Hot Contract (20 page)

Whoever drove the brown car hadn't bothered
to lock the doors. Fallon put his grenade launcher in the back seat
before he sat down and broke the casing from the steering
column.

Corlis got in a minute later.

“Should have got coffee,” he said. “The cops
had a machine right next to the desk.”

“You turn it off?”

“I’m not trying to burn down a trailer full
of cops and innocent bystanders, babe.” He jammed the screwdriver
into the ignition slot.

Corlis looked out the window, her face a pale
blur in the night-darkened glass. She tried to work it out, to give
her fear a name. “It's time to call for backup. We can't do this on
our own. Percival Stalling is—”

“Yeah,” said Fallon, willing to label Jen's
brother anything from the Devil to an asshole to make his partner
happy. He wasn't about to get between Corlis and her emotions. They
were both damaged. Fallon pulled out and joined the flow of traffic
headed to the park. “Call after you eat. There are granola bars in
the glove box.”

“Chocolate chip?”

“I don’t know where you think we are. But
this ain’t no Wal-mart, the box says raisins.”

That snapped her out of it. “Raisins?”

Fallon reached over, grabbed the box and
dropped it in her lap. “Get something in your stomach. You're too
damned thin.”

****

Keegan pushed out from under a wind-flattened
tree and stood, looking out over the lava barren. “There’s a break
halfway to the front,” he said, helping Jen out from under a
low-hanging branch.

He didn’t let go. She didn’t want to let go,
either. How they'd managed to get where they were going was a
miracle. Their earlier run had been beyond stupid. Even if Keegan
didn’t, Jen knew better. This whole plain was littered with
hornitos and lava tubes. Without help, a fall through the fragile
surface of the lava into an underground conduit or one of the deep
holes left by the receding magma would more than likely kill
them.

The small break in the escarpment was eroded
to the point of being unstable, and neither of them wanted to risk
a jump. Keegan lowered her to the ground and followed, his boots
crunching down through the loose patina. He was hurting worse than
he said. The rings around his eyes stood out like bruises. She
caught him when he would have fallen, staggering back under his
weight. He gave her such a fake smile that she had to laugh,
despite her fears.

He brushed her lips with his, and Jen kissed
him back so hard he let out a grunt. “Keep doing that,” he said,
“and we’ll never get out of here. Now what?”

Long shadows slanted across the desolate
landscape like blackened fingers. They had to get back to a point
where they could strike out toward the trail.

“We look for a way around,” she said. “It’d
help if we could lose a little height, maybe follow a crevice or
something. I don’t know if anyone will come back down the road, but
we’re really obvious.”

Keegan gestured to a fracture in the smooth
lava. “What about that?”

Jen tapped the ground with her sandal and
cocked her head over, listening. “It looks solid enough, but if you
step on something and it starts to crack, move fast.”

Keegan dropped out of sight, and when his
voice came again it sounded like he was at the bottom of a well.
“It feels solid.”

His voice didn’t echo.

Jen slid down into the space beside him,
hands brushing at the sides. The flow that had created the hollowed
out half-tube wasn’t as old as the eruption that had splintered up
around the escarpment. Like two cake layers, the more recent flow
had settled on top.

“...he’s got a sat-phone.”

Jen jumped, hand fisted over her mouth. She
knew her eyes were wide, but the look Keegan gave her told her that
she’d just lost her color, too.

“God,” she whispered.

Keegan shook his head, putting his hand over
her mouth when it looked like her own wasn’t going to be enough.
“Tell me,” he breathed over her ear, barely moving his lips.

“Conduit,” she mouthed, horrified she was
being too loud, and scared Keegan wouldn’t hear her.

“The heiau?”

She nodded.

“...anyone see where he went,” called a voice
she recognized as her cousin, Dave.

“It’s that security guard. The blond
guy.”

“Shit, I saw him at the luau. Watch it, man!
He’s going for the fuses.”

A man shouted. “...shoot him, shoot him!”

Keegan froze, every muscle in his body tight.
“C-4,” he breathed. “Oh, Jesus.” And Deacon was going after it.

“C-4?”

“Plastic bonded explosives, composition four.
I saw the boxes—”

Her mind was going a mile a minute.
“Explosives?”

