks,” she gasped, winded.

“No problem.” Loki grunted. “Vallas is on his own, though.”

A minute and a lot of stifled curses later, Peter joined them. “Not a huge fan of the bug-out plan so far,” he muttered.

“It’s working perfectly.” Loki had that crazy gleam in his eyes again.

“What next?” Noa asked. The field still looked clear: a few hundred yards of waving brown grass, dead-ending in aspen trees.

“I got a truck five hundred yards south,” Loki murmured. “Covered with a camo tarp.”

“Great,” she said, relieved. The run through the tunnels had sapped her energy, and she definitely wasn’t up for a long hike.

“What are we waiting for?” Peter urged. “Let’s go!”

“There’s one rule,” Loki said ominously, holding up a finger. “Put your feet exactly where I do. Got it?”

“Why—”

“We got it,” Noa said, throwing Peter a look. Loki had gotten them this far. Trusting him was their best bet for survival.

Loki broke into a lope across the field. Noa kept pace, trying to stay within the tracks he left in the grass.

Peter mumbled something about crazy bastards, but when she checked he was right behind her, following the exact same path. Her legs felt leaden, so heavy she almost expected them to sink into the earth. She bit her lip, trying to tap into a hidden energy reserve, but it was no use; her body refused to respond.

“It would be better,” Peter huffed practically in her ear, “if we could move a little faster.”

“I’m trying!” she insisted.

A shout from behind them: Noa whipped her head around.

A mercenary loomed at the crest of the hill, aiming a rifle at them.

“Stay together!” Loki hollered. “We’re almost there!”

“He’s going to shoot us!” Peter protested.

Loki charged ahead, carving a path through the grass like a bull plowing through tissue paper. “Moving target! Hard to hit!”

Peter prayed he was right as they tore headlong across the field. Gunfire whizzed past his ears. Peter instinctively tucked his head into his shoulders, as if that could possibly make a difference.

Loki was moving in an odd, zigzag pattern, with Noa right behind him. Peter struggled to follow in their tracks.

Angry shouting from the top of the hill. Peter focused on Noa’s back, her dark hair flying out behind her. Peter’s lungs strained, every breath made ragged by the hard drives slamming into his rib cage.

A bullet whistled past his ear. Peter was nearly tripping on Noa’s heels; her foot had no sooner vacated a space then he plunged into it.

The tree line was twenty feet ahead.

Ten.

Five.

More shots, closer together. There were probably more of Pike’s men firing from the top of the hill, but he didn’t dare check. Peter pictured himself shot full of holes, spouting blood like a leaky sieve. But somehow, the bullets kept missing.

A blast exploded straight ahead of him; Loki had stopped just inside the shelter of the trees and was firing the shotgun back up the hill. As Noa and Peter raced past, he called out, “The truck’s fifty yards dead ahead!”

Another whoop as he fired at the dark figures who swooped toward them like a flock of vengeful crows.

Pike’s men scattered, spreading out across the hillside.

“That’s right, you bastards!” Loki taunted, fumbling to reload the shotgun. “Come and get us!”

He unleashed another volley up the hill, then loped after them.

Peter wove through the trees. Noa was just ahead of him, more stumbling forward than running. He grabbed her elbow to help her along. She had to be in truly bad shape, because she didn’t protest.

“Is this the right way?” he called out.

Loki swept past them. “It’s right there!”

“I don’t see anything!” Noa gasped.

“There!” Loki pointed.

Following his finger, Peter saw a dark, huddled shape. As they pulled closer, it resolved itself into a dark-green pickup truck with camo netting draped over it.

Loki was already digging keys out of the wheel well. Peter dragged off the netting and tossed the packs into the truck bed, scrambling in after them.

“Drop the gun!”

Peter spun around so fast he nearly went sprawling across the packs.

A swarm of men emerged from the trees on all sides—five total.

A shot pinged off the side of the truck inches from his hands. Peter froze, riveted by the circle it had sheared through the metal.

“Drop the gun and stay where you are!” one of the men shouted. The group was still advancing slowly, inching forward from their position twenty feet away. They looked eerily alike in their black uniforms, with their faces concealed behind masks.

Noa was already in the passenger seat. Her face was grim, filled with defeat. Loki stood at the driver’s-side door, the shotgun dangling from his hands. With seeming nonchalance, he tossed the keys on the front seat.

“You’re on private property,” he bellowed. “Get the hell off my land!”

In spite of everything, Peter was impressed by his bravado. Not that it was any use. Peter breathed out hard, overwhelmed with frustration. They’d been so close, just one more minute and they might have made it. . . .

“I’m sorry,” Noa said in a low voice. “I slowed us down.”

“Not your fault,” Peter said.

“Shut up!” one of the men barked.

