The Winter Over(78)

Pete made a burping sound, then took two tripping, tipping steps backward into the kitchen, sprawling across his cart and knocking boxes to the floor. Blood spilled from a rift in the crown of his head. His feet kicked once like a toy thrown to the ground.

Anne looked down in horror at the body, unable to comprehend what she’d just witnessed, then screamed as the bulky figure that had loomed in the doorway moved into the kitchen. A scream joined hers, playing counterpoint to the water-bright laughter in her head as the arm rose and fell.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE


Carla looked up from her microscope, annoyed. The noise that had broken her concentration, she realized, had crescendoed from a distant murmur into a collection of shouts and pounding feet that was impossible to ignore.

She frowned, only just remembering that Anne had gone in search of coffee for the two of them. She glanced at the clock . . . Jesus, she’d banished the poor woman almost an hour ago. Her mind, keen and pitilessly logical when it came to matters of biology, moved sluggishly in other circles and it took her a minute to connect the possibility that the fracas outside and the fact Anne hadn’t come back yet might be related. She hesitated, then hurried for the door.

A crowd had bunched at the far end of the hall. Voices, punctuated by the occasional gasp or moan, filled the air. A primal sense of shared fear and crisis emanated from the group, causing doors to open and heads to pop out into the corridor. Carla took small, hesitant steps, drawn magnetically to the gathering.

“On your left,” someone barked behind her, and she pressed herself against the wall. Dr. Ayres trotted past her with a trauma kit in one hand, his face a professionally blank mask that scared her more than any amount of screaming or yelling. She hurried after him. The knot of people parted to let Ayres through, then re-formed behind him. In that brief second, she got a glimpse of a body sprawled on the ground, legs askew, a scarlet pool welling underneath the boots.

Carla’s cool, scientific detachment vanished, like a hat knocked off her head. In an instant she knew that she hadn’t really managed the anxiety that had been building inside her, she’d only packed it away and smoothed it over with a veneer of professional detachment. At any moment, all that had been needed was the right set of circumstances to pry open that box and unleash every pent-up emotion she thought she’d jettisoned. This was that moment.

A scream rose inside her as she pelted down the hall toward the boots and the blood.




Hanratty paced his office floor, wiped his hands on his khakis, then frowned at the mannerism. It smacked of weakness, of sweaty palms and regret, and he clasped them together to keep it from happening again. He was in the soup, no doubt about it, but things were far from over.

The meeting in the gym had gone as well as could be expected. He knew from the start that he’d win some of the crew, he’d lose some of them, and some had long since left his sphere of influence. It was a lesson learned in Afghanistan, when his vision had blurred and he’d stopped seeing his men as individuals and instead seen groups of bodies, factions breaking along lines of personality and temperament.

There had been three simple divisions. The men in the center were the bravest. The ones along the sides, clumped together, had courage but questioned everything he said. And the ones haunting the back were the cowards.

He’d hated the last group, despised them. Not because of any innate moral judgment. Not because society had told him to. Not even because, soldier-to-soldier, you feared and loathed the ones who wouldn’t be there for you when you needed them most. He hated them because he knew them as he knew himself.

He was a coward. Always had been. Always would be.

In twenty-three years of traveling the world to do America’s dirtiest jobs, he’d never had to prove his courage one way or the other. That was the modern army. You could fight for a lifetime and never see combat, even while your country was at war. Acting angry and barking orders didn’t take any special courage or talent. You just had to act the part and everything seemed to work out.

Until that day when he’d seen his men broken up into those groups, knew which one he should’ve slunk over to and joined . . . but couldn’t. Because he had to lead them, lead them all. Right up that valley, where the kill rate was fifty percent and every inch of the floor had been marked off and measured by their snipers. Then all of you began to jog and your kit was flapping against your back and hitting your legs and your lid was slipping down over your eyes and you were waiting for the slug to hit you like a truck and oh, Christ, two of your men had had their heads taken off and now the rest were scrambling for cover and shouting to you, screaming, wanting to know what you were going to do to save them. Help me, Captain! Captain, please! He’d crouched behind a rock, bleeding tears, watching his men die. Jesus Christ, he would’ve given anything at that moment, done anything, to know why he was frozen in place, his mind an uncomprehending mass of fear, to know how he could’ve been built differently to help his men, to help himself . . .

“Jack!”

Hanratty spun in place, staring at Taylor as though he’d been dropped from the sky. His chief of security must’ve come through the office door, but if he had, Hanratty hadn’t heard him. He looked down at his palms. Not sweating now, but bleeding from where his nails had pierced the skin. He put on his best CO scowl. “What is it?”

Taylor’s face, normally impassive, was apprehensive. “We’ve got a problem. Dave Boychuck has some of the techs wound up. Sounds like they might try storming the castle like those two idiots.”