Busted Flush

Just Cause: Part III

Carrie Vaughn

ARABIA

HOT, EXHAUSTED, SWEATING RIVERS inside her Kevlar vest—this, she had decided, was a Kevlar situation—Kate looked out the helicopter window at the desert sliding past below her. In a few minutes, they’d reach the pumping station in Kuwait, twenty miles from the coast of the Persian Gulf.

This was their second stop of the day. At the first, they’d spent six hours keeping a crowd of sullen locals at bay while technicians started the wells pumping.

Not a single person on either side had been happy to be there. This wasn’t like Ecuador, where the lives they saved stood right in front of them. Hard to see the lives they were saving here.

Her phone beeped—incoming text message.

One word: FUBAR. From Michael.

“What’s wrong?” Lohengrin said. Somehow, even in the heat and sand, with everyone around him boiling, he managed to maintain his cool, almost arrogant demeanor.

She showed him the screen. The German ace raised an eyebrow.

“From DB? He wanted to come here,” he said. “He shouldn’t complain now.”

This wasn’t complaining. Complaining was bitching about the heat and the food, pouring sand out of your shoe and yelling at your teammates for nothing at all. This was different.

It wouldn’t do any good to argue with Lohengrin. He’d just look down his nose at her with the sort of condescending pity people used on children with skinned knees.

The helicopter landed on a concrete pad outside the station in a whirlwind of grit. Like Simoon. Ana had called from New Orleans to tell her about the weird ace who showed up channeling the girl’s ghost. Kate was happy enough to not be there dealing with that particular mess. She shook the thought of the fallen ace away. She and Lohengrin piled outside first. Despite his confidence, he wasn’t taking any chances—he already wore his armor.

They were in a dusty valley, a bowl of sand ringed by rocky outcrops. Some grasses clung to the wasteland, tossing in a constant breeze. The station itself was an industrial complex covering acres. Dozens of wells were marked by steel trees thrusting up from the ground, attached to angled collections of pipes and valves. More pipes, a twisting maze of them, connected various stations of hunched machinery of arcane purpose. It was a sci-fi landscape from some depressing post-apocalyptic future. The air smelled thickly of oil, sulfur, and waste. Kate sneezed.

Sun glared off everything. Even with sunglasses, Kate’s face felt like it had frozen in a squint.

A control building and a collection of prefab barracks lay off to one side. But nobody was here. No workers had gathered to block the gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the site. No crowd milled around the barracks. She should have been relieved. The whole place was quiet, still.

Throwing a pebble, she blew the padlock and chain securing the gate. Still nothing. Maybe the place had been abandoned. She waved back at the helicopter, and the team of technicians, with their bright blue UN vests and helmets, ran to meet them.

“Keep your eyes open,” she said to Lohengrin.

“You think I would let down my guard?” He sounded offended.

You’re sleeping with Lilith, aren’t you? “Of course not,” she said.

They followed the team to the main building. Their attention was out, looking for trouble. The helicopter’s motor was still running, just in case. A trio of UN soldiers stood near it, also keeping watch.

“Curveball!” one of the techs called from the door. He was middle-aged, British, and had a weathered look to him. “It’s locked. Care to do the honors?”

She kept looking at the barracks, waiting for someone to lob a grenade from there. “Yeah. Sure.” She pulled a pebble from the pouch over her shoulder.

“I could cut the lock off,” Lohengrin said.

“Yeah, but people like it when things go boom.” She smiled. The techs chuckled. “Stand back, guys.”

She almost didn’t look at the door before making her pitch, but she lowered her arm at the same time Lohengrin said, “Wait a moment.”

They both approached, their attention drawn by a thin line of discoloration at the top of the frame. Like a bad paint job, or a place where someone had tried to patch a crack. It looked almost like caulking.

“Bill?” she said to the British tech. “What’s this look like to you?”

He joined them at the door and studied where she pointed. It only took a second for his expression to turn slack, his eyes growing wide.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured. “I think it’s plastique.”

“Set to detonate when the door opens? A booby trap?”

“Probably.”

They all backed away.

“What do we do?” Lohengrin said.

“We call it in,” Curveball said. “Go back to HQ. This isn’t worth blowing ourselves up over.”

The technicians trotted back toward the helicopter without argument. She and Lohengrin brought up the rear as they’d initially led the way—watchfully, looking over their shoulders.

