The sudden explosions he heard were muffled, but distinct. It took him a heartbeat to recognize them as gunshots, and they were coming from the tunnel in the basement. He thought he heard someone call his name. That thought was not complete as he gripped the long-slide Colt in his hand, jerked from the shoulder holster without conscious reaction.
He leaped to the basement door and opened it. The tunnel door banged open at that instant, and someone lay crumpled in the doorway. Gunshots echoed in the tunnel, and three men dressed head to toe in black crowded their way through the doorway into the basement. They looked left and right, waved machine pistols, but neglected to look upwards.
Eric went down on one knee, arm rigid, shoulder locked, and fired seven rounds into the heads of the three men below him. The far wall of the basement splattered red with their blood. Eric scrabbled at his shoulder holster as he released the Colt’s empty magazine, then slammed another magazine home and worked the slide. There were two more shots from the tunnel, then a gurgling scream, and silence.
Eric crab-walked down the stairs and kept his aim on the tunnel door. He jumped to one side, stepped up to the door, dared a quick glance down the tunnel, then a longer look. There was no movement. Two men were crumpled by the doorway, two others in black were sprawled steps away, and there was an isolated puddle of blood beyond that.
From upstairs came the roar of a vehicle rushing past his house, and Eric remembered the black van following Leon.
Leon. Oh, shit.
And then, right where he stood, someone groaned.
Eric looked down. At first he saw only a man on his back, face masked by a solid, opaque plate, arms to his sides. But there was a third arm jutting from beneath the man’s waist, a coat-sleeve shimmering gray.
Eric rolled the masked man over, and stared with dismay into Leon’s face. There was a blue pallor to his cheeks, and his chest was soaked with blood. Leon’s eyes flickered open. He smiled weakly.
“Heard—shots. Didn’t think—got you,” he gurgled.
Eric pulled Leon’s coat aside, saw three entrance wounds there, two high in the chest, one lower, close to the heart.
“I’ve got to get you medical help quick. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“S’okay. No pain. Just cold. Coulter did this. Wanted to kill you. Did—what I could—Eric.”
Eric watched Leon’s life pumping out of him with each heartbeat. The base had no hospital he knew of, only an infirmary. He could call Davis, and wait half an hour for someone to come. There was no surgery in town. The nearest was in Cottonwood, another half-hour down the road. And it would take over an hour to get him to Phoenix, even if a helicopter was called.
Leon didn’t have half an hour. Eric considered his options for two heartbeats, and decided.
“I’m taking you to Cottonwood, buddy. This’ll have to hurt.”
Eric picked the man up like a baby, and Leon groaned.
The groaning stopped halfway up the stairs, and Eric felt Leon’s head fall against his back. There was an ache in his chest, a sense of futility as he carried Leon into the garage and lowered him into the back seat of the car. Leon’s skin was horribly tinged blue, and his breathing made sinister bubbling sounds. Eric had seen the signs before, in a far away war the newspapers had never heard of. He could try as hard as he could, and had to do that, but the result would be the same. Leon would be dead in a matter of minutes, and they were too far from a hospital to save him.
Eric gunned the engine, thumbed open the garage door and the gate at the same time. The tires squealed as he backed up, but one look in the rear view mirror and he slammed on the brakes hard.
Military vehicles were pouring in through the gate, and blocking his way out.
Eric opened the door so hard the hinge shrieked. “I’ve got a gunshot victim here! He’s bleeding out!” he shouted. There was a Humvee, two vans and a jeep, all in desert beige, and the sight of the man in the jeep astonished him.
It was Sergeant Alan Nutt.
Eric gaped at him. Men poured out of the vans and Humvee. Alan gave orders, pointed, and some of the men ran right by Eric and headed for the garage.
“Is the door unlocked?” asked Alan.
“Yes,” said Eric. He hadn’t even thought about locking it. “My partner has been shot up bad. He needs immediate surgery.” He opened the back door of the car.
“He’ll get it,” said Alan. Two men came up from behind him, carrying a stretcher. A second stretcher was being carried into the house.
Leon didn’t make a sound when they put him on the stretcher and carried him to a van. Eric felt a lump in his throat when Alan put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll do what we can,” said Alan.
Eric swallowed hard, and tried to distract himself. “How did you know we needed help here? You must be hooked in live to the surveillance cameras, but even so you got here awful fast.”
“We’ll talk later. Are you okay?”
“Yes. I got three of them. Leon got three others, and I know who was behind the attack. His name is John Coulter, and the next thing I’m going to do is kill him.”
“The next thing you’re going to do is fly Sparrow,” said Alan. “Get in the jeep. I’m taking you straight to the base and under guard until the flight. Give me your keys. We’ll clean up here, and lock the house for you.”
Eric gave Alan his keys. Alan gave them to a corporal returning from the house. Two stretcher-bearers were with him, and they carried a man covered with a blanket. His eyes flickered, and he looked at Eric as he passed by him.
“We turned off the stove, sir. Your dinner was burned,” said the Corporal. He took the keys, and went back to the house.
Eric nodded at the man on the stretcher. “Where did he come from? I looked in that tunnel, and Leon was the only person alive in there.”
“Guess you didn’t look close enough, sir,” said Alan, and took Eric’s elbow to steer him towards the jeep.
Eric went with him, got in the back seat of the jeep. Men were now carrying body bags out of the house. The injured man was put into the van with Leon, and the van sped away. The body bags were put into the other van, and the doors closed.
The jeep carrying Eric went out the gate, turned left, and sped towards the canyons, Eric sat in the back, counting numbers in his head.
Two injured men, and six body bags made eight people.
But including Leon, Eric had only seen seven.
At a distance, they followed the van that carried Leon. As Eric expected, the van was returning to the base. It raised a cloud of dust ahead of them once they were off pavement and bouncing on red earth and scree. When they arrived at the fenced-in hut that was an elevator, the van had gone underground, and they had to wait ten minutes for the gate to open again for them. They descended, raced along the main tunnel and passed the van parked at a cutout near the entrance to the portal bay. The back doors of the van were open, but nobody was inside.
Alan said nothing to him the entire trip, looked back at him a few times, and once reached back to pat him on the knee as if to say “It’ll be all right.”
But it wasn’t going to be all right. Eric knew a mortal wound when he saw one, and had heard the last words of dying men. Leon had been shot defending a man who’d treated him like shit on more than one occasion, and now that man was feeling badly about it.
They were approaching the main parking area, and the jeep slowed. Eric leaned forward, and said loudly, “I saw the van back there. Is there another clinic nearby?”
Alan turned, but didn’t look at him. “It’s upstairs. There’s another set of elevators.”
The jeep stopped. Alan got out; pulled the seat forward for Eric to follow him, and the jeep sped away.