Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [72]
And he had not only survived, he’d thrived.
That was why he was the best.
He’d been standing in the cargo area for several seconds, but the copter hadn’t moved.
Angrily, he walked to the cockpit.
“Why haven’t we taken off?” he demanded.
“ ’Cause I don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’.”
The voice was not Montgomery’s.
The man in the pilot’s seat turned around, revealing himself to be that black punk who was with Olivera and the woman in the tube top. For that matter, he’d been in the gun shop with the S.T.A.R.S. personnel, but, since he was very obviously not a threat, Nemesis had spared his life.
Cain realized now that that had been a tactical error.
Even as he reached for his Glock, the black man punched Cain right in the face.
Dazed, Cain fell to the floor.
“Little something I learned in grade school.”
Cain’s vision swam. He hadn’t been coldcocked like that since basic!
He tried to get up, but he couldn’t get his limbs to work. Dimly, he was aware of Montgomery’s equally prone form next to him on the cockpit floor.
The next thing he knew, he felt hands grabbing him by the chest.
“Geddip.”
That didn’t sound right.
His vision cleared.
He saw the woman in the blue tube top. She had said, “Get up,” he now realized. But he still couldn’t make his legs move.
So the woman hauled him to his feet and pushed him into the cargo hold. The cold metal of a pistol’s muzzle pressed into the flesh of his neck.
Blinking a few times, he saw Ashford’s little girl standing in the hold, clutching a lunchbox, of all things, for dear life. Olivera was there, too, holding up Abernathy, who had a nasty wound in her chest.
That would heal, though. She was strong physically, even if she was weak mentally.
He wondered what had happened to Nemesis.
Now was the time for him to bargain. He could still get out of this.
“You have no idea what I could do for you. Don’t make a mistake.”
“Shut the hell up,” Tube Top said.
From behind him, he heard the black man’s voice saying, “Get us in the air, now! Don’t make me hit you again, dog!” He was obviously talking to Montgomery.
“I could get you whatever you want,” Cain said. “I could—”
Abernathy stared at him with her ice blue eyes.
Timothy “Able” Cain had faced the terrors of a desert war without fear. He’d come close to dying on hundreds of occasions. Not once during his entire tour was he ever scared.
Over a decade later, facing a lone, wounded woman in the cargo hold of a helicopter that was in the middle of a city about to be nuked, Timothy Cain was scared.
Saddam’s troops had wanted to kill the enemy. It was nothing personal; they were doing their duty, as Cain had been when he killed them.
Alice Abernathy wanted Cain dead because he was Timothy Cain.
For the first time, Cain realized that life was not at all cheap. It was precious.
And he wanted to keep his.
“Please,” he said. “What are you going to do to me?”
Alice pulled away from Olivera and walked over to him. She grabbed him by the shirt, just as Tube Top had.
“Not a goddamn thing.”
Then she threw him out of the cargo hold.
He landed badly, but the damage was comparatively minimal. The helicopter hadn’t yet taken off. He’d had worse in his time.
Now the C89 was taking off. Cain tried to get to his feet—
—but something grabbed him.
Even bulletproof material succumbs to enough pressure being put on it, and as good as Umbrella’s new PlastiGlas was, even it would break if enough weaponry hit it.
Between the rail gun and the firefight between Olivera and Tube Top and his own people, the barriers that had kept the walking corpses from invading the square had collapsed.
Now they were coming in droves. And with the helicopter taking off, and the only other people in the square already dead, that left them with only one target.
Cain.
He fired