The Terminals (15 page)

He lined up for a penalty kick and waited until Ranuel stepped into the goal. His first shot smacked the wall in the lower right corner almost before the teen could move. Ranuel stumbled sideways only after the ball had already bounced back out toward where Cam stood. Cam quickly lined the ball up again. He eyed the lower left corner, and then sent the ball there just fast enough that Ranuel had to dive after it. Ranuel flattened out and reached, getting a hand on it and knocking it wide. He came up smiling. When Ranuel rose, the pistol was visible in his waistband.

Cam noted the weapon's location and extended a hand to shake.
“Gracias!”
he said. He'd shown Ranuel his skill and then let the boy feel like he'd risen to the occasion. A tie meant they were peers, not opponents, and a handshake would cement the relationship.

Ranuel adjusted the pistol, and then took Cam's hand and shook it vigorously, babbling excitedly in Spanish.

You don't get out much, do you?
Cam thought.

Cam took the ball and dribbled it back toward the waiting room. When he reached the door, he knocked and announced himself.

“It's Cam. And our new friend, Ranuel, is right behind me.”

He entered and found his teammates standing in a semicircle around the door. Ranuel stepped in after him. Ari's dart hit the unsuspecting teen in the left breast. Ranuel reached for his pistol instinctively, but Cam knew he wore it on his right hip and secured his right arm. The teen grabbed the door with his left arm to steady himself as his legs began to buckle, and he stared at Cam with sad eyes, betrayed. Cam almost felt badly, but the boy was an outlaw, and the bullets in his gun were meant for them. Cam kicked the door closed, and Ranuel dropped to the floor.

“I take it Donnie's team is here?” Cam said.

“Four minutes and thirty seconds,” Ari replied. “Things are about to get interesting.”

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

15. CHAOS
  

by Demonkeeper

16. BACKPACK FULL OF SOUL

by C. Aspen B.

17. DRIFT

by Slurpy

“Chaos. Total loss. Run! Hide! It's chaos!”

“Is he dead?” Jules gently turned Ranuel over.

“Of course not,” Gwen snapped. “One dart. He's just out.” Gwen resumed counting. “Four minutes left.”

“What about his gun?”

“Disable it. Flush the bullets,” Ari instructed.

“I know where the pirate brain trust is gathered,” Cam said. “The door to the right of the gate.”

“How certain?”

Cam hadn't evaluated his degree of certainty. “It's the most likely door,” he tried.

“‘Most likely'? That's it?” Gwen complained, her eyes bugging out behind her glasses.

“I need a percentage.” Ari's brow was wrinkled like that of a kid concentrating in a chess match.

Cam could almost see his roommate's mind ticking off the odds and possibilities. “I dunno. Eighty.”

“It's enough.”

“Two up on top,” Cam added. “One over the gate and one on the west wall.” He began to assemble and hand out darts. He was quick. One hundred repetitions of inserting needles and attaching flights during training made it second nature.

“Calliope, tell Donnie.”

“Already doing it,” she said. She relayed the information and awaited a reply. “They see the sentries and think they can dart them both.”

“Okay, last mystery. Where the hell are the docs?”

“There's the one other door with a deadbolt,” Cam suggested.

“That's obviously it,” Gwen interjected without losing count.

“What about the gathering room?” Ari asked. “They all have guns. If scuba storms it, there are likely to be casualties.”

“The doors open outward,” Cam said.

Ari thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes. I see what you're saying. But we need to move before scuba raises a ruckus. Calli, tell scuba to give us two minutes after they dart the walls.”

“We'll need something heavy,” Cam said.

He and Ari tried shaking the toilet to see if they could pry it loose.

“Wall sentries are down,” Calliope reported moments later.

“We have two minutes, starting now.” Gwen began her count at zero again.

Cam went to the door. He almost threw it wide, but some instinct told him to peek out first instead. A large man was walking toward him, already halfway across the yard, his rifle on his hip. He glanced up, looking for the sentries, frowning.

