Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(104)
Cort Wesley took a deep breath that dissolved into a sigh. “I believe you did that, son.”
“I don’t know if I can ever go back to school now, not after this.”
“Not a decision you need to make today.”
Dylan turned back toward the windshield, board-stiff in his seat. “We’re gonna kill them, right? These ISIS fighters who killed Ela. Just tell me we’re gonna get some payback here.”
Cort Wesley’s expression fixed as flat as the windshield glass. “Count on it.”
103
KLYDE WARREN PARK, DALLAS, TEXAS
Caitlin’s grandfather always talked about vision, when it came to gunfighters. Not that they could see better so much as they could see more. Like, three things at once: left, right, and center.
Caitlin’s center was dominated by the huge, looming shape of al-Aziz’s chief henchman, Seyyef, his head like an anvil atop his shoulders.
To her right, the whirling shape of Guillermo Paz barreled forward against the grain of fleeing families, a path seeming to open for him down a center his charge created.
To her left, al-Aziz was pushing his way through the mass of people fleeing the park on the Pearl Street side, dragging Daniel Cross with him.
Center and right merged as Paz slammed into Seyyef in a collision akin to a pair of semis in a head-on, the two huge forms hurtling backwards. The collective force pitched them up and over the lead car of the roller coaster, which had just discharged the last of its riders.
Dazed, Caitlin fought to reclaim her footing, feeling instantly woozy when she did, the world all out of kilter. She leaned against a stanchion, holding on to a rope divider for balance, vision clearing all the way to reveal Jones yanking Daniel Cross from al-Aziz’s grasp, the kid surging away toward the exit beyond the botanical garden.
The two men struggled amid a brief rainbow of muzzle flashes. Jones staggered now, still pushing on as al-Aziz retreated, charging in the opposite direction, to the east, clinging to the tree line.
Caitlin steadied herself against the stanchion, turning back to see the twin hulking shapes of Paz and Seyyef in hand-to-hand struggle. Their search for any advantage they could muster generated enough force to send the gravity-fed coaster rolling down the track, where it banked into the initial climb and then picked up speed as it crested, into the first dip.
Caitlin’s head was on fire. Her teeth were chattering. She realized she’d dropped her pistol and she stooped to retrieve it, her mind clawing at the memory of al-Aziz sprinting across the park, likely toward the exit that spilled out on Harwood Street.
Caitlin caught sight of Jones sinking to his knees, bleeding from everywhere at once it seemed, but still with the presence of mind to wave her on, after Hatim Abd al-Aziz.
She lit out in his wake, bettering her angle just in time to cut off his route to Harwood Street, unleashing a torrent of fire. He spun to return it, and his shots went wild as he veered back into the cover of the amusement park and the attraction set off in the very rear, on the grass in front of one of the performance pavilions: the Chamber of Horrors.
*
Guillermo Paz had known men as big as Seyyef, and as strong, but never one who was both, and Seyyef had a litheness and agility that belied his bulk and brutish appearance. Paz could tell from the first blow he landed that the man used pain, probably liked pain, was impervious to strikes powerful enough to shatter bone. He’d heard boxers were like that, so used to being struck that taking the blow becomes second nature.
The modest roller coaster was into its second rise before Paz realized they were moving, adjusting his footing and balance to make that motion work for him. Claiming the high ground that a moment before had been the low ground. The move seemed to confuse Seyyef, who nonetheless absorbed a brutal flurry of strikes that shattered his jaw and right cheek. One eye was closed now, the other bulging with rage and the sense of battling an opponent equal to him.
True to his name, Seyyef was an executioner who knew how to kill.
Paz was a soldier, a killer too, but one who knew combat. The advantage had turned clearly his way, until Seyyef projected all of his vast bulk forward, whether fortune or by design, just as the coaster dropped into a fresh dip, giving the high ground back to him. And before Paz knew it, he was bent over the front of the car, Seyyef jamming his face down toward the track.
*
Caitlin followed al-Aziz through the lingering chaos to the Chamber of Horrors, laggardly at first, forcing the light-headedness from her consciousness and summoning whatever it took to gather herself and beat back the pounding that felt like a knife poking around inside her skull.
She fired when al-Aziz neared the flat-roofed modular building, but her shots flew wildly askew. He spun and returned her fire with his own, just before disappearing into the structure.
Caitlin stayed on his tail, charging toward the same double doors al-Aziz had used, into a black void. Suddenly she was a little girl again, struck by the memory of her father forcing her to board a similar ride with him when she was a kid.
I’m too scared!
That’s why you have to do this, little girl.
Her father had dragged her on and lifted her into the lead car, next to him. She was still crying when the car crashed through a pair of double doors painted to look like the devil’s mouth.
Now Caitlin found herself charging through a set of double doors made up to look like … the devil’s mouth. The warped wood and fading colors made Satan’s teeth seem chipped.