Without waiting to see what the man did, Nicholas ran after Mike into the flame-lit night.
Twenty minutes after the bomb went off, the scene looked like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare scape. The air was still ripe with the scent of carnage, men stumbling from the converters, others slumped silent on the ground, bloody, groaning, so many others more seriously hurt and bleeding in the staging area. In that instant, this hell shot Nicholas back to a place more than three years before, in another part of the world, and the terrible mistakes made, and he felt a ferocious hit of pain and guilt.
The firefighter who’d tried to stop them, Jones, was at his elbow, pointing and shouting. Nicholas whirled round. He thought they’d cleared everyone in this quadrant. He couldn’t see any more bodies in the hellish light.
“What is it? I don’t see anyone.”
Jones yanked on his shoulder, pulled him backward, shouting, “No, look, over there. Bomb, bomb!” and Nicholas saw a black backpack on the ground, with wires sticking out of the top. His heart froze.
Mike was a good twenty feet in front of him. He sprinted to her, caught her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her as fast as he could away from the backpack into the darkness, yelling, “Secondary device, run, Mike, run!”
They ran toward Jones, who was still screaming at everyone to fall back, fall back.
The backpack exploded, and the world around them shattered.
5
KNIGHT TO C3
Nicholas barely had time to fling his arms up to protect his face before he was hurled backward to the ground, unconscious. A year, a day, moments, he didn’t know, but when he came to, he was lying facedown on the oily tarmac. He shook his head, pulled himself together. He saw Mike lying ten yards away, sprawled on her back, legs and arms flung out, Jones lying beside her. Neither of them was moving. He saw something dark and wet on the ground near Jones’s head—blood, yes, blood was the word he was looking for—and Mike still wasn’t moving. He tried to stand up but couldn’t, he had no balance.
He crawled to Mike, pressed his filthy fingers to the pulse in her neck. She was breathing, thank the good Lord.
He pulled her onto his lap and held her close, rocking her. “Come on, Mike, wake up, come on, sweetheart, you can do it.”
She began to moan low in her throat and he said over and over, “Come on, Mike, come back to me, you can do it. I’ve promised a dozen years of good works if you’ll be okay. Come on, Mike, wake up, do it now before I stroke out.” Finally, she twitched and opened her eyes. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes, now vague with confusion, and knew such relief he wanted to shout with it. He wondered if this was how she’d felt in Geneva, with him out cold on the ground, the building exploding behind him? Her glasses lay on the ground beside her, incredibly unbroken. He handed them to her, watched her shove them back on.
They’d both lost their shirtsleeve masks. Mike’s hair was sticking out in all directions. Her face was grimed with soot, but he could clearly see the big bruise on her cheek and the beginnings of a black eye.
Amazingly, she smiled up at him. He pressed his forehead to hers, knowing his heart was still pounding too fast, the fear still eating deep. “Tell me you’re okay. Promise me you’re okay.”
“Yes, don’t worry, Nicholas, I’m only battered a bit. You look pretty scary. Can you believe it? My glasses aren’t broken. You okay?”
He nodded. “But our savior, Jones, he doesn’t look good.”
Together they crawled to where Jones lay motionless. He was still, too still. Mike leaned close, said over her shoulder, “He’s breathing. He lost his hardhat, but he’s wearing his fireman’s jacket, it cushioned his fall.” Mike patted his face, ran her hands over his head, down over his shoulders, while Nicholas felt his arms and legs. She patted his face again. “Mr. Jones? Come on, wake up, tell me you’re okay.”