Hellbent

He shifted the action to manual so he could cycle the low-powered breaching rounds and give them more steam. Then he stepped back and fired top to bottom—boom-boom-boom. The last slug knocked the door clear off the frame, sending it skidding across the floor.

Cycling buckshot into the chamber and toggling the switch back to autoload, he stepped through the dust into the metallic tang of cordite, shotgun raised.

The blow-radius effect of the initial blasts in the contained shop was biblical. With no air movement, the powdered smoke had stratified, hovering like gray mist.

Five men, either dead or in various stages of critical injury, shuddered on knocked-over folding chairs, tilted against bloodstained walls, sprawled over a central table. No sign of the Orphan. The broad-shouldered man was the only one able to do more than bleed out.

He bellied across the floor, dragging himself away with his forearms, a combat crawl. His right leg was a mottled fusion of denim and flesh.

He kept on, making for a rack of rifles and shotguns beside the steel front door.

Evan walked toward him, stuck a toe in his ribs, flipped him over.

The man tried to look away. “Oh, God,” he said. “You’re — are you — Orphan X? Oh, God.”

Evan seated a boot square on his barrel chest, hovered the hot muzzle over his throat. “You killed Jack Johns.”

The man’s fine hair, so blond it was almost gray, was shaved in a buzz cut. His scalp showed through, glistening with sweat. “No — not me. I didn’t go up in the chopper, man. There was a special crew.”

“But you were there. On the ground in Alabama. You were all there.”

“Yes.”

Evan swung the shotgun to the side and blew off his hand.

The howl was inhuman.

But so was making a man in his seventies jump out of a Black Hawk with his wrists cuffed together.

Evan rotated the Benelli back to the man’s head. “Van Sciver?” he said. “Where?”

Somewhere behind them, a final sputtering wheeze extinguished.

“I don’t know. I swear. Never even met him.”

Evan moved the Benelli over the guy’s other hand.

“Wait! Wait! I’ll tell you — tell you everything. Just don’t… don’t take me apart like this.”

“How many freelancers did he bring in? Not including the helo crew.”

“Twenty-five. He hired twenty-five of us.”

Evan surveyed the wreckage, added it to the train-station tally. “Fifteen now,” he said.

“Sixteen.” The man risked a look at his hand, failed to fight off a full-body shudder. “I make sixteen.” And then, more desperately, “I… I still make sixteen.”

“Who’s running point here?”

The man looked over at the red-smeared linoleum where his hand once was and dry-heaved. His face was pale, awash in sweat. Evan put more pressure on his chest, cracking a rib, snapping him back to attention.

“Jordan Thornhill,” the man said. “Orphan R. Nicest guy in the world. Until he kills you.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Black dude, all muscle. Could scale a cliff with his bare hands, he wanted to.” The man started hyperventilating. “God, oh, God, I think I’m bleeding out.”

“You’ve got enough for the next five minutes. Where is he?”

“Van Sciver called him home. I don’t know where.”

Evan twitched the barrel slightly.

“I DON’T KNOW WHERE! I don’t know anything. I swear. They keep us in the dark about everything.”

Evan let the weight of the hot barrel press into the hollow of the man’s throat. The flesh sizzled. “Not improving your situation, hired man.”

“Hang on! I overheard Thornhill saying something about a female Orphan. Candy something. Orphan V.”

At this, Evan’s face tightened.

“Please.” Saliva sheeted between the man’s lips. “That’s all I know. I told you everything. Can I… will you let me live?”

“You were dead the minute Van Sciver told you my name.” Evan pulled the trigger.

He heard a creak behind him and pivoted, dropping the empty shotgun and drawing his ARES.

He found himself aiming at Joey.

She stood in the doorway, surveying the wreckage. A flush had come up beneath her smooth brown cheeks. The shack smelled of blood iron and the insides of men. Through the lingering smoke, her emerald eyes glowed, unguarded, overwhelmed.

“I told you to stay in the car.”

“I’m fine.”

“Pull the car around. Hurry.”

She stepped back and was gone.

He flung a corpse off the central table and rifled through the items beneath. Coffee cups, battery packs, a half-eaten sub. Useless. Beneath a pack of black gel pens, he found a red-covered notebook. Seizing it, he thumbed through the stiff pages. Nothing inside.

He tossed it, moved to the chipped counter em-dashing half of the east wall. Coffeepot, microwave, utility sink. The cabinet beneath held rusted pipes, water spots, a crusted bottle of Drano.

He turned in his crouch, giving the room a last, hurried scan.

Blood dripped from the edge of the table. A strip of duct tape shimmered beneath the lip.

A laptop, adhered to the table’s underside.