"Four hours."

"Four long hours."

She sobbed. I didn"t. I looked at the boxes, at the BMW motorcycle I was rocking.

The rain fell harder. Visibility lessened. The big storm was moving in.

I said, "LKs were booked on two flights to Barbados."

"At least ten were on the reservation list. Others had flown to Grenada."

I inhaled, held it, exhaled, clenched teeth, said, "I"m going to need your car."

"No. I spent all of my money for this car. This is my first true car. I"ll drop you off."

"Sure you want to do that? You"re a woman easy to describe rocking a car that is easier to describe. If they catch me in the car, again they"ll think they have found Hacker. If they catch you riding with me and they are after me, well, they won"t give a f.u.c.k who you are."

"Will you drop me somewhere?"

"No."

"You"re going to leave me in the dark? Alone?"

"If they"re looking for you, I"ll be in your car. If they are after me, you won"t be with me."

"What should I do about getting my car back?"

"You have insurance?"

"Yeah."

"Report it stolen."

"Should I kiss it good-bye?"

"Depends on how you feel about it."

FIFTY-FOUR.

Upper Collymore Rock Five SUVs were in the immediate area. All black. All with tinted windows. One was in the lot at Channel Grocery Store, the one facing the plaza where Big Guy"s shop was located. One was across the road at Payne"s Plaza. The engines were on. The windshield wipers moved every now and then, wiped away water to yield visibility. The only light came from businesses with generators.

Big Guy didn"t have a generator, but at least three people in his s.p.a.ce held flashlights.

Phone service was still on. I messaged Big Guy.

IT"S REAPER.

YOU"RE HERE?

LOOK IN THE HALLWAY. LEFT YOUR FOOD ON THE STEPS.

Whoever looked out saw two dead men. One with a knife wound in his heart, the other with his neck broken, his face now facing his back and looking up toward the clouds.

My cellular vibrated.

I knew it would ring. I answered with a smile.

I said, "I hate Barbados, and I really needed those pa.s.sports."

"Your Kiwi accent is gone."

"Is this better, War Machine?"

"That is a voice I will never forget."

"Does this Kiwi accent get your w.a.n.ker hard?"

"Who are you working for?"

"Do you want to hire me? I"m a b.l.o.o.d.y GDI now."

"Who sent you to Trinidad?"

"I was working for the sh.e.l.l corporation RCSI. Ask the guy you"re holding hostage. Keep away from his coffee. It tastes like day-old horses.h.i.t, not that I have had day-old horses.h.i.t. Tell him I said that it"s okay to tell you all he knows, if he"s not dead. If you contact the Barbarians, better known as RCSI, they will deny my existence. My a.s.sociation with the Barbarians, that"s over now."

"So you"re not protected."

"Only during s.e.x."

"Why didn"t you stay hidden? Why didn"t you run?"

"Since you came this far to see me, I figured I"d show up for the fete."

"Come here. Come out of the rain. Let"s sit here and talk."

"No. We should meet. Just you and me, or me and one of your men. Pick a man. Any man. You can pick Appaloosa. I don"t give a f.u.c.k. He brings one weapon. I bring one weapon."

"You won"t win."

"Your guntas like swords. I can handle one. He could bring two swords as long as I am supplied with the same number and of the same quality. Or we could just go toe-to-toe. We meet in Queen"s Park or on the field at Kensington Oval and battle like Roman gladiators. I win, I walk away and you stop looking for me, forget I ever existed, take your dead gunta, go back to being whatever sc.u.m you were before. You can go after RCSI, kill the Barbarians, I don"t care. I just want no part of it."

"I find you fascinating. Come to me. Let"s talk this over."

"I"m not going to be bound and gagged and burned alive in a park. Not my kind of barbecue."

"Where are you, Kiwi? Where are you?"

"I"m across the road from you at Payne"s Plaza. How many SUVs do you guys have?"

I saw that his men moved in that direction, guns aimed. They were nowhere near me.

I shattered a window, the sole window to Big Guy"s office. Men yelled like boys. I threw them a pair of flash-bang grenades to play with. It was enough to shock and disorient the hive of guntas.

I was about to pull the pin on a real grenade, but Big Guy screamed.

He wasn"t dead.

