the barrel of his gun.
“You’ll let me live? That’s fuckin’ cute.”
Enda pushed Tiny into the doorway, its rotors masked by the buzz of shorted screens. Mental schism as Enda saw herself painted on the lens of her contex, crouched behind her shield. She steered Tiny further into the room, and pivoted the drone so the last two targets were centered in its vision.
“Drop the shield,” Redhead said again.
Enda tore off the Velcro strap that kept the shield secured to her arm. As soon as she saw Redhead’s smirk she threw the shield at Mohawk, sent Tiny flying at Redhead’s face, and dropped to the floor. She landed awkwardly, her elbow digging into her side, and grabbed the Kalashnikov.
Redhead cursed, and fired his pistol—hollow sound as the bullet chanked into the wall above Enda’s head. She fired one burst and Mohawk’s leg shattered in a shower of blood, the white of bone showing through torn meat.
Redhead fired again as he ran for the door, the Glock popping like a child’s toy compared to the roar of the AK. Enda swung the weapon past Osman and took aim at the door. She let off another burst, unsure if she hit Redhead as he disappeared from view, leaving the echo of footsteps in his wake.
Mohawk cried and jabbered—rapid-fire Korean spilling from his mouth intercut with English swearing. The target in the corner was out cold, a small halo of blood pooled around his head. Bowl Cut groaned and got onto all fours.
Enda stood over him and pressed the AK-47 to the back of his head. “Are you going to try and hit me again, Jin?”
He shook his head, scattering tears across the floor.
“Have you got a belt?” Enda asked. He nodded, slow and hesitant. “Pull it tight around your friend’s leg and maybe he won’t die.”
She approached Osman, strapped to the seat, chest stained red with blood. One eye was swollen shut, the other rolled in the socket.
“Osman, can you hear me?”
His eye stopped and found Enda. He groaned, a guttural sound from deep within.
“Help is coming, okay. Stay with me.” She checked his pulse with her free hand. It was too slow. She would have thought he was dead if it weren’t for the whistle of his breathing.
He opened his mouth. “Find—” He paused to swallow blood. “Find JD.” He coughed and a fine mist of blood sprayed over Enda’s face. It was not the first time that had happened.
“Stay with me, kid.” Enda felt his pulse jolt through the veins of his neck and waited for another.
And waited.
Nothing.
Osman’s mouth hung slack—a red mess of bleeding gums and missing teeth. His left eye was open, sad even in death.
“Sorry, kid,” Enda said. She turned back to Jin. “Who’s JD?”
“Fuck you.”
She pulled the gun back, ready to slam its butt into Jin’s face, but the sound of sirens stopped her. They were close. Enda glanced around the room and sighed. She lowered the gun, took out her phone, and called the Mechanic.
“Good afternoon, Enda.”
“It’s really not,” Enda said. “I’m going to be offline for a little while. But I need you to run a name—initials really. JD. Cross-reference that with Tyson’s gait recording. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Understood,” Natalya said. “My concern is that this may provide rather a large quantity of poor-quality hits.”
“I trust your judgment. Just sift through them and have a list ready for me by tomorrow.”
Enda hung up, and dropped her phone on the floor. She aimed the assault rifle at it, and opened fire. The phone bounced with the force, glass and metal glittering as they exploded into the air.
The tight tattoo of boots reached Enda through the sharp whine of her ringing ears. With a series of quick movements she released the magazine from the AK-47, cleared the chambered round, and field-stripped the weapon, tossing each piece onto the ground by the doorway.
As she knelt on the floor and laced her fingers behind her head the flash of light off Tiny’s lens caught her eye. The drone hovered in the middle of the room—without her phone, her link to it was lost.
“I hope you got my good side,” she said.
A second later, SWAT officers poured into the room, yelling commands in Korean and English, scanning the room with their shotguns—Enda, three incapacitated thugs, a dead body, and blood pooling on the floor and spattered on the walls.
It did not look good.
* * *
It was almost 3 a.m., and JD was still awake. I could tell he hadn’t slept—sensors