The last thing I remember

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Battle for the Bridge It wasn’t far-but it was the longest run of my life.

Orton was at the center of the bridge. He had his back to me. He was leaning over the trunk of his car, working on the mechanism inside-activating the bomb, I guessed. I flew toward him, pumping as hard as I could, knowing that any second he might hear me, might turn and see me and gun me down as he had the troopers.

One of the dead troopers lay between us in a spreading pool of blood. It was a horrible sight. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I had to push past it. I had to get to Orton.

I ran and ran. It seemed to take forever. Slowly, slowly, I got closer, closer.

I was only a few steps away when he heard me coming.

He turned to look over his shoulder and spotted me. His mouth dropped open, and his smooth, long features showed his surprise. I didn’t slow down. I kept charging at him, full speed. He recovered himself quickly. He jammed his hand into his jacket. He started to draw his pistol again. I could see there wasn’t going to be time to reach him before he leveled it at me.

He swung around. He pointed the gun at my chest.

Then I was on him.

I spun to the side. He fired. The bullet went past me. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, pulling it past my body, pulling him toward me. I hit him with my right fist, sticking the thumb out so it went into his eye.

The blow stunned him. I twisted his gun hand. I grabbed the gun and pulled it free. I stepped away and turned the gun on him.

He kicked it out of my hand.

It was a great kick. A black-belt kick. The kind you usually only see at tournaments, at the highest level. It caught my wrist full force and sent my arm flying upward, the gun spinning out of my hand and into the air.

I never got to see where it fell.

Orton let the force of the kick bring him close to me, spinning to bring a slashing hand around at my throat.

I managed to duck. The hand chopped into the side of my head. It felt like a hammer blow and knocked me to the ground.

I rolled to get away from him. Orton, seeing me on the ground, charged after me. That was a mistake. I looped one foot behind his ankle and kicked out with the other, catching him just below the knee. It toppled him over to the pavement. I leapt on top of him.

The next moment, we were locked together on the bridge, ripping at each other’s faces, looking for an opening, each of us trying to drive a knee into the other’s groin or ribs. We rolled over each other once and then again, and then I was thrown free and smacked into the bridge’s railing, hard. The impact stunned me. Orton seized his chance. He drew up on his knees, drew back his fist, ready to knock me out.

I lashed out with my leg and kicked him in the chest.

He toppled over backward and rolled. I rolled and got to my feet. He was up first and rushed at me.

I was pinned against the bridge’s railing. I could feel the top of it where it hit me in the small of the back. Orton was coming in low and fast. I think he wanted to pick me up and lift me over the rail, hurl me down to my death in the canyon. The whole thing happened in a second. He was there. I was spinning aside. His arms were out, reaching for me. I dodged his grip and caught hold of his shirt and his shoulder.

I swung around and hurled him at the railing full force. He hit-and flipped over it.

It happened so fast there was no time to stop it. One moment Orton was at the bridge rail, the next he was spilling across the top. The sight of him tumbling over toward certain death made my heart clutch. Without thinking, I lunged after him, trying to stop his fall.

I touched something. I grabbed it. His arm. His wrist. I had him. His weight pulled me hard against the railing, nearly pulled me over with him. I braced myself against the steel. Held my grip on his wrist. I looked over the railing, looked down.

Orton’s face peered up at me, a mask of terror. His body dangled over the abyss. Moment by moment, his weight was dragging him down, dragging him out of my grip. Already, I could feel his arm slipping through my fingers.

“Help me,” he said.

I got a better hold on him. It wasn’t easy. I had to pull him up until I could reach him with my free hand. Then I had two hands on him. He grabbed hold of my wrist too. But my grip still wasn’t very good. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to pull him up or not.

“Help me, Charlie,” he said then.

His words stopped me. I stared down at him where he twisted above the chasm.

“You know me,” I said.

“Pull me up, please,” he said, his voice straining.

I held on to him, but I didn’t try to pull him up. “Who are you?” I said down at him.

Orton glanced down at the fatal fall beneath him. Then he glanced up at me again desperately.

“Please,” he said.

“Just tell me. Then I’ll pull you up. Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“You know me, Charlie. I’m Howard Orton. I’m your friend. One of the Homelanders. Just like you.”

I stared. “Like me?”

“Please…”

“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me or I’ll let you fall.”

I wouldn’t have done it, but he didn’t know that. He started to talk, babbling in his fear.

“I was always on your side, Charlie. I told them they were wrong about you. I swear. You know Prince. You know what he’s like.”

I felt him begin to slip from my grasp again. I adjusted my hold to get a better grip, but I was losing him. “I don’t know Prince. I don’t know you. I don’t know any of you. Who are you? Who are the Homelanders?”

“Please, Charlie…”

“Who are they?” I shouted.

He glanced down again. I tried to hold him, but he was slipping away.

“Americans,” he said. “Recruited by the Islamists. Because we’re not foreigners. We don’t draw suspicion. We can go places they can’t go, do things they can’t do. We’re going to destroy this country from the inside… That’s the plan. But you know this. You know all this. You’re one of us. Please, Charlie.”

“You’re lying,” I shouted down at him. “I love this country. I would never do anything to hurt it. You’re a liar.”

He slipped another inch in my grasp, another inch toward that fatal fall.

