Loyalty in Death

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"Lieutenant! Dallas! Sir!" Peabody scrambled out the front door as Eve leaped out of the car.

"Go," Eve told Roarke. "I'm right behind you."

"Your data's still coming in." Peabody slid over the frost on the lawn, grabbed her footing. "I relayed to Central. Units are being mobilized."

Eve took the scanner. "Full protective gear. You scan before you go in. I'm not losing anyone else."

"Yes, sir. The commander wants your destination and ETA."

Eve whirled around as the silky drone of the jet-copter blurred the air. She watched it sweep out of the mini-hangar, purr. "God help me, I'm going up in that. Liberty Island. You'll know my ETA when I do."

She crouched to avoid the blast of air, tossed the scanner to Roarke, then hooked a hand on the door opening, propped a boot on the runner. She gave Roarke a brief glance. "I hate this part."

He grinned at her. "Strap in, Lieutenant," he advised as she boosted herself through the door. "Secure the door. This won't take long."

"I know." She hooked the strap across her body, braced. "That's the part I hate."

He went into a steep vertical lift that had her stomach flopping as she contacted Whitney. "Sir. En route to Liberty Island. Data should be coming through to you now."

"It is. Mobilizing backup and E and B teams to each location. ETA to Liberty Island, twelve minutes. Give me yours."

"What's our ETA, Roarke?"

They rose over trees, buildings, engine purring. He sent her one quick look out of wickedly blue eyes. "Three minutes."

"But that's – " She managed not to scream when he punched in the jets. The purr turned to a panther roar and the copter ripped through the sky like a pebble shot from a sling. Eve gripped the seat with white-knuckled hands and thought, Shit, shit, shit. But her voice was relatively controlled. "We'll be there inside of three minutes, Commander."

"Report in on arrival."

She clicked off and struggled to breathe steadily through her teeth. "I want to get there alive."

"Trust me, darling."

He banked over the city, adjusted course, and the copter tilted dramatically. Eve felt her eyes roll back in her head. "We'll need to scan the site." She picked up the instrument, studied it. "I've never used one of these."

Roarke reached over, flipped a switch on the base of the scanner. It let out a mild hum.

"Jesus Christ! Keep your hands on the controls!" she shouted at him.

"If I ever want to blackmail you, I can threaten to tell your associates of your phobia of heights and high rates of speed."

"Remind me to hurt you if we live." She wiped a clammy hand on her thighs, then took out her weapon. "You'll need my clinch piece. You can't go in unarmed."

"I've got what I need." He sent her a grim smile as they flew out over the water.

She let that go and called up the data on the in-dash. "Five locations, from base to crown," she said, studying the image. "If they follow these plans, how long would it take you to deactivate them?"

"Depends. I can't say until I see the devices."

"Backup's nine minutes behind us. If this is the target, it's going to be mostly up to you to take the explosives down."

"Activate long-range sensor and screen," he ordered. The in-dash monitor blipped on. Eve saw lights, shadows, symbols. "That's your target. Two people, two droids, one vehicle."

"Have they activated?"

"I can't read explosives with this equipment." He made a mental note to add that capability. "But they're there."

"Droids here, and here?" She tapped a finger on the screen, indicated the black dots on the screen.

"Guarding the base. Ever been in the lady?"

"No."

"Shame on you," he said mildly. "Museums in the base. She's on a pedestal, several stories high. Added together, she's got to be twenty, twenty-two stories, easy. There are elevators, but I wouldn't recommend them under the circumstances. There'll be stairs. Narrow, winding metal. Up to the crown. Then a jag and they follow up to the torch."

Eve wiped a hand over her mouth. "You don't, like, own her or anything?"

"No one owns her."

"Okay. Go in low." Gritting her teeth, she unstrapped. "I'll need you to get close to give me a shot at taking the droids out."

He pressed a button under the dash. A compartment opened. In it was a long-range laser rifle with night scope. "Try that instead."

"Christ, you could get five years in maximum lockup for transporting one of these."