“Someone's coming,” Cam hissed, and he slid the door shut again.

“Shit!” Ari said, and they all reached for darts at once.

“He's got a rifle. Finger on the trigger. If he opens that door and sees Ranuel lying here someone's gonna get shot.”

Jules breathed a desperate prayer, and Calliope shrank behind her.

“This is what we signed up for,” Gwen said, gritting her teeth and gripping her dart white-knuckled. “This is the mission.”

“We'll need a moment,” Ari said. “Just a moment.”

“The toilet!” Cam said. “Help me get Ranuel up!” When Jules hesitated, he grabbed her by the shirt and yanked her down to the teen pirate's body. “Quickly!”

Together they hauled their limp guard up onto the seat. Cam propped Ranuel's elbows on his knees and let his head drop into his chest. Finally, he yanked down the teen's worn trousers.

The man opened the door to find them all standing along the wall, politely looking away from Ranuel, who sat on the toilet with his pants around his ankles and his head down. By all appearances, Cam thought, the teen pirate was taking an especially difficult dump. The man spoke, and, when Ranuel didn't answer, he stepped across the room, turning his back to Gwen. She leaped on him from behind and buried a dart in his neck with such force that a thin stream of his blood spurted across the wall. The poison acted quicker than it did with Ranuel, and the man collapsed before he had time to raise his rifle. Cam almost stuck him with his own dart too, but held off at the last possible second. He was glad he did. It would have killed the man. Instead, the pirate merely joined his mate in unconsciousness.

Calliope was already relaying the events into her tongue ring.

“There you go,” Ari said to Cam. “Something heavy.”

“One minute to scuba,” Gwen said.

Ari pointed to the door. “Go!”

Cam and Gwen grabbed the heavy man, while Ari and Jules hauled Ranuel off the toilet half-naked. They didn't even pause to pull up his pants.

The moments during which they dragged the bodies across the yard were the scariest. If the door on the far wall opened, the pirates would step out to find them hauling their slumped companions along the ground. They would likely be summarily executed, Cam thought. The door was out of dart range, their hands were full, and scuba was still forty seconds away.

The big man was heavy, and Cam was surprised that Gwen was pulling her side more easily,
much
more easily. She glared at him, almost running with the large body while he struggled to haul it along.

“I thought you were an athlete,” she hissed.

She's juiced
, Cam reminded himself. He strained, willing himself to keep up, sweat springing out on his forehead, his calves and biceps aching. It felt strange running toward danger, and his instincts complained almost as loudly as his muscles. Then they were at the door. They slowed and quietly eased both bodies against its base. Cam estimated the limp weight of Ranuel and the big man at nearly four hundred pounds. It wasn't a permanent fix, but it would keep anyone from bursting out suddenly.

When Cam turned, Donnie and Owen had appeared in the yard like ghosts. They made no sound, proceeding with hand signals only. They'd drilled with signals for months before Cam had arrived in camp, and they were proficient, while Cam had trouble deciphering their rapid arm movements. They flashed a signal to Ari. He answered, flashing three and five fingers back, which meant “three to five enemies behind the blocked door.” Donnie waved, and Owen took up a sentinel position beside the door.

Across the yard, Zara was already trying another door, looking for the docs. Tegan covered her, his dart rifle on his shoulder.

The pirates' upper hierarchy still hadn't tried to exit.
Dinnertime
, Cam realized.
They're eating.
He glanced at Ranuel. The boy didn't get dinner. Instead, he was twisted beneath a fat man with his arm bent behind him in an unnatural position, his privates hanging out, and his face shoved in the dirt, lips pulled back to reveal surprisingly straight and white teeth. He looked, Cam thought, like a whinnying horse trying to cry out in alarm.

