Tim moved a fraction of an inch at a time, exposing as little of himself as possible as he moved back from the landing gear that was his only cover. He looked under the fuselage of the Learjet, expecting to be shot in the eye.

No bullets were forthcoming. He could see the boy soldiers moving, probably taking up positions from which to fill the plane full of lead, but for the moment they weren’t actively trying to kill him.

He decided to take a risk. He stood up. Then, with one smooth motion, he twisted the handle on the Learjet’s main hatch and then pulled down. The door slid easily open on counterweights and revealed a short flight of stairs leading up into the cabin.

Tony went first up the stairs, holding onto his bad arm. Sasha followed and then Tim, who pulled the hatch shut behind him. He ran from side to side of the plane, watching as the soldiers moved to circle them. Still no one fired a weapon.

“Holy fuck yes,” Tony said. He’d found a bottle of bourbon which he decorked with his good hand and then sucked at hungrily. “You cannot imagine the amount of pain I’m in right now. You would need a thesaurus to describe it properly.”

“Stop crying, baby,” Sasha said, slumping down in a leather-covered swivel seat. There were six of them arranged around a mahogany coffee table in the middle of the cabin.

Tim took a second to look around. He had to whistle he was so impressed. The walls were lined with green velvet and the floor swallowed his feet in luxurious shag carpet. The bottle of bourbon had come from a fully stocked, if miniature bar and there was a four burner stove in the galley at the back of the plane.

Mounted on the ceiling were three huge flatscreen panels that could be pulled out on flexible arms and arranged any way one pleased. Behind a panel in the purser’s closet were a DVD player and a top of the line computer server.

“What is this, Bill Gates’ personal plane?” Sasha asked.

“Maybe,” Tim said.

Sasha found a pair of soft slippers in a compartment under her chair. She pulled off her boots and put on the slippers and closed her eyes in pure contentment.

Tony just drank and brooded.

Tim shook his head. They were still in immediate and certain danger. The soldier would attack the plane at any moment. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t. “I think they have orders not to shoot this thing,” he said. “Horne must have been saving it for something special. Maybe he own personal getaway vehicle.” In the end, though, Tim knew he wouldn’t have used it. Whatever his sins or excesses the Colonel had been committed to Seattle’s reoccupation. He had planned on seeing it through to the last detail.

Then the looters went and shot him.

Maybe, Tim thought, Horne had kept the plane the way some recovering alcoholics keep a bottle of liquor around. On bad days Horne could tell himself he always had an escape route. On good days the plane would remind him just how firm his resolve was, that even in the face of obvious salvation he would accept his damnation with equanimity.

Or maybe Bill Gates was coming back for it, who knew?

“Don’t know, don’t fucking care. They try to come through that door and I will personally ventilate them,” Tony said.

Sasha had discovered that her chair would massage her back if she pressed the right button. She pressed it repeatedly.

“Jesus,” Tim said. “What are you two made of?” He rethought the question. “Why the hell did you do this? Why come for me? You don’t owe me anything.”

“Hell yes I do,” Tony said. “You saved my brother.”

“I… did?” Tim asked. It wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. He had cheated Tony with the thorazine he’d given him, selling him sedatives as if they were a vaccine for the Flu. If anything he’d expected Tony to come howling for his head, guns blazing as he tried to get revenge for Tim’s fraudulent deal. Sasha’s eyes went very wide, though, and Tim knew better than to say too much. “Those pills I gave you worked okay?”

Tony grimaced and drank more. Already his words were growing thick and running together. “Sure did. I gave him one myself and like twenty minutes later he started to calm down. It was amazing, dude. After an hour he wouldn’t attack me, even when I poked his chest. He was on his way to being okay.”

“Then you had to go and fuck up,” Sasha said.

“Yeah. I had to go and fuck everything up.” Tony gritted his teeth and looked away. “I thought, you know, one pill makes him calm, maybe two will make him even better. Maybe five will cure him. That makes sense, right?”

“Sure,” Tim said. He wondered how old Tony was. He looked like he was in his early twenties but maybe he was younger. Had he never heard of an overdose? Again he decided it was better not to say some things.

“He got real quiet, and real peaceful. He looked like he used to, like he was my braw again. It was so awesome. Then he fell asleep. I don’t think he’d had an hour of sleep since he got bitten. I can not tell you how grateful I felt to you at that moment, man. My Mom cried. Like a lot. We took him upstairs and put him in bed and said goodnight, and let him sleep.” Tony shook his head. “In the morning. In the morning—”

“He went peaceful, that’s what you remember,” Sasha finished. “That’s all you need to remember. Your bro died in his sleep, which is more than we can ask for now.”

Tim sat up with a jerk. He peered out the round windows of the plane and saw the soldiers closing their ring. They still weren’t firing—but in a few seconds they would be right on top of the Learjet, surrounding it on every side. What happened then was anybody’s guess but Tim expected it to be painful.