Toys - James Patterson [80]
The secret-service men unleashed a blistering return attack. I raced like a berserk paratrooper, bouncing and flipping from side to side and somehow avoiding the hail of defensive gunfire.
I quickly spotted what I was looking for—the under-stage service entrance. But the massive steel door was sliding closed! Nothing short of an armored truck full of explosives could blast through it. That, or possibly the thermal grenade I’d strapped onto my armored vest an hour ago. I hurled it into the dead center of the dwindling opening.
Lucy yelled, “And you thought baseball was a dumb sport!”
“Don’t forget boring!” I called back.
Phooom! A blinding flash tore through the interior, turning sensitive equipment into melted debris and jamming the door.
The gap was no wider than my shoulder, but I lunged at it, wriggling through even as acrid smoke billowed across my face. Lucy was a half second behind, with only half the wriggle necessary to follow me in.
I skidded on the floor inside, spinning with my rifle raised, ready to take on more Elite guards—whatever it took to get to Jacklin and his cabinet.
But there weren’t any guards.
Instead, I heard a hoarse, familiar laugh up ahead.
Tazh Khan walked forward, his face blackened with soot. “Next time you warn me you throw grenade. OK?” he cheerfully scolded.
Chapter 110
“THIS WAY!” HE pointed. “Termite soldier scum!”
The staccato crack! crack! of weapon fire was ringing in the air as I burst up through a trapdoor and onto the next level. I had my rifle ready, expecting the president’s guards to be there.
The first thing I saw was one of the Elite militia men. He caught a bullet and his head exploded like a sledgehammered watermelon—except it was filled with silvery microchips instead of black seeds.
“Kill the head! Like I said, Hays.”
Lucy had come through like the warrior she was! She had met up with her team, and they had used their old-fashioned rifles with stunning accuracy to clear a path to Hughes Jacklin and the other leaders.
And then—there he was! The president spun around and stared at me like I was, well, some kind of human scum.
He stabbed a forefinger in my direction. “Kill him!” he commanded his guards, who were led by a guy I could have sworn I’d just killed—Devlin. Could they all have been clones?
The outsize bodyguard made a quick study of the expression on my face.
“Hello again, Hays,” he said, stepping forward and waving the president and the other VIPs back toward a door, which led off of the dais. “You didn’t possibly think I’d have been hanging out in the parking lot with my clones while my president was unveiling the dawn of our new free society?”
“Funny how one doesn’t usually hear termite colonies described as ‘free societies,’ ” said Lucy, edging forward with me and Tazh Khan as Devlin leveled his guns at us and his remaining thick-necked brethren formed a defensive wedge behind him.
There was no turning back—and there was no delaying. We couldn’t let the president escape. We had to kill the head before it reconnected with the larger body of Elite muscle beyond that door.
Chapter 111
I SWUNG MY weapon around and fired as I dove to the ground. The glowing spray of the bodyguards’ automatic weapons raked the room at waist level. But my shot went wide or—was it possible? Had Devlin somehow dodged my bullet?
I watched in slow-motion horror as the feet of the VIPs pounded through the far doorway. After all this…
“Go ahead, be heroes for your boss,” I shouted at the bodyguards as Tazh Khan, Lucy, and her platoon of human commandos took up position behind me. I’d never heard a sweeter sound than the kerchink, kerchink of the rounds as they were racked into the old-fashioned, but nonetheless deadly, metal weapons.
“Maybe he’ll give you a pay raise in hell,” I continued. “Think about it. You’re outnumbered ten to one! Easily. You’ll all be dead in seconds.”
The Elite guards looked at the dozens of dull metal barrels