The Wizard rears up, placing his palm on her face and driving her down. He roars like a lion who has escaped death, before Liam Orci and the guards grab him physically and run him out of the room, leaving Louise for dead, like somebody’s daughter rolled up in a carpet and left by the side of the road.
For a minute there is silence in the room, Louise buried completely in the gap between the seat and rear cushions. Only her left knee juts out, part of her arm. Her face is just a slash of color. Then the cushions begin to move, and she struggles up out of her leather coffin, like a hope that just won’t die.
Her side is on fire, blood pouring from a wound below her ribs. She gets a hand over it, wheezing when she breathes. The fastest way off the sofa is to fall, and that’s what she does, getting to her hands and knees and crawling over toward a stack of towels, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Breathing in the heat from the sauna, Louise realizes she doesn’t want to die. This surprises her. She always assumed she was pretty fifty-fifty on this whole life experience, with its endless trials and tribulations, but now that she feels her own blood pouring through her fingers, she realizes she didn’t make it this far just to bleed out in the Wizard’s bathroom, like some discarded condom.
Louise makes it to the towels, presses one to her side. Outside she can hear the sound of multiple assault rifles firing in concentrated bursts, and something else—the sound of a helicopter powering up.
Everything is going according to plan.
The Plane
The helicopter comes in low, moving fast over the treetops. From a hundred feet up they can see wildfire consume the mountains to the west. Mobley sits in back with Bathsheba and Liam Orci. The cut on his cheek is bleeding, but his adrenaline is still too high to feel it. Legolas sits up front with Boaz. Aragorn rides point, standing in the open doorway, scouring the approach with his AR-15, like this is Fallujah, not Palm Springs. When Astrid tried to squeeze aboard—face panicked, gunfire pinging off the paving stones—Bathsheba kicked her physically out the door with her right foot. She can still hear the scream as Astrid toppled to the ground, the helicopter already five feet high and rising.
One down, she thought. Three to go.
They’ve radioed ahead to the plane—wheels up in five—and Legolas can see it now, parked on the tarmac ahead, nose stairs down. He signals to Orci to bring it in close, fuck FCC regulations. Liam leans forward, shouting into his headset.
“When we touch down, I want the Lord of the Rings twins on the tarmac setting up a perimeter. My brother and me are gonna get the principals onboard. Shoot anything that moves until we’re in the air. Clear?”
Legolas and Aragorn hoo-ah. Boaz Orci pushes the stick and sets the chopper down, powering off before the bird is even settled, and then they’re out of the helicopter and running for the plane. The jet engines are on, cycling at a deafening whine. Liam supports Mobley under the arm, while Boaz has Bathsheba by the back of the neck, pistol out. The temperature has hit 107 in the shade. Aragorn and Legolas break off, sweeping the perimeter, but the airfield is clear.
And then Mobley, Bathsheba, and the Orci brothers are on the plane.
Aragorn signals Legolas to move to the tail. He slow-walks to the nose, sweeping for movement. On the far side of the plane, out of sight, a shadow descends from the wing, a figure dropping silently to the ground. It is a young man in black with long hair and wearing cowboy boots, a shadow wraith with one eye. He slides under the plane, moving in a low crouch. There is a 9mm on his hip and a bowie knife in his right hand. Lying flat, he watches his quarry’s legs. Then he makes a choice.
On the plane, Boaz shoves Bathsheba toward the back. The plane is a 737, customized to indulge the most discerning billionaire. Mid-century modern furniture, a full bar, arcade games for the kids, and a fully soundproofed bedroom in back. Liam guides Mobley to a chair, sits him down.
“Stay here,” he tells the billionaire, handing him a handkerchief for his bleeding face. “I’ll get us off the ground.”
He turns and nods to Boaz, who walks to the closed cockpit door, tries the handle. It’s locked. Boaz frowns, bangs on it, as Liam moves to the nose stairs, reaches for the lever to raise them and close the plane’s outer door.
He has his hand on it when four things happen simultaneously.
1） The bedroom door opens and Simon steps out. In a loud, clear voice, he says, “I figured it out.”
2） The Orcs turn toward him.
3） The cockpit door opens, revealing the Prophet, standing alone with a spray bottle of coyote urine.