He only smiled when she pulled it out, checked it for weight. "Or you could get two droids before we land. My money's on you, Lieutenant."

"Just keep this thing steady." She opened the door, gritted her teeth against the blast of wind, then bellied down on the floor of the cockpit.

"We've got one at three o'clock and one at nine. We'll take three o'clock first, then I'm going to swing around. So brace yourself for it."

"Just get me in range," she muttered and sighted in.

Out of the dark, out of the delicate mist, the lady rose up. Torch held high, face serene and somehow kind.

Lights glowed in her, around her, charging her with brilliance, with purpose. And how many, Eve thought, had seen that welcome, that promise, when they'd crossed an ocean to a new world? A new life?

How many times had she seen it herself and thought nothing more of it than that it was there? Had always been there. And by God, she vowed, there it would stay.

She saw the other copter first, the cargo unit cloaked in the shadows of the statue. Through the scope it burned red through a green background.

"Coming into range," Roarke warned her. "Do you see it?"

"No, not – Yeah. Yeah, I got the bastard. Little more, little more," she murmured, then engaged the target lock. She fired, took him clean, mid-body. She had a moment to see the mechanical implode, a moment to register the shock of the rifle's power sing up her arm to her shoulder, then Roarke was going into a hard turn.

"They'll have made us now," he told her. "So let's make it two for two. Droid's moving, coming around to six o'clock. One of the marks inside is heading down, fast."

"Then we'll be faster. Come on, come on, come on."

"He's got a long-range himself," Roarke said mildly as a blast of light skimmed inches from the windscreen. "Evasive maneuvers. Take him out, Eve."

She hooked a boot around the base of her chair as the copter swung and danced. "I've got him." She fired, watched the light stream explode onto the ground as her target swerved. "Fuck it. This time."

She drew in breath, held it, ignored the flash and flare of fire outside. She caught him in the crosshairs, locked, and sheared him off neatly at the waist.

"Get this thing on the ground!" she shouted, crawling up to grip the door. "If you get the chance, take out their transpo." She dropped the rifle onto her seat. "They'll think twice about blowing up this site if they're stuck on it."

She watched the ground speed up toward her, began to breathe in fast pants to pump adrenaline. "I'll keep them off you as long as I can."

"Wait until I land." A spear of panic arrowed into his gut as he understood what she meant to do. "Goddamn it, Eve, wait until I put down."

She watched the ground come, felt the speed slow. "Clock's ticking," she told him and jumped.

She kept her knees loose, absorbing the shock. Still, she felt the bright pain careen from her boots up her legs as she hit and rolled. She came up, weapon drawn, and ran in a zigzag pattern for the statue's entrance.

A stream of heat singed past her. Eve hit the ground, rolled again, and returned fire. Even as she came up, she released the harness on her calf, pulled her clinch piece. She hit the door with sweeping blasts from both weapons and dived through.

The return fire came from above. Eve saw Clarissa in full combat gear, an assault laser in her hands, two hand blasters strapped to her side.

"It's done!" Eve called out. "It's over, Clarissa. We found your room, your data. Your transmissions to Montana are going to lead us right to Henson and the rest. There's a hundred cops on their way to this location."

A huge blast rocked the ground. Light exploded outside the door. Roarke, Eve thought with a cold smile. He'd come through. "There goes your transpo. You can't get off the island. Give it up."

"We'll take it out. We'll take it all out. There'll be nothing left but the ashes." Clarissa fired another round. "Just as my father planned."

"But you won't be there to take his place." Eve plastered herself to the wall. Across the room was the first device, set in a slim metal box. She could see the red lights blinking. Time? she thought. How much time?

"It falls apart, everything he wanted falls apart if you don't take his place."

"I will take his place. We are Cassandra." She laid down a stream of heat and light as she raced up the stairs.

Sucking in a breath, Eve pounded after her. The heat burned her lungs, had tears streaming from her eyes and blurring her vision.