Four of the men had stopped where they were, establishing a wide perimeter. The other stepped forward cautiously, his gun aimed straight at Peter’s chest. “Under no circumstances is anyone to shoot the girl,” he said loudly. “She’s—”

An audible metal click, loud and discordant. Loki started to laugh deep in his chest.

“What was that?” the guy asked.

Loki whipped his head around to Peter; there was a wicked gleam in his eyes as he said, “Better take cover.”

“What? Hey—”

Loki hurled himself into the driver’s seat. The commandos were shouting for him to stop, but he’d vanished from sight, dragging Noa down with him. Through the window, Peter saw his lips form the word
bomb!

Peter dropped to the truck bed and covered his head with both hands.

BOOM!

The force of the explosion slammed Peter against the truck’s wheel well; the pickup rocked from the concussion. The guy who had been speaking shot straight up in the air like a rocket. Peter’s jaw gaped open as his body was tossed toward the trees like a rag doll. It landed in a spray of red ten feet away.

In books and movies, everything slowed down when a bomb went off; Peter had the opposite experience. Suddenly events were occurring at warp speed. The truck started with a roar. Peter slid around helplessly as it whipped in a circle, clipping low-hanging branches. There was screaming everywhere, but it sounded oddly hollow and far away, like it was coming at him through a long tube.

Peter kept his head down as the pickup screeched forward, gunshots pinging all around him as tree branches raced past overhead.

Loki was bent so low over the steering wheel, Noa couldn’t imagine how he could see anything. Not that it mattered; pierced by multiple bullets, the windshield had splintered into a dizzying array of cracks. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion—and what was up with
that
, anyway?

That’s why we had to stay in his tracks
, she realized. Loki must have set land mines along his escape route; it was exactly the sort of insane, paranoid thing he’d do. Sheer dumb luck must have kept Pike’s men from stepping on one of his booby traps as they came down the hill.

Loki murmured to himself as he steered, zigzagging around obstacles in the road that only he could see. Although “road” was putting it generously; it was really more of a glorified hiking trail. Fortunately, the truck had four-wheel drive; what it lacked in speed, it more than made up for in sheer tenaciousness.

The forest all around them teemed with armed men; every time they rounded a bend, a barrage of gunfire rained in from the trees. How many had Pike sent?

A lot
, Noa thought grimly. She just prayed there wasn’t a barricade blocking the end of this road.

She straightened up to check on Peter: He was spread-eagle in the truck bed, with his hands and feet braced against the sides. Seeing her, his eyes went wide and he shouted something, but her ears were still ringing too hard to discern it. He was covered in blood, but hopefully none of it belonged to him.

A bullet struck an inch from her head, and she dropped back down, curling into the passenger footwell. So much for not shooting at her; apparently some of them hadn’t gotten the memo. Although if they wanted to, they could probably turn the truck into Swiss cheese. So maybe they were just trying to disable the vehicle.

Which might be working. Smoke rose from the hood—had the engine been hit?

“Loki?” she ventured. “Where are we going?”

His eyes flitted to her. “Out.”

“I got that,” Noa said, trying to keep her voice calm. “But out where? Is the road close?”

“They came.” He wet his lips, then repeated, “They finally came. Gotta bug out.”

He seemed to be lost in his own private world. Hopefully he’d hold it together long enough to get them out of here.

A break in the trees up ahead—daylight. Noa bit her lip. This was it, the moment of truth.

A huge Humvee was parked across the road. Three armed men stood in front of it. As the truck lurched toward them, they raised their guns.

Noa hunched lower. There was a deep gully on the right side of the road. On the left, long grass that either concealed flat land, or another ditch.

She prayed for land. As they approached the Humvee, Loki swerved left. More bullets riddled the passenger side of the truck. “Hang on, Peter!” Noa screamed, even though she doubted he could hear her.

The truck dipped alarmingly, Noa’s heart plummeting with it.
No
, she thought.
No, no
—

But it abruptly bounced back up; she caught a glimpse of sky through the window, then the back wheels climbed out of the rut and the truck leveled out with a hard thump. The front tires bit into pavement, and Loki wrenched the wheel right again. The rear of the truck swung wide with a squeal of tires.

They were back on a real road.

Noa breathed out hard. Her lungs ached from the strain of holding her breath. It felt like a lifetime had passed since they fled the control room, but it had probably only been twenty minutes.

“Are they gone?” Peter yelled.

“Yes!” she yelled back.

His head popped up in the splintered rear window. In a voice slightly muffled by the remaining glass, he said, “Well, that totally sucked. You guys okay?”

Noa cut her eyes to Loki. He was hunkered over the wheel, eyes darting feverishly across the road. “We’re fine, I think. You?”