They heard the machine-gun fire before they saw the gunman.

Instinctively, Kate dropped as squibs of sand burst around her. Then a weight fell on her. Lohengrin, in full armor, including bucket helmet with decorative wings, playing human shield. She couldn’t move to reach her pouch.

“Get up!” she hissed, elbowing him. He did, just enough for her to slip out, take shelter, and take stock.

The firing continued. Bullets pinged off Lohengrin’s ghost steel.

There was only one of them. A basic-model automatic rifle. It was coming from the corner of the control building. She was actually getting experienced enough with this to discern that much from a noisy burst of gunfire.

Golf ball in hand this time, she cocked back and threw over Lohengrin’s shoulder. Didn’t have to aim, because she steered the projectile, sent it rocketing around the corner. She hoped that would silence the weapon.

It impacted with all the power of her surprise at the turn of events. People shooting at her brought this out. This anger. It translated well, and that side of the prefab building went up in a crack of thunder, a burst of dust and debris.

But he’d already run. Lohengrin pointed, and she caught a glimpse of someone peering out around the corner of the other side of the building.

Still just one of them. No army bearing down.

A second explosion blew out the front of the building. Fire ringed the door—the booby trap. Her detonation rattled the door and set the bomb off. Shit.

Billowing flames swallowed the building. She ducked, Lohengrin hunched over her, and debris pummeled them. Pieces of siding, of corrugated roofing, furniture even. Sheltered by Lohengrin’s body, she felt the impacts against him.

She didn’t see what struck his head, hard enough to whip it back, too fast, too hard. He slumped, boneless—and his armor vanished. She found herself holding a two-hundred-plus-pound unconscious German in her lap. The ghost steel couldn’t protect against everything—like getting knocked out inside the helmet.

In a panic, Kate felt for a pulse, looked for injuries. She didn’t see blood, no obvious marks. She shook his shoulders. “Lohengrin? Lohengrin! Klaus!”

They were in the open, totally exposed, and that guy was still out there with a gun. But the rain of fire didn’t come. She threw another stone.

And at that moment the gunman emerged and revealed what he was doing. He’d set down his gun and was pulling the pin from a grenade. But he wasn’t facing toward them. He’d turned to the tangle of pipelines, the wells, the pumps that held back the pressure of oil and natural gas.

He threw. The grenade sailed up.

She turned her missile toward the grenade. Didn’t know if this would work. Was she good enough, fast enough, clever enough? Had to believe she was. Good enough to get this far, couldn’t hesitate now.

She wondered what would happen the time she wasn’t good enough. It would only take once.

Her missile, glowing red-hot, sailed in a straight line toward the grenade, which was falling toward the pipes.

Squinting, she could barely see her target. But she could see it in her mind, follow the arc. She reached toward her missile, her arm taut and trembling, guiding it faster, still faster. She let out a cry of rage.

It sped up, then slammed into the grenade from the side, carried it forward some twenty yards, and exploded. Both projectiles vaporized. Nothing else happened. Nothing broke, nothing ignited. These oil fields wouldn’t burn.

The gunman—young, wearing plain trousers and a T-shirt—screamed in his own fit of rage and ran toward her, waving a handgun, a weapon of last resort. He fired at her again and again in an obvious suicide run. She picked up something—stone, a piece of plastic from the destroyed control room. Didn’t matter, because it was solid in her hand, and her arm burned. She pitched.

The missile went through him, all the way, just like a bullet, complete with the spray of blood, a splatter raining from the front, a gory mess spilling from his back. He exploded from the inside and fell like a stone.

She stared, almost smiling with satisfaction.

Lohengrin tried sitting up, shaking his head, blinking until he managed to focus on her. “My lady! I am in your debt.”

She pursed her lips.

Blue helmets ran toward them. The UN team, with machine guns. They were shouting.

“Curveball!” one of them called. French accent. She couldn’t remember his name.

“Help me get him to the chopper!” she shouted, trying to lever Klaus to his feet. He tried to pull away.

Everything moved quickly. Two soldiers were suddenly there, taking Lohengrin’s arms, pulling the big ace away from her. She scrambled after him. “He’s hurt, we have to—”

“Curveball!” the French peacekeeper said again. He pulled her to the helicopter. In moments, they were airborne and getting the hell out. But the soldier wouldn’t let go, and she started to get angry, especially when another soldier started tugging at her left arm. What the hell were they doing? Between the two of them, they pinned her to the seat.