She heard Clarissa screaming for her husband, calling for death, for destruction. For glory. The old metal stairs circled, circled up the body of the statue. She saw the second device, hesitated for a heartbeat with some thought of deactivating it herself.

And hesitating saved herself a laser blast full in the face. The blast shrieked past her and blew out three of the metal treads.

"He was a great man! A god. And he was assassinated by the Fascist forces of a corrupt government. He stood for the people. For the masses."

"He killed the people, killed the masses. Children, babies, old men."

"Sacrifices of a just war."

"Just, my ass." Eve swung from cover, fired high and blind toward the shouts. She heard a howl of rage or pain; she couldn't be sure which. She hoped it was both.

Then they were racing up again.

She saw the third device. Roarke had already dealt with the first, she told herself. Had to. She could hear no sounds of fire or struggle from below. He was in the clear, doing what needed to be done.

She took a quick look at her wrist unit. Six minutes to backup.

Her calves burned, her breath came short. For a moment, her vision wavered and the weapons clutched in her hands grew weighty and awkward.

The crash was coming on. She leaned back against the wall to catch her breath and her bearings. Not now, not now. She could hold out against it, would hold out against it.

Finally, she heard movement behind her. "Roarke?"

"The first is down." He called up the stairs, his voice brisk and cool. "Moving on to two. We're on timers with these. Set for eighteen hundred. Locked and loaded."

"Okay. Okay." She scrubbed the back of her hand over her mouth. It was seventeen-fifty.

She pushed away from the wall, climbed. She didn't give the fourth device so much as a glance. Her job was the Bransons.

She was running on pure nerve when she reached the top. Her legs were jellied. As she slid along the wall, she saw the dazzling view out of the observation windows. The last device was set dead center of the lady's crown.

"Clarissa."

"Cassandra."

"Cassandra," Eve corrected, shifting slightly, trying to scan as much of the area as she could manage. "Dying here isn't going to finish your father's work."

"It will be a great moment in history. The destruction of the city's most beloved symbols. She'll crumble in his name, and the world will know."

"How will they know? If you're buried under tons of stone and steel, how will they know?"

"We are not alone."

"The rest of your group is being searched out and picked up right now." She looked at her wrist unit again, felt sweat slipping down her spine. "Henson." She tossed the name out, hoping it would shake her quarry. "We know where he is."

"You'll never take him." In fury, Clarissa fired. "He was my father's most trusted friend. He raised me. He completed my training."

"After your father was killed. Your father and your brother." Roarke was moving up, she told herself. They'd take out the last device together. There was time. "You weren't in the house."

"I was with Henson. Madia died for me. It was right that she did. We heard the explosion from blocks away. I saw what those pigs had done."

"So Henson took you under. What about your mother?"

"Worthless bitch. I wish I could have killed her myself, watched her die. I would've enjoyed that, loved it, remembering all the times she berated me. My father used her as a vessel, nothing more."

"And when her usefulness was over, he left her, and took you and your brother."

"To teach us, to train us. But I was his light. He knew I would be the one. Others saw me as just a pretty little girl with a soft voice. But he knew. He knew I was a soldier, his goddess of war. He knew, as Henson knew. As the man I chose to marry knew."

Branson. Eve shook her head to clear it. Dear God, she'd forgotten about him. "He's been in on it all along."

"Of course. I would never give myself to a man who wasn't worthy. I could make them think I would – like Zeke. What a pathetic boy, starry-eyed, gullible. He made those last steps work. The Bransons dead, most of the money in closed accounts, me running out of guilt and fear. B. D. and I would continue our mission from another place, with other names. And all the wealth of this corrupt society to back our cause."

"But that's over now." She heard feet slapping the stairs beneath her. It was time to move.

"I'm not afraid to die here."

"Good." Eve dived across the opening, firing a sweeping blast. She saw the impact knock Clarissa down, and the blood bloom on her thigh. She came in low, kicking the weapon from Clarissa's still shuddering hand. "But I'd rather you live in a cage for a long, long time."

"You'll die here, too." Clarissa gasped for breath as Eve disarmed her.

