The End Game

He changed course, dodging flying rubble, banging his hip against a concrete pylon, there to ensure the security of this place, only it hadn’t done any good. The bombers had gotten in despite all the safety precautions.

Nicholas saw a man pi

Nicholas moved behind the man, nodded to Mike. “One, two, three,” she yelled, and Nicholas pulled up the stinging hot metal, burning his hands, heaving with all his strength while Mike tugged the man clear. He dropped the metal back to the ground with a crash barely heard in the hellish chaos around them.

“Bloody hell.” He shook his hands, rubbed them together, wincing at the blisters that had popped up. He hadn’t thought to get gloves from the car’s boot, brain that he was.

“There’s another man over there!”

Nicholas saw a large chunk of metal sticking out of the man’s neck and the odd angle of his head. “He’s dead. Keep moving.”

Mike swallowed, nodded. They wound their way closer to the center of the blast site. The heat was incredible, the flames shooting madly into the night, singeing their arms and hair, but they kept moving, picking through the rubble, looking for survivors.

“Here’s one,” Nicholas shouted, and they dragged the man free, picked him up by arms and legs, and ran him back to where firemen had set up a protected space for the arriving EMTs to tend to the wounded.

They lost count of the men they’d carried back to the staging area. Finally a firefighter stepped in their way, hands up.

“Hey. Stop, both of you. I don’t know who you are, but you don’t have the right equipment. Get back away from here, now. I don’t want the two of you hurt as well.”

Mike shouldered her way past him. “These men are going to die if we don’t get back in there. Help us or get out of the way.”

The firefighter opened his mouth to yell at her when Nicholas grabbed his arm, saw his name on his jacket. J. JONES. “Don’t bother, mate. She’s unstoppable. Come on, we could use your help. We’ll tell your supervisor you were escorting us. Move it, now.”

Without waiting to see what the man did, Nicholas ran after Mike into the flame-lit night.

Twenty minutes after the bomb went off, the scene looked like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare scape. The air was still ripe with the scent of carnage, men stumbling from the converters, others slumped silent on the ground, bloody, groaning, so many others more seriously hurt and bleeding in the staging area. In that instant, this hell shot Nicholas back to a place more than three years before, in another part of the world, and the terrible mistakes made, and he felt a ferocious hit of pain and guilt.

The firefighter who’d tried to stop them, Jones, was at his elbow, pointing and shouting. Nicholas whirled round. He thought they’d cleared everyone in this quadrant. He couldn’t see any more bodies in the hellish light.

“What is it? I don’t see anyone.”

Jones yanked on his shoulder, pulled him backward, shouting, “No, look, over there. Bomb, bomb!” and Nicholas saw a black backpack on the ground, with wires sticking out of the top. His heart froze.

Mike was a good twenty feet in front of him. He sprinted to her, caught her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her as fast as he could away from the backpack into the darkness, yelling, “Secondary device, run, Mike, run!”

They ran toward Jones, who was still screaming at everyone to fall back, fall back.

The backpack exploded, and the world around them shattered.

5

KNIGHT TO C3

Nicholas barely had time to fling his arms up to protect his face before he was hurled backward to the ground, unconscious. A year, a day, moments, he didn’t know, but when he came to, he was lying facedown on the oily tarmac. He shook his head, pulled himself together. He saw Mike lying ten yards away, sprawled on her back, legs and arms flung out, Jones lying beside her. Neither of them was moving. He saw something dark and wet on the ground near Jones’s head—blood, yes, blood was the word he was looking for—and Mike still wasn’t moving. He tried to stand up but couldn’t, he had no balance.

He crawled to Mike, pressed his filthy fingers to the pulse in her neck. She was breathing, thank the good Lord.

He pulled her onto his lap and held her close, rocking her. “Come on, Mike, wake up, come on, sweetheart, you can do it.”

She began to moan low in her throat and he said over and over, “Come on, Mike, come back to me, you can do it. I’ve promised a dozen years of good works if you’ll be okay. Come on, Mike, wake up, do it now before I stroke out.” Finally, she twitched and opened her eyes. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes, now vague with confusion, and knew such relief he wanted to shout with it. He wondered if this was how she’d felt in Geneva, with him out cold on the ground, the building exploding behind him? Her glasses lay on the ground beside her, incredibly unbroken. He handed them to her, watched her shove them back on.

They’d both lost their shirtsleeve masks. Mike’s hair was sticking out in all directions. Her face was grimed with soot, but he could clearly see the big bruise on her cheek and the begi

Amazingly, she smiled up at him. He pressed his forehead to hers, knowing his heart was still pounding too fast, the fear still eating deep. “Tell me you’re okay. Promise me you’re okay.”

“Yes, don’t worry, Nicholas, I’m only battered a bit. You look pretty scary. Can you believe it? My glasses aren’t broken. You okay?”

He nodded. “But our savior, Jones, he doesn’t look good.”

Together they crawled to where Jones lay motionless. He was still, too still. Mike leaned close, said over her shoulder, “He’s breathing. He lost his hardhat, but he’s wearing his fireman’s jacket, it cushioned his fall.” Mike patted his face, ran her hands over his head, down over his shoulders, while Nicholas felt his arms and legs. She patted his face again. “Mr. Jones? Come on, wake up, tell me you’re okay.”

A few moments later his eyelids began to flutter, and he was back with them. “Wh-what’s happening?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nicholas said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, amazingly still snowy white. “Here, your nose is bleeding.”

Mike sat back on her knees, watched Jones take a swipe at the blood. She said, “Hey, way to get out of the way, dude.”

He gave a ghost of a laugh. “Do I look as bad as you guys?”

“Probably worse,” Mike said. “You have blood smeared all over your face.”

“Feels like I busted my nose again. Weird, but it doesn’t hurt like the first time. You guys all right?” He sounded like he had a bad cold.

“Bumps and bruises,” Nicholas said. “Can you stand?”

They hauled him to his feet, all three clinging to one another for balance. Mike said, “You know the drill, keep pressure on your nose. What’s your name?”

That took him a minute, then he gri

“Okay, Jimbo,” Nicholas said. “I’m Nicholas and this is Mike. Let’s get you back to the EMTs.”

The scene behind them hadn’t worsened after the second blast. Since they’d been closest, and they were alive and nearly walking, it hadn’t been a very strong bomb. Nicholas thought back to the placement—the backpack had been lying on the ground out in the open, almost as if it had fallen off the wearer’s back. Perhaps it was the bomber’s and he’d been ru

Nicholas said, “This is curious. I mean, a second bomb—that’s the MO normally used by terrorist organizations to achieve maximum death tolls by taking out the first responders. What’s going on? COE has never pulled this trick before.”