DEADLY DILEMMA

by Dan Stratman

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Thank you, Major. I need to change the bandage on his leg. Give me five minutes,” Cyndi shouted.

  “You have two. Throw your guns into the hallway first,” Pierce ordered. “I don’t want any nasty surprises when we come in.”

  There was no response from the LCC.

  Pierce was about to repeat his order when a Beretta pistol slid across the floor. Moments later a second gun came sliding toward him.

  Out of an abundance of caution he left them where they came to rest. Pierce slapped a new thirty round mag into his rifle. He signaled Lopez to do the same.

  While waiting for his prey to voluntarily walk into his trap, Pierce leaned back against the wall. He removed his Ops-Core ballistic helmet and turned his head to the side, taking a draw on the tube leading to his hydration backpack.

  Thoughts of a carefree life on the beach, with one or two Mexican beauties satisfying his every need, briefly flashed across his mind. Unlike the average man, the tantalizing thoughts left as quickly as they had come. Pierce was no average man. Being out of the game wasn’t an option for him.

  He’d been orphaned at four years old when his parents had died in a fiery car crash at 2 a.m. coming home from a bar. After no relatives stepped forward to claim him, a neighbor took him to the police station and dumped him on the front steps with a note pinned to his shirt. Pierce grew up bouncing from family to family in the brutal world of the foster care system. Every relationship he’d ever had eventually crashed and burned. The realization that not one single person on the outside cared if he was dead or alive had hardened his heart even more.

  The life, despite its obvious drawbacks, was all he had. And even that was tenuous. He knew his handlers wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over sacrificing him if it achieved their goals for the next foreign policy crisis du jour.

  Today would be different. The days of being treated like a disposable pawn were over. It was his turn to play God.

  After he’d accomplished his mission, remaining with Delta Force was not possible, of course. Fortunately, there was no shortage of corrupt politicians, corporate executives that feared being kidnapped, and scumbag drug lords in Mexico who would pay top dollar for a bodyguard with his skills.

  They would consider him just another knuckle-dragging goon, but the money would help him overlook their condescending, misinformed judgment. His new life would allow him to stay in the game and finally live the lavish lifestyle he was entitled to after all he’d sacrificed. Still, knowing how many people were going to die today gnawed at his conscience—what little he had left of it.

  Compartmentalizing the emotional fallout from what he was about to do was Pierce’s way of living with his homicidal plan.

  The major shook off thoughts about the course of his immediate future and snapped back to the task at hand. Growing impatient with the delay, he called out, “Times up, Stafford! Come out with your hands on your head!”

  He listened for her reply.

  No response came.

  “Now, Stafford!”

  Silence greeted his vehement demand.

  Pierce strapped on his helmet and lowered the NVGs. He fired two rounds from his Glock 17 into the opening to get her attention. “Last chance, Captain. Come out or die.”

  Still no response.

  Pierce signaled Lopez to ready a grenade.

  He pulled back a strip of Velcro on his vest covering a fragmentation grenade.

  Pierce shook his head. “Use a flash-bang. I don’t want to destroy the launch console.”

  Lopez switched to the less lethal weapon.

  Pierce pointed at the opening and nodded.

  His teammate pulled the safety pin, crept out into the hallway, and rolled the grenade down the middle of the floor like a bowling ball.

  Because of its irregular shape, the M84 stun grenade skipped and bounced down the hallway in a haphazard path. When it disappeared through the opening, Lopez dove for cover and covered the lenses of his NVGs.

  The grenade went off with a deafening 180 decibels of sound and eight million candelas of blinding light. The cacophonous explosion was amplified even more when it echoed off the solid walls and ceiling.

  Smoke billowed out of the opening.

  Pierce and Lopez crouched low and hugged the walls as they moved forward. Halfway to the LCC they reached the corpses of their fallen comrades. A pool of dark crimson liquid was slowly spreading across the hallway. Still pointing their rifles at the LCC, they rolled the bodies over. Shrapnel from the extinguisher tank had shredded every area of exposed skin. Razor-sharp pieces had severed arteries and pierced vital organs. The men’s faces were so mangled, if it weren’t for the obvious difference in skin color, identifying them would have been nearly impossible.

  After all the times they’d cheated death in the worst Third World hellholes there are, O’Brian and Jackson had quietly bled out and died in a dark, dank dungeon controlled by their own country.

  Pierce took spare magazines off the men and left their bodies where they lay.

  The surviving members of the team stood and tucked themselves against the outside of the blast door. Pierce did a quick glance into the LCC and scanned the room with his NVGs. Not seeing any movement, he waved Lopez forward.

  Guns raised, they hurried into the LCC. The men spread apart as much as feasible in the small space. To avoid tunnel vision and vertigo, the operators rotated their heads slowly while they scanned the room with their NVGs.

