“No!” Brodie lunged at the man and slammed his shackled arms against the back of the couch. The capsule dropped.
Klasky swung his arms into Brodie’s head and tried to twist out of his grip.
As Taylor ran to him, Klasky twisted himself upside down onto his back, braced his legs against the back of the couch, and pushed himself off, freeing his arms from Brodie’s hold and crashing onto the glass coffee table, shattering it.
Klasky lay in the glass, dazed a moment. Then he grabbed a shard and scrambled away from them.
Taylor put up her hand. “Dan… listen… We can protect you.”
The man looked at her, wild-eyed. “You can’t stop what’s coming.” He thrust the glass into his throat, and a geyser of blood shot out of his jugular.
Taylor jumped on him and pressed hard against the cut. Blood pooled on her hand and seeped between her fingers. “Get a medic!”
“Taylor…”
“Get a goddamn medic!”
Taylor kept pressing, and then she looked at the major’s eyes, wide open and vacant.
She let go, and blood continued to burble out of the deep cut and pool on the floor.
Taylor stood. Her hands and arms, along with part of her dark suit and white blouse, were drenched in Klasky’s blood.
Neither of them said a word. Then Taylor walked across the living room, as if in a trance, and to the front door. She took the handle and turned it, getting blood all over it, and she walked out. Brodie followed.
They stood on the front stoop of their house, scanning the little ring of suburban homes—a ridiculous banality at the nightmarish Camp Hades. Which circle of Hell was this? Who was the sinner, and what was their sin?
General Morgan was where they’d left him, conferring now with Captain Pickman. Sergeant First Class Mike Miller had arrived, standing with Staff Sergeant O’Connor next to his parked Hummer. Lieutenant Mike Lehner sat on his stoop. Farther down the road they saw the Rangers’ checkpoint, and in the sky above, the Black Hawk circled, trying to get a visual on the fugitive tin man.
This doesn’t end with me.
There was someone else on base. But who? And how would they find them? And at what point would it be too late?
Finally one of the Rangers guarding Dixon’s house noticed them. “Holy shit. Sarge!”
Miller looked over, and then everyone looked at the two agents, one of whom was soaked in blood, and rushed toward the house.
“Scott,” said Taylor in a faraway voice as the soldiers rushed at them.
“Yes?”
“Is that thumb drive in your pocket?”
“It is.”
“Drop it. Right now. Between the slats.”
Brodie felt in his pocket for the flash drive and quickly slipped it out and let it drop. It clacked on the wooden planks of the stoop, and he used his foot to push it into a gap between them.
Taylor said, “Say nothing. Trust no one. No matter what they do. We only have each other.”
He looked at her. “You’re goddamned right.”
CHAPTER 40
BRIGADIER GENERAL MORGAN SAT INhis living room, fidgeting with a crystal figurine of a pig. He had not bothered to dust off his pants or boots and had tracked sand across the rug and onto his couch.
He set the pig on the glass coffee table, next to Brodie’s and Taylor’s SIG Sauers and CID badges. He looked up at the two agents, who were seated across from him, in fresh clothes. “Angela collects those things. They cost a fortune, and she hauls them around to our different duty stations. I never really understood it, but now I do. They’re so impractical, you’d only have things like this at a place you called home, right? And that’s the way she goes about things, making the best. I’m resigned to being a nomad, but that can mess with your mind. And while I’ve been counting down the days until I can leave this godforsaken place, what I really ought to have been doing is pretending it’s home. Like Angela. Because we defend our homes with the greatest vigor, don’t we? It’s human nature.” He gestured to the table. “That pig is a flag planted in the earth.”
