Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER FIFTY

Her life was measured in seconds. The distance between her and the fast approaching comms building seemed to elongate like some special effect, making it seem farther away. Smyth was at the door, screaming. She felt an ill-omened rumble begin under her feet. The ground shook.

The arm she held slapped a tree on the way past. Mai barely kept hold of it. If she dropped it there was no doubt—game over.

But it already was. Nine…eight…

Mai flung her entire body at the top step, skidded across the threshold and into the room, twisted in mid-slide and dug her boots against the concrete for purchase. Then like a hundred-meter sprinter, on her knees with her hands against the floor, she was out of the traps like a gold medal winning Olympian.

Smyth had cleared the path to the console. He was even pointing at the fingerprint pad.

…three…two…

Mai lunged.

“One.”

“Final protocol engaged.”

Mai jammed the boss’s fingers to the pad. She heard a click. But then the threatening rumble beneath her feet grew to a shaky groan. Smyth ran to the door and Mai followed him.

Above the distant trees, a trail of light and fire shot high into the sky. Mai spared a despairing glance for Hibiki and then stepped close to Smyth.

“At first I thought you were an insolent prick, my friend. It is strange that I grew to like you so much. It has been…a life experience.”

“That it has, Maggie.” Smyth’s eyes tracked the boiling stream of light as it painted the skies. “That it has.”

The rocket attained the end of its vertical flight and began to turn. Mai was surprised to feel Dai Hibiki’s hands suddenly resting on her shoulder. “You must go.” He coughed. “Run. You might make it.”

Even Smyth laughed. “I doubt even the great Mai Kitano could outrun a rocket, bud.”

“Well, not with a marine in tow.” Mai’s thoughts turned to Drake. Here she was, staring into the scorching face of her fate, unsure if the man she already knew she loved was even alive. She remembered their first meeting so well she could recite every line, recall every event, simply because she ran it through her head at least once a week. Chechnya had been a hellhole, a veritable outpost of purgatory and a den for all the Devil’s demons, but Mai knew it as the place where she’d met the love of her life.

Amidst battle. Amidst war. A fitting occurrence that defined all her days since the clan had bought her from her destitute parents. To be a human child, and then for that child to be remade into steel, into the hard edge of the night, and then to be turned human again by a single chance meeting with a great man.

“What the—?”

Lost in her thoughts, in her unfulfilled dreams, Mai hadn’t even been aware of the rocket anymore. Smyth’s outburst brought her back just in time to see the burning fire trail flutter out. In the same instant, the terrible weapon stuttered and fell, like a bird killed in mid-flight, straight down toward the ocean.

The doctor, the last Korean standing, sounded very matter of fact as he spoke up. “I did say the base commander could abort the missile. Abort.”

Mai resisted the urge to turn around and shoot him.