Villain (Gone 8)

From there it took another half hour to arm and launch the drone, and another hour to reach the target. Men and women in dark, air-conditioned trailers parked in the desert sat in padded armchairs facing monitors. They searched high and low for signs of life in the target area. Nothing.

Good enough.

A Hellfire missile was launched, coincidentally just as Drake Merwin emerged from his hideout, wondering where the hell Tom Peaks had got to.

The missile blew Drake into the rocks. Or at least pieces of him. Chunks of Drake—many burning—fell between crevices or splatted against stone. His head was torn in half, with most of his brain, his right eye, and nose a jellied, slow-burning wad of goo.

The remainder of his head, comprised of his left eye, a bit of nose cartilage, and his mouth, fell, somewhat intact, onto a cactus, where it sat like some demented bird’s nest.

“Damn,” Drake’s mouth said. “This again?”

CHAPTER 19

Ruthlessness: Not Just for Sharks Anymore

DEKKA AND ARMO managed to catch some sleep and some food in a suite at the barricaded Caesars Palace resort—classier than the Venetian, but still wonderfully gaudy, with facsimiles of Roman architecture and statuary. Though the excellent, life-sized copy of Michelangelo’s David was actually from Renaissance Florence, not Caesar’s Rome, but hey, what was a millennium or two?

Some bright person at Caesars named Wilkes—newly promoted by virtue of her former boss’s death at Caesars—had recognized the wisdom in giving the two Rockborn a place to crash.

Dekka woke first and stumbled to draw the curtains open on blazing sunlight. The room faced north, her view encompassing the Linq and Mirage casinos. And across the strip from the Mirage, the Venetian, which burned, with smoke billowing from shattered windows.

The Strip was almost devoid of cars, aside from those that had crashed or been overturned. Some cars and trucks still smoldered. Bodies were everywhere, little rag dolls dropped in the street, on sidewalks, in fountains.

An empty police car was still flashing red and blue. Through the thick glass Dekka heard sirens and alarms trilling endlessly.

Weariness swept through her. Not sleepiness, though she felt that, too, but bone weariness. The bed she had just left called to her. Armo was still asleep on his bed, facedown, so big that he managed to hang over the foot of the bed and both sides simultaneously.

Dekka found the remote control and turned the TV on.

A state of barely controlled panic had seized the country, with the news split about evenly between what Shade had done at the Ranch and the growing madness of Las Vegas.

But, the anchor said, tanks were on the way. Like that was going to be a good thing.

She opened her phone and WhatsApp, struck by the fact that she was using the favorite app of terrorists.

Dekka: Shade?

Shade: Yes?

Dekka: Coming to Vegas?

Shade: Yep.

Dekka: I thought you might be. Come to Caesars Palace. Text when you get here and I’ll have them let you in.

Shade: Malik says “Avengers assemble?”

Dekka: Something like that.

Dekka met Shade, Cruz, and Malik downstairs. “Glad you came,” Dekka said, shaking their hands. “Armo and I were on our way to back you up—which you obviously did not need—and got sidelined here.”

“Thanks for the thought,” Shade said wearily. “It’s been a rough day.”

“The days are all rough now,” Cruz said.

Dekka made eye contact with Shade and subtly inclined her head toward the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

Shade said, “I have to duck into the ladies’.”