“What—”

Lohengrin was the one who said, “Kate, your arm!”

She stared at him, blank-faced, confused. Then she looked at herself.

Her left arm was covered with blood. Her own blood. The soldier was swabbing at her with an alcohol wipe, searching for the wound. She hadn’t even felt it. Why couldn’t she feel it?

“Just grazed. You’ll be fine,” the medic said, poking at her biceps.

He did something—and every nerve lit with pain. She clenched her teeth and pressed her head back while he wrapped a bandage around the arm.

She thought, despairing—what if it had been her right arm?

A few long, terrifying moments of shock passed. After sunset, they arrived back at the tent city that served as their local base of operations. Kate ended up in the infirmary, on a lot of painkillers, sitting on a chair and looking away as a medic stitched the wound in her arm. Eight stitches. She’d have a scar to show for this.

Lilith, still managing to look suave and stylish in black fatigues, regarded her.

“Don’t tell John about this,” Kate said. She didn’t want him to worry. But God, she wanted to see him. Wanted to fall into bed with him and sob about the close call. But he’d try to send her back to New York. “I’ll call him later. I don’t want him to get distracted because of me.”

“You’re loopy on drugs,” she said. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

Kate gritted her teeth. “Lilith, I know we don’t get along. But please don’t tell him just to spite me.”

Lilith stepped close and glared down at her. “After everything we’ve been through together, you don’t think I’d go out of my way to spite you, do you?”

Of course she would. Spite was her bread and butter. “Bitch,” Kate muttered.

She tsked. “Dear, don’t aggravate yourself. And you really shouldn’t call me names when you want me to do you a favor.”

Kate closed her eyes and tried to settle herself. She didn’t have anything on hand to throw.

“What are you going to tell John?” she said softly.

Lilith shrugged. “What I have to.” She swirled her cape and vanished with a hiss of air.

“Funny. The guys all seem to get along with her just fine.” DB pushed through the tent flap.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him just now. At the same time, she was relieved to see a friendly face. He pulled a chair over with one hand, tapped a patter with another. After sitting, he just looked at her for a long moment. His face was a picture, a conflict of emotions. Shadows darkened his eyes. A multicolored bruise melded with the ink of tattoos on his rib cage. He hadn’t slept since his own disaster. Hadn’t smiled, either. Together, the two of them must have looked war-ravaged.

“Christ, Kate, when I heard you’d been hurt—”

“I’m fine—”

“Would you listen to me? After everything that’s happened, all the shit that’s come down, I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

“Michael. I’m not sure I can handle that sort of thing from two sides.”

“Is it so fucking wrong that I care?”

“No. Of course not. But—”

“But you’ve got John. I know.”

Incredibly, she felt her lips turn in a smile. He stared at her. “What? What’d I do?”

“You didn’t call him Captain Cruller. Or Beetle Boy.”

For a moment it looked like he might spout obscenities. Then he ducked his gaze and chuckled. She reached for his nearest hand and squeezed. Friends in a tight spot. She didn’t want to lose that. He wrapped three of his hands around hers. All she had to do was say the word, and he’d wrap his whole, immense body around her like that, smothering her with warmth and affection. She didn’t say the word.

Sighing, he said, “This mission is completely fucked up.”

She pressed her lips in a line. “I know.”

That evening, Kate found a TV that picked up CNN and watched John’s mission go to hell even worse than this one was. The footage of Sekhmet the Lion shrugging off gunfire and tearing the treads off tanks left her nauseous. That was John in there, she kept telling herself. The Committee hadn’t stopped a genocide. They’d ignited a war. Reports of injured Committee members were sketchy—all anyone knew was that there were injuries. Calls to John weren’t getting through.

When Ana called, Kate left the crowd gathered around the TV to get some privacy.

“How are you?” Ana asked, her voice scratching over the cell connection.

I’ve been shot. “I’m okay,” Kate said instead.

“You’re lying,” Ana said, a little too flatly for it to be a joke.

“Well, so are you.” Both women sighed, unable to explain how much they were really hurting. “Have you been watching the news at all?”

“Haven’t had time,” Ana said. “Not sure I want to. I take it things aren’t going well.”