Boxes of...explosives? Her aunt was crazy,
but Jen had simply assumed she was one of those fire and magic
people, waiting for Pele to come out of Her crater and blow the
desecrators away. But what if Aunt Kate had been playing them,
waiting for her chance to blow the rift? There was always the
chance that a well-placed charge would trigger enough of a reaction
to send the entire side of Mauna Loa sliding down into the sea.
More likely that it would divert the current eruption into a new
channel. The Project was down-slope. And no one, least of all Kate,
knew enough about the complex interconnections present in the magma
chamber to guess at the impact of a violent explosion on the
fragile rift-zone. The real probability genius had been Terri.

Oh, God. Terri. Terri had been involved with
the Aina. What had she seen beneath the heiau to make it worth
Kate’s while? And why had the Aina killed her with their plans so
close to completion?

Jen came back to herself to find Keegan
staring into her eyes. He knew, even without her saying anything.
In his own way he was as much of an expert as Terri.

“This isn’t one of my scenarios,” she
breathed. “I could give you some tech-jargon, but no hard answers.
There are too many variables. If you could get the charge to blow
down like this,” she cupped her hands like an upside down bowl,
“maybe something would happen.”

“The Project is downhill,” he whispered.

She nodded, throat tight. The odds weren’t
good. Terri had known something and hundreds of people were going
to die because Jen hadn’t seen the changes in her friend.

The voices got louder. “He’s down,” yelled
Dave. “I got him in the leg.”

“Careful man, look for a gun.”

“The rangers start their rounds in an hour.
We don’t have time for this shit.”

“Where’s Kuipo?” asked the second voice.

“She’ll be here.”

“Oh man, Dave. He’s bleeding.”

“No difference. He’s gonna die anyway.
Throw’em in the vent.”

“They’re talking about Deacon,” said Jen,
charging out of the hole.

Keegan caught her before she could go running
off. “He knew the risks.”

“Terri was his fiancée. How can you just walk
away?”

“Just watch me. I can walk away from
anything.”

“If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to live
with myself.”

In his world, women died all the time and the
horror of that happening to Jen was enough to immobilize him.
Shit—caring made you weak. He had to get his head out of his ass
and get his priorities straight. Protect her, save Connor. As far
as he was concerned, Deacon was already dead. “You’re willing to
trade his life for the lives of all the people on your Project? He
died the minute he walked back in there.”

“I won’t abandon him. We can save Deacon and
stop the Aina—”

“Jesus! This ain't no damned movie. I don't
have some kind of special gun or backup waiting off-stage. If you
die, you're fucking dead and if I die, you'll die soon after.” He
grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me!”

“Damn it, Keegan!” She stared into his eyes,
hands locked on his wrists. “Help me,” she whispered. "Please do
something.”

Keegan crouched just inside the outer curtain
wall. He’d talked Jen into staying behind but he knew she was on
the other side of the parking lot, waiting for a chance to rush in
and fix things. Terri had personally, and with malice, screwed
everyone in sight and Jen in particular. Now Jen was dealing with
the consequences by trying to protect the one friend she had left.
Jesus, he felt sorry for Deacon. Just looking at the big sloppy
crescents where the former CIA operative had fought back told
Keegan that he was fighting not just the Aina, but time.

Deacon had rarely interacted with SOSCOM,
Special Operations Support Command. He’d specialized in South
America, and done work on the Shining Path along with Fallon’s old
group, the 7th SFG. The Project must have looked easy after field
work. It’d have been easier still if he’d just backed away, but
love made people do strange things, and Keegan wasn’t about to
judge him. Deacon was up shit creek without a paddle, and Keegan
was right there behind him. He padded across the crushed coral,
careful to keep to the hard packed edges. There were fourteen boxes
of C-4 and a flat case that might hold fuses perched on the table
next to the water coolers. If Jen was right and Terri had been
working with the Aina, the terrorists knew what they were doing.
The nearby hill wasn’t just a vantage point. It was high
ground.

