Bone Rider (25 page)

“I’m not leaving him.”

Andrej took a deep breath, then shifted slightly to glance behind Misha. Must be Kolya back there, probably doing the inscrutable thing again, because Andrej gave up on him almost immediately to focus back on Misha.

“You can’t,” he said, his fingers digging into Misha’s shoulders with unthinking force. “There’s a shitload of soldiers over there and a sniper team in the helicopter. We’re unarmed. And Riley’s gone.” His fingers twitched. “He’s
gone
, man. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

A brief flash of fury seared through Misha at those words. He clubbed it down. Andrej didn’t know. Couldn’t. He’d never felt for anyone what Misha felt for Riley and then lost them. It wasn’t something you could explain, so Misha didn’t.

“There’s plenty weapons over there,” he pointed out instead, quite reasonably, or so he thought. “Plenty of cover. Shoot the sniper team first while we have the angle, take the leader hostage, and we’re good to go.” His throat felt weird, hot and tight, and he swallowed convulsively to get rid of the obstruction. “I won’t need long.”

Behind him, Kolya huffed and moved. Misha glanced to the side to check his reflection in the window glass of their rental, just in case the man was about to pick the wrong side. He knew Kolya was armed but wouldn’t use a weapon against Misha if he could help it. He’d go for a chokehold or a blow to the head. Misha, on the other hand, wouldn’t hesitate to use the ceramic knife hidden in his sleeve if Kolya tried to keep him from Riley. He didn’t really care whom he had to kill to get to the diner. He only knew he wasn’t leaving without Riley.

Kolya managed to surprise him once again. He was stripping down, tie already off, jacket sliding down his powerful arms as Misha watched. He tossed it in the back of the car and went to work on his shirt, meeting Misha’s gaze in the mirror and raising a sardonic eyebrow. Kolya wasn’t a tall man. He was balding early, so he kept his hair shorn, which showed off his angular features, drew attention to his intense eyes and broken boxer’s nose. With his clothes on, he looked average, a little thuggish no matter how expensive his suits. With his shirt off, though, his true nature showed. Pale skin stretched taut over sleek muscles, faded blue prison tattoos rippling with every movement. There was a skull on his chest, too, declaring him a killer. Three of a kind, here. Enough to pull this off if they worked together and didn’t hesitate.

“Kolya?” Andrej asked. He didn’t let go of Misha, held on like he thought Misha would go it alone if left unattended. He wasn’t wrong. They’d already wasted too much time arguing, had to move fast before the soldiers decided to advance on the diner after all.

“You want your face plastered all over the news?” Kolya grunted. He’d snapped open a switchblade and was cutting his shirt into three pieces. He tossed two of them over Misha’s shoulder before he turned and retrieved his jacket. “There. Let’s play holdup.”

“Jesus, you two are nuts,” Andrej muttered, but he snatched up a strip of cloth and tied it around his head outlaw-style anyway. Misha did the same. The impromptu mask smelled like Kolya: sweat, a fading wisp of some no-name deodorant, and faintly of gun oil. The scent of their breed.

“Take these,” Kolya ordered, impatiently, and pressed a pair of crinkled latex gloves each into their hands. Any other day, they’d have mocked him for it, told him that most people carried condoms in their pockets. This wasn’t any other day.

Misha pulled the gloves over his hands without a word, cracked his neck, and started toward the soldiers. Andrej stopped him as he pushed past, fingers a band of steel around Misha’s arm as he gave Misha a hard look.

“Don’t get killed or I’ll kick your fucking ass.”

Misha nodded readily, but in his mind he was long gone, slipped into the kill-space. No reason to hold back for Riley’s sake. Not anymore.

T
HEY
crossed the street at a dead run, sliding smoothly over hoods and trunks because speed was essential, the element of surprise a fleeting advantage. Misha took point, forced his way through the thin crowd of gawkers with elbows and fists. The soldiers who were facing the street to keep back the civilians were alerted by disgruntled shouts to the killers’ approach, but they were in no way prepared for what was coming. They had a second to frown in surprise at the improvised masks when the trio pushed free, then the blade of Misha’s knife cut through an unprotected throat and first blood splashed on the dirty asphalt of the parking lot and into the face of a pasty-faced gawker. She screamed like a banshee.

