Greg Bear - Mariposa

Schmitz could not help but be distracted.

Fouad had no idea what was happening but did not much care. He saw his moment. He had tracked which of Schmitz's two Haitians held the key to his cuffs and leg irons. Lifting his legs, twisting his shoulders, he leaned and gave the other Haitian a wobbling, half strength slam of his elbow just below the nose. The blow was not what he had hoped, but still firm enough to shove the man's nasal bones into his brain-unseen by the others.

The man made a sudden mimp and fell back.

Fouad went under the table, grabbed the key-bearing Haitian's legs-the one who had smiled broadest, apologetic about showing his former teacher a lack of respect-and pulled him down from his chair. Slipping his cuffed hands over the man's head, he broke his neck with a swift reverse spin-then rolled him like a sack of potatoes to present the right pants pocket.

Now came the difficult part. Hunching along the corpse, Fouad reached into the pocket with cuffs still on, fumbling. After a moment, fingers poking the dead man's inner thigh, he looped through a steel ring, pulled it out, and grasped the key-

Schmitz pushed aside the red cloth and leaped under the table. He tried to knock the key loose. They fought for a long, difficult moment, but Fouad had the advantage. He was still feeling the effects of the drug, but not in searing pain.

With the cloth held back by Schmitz's torso, light from the burning banners flickered over his thrashing arms. Both of them smoked through melted holes in the sleeves just above the wrists. The smell filled the air.

Fouad curled and grabbed Schmitz's right arm, squeezing the burned flesh over the ID chip.

"God damn you!" Schmitz yelledy. His head thumped the bottom of the table.

Fouad let go, jammed the key into the leg irons, and twisted. Then he pulled away from Schmitz in the other direction and inserted the key into the cuffs. The irons dropped loose but the cuffs only partially opened, then jammed-they felt hot.

The fight under the table turned frantic.

Fouad's foot came up and caught Schmitz under the jaw, a kick that might have killed him outright had the drugs not damped Fouad's strength. Schmitz grunted and wrenched his leg around. Fouad grabbed Schmitz above the elbow, pressing back and making the soldier roll in that direction to break loose-then grabbed his wrist, stretched the arm out, and with his heel pressed as hard as he could against the adjacent ribs, pumped like a tiger again and again, his kicks moving from ribs to stomach.

The arm gave with a pop.

Schmitz was making little puffing shrieks but still would not quit.

Fouad's cuffs finally came loose. He reached down for the long steel chain. Schmitz desperately warded off the chain with his one good arm, breath whistling in his nose, grunting, legs flailing against the dead Haitian-

Fouad came around on Schmitz's left and wrapped the chain around his neck and then, like a crocodile spinning in the water, twisted and twisted and looped and twisted again until they both emerged from beneath the table, pulling down the red cloth, and rolled off the riser, landing with a heavy thud on the oak floor.

Schmitz clutched and clawed at Fouad's hands, reached up and poked a thumb into one eye, then stuck it in one corner of Fouad's mouth and yanked.

Fouad bit down.

Schmit pulled out his fingers and grabbed feebly for Fouad's head. Everything was coated in sweat and blood-he could not find purchase.

In the flame-lit shadows of the ballroom, over the next few minutes-that awful interval of an adversary's final time in this world-Schmitz's arms fell.

He stopped struggling, stopped breathing.

His muscles relaxed.

Fouad regretfully twisted Schmitz's head on the limp neck until the vertebrae parted, just to be certain, then shoved himself to his feet and staggered to the middle of the dance floor. He was covered in blood and saliva, half blind from the thumb gouge in one eye-muscles stretched to their limits.

He knocked aside a staggering Chinese man and drew a welcome whoop of breath.

Still alive!

Allah would forgive all-he was still alive.

And now the time of Mr. Price was come.

Over Lion County

"Bright number three away," the first weapons officer announced. "Two-minute burn."

"Look at that," Daniel Haze said in awe as he stared through the window by his seat.

The ground around the Talos Campus-the landscape for at least twenty miles in all directions-was marked with the great, hashed brush-strokes of sooty fires-clearly revealing the criss-cross dispersal patterns of the aircraft that had years ago dropped Talos's ground-sensor chips.

Wherever the chips had fallen, they had absorbed energy from the expanding plasma pulse and conveyed it to the local flora.

At least ten thousand acres were ablaze. The fires were slowly merging into one great conflagration, with the Smoky, the Talos Campus, and the airport at three points of a triangle inside the burn.

"Looks like all the Talos drones are down," the pilot said. "I don't see anything flying."

Rebecca removed the mouth guard and felt her jaw, wondering if the heat had cracked a couple of molars. She should have had that amalgam drilled out years ago.

"We go down-what are the chances they'll shoot at us?" Kunsler asked.

"Their firearm ID chips are fried," the weapons officer said. "If what we were told about Talos armory rules is true, I don't think they'll be shooting at us for a while. The more high-tech they are, the harder they fall."

"They could keep unchipped guns for an emergency," Rebecca said, considering their options carefully-about to make her major decision.

"They're still feeling a world of hurt," the weapons officer said. "Our best trained special ops take twenty or thirty minutes to recover from a Bright, if they're chipped. Burns like a sonofabitch. Some of the older model chips burn right through the skin and set clothes on fire."

"Tower systems are dead," the second officer said, coming back from the cockpit. "They have no way of knowing who we are, except by visual-and this plane is stealthy and can hide its markings. We disperse our heat. We should be ghosty even if they still have operational radar and IR-which they don't."

Haze and Kunsler looked at each other across the plane's narrow aisle, nervously awaiting Rebecca's decision.

Kunsler had never engaged in an actual combat landing before.

"If we land now," Haze said, "confusion and smoke will provide excellent cover. "We can't delay. Price's soldiers are disciplined. They'll regroup quickly, I think-and they'll find some way to arm themselves."

"I told William Griffin to get to the airport," Kunsler said. "If he's managed to connect with Nabokov-with Fouad-then they'll be looking for us. But that seems less and less likely."

"Last FLIR images show their escape vehicle blown off the road," Haze said. "One agent killed in the brush… Two released west of our strike zone. They're off in the desert somewhere by now, if they weren't captured or shot."

"One ejected," Kunsler said hopefully.

"That's a maybe. Could be flaming debris-or a burning body."

Rebecca felt the plane bank right. The pilot was preparing for a landing-or another pass. He had looked over the runways-two, in parallel, with taxiways and a third small plane strip arranged like a wobbly X in the desert, about two miles beyond the Talos campus.

The Smoky-where most of the guests and Price were likely to be located, as well as Fouad-lay northwest of the line between the campus and the airport.

Her own senses seemed sharp. Her visual field was still expanded, still intensely detailed, still showing weird patches of color-useful or not, who could tell?