“Please!” he said.

I pulled him up. It took all my strength. Grunting with the effort, I stepped back from the railing, lifting him inch by inch until he could bring his own hand up and grab hold of the metal himself. Then I shifted my grip and helped him climb over. He tumbled, gasping, onto the bridge pavement. I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

Orton lifted his hand. “The motorcade. They’ll be here any minute. We’ve got to activate the bomb.”

Rage erupted inside me. I reached down and grabbed the front of Orton’s jacket. I dragged him off the pavement and brought his face close to mine.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you think. I’m not one of you. I’m not a Homelander. This bomb is not going off, you hear me? You’re finished, Orton. I saw you kill those troopers and I’m turning you in.”

He struck with lightning speed. His arm flashed across my wrists and hammered back at me, hitting me in the throat. I went down to the pavement, gagging. Through a blur of tears, I could see Orton staggering to the car. He went into the open trunk again. He worked at the mechanism.

I had to stop him. I looked around for help. The gun-his pistol-there it was, lying in the road about five yards away from me. Choking, I crawled toward it.

Orton stood up. He had a device in his hand-a small electronic box with a blinking red light on it. I knew what it was. He had finished activating the bomb and was ready to set it off by remote control.

I was almost at the gun. I was reaching for it. Crawling. I was just beginning to breathe again. I sounded like a creaking door as the air wheezed in and out of me. I reached the gun and wrapped my hand around its grip. I worked my finger into the trigger guard.

Orton spotted me. He walked quickly across the bridge. He kicked out and hit my wrist with the sharp tip of his shoe. The gun flew out of my grasp and went spinning across the bridge’s surface.

Orton seemed about to go after the gun, but he looked over his shoulder and hesitated.

Then he took off in the opposite direction, running along the bridge.

Still wheezing, I worked my way to my knees and looked where Orton had looked. I saw the motorcade. It had just come into view around the corner. It was heading for the bridge. It would reach the entrance in sixty seconds, maybe less. Orton was trying to get off the bridge so he could blow it and send Yarrow and everyone with him to their deaths.

There was no chance for me to get to the motorcade, no chance anymore to warn them. By the time I reached them, they would already be on the bridge. I had to stop Orton. I had to get that remote.

Crying out with the effort, I got to my feet and raced after him.

He was nearly at the end of the bridge, but I was faster than he was. Even as worn out and battered as I was, the fear and desperation of the moment gave me the energy to race at top speed. I closed the gap quickly.

I glanced back over my shoulder. The motorcade was nearly at the bridge. I faced forward and saw that Orton had reached the bridge’s far end. He turned, holding the remote, watching, waiting for the right moment to push the button. He saw me and cursed. I was going to reach him before the time was right.

He turned and tried to run farther, but he was too late. I threw myself at him.

I hit him low, around the legs. He toppled over and hit the road. The remote control was jarred out of his hand and skittered away from him.

I tried to climb over him, to get to it. Orton drove his elbow back and caught me in the side of the face. The blow knocked me off him. He pulled his way forward over the road and grabbed the remote again.

I looked back across the bridge. Yarrow’s motorcade was just reaching the bridge entrance. There were only seconds left before he would be in the blast zone.

I looked back at Orton. He was getting a grip on the remote. He was turning to face the bridge, waiting for the cars to get out on it, over the canyon.

I lunged at him, grabbed the remote, and drove my palm down on the button.

“No!” Orton shouted.

The car in the middle of the bridge exploded. The blast was enormous, a billowing fireball that blotted out the sky. The force of it washed over me. The roar of it erased every other noise, every thought. And still, for another endless second, that orange ball of fire kept rising up and up, obscuring everything.

The bridge broke. The steel railings were torn apart like paper. Concrete poured down into the canyon below, the debris falling and falling endlessly before hitting the water and earth at the bottom with a noise washed away by the echoing blast.

I climbed slowly to my feet, staring at the devastation. For a long moment, I couldn’t see anything beyond the explosion. The fireball was curling back into itself, but in its place was a rising column of black smoke that hid the far end of the bridge from view. It was another second or two before the breeze over the canyon blew the smoke aside and I could see what had happened.

The motorcade-it was still there. The cars had stopped well clear of the explosion. I had done it. Yarrow and his people were safe.

Orton saw it too. He was on his feet too. He let out a string of foul curses.

“Prince was right about you,” he said. “He was right all along. After all our preparation. All our plans. You ruined everything.”

Exhausted, I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I did.”

“You rotten little…”

But suddenly his voice stopped. He stared at me with wide, frightened eyes. He looked down-we both looked down-and saw the bloody hole in the center of his shirt. He’d been shot.

“Oh…” He rolled his terrified eyes up to the sky. “Oh no.”

Then he collapsed onto the pavement, dead.

I stared at him, uncomprehending. The rumble of the blast was still echoing and fading along the walls of the canyon.

Then it was gone, and a new noise surrounded me: the deadly rattle and whine of gunfire.

I lifted my eyes from Orton’s body and looked back across the bridge. Secret Service agents and police had poured out of the cars of the motorcade. They were racing across the bridge toward where the bomb had blown a hole in it. Some had pistols in their hands. Some had rifles raised to their shoulders.

All of them were firing at me.