Movement, shadows amongst shadows, makes me glance at the hallway. Another man enters the living room with Lily unconscious in his arms. His R2 is slung across his back.
I step inside and stand with my feet planted slightly wider than my hips on the floorboards. A chill flushes through my arteries, ice water replacing blood, and the world seems to go very still. Lily’s head flops over her captor’s arm, throat exposed, long hair streaming down and made emerald in the Goo-light. Her captor doesn’t seem to care that her dangling metal prosthesis drags on her shoulder. Rage curls in my chest.
A third man steps up behind him slides a butterfly knife into his pocket. A fourth follows. “There she is,” he murmurs. All four of them are middle-aged and grizzled, with heavily lined faces, wiry muscles, and brutality in their eyes.
“Who are you?” I demand. “Are you with Shade? What do you want with her?”
The one in the living room aims his R2 at my heart in reply.
The fourth man does the same and starts to move towards me, slow steps across the creaking floorboards, passing the first. As he comes closer, I get a taste of him, the thick musk of unwashed male body. It mingles with my own cold sweat and the succulence of apple pie that lingers in the cottage. Reality narrows to here, now, in this broad man’s brutish face and his odour and the black rifle he points at my forehead. My mouth is dry. I try to swallow. My throat spasms.
I step back on my right foot and make it look like a nervous retreat. His fingers are wrapped around the grip, nowhere near the trigger. Good. This might work.
He’s four paces away, three, two–
I pivot, jump, left leg lashing out up and over the R2. My sneaker smashes into his jaw, snapping his head sideways, and he topples like a tree and I drop to one knee and snatch the R2 from his hands before he hits the ground.
Muscle memory from days in the bush with Carmen take over. Nestle the stock against the shoulder, hook a finger around the charging handle and tug to chamber a fresh cartridge, find the switch above the trigger and flick it from semi- to fully-automatic – which is something of a misnomer because in fully- an R2 delivers a mere three round burst in the name of not wasting ammunition – and rest my finger along the trigger guard as I align the sights on the chest of the first man. I do it in a second. Carmen would be proud.
Thirty-seven-centimetre barrel, seven-millimetre round. The bullet is larger than the standard M4s of the US military, slightly smaller than the AK-47, and is designed to rip apart once it enters the body. A three-round burst would shred this man and he, wide-eyed, face stripped of expression in his fear, knows it too. The other two freeze, waiting to see what happens next.
I inhale to steady myself and get a lungful of musk and apple pie and suddenly panic, sheer bloody panic, surges beneath the ice.
What the hell do I do now? Shoot this man in front of me? Shoot the knifeman, tackle the guy holding Lily and run with her to the bunker? Scream blood murder to warn Fudo and Cleo? But what if there are more of these people on the island? In the villa? Do I shoot them too? How can I if I’m carrying Lily?
In my periphery, the knifeman steps in front of Lily’s captor. I tighten my grip and refocus on the first man.
“Who are you?” I ask again.
He reaches into his pocket. I watch, wary, ready to fire the moment he reveals another weapon – aim for the knees, Lys, it will incapacitate without killing him – but all he takes out is a small metal box. He places his thumb on the box’s button. The knifeman shouts. “Don’t!”
I reach for the trigger. Too late.
Click.
The garden flashes white. Long shadows stretch away from the Russian house. An instant later comes a deafening boom and the side of the cottage explodes inwards and hurls me to the floor. My head cracks on the fourth man’s steel-capped boot. Stars burst. I drop the gun. Shattered weatherboards, plaster dust, and paper rain down upon the living room. Dazed and shaken, face pressed to the floorboards, ears ringing, I hear a horribly familiar roar. Flickers of yellow dance upon my closed eyes. I can smell burning eucalyptus, and I can hear my thirteen-year-old self shrieking. Drake, Drake, where are you? Drake! Please, please, Drake, save me. Drake!
There’s a BANG, and I’m back in Australia.