The worst injury was a sucking chest wound, front and back penetration. It looked like a large-caliber full metal jacket round, maybe coated with something to defeat armor, .50 caliber or .44 magnum. He cursed all fans of big-bore handguns as he grabbed Elise’s bare hand and put it against the bloody hole in Larry’s chest.
“Pressure, hard, HERE.” She did as he told her, shaking tears out of her eyes.
Daniel rolled Larry onto his side to keep the fluid buildup in his lungs under control. Air wheezed in and out of the puncture in his back as his body struggled for breath. He needed to seal that up.
By this time Zeke was squeezing off single shots left-handed in the doorway, firing down the corridor to the right, suppressing the hostile. With part of his mind Daniel heard the electric-chainsaw sound of Spooky’s P90, slim 5.7mm rounds shredding in short bursts like hail drumming on a steel rooftop. Then he heard a flash-bang go off, and Zeke moved out into the corridor. He and Spooky were assaulting the shooter.
Daniel had unrolled his aid bag and was reaching for the tools of his trade when Elise leaned over and planted her mouth full on Larry’s.
No time for smooching and no need for mouth-to-mouth ran through Daniel’s head unbidden. His fingers slowed down as his disbelieving brain watched her lay the mother of all French kisses on Larry, like a drunk chick at a Saturday night meet-market. The uncomprehending part of him was suddenly jealous. He heard the snake giggle from somewhere deep inside.
Elise lifted her head, coughing and retching, and he saw her expression, a mixture of horror and hope, as she wiped her mouth out with the sleeve of her lab coat and stared down at Larry.
Daniel realized this must be an attempt to transfer the XH to Larry. It was the only thing that made sense.
He had to put that question on hold along with many others as a tall cabinet in the corner behind Elise swung inward. It had hidden a door from the next room. A man stood thus revealed, a scarred man with a very, very large handgun in a shooter’s grip: Karl Rogett. He fired two more quick shots back into the room he was leaving and then turned toward Daniel – and Elise.
Daniel dropped his right hand to his thigh where his trusty XD was holstered, quick-drew and fired, double tap. Unfortunately the hard rubber bullets he had loaded stung and bruised the gunman but didn’t put him down. His experiment with nonlethal ammo had betrayed him, and he frantically pulled the trigger over and over, peppering the man with riot rounds at close range. One hit Rogett’s face and tore a hole in his cheek, but the shots that bounced off his arms and chest did little but annoy him.
The pistol’s slide locked open and Daniel was out of ammo.
Karl had been shielding his face with his raised arms, and began to bring his weapon back to shooting position. Daniel released his pistol, snapped his hand to the blade on his calf. He drew the knife with his fingertips and in one motion extended his hand with a flip of the wrist. It was poor technique but he was very close, less than ten feet away. Gramps’ legacy turned end for end once. The razor-sharp tip of the blade punched right through the meaty part of the man’s left forearm, between the radius and ulna.
Unfortunately the man was right-handed. Rogett gritted his teeth and his right hand kept swinging that hand cannon in Daniel’s direction, and he knew this was going to hurt. He prayed for God to save Larry and the XH to save him and surged to his feet to rush his enemy.
But it was neither God nor XH, it was his own angel that saved him. Elise was closer and wasn’t carrying a load of gear. She bounced up and stepped in front of the gunman and Daniel saw the explosion as the first round blasted through her shoulder upward, a spray of red that covered him in a fine mist. The bullet, slowed, thumped off his Kevlar helmet, staggering him.
Elise screamed as the bullet passed through, but stayed up. Karl fired the second and last round just as Elise got her hands on his weapon. It tore through her right upper arm, to plow into the wall somewhere off to their rear. Impossibly, she hung on to the big black automatic with a death-grip, preventing him from firing with her fingers jammed through the trigger guard, for just long enough.
Daniel thought, What an amazing woman. If I wasn’t in love before, I sure am now.
Karl struck her weakly, once, with his wounded left arm, Daniel’s knife still sticking out of it like some bizarre fashion accessory.
Then Daniel had him.
Without thought or planning his right hand had dropped to the pistol grip of the M4 hanging on its retractable sling and he lined it up between the man’s eyes. He didn’t fire, though, as he would have a few days ago, before his conscience started acting up, before the XH. Instead, he punched the weapon forward, driving the tip of the barrel into the big man’s forehead with a meaty thud.
Daniel had to hit the man twice more before he finally slumped and let go of his gun, wheezing on the floor. Daniel kicked it aside. Desert Eagle, like he’d thought. He pulled his blade out of the gunman’s flesh, wiped it on his pants leg, and slid it back into its sheath.
Elise slumped to the floor. Just then Zeke came through the same secret door. He took in the scene and pulled out his zip cuffs again.
“Double them,” Daniel said, turning back to Larry. “He’s one tough son of a bitch.” He was worried about Elise but the triage medic in his head made him work on the wounded man first. Compartmentalize and stitch. Besides, she had the XH and had survived worse.
The irony was that the “worse” was something he himself had inflicted.
Zeke dragged the hog-tied hostile out of their way. With the corner of his eye Daniel saw Elise sitting on the floor bleeding, propped against another lab counter, both arms hanging flaccid. “Zeke, can you look at her?”
Zeke pushed his M4 back on h sling and knelt down to tend to Elise. She opened her eyes and smiled. “I’ll be all right. The Plague will heal me.” She lifted a shaky hand. “See? Getting better already.”
Skull appeared in the lab doorway, having come to join the fight. He looked disappointed, until Zeke yelled, “You and Spooky clear the rest of the building.” Zeke needn’t have shouted, since they were all still on the tactical link, but sometimes men do things in the heat of battle that don’t entirely make sense.
“You guys all right?” Vinny broke in on the radio. He had been pretty restrained until now. Of course they had emphasized the importance of no chatter, but he finally couldn’t help himself.
“Larry’s hit, but I think I got him.”
But Daniel had lied. Larry was bleeding out fast. The delay dealing with the last hostile had cost him and he was racing to save the big man’s life.
He made sure Larry’s airway was clear, got plugs into the chest wounds front and back, and wrapped him tight and quick, putting him on the wounded side again to keep him from drowning in his own fluids. Then he slapped pressure bandages on the rest of Larry’s wounds, of a type with the infused clotting agent. A large-bore IV of saline was next, into a vein. Daniel looked around for something to hang it on, and found Elise there.
She grabbed the bag with her left hand and held it high. Her wounds had closed fast, much faster than he had expected. She smiled reassuringly, encouraging.
Daniel’s own remembered need for food, food to heal his wounds, cramped his gut, almost doubling him over. He grabbed his rucksack, opened one of the pockets to pull out a handful of protein bars. Ripping the wrapper off with bloody hands he held it out toward Elise’s face.
Their eyes met, understanding passing between them.
She grabbed the bar with her free hand and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing furiously. She moaned with pleasure, a sound that reached Daniel somewhere below the belt.
A part of him marveled at the human male’s ability to think about sex he hadn’t even had with someone he didn’t really know, even in the middle of a death struggle. Maybe because of the death struggle. Daniel dropped the rest of the bars on the floor within reach, then went back to treating Larry.