Dan Simmons - Hard as Nails

The house was definitely on fire. There were shots from the library, but Kurtz didn't turn that way. He went down the hall and into the smoky foyer.

Movement on the stairs made him shift the small IV bottle and draw his pistol.

Angelina Farino Ferrara came down the stairs through toe smoke, staggering under the load of a man's body on her shoulder. Her face, arms, hands, and sweater were drenched in blood, and she still carried the Mp5 in her right hand.

"Jesus," said Kurtz as they both went out the front door with their burdens. "Your man?"

"Yeah," panted Angelina. "Campbell."

"Alive?"

"I don't know. He took one in the throat." She paused under the porte cochere and nodded toward Rigby's pale, bare legs and white underwear. "Your girlfriend? She'd have a nice ass if it wasn't for the cellulite."

Kurtz said nothing. He drank in the fresh air. Flames crackled from the upper stories. A figure moved in the driveway and both he and Angelina swung, weapons coming up.

"Don't shoot," said Baby Doc. He had his own Mp5 slung over his shoulder and was carrying one of the RPGs with its grenade still on the muzzle.

Kurtz looked to where the driveway came up to the last guard barrier and saw an SUV and a sheriff's vehicle burning in a single conflagration. "All that with one RPG?" he said as the three turned and began moving quickly toward the helicopter.

"Yep," said Baby Doc. His face was smudged with soot and there was a burn or cut on his right cheek. He looked at Angelina staggering under the weight of her bodyguard but didn't offer to help. "You two go on," he said as they passed the dark Huey. "I'll be right there."

Halfway to the Long Ranger, Angelina had to pause to shift Campbell's weight on her back, but Kurtz didn't pause with her. Rigby was moaning. Blood poured down her leg and sopped through his sweater and ran down his left arm.

A loud blast made him turn. Baby Doc had fired the remaining RPG into the Huey and the black machine was burning strongly. The Lackawanna boss jogged past him, carrying only his rifle now. "Old Israeli commando rule—don't leave their air force behind," he said as he ran past. "Or something like that."

Baby Doc had already clambered into the chopper and fired up the turbines when Kurtz reached the open door and laid Rigby on the plastic-sheeted floor next to where the Yemeni doctor was working on Colonel Trinh where he lay, still flexcuffed and bleeding. Dr. Tafer moved away from the colonel, leaned over Rigby and shined a flashlight into her eyes and then on her wound.

"How is she?" asked Kurtz, leaning against the open door of the helicopter to catch his breath.

"Barely alive," said Dr. Tafer. "Much blood loss." He pulled the IV needle out and tossed the almost empty bottle out into the grass. "This is saline solution. She needs plasma." He pulled a plastic bag of plasma from his box and slid the needle into Rigby's terribly bruised arm.

Angelina staggered up with her man and dumped him onto the floor next to Rigby. The floor of the Long Ranger was filled with bodies. " Triage ," she gasped and sat down on the grass.

Dr. Tafer shone his flashlight into Campbell's open, unblinking eyes and inspected the neck wound. "Dead," said the doctor. "Get him out of way, please."

"We're taking him home," said Angelina from the grass.

Kurtz leaned and shoved the bodyguard's body against the rear bulkhead, tucking him half beneath the bench there.

"It sounds like Napoleon's goddamned retreat from Moscow back there," called Baby Doc from the pilot's seat.

"Shut up," said Angelina over the rotor and turbine roar. She got to her feet, dropped the empty banana cup out of her rifle, and slapped in a new one from her ditty bag. She and Kurtz both began walking back toward the burning house.

Arlene caught just a glimpse of the Burned Man's ballcap—an old Brooklyn Dodgers' cap, she noticed—before the flashing lights arrived.

It was five minutes before midnight, she noticed, and the man from the pest control van had spent a few minutes looking at her car and another couple of minutes walking around out there, checking it out, before approaching her driver's side door—still unlocked, she feared—on foot. Then the top of his cap rose above the driver's side doorsill of the Buick. Arlene aimed the Magnum and prepared for the recoil and flying glass.

The red lights flashed first, and then she heard the sirens.

The ball cap disappeared from the window and a few seconds later an engine started up and the van's headlights splayed across her windshield again.

When the headlights turned away, Arlene sat up and peeked over the dashboard.

The ambulance was accompanied by a police cruiser and both vehicles were sweeping around in a turn, away from the mall entrance, toward the pest control van with its hypothetical cardiac arrest victim.

The van drove away toward the north exit at high speed.

Both the ambulance and police cruiser stopped—as if nonplussed—and then gave chase to what appeared to be the fleeing heart-attack victim. Within a few seconds, the flashing lights had disappeared out onto Niagara Street and the parking lot was quiet again. Arlene bad known that Niagara Falls's Memorial Medical Center was only a few blocks north on Walnut Avenue, but this was good time even for that proximity. Evidently midnight on a drizzly Sunday in late October was a slow time for them.

The old Dodge with Ontario plates turned into the mall lot slowly, hesitantly, braking twice, as if the driver and occupants—Arlene could see several heads silhouetted against the streetlights along Niagara—were suspicious, ready to bolt at any sign of movement. Arlene shifted to the driver's seat but kept her head low, peering through the Buick's steering wheel.

"Arlene?"

It was a good thing, she realized later, that she'd just lowered the hammer on the big Magnum and set it back in her purse, or she probably would have soot herself when Gail's voice erupted from the cell phone. Arlene had forgotten about the phone. Heck, she'd forgotten about Gail.

"Are you all right!?"

"Shhh, shhh," Arlene hissed into the phone. "I'm fine."

"Well, damn it!" cried her sister-in-law and friend. "You're scaring me to death ."

The Dodge with the Ontario plates had stopped by the mall doors. Now a small woman carrying an old suitcase was shoved out onto the sidewalk in front of the doors and the Dodge accelerated away toward the Third Street exits.

"Gail, it's quite possible that you just saved my life," Arlene said calmly. "I'll call you tomorrow with the details."

" Tomorrow! " squawked the phone. "Don't you dare wait until…"

Arlene broke the connection and turned her phone off. She waited only a few seconds, half expecting the bug control van or the police cruiser to reappear at high speed.

Nothing. Just the small woman and the old suitcase and the empty lot.

Arlene started the Buick, turned on the headlights, and drove up to the woman in a wide arc so as not to spook her.

More girl than woman , thought Arlene as she hit the button to roll down the passenger side window. The doors had, as she'd feared, not been locked. "Aysha?" she said.

The young woman did not flinch back. She looked to be a teenager, with a pale face and large eyes above her cheap raincoat. The suitcase she clutched looked like something Arlene's parents might have owned.

"Yes, I am Aysha," said the girl in accented but smooth English. "Who sent you, please?"

Arlene hesitated only a second before saying, "Yasein. Please get in."

The girl got in the front seat She still clutched her bulky suitcase.

"Toss that in the back," said Arlene and helped her lift it between the seats and drop it on the rear seat. The young woman was smaller than fourteen-year-old Rachel.