Finn was too far away to get to him before the gun went off, and from the look of his stance the captain was a far better-trained shot than Stevens. Finn had given his primary to Monica and left his secondary sticking in Stevens’s foot.
No primary. No secondary.
This, he thought.
This was why you always deployed a tertiary.
A backup to your backup.
And then the helo pilot did something neither Finn nor the captain expected. She slowly began to turn around. Hands out to her sides. Putting her back to the captain.
Finn understood what she was doing an instant before Eagleberg did. If she turned all the way around she would force his hand.
Tough to claim self-defense when you shot the other person in the back.
“Stop it!” His voice cracking, gun hand trembling. “Don’t move!”
She froze again, then resumed her painfully slow turn, shouting over the wind as she did. “It wasn’t Chief Finn, sir!” she shouted. “It was Stevens. Stevens killed them all.”
“I’m warning you, Lieutenant—stop moving, that’s an order!”
She kept turning. If he really meant to go through with it, this was his last chance.
“Stop, goddammit!” he screamed. “I will shoot you!”
Finn believed him.
Endgame.
He moved like a flash of lightning—a slingshot twist of his body and flick of his left hand.
The captain cried out in pain and surprise.
He dropped the sidearm, both hands flying to his face, and fell to his knees with blood pouring through his hands. He stared up in horror at Finn. Then looked down.
On the deck in front of him sat a bloodied, silver-plated Rubik’s cube.
“Shuck! Shuck!” he screamed.
He looked up at Finn in disbelief.
“You jush broke my shucking nozhe!”
Captain William James Eagleberg sat kneeling on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and began to cry.