He bends over and slides the pistol across the concrete to me.
“You’ve got one bullet,” he says. “What will you do with it? Once Ms. Masters is on fire, will you put her out of her misery? Or will you try to kill me?”
Like a suspicious primate taunted by a cruel zoo worker, I hesitate to reach for the derringer. But in the end, I snatch it up. Maybe I can inflict some degree of harm on Brody before I die. Breaking open the weapon, I check the remaining round—a .22 long rifle bullet. It seems to be live, but it’s practically useless from this range. To reliably kill from this gun, this bullet should be fired from a foot or less.
“There’s a third choice, Brody,” Randall says. “He might save the bullet for himself. To spare himself the pain.”
Royal laughs. “Are you that blind, Randall? Not Mayor Cage. He’s a white-knight type. He’s Ivanhoe, son. Chivalry and honor. He’s his daddy all over again. Nope … he’ll shoot the girl. I’d stake my fortune on it.”
“Look at his eyes,” Regan says, watching me warily. “I’d take a step back, if I were you.”
“Oh, he’d love to kill me,” Brody concedes, like a sportsman arguing about a casual bet. “But he’ll save the bullet for her. That’s true love, Randall. Pay close attention. It’s something you never felt in your whole life.”
While Caitlin silently reaches out to me with her eyes, I force myself to ignore her, quickly calculating the relevant distances, not only from where I stand, but from where my gun hand could reach if I leaped toward Brody. With the full length of the chain, my body, and my gun arm, a dive forward might buy me an additional six or seven feet. But I’d have to time the shot perfectly to kill him, and still Regan would remain free to burn Caitlin and me to death. No … the only way to prevent that outcome is somehow to kill Brody and take his pistol—then shoot Regan before the man incinerates us.
Impossible—
“You want me to light her up now?” Regan asks, his eyes on Caitlin.
Brody peers into Caitlin’s bloodshot eyes as though he could subsist on her tears alone. “No,” he says softly. “Give me that unit, Randall.”
“What?”
“I said, give me the damn thing. Take my pistol.”
Regan looks like a wolf cheated of a tasty meal by his alpha male.
“Help me put it on,” Brody orders.
Regan unhooks the khaki straps, then helps settle the pack onto Royal’s shoulders. The old man scarcely bends under the weapon’s weight. “Heavier than I remember,” he says, adjusting the straps on each shoulder and closing his hands around the hissing jet pipe.
“Can you handle it?”
“Long enough to cook this piece of chicken.” He turns the jet pipe on Caitlin and curls two fingers into the trigger mechanism. The hiss of the pilot flame sounds like an angry viper in the room, and oily fire drips from its opening.
Regan practically licks Caitlin with his eyes. “Scorched on the outside, pink on the inside.”
As Brody moves farther away from her to avoid any backsplash from the pressurized fuel, a bolt of instinct flashes through my brain: Shoot the gas tank! But which one? One of the two cylinders probably contains inert propellant, the other the gasoline and tar mixture. The upper tank looks smaller than the lower one. Which one holds the fuel? Top or bottom?
“Hey, Brody!” cries Regan, astonished by something. “Look at this gimp motherfucker.”
He’s pointing at Henry Sexton, who has begun crawling slowly toward Caitlin, his bloody cast leaving a scarlet trail across the floor. “You want me to shoot him?”
Brody stares, fascinated, as the reporter reaches a bare support pole, grips it with both hands, and begins to pull himself erect.
“Unbelievable.”
Regan aims his semiautomatic at Henry’s head.
“Put down your gun,” Brody commands, like a boy watching a mortally wounded animal. “Let’s see what he does.”
Once Henry regains his balance, he staggers across to Caitlin, leans against her for a few seconds, then turns and faces Brody as a human shield.
“I’ll be damned,” Royal says with obvious admiration.
“You will,” I promise, shamed by the bravery of Henry’s hopeless act.
Sobbing softly, Caitlin says something to Henry that I can’t make out, nor can I tell whether Henry understood her. To my surprise, she seems to be praying.
There are no atheists in foxholes, my father always said. Trust me, I’ve been there.
But I’m not praying. I’m wondering if a .22 slug in the proper tank could turn Brody Royal into the Human Torch. As the old man braces the pipe against his hip and aims at Henry and Caitlin, the hiss of the gas pilot brings every hair on my body erect.
“Do it,” Regan urges, pumping his fist in the air. “Cook her!”
I step to the limit of my chain, then extend the derringer, sighting along its two-inch barrel toward the larger of the two cylinders. With Brody standing in profile, I can only see the heads of the cylinders in cross-section—a vanishingly small target, considering my weapon. But I have no choice.
“Drop it, Cage!” Regan shouts, turning his pistol on me. “I’ll blow your shit away, I swear to God!”
As I start to depress the trigger, Henry says, “No,” in a clear and distinct voice. “No more.” Then he starts walking toward Brody.
The reporter’s eyes shine with the ecstasy of a martyr walking into the flames. His first step is tentative, as though he might fall, but his next is stronger, and then suddenly he’s closing the distance between himself and the hissing jet pipe with the flame rising from its mouth. Startled, Brody retreats a couple of feet and tries to brace the firing pipe again. Clearly, he fears the weapon in his hands more than he does Henry Sexton.
“Burn him!” Regan shouts, shifting his pistol toward Henry. “Now!”