A surge of vicious satisfaction flashed through Misha as he grabbed the soldier’s gun and tossed it to Andrej, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. He didn’t think there was enough blood in the world to make up for Riley, but this was a start. Someone had ordered this, and Misha intended to find them next. He’d make sure to drive home the message that Riley hadn’t been alone or expendable, had meant so much to someone that this someone was willing to build him a memorial made of death and terror. Keep on killing for him until people remembered the name Riley Cooper forever. Hell, if he could’ve pulled it off, Misha would’ve slaughtered the whole world in retaliation for this one unforgivable death. Fuck it. It wasn’t worth anything without Riley in it anyway.

Andrej and Kolya fanned out, flanking Misha, blood on their hands as well. Andrej kicked a soldier in the nuts, snatched the assault rifle out of his hands as the man folded up, and vaulted into the back of a battered, black pickup truck. Getting in position to take out the sniper team in the helicopter. The truck was Riley’s, Misha realized, and his heart missed a beat in grief and savage appreciation when Andrej squeezed the trigger. Several shots rang out in rapid succession and then blood rained down from the sky, some of it hitting the officer in command of Riley’s murderers as he spun around to face the threat. The pilot reacted instinctively to the barrage of bullets and the sudden death of the soldiers in his cargo area. The Black Hawk tilted and drifted away, its shadow streaking across the lot. A rifle slipped from a dead man’s hand and smashed through the windshield of one of the parked cars below.

Andrej had already abandoned his exposed position on top of the truck and was back at Misha’s side, faithful and fearless. It was just them now. Three syndicate enforcers against a decimated platoon of startled soldiers who’d thought their work over, believed themselves safe. Insane odds, but then again, Misha had gone just a little insane himself. He lunged, pushed his knife through the soft tissue of an eye, enough force behind the blow to slam the weapon deep into the vulnerable inside of the skull. Took the gun from the falling man, brought it up and shot another between the eyes before the body had hit the floor.

A bullet passed so closely by Misha’s face he felt the sting against his cheek and he dove behind a cherry-red SUV, out of the immediate line of fire. A glance in the side mirror revealed the shooter to be the officer in command, the Dead Man Walking who’d given the order to blow up the diner and kill Riley. He’d homed in on Misha’s position and was closing fast, unexpectedly graceful for such a hulking giant of a man, ice-blue eyes narrowed and unafraid. Definitely not panicking, this one, and experienced enough to have picked out Misha as the leader of the hostiles decimating his men. He was good, had Misha nice and pinned, but then, Misha wasn’t alone.

As if on cue, a soldier slumped to the ground a step beside Misha, dead as a doornail. Andrej peered around the rear end of a truck and raised an eyebrow.

Disable
, Misha signaled.
Don’t kill
.

Wouldn’t do to take out their hostage
in spe
. Misha intended to do that later, when he’d retrieved Riley. He was going to savor that death. Make it hurt. Leave the body at the gates of Fort Bliss before he went in and killed his way to the head honcho there. For now, though, he wanted the man alive. The soldiers were already recovering from the shock of the unexpected attack and rallying. Couldn’t let them launch a counterstrike; there were too many of them.

Andrej nodded his understanding and slipped away. A machine pistol coughed. Empty shell casings hit the ground like metal rain. Someone screamed. Above them, the three helicopters circled like angry hornets, adding to the battlefield chaos on the ground without a chance to intervene. They couldn’t fire their weapons in such a crowded area without hitting their own people, and that made them absolutely useless for anything other than intel gathering and calling for reinforcements that wouldn’t get there in time.

Misha checked the mirror again and watched in satisfaction as a wounded man staggered back against his commander. The Dead Man caught the soldier instinctively, eyes flashing angrily when Misha used his distraction to relocate. Unable to get to Misha, the Dead Man barked orders, organizing his troops. His men were still scattered, forced into close quarters fighting between the parked cars, most not daring to shoot for fear of hitting innocent bystanders—of which there were still plenty—but a few were firing methodically at the trio currently cutting a swath through them. Bullets slammed into metal and glass, punched out tires, glanced off asphalt, and buried themselves in tissue and bone.

The remaining civilians had been the hard core, either stupidly brave or just plain stupid. They had watched with wide eyes, some of them actually filming the battle with their camera phones, but even they finally fled the scene when they realized the firefight raging right in front of their eyes was really real. Thoughts of Internet fame and TV appearances were rolled under by survival instinct at last. The chaos of their unordered retreat nearly drowned out the sharp barks of the firearms and the shouts of the soldiers.

