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She started to get to her feet but that wasn’t fast enough for me. I hooked my arm around her waist and hauled her to the door.
Suddenly, my foot shot out behind me. I’d forgotten that the bare metal in here gave no grip and my boots were slick with mud. I shoved Tanya out of the door just as I went down. I caught myself on my hands, narrowly avoiding cracking my teeth on the metal floor, and scrambled up—
Fuck. My right palm was stickily wet. I must have put it down right in one of the stains.
I headed for the door but, already, I was starting to stumble. One step and my legs felt like rubber. Two and my muscles started to tense and lock. I went down in the mud just outside the door, the rain hammering my face.
“Colton?!” screamed Tanya.
The pain exploded as my muscles spasmed and every tendon stretched to breaking point. I tried to warn her that it was nerve gas but, by now, I couldn’t speak. My lungs were barely moving any air. I knew that soon the blood would start to clot in my brain.
I was dying.
47
TANYA
He passed out, probably from the pain. He was thrashing and twitching, his body rocking as his muscles knotted and twisted, tighter and tighter.
Please no. For the first time since Lev, I knew true fear. An icy grip closed around my heart as it sunk in that I might lose what I cared about most. Not now. Not when we just finally told each other we—
I knew what was happening to him. Given that my country was one of the few to actually deploy nerve agents, the GRU took great care in teaching its officers to recognize the symptoms. They’d taught us what to do if one of us was accidentally contaminated: inject atropine straight into the heart. Except I didn’t have any atropine.
They’d given us advice for that situation, too. If one of your team is accidentally contaminated and you do not have suitable first aid on hand, leave them. Do not touch them. Do not try to help. You risk endangering yourself and the rest of your team.
Fuck that. I grabbed Colton by the shoulders and dragged him over to the truck. I knew I couldn’t put him in the cab with me or whatever was on him would contaminate me, too. I thought for a few seconds, then opened the tailgate. It took all my strength to heave him up into the back of the pickup. “Hold on, Colton,” I whispered, then ran around to the driver’s seat.
I fired up the truck. I had to get atropine into him in the next few minutes or he was dead. Colton’s new truck had voice-activated navigation and I mashed the button on the steering wheel. “Find me the nearest hospital!” I yelled.
“The nearest hospital is Mount Carmel East, eighteen point three miles away,” said the navigation voice calmly. “Estimated drive time is nineteen minutes. Do you want to start navigation?”
I unleashed a long string of Russian curses. Then I had a sudden thought. “Find me the nearest veterinarian!”
“The nearest veterinarian is Paws and Claws, two point six miles away. Estimated drive time is three minutes. Do you want to start navigation?”
“Yes!” I yelled, and hit the gas. The wheels spun in the mud for a second and then found grip and we shot away.
Ignoring the speed limits, I blasted down the back roads and, a few minutes later, arrived in a small town. I slammed on the brakes when I saw a sign with a cartoon cat.
The vet’s was closed. I looked up and down the street: it was dark and the pounding rain was keeping everyone inside, which was lucky because I didn’t have time to be subtle. I kicked the front door until the lock gave way, then staggered into a tiled waiting room with posters for flea treatments on the wall. Where do they keep the drugs? I saw a door marked Treatment Room and ran towards it—
“Hold it.”
The voice was elderly, female, and made of flint, like an American version of one of my teachers at the academy. And the order was followed by a metallic double click: the sound of someone working the slide on a pump-action shotgun. I froze.
“Touch the ceiling,” the voice said. I quickly put my hands in the air. “Now keep ‘em there while I call the cops.” She sighed. “Goddamn junkies. I just got that door replaced.”
“I’m not a junkie,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry about your door. I need atropine. My friend is contaminated with a nerve agent, he’s dying.”
Taking small, careful steps, the woman circled around the room until she could see my face. She was in her late sixties, her silver hair pinned in an updo. “Russian?” she asked.