He pulled himself up over the edge of the
stone platform, wincing as the makeshift bandage around his thigh
caught on a splintered rock. A flash of color near the rear wall
turned into the men from the truck. Harmless-looking kids with the
dark-haired build of Stallings. If Deacon hadn’t been laying there
covered in bloody duct tape, Keegan would have taken his chances,
but from Deacon's thoroughly professional beating, it was obvious
at least one kid had a full measure of the Stalling crazies.

Deacon didn't move when Keegan eased in
behind him and slipped a knife under the tape around his wrists. No
telling how long it would take the Aina to finish what they were
doing. Not much finesse to C-4. It was a simple, brute force
explosive.

“Got any charcoal?” called a voice.

“Charcoal won’t cut it, man. Rocks are cool.
Try this one.”

“...carrot? Look, I got this Groucho
mask...”

Keegan flipped Deacon on his back and pulled
the tape from his mouth. “How many?” he breathed.

Deacon tapped his fingers. Five, then. Three
at the vent, which meant two were missing.

“Can you run?”

“Get me out of here,” Deacon growled, “and I
can fly.”

“Where were you shot?”

“Left hip. Hurts like a bitch.” Deacon looked
wild, head weaving back and forth. “My pack’s on the ledge. Get it,
call for back-up.”

Keegan pulled the other man after him. “Too
risky.”

They swung down to the courtyard and ran,
crunching through the gravel.

Deacon staggered and dropped to one knee,
folding in over his belly with both hands pressed to his injured
hip. “Dizzy,” he whispered, trying to get up. Without a quick trip
to Emergency, odds were he wouldn’t last the night.

Out in the parking lot, new cars pulled in
and parked between the ones the police had dismantled.

“We have company.”

Deacon leaned against the retaining wall,
barely visible in the darkness. “That yellow car...Avalanche,” he
gasped, “…Kimo.” His eyes were white-rimmed all the way around, and
he was losing his breath.

The parking lot was wide open. If Kimo was
out there, Kate wasn’t far behind. There was no cover and nowhere
to run except to the road, and if the sight of a woman in a
tattered pink dress, a shirtless guy in tourist gear and a wounded
giant didn’t turn heads, it was time to buy lottery tickets. A
series of car doors slamming brought it all home. They were trapped
at a deserted temple with no way to call for backup, and as soon as
the loonies back on the platform realized their catch had escaped,
they’d tell their loony friends out in the parking lot, and all
hell would break loose.

Keegan eased Deacon to his feet and held him
still. “Get ready. The minute they start across the courtyard,
we’re out of here.”

Deacon nodded. Keegan had to admire the man,
he was bleeding to death and somehow he was going to haul ass.

Something moved out in the parking lot, but
Keegan didn’t react. He had to be ready. They only had one chance
and he didn’t want to fuck it up.

“Hey, Kuipo! Look what I found—”

That was Kimo, first up on Keegan’s list of
men who needed to look down the barrel of his gun.

A loud shriek, then, “My brother will kill
you, traitor! Give it up now, before it’s too late—uphf!”

His heart raced. They had Jen.

Kate swept through the entrance with a double
row of guards expanding out around her. One remained at her side,
carrying Kate's special prisoner like a bag of ungainly potatoes.
Jen's sandals plowed through the crushed coral, kicking up huge
clouds of white dust while her shrieks rose like a tsunami warning.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and said something
unintelligible before helping Jen to her feet, one hand cupped
under her elbow.

“Thank you,” she said, so damned polite, like
the part of her that was in the process of being kidnapped was a
totally separate entity from the woman straightening her clothes.
She stood, brushing at her shirt.

It was part of being a Stalling. Normal was
something other people did.

She eyed Kate through her tangled hair and
produced a sneer. “If you surrender, I’ll talk to Percy for
you.”

“Ten years in the home for wayward Stallings,
my dear?” Kate pushed her guard aside. “I think not.”

Kimo strolled up, slender and mocking in his
green fleece hoodie. “Want me to dispose of her?”

“No,” Kate tapped her lips. “Just bring her
along and send a team to look for her bodyguard.” A tall man in a
green polo shirt handed Kate a shoe. “Oh, dear.” She frowned down
at the bloody leather for a long minute. “We have company. Mr.
O’Malley, and…I’m assuming...Mr. Dalfrey?”