The sounds of screaming and gunfire were distant in Misha’s ears, meaningless background noise. All he really heard was the rasping of his own breath, the fierce thumping of his own heart, and the metallic click whenever he’d emptied another clip. He was on autopilot, years of training kicking in to take over while his mind was still too numb to cope.

Move fast, don’t falter.

Use the bodies of your enemies as cover.

Duck, weave, kill.

Toss the gun, take a running dive, crash against a pair of booted
legs.

The soldier fell, flailing, accidentally pulled the trigger and hit one of his comrades. Misha rolled on top, grabbed his victim’s gun hand. He twisted it brutally until the muzzle pressed against the soft skin under the man’s chin and put a round through his head.

Kolya sprinted past, expensive slacks stained with red, his rumpled suit jacket brushing Misha’s hand as he snatched up the weapon Misha was holding out for him. Misha unclipped the dead soldier’s MP from its harness, came up on his knees, and bought Kolya a crucial few seconds so he could reach their mark.

The Dead Man Walking had dragged an injured soldier to safety and was up again, gun raised. He really was a scary fucker; clear-cut face, eyes like frozen gems, as coldly professional as any syndicate enforcer Misha had ever met. He stood mountain-tall in all the smoke and confusion, the only one not completely steamrolled by the brutal efficiency of the unexpected attack. His gun was aimed at Kolya the instant Kolya cleared the cover of the cars, but it didn’t save him. Kolya threw his empty gun with ridiculous accuracy, knocked the weapon clean out of his hand, then pointed the loaded pistol Misha had supplied him with at the man’s face.

Misha couldn’t hear what Kolya said, but it worked. The Dead Man gritted his teeth so hard the muscles along his angular jaws bulged, then ordered his men to cease fire. His voice certainly fit his stature; the deep roar rolled over the small battlefield like cannon thunder, cut through the noise and even left a dent in the quiet of Misha’s kill-space. He’d have resented it but for the effect the bellow had on the remaining soldiers. They froze. Apparently, getting one’s commander killed was still considered a no-no.

“Go,” Andrej said tightly as he inched past Misha, closer to Kolya to cover his back and round up the surviving soldiers. “Hurry.”

He said something else then, but Misha’s hearing had cut out again. His vision went next; he didn’t see what Andrej and Kolya were doing, didn’t see the helicopters, the spectators, or the soldiers. All he saw was the diner, so much closer now, blind glass broken by the grenades, smoke curling along the cracked ceiling tiles and out into the open. The fire was spreading from the back, from the kitchen, hissing and popping. There were other sounds, the rhythmic whupping of the rotor blades, voices snapping, people buzzing like flies on a carcass, but it all pearled off Misha’s consciousness like water off a duck.

He walked across the parking lot as though through a dream, soles crunching on grit and spent shells and on broken glass blown out of the diner by the force of the explosions. One step, two steps, up on the porch. It smelled like burning. His fingers closed around the metal door grip, pulled until the warped metal yielded and the door groaned open. Most of the glass shards still stuck in the frame were shaken loose by the movement and tumbled to the floor, glittering in the sun outside and reflecting the firelight inside. Beautiful, razor-sharp, and shattered beyond repair. Misha stepped over them into the burning destruction beyond.

T
HE
counter must’ve taken a direct hit, and it hadn’t taken it well. It was a mess of blackened, fragmented wood and plastic coating, the bent metal rods of what had once been bar stools glinting dully where they lay scattered. One of them was still attached to a badly damaged seat cushion, pointing at the smoke-wreathed ceiling like a skeleton arm. There was a hole in the wall behind the counter and that was odd, because it didn’t look like it had been caused by the explosions, but it wasn’t quite big enough to allow a grown man to escape, so Misha dismissed it as irrelevant and kept scanning the rubble for any sign of Riley. The most likely place Riley would’ve used for cover was the corner behind the counter, so Misha kicked aside the broken remains of chairs and tables and made his way there as fast as he could. He tossed away his weapon and dug into the pile of debris with his hands, unmindful of splinters and jagged edges. Riley was in there somewhere. Nothing else mattered.