Dead Ice

I used his extra eyepiece to look closer at the struggling woman in the doorway. “It’s the zombie. I saw her on film.”

The magic tightened around me, so that it was hard to breathe past it, as if the air were getting heavier. “The spell, whatever it is, is almost complete, and when he finishes he will kill her.”

Connie and the zombie were both screaming, because one was alive and wanted to stay that way, and the other one didn’t know she was already dead.

“Knife, he’s got a knife,” Sutton said into his mic.

The other men were still doing the plan, working their way carefully up through the graves, because if the bad guy knew they were coming he could shoot them all before our team made entry.

“He’s going to kill the hostage,” I said.

Hudson said, “Sutton, do you have a shot?”

“Negative.”

“Shoot through the zombie. Greenlight his ass,” I said.

“I can’t shoot through a hostage.”

“Zombies aren’t hostages.”

“Sutton, Blake—give me eyes,” Hudson said.

“Zombie,” I said.

“Hostage,” Sutton said.

The women were screaming. The magic was squeezing the world down; something big was coming. I didn’t know if it was the loa coming to ride Max, or something else, and I didn’t care; as long as I shot him before he finished, it didn’t matter.

I moved to the other side of the tombstone from Sutton and used the stone to steady my rifle. I hit my throat mic and said, “I have the shot. Repeat, I have the shot.”

“He’s going to kill her,” Sutton said. He still had a shot, because he could still see past the zombie’s struggles to what the perp was doing.

“Greenlight, repeat, greenlight,” Hudson said.

I used the skills that Ares had taught me, the ones that had let me shoot him from the doors of a still-moving helicopter and do the last thing he ever asked of me, to kill him before he hurt someone. I knew the woman hanging there was a zombie; she was just like Thomas Warrington. It only looked alive. I prayed with the breath I drew in to steady myself, “Let me be right,” and I squeezed the trigger from that well of silence where I went when I shot, where there was nothing but the gun, my hands, my body, the target. It became not a person, but just the place you needed your bullet to go. Especially from these distances you don’t think you’re going to kill them, or shoot them; you think only be still, don’t breathe, control your pulse. Even your heart slows, as you pull the trigger, and let it happen. The hardest things to overcome are, don’t flinch, don’t pull, don’t anticipate that a small explosion is going to go off in your hands, because that’s what it is really; just be in that moment when the world narrows down to the dot of your laser sight going on the woman’s dress, but the target is behind her with its arm upraised and what you think is a knife coming down . . . and . . . the recoil of the rifle rocked against the snug of my shoulder, the firmness of my hands.

The body in the doorway moved, the target on the other side fell out of sight, the magic paused, like a giant had taken a breath. “Target down,” Sutton said.

I saw the other team members enter the building. They didn’t use flashbangs as planned, because they didn’t need to; the target was down, no need to stun the hostages. Sutton and I put our rifles to our shoulders and moved at that jog-trot that was still strangely smooth. I fell in beside him and just to one side, so that we stacked, even though it was just the two of us, and we went to join our team.

Gunfire ahead of us; there was still something to shoot in the crypt, or to shoot back. We ran like we’d been taught, not as fast as we could have run, but as fast as training had taught us we could keep our rifles to our shoulders, ready to aim, and keep moving.

65

THEY WERE DRAGGING Max out in cuffs. He was leaving a trail of blood. The moment they put him on the grass it started to pool underneath him. I knew one hole was mine, but he was bleeding in places I hadn’t shot him. The hostage from the doorway was on the grass with Saville, but there was no blood pooling under her. Max looked like so much bloody meat; she looked like an anatomy illustration, clean and bloodless. The dead don’t bleed like the living.

I heard Connie screaming, “Tomas! Tomas!”

My stomach tightened and fell into my feet. Please, God. Sutton was stopped at the door to the crypt, too big to get through the other men, but I was smaller, and fuck protocol, I had to see why Connie was screaming her brother’s name.

I yelled, “Make a hole!” and pushed between the men without waiting. They didn’t so much make a hole, as I could fit through where the bigger guys couldn’t. Sometimes small isn’t a bad thing.

Connie was kneeling over Tomas’s body in the corner, where it had been motionless through the scope. They were trying to pull her off him, so they could do what they could until the ambulance got here. I could hear sirens coming closer. Tomas was pale, eyes closed, face slack. His face looked more like the pictures I’d seen of Manny from high school than the last time I’d seen the kid. His upper body fell boneless against the stone floor as they pulled Connie off him.

I heard Hudson say, “Let us help him, Ms. Rodriguez.”

I yelled, “Connie, Connie, it’s Anita!” I took off the helmet and pulled the balaclava off so she could see my face.

She turned and looked up at me. “Anita! Oh God, Anita!” She got to her feet then and did what the men hadn’t been able to force her to do, gave them room to do their best for Tomas.