She grinned wryly. Reliable old Ryan, who seemed to have a plan for every contingency, had drawn away the rat pack, his guns blazing like an action hero in some old movie.
She waited for a count of thirty, then began moving in a crouched duckwalk J.B. had taught her. The MP-5 kept banging her shins, and she realized why Ryan had passed on choosing it. It was bulky and a little unwieldy. She headed back toward the Lincoln Memorial, planning to return to the ventilation shaft and make her way to another level, hopefully to the primary circulation station.
The psychologist in Mildred despaired of ever reasoning with the Anthill inhabitants. The very existence of the cunningly crafted miniature model of Washington, D.C., indicated a severe disassociative disorder; it was obsessive-compulsive behavior taken to a frightening degree. The people inside Mount Rushmore had lived too long in isolation to feel emotions beyond contempt for the outside world or anger if their wants weren’t immediately gratified. In that, they were very similar to the people of Helskel.
A shadow flitted over her, and Mildred froze in mid-scuttle, not daring to move or even breathe. A beetle skimmed slowly above the rooftops, not pausing or slowing as it floated past her position.
Doug’s ID badge clipped to her coat had saved her from detection, but she realized it was a two-edged sword. The tracer lozenge on it could just as easily be used to pinpoint her location anywhere inside the complex.
After the beetle was out of sight, she began moving again. The heavy exchange of gunfire seemed to be tapering off to a sporadic crackle. Something rammed into her lower back. The air shot from her lungs, fierce agony filled her body and tears sprang to her eyes. She sprawled facedown across Constitution Avenue, crushing the six-inch-tall hedgeline around Stanton Park.
Mildred tried to push herself over, only to feel her upper arms vised by a pair of hands that felt like hydraulic-powered steel clamps. She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, and she managed to keep her revolver in her hand. The force of the blow had knocked the headset loose, and it dangled between her legs.
Her assailant mashed her in a crushing embrace, fingers kneading her breasts. What little air remained in her lungs was squeezed out.
A hoarse, angry laugh sounded close to her left ear. “I found a black woman, didn’t I? I heard they still existed, but I never thought I’d feel one.”
Mildred sagged in the man’s arms, shifting her weight into an unresisting, unstruggling mass. She went completely limp, and her attacker tried to reposition his grasp, hugging her close. His grip loosened for a split second, and she snapped her head back, butting the man’s face with the top of her skull. She felt and heard the crushing of cartilage.
The man grunted, stumbled back a half pace, the tension in his arms lessening. Mildred wriggled free, dropping through his arms, landing on her knees and lunging forward. She lashed out behind her with her legs.
Her feet clipped the man’s ankles, and he staggered backward. He kept himself from falling only by grabbing the cornice of the Supreme Court building.
Before he could regain his balance, Mildred flipped herself over and squeezed the trigger of the ZKR. The bullet caught the man in the neck just above the top button of his white collar. The slug traversed his throat, smashing vertebrae and exiting from the occipital area of his cranium. He backflipped over the building, propelled by the impact. Mildred saw his hands paw convulsively at empty air before he died.
The woman didn’t rise for a long moment, striving to clear her body of its blurring pain. She breathed heavily, every inhalation hurting. Her heart pounded wildly. Finally, when the pain had faded to a tolerable level, she checked her headset. Her knees had cracked it, the earpiece breaking loose from its plastic casing, exposing the wires beneath. One of the wires had been snapped, and she didn’t have the time to splice the ends back together. She and Ryan were incommunicado.
Using the pair of Senate office buildings as crutches, she slowly levered herself to her feet, biting her lip against the fierce pain lancing through her lower back. The man had to have kicked her there, probably with a bionic leg. She couldn’t crouch, so she began a shambling walk.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121