Free Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel by Gareth Jefferson Jones K. W. Jeter Page B

felt the dismay rising in his gut as he stumbled from each splayed-out body to the next, recognizing one face after another. The entire alpha team was there, or what was left of them.
    Rescue mission …
    The realization dawned in his slow, numbed thoughts. The team must have found out where the insurgents had taken him. And had come to save him. But he hadn’t been able to see who he had really been firing at, picking them off one by one. The Devil, whispering unseen at his ear, had tricked him.
    On the ground, sloping away from the back of the farmhouse, Blake found the last of them. The alpha team’s second-in-command; they had all been his sworn companions, but this had been his best friend. The corpse’s skull had been ripped open by the M16 round that Blake had placed there, guided by the Devil.
    Weeping, Blake gathered his friend’s body up to the front of the seething overcoat he bore upon his own frame. And saw from the corner of his eye that the corpse’s hand was gripped tight upon a grenade, its pin already pulled and discarded. The grenade dropped from the dead grip and rolled down the slope to the fuel barrels that were stored there. Blake didn’t let go of his friend’s body, but held it tighter against himself, as though he could somehow shield the dead from what he knew was going to happen next.
    The fiery explosion lifted Blake from the ground, tearing the alpha team member’s corpse from him. He arced through the air, landing in the smoldering rubble of the farmhouse amidst the walls collapsed by the shock wave from the fuel barrels igniting.
    He landed so hard that it amazed him that he was still conscious. As the smoke began to clear, he pushed himself into a sitting position, then saw that a jagged piece of shrapnel, big as his arm, had been torn from one of the fuel drums and lodged in his chest. Its knifelike point had pierced the overcoat and imbedded itself into his heart.
    I should be dead …
    He knew that, even as his trembling fingers seized the metal and yanked it out. Blood gushed from the wound as he threw the red shard away. The blood seeped between his fingers as he clutched his chest and got to his feet.
    The alpha team’s emergency med kit was in one of the corpse’s backpacks. Blake found it, tore the lid open, and pulled out the surgical needle and a pack of sutures. Hunkered on the blackened ground, he bent over himself, driving the needle through the overcoat and into the raw flesh beneath, stitching himself up as best he could.
    Dizzied from the pain and his grim labors, Blake staggered over to the farmhouse’s water trough. His reflection as he bent over the water was that of a bloodied, grimy scarecrow, his face blackened with dirt and the crusting red from his own wounds and those of his dead team members. When he reached down and splashed the water into his face, it burned like acid, fierce enough to send him reeling backward, gasping in renewed agony.
    He realized then that the coat, as full of filth and stinking blood as the rest of him, would never let him cleanse himself of what had happened, of what he had done to his comrades and friends.
    Yet there was still one more gift. One more trick that the Devil sent him. Searching about in his dead team members’ backpacks, for an MRE or anything else to get into his empty stomach, he came across the comm officer’s radio gear. He couldn’t get the shortwave transmitter working, but managed to pick up an English-language broadcast signal. He squatted down and listened, comforted by hearing another living being’s voice.
    The comfort didn’t last long. A news report told him of an explosion in the nearest town; a fuel truck, that witnesses described as being driven by a teenage boy, had gone off near the marketplace, killing the young driver and some 350 bystanders.
    Adeeb  …
    He knew immediately who it had been. A remote-control detonator, its button in an elegantly manicured hand. That was why the Devil had