Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(93)

The white-blond man didn’t move. Two more swift pocks and neither did the others.

Dougie’s voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve got movers coming in from the east. Get out. I’ll cover you.”

“Sydney?” Cohen said.

I unshouldered the M4s I’d collected and laid them on the ground. “Company’s coming. We have to move fast.”

I ordered Almasi to her feet. “Slow us down, I’ll shoot you.”

She rose without protest. Her face said all the fight had gone out of her.

We moved along the cluster of trailers, not stopping to clear the corners. The periodic burst of gunfire told me Dougie was true to his word.

He said, “Get across the field.”

“Cut left,” I told Cohen as we approached the end of the row. “Sniper’s got us covered.”

We burst into the sunshine. The parking lot was two hundred yards away across a stretch of weedy ground. A quick sprint for everyone except maybe Almasi.

I glanced to my left. Three vehicles heading our way, still distant but closing the gap. Sunlight glinted off their bumpers and mirrors, their headlights hazy in the undulations of heated air rising from the ground.

“Move,” Dougie said.

Almasi stared at the field, then sank to a crouch and buried her face in her hands.

“I’ll get the car,” Cohen said.

I squinted in the direction of the approaching vehicles. Still a long way off. I tossed him the keys, and he snatched them out of the air. Our eyes met briefly, and in his I saw a riot of conflicting emotions. Fear, understanding, anger. And beneath all of it, what I chose to see as love.

Then he spun on his heel and took off across the field.

Clyde, sensing the game was changing, had his eyes on mine.

“Go with Cohen,” I said, wanting my partner out of reach of the reinforcements.

Clyde raced after the detective.

“More movers to the south,” Dougie said. “I need you to get across that field in the next five.”

“Roger that.”

I jammed my hands under Almasi’s arms and hauled her to her feet. She sagged against me, and I pushed her upright. She was weeping. She staggered forward a few steps, then stopped. Her head drooped, and her chest heaved as she sucked for air.

“Can’t,” she wheezed.

I pushed her again. “Can. And will.”

She lifted her head. Her moist eyes held a dull cast like those of fish laid out on ice. A froth of spittle glistened at the corner of her mouth.

“Move,” I said. “Or you’ll never see your daughter again.”

She moved.

The parking lot seemed a thousand miles away, the world vaster than it had been an hour earlier. The field carried the exposure of mountaintops. My spine drew as tight as a piano wire, waiting for a bullet.

Halfway across the field, Almasi stumbled and went down.

“Get up,” I said.

She rose to her hands and knees, head down, body swaying.

“Come on,” I said.

But she stayed in the weeds. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

Dougie said, “Leave her.”

“She’s our protection,” I said.

I bent over and grabbed her around the waist.

She twisted at the hips as I pulled, and her arms came up fast. Her manacled hands slammed into my temple. Pain burst in my head like a bomb going off. I staggered, then went down hard, my head striking the ground. My gun flew into the weeds.

Then she was on top of me, her knees pinning my elbows as she pressed the handcuffs against my throat. In her right hand she held a knife. My knife.

“How’s it feel?” she snarled.

The blade was a whisker’s breadth from my eye. Sunlight glinted on the steel as she turned the tip toward my eye.

I raised my knees and hips to buck her off. My own momentum pushed the knife forward. It slid into my flesh at the cheekbone. Pain roared its fire across my face.

“First blood,” Almasi said.

On the edge of my vision, I caught a blur of gold and black. Clyde. He had seen me go down and now was running toward us, his body a bullet arced in our direction.

The knife bit a second time.

“Second blood,” she said. Her eyes bulged, wild and savage, her lips peeled back from her teeth, spittle slicking her chin. She shoved all her weight against my throat.

I got one arm free and grabbed her wrist.

Then I heard Clyde yelp. An instant later, the sound of a rifle cracked across the world.

The bastards had shot Clyde.

Rage fizzed across my brain, popping and sparking behind my eyes.

I let go of Almasi’s wrist and scrabbled for the holster on my belt, my hand soft with sweat and sliding around the leather as I dug for steel. My fingers found the handle, and I worked them around the grip of the knockoff TASER I’d gotten in Mexico. I jerked it free, pressed the gun against her ribs, and squeezed the trigger.

Her body jerked and flailed as the twenty thousand–volt jolt hit. Her eyes went wide, and a guttural shriek tore out of her throat. Fire licked up my own arm—the knife making its final mark against my flesh as she convulsed.

I shoved her off, rolled over, and crawled toward Clyde.

“I’m coming, boy,” I whispered.

He lay on his side in the weeds, his right leg tucked under him. When he saw me, he lifted his head and whined. He tried to get up.