Page 72 of The Devil's Ransom

I went to Pushka’s body, seeing Brett working on him, but knew it would do no good. He’d been hit right above the heart, through the lung. His breath was making frothy red bubbles and his eyes were glazed. Brett did what he could, rolling him to check for an exit wound and finding none. He flipped him back over and ripped open his shirt, exposing the entrance wound and the blood coming from it. He slapped his hand over the top of it and said, “His lung is punctured, and it’s sucking. He doesn’t have long.”

I crouched down next to Pushka’s head and opened his airway, clearing his tongue from the back of his esophagus, doing what I could to get life-breathing oxygen to his brain. Brett looked around the room, seeing Jennifer at the kitchen island. He shouted, “Jennifer, find some ziplocks or cellophane.”

She began ripping through drawers, then came running back with a gallon plastic freezer bag. He tore it in half and slapped itover the wound, yelling at me to hold the seal. I tried, my hands slipping in the blood, pressing to get his lung to reinflate. Brett fought the slippery bag himself and said, “This is like putting a Band-Aid on an amputation. That bullet hit something big next to his heart. He’s bleeding out.”

And like that, he died. I was over his head, pressing down on the freezer bag, and saw his eyes go slack in that way I’ve seen too many times. He gave me a last rattling breath right into my face, and then his lungs quit working to get air. His heart stopped. And his soul fled his body.

I looked at Brett, and he shook his head.

I raised my hands, now coated in Pushka’s blood. I unconsciously shook them, like I was wringing out some nastiness I didn’t want, then stood up, holding them in the air like a surgeon about to save someone’s life instead of one who’d just killed.

I went to the sink and said, “Knuckles, get Creed on the line. Brett, get cleaned up. Veep, stay on Rodavan. Jennifer, go downstairs and see if we have a threat coming.”

They all started moving, except Jennifer. She came my way, saying, “You okay?”

“Okay? I just had a detainee killed under my control. I could have prevented that. I didn’t.”

“You did what you could.”

She watched the red running down the sink and I said, “I know. Doesn’t make his death any better.”

She looked at the team running around the room doing what I commanded and said, “You know, at the end of the day it’s a lot easier being the clown than the guy in charge of the circus.”

I gave a stilted laugh and said, “Go make sure we aren’t compromised.”

She turned to leave and I said, “Jennifer.”

She turned back around, and I said, “I appreciate it. Thank you.”

She smiled and left the building.

I dried my hands and said, “Knuckles, you got Creed?”

A phone to his ear, he nodded and said, “Right here.”

He handed me the phone and I saw Pushka’s eyes still staring at the ceiling. Brett came out of the bathroom, and I took the phone, saying, “Brett, cover that guy.”

He nodded, knowing exactly what I meant.

I put the phone to my ear and said, “Creed, are we good?”

“Yeah, we are. I don’t know how you did it, but we’re clean, like it never even happened. The only issue now is that they might have our data somewhere.”

I looked at the table of smoking computers and said, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. It looks like all of their hardware is melted, and these guys don’t use the cloud. If it’s somewhere else, we’ll have to deal with it just like we did here.”

He replied with a little excitement, saying, “Man, I don’t know how you always pull this out. You’re a miracle worker. That commando shit is pure gold.”

I saw Brett putting a jacket over Pushka’s face and bit back my initial response, saying, “Are you back up and running?”

“Not completely. It’ll take probably a day to get the systems here going again.”

“What about that phone we just sent you? Can you get anything out of it?”

“I have the data, but I can’t do anything yet. Why?”

“Because it’s tied to the leader of this whole enterprise.”

“Give me a day to get the systems back and operational.”

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