THE OMINOUS CLOUDS FINALLY opened. Splotches of icy rain began to patter onto the ground. Sleet dripped thickly from the chain fence of the petroleum farm. Reuben’s men had cut a large, square hole in the fence to wheel the trolley with its deadly payload onto the property.
In the dark, the tanks looked like a pagan holy site, a twenty-first-century Easter Island. Some reservoirs were lean like grain siloes, some fat like small stadiums. Each perfectly rounded and glistening in the gentle yellow lights that shone from the top. Even the patchwork bits of light and shadow on the ground were curved.
At the base of the tank closest to me, I saw the dark boxes of shaped charges stuck to the side. Black tumors marring pristine skin. Glued in place with instant epoxy, maybe.
Pipelines cris-crossed the farm. The small pipes were a foot in diameter and low to the ground, the largest one a yard wide and up on supports. I stayed low and close to it for cover as I ran. The farm smelled cloyingly of gasoline fumes, thick enough that the freezing rain couldn’t completely push them aside. Even the air was flammable here.
I didn’t know where Kasym was, among the acres of tanks. If they were blowing holes in all of the bigger containers, he would push the incendiary bomb on its trolley near to the center of the farm, for maximum effect.
He’d have a gun. I had a claw hammer. It would be a surprise attack, or nothing.
I ran for a hundred yards, like a rodent scuttling alongside the big pipe. The sleet coated my hair and my back.
Then I saw it. The Mark 77, on its trolley, halfway between two gigantic tanks. No Kasym. And no packet bomb visible on the long blue-white tube of the Mark 77, either. Good. Better than good. Kasym must still be off setting the last of the shaped charges.
I found a guardhouse, a glassed five-foot-square shack for the petro farm security to stay out of the weather. It was empty. The phone lines had been torn away from the wall and the receiver.
As I turned back toward the pipeline, I felt the whip of a bullet passing the bridge of my nose. It splintered the glass behind me.
I ran.
On the second shot I heard the little crack of a suppressor, like a clap heard from far away. Handgun. Sixty or seventy feet off. Kasym was taking the time to aim. I rolled under the pipeline. A third round dinged a metal support strut only a foot from my knee.
Taking cover would be pointless. He knew I wasn’t armed. He would just walk up and blow me away. I needed distance. The ground was becoming slick with rain and ice granules. I heard Kasym’s footsteps, running after. My legs pumped as I sprinted hard for the shadows between the tanks.
No more shots whipped past. He was concentrating on catching me, or at least keeping me in sight. A lethal game of tag. I rounded one tank, then another, skidding on the wet pavement. I glanced back and saw him, dressed for the exercise in his tracksuit but hampered by the pack on his back, which still looked half full. I was winning, stretching the yards between us.
But Kasym didn’t need to catch me. Just attach the packet bomb to the incendiary, get clear of the blast zone, and set off the charges. How many minutes did we have, until the firestorm?
He wasn’t following anymore, I realized. A muffled thump came from back near the big pipe, a hundred feet away. Was he moving away from me? Or circling around, to put one between my eyes?
I had stopped next to a set of narrow stairs that wound up and around the side of the nearest tank. Being on top would give me a better vantage. Staying down would give me room to run.
I went up. Slush wept from the thin steel grate of the steps. I took big, low strides while holding on to the railing, three stairs at a time.
On my tenth step, maybe thirty feet up from the pavement, I saw Kasym. And froze.
He was making his way very quietly around the curve of the next tank over, his automatic leveled in two hands. Maybe he didn’t have the big bomb ready and didn’t want to risk any interruptions. Or maybe he just really wanted to kill me.
I couldn’t move. Any sound, and he’d look up and have four shots in my center mass before I could complete a step. The sleet spun through the air in tiny cyclones, in and out of the light, lending everything around us a diamond sparkle.
Kasym kept advancing. Halfway around the curve now and almost directly in front of me. I played rabbit, waiting until the fox padded away into the tall grass.
He passed. And felt my presence, high above. I knew it an instant before he did, and even as he started to turn and raise the gun I was following through on a fastball throw of the hammer. It whirled and glanced off his head. I heard the gun clatter on the ground as I bounded down the stairs.
The hammer had dazed him, but he was not down. He reeled after the fallen gun. I tackled him. We rolled through shallow puddles of ice water. He clocked me hard across the cheek with his elbow. I kneed him in the stomach. On my second kick he got a forearm under my chin and shoved until I gagged. He was very strong. I heaved and yanked and got him off me. His other hand dipped toward his waist as we stood and I hit him one hard straight right before jumping back. The blade of his knife sizzled the air in front of me.
He lunged. If he hadn’t been stunned he might have put the knife hilt deep in my heart. But he overextended, and I grabbed him by the wrist and chopped my hand down on his elbow. The knife fell from his numb fingers. I tried to twist his wrist behind him, around the backpack. Rip his arm off at the shoulder. He drove me into the side of the steel tank. My arm holding his was trapped between us. He hit me with his big fist under the ribs. Pain. My whole body shook with the force of it. I spun away from the next punch but he had me now where I couldn’t dodge. And his head was clearing.
Instead of trying to push away, I clinched with him. I couldn’t take another paralyzing hook to my kidney. Kasym pushed harder, trying to mash me right into the paint of the tank. He stank of old sweat and grease. My hand clawed at him, trying to get a hold. The fabric top of his rucksack was open. He drove the bone of his shoulder under my chin. Pressed into my windpipe. Over his back, I saw the little red packet bomb with its timer. I couldn’t breathe. My fingers closed almost robotically on the dial. Red numerals appeared, bright in the shadows both real and in my brain. 01:00. And then 00:59. The timer beeped as its numbers counted down.
Kasym heard it. Knew what it meant. His eyes went wide in panic. He shoved at me, but now I was the one holding tight. He thrashed like a shark, trying to head-butt, to claw, anything. I hung on. The timer beeped, almost happily.
It wouldn’t be bad to go out like this. With an enemy. With purpose.
I’d miss Luce.
And there was still Reuben.
Kasym stepped back and shoved frantically again, and this time I let him go. The weight of the rucksack stumbled him backward. I punched one-two-three one-two-three, all head hunting, not caring if I broke my hands on his skull. He fell to a knee and I kicked him so hard in the ear that he flew sideways to the ground.
Then I was running, a lurching monster’s gait. How far away did I need to be? Twenty yards. Thirty. I fell more than dived behind the curve of the next tank and looked back.
Kasym was still, incredibly, conscious. He was up on his knees. He’d gotten the rucksack unbuckled around his chest and was removing the strap from his shoulder when the bomb went off.
I have seen it before. I wish that I could say I was still amazed by the effect of high explosives in very tight proximity to the human body. But suicide bombers are as much a fact of modern warfare as mustard gas was a century ago. And there is not much variance, not with a bomb that close. The middle of the body vaporizes. The extremities often remain.