Surprise made her look him in the face for the first time since she’d entered. She’d fucked him over; he had no reason to listen to her opinion or trust her in any way. Yet there he was, meeting her gaze with those keen, cool eyes. He was giving her a second chance, she realized. Wasn’t making a big deal of it like every other superior officer she’d known up to then; just offered her an opportunity to do her job and prove she’d really meant the apology… and for the first time in a long while, Leandra found she actually did mean it, if only in retrospect.
“Frankly, sir,” she said, proud of how steady and dry her voice came out, “the whole story sounds like what passes for the plot in a summer
blockbuster.”
Young laughed; a sharp boom of a sound that seemed too loud in the small infirmary room. He winced and swayed briefly before he caught himself. Exhaustion and possibly a minor concussion, Leandra diagnosed, plus he had to be black-and-blue after that tumble out of a moving car, controlled fall or not. She was smart enough to keep her mouth shut. He couldn’t be in any immediate danger or the medical personnel wouldn’t have left him alone, so she might as well save her breath. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Luckily, Young might be goal-oriented, but wasn’t an idiot. He clearly knew his limits and thus didn’t attempt to stand up and be a hero but settled back on the gurney to wait until his body gave him the all clear.
“I agree,” he told her. “And the fuckers didn’t even bring their own guns to that fucking gunfight.”
That was news. “How do you know?”
“I had Peterson count the weapons.”
“Three missing, no extras?”
This was ridiculous. No sane person would’ve attacked US troops unarmed and unequipped. It would’ve—should’ve—been a suicide run.
“Three missing, no extras,” the general confirmed sourly. “They waltzed in and rolled us like amateurs starting out with their bare hands.”
He frowned and one of his hands twitched as if he wanted to finger the cut on his head again. “I don’t think they were after the alien at all. I think they were after the host. Which means as soon as the entity wakes up, things are gonna get interesting.”
That was putting it mildly. “What’s the plan, sir?”
Young’s eyes turned flinty. “I’m done fucking around. This time, we’re taking the Spitfire and if the alien fucker doesn’t put up its hands and surrender, it is toast.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
THERE was something slightly surreal about sitting in the shade of a desert canyon with the burn of southwestern spices painting over the memories of bland breakfast cereal eaten in the New Orleans Garden District and the livid images of recent violence slowly fading into sepia in the quiet of the afternoon. Andrej was used to short bursts of adrenaline-driven carnage followed by periods of forced inactivity, but this time he was having trouble with the disconnect. He didn’t know whether it was because everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly, or because they were moving way outside of their usual pattern. Not only had this mission been unsanctioned, it had proved to be eminently uncontrollable, which wasn’t something that sat well with a man of his profession.