“We had a guard,” Cam said to Calliope suddenly. “So will the docs!” He had no idea how to signal the information to the others across the yard without yelling. Calliope looked at him, puzzled, and then realized what he was saying. Gwen was at the door across the yard with the deadbolt. Cam whistled for her attention, and she turned to look at him just as she swung it open. It was a mistake. A large, hairy hand reached out and grabbed her by the back of the neck.

The team drifted toward her and her captor, except for Cam, who ran. He didn't realize he was sprinting until he skidded to a stop only five paces away.

The pirate walked her out into the courtyard, his big hand gripping her neck. He wore cutoff jean shorts and a dirty T-shirt. He was older, maybe forty. His facial hair was long, thin, and scraggly, and he was nearly bald. It looked as though the hair that was supposed to cover his head had slid down the sides of his face, like he was melting. His eyebrows rose as he looked around and saw the scuba team with their strange-looking dart rifles, and he shoved the barrel of a pistol into Gwen's back so hard that Cam could hear her grunt. She flinched, but didn't pull away. She didn't dare—the muzzle was snuggled up against her.

The man called out in Spanish for his comrades, glancing up at the walls where the sentries should have been.

“Shut him up!” Zara hissed, breaking their sign system.

She was looking directly at Cam, and he realized she didn't have a good shot with Gwen in her line of fire. Nor was the sliding-hair man focused on him—he was staring at the scuba team's weapons. Cam was also closest. He already had a dart in hand. “
Hesitation kills
,” Ward had taught him. “
If you're going to be wrong, be wrong decisively and promptly.
” Cam whipped the dart to his ear and hurled it at the pirate.

The needle sunk into the pirate's bald head with a light thunk. Cam smiled. It was a good throw. Then the gun roared.

Cam staggered, his ears ringing. When he looked down, he found himself covered with blood.
I'm shot!
he thought. But there was no pain. The pirate lay in a heap in the dirt, Cam's dart still jutting from his head like a large, persistent mosquito. Beneath him lay Gwen.

Cam stood shell-shocked, and Zara reached her first, yanking the man off and flinging him aside with one hand. At first Cam didn't understand what he saw. It looked like Gwen, but a motionless version that only looked straight ahead, the way a mannequin stared out a store window.

“She's done,” Zara said simply, and she hopped back up to cover the open door with her dart rifle.

The blood on me is hers
, Cam realized. He felt suddenly and intensely selfish for worrying that he'd been shot himself.
I killed her.

The gunshot had echoed through the compound. Shouts and foreign profanities rose from behind the blocked door, and there was furious thumping on the other side. It nudged open an inch. Owen stepped out and neatly pumped a dart through the gap. Donnie stayed with him, the butt of his own gun against his shoulder, the muzzle trained on the door.

“Some of the doctors are in here,” Zara announced. Her voice shook Cam from his stupor, and he edged past Gwen's still form to look inside.

Flies buzzed. The collection of three severed heads was strangely tidy. They were arranged in a row—a generically Caucasian man, a Scandinavian, and the young man in the worn Red Sox cap. The hat was still on his head, a bizarre mockery of his U.S. heritage. The heads sat upright on the dirt floor, open-eyed and staring ahead. Except for their grimacing expressions, they might have been beachgoers whose kids had playfully buried them in the sand.

“Only three,” Zara said. “Where are the other seven?” She ticked off the inventory of missing physicians, while Cam fought the urge to retch. “Check that cabinet,” she said, unfazed by the aura of death in the room. Then she ducked out to tell the others to keep searching.

Cam stepped gingerly past the line of heads. He felt like he was violating an invisible barrier, and he tried not to look at them as he opened the top drawer of the cabinet. Nothing inside. He fumbled with the second drawer, eager to be gone. The events were so bizarre and happening so fast that he would be paralyzed by fear if he stopped to think about them. There was nothing of interest in the second drawer—a stapler and some documents. The third drawer, however, held a bulging backpack. Cam reached in and unzipped it, hoping it didn't contain another head.