Flashback

Chapter Twenty-Four

Saskia Brandt twisted in the cot. She was past agony. Her back was shattered and her legs broken clean. Her ribs were cracked and her nose was smashed. Despite this, she was healing. Her left eye had opened and, with it, she tried to focus on the pink carnation in the vase. Then she tried to reach for it. Her arm swung like a boom. The bloody stump felt cold.

Take my hand, she thought.

They felt like the only words she knew. She did not mean take my hand. She meant-

Help? came a soft voice. So let me help you. Do you see the carnations? Reach for them. Push the vase.

The arm swung again.

Good. You touched it. That proves you can do it.

Saskia smiled.

Take my hand, she thought.

Soon. Now the flowers. Aren’t they pretty, Saskia? Push the vase.

Cory willed the projectile to go faster.

Hurry.

Beneath the tarpaulin, whose corner was closed in the hand of Tolsdorf, there was a crude pipe. At the end of the pipe was a ball bearing. A wire attached the bearing to a tractor battery and a homemade rack of beer-bottle capacitors. A second ball bearing was suspended at the top of the pipe. It too connected to the battery. The second ball bearing was held in place by string, which led through the wall to the neck of the vase in Saskia’s anteroom. As the vase fell, the string released the upper bearing. It connected, clack, with the lower. The spheres exchanged a spark. An electromagnetic pulse, its lifetime less than one quarter of a millisecond, flashed through the forest.

Cory’s orphaned bullet tumbled, lost speed, and dashed the hut like the knuckle of a night caller.