The men at Payne"s Plaza zoomed to my side of the road. The SUV parked in front of Channel did the same. I threw the grenade toward them, the explosion making both of them veer and stop. Disoriented guntas on my side of the road in Big Guy"s office were treated to tear gas. Metal bars were on the windows so there was only one way out, and they fled, stepped out as I stood up high, gun in hand. They felt the sting of hot lead. Weapon-heavy, I was on the roof, soaked in rain. Had come through the Pine, took the flooded back road that snaked to Upper Collymore Rock, then parked in the KFC lot. There were no back doors to the offices on the second level, so they wouldn"t need to watch the back of the building, but two men did walk the perimeter. I moved through the rain and darkness, with a silencer on one of my weapons and with two quick pops, the dead count was up to four. I had carried enough stretchable shock cord and made my way to the roof. Without a plan, without a team, without Barbarians in my corner, I had accepted my invitation to be the guest of honor, had arrived, and now the party had officially started.

Guntas fled the building, senses shattered.

I gunned them down, fired and fired and fired, until they regrouped and returned fire.

I dropped down low and rolled, infrareds up to my eyes, reloading, firing. That was what I did until I saw Appaloosa step out of his SUV carrying a large weapon. The winds blew his payload and took it toward Mane Attraction, all but destroyed that building. He had a rocket launcher. A game changer. Fear almost arrested me. Fires raging, I hardball-pitched three grenades at them, hit one SUV and missed the other two, then ran away, bolted across the top of the building and jumped, an explosion behind my back.

Holding on to the stretchable cord.

Hoping I didn"t lose my grip.

I tumbled.

I fell into the arms of gravity.

FIFTY-FIVE.

I had survived the fall, cut the cord as it stretched, and landed on my feet, but had to roll and rise up running. When I vanished behind KFC, someone else had come up the road in a car. The moment they turned on the main road, the LKs lit them up. Anyone who stepped out into the streets, they were gunned down. They didn"t know where I was, if I was alone, so all of Barbados had become their enemy. Then I came out roaring in the Mini Cooper. I hit the main road and pa.s.sed the poor soul who had been gunned down. They were gunning everyone down. The rear window of my escape vehicle shattered. Gla.s.s flew like tiny knives, forced me to close my eyes for a moment. Heart tried to beat out of my chest. Rapid fire came from a dozen guns. The Sh.e.l.l gas station exploded, the projectile sent by Appaloosa barely missing the Mini Cooper. The ground shook as flames, smoke, and shrapnel reached into the dark sky, clawed at the falling rain. Locals had come out, had been on the side of the road like they were watching an action movie, BBMing until they caught fire or were shot. Sobs, curses, and prayers went from their mouths to G.o.d"s ears. The gas-station explosion caused the LKs to duck for cover, gave me a moment without being fired on. People had already raced outside in the rain and wind. More f.u.c.kin" BBMers. Houses were along the main road and people had heard noise and come out. Many caught lead and fell to the ground. I made a hard U-turn, doubled-back by the car that had been riddled with bullets, its driver a victim of pink mist, and took the fight away from this neighborhood, circled though the flaming Sh.e.l.l parking lot, bounced out onto the main road.

LKs recovered from the brunt of the explosion and were in their SUVs within seconds. Adrenaline rushed, flooded my system the way the storm was flooding the roads. I fishtailed, corrected the car, took the anorexic road next to KFC, sideswiped a half-dozen cars as I fled, accelerated through the dark serpentine roads that led into the midnightness of the Pinelands, then was forced into a hard, skidding left where it ended at Pine East-West Boulevard. Streets were slick. Couldn"t tell if a tire had been murdered, felt like it had for a moment, the road so rugged at this place, then I was forced into a hard right before Pine Gardens. I shot up the border of Two Mill Hill that fed into and ended at Government Hill. The road curved in their favor and they fired, forced me to make a left. Book Source exploded as I turned. They had antic.i.p.ated that move. An explosion landed to my right, then the giant iPhone on the right in front of the LIME head office exploded. When I swerved into the next lane, the same happened to the cellular company"s car park and lobby. It was a straight shot to Tweedside Road. I killed my headlights, knew that would darken my taillights, and kept my foot from the brake, pressed the accelerator through the floor, zoomed through a red light, and approached yet another roundabout where I would have to decide if I would let it regurgitate me toward Harmony Road or throw me onto Roebuck Street. Headlights were in my rearview, were in both lanes by the time I came up on Sawh"s Supermarket. Bombs exploded around me. Rampant destruction testified to their level of anger. More innocent bystanders became casualties. This had too much momentum to stop now. Water gushed from broken mains. Broken gla.s.s littered the road. Backpack on the pa.s.senger seat, I reached over, found a grenade of my own, pulled the pin, dropped it out the window. Any sane man would have backed off by now.

