The ground—those same fibers—rushed up at him.

With twenty-eight tiny impacts Bug Man’s forces landed on the lapel of the president of the United States.

TWENTY-FIVE

Ophelia went straight up to the gift-store clerk and asked, “Do you take MasterCard? I mean, I know you have to take Visa, right? Because it’s the UN? Visa? Get it?”

While Ophelia distracted the clerk, Wilkes went to the book rack, bent back the pages of several paperbacks, pulled out a lighter, and set fire to as many of them as she could get to before the clerk yelled, “Hey, what are you doing! What are you doing?”

Wilkes smiled, and Ophelia turned, walked quickly to a shelf of stuffed toys and kid’s books, and deployed her own lighter.

“Oh, my God, what are you doing?” the clerk cried, waving her hands as if frantic fingers would solve the problem. And now the handful of other patrons in the store had to choose between screaming, running, screaming and running, or trying to corral the obviously crazy woman and girl.

Wilkes reached under her skirt, up into the waistband of her tights, and pulled out something that looked exactly like a pistol. In fact it was plastic and therefore had gone through security without a problem. And if the patrons who now raised their hands and said things like, “Whoa, whoa, take it easy,” and backpedaled, had taken the time to examine the gun, they’d have spotted it as a fake.

But when a crazy person is waving a gun at you, sometimes you don’t search for serial numbers.

Ophelia set fire to a bunch of glossy commemorative picture books, and a nice oily smoke was coiling up to the ceiling.

Alarms began jangling.

Sprinklers came on fitfully, spitting and then spraying water over all the tacky merchandise.

To her credit the clerk did not flee, so Ophelia reluctantly smashed a snow globe against the back of her head, and she and Wilkes pushed around the counter, into the back room, and through the door that led to the storage area. It was a fairly compact space full of flimsy cardboard boxes, most with Chinese as well as English markings.

The obvious back door opened onto a blank, overlit hallway that presumably went on to find a loading dock or freight elevator somewhere.

“That’s not it,” Ophelia said.

“It has to be here. Has to be,” Wilkes said. “Otherwise we’re just going to jail for arson.”

“And assault,” Ophelia added, still holding the snow globe.

They raced around the perimeter of the small storeroom, pushing boxes away, knocking things over. Out in the shop there was yelling, and an authoritative voice saying, “What’s going on here?”

“Two crazy women!”

“Where did they go?”

And the sound of a walkie-talkie and the UN guard calling for backup and ordering the loading dock closed down.

“Here!” Ophelia hissed. There was a space not blocked by boxes, where the wall was covered by a suspiciously large poster of former UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

“No one cares that much about Ban Ki-moon,” Wilkes agreed. She tore the poster down, revealing a very ordinary door protected by a very unordinary passkey system.

They had been briefed on this. And they’d been told that if all they did was start a fire and draw cops and firemen, that would probably be enough.

“That would be a C-plus,” Vincent had told them.

But now with the adrenaline pumping, neither of them wanted to take a C-plus.

Wilkes banged loudly on the door.

Nothing.

She kicked it with her boot, and out in the shop a second guard must have arrived because there was a worried, conspiratorial conversation.

They had seconds left.

Then, a muffled voice through the door. “Who is it?”

Ophelia glanced at Wilkes, who deepened her voice and said, “It’s Bug Man. Open up.”

“He’s English,” Ophelia whispered.

“It’s fooking Bug Man, open the bloody door, I have to use the loo!” Wilkes yelled.

“Use your swipe card,” the muffled voice answered.

“I lost the bloody thing, didn’t I? Now open up, you tosser!” She sounded a bit like Rupert Grint. Or at least an American’s version of Ron Weasely.

To their mutual amazement, the door opened, revealing a TFD in characteristic polo shirt and chinos.

Wilkes jammed her fake gun under his chin and pushed him back.

Ophelia slammed the door closed behind them. Then, as the TFD was just beginning to notice that the so-called gun didn’t feel as though it was made of steel, Ophelia smashed him in the face with the snow globe, which broke and sent fake snow and plastic representations of the UN Building tumbling down his front.

It didn’t knock the TFD out and he was recovering fast and realizing he was in trouble and the gun wasn’t real and that he had maybe just forfeited his own life, so he came back swinging hard, wild, and half blind.

Wilkes gave him a Doc Marten testicular adjustment, punched him, and Ophelia punched him and it was a melee. The TFD went down on his back but with his hands around Ophelia’s throat, so Wilkes just started kicking him in the side of the head. Crump! Crump! Crump! Again and again.

Ophelia was able to pry his hands off her neck, but Wilkes never stopped, not until the side of the man’s head was red and bits of bone were showing.

“Enough, enough,” Ophelia gasped.

Wilkes buried a boot into him once more, a sort of final “And stay down” move.

Wilkes, Ophelia decided, was a girl with some issues.