David Morrell: Burnt Sienna

The smoke will work, though, Malone decided. There just has to be enough of it.

Wincing from the pain in his ribs, he forced himself across the courtyard. Gaining speed, he reached a street and saw another Jeep approaching. He took off his windbreaker and formed a sling with it. He darted out, jumped onto the Jeep, grabbed grenades from the equipment belts on the mannequins, stuffed them into the sling, heard the chopper approaching, grabbed two more grenades, and leapt off, taking cover in a doorway as Bellasar flew over.

Straining to get enough air in his lungs, he pulled the pin from a grenade, heaved the grenade toward the receding Jeep, and raced the opposite way along the street. A truck came around a corner. He tossed a grenade into it as well and ran harder. The blast from the first grenade gutted the Jeep, set off a secondary explosion in the gas tank, and detonated the ammunition in the rifles. Pop, pop, pop , he heard, then winced from the louder explosion of the second grenade, the truck bursting into flames. Continuing to run, he hurled a third grenade at a pickup truck, a fourth at a bus, a fifth at a station wagon. The chain of explosions behind him was accompanied by rising columns of dense black smoke from burning gasoline and tires.

Bellasar shot into the smoke, but Malone was already in a different sector, blowing up a half-track, another Jeep, and another pickup truck. The secondary explosions added to the chaos, more dense smoke billowing. The stench was so acrid Malone bent over, coughing. The flames spread to buildings. Mannequins dressed as civilians moved on their tracks, continuing to walk even though they were burning.

The smoke drifted from the village, spreading across the field around it. Malone used it for cover, racing toward the weapons-testing stalls. The.50-caliber machine gun, he kept thinking. Bellasar had cut off his route to it earlier. If Malone had persisted, he was certain Bellasar would have decided the threat was sufficiently serious for him to quit toying with Malone and stop the game right then.

A change in the sound of the chopper’s motors warned Malone that Bellasar had seen him running across the smoke-obscured field.

No!

He raced as hard as he could.

The chopper sped toward him.

What if the machine gun doesn’t have ammunition? What if -

Run!

Bellasar fired, narrowly missing him.

Faster!

Malone’s makeshift sling still held a few grenades. His legs pumping, his chest heaving, he grabbed a grenade, pulled its pin, reached the machine gun, then whirled and threw the grenade as far and as high as he could in the chopper’s direction. He was too desperate to worry about shrapnel as he swung toward the machine gun on its tripod and shouted in triumph when he saw that an ammunition belt was attached to it.

The grenade exploded in front of the chopper, its shock wave jolting the fuselage, shrapnel whacking against the Plexiglas, the distraction enough to keep Bellasar from firing again.

For an intense moment, Malone saw Bellasar’s fury-contorted features. In the back, desperate and frenzied, Potter and Ahmed tugged at the bars to which they were handcuffed. Then Malone yanked back the arming mechanism on the machine gun, tilted the weapon upward, and pulled the trigger. The awesome rate of fire threatened to twist the weapon out of his control. But although he had found the recoil daunting when Bellasar had made him fire the weapon months earlier, he now felt angrily at ease with it. Its repeated shudder, reminiscent of the speed and power of a locomotive, aggravated the pain in his body, but his body transcended his pain. In the next pure timeless moment, he and the weapon were one as he steadied his aim and kept squeezing the trigger. The rounds had extrapowerful loads. The tips were explosive. Bellasar had been so proud of them. Now a steady spray of them struck the chopper, blowing it, along with Bellasar, Potter, and Ahmed, to hell.

The blast was so powerful, it slammed Malone to the ground, and this time he did pass out – but not before he saw the flaming wreckage cascade, slamming, onto the field. How long he was unconscious, a minute or five minutes, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that when he came to, the wreckage was still burning across from him. But he didn’t have time to rejoice in his victory. He had no thought of celebration. He hadn’t been victorious. There was nothing to celebrate. He was alive, and he had gotten his revenge, but he hadn’t won. Wavering to his feet, he stumbled past mutilated trees and hedges toward the Cloister. Sienna! he kept thinking, and then, as he broke from a stumble to a run, he wailed it.

“SIENNA!”

Time had deceived him. What had seemed like fifteen minutes had taken an hour. When he reached the Cloister, he found Jeb passed out on its front steps, a pool of blood around him, a bullet hole in his arm. “Now I owe you ,” Malone said. A policeman and a doctor, alarmed by the rumble of the distant explosions, had arrived from the nearest village twenty kilometers away. While the doctor worked on Jeb, the policeman and townspeople summoned by phone were searching the grounds, trying to help the survivors. Three of Jeb’s men, including Dillon, had been wounded. Two were dead. Sickened, Malone rushed down the basement stairs to the corridor outside Sienna’s chamber.

The Russians had remained, still devastated by the reality that Bellasar had actually used the weapon. Pale, they continued to stare through both windows toward Sienna. After having waited so long, she was pacing, her eyes panicky. Through the one-way glass, Malone watched her tug frantically at the door, then study the ceiling, trying to calculate a way out. The bruises on her face were more pronounced. It broke his heart to see them. But they were the least thing that would mar her beauty.

“How long does the disease take to develop?” he asked the stoop-shouldered Russian.

Downcast, the man replied, “Normally, seven to ten days.”

“Normally?”

“We engineered it so the effects are accelerated. But it was all a research experiment. We never dreamed Bellasar would actually use it.”

“How long?”

“Three days.”

“Does she know she’s been exposed?”

Looking more dejected, the Russian shook his head from side to side.

Malone swallowed bile. His ordeal had left him so weak, he could barely stand. But how he felt didn’t matter. He went into an office behind him, picked up its phone, and pressed the numbers Bellasar had earlier given him.

Across from him, through the one-way glass, Sienna spun toward the room’s table and the phone on it. From Malone’s point of view, it rang silently as she picked it up.

“Chase?”

“Right here, sweetheart.”

“I got so worried. You said you were coming, and when you didn’t -”

“Something held me back.”

“You sound…” She straightened. “Are you all right?”

“Tired. Banged-up. Otherwise… You want to hear some good news?”

“God yes.”

“It’s over. He’s dead. You don’t have to be afraid of him ever again.”

For a moment, she didn’t react. She seemed not to believe what she had heard. Then tears welled from her eyes, streaming down her ravaged face.

With all his heart, Malone wanted to hold her. He imagined how closed in she must feel, not being able to see outside the room.

“Come get me,” she said. “Please.”

“I can’t.” Malone’s voice didn’t want to work. “Not yet. Not for five hours.”

“Five hours? Why? I don’t understand.”

“Some kind of time lock. I won’t be able to open the door until then.”

“Time lock? Five hours?”