"The hell I will. I've got an ace in the hole."

Roarke came through the door. She started to grin at him, then saw the movement behind. "Your back!" she shouted.

He pivoted, swung out. The flash from Branson's weapon smoked his sleeve. Eve saw the line of blood, sprang to her feet. They were already struggling, locked in close hand-to-hand. With no way to get a clear shot, she prepared to leap.

Clarissa swung her legs out, caught her behind the knees, and sent her sprawling. Eve was cursing when the next blast shattered the glass. Wind poured in, and the roar of copters, the scream of sirens.

"It's too late!" Clarissa shrieked, and her lovely eyes were wide and wild. "Kill him, B. D. Kill him for me while she watches."

Roarke's hand slipped off the weapon. Pain fired up his arm. The scent of his own blood had his teeth bared. From somewhere behind him, he heard Eve shouting, the sound of racing feet. But all he could see was the vicious thirst for death in Branson's eyes.

The weapon swung again, shot blasts into the ceiling. Debris rained down, whirled by the wind into his face like tiny bullets. When a hand closed hard over his throat, he saw small stars and spun his body into Branson's. The impact sent them both over the rail and through the jagged glass.

Eve heard screams, couldn't separate them. Hers, Clarissa's. She was halfway across the room when she saw Roarke fall. Her heart froze, her mind went helplessly, hopelessly blank. The lights from the incoming copters blinded her as she dashed to the window.

Roarke. His name shrieked through her mind, but only a choked sob pushed its way out of her throat. The dizzying height had her head reeling, but her wavering vision could still make out the small, crumpled body on the ground below.

She was halfway out the window, with no idea what she would do when she saw him. Not dead and broken on the ground, but clinging to a narrow fold of weathered bronze with bloody hands.

"Hang on. For God's sake, hang on."

She started to swing out when Clarissa rammed into her back. Her balance teetered, her breath heaved. Almost as an afterthought, Eve spun into a back kick and planted her boot in Clarissa's chest, a second in her face. "Stay away from me, you bitch."

There was wailing and sobbing behind her as Eve leaned into the teeth of the wind, braced her midriff on the window ledge, and held out a hand to Roarke.

"Reach up. Grab hold of me. Roarke!"

He knew he was slipping. Blood was dripping down his arm, through his fingers. He'd faced death before, was no stranger to the sensation of knowing this breath, this one breath, could be the last you drew.

But he'd be damned if it would. Not when his woman was watching him with terrified eyes, calling to him, risking her life to save his. He set his teeth, gave his injured arm his weight. Pain swam sickly into his head, into his gut as he reached up to her.

And her hand gripped his, firm and strong.

Eve rammed the toes of her boots into the wall for purchase, and muscles screaming, held out her other hand. "I'll pull you in. Give me your other hand. I'll pull you in. Hurry."

When her fingers closed over his, slipped once as the blood slickened them, his vision grayed. Then she was locking her hand over his wrist, hauling up. He bore down, pulled his body up, an inch, then two. He saw the sweat run down her face, into her eyes. Concentrated on her eyes.

Then his arm was on the window ledge, braced there. With one last heave he was tumbling in on top of her.

"God. Roarke. God."

"Time!" He rolled free, all but fell on the last explosive. The readout showed forty-five seconds. "Get out, Eve." He said it coolly as he began to work.

"Get it down." She fought to get breath back in her body. "Get it down."

"There won't be time." Battered, bloody, Clarissa dragged herself to her feet. "We die here. All of us. Both men I loved, martyrs to the cause."

"Fuck your cause." Eve yanked her communicator. "Keep this area clear. Keep it clear. There's a hot one left. Working now." She shut it down as shouts and orders buzzed through. "Live or die," she said, looking into Clarissa's eyes. "You still lose."

"Die," she said. "My way."

Screaming her father's name, she leaped through the window.

"Jesus Christ." Eve wanted to sag to her knees, but braced against the device. "Kill this thing, will you?"

