Part 23 (1/2)

Cosgrove moved out of the way.

Dimly, he registered that Anji had done the same. Interesting. He'd had her down as a civilian, but not even the White House bodyguard had her reactions.

The bodyguard had drawn his pistol.

Cosgrove did the same, but kept it down, out of sight.

The bodyguard fired, at virtually point blank range, but it didn't do any good.

The creature nearest to the bodyguard raised his weapon, fired, and a white line of light bisected the bodyguard.

Penny Lik screamed, and was the next to die. Cosgrove was surprised how angry he felt.

One of the creatures was grabbing for the Asian girl, Kapoor, but she was managing to duck and weave out of its way. They were almost too large for the room, they were having to bend down to avoid sc.r.a.ping against the ceiling, and Kapoor was taking advantage of that.

One s.n.a.t.c.hed her handbag, parted the leather with its claw, as if it was Clingfilm.

It rummaged through the contents, found what looked like an old*fas.h.i.+oned mobile phone, and growled something.

Cosgrove had hunted rhinos.

It wasn't something he could admit anywhere these days, of course, even at his club. It had been sixty years ago, in Africa, and he'd bagged one, gaining a lot of admiration from the hunter who'd been leading the party.

Rhinos were extinct in the wild and in zoos, now, he'd seen that reported on the news a few years ago. They only existed in clonetivity.

He stood, raised his gun, and one of the creatures was at him within seconds. Cosgrove shot its gun, blew a hole in it that exposed a glowing mechanism. The creature tried firing it, but he'd disabled it. That only served to anger its owner, who swung its arm at him. It was too powerful to block. Cosgrove ducked, came up, tried to punch it in the side.

The creature didn't even register the blow. Instead it reached down, picked Cosgrove up. It was like being lifted by a crane. Cosgrove brought his hands together, slammed them down hard on the creature's arm. It was like hitting a statue.

Cosgrove wriggled, tried to grab at the thing's eye with one hand. Everything had a vulnerable spot, and it wouldn't like the ball of his thumb, or his thumbnail, in its eye.

He poked it, but just seem to enrage the beast more.

It threw Cosgrove down to the floor, leaned in.

It snarled something in its alien language.

It opened its mouth, roared in Cosgrove's face, half*deafening him.

Cosgrove shoved his gun in the open maw, angled it up slightly so it was aiming up at the brain pan, and fired.

The skull was thick, so he didn't blow its brain out. Its eyes glazed over, though.

It had also lost control of its legs. Cosgrove barely rolled out of the way in time as it crashed down.

The reaction from the other two creatures was instantaneous and startling: they panicked.

One of them, the one holding the mobile phone, shrieked an order.

A second later, the air had rippled, and the two surviving creatures had gone.

Cosgrove sagged, exhausted.

Dee was trying to catch her breath.

She'd not felt like this since she was a girl. She'd had asthma, the sort you grow out of, she'd only had a couple of attacks, nothing too serious, although it had felt like it at the time.

It felt serious now.

Her lungs ached, her mind just wasn't doing anything at all.

'What the h.e.l.l were they?' a woman's voice was saying. It was probably her own.

Anji and Cosgrove were on their feet again. The President hadn't had time to move.

Professor Lik and the bodyguard were smeared over the ground.

Dee felt sick.

Baskerville stood, tried to compose himself. He and Anji were the first to get to the alien corpse.

'What is it?' Baskerville asked.

'An alien,' Anji said quietly.

The body looked untouched, pristine. Dee tried to piece it all together.

'Cosgrove shot it,' she said feebly.

Cosgrove was getting back on his feet, but he needed to prop himself against the wall to do it.

Baskerville was agitated. 'We get out of here, now.'

Mather was looking down at the remains of his bodyguard. 'I need my security team '

'They wouldn't last long,' Dee said, and it came out sounding far more callous than she'd hoped. She was more worried about Baskerville, who looked scared for almost the first time Dee could remember.

'I can get us to safety,' Baskerville insisted.

'I'll look after you,' Cosgrove pledged.

Mather laughed.

'I know how to kill them, now,' Cosgrove insisted.