Crooked River(110)

Coldmoon let loose with several bursts of suppressing fire as Pendergast scurried across, pulling Alves-Vettoretto along as he sprayed the gate with a dozen rounds of his own, dispatching its last two guards. Now all the klieg lights were on them as they crouched by the side of the last truck. It was brighter than day. More soldiers were surely on their way to the firefight.

“Ammo?” Pendergast asked.

He swiftly checked his magazine. “Christ, only one left. You?”

“One also. But the gate is clear.”

Just as he spoke, Coldmoon heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie on the far side of the gate. Shit. And behind them, he could see the soldiers in the parking lot moving toward them, spread out, darting from cover to cover.

“We’re surrounded,” Coldmoon said. “Only two rounds, and the bastards aren’t likely to let us surrender.”

“They’re going to kill us?” Alves-Vettoretto asked.

“What do you think?” said Coldmoon sarcastically.

There was brief moment of silence, a pause, as they stared at each other.

“Well,” said Pendergast, extending his hand. “You’ve been a fine partner.”

“You weren’t half-bad, either.”

They shook hands.

“You won’t tell anyone I said that, I presume?” Pendergast asked.

Despite their situation, Coldmoon laughed. “You wouldn’t have told me that if you thought I’d have a chance to repeat it.”

Another burst of fire tore into the truck they were crouching behind as the soldiers in the parking lot made a coordinated rush. Pendergast said, “Get ready,” and aimed his rifle, not at the approaching soldiers, but at the truck’s gas tank. He fired a round into it.

“What the—?” Coldmoon scrambled back as the truck erupted in fire, ready to blow. Pendergast grabbed Alves-Vettoretto and ran past the smoke and flame through the gate, Coldmoon following, firing his last round into the darkness ahead. As they came out the other side, into the old courtyard, a voice rang out.

“Drop your weapons! Hands up! Now!”

They had practically run into a squad of soldiers stationed just outside the gate, arranged in a semicircle, their weapons aimed squarely at the little group of three. Coldmoon looked around in a panic for a way to escape. Broken walls of weathered stone rose on two sides amid pallets of bricks, long forgotten and covered with kudzu. The gleam of the searchlight cast a ghostly pallor over everything. They were trapped.

“Drop your weapons!” barked the voice. “I won’t ask again!”

Pendergast and Coldmoon placed their now-empty weapons on the ground. Then they raised their hands over their heads. Behind them, Coldmoon could hear soldiers from the first squad coming through the parking lot and past the gate.

They were surrounded, with approximately twenty weapons pointed at them.

The figure that had spoken stepped forward. He was tall and muscular, with an acne-pitted face. Unlike most of the other soldiers, he wore the markings of a full-bird colonel, along with a name tag: Kormann.

He looked from Pendergast, to Coldmoon, to Alves-Vettoretto, with a mixture of disdain and hatred. “Which one of you shot Harrigan?” he asked, jerking one thumb toward a prone figure directly behind him. Coldmoon noticed the colonel’s boots were freshly splattered with what must have been the dead man’s blood.

“I had that privilege,” Coldmoon said.

The man named Kormann stepped up to Coldmoon. He smiled lazily. Coldmoon smiled back.

Kormann lashed out with a fist, catching Coldmoon on the jaw. Coldmoon staggered under the blow but didn’t fall. As he raised himself back to full height, the colonel spat in his face, then buried the fist in Coldmoon’s gut. He doubled over, groaning, and Kormann connected with a wicked haymaker that knocked him prone.

Pendergast must have made some attempt to intercede, because Coldmoon, as if from far away, heard the clatter of weapons and an order from Kormann: “As you were.”

There was a brief silence. Then Kormann laughed. “You’re the one called Pendergast, aren’t you? Well, look at you now.”

Coldmoon, full consciousness returning, saw Kormann turn to one of his men. “Let’s take them back to the barracks—and have some fun.”

Coldmoon grabbed a stone from the rubble-strewn ground and, half rising, tried to smash Kormann with it. But the colonel dodged the blow easily, kicked him brutally back onto the ground, and then—with a brief laugh—began to close in.





68



COLDMOON—DAZED AND bleeding—could only turn his face from the crushing blow he knew was coming. But there was nothing. Instead, a strange silence fell, a hush, like a collective intake of breath.

“Well,” he heard Kormann say. “And just what the fuck do we have here?”

The hush was broken by a low murmuring among some of the soldiers. Everyone had turned to look at a curious figure standing in the ruined archway at the far end of the courtyard.

Coldmoon blinked the blood out of his eyes and tried to focus. He wondered if he was seeing things. It looked like some woodland elf, petite, girlish, smeared with mud. Bits of leaves and plant fronds were plastered here and there, one fern flapping back and forth in the wind. The figure itself remained motionless, in a posture that seemed easy and confident, even relaxed. It held a dagger in one hand.