Greg Bear - Quantico

‘What the hell are you up to?’ a man called from the parking lot. William took a book of motel matches-some people still rented smoking rooms, thank God-and lit the soaked, citrus-scented bundles. The result was immediate-a wall of brilliant flame right in front of the window to Rebecca’s room.

He reached around and pounded on the door. ‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘Everyone out NOW!’

For an agonizing few seconds, he hung back flat to the wall. He shot a glance out to the street through the flames and then to the left, at people milling in the parking lot. They were staring up, mouths gaping. He did not dare shout for them to leave. No sign of patrol cars or fire trucks or any other assistance. The smoke billowed black under the roof. What a stupid ass thing to do. What if the whole place burned down?

How long until the manager or someone came running with an extinguisher and stood in his line of fire?

He heard shrill, childish cries and a hoarse shout inside the room and then the door opened. William stayed flat against the wall. A hand clutching a steel blade poked out and then withdrew. He heard scuffling then a metallic pop-not a gunshot-and a mist of water puffed through the door. The room’s sprinkler system had gone off.

‘Fire!’ William shouted. ‘The roof’s collapsing! Get out now!’

A young man with blond hair lurched out, wiping water from his eyes, waving the knife as if fanning away the flames. William swung a quarter turn with gun in both hands, crouched, barrel pointing right at the center of the blond man’s torso.

‘FBI, drop the knife and get your hands up!’ William shouted. ‘Do it now!’ The flame ebbed but thick smoke blew onto both of them.

‘Jesus!’ the boy shouted. He did not drop the knife. He couldn’t see William or his gun. The smoke had finished the job the water had started. William began a pull, let it off. The boy stumbled blindly away from the door, blade wavering, pointing straight out, then down.

‘Drop the knife NOW!’

The young man shuddered and opened his hand. The knife handle hit the deck and bounced. Inside the room William heard a girl scream then a gunshot. The window blew out over the young man and he collapsed to his knees, covered with shards of glass. ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ he mewed.

Rebecca lurched out with a twist of blond hair in her fist. Her blouse had been ripped and pulled down around her shoulders. She tugged the girl in the gingham dress out onto the deck and flung her at the iron rail and the burning stacks of toilet paper. The girl bounced off, knocking flaming, smoking rolls down to the cars and asphalt. Rebecca and the girl were now between William and the crouching young man. Rebecca saw this through strings of wet hair and swung about with a dancer’s precision, pushing the girl at William. William caught her, twisted one of her arms around, and had her face-down on the deck. He kneeled on top of her. Both of the girl’s hands were empty but clutching, scratching at his pants. He pressed a knee in her back hard enough to make the vertebrae pop. The girl oofed and got quiet.

‘Where’s the gun?’ William shouted.

Smoke rolled away.

The boy looked sideways, eyes wide and red. He reached out. Rebecca kicked the knife under the rail and over the parking lot. Then she kicked the young man in the side, hard, which put him once more on his back, and stomped him right in the groin with a bare bleeding foot. He curled up like a pillbug, alternately moaning and screaming. She flipped him over in the glass and pulled back both of his arms.

The manager came up from the other side, spraying foam over everything. ‘Fuck this!’ he was shouting. ‘You trying to burn me out?’

‘FBI,’ William said, wiping his eyes.

‘I’ve called the cops, you fuckwad, I’ve called the fire department-’

‘Got your cuffs?’ Rebecca called out. The young man jerked and struggled and she smacked him hard across the back of the head, then forced his face into the glass. William tossed her the cuffs from his belt. She caught them through a swinging arc of foam.

Rebecca’s broad, well-defined shoulders, smudged with soot, glistened as she bound the young man. With dripping hair askew, black brassiere revealed, slacks halfway down her hips-showing the top stretch of pink panties-she looked absolutely amazing. The young man gasped as she lifted her knee off his lower spine. The manager’s foam finally ran out and he flung the tank against the stucco. It bounced and rolled. They were all covered with hissing, dripping retardant.

‘Careful with the girl, she’s pregnant,’ Rebecca warned William.

She had humped up strangely. He eased her over on her side. The girl moaned between quick bursts of prayer.

Gun. He leaned far enough to see a pistol on the floor of Rebecca’s room, far out of anyone’s reach.

‘Room’s clear,’ Rebecca said.

Below, tenants were backing out their cars and leaving. The manager shouted over the railing: they hadn’t paid their bills.

Chest heaving, Rebecca toed a blackened, sodden roll of toilet paper. ‘What the hell was that?’ she asked William.

‘Advanced tactics,’ William said.

She sucked in her breath, pulled up the shoulders of her blouse, and gave him the sweetest smile. ‘You bastard,’ she said.

Turkey/Iraq

The Superhawk hit a wall of air over the endless wrinkled blanket of the Zagros mountains. It shuddered like a stunned ox and fell for a few hundred feet until the blades growled, bit air again, and whanga-whanged like a Jamaican steel band. Fouad had never heard a sound like that and it made him go pale. He clutched at the belt over his slung seat.

Across from him, Special Agent Orrin Fergus signed a thumbs up and then tapped his nose. Fergus shouted, ‘The shit is mostly over. We’re coming into Diyala. That’s an Iraqi muhafazah . Province or whatever.’

‘Governorate,’ said the master sergeant on Fouad’s left. He was a compact, well-muscled man about Fouad’s age, fully tricked out in flak plate and desert camouflage, helmet overlaid with headphone and gogs and a rucksack full of folded plastic maps. His dedicated satlink kept him fully informed about activity in the area-what little activity there was. He was a connected kind of guy and looked like a robot samurai.

The crew chief moved to the rear. ‘Down in thirty. Use the green bucket if you are so moved. Captain Jeffries does not like a slippery deck.’ He looked hard at Fouad. ‘First time?’

Fouad nodded.

The crew chief used his boot to shift the bucket next to Fouad.

‘I will be fine,’ Fouad said, looking up with wide black eyes.

The crew chief grinned and walked back to his position on fire control.

‘They call Kifri UXO Central,’ Master Sergeant said. ‘Decades of back and forth between the Kurds and the Sunnis. The national animal is the Gambian rat. They use ’em to sniff out mines and ordnance. Happy little beasts, work like sonsabitches. Last time we were through here an Iraqi film company was making an epic about Arabs stomping Persians fourteen hundred years ago. Pretty big deal. Then the director stepped on a Coalition bomblet and blew off his leg. Took out a cameraman, too. Shit. They were feeling pretty low that day.’

‘Do they mind that we are here?’ Fouad asked.

‘The folks in Baghdad mostly don’t give a fuck,’ Master Sergeant said with a grin. ‘They’re supposed to be our allies, so we turn a blind eye when they kick Kurdish butt.’

Orrin Fergus moved over to Fouad’s side and shouted into his ear. ‘We’re going to meet up with Tim Harris’s team in Kifri. You’ll conduct the interrogation for us. Harris’s accent just makes ’em blink. How’s your skill at the local dialect?’