James Axler – Stoneface

Getting to his knees through sheer force of will, Ryan kept low and crawled behind the base of the Washington Monument. The whole right side of his shirt was dark with blood. White-hot pain and nausea washed over him in a wave, but it passed. Gingerly he flexed his fingers, and though the movement tore a protest from his shoulder, the muscles, tendons and nerves still worked. He wasn’t so much worried about the blood loss, but about crippling injury, temporary or not.

He seated the earpiece of the headset more securely and called Mildred. There was no reply, only the hiss of static. He repeated her name, and received the same responsestatic.

Refusing to speculate on the reasons why he couldn’t contact her, Ryan opened his coat and checked the severity of the exit wound. The bullet had passed completely through his shoulder from the back. Under the circumstances, the raw, bleeding crater just beneath his collarbone was more unsightly than critical; the bullet hadn’t taken much meat and muscle with it, and it had fortunately missed bone.

Still, the wound hurt like bottled hell, and it throbbed in cadence with his heartbeat. Sensations became rubbery, wavering. His eye remained open, but the miniature city blurred and receded in his vision. Footfalls and voices forced him to focus. He could hear men moving quickly toward his position.

“He’s over there, behind the monument. Frank nailed him.”

“And he nailed Frank. Let’s be exceptionally careful, gentlemen.”

The mechanical sound of firing bolts being pulled back was audible.

“Fuck this,” Ryan mumbled beneath his breath.

He pulled one of the incendiary grens from his combat harness, jammed it firmly against the base of the obelisk and pinched away the pin. He got to his feet and trotted away in a fast backpedal, making sure to keep the replica of the monument between him and the freezies stalking him.

A quartet of blaster-wielding men crept around the monument, two to a side. One pair sighted Ryan and raised their weapons. The second pair sighted the metal egg at the base of the tower. They uttered cries of alarm and fear, and tried to scuttle away as fast as they could.

The base of the monument erupted in a blaze of flame, smoke and debris. Ryan felt the cold slap of the concussion. The obelisk shivered, swayed, and with a groan and grate of stone, the entire length toppled majestically down across metropolitan Washington, crashing into and crushing several buildings. Planes of smoke and dust rose in the air. Men screamed in pain and outrage, cursed in a homicidal fury.

Ryan turned and ran as fast as he could down another lane, sprinting low to keep his head down behind the buildings. Once, he was forced to squeeze into a very narrow alley and squat there as a column of dark-suited pursuers flashed past along the street. He didn’t shoot at their retreating backs, reasoning that if he hadn’t done enough to draw the heat from Mildred by now, there was no point in engaging in another blaster battle.

He noticed blood dripping from his left hand, slicking the butt of the SIG-Sauer and splattering on the artificial lawn. Fleur’s knife cut on his shoulder blade had reopened, though Mildred’s stitches and bandages seemed to be keeping the bleeding to a minimum.

He tried raising Mildred a third time on the comm unit, and when he couldn’t, he removed the headset and stowed it in an inner coat pocket. Biting his lip to repress a grunt of pain, Ryan rose and moved through the drifting sheets of dust and smoke, wending his way between the buildings until he came to a barrier. Two very ornate, very tall double doors, bound with thick braces of brass, towered over him.

Emblazoned in the very center of the doors were two bordered disk-shaped symbols that depicted, in gold and black paint, an eagle with outstretched wings. One clawed talon gripped a sheaf of arrows, and the other held what looked like sharp pointed missiles. He recognized the images as altered versions of the great seal of the United States. There was an inscription printed inside the borders of the disks, and Ryan had trouble reading it, sounding out the words.