Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(80)

For want of the shoe, the horse was lost, and so on, in an escalating series of catastrophic events, from horse to rider, to message, to battle, to the war being lost, and all for the want of a nail.

Just like the poem, Mary’s stumble was really a small thing. But what she stumbled over had deeper connections in the pile of rotted tree limbs, ivy and sticker bushes. Something rolled and shifted. An entire four-foot section of ivy jerked in a way that was not at all natural or mouse-like, and suddenly where they were standing became the subject of intense scrutiny.

One man straightened. As he brought up his assault rifle Michael flung a throwing knife that embedded in his eye.

The second man had stayed crouched behind cover. That was unfortunate.

Michael dropped Mary’s hand and launched toward him. Even as he broke the man’s neck with a perfectly executed kick, he knew he was too late.

Because if they had night-vision equipment and too many men surrounding the island, then they probably had . . . He bent to grope at the dead man’s blackened face and found what he was looking for, a small wire and earpiece now mangled by his kick.

Shit. Shit.

They had a comm link. With so many in their group, they would have a centralized communication point, one person to coordinate maneuvers and relay orders, often nicknamed “God.” That person would be tucked safe away from any fighting, probably on one of the nearby boats.

Shit.

As he spun back toward Mary, he caught sight of something streaking through the air toward her. He thought, I can’t believe it. Did she just get shot again?

He was both right and wrong. Even as he took comfort in her bulletproof vest, the something unfurled into a nylon net that settled over Mary’s head and shoulders, and she reacted in the most natural way in the world. She fought to get it off of her. The net had been designed to tighten more as the captive struggled.

He threw himself forward as another net streaked through the air. In that flash of an instant, he knew he couldn’t get to her in time. He would risk them both getting tangled in the nets.

He had to stay free to maneuver. He switched course and dove. The weighted edge of the second net brushed his thigh as he rolled.

A third net shot through the air. It wrapped python-tight around Mary’s staggering figure. She groaned, lost her balance and fell to the ground.

Michael’s attention snapped to the person who shot the nets. He shot the man twice in the neck.

He loped over to the dying man. After reaching down to carefully remove the man’s slender headset, Michael shot him in the temple to give him a cleaner death.

From twenty feet away Mary said in a quiet, flat voice, “I am not okay with this turn of events.”

He kept his reply easygoing and reassuring, the quality of which alone should win him an Oscar. “Don’t worry. At some point we would have had to stop sneaking around and fight.”

He slid the headset on and adjusted the earpiece.

A strange young man said, “She’ll have something to worry about soon enough. Hello, Michael. If I can hear you, I’ll bet that you can hear me.”

Michael knew who was at the centralized communication point. Well, who else would it be? How it must amuse him to play God.

“Hello, Lucifer,” he said.

At the same time, he thought, if I get my hands on Astra, I’m going to kick her ass. Why the f**k couldn’t she have warned us?

For want of the message, the battle was lost.

Chapter Twenty-eight

ASTRA LIKED SOME of Earth’s modern vernacular.

The sixties and seventies had been a great time for slogans.

Give peace a chance. Make love not war.

That tall chick with the great nose and long, dark hair and her short, goofy-looking husband with the mustache—they had come up with some of the silliest ones she’d ever heard.

The beat goes on. What the hell did that mean? What was another one? Oh, yeah. I got you, babe.

Jerry had a slogan that she really liked. Don’t push the river. There was a lot of sense in that one. How, in God’s name, could you possibly push a river? You couldn’t. A river flowed where it would. It was an act of insanity to even try.

Her translation of that? The universe was an easier place to live in when you stopped kicking against how things were going, and you made use of what you were given.

Or in other words: go with the flow. She liked saying it. It made her feel hip and snappy. Groovy, as it were. Never mind how Michael would laugh himself sick at her when he was a boy. She sniffed.

For instance she had known exactly the moment her cloak had slipped. The Deceiver had not just been waiting for it to happen. He had been pushing to make it happen. She had sensed him sneak past her guard like the thief that he was.

Instead of lashing out to drive him back, instinct stayed her hand. Just for a moment. Not for too long. She had to make it look good.

When she resumed cloaking the island, she had known he had gained information about their location. So she went with the flow.

Long ago, she had chosen an island as her sanctuary for a lot of reasons, and all of them involved its remote location. She could cloak the area and make it difficult to locate. If men forgot the island was there, they couldn’t draw it on any map.

Also, it was a perfect place to do battle. The only victims would be the various species that lived on the island and, of course, the land itself. She and the island had several good, long talks about that. She had wanted to be certain it understood the danger before she took up residence.