“Gun,” Colding said. “I’m really sorry about Brady.”
Gun nodded a silent thanks. He shuffled off to the bunk room.
Sara gently grabbed the back of Colding’s right arm. “Come on.” She walked him the few feet to the small infirmary and pointed at one of the two metal beds. He sat. Without a word, she helped him out of his ruined parka. Bits of white down feathers escaped and floated in the air. She grabbed some surgical scissors and cut away his torn, bloody shirt.
She wore no perfume, but this close the scent of her skin filled his nose. She smelled just like she had two and a half years ago.
He craned his neck to get a good look at the wound. The edge of the axe blade had cut him from his left shoulder to his sternum. He’d been lucky. If the point had gone just a bit deeper, it would have sliced his pectoral in half. Sara cleaned the cut.
“Do I need stitches?”
Sara shook her head. “Basically a glorified scratch.”
Her hands moved delicately across his skin, wiping away the still-oozing blood. She picked bits of white down feathers out of the cut before gently smearing antibiotic ointment on the wound. It hurt, but the touch of her fingertips felt relaxing. She quickly finished the job, wrapping gauze across the wound and around his chest, then sealing it in place with surgical tape.
Despite her delicate touch, she radiated hostility. He had to talk to her, smooth things out. “Listen, Sara, I—”
“Don’t bother. You got what you wanted—me, and through me, a crew for this plane.”
Was that what she thought? That he’d just used her? “That’s not how it was.”
“Oh?” She stood straight and looked him in the eye. With his ass sitting on the table, her head was just a little above his. “That’s not how it was? Then how was it, Peej?”
Peej. That strange nickname she started calling him after they’d had sex. He’d thought the name cute then. Now he found it uncomfortable.
“Call me P. J., please.”
“Excuse me?”
“Uh… well, you know. The last time you called me Peej, we… uh…”
She tilted her head and smiled the way you’d smile at some loudmouth in a bar right before you smacked him in the nose.
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you a choice. I can call you Peej, or I can call you Mister Rotten Fucking Piece of Shit That Treated Me Like a Used-up Whore. How’s that?”
Colding just blinked. “Uh… that’s not… I mean… that’s not what it was.”
She crossed her arms. “Then what was it? Used your magic cock to get me to sign the contract?”
He felt his face get all hot. Clarissa had never talked like that.
“So,” Sara said. “Which name would you prefer?”
He just wanted to end this conversation, and right now. “Peej will be fine.”
“I thought so. Now go get some sleep. I’ll send someone to wake you when we get close to Black Manitou.”
Sara strode out of the infirmary and turned left, toward the cockpit. Colding watched her go, watched the only woman—besides his wife—he’d slept with in the last six years.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he deserved it. And then he remembered Brady’s dead body, remembered how he’d kicked in Erika Hoel’s ribs, remembered that Fischer would keep hunting for all of them. Those things were far more important than worrying about Sara Purinam’s feelings.
He hopped off the bed and walked to the bunk room. Gunther was already snoring. The noise didn’t keep Colding awake for long.
NOVEMBER 8: THE GANG’S ALL HERE
“STOP IT, HANDS.”
Jian’s bloody hands ignored her. They kept sewing. The needle pricks were worse this time, each one a piercing sting she felt clear down to the bone. Wet red dampened the panda body’s black-and-white fur.
“Stop it, hands.”
She finished sewing. Just like the time before, and the times before that, the mishmash creature’s big black eyes fluttered to life, blinking like a drunken man awakening to the noonday sun.
Evil.
Jian felt evil pouring off the thing like the acrid stench of a skunk. She wanted to move, to run, but her body obeyed no better than her possessed hands.
Evil enough to kill her. And wasn’t that what she truly deserved?
The creature looked at her. It opened its wide mouth.
Jian started to scream.
SARA AND ALONZO sat in the C-5 cockpit. The equipment-packed space smelled of artificial pine thanks to the green, tree-shaped car air freshener Alonzo had hung off the overhead systems panel.
Sara could feel the tension pouring off her copilot, and she’d had just about enough.
“Out with it, ’Zo,” she said. “You’ve been biting your tongue for hours. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
He examined his instruments, making a show of looking very closely at everything in front of him. Sara let the silence hang. She just stared at him.
The cockpit door opened. Miller and Cappy came in. Normally, they didn’t come up to the cockpit during a flight.
“Well, well, well,” Sara said. “The gang’s all here. I bet you’re ready to talk now, hey ’Zo?”
Alonzo nodded. “You actually need us to say it?”
“Say what, exactly?”
Miller laughed a small laugh. “We’re sooooo reserved and mysterious. See if you can guess what we’re thinking.”
“Yeah,” Cappy said. “See if you can guess and shit.”
“Let’s see,” Sara said, rubbing her chin and looking up. “The spirits tell me… you’re concerned that we’re transporting a genetic experiment that we know nothing about?”
“Bzzzz,” Alonzo said. “Wrong, but thanks for playing.”
“Come on, guys, enough. Talk to me. Miller, sit your ass down and spill.”
Miller took the observer seat, which was right behind the copilot seat. “Sure, the genetics stuff freaks me out,” he said. “But I signed up for that. I knew what I was getting into.”
Cappy remained standing. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What we didn’t sign up for, chickee-poo, was flying Fred into a fucking combat zone, complete with burning buildings and dead bodies, then loading up casualties and flying out fast. A new Fred isn’t built for hot-zone operations like that, let alone a rebuilt one. You know this.”
Fred was a nickname for the entire C-5 line—it stood for Fucking Ridiculous Economic Disaster. The planes normally required around sixteen hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time. Their modified version was updated with state-of-the-art gear top to bottom, so it was easier to maintain, but Miller was still dead-on: this plane was not designed for combat operations. But what could they do about it now? Sara shrugged, wondering if she looked as nonchalant as she hoped.
Alonzo didn’t appreciate the attitude. “Sara, a man died back there. This is supposed to be a science experiment, not an action movie.”
It was Sara’s turn to look away, to overly examine the instruments. She and the boys had been together for seven years. They’d been in her C-5 crew during their days in the air force. When they all got out, they’d pooled their money and bought a 747 that had been converted for pure cargo hauling. There had been plenty of shipping offers from drug smugglers, but Sara and the boys never took those jobs. Most of their income came from FedEx and UPS, when those companies had an overflow of cargo that absolutely, positively had to be there overnight.