The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Tangled together, McBride emptied his clip into Yuri’s stomach. Muffled by his body, it sounded like loud claps and felt as if someone were punching him in the gut. Still, Yuri slammed the plunger home, sending the poisonous slurry straight for the heart.

McBride screamed.

Yuri fell with the man to the floor. He knew what McBride was feeling: flames shooting through his veins, pressure detonating in his head, heart squeezing with agony. Hands pulled Yuri off McBride and rolled him to the floor. He spotted Kat draped over Sasha, protecting her from the gunfire, keeping the child’s head turned away.

At his side, McBride writhed up into a convulsive seizure, spittle flying, turning bloody as he bit through his tongue. The body would live, but not his mind. The drugs would burn through his brain, leaving him a hollowed husk.

Lisa leaned over Yuri. “Help me!”

More hands appeared, applying pressure to his belly. Blood spread across the floor. Kat joined him, cradling his head. He coughed. More blood. He reached a hand, knowing she would help.

“Sasha…,” he gasped out.

“We’ll protect her,” Kat said.

He shook his head. He knew this already, did not doubt her heart. “More…more rebyonka.”

He had trouble focusing—mind and vision. The world darkened, and the pain sank into coldness.

He tried to speak, to tell her where. “Chela…insk…” His hand scrabbled to the floor, drew two numbers in his own blood: 88.

Her hand closed over his. “Hold on, Yuri.”

He wished he could, for Sasha, for all of them.

Darkness clouded over; voices drifted away down a long tunnel. He offered the only thing he could with his last breath.

Hope.

He clenched Kat’s hand and forced out one final message.

“He’s alive…”

Stunned, Kat sat with Yuri’s head in her lap. Had she heard him correctly? She stared down into his open eyes, now lifeless and glassy. He had been frantic at the end, as if seeking some last penance, even slipping into Russian. Fluent in the language from her former days with Naval Intelligence, Kat had understood some of it,

More rebyonka.

More children.

Like Sasha.

She stared at the girl in the bed, now guarded by Malcolm.

Yuri had babbled after that, tried to write something, but it was garbled nonsense. But what about what he’d said at the very end?

Kat turned to Lisa.

Her friend knelt in a pool of the man’s blood. “He saved my life,” she mumbled and placed a hand on Yuri’s chest. Busy with her ministrations, Lisa had not heard his last words.

Beyond Lisa, McBride’s body had stopped convulsing. His eyes were open, staring, just as lifeless and glassy, but his chest rose and fell.

Kat sat, unable to stand, her gaze focusing back to Sasha, to the pile of drawings.

Yuri’s words filled her world.

He’s alive.

His fingers had clamped onto her hand.

A message for her alone.

She knew whom he meant, but that was impossible.

Still, his last words loosened something inside her, stoked what had never fully gone cold. Her breathing grew heavier. With each breath, the fire grew stronger inside her, burning away doubt, blazing light into the dark places in her heart. A part of her dreaded to let go of that darkness; there was security in the shadows. But she refused to staunch these new flames.

Instead, the fire propelled her to her feet.

She grabbed the guard’s abandoned gun from the floor. Straightening, she spoke in a rush to the entire room. “It’s not secure here. We’ll strike for an exit…if not, we’ll find someplace we can fortify.”

As Lisa unhooked the girl’s I.V. line, Kat spotted the coloring book, still open on the bedside table, scribbled in green crayon, a man on a raft.

Impossible, but Kat knew it to be true.

Monk…

He’s alive.

10:20 A.M.

Southern Ural Mountains

The American should be dead.

Borsakov cursed his missed shot. He lay flat in the shadow of a mining shack. The rifle stretched out in front of him, his cheek resting against the stock of his weapon.

He had not expected the sudden bolt of his targets—straight back toward him. It had required repositioning and firing before being fully set. Plus he suspected his sights were incrementally out of alignment after the abuse in the swamp. He had not been able to test-fire the weapon and calibrate its sights. The shots would have warned the targets of his approach.

Still, he had them all pinned down.

Two children and the chimpanzee hid in the brick building. The American and the boy behind the truck. Borsakov slid backward, keeping to the grasses. All he had to do was cross the street, and he’d have the American within his sight line again.

This time he would not miss.

He moved stealthily and low across the road, keeping to shadows for as long as possible. He reached the far side and crouched behind an overturned barrel. He leaned out, ready with his rifle.

Down the street, he had a clear view behind the truck now.

Borsakov’s fingers clenched on his rifle in fury and confusion.

No one was there.

The American and the boy had vanished.

Pyotr huddled inside the truck, curled in the footwell. Monk had lifted him and shoved him through the half-open window, then disappeared between the two buildings behind the truck. Before he left, he had motioned Pyotr to remain low and duck far into the space in front of the seat. Leaves and beetles shared his hiding place. He clutched his arms around his knees.

Somewhere in the dark places in his mind, where he feared to look, he remembered hiding like this: cramped, breathless, hunted. Another life. Not his. Stone had encased him then, rather than rusty steel.

Hovering between then and now, he felt the pinpricks of lights out in the darkness. Stars in the night sky. If he stared long enough, they would grow brighter, falling toward him. But the night sky had always scared him. So he shied away, back to the moment.

As he did so, a hunger filled him. But like the memory before, this appetite did not belong to him. Close by, a large heart thundered, swallowing Pyotr’s feeble beat. Strange odors swelled through his senses: wet grass, the whispers of hot blood in the air, the feel of gravel underfoot. A breath drew heavily, much larger than his own small chest. The scent of the hunt fired through him.

Then another musk came with it.

A new scent.

Another hunter in their midsts.

But this scent carried more than pungent odor.

Memory of searing agony came with it.

Spine prickling, fury burned away hunger.

As Pyotr huddled tighter, that large heart stalked forward, padding toward him.