“They could be worse. We haven’t lost anyone yet.” Then Kate wished she hadn’t said it. It was such a close thing.

“Same here. We got through Harriet, but there’s a second hurricane on the way. Category five this time.”

When it rained, it poured. And that was a really bad joke.

“Are you getting any rest at all?” Kate said.

Ana sighed. “I’m doing okay.”

“No, Ana, you’re not. I’m ten thousand miles away and I can hear that you aren’t.”

“I swear, you’re as bad as John with the overprotective thing,” Ana said, as frustrated as Kate had ever heard her. Kate didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m a big girl, Kate. You worry about your own skin, okay?”

Her own skin, with its gunshot wound and eight stitches.

“Okay,” she said weakly.

“I have to get going,” Ana said with new urgency. “Chopper’s here to take me across the lake.” It must have been midmorning in New Orleans. Ana was just getting started.

“Be careful.”

“You, too. See you later.” She clicked off.

Kate tried not to worry about what was happening on the other side of the world. Too much worry, in too many places. She returned to her room, sitting in the dark, on her cot, in sweatpants and sports bra, curling her left arm protectively to her body.

She didn’t know what to do. What the fuck were they going to do?

A brief breeze, maybe a second of whooshing air, passed through the room, like a draft through an open tent flap.

Lilith swept back her arm, flourishing her cape. Beside her stood John.

Her first thought: she didn’t want John to see her like this, hurt and defeated. Her second: Lilith told him. The bitch. But she forgot all that when John knelt by her cot and pulled her into his arms. He didn’t look a whole lot better than she felt. His face was ashen, almost sickly, his eyes bloodshot. She could smell soot and gunpowder ground into this clothing.

“Are you okay?” they asked each other at the same time.

She hugged him as tight as she could with one arm. “I’m okay, John.”

He pulled away to look at her, cupping her face in his hands, smoothing back her hair. “Kate. You were shot.”

“Grazed. Just a few stitches. Left arm, even. I can still throw.”

“Kate—” His look darkened, and Kate braced. Here it came, he was going to try to yank her from the mission.

She tried to beat him to it. “John, we’re done here. We’re cooked. We need to pull out before something ridiculous happens.”

“Lilith says this was an isolated incident. One guy. A disgruntled worker lashing out.”

She almost laughed. “You can actually say that with a straight face? After what happened to Michael and Rusty? John, we’ve seen what’s happening here. These people don’t want us here. This is an invasion. Michael will tell you the same thing—”

“You’re siding with him now?”

She huffed. “God, what is it with you two?”

“It should have been me here. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into switching.”

“John, would you listen to me? It wouldn’t matter if you’d been here. It isn’t about you or him or me or who’s doing what. It’s this place. The situation here is totally fucked up and Jayewardene’s crazy if he thinks us being here is going to help anything. The UN needs trained diplomats on the ground here, not . . . not . . . a bunch of reality show rejects!”

John looked over his shoulder. Lohengrin was standing in the doorway.

“You lack faith,” the German ace said. He’d recovered from his bout of unconsciousness with no ill effects. Hard-headed, that one. “We’re symbols. Powerful symbols. Have faith.”

This wasn’t a game, she wanted to scream. This wasn’t a divine calling. And there wasn’t always going to be someone around to save your ass.

“Kate,” John said, somber. “We’re pulling out of Africa. The mission there’s a bust. Tom Weathers—he’s psychotic. Insane.” He shook his head, as if still trying to understand. “There’s nothing we can do there. Which makes it even more important that we do some good here.”

Recalling the spray of blood from the man she’d killed, she almost laughed at him. That was doing good?

Lilith cleared her throat. “Let’s leave these two to their little conversation, shall we?”

Predictably, Lohengrin seemed all too happy to leave with the British ace.

When they were gone, Kate touched John’s face and kissed him. He looked surprised. His brow—his marred, gem-embedded brow—furrowed. “You’re hurt.”

And if that was going to stop him, he lacked serious imagination.

“Sit with me,” she said, scooting back to give him room.

He did, shifting onto the cot. When he was settled, she curled up against him, pulling his arm around her shoulders, resting her head on his chest. Cocooned herself with him. He held her tightly, stroking her hair.

In spite of her plans, the painkillers and exhaustion conspired against her. Feeling safe for the first time in days, she slept.