  Lopez searched the gaps between computer cabinets, under the desk, and next to the toilet.

  Pierce ripped the curtain and its rod away from the bunk. It was empty. He turned and whispered, “You see their bodies?”

  “Um…negative, sir,” Lopez replied with puzzlement in his voice.

  Pierce flipped on the light switch and ripped off his NVGs. He held a hand over his eyes and blinked rapidly until they had adjusted to the light. When they did, his dead eyes became filled with rage. “What the hell do you mean, negative? They didn’t just vanish into thin air!”

  When he turned and saw the console, Pierce went ballistic. “Where the hell are they!” He smashed everything in sight with the butt of his rifle.

  Lopez decided to stay silent rather than add fuel to the fire by stating the obvious.

  Pierce stared at the charred and bullet-ridden REACT console in disbelief. “Those bastards! I’ll never be able to launch now!”

  With his mission objective now out of reach, he repeatedly pounded on the solidly built console but did little additional damage. Pierce kicked at debris on the floor, like a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum. A piece bounced off the storage cabinet door under the desk. It made a hollow, tinny sound.

  Pierce stopped his tirade. He held up a hand and trained his ear on the cabinet door. He waved Lopez over. Pierce pointed two fingers at his eyes then pointed at the cabinet door.

  Lopez crouched down and put his hand on the door latch.

  Pierce backed away and took a knee.

  He pressed the stock of his HK416 into his shoulder, leveled it at the door, and closed his left eye.

  Laughing, he said, “In case you two haven’t figured it out yet, I lied about letting you live.”

  Lopez yanked the door open.

  Major Pierce unleashed a slashing volley of 5.56-caliber rounds into the large space.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sergeant Morgan rushed up and knocked on the office door.

  Colonel Wilmer didn’t hear it. He was lost in an extremely thorough inventory of the training-scenario SD cards stored in his desk drawer.

  Morgan knocked harder.

  Wilmer looked up with a scowl on his face. “I’m busy. Go away!”

  Morgan ignored the rude comment and opened the door. He held out a stack of computer printouts. “Sir, I’ve checked all the major systems in the command post. There were no malfunctions in any of our equipment.”

  With a panicked voice, Wilm
er said, “Then run a systems check on Alpha One. Check comms, check missile status, check the feeds from the security cameras.” He jumped up. “Check everything, dammit!”

  Embarrassment combined with rage kept Pierce blasting away into the empty storage cabinet until his clip was empty.

  Lopez held the door open and waited until the needless waste of ammo was over. He was going to say something but thought better of it when he saw the insane look in Pierce’s eyes. He wisely stayed silent, got up, and started another search of the LCC.

  Lopez began at the left end of the room. He moved aside a stack of manuals then stopped and looked up at the ceiling. A puzzled expression formed on his face. During his initial sweep he hadn’t noticed a round metal hatch built into the ceiling.

  Above it, a sixty-foot-long steel tube connected the LCC to the surface. For obvious security reasons, the existence of an alternative route for getting out of the underground bunker after an attack had been kept classified since the 1970s.

  Lopez assumed their vanishing prey had gone up the emergency escape tube. Without getting clearance from Pierce first, he opened the hatch. Wet sand, designed to absorb the shock wave from a nearby blast, poured out of the three-foot-diameter tube. Fifty-four thousand pounds of sand first crushed Lopez, then suffocated him.

  The tidal wave of sand knocked Pierce off his feet. He got on his hands and knees and scrambled away from the spreading pile. Once he was a safe distance away, he rolled onto his back and collapsed on the floor. Pierce stared up at the ceiling, pounded his fists on the floor, and screamed, “Fuck!”

  The sense of impotency Pierce felt lying on his back with nothing to show for it was obvious. His curses echoed off the solid LCC walls until it ricocheted back and struck Pierce squarely in the ego.

  Months of planning his revenge for the death of his only friend had gone up in smoke. His team was dead, the console was too damaged to use, the missile remained in the silo, his career with Delta Force was over, a security team was likely on its way, and most infuriating of all, the two missileers had somehow turned into ghosts and vanished into thin air.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on his next steps. A faint sound caught his attention. Pierce opened his eyes and turned his head to the side. The layer of sand on the floor was slowly disappearing like sand running through an hourglass. He got up and looked at the strange pattern. The missing grains of sand formed a perfect grid across the floor.

  Pierce knelt and brushed away the sand. He thumped each tile on the floor with his fist. One of the tiles bounced slightly. He pushed down on its corner, which raised up the far end. Sand poured into the opening. Pierce lifted the tile and flung it away.

