Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(23)

Not long after, the sky began to lighten in the east, looking bruised and leaden. It was going to be a dirty dawn, dulled by the aftermath of the storm.

She saw the dust cloud first, and she straightened from her slouch. Two SUVs came into sight, roaring toward her.

Well. That was either good news or bad news. She took the blanket from around her shoulders, folded it and set it aside. Then she stretched out on her stomach, laid the M16 beside her, rested her chin on her hands and watched the arrivals.

It was not good news.

Both SUVs screeched to a halt and six men climbed out. Four men she didn’t recognize. Rodriguez. Bradshaw Senior.

Bradshaw had gotten here awfully fast. Too fast. Where had she gone wrong in her calculations? She frowned, her mind racing back.

Then in a flash of realization, it hit. She had estimated travel and response times from the confrontation with Junior and friends. What she should have estimated from was an earlier point in time, when Rodriguez knew that Luis was alive. He would have tried to get in touch with Bradshaw the moment he left Jackson’s. Maybe the cell and landlines were out by then. Maybe Rodriguez had to drive the information out. Maybe he had managed to get a call out, but the storm would have grounded any local flights, so Bradshaw would have had to drive in from Vegas.

They wouldn’t know Luis was no longer a badly injured, unconscious dog. They probably stopped by Jackson’s already and found everybody gone. They might have stopped by Junior’s too. Bradshaw might not even know yet what had happened to his son. Either way, he was here to take care of the mine issue himself.

The scene crystallized around her.

She didn’t have all the answers, but did she have enough of them? The events of the day passed through her mind. She thought of Luis, of Jackson, of her barroom chat with local people, of what each person had told her and of what she had surmised. She thought of Junior and his friends.

She reached for the rifle and sighted down the barrel.

One shot. One well-timed bullet, aimed at the head of this snake. If she did this, she was putting herself in the line of fire again.

She was not afraid of death. Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories.

She and death had danced together for a long time now. Sometimes they were partners. Sometimes they were opponents. Sometimes she might cheat him, but hell, that old thief was still bound to win some day.

She pulled the trigger.

Chapter Seven

Love

The shot took Bradshaw Senior, who spun backward and collapsed to the ground.

That just left the professionals.

Rodriguez lunged to Bradshaw’s motionless figure and dragged him behind the cover of an SUV, while the other four men pulled weapons, shouted to each other and lunged for cover as well. Two started to climb into the drivers’ seats.

No, you don’t, she thought. Nobody’s leaving until I say so. She shot out the rear tires of both vehicles, four taps in quick succession.

By then they had her location and returned fire. She ducked, flattening herself as shards of rock ricocheted. Fiery pain bloomed on her back and arms. She ignored it.

The M16 magazine held thirty rounds, and her Glock had fifteen. They had more shooters, more guns, and more rounds. She was going to have to get picky.

She watched and waited as the dirty sky brightened. They tried to flush her out with a heavy rain of bullets. Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen. More ricochets, more nicks. She stayed flattened on her ledge and listened to them expend their resources, and she kept watch, counting her rounds and using them sparingly, just enough to keep them pinned down.

While she did so, she remembered other times when she and death had danced together, the staccato rhythm of heavy artillery, interspersed with anguished screams.

This was a cleaner place. After the first flurry, the targets grew quiet as they tried to think their way out of the invisible cage she put them in. There wasn’t a way out, not until she ran out of ammo, and they wouldn’t know when that was. Still, somebody had to try to make a run for it. She was ready when he did, the guy sprinting toward the nearest building while the others laid down covering fire.

She dropped him fifteen paces out. It took him a while to crawl back behind the SUV again. None of his buddies rushed out to help. She thought about finishing him as she watched him struggle, weighing the expenditure of another round against reducing their manpower. But one more round was currency that bought her time.

That was her mission, time. She paid for it in snatches when they pushed her to it, and in between bouts of exchanging gunfire, she rested and listened to the windswept silence.

She had three rounds left when a hurricane arrived. The hurricane materialized into a star-eyed Djinn, Luis and several other tribunal Peacekeepers, and then, for Claudia, the dance was over.

The aftermath was a hell of a mess.

Over the next few days, correspondents from network, cable and a few foreign newspapers tried to fill up both motels. Several reporters were highly disgruntled when Peacekeeper officials and the FBI, including geologists and crossover experts, commandeered rooms. Then there was a great deal of squawking and flapping until everybody settled into another uneasy pattern, like birds on a wire.