0 0 0
“How’s he doing?” Lois asked once again, as Sam checked on his patient. Clark’s fever had broken about the time the ice melted. She and her father manhandled Clark back into Mike’s bed. They’d given up on any pretense of protecting Clark’s modesty. With any luck, assuming he recovered, he wouldn’t remember any of this.
“Breathing’s better, pulse is stronger. Temperature’s a lot closer to normal. Now he just has to wake up,” Sam reported. “I still wish we could take him to a hospital. If his temperature spikes again, we could well lose him. As it is . . .”
“No hospital,” Clark muttered, eyes still closed.
Sam’s eyebrows went up in surprise. His last check had produced a Glasgow score of seven – severe neurological impairment. Normal people simply didn’t recover that fast unless the depressed consciousness was drug induced. And drugs normally didn’t leave the system that quickly.
“Clark, how are you feeling?” Lois asked gently. “We’ve been worried.”
“Hurts,” Clark mumbled. “Cold.” He managed to open his eyes. “Why?”
“Dad put you in an ice bath to bring down your fever,” Lois explained. “Looks like it worked.”
“I’d still like to what could cause a fever that high and not kill you.” Sam said. Clark’s eyes widened, and he started trembling. “Relax, son. You’re safe here,” Sam assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder, forcing the young man back onto the pillows. “Can you tell me what year it is?”
“’93?”
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Despite the obvious question mark in Clark’s voice, he wasn’t too disoriented and that was a very good indication he’d avoided any serious brain damage.
Clark managed to pull his good hand out from under the covers and found the torque that was still around his neck. “Poison, hurts . . .”
“I knew we should have gotten that off him,” Sam muttered. “Lois, see if you can find Mike’s tool kit. Bring me a pair of nippers and a hacksaw blade.”
“No, Sam, don’t touch it,” Mike’s voice rang out as Lois turned to head out of the bedroom. “It’s designed to put out a killing shock if the internal circuits are broken.”
Mike stepped out of the doorway allowing Martha and Jonathan to get past him. Martha ran to her son. “Oh, baby, what did those monsters do to you?” She caressed his face, afraid to touch anywhere else for fear of hurting him. He had several day’s growth of beard, and it scratched a little, but she didn’t care.
Clark threw his good arm around her, pulling her close. “Mom?”
“It’s okay, honey,” she assured him. “Your dad and I are here and we’re not going to let anything else happen to you.”
0 0 0
“Targets are in sight,” the sniper leader announced softly into the headset. His associates called him Kras and he was among the best, hand picked by Straker for this operation. He recognized four of the men in the alley below. Two more were unknowns, but in an operation such as this one, the only non-targets were the people he was assigned to protect – the six people currently in the apartment, the three members of the Kent family, especially the boy, and the three Lanes.
He sensed rather than saw a shadow falling over him. He rolled over, pulling a throwing knife out of its sheath and throwing it in a single seamless motion. The other man was down, a knife through his throat. The man gurgled as he tried to pull the knife out. Kras was on his feet, finishing the job before his target hit the tarred roof. He cleaned the bloody knife on his victim’s clothes and went back to his station.
“One down,” he murmured into his head set. From his vantage point, he could see Jerry Tauben call out to the Bureau 39 men, demanding their surrender. Both ends of the alley were blocked by MPD panda cars and armed police. There could be no escape for Myerson’s men.
A shot rang out, followed by a fusillade of fire.
0 0 0
Inside the apartment, they heard the shots. Lois started toward the kitchen, to one of the windows overlooking the alley. Mike knocked her to the floor.
In the bedroom, Martha and Jonathan pulled Clark, and the bedcovers, off the bed, holding him down and bundling him up as he struggled to get off the floor. “Clark, honey, stay down,” Martha insisted.
“Mom, I have to . . .”
“You don’t have to do anything right now, honey. Except stay quiet,” Martha ordered.
The kitchen window exploded.
0 0 0
In the American Bistro, the shots were also heard. Straker stood as the patrons began to worry, then panic. The several of the kitchen staff ran out of the back area, away from the gunfire.
“Everyone stay calm. Stay inside the building, away from the windows, please,” he announced. “This is a police matter and it’s being handled.” He didn’t stop to see if his orders were obeyed, heading toward the kitchen and the back door. Out of sight of the restaurant patrons, he pulled out his gun, an ASP 9mm, and headed toward the back door.
A man in military fatigues was standing just inside the back door, holding a gun on two of the kitchen staff. Myerson.
“It’s over, Myerson,” Straker announced. “Put down the gun.”
“It’s not over until we know what that damned alien has planned for us,” Myerson said. “It’s not over until that bastard is dead. Until we have him laid out on a slab for study.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” Straker asked softly. The longer he could keep Myerson talking, the greater the chances the other man would make a mistake. Straker noted the confused expressions on the two cooks. That was something to be dealt with later, if necessary.
Myerson’s expression turned sly and he put a hand into his pocket. “You people make me sick. You have access to all this tech, stuff my people found for you, and you won’t use it. You won’t do what needs to be done. You’re all so in love with the pretty boy who can fly that you can’t see how dangerous he is. You’re soft, Straker.”
In his peripheral vision, Straker saw the two cooks exchange a look and slowly move apart.
Myerson noticed. “Hold it right there!” he ordered the two white-coated men.
“You can’t take out all three of us,” the taller cook said. “Shoot one and the other two will take you out.”
“And you can’t get to me before I do this,” Myerson said, pulling a small box from his pocket and pressing a blue button with his thumb.
