Ziv walked over to the bodyguard. “You and I have unfinished business, my old friend. Does your head still hurt from the punch I gave you? Yes, pig?” He drew his knife and motioned for the other man to come at him.
“Ziv, are you kidding me?” I slipped my finger onto the trigger of my rifle and drew a good site picture, but Ziv waved me off.
“No, Nick, do not interfere. Look at the rifle. This one killed Ahmed. I must do this.”
The man laughed. “Ha, good, I thought I got a piece of that Muslim piece of shit. Sniper, my ass. I can’t believe you had a hard on for a raghead. I thought you Serbs were tough.”
I stepped back and lowered my rifle. I was worried, because in a knife fight, everyone gets cut. Yeah, one person may come out the loser and wind up dying, but the winner, often as not, comes off pretty badly himself.
I nodded to the man. “You know if you win, I’m going to kill you.”
“Yeah, but I’ll go out in style. Killed the famous sniper Ahmed, and now I’m going to slice up Sasha Zivkovic, notorious Serbian Special Forces Officer.” With that, he slipped a bayonet from where it was strapped onto his boot and went into a crouch, left arm extended; right arm held in close, bayonet pointed down. Ziv walked towards him, big knife held at the low ready. Damn, this was going to suck.
The shot from the house, fully a thousand meters away, took off the top of the bodyguards’ head, and he threw his arms up in the air and toppled over to one side, his brains splattering out the huge exit hole. My radio crackled to life, and Brit’s voice carried over the air.
“Whoops! Must have squeezed the trigger in all the excitement. Excuse me, gotta go pee. Brit Out!”
Ziv stuck his knife back in the sheath, then spit on the corpse. “Nick, I am going to have a talk with your she-devil. Gah, impudent American women.”
We walked over to where Doctor Morano sat in the dirt, hands cuffed behind her back. She smiled at me as I approached.
“Hello, Nick. Long time no see.” She started laughing. “Tell Ms. O’Neill I said that. No see! Hahaha!” She peeled off into hysterical laughter. I waited for her to stop.
“You should have stayed in the lab, Doc. Picked the wrong ground to fight on, my ground.”
“So now what? You shoot me?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. Back to the house, for starters.”
Hart grabbed her hands and lifted her, pulling hard, making Morano wince in pain. We frog marched her back to the house, and Doc lowered the bridge, allowing us back across the canal. Brit met us at the far end of the span.
Doctor Morano started to speak, “Ah, Miss O’Nei-“, but before she could get the words out, Brit took an icepick and poked her in the eye, puncturing it. Morano fell to the ground, screaming. Jim grabbed Brit’s hand, but she stepped back.
“It’s OK, I’m done!”
“Doc, treat that. Get her patched up. I want her alive.”
Doc got out a field dressing and started to wrap it around her head, holding it to her bleeding eye. As he held her face with his free hand, she twisted her head and bit down hard on his fingers.
“OW! FUCK!” Doc pulled his hand away and Morano laughed. Hart kicked her in the shoulders and she fell to the ground, still laughing.
“Crazy bitch!” Doc was holding his hand, and I could see the blood welling up from the teeth marks.
“Go get that cleaned up, Doc. Leave her eye the way it is.” Doc walked over to the well pump, muttering to himself.
“You’re an evil snake. Gotta get one last once of pain in, don’t you?”
“You have no idea, Nick. No idea.” She licked at the blood running down her face and kept laughing.
Brit screamed, and Doc hit me from behind, knocking me down into the dirt. I felt his hands wrap around my neck as I rolled over. Training kicked in and I jammed my arm up into his mouth, the kevlar inserts in my sleeves keeping his teeth from sinking into my arm.
“I CAN’T GET A SHOT!” yelled Ziv. I dragged my pistol out with my free hand and forced it slowly up under his chin. His red eyes burned at me from inches away, and his hands were choking me, jaws reaching for my neck. Everything was going black, hazy around the eyes. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Red with his hammer looking for a way to swing. Behind him Morano started to run, but Brit tackled her and started banging her head into the dirt. I kept forcing Doc’s head back, trying to get the pistol up, working the hammer with my thumb, cocking it back. I finally got it jammed under the skin of his neck, pulled my arm out of his jaws so I didn’t shoot myself, and pulled the trigger, sending the .22 slug through his lower jaw and into his brain. I pulled it again and again until the magazine was empty and the thing that had been my best friend rolled off me and fell to the ground.
I sat up and started crying.
Chapter 32
Morano sat tied to the chair in the basement. I flicked on the light, and she squinted up at me. Not bothering to strap on my leg, I hopped down the stairs. Brit followed behind me, and we each took a seat in chair facing her. She stared at us, her eye socket bloody and a half mad grin on her face. On a table in front of her sat a leather wallet, open, showing half a dozen syringes.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re infected.”
She gave me a look like I was an idiot. “Of course I am. How else could I do my research?”
“You did this to yourself?”
“Why, yes. It would be inhumane to not experience what my test subjects were going through, right?”
Brit leaned over and whispered in my ear. “She is freaking nuts.”
I nodded. “So, what’s in the syringes? A cure?”
“Not that you would understand it, but no, not a cure. A preventive. It keeps the parasite at bay. I need to have it every forty eight hours. You’ll be happy to know that I developed it from your friend Mya’s blood.”
Brit stood up, pulled on a glove, and jammed her finger into Moranos’ bloody eye socket. She screamed in pain. I grabbed Brit’s arm and pulled her back.
“Sit down, Brit. I know what we’re going to do.” I reached for the medicine.
Morano leaned forward in her chair, new blood pouring from her ruined eye. “You have to let me go, you know. I’m very close to a cure. The government needs me. I could have even saved your friend Doc. You’ll of course have to give me Specialist Redshirt. He will be vital to our program. I’ll forgive Ms. O’Neill. Eye for an eye, you know.”
One hundred percent, batshit crazy. I dropped the syringes on the floor and ground the glass vials into dust under my boot, then spread the liquid around on the brick. Morano’s mouth opened, and then closed.
“Forty eight hours you said? Must be at least twenty four since you had your last shot.”
“You can’t do this. The world depends on me!” For once, something seemed to have gotten through to her.
“Not this world, Maybe the next one.” I called up for someone to come down and give us a hand.
Ziv came downstairs and grabbed her by her feet, dumping her out of her chair. Despite her kicking and screaming, he dragged her up the stairs, making sure she hit her head on each step. When we got outside, he locked her cuffs to a tree with a bicycle chain. Then we went to bury Ahmed and Doc in the field just outside the house.
In the end it took less than a day. Maybe the adrenaline from the firefights purged the preventive from her system more quickly, I don’t know. I sat and watched, with Brit, as a red light started to appear in Doctor Morano’s good eye. At first she begged, then cursed us to hell, then laughed hysterically.