Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(42)

He dropped softly down behind the guy, and wrenched the man’s helmeted head around. Crack. Miles lowered his limp body to the ground, and picked up the short assault rifle. An H&K G36. He quelled the noise in his mind so he could hear the other guy’s approach. Time enough later to stress about having taken a human life.

The other one was coming down from the left, on a collision course with Davy. He had some different kind of psi, more along the lines of coercion. Miles crept around the outcroppings, seeking a visual.

He finally caught sight of him, armored and bristling with guns and gear. Still wearing infrared goggles, though, to Miles the dawn seemed as bright as noon.

He positioned himself behind a fallen log. The guy had an armored breastplate, as well as a helmet, but Miles didn’t want to kill again. Not unless he had to. He dropped his sights to the guy’s thigh.

Poised, inhaled. Sought the stillness between breaths.

Bam. The guy jerked, and fell, thrashing on the ground with a muffled shout. Miles ditched the H&K, and raced back to Davy.

“Fixed them,” he said, in answer to Davy’s questioning glance.

He heard no other pursuers. Those two had been the vanguard. He heaved Davy onto his feet, and they recommenced their stumbling race. He still felt the pressure of Greaves’ furious attack, beating impotently around the armor of his shield. The guy still had a fix on them, as long as Davy was in his telepathic grip.

Their staggering progress was agonizingly slow. The truck came into view when they turned the corner of the creekbed. The others were gone. He hoisted Davy into the passenger’s seat. The pickup bounced and groaned over rocks and young trees as he steered it through the forest.

“I’ll get you to a hospital,” he told Davy, when they lurched back up onto the gravel roadbed.

“He’ll watch the hospitals.” Already Davy’s voice sounded stronger. “He’ll be looking for anyone with brain injuries, stroke. That’s what I’d do, if I were him. Forget the hospital. Just put distance between us and that scumbag.”

That was a plan he could get behind. He floored it.





It was outrageous. Unprecedented. In spite of the psi stranglehold he’d had on their minds, in spite of his psi-enhanced soldiers, one of whom was now dead, they were slipping away from him.

“They’re almost out of range,” Greaves huffed to Silva, as the man pounded along beside him toward the garage. “Get everyone mobilized. Two vehicles going north, two going south.”

He flung open the passenger side of the Jeep. Silva leaped into the driver’s side, bawling orders into his wristcom.

The engine revved, the vehicle backed out, picked up speed . . .

The car dragged. Tires thudded heavily, scraping.

Silva cursed under his breath, braked, leaped out. The cursing got louder, with an edge of fear. He kicked the back tire. “Slashed,” he said. “Both back tires.”

“Another vehicle, then,” Greaves said, from behind his teeth.

But no. The back tires of all six of the parked vehicles had been slashed. His staff scurried to change them, but it would make no difference now. Seconds had counted. Those seconds were lost now. He would not even bother to accompany them once they ventured out.

“Sir, I’m so sorry,” Silva ventured.

Greaves ignored him, maintaining a flat, fatalistic calm. Just a tendril of his consciousness stayed connected with those hardy souls who had somehow crept into his inner sanctum, and proceeded to f*ck him up the ass. The contact grew thinner, fainter . . . and it was gone.

Bumping up against the limitations of his gifts felt like an insult.

He walked back into the house with a slow, measured tread, calling for Levine on the wristcom.

“Yes, sir?” Her voice was suitably subdued.

“Do we have any staff with strong telepathy in their profile in Kolita Springs, or south of here on Wheeler Road? Before any of the highway exits.”

“Ah . . . ah, yes, I think that Coburn and Mayfield could—”

“Get them in place, fast, to monitor all the highway exits. Unless these bastards take the back roads, we’ll pin them and identify them as they get onto the highway. They’re moving fast. We have maybe fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

Greaves strode into the house. His staff had found their wits again. The wounded ones had been transported to the infirmary.

Greaves peered inside, watching the medics examine the bloody lump on Anabel’s head, the bullet that had sliced through the meat of her thigh. The battered face and broken ribs of the whimpering Hu.

Worthless trash. Worth keeping only until they had been questioned about the invaders, the contents of their pathetic brains laid bare. Everything that they had seen and sensed, even subliminally.

Four out of the members of Geoff’s rotating medical team were hard at work with the injured. Two of them attended his son at all times, in eight-hour intervals. Geoff and his med team accompanied Greaves everywhere, in a vehicle that seemed an RV from the outside, but was actually a high-tech, cutting-edge hospital room. Each one of his residences had a special room for Geoff—climate controlled, disinfected, filled with all the equipment his son needed to stay alive.

He was at a loss for something to do with his anger. Every outlet had been blocked. He had difficulty breathing. They had slashed his tires, shot his windows. Beaten and shot his employees. Taken Lara, his beautiful prize. And ruined an excellent meal.