Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 30

30

The copying dialog box has barely disappeared when I snatch my little laptop off the floor. I have to have the laptop. It’s got the proof of Deke’s treason. I need to see it again. Need to harden myself. Need to see just how badly he’s betrayed me, us, everyone.

My heart is still hammering, my stomach burning with furious bile, my chest hollow, but I slip the laptop and its cargo of deceit back into its armored sleeve and then into my backpack, so it rests right next to my spine.

I pull a flat black thermite device out of the bag and slap it on top of Noah’s personal computer. A second charge goes on top of the other workstation. “Ready,” I say. I’m already kneeling, so it’s easy to throw myself flat. The plush carpet absorbs my impact before I feel the subfloor underneath.

“Changing magazine,” Bradley says in my earpiece.

I scoot an extra foot to the side, in case the heavy glass-topped desk next to me shatters.

Across the room, Jacka’s standing pressed face-first against the heavy mahogany office door. Rob’s right behind him, pinning Jacka upright.

Behind me, one of the vast picture windows shudders. There’s this dull thump, then the window dissolves into a hail of safety glass that sparkles and dances across the carpet.

My ears pop with the pressure change, but I’m already rolling to my feet and slipping my backpack back over a shoulder. “Fifteen seconds,” I say.

Rob has Jacka’s arm over his shoulder, and his own arm around Jacka’s back. They’re staggering towards the gaping window. I take four long steps to join them and seize Jacka’s other side.

A sharp crack breaks the night’s silence. “Covering fire,” Bradley says in my earpiece. “Go straight away from the building. Shortest path to the darkness.”

Together, we hobble out the door and into the patio.

“Grand finale,” Bradley says. “Fire.”

There’s another grand hollow thump, ringing my hollow insides like a bell.

“Three,” Bradley says. “Two.”

We just touch the edge of the darkness when the thermite charge I left behind gives this pa-humpf sound and casts its own brightness behind us, casting razor silhouettes into the dark arid Portuguese night.

Another, louder blast. Further behind us.

Noise and light, laced with distant screams, shatters the night.

With Jacka’s maimed arm over my shoulder, we hurry into the receding darkness.

As the flares behind us dim to mere fires, the darkness crawls forward to greet us.

When the light gives out, we pause for a step so Rob and I can slip our night-vision goggles back on. “Clear,” Rob says.

“Implementing wounded plan,” Bradley says in my ear.

We turn towards the emergency rendezvous, grotesquely staggering between dome-shaped trees like some three-headed mutant. The dusty ground is still warm from yesterday’s sun, but the night vision goggles reveal only its rough textures in hazy shades of green. Jacka groans when Rob or I lurch with a wrong step, the only clue that he’s alive.

I let each groan lash me into concentrating on the moment. I don’t want to think about Deke. I don’t want to ponder betrayal. I don’t want to feel my own heart. The world shrinks to Jacka’s weight over my shoulder, my own quick careful steps on treacherous rocky dirt, the way I weave for balance when my boots find a patch of loose sand, the stink of a dead thug’s lifeblood drying on one side of my clothes and Jacka’s fresh blood oozing down the other.

We’re only a few hundred yards further when Jacka’s legs stop trying to help. We stop long enough to scoop his thighs in one hand and latch our hands behind his back in a fireman’s carry, then grind forward, shoulders burning.

We’re nearly at the wall when a chain of small explosions shatters the night behind us. Someone found Bradley’s abandoned pack. But they don’t regret it. People more than a few yards away might regret it, but whoever open the pack regrets nothing.

“Wall,” Rob says into his throat mike. He stops.

I stagger to a halt before we wishbone Jacka. Right. The wounded plan. Strain burns down my shoulders. My breath slams my parched throat. I ache to release Jacka’s weight, to set him on the ground and move free, but I won’t. I won’t.

I will not leave him behind.

I will not betray Jacka.

Like Deke betrayed me. Us.

Like Deke destroyed me.

The laptop seems its own nova of heat and light against my spine.

“Check,” Bradley says.

I close my burning eyes, panting. My shoulders involuntarily hunch.

Jacka groans with the motion.

Another dull boom.

I open my eyes.

The night vision goggles show a bright green but quickly fading blotch on the wall, a couple dozen yards off our path. Explosively heated bricks still tumble to the ground.

By the time we get to the breach, the innkeeper’s rusty rattletrap minivan pulls up. Bradley hops out to yank the sliding door open. We heave Jacka into the back, I pull the door shut, and we’re off into the secret night.