Darren Lemke - Gemini Man

The sound of the blast was merciless. Henry covered his ears, felt the ground shake as the shockwave slammed into him; he had a glimpse of Danny sliding backwards on her stomach as the explosion shoved her off the road. He put up an arm to shield himself from chunks of asphalt and dirt flying at him. The blast blew a crater into the street and flipped the Jeep into the air end over end like a flimsy toy; it was completely engulfed in flames. Squinting against the brightness and the heat, Henry saw both doors on the passenger side flapping open but only one on the driver’s side. Then, over the stink of hot metal and burning tires, that smell hit him in the face, forced itself up his nose.

“ Baron! ” Henry jumped to his feet and ran toward the burning Jeep but the heat was too much for him, the heat and the smell, awful, sickening, and all too familiar from his time in the Corps, the smell that told him Baron hadn’t made it out with the rest of them.

And now Danny was pulling on his arm, telling him he had to back off, she knew, she knew, but he had to stay back.

“Are you hit?” he asked her.

She shook her head and kept on trying to pull him away from the burning wreckage. Henry looked around, his eyes stinging from the smoke, until he finally found Junior standing on the other side of the street.

In the light from the flames, Henry could see the storm of emotions on his face—horror, fear, guilt, disbelief, betrayal. It hadn’t been Henry’s chip they had zeroed in on—Junior had removed it. Henry felt his heart break all over again, for Junior, for Danny, for himself, and for Baron.

Junior’s eyes met his and for a long moment, something like a powerful current of energy ran between them, holding them there in the terrible light from the burning Jeep. Henry couldn’t move, couldn’t speak; he could only stare.

You should have run , Henry thought at Junior, and it was almost as if Junior really were his younger self and it was possible to tell the twenty-three-year-old Henry Brogan that it wasn’t too late to take a different direction. You should run for your life—your real life, not whatever this is. You should run and never look back.

And then, as if Junior had heard what Henry was thinking, he turned and ran into the darkness.

Danny was sobbing as she yanked at Henry’s arm, trying to get him farther away from the Jeep still burning in the middle of Main Street. “Henry, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry but please, please ! We have to go !”

Henry pushed her hands away, twisted out of her grip. “It’s my fault, I brought him into this.” He wiped his eyes, stinging from the smoke. The stench of burning tires mixed with that smell turned his stomach. “I told you to go home, man—” He broke off as he heard the sound of another vehicle approaching.

“ Henry! ” Danny bellowed, practically in his ear. “We have to go now !”

The headlights of a Gemini vehicle cut through the fire and smoke. As it got closer, Henry could see there were several Gemini soldiers hanging off it ready for action; mounted in the center was an M134 Minigun.

But it was the sound of gunfire and glass breaking behind him that stirred him into action. Danny had shot out the front window of a liquor store and she was dragging him toward it. She managed to pull him inside just as the vehicle came to a stop. The soldiers jumped off and fanned out on the street, taking aim.

He and Danny dropped as everyone opened fire.

Bottles exploded, spraying glass and booze in all directions, shelves broke and collapsed, the doors of refrigerated cases cracked and shattered, their contents disintegrating.

Keeping their heads low, the two of them belly-crawled toward the back of the place so that they were practically wiping the floor with their faces. Machine-gun fire shredded the walls, punching out chunks of drywall and wood to mix with the booze and broken glass on the floor. If they kept this up, Henry thought, the Gemini team were actually going to cut the building in half sideways. He and Danny had to get out of here before the entire structure collapsed in on itself.

He looked at Danny, brushed a scrap of wet paper from her cheek. Maybe the alcohol would disinfect any cuts they got from broken bottles. Maybe he could think up some other absurdities to help him avoid wondering how he was going to live with himself after what had happened to Baron.

Henry wrapped his grief for Baron into a tight little package and stowed it away next to Jack Willis and Monroe. He had to concentrate on doing everything he could to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to Danny Zakarewski, the exemplary agent who’d never gotten a demerit, recently undercover as a grad student in marine biology. She had signed up to serve her country and instead it was serving her up as toast. She hadn’t asked for any of this. Maybe she even wished she really was a grad student in marine biology; he certainly did.

She turned to look at him then and flashed him a grin as they continued to inch forward. He promised her silently that he absolutely would not let her buy it on the floor of a shot-up liquor store; he would get both of them out of there alive. Danny would go home and live a long and fulfilling life, while he was going to live long enough to shoot Clay fucking Verris in the fucking face.

They finally made it to the storeroom. The back door was heavy-duty metal. Yeah, this was a small town, all right—security door in the back, no shutters up front. Henry wondered if the owner was insured for damage due to domestic terrorism—probably not. Most insurance carriers wouldn’t cover war or so-called acts of God. No doubt Gemini would take care of all the damage and fix the new giant pothole in the road as well. It probably wouldn’t be the first time.

Henry heard more shelves collapsing out on the sales floor as well as the creak and groan of load-bearing walls that hadn’t been made to withstand heavy artillery and wouldn’t be able to bear their load much longer. He reached up for the door lever and a burst of machine-gun fire nearly took his hand off. He sneaked a quick look behind and saw it was only the Jeep out front now. The soldiers would have circled around to cover the back door. The bastards knew exactly where they were and wanted to keep them pinned down. If the building didn’t collapse and bury them alive, the soldiers would either ambush them when they came out or come in and finish them off.

Henry conveyed this to Danny in a combination of whispers and sign language, then reached for the lever a second time. Again he had to yank his hand back while bullets punched into the metal.

When he tried a third time, however, nothing happened. Henry couldn’t help grinning. Four thousand rounds per minute was lethal but it ate ammo fast. While the guys out front were reloading, he got the door open and he and Danny slipped out into the alley behind the store, still keeping low.

From where he stood on the gravel roof of the Masonic Hall in the very center of downtown Glennville, Clay Verris listened to status reports on his comm unit while he kept an eye on the action at street level. Using binoculars, he saw the soldiers had moved around to the back alley behind the liquor store, ready to greet Henry and Zakarewski if they managed to get out. He didn’t think they would, not without getting at least winged by the M134.

The back door of the liquor store swung open but Verris couldn’t see much else—Brogan and Zakarewski were crawling on their bellies. If they stood up, the soldiers would say hello. It would be a kind of Butch and Sundance moment, only not as cinematic—