At my feet, my cellular rang and rang and rang and rang.

Headlights became larger in my rearview, came at me fast, and bullets came faster.

I dropped another grenade and thought I saw an SUV explode, three vehicles back. Headlights kept coming, the bogeymen with xenon eyes turned up high in hopes of blinding me each time I looked in the mirror. I made hard turns, hit snaking roads, hit narrow streets.

They chased me into Bridgetown.

The LKs sideswiped cars parked near St. Mary"s Church and the Old Synagogue. The rain put visibility at a minimum, the blackout left me able to see only a few feet ahead, but all they had to do was follow my taillights. Synagogue Lane. Coleridge Street. Magazine Lane. The flooded streets of Bridgetown were my enemy. Explosions were swallowed by the howl of the winds as flames succ.u.mbed to the storm. All I could do was try to outrun them, make a turn and lose them, hope the lead car crashed and caused them to pile up. They matched my speed, moved into the delirious winds at over 170 kilometers per hour. My heart rate accelerated, palms sweated, teeth clenched as my enthusiastic hunters came closer, refused to allow their trembling prey to escape its fate.

FIFTY-SIX.

From the pa.s.senger seat, Kandinsky barked over the roar of the storm, "War Machine."

"Read the readout."

Kandinsky shouted, "Winds near forty. Rain acc.u.mulations between two and six inches."

"We"ve lost more men. We have to recover the bodies and the injured."

"The third team is doing that now. Incredible. The Kiwi will pay."

"Nothing that we do to her will be sufficient, nothing will raise our dead."

"She will pay."

"We will rush the capture, but we can"t rush this death."

"Helicopters?"

"When the wind dies."

War Machine and his men had attacked the island of Barbados before they attacked their target.

There was no electrical current and that blackness would obscure all that they did. Diamond Dust had commanded second-tier guntas to strike the substations at Belmont Road, Government Hill, Pine Garden, and by the Garrison, and they had destroyed them all. Barbados would be dark for many days and nights with no power other than generator power. The roaring island was as dark as the bottom of a grave.

War Machine grimaced, and they accelerated into the winds.

Then he was less than five yards behind the Kiwi, close but not close enough, speeding the wrong way up a one-way street that would end in a T at the Bridge House. She would be forced to go left or right, but going left would send her into a dead end behind the Bridge House. The Kiwi would be forced to go to the right, would be forced to slow to make that sharp turn. Slow or slide. Her brake lights flashed. War Machine accelerated and smashed the rear of the vehicle. Contact was strong and dead on point, clipping the left b.u.mper, forcing a spinout to the right. That, combined with the winds, was more than enough to make the Kiwi lose control.

The incensed winds advanced his opponent"s skidding turn and blew her vehicle off the road near the docks of Bridgetown, as if the G.o.ds had reached down and thrown her, had sent her flying, her battered vehicle airborne and doing a 300-degree turn. The winds and slick road and War Machine"s unrelenting speed did him no special favors, shoved his car at least thirty yards beyond his target, the second car in his team on his b.u.mper, sliding and spinning as well, striking him hard enough to make his head jerk backward, ramming him and sending both teams into a second harsh, sliding spin. A few seconds of disorientation was an eternity.

It was long enough for the Kiwi to extricate herself from her mangled vehicle and flee, but not before she had thrown a grenade, one that exploded nowhere near them.

Still, they paused, tensed, antic.i.p.ated, waited for another.

The winds howled, the force strong. That power delayed War Machine and his men from opening their car doors, but within seconds they were all out, guns aimed, all firing in hopes of a lucky shot, something that would slow if not halt the Kiwi"s, that Woman of a Thousand Faces", retreat. The curses of gunfire were swallowed by the storm"s incessant roar.

War Machine saw her in the distance, guns no use in the wind.

He led the charge in that direction.