"I'm working on it." But his fingers were slippery, his system screaming to shut down from loss of blood. The readout clicked down twenty-six seconds, twenty-five, twenty-four.

"It's going to be close." He shut off the pain, as he'd learned to do as a child. Get through, get by. Survive. "Start out. I'll be behind you."

"Don't waste your breath." She moved to his side. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen. Laid a hand on his shoulder. Unified them. Lights from a circling copter speared through the windows, lighted his face. Doomed angel, with a mouth of a poet, the eyes of a warrior. She'd had a year with him, and it had changed everything.

"I love you, Roarke."

His answer was a grunt, and it nearly made her smile. She took her gaze from his face, looked down at the readout. Nine, eight, seven…

The hand on his shoulder tightened. She held her breath.

"Would you mind repeating that, Lieutenant?"

She whooshed out her breath, stared down at the readout. "You killed it."

"With four seconds to spare. Not bad." He pulled her against him with his good arm. Those wild warrior's eyes were brilliant on hers. "Kiss me, Eve."

She let out a whoop of laughter and ignoring the circling lights, the shouts from bull horns, the incessant beep of her communicator, crushed his mouth with hers. "We're alive."

"And staying that way." He buried his face in her hair. "By the way, thanks for the lift."

"Any time." In joy, she threw her arms around him, squeezed, then leaped back when he yelped. "What? Oh God, your arm. Looks bad."

"Bad enough." He wiped blood from his face, then hers. "But it'll hold."

"Uh-uh." She tore his sleeve, frowned at the wound, and quickly bound it up. "This time I get to drag your ass to a health center, pal." She staggered, shaking her head as he grabbed her.

"We'll get a big bed. Are you hit?"

"No, crash city." Her mind went on float and she giggled. "I got my four to six out of the goddamn chemicals though. I'm okay. I've just got to lie down really, really soon."

But she hooked her arm around his waist, turned. Together they looked out over the water, toward the city lights that flashed and blinked against the dark. "Some view, huh?"

His arm came around her. It was debatable who was holding whom upright. "Yeah, it's a killer. Let's go home, Eve."

"Okay." She pulled out her communicator as they hobbled toward the doorway. "This is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. We're secure here."

"Lieutenant." Whitney's voice came through as a mild buzzing as fatigue washed over her. Even the echo of adrenaline had faded. "Report?"

"Ah…" She shook her head, but didn't quite clear it. "The explosives are down, E and B teams can dispose. The Bransons took a leap. We'll need body removal to scrape up what's left of them. Sir… Roarke's injured. I'm transporting him to a health center."

"Is his condition serious?"

They teetered on the stairs, shifted grips, and continued down. Eve had to swallow down a chuckle. "Oh, we're pretty much a mess here, Commander, thanks, but we'll hold. Do me a favor, will you?"

On the miniscreen, Whitney's brows drew together in surprise. "Yes?"

"Will you tag Peabody and McNab and Feeney? Tell them we're okay here. Mostly okay, anyhow. They worry, and I'm feeling a little too flaked to triangulate our status. Oh, and tell Peabody to go get Zeke and maybe get him drunk or something. He'll handle what went down here better that way."

"Excuse me?"

She swayed as they came to the entrance level, shot Roarke a puzzled look as he shook with laughter. "Um, sorry, Commander, I think we're running into some interference on this channel."

Obligingly, Roarke took the communicator and shut it down. "There, before you ask your superior to join the drunken revelry."

"Jesus, I can't believe I said that." She stepped out into the teeth of the wind, winced against the brilliant spin of lights from landing copters. She rubbed a hand over her face as the teams began to leap out and race toward the statue. "Let's get out of here before I say something else stupid."

By the time they dragged each other into the jet-copter, she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner, any corner, and sleep for a week. Yawning, she turned her head and looked at Roarke as he took the controls. He was bloody, torn, and gorgeous. Through the fatigue, the worry, she grinned.

"Roarke? Nice working with you."

His eyes glinted wild and blue and his grin flashed in return as the jets roared to life. "My pleasure, Lieutenant. As always."