  Miles of new wiring needed to be installed between the old LCC and the new missile silo. A raised platform had been built to provide a pathway for it all. The new floor was eighteen inches above the original concrete floor.

  Pierce pulled out his flashlight and pointed it down the wiring tunnel. In a quick move, he put his head into the opening then pulled it back in case his targets were still armed. In that brief moment he was able to see a small beam of light and two dark shapes far down the tunnel moving away from him.

  A burst of optimism had invigorated Lance when Cyndi had shown him the wiring tunnel. The morphine was doing its job blocking the pain in his leg, so he didn’t hesitate to leave the LCC. He scrambled forward on his stomach as fast as possible in the confined space.

  Cyndi was right behind him. She saw a beam of light flash by. “Get your ass in gear, Lancelot. Pierce just discovered the wiring tunnel.”

  Gunshots rang out. Bullets whizzed by their heads. Pierce was firing blindly down the tunnel.

  The sound of each shot echoed in the confined space. As deafening as the noise was, it beat getting hit by a 9 mm slug. The ringing in their ears would go away. A direct hit to a vital organ would spell doom.

  So far, luck was smiling on them.

  Pierce pulled his gun back out of the tunnel and jammed in a new clip. He was much bigger than either of the missileers. To have any hope of fitting in the confined crawl space he’d have to get rid of every piece of protective equipment he had. The rifle was useless. He stripped off his helmet, tactical knee and elbow pads, and vest. Only his pistol and flashlight would accompany him. He crammed himself into the space headfirst. Sheer determination, and seething anger at his prey for escaping his grasp, propelled him forward down the small tunnel.

  Any concerns about claustrophobia had been stripped from his consciousness years ago by the cruel methods of confinement repeatedly administered during the six-month Operator Training Course. That part of the training had washed out more candidates than any other.

  Lance stopped when he bumped his head into something. He’d reached the end of the tunnel. He banged his knuckles on the flat surface. The unmistakable sound of metal reverberated off the steel plate. He pounded on it with his fists. The plate didn’t budge.

  The tunnel had widened slightly at the end to accommodate the thick cables curving left and right as they went off to their assigned equipment. The thick plate covered an opening in the silo wall that allowed maintenance crews to access the wiring.

  Lance tucked himself into a ball and slowly spun himself around until his feet faced the plate. With his good leg, he kicked at it with all his might. The plate still didn’t budge. “Help me,” he told Cyndi.

  She banged on the plate with her fists while Lance kicked. Her efforts did little to help. Cyndi tried to rotate her body around but was unable to with Lance filling most of the cramped space.

  “Hug me,” he said unexpectedly.

  “What?” Cyndi replied with disbelief. “We have a maniac with a gun coming after us, and that’s where your brain is?”

  In the dark tunnel, Lance winked. “Maybe later. Right now, we need to figure out a way to fit two bodies in a space only big enough for one. I’ll lie flat. You climb on top of me. We’ll wriggle around until your feet are facing the plate. Then you can help me kick it.”

  “Oh…right,” Cyndi said sheepishly.

  She lay across Lance. Their bodies twisted and intertwined in ways that would make a contortionist blush.

  Finally, Cyndi’s feet were facing the metal plate. A bullet ricocheted off the plate just as they were about to kick. With renewed motivation, they slammed their feet against it. A corner bent outward. A hopeful ray of light shone through. More kicks bent a second corner.

  “Harder!” Lance yelled.

  Two more kicks, and the plate fell away, clanging against the concrete below as it landed.

  Cyndi poked her head out the opening. A layer of dense fog began right below the opening, obscuring the view of the silo floor. She had no way of gauging how far the drop was. Cyndi looked out at the sixty-foot-tall Minuteman missile. It appeared that the opening was located about halfway up the missile. Jumping down thirty feet without knowing if the floor were clear of any equipment or if there was a floor at all in this section of the silo would be suicide.

  Cyndi looked up. Brilliant blue Wyoming sky filled the large opening. Snowflakes swirled around in the wind. As enticing an escape option as the opening would have been to solve their predicament, the smooth silo walls made it impossible to climb to safety. They might as well have been at the bottom of a deep concrete well.

  She looked over to her left. The data cable that had been attached to the missile umbilical dangled down, four feet away from her. The remaining cable disappeared into the fog. There was no way to tell if it reached the floor.

  Cyndi turned to face the silo wall. She leaned to her right and reached out as far as she could. The thick cable was only six inches from her outstretched hand.

  She ducked back into the tunnel and asked, “Do you trust me?”

  Lance’s eyes narrowed. “Is this one of those trick questions women like to ask?”

  Cyndi didn’t have time for his jokes. “The data transfer cable is next to the opening. We can shimmy do
wn it to the silo floor. You’re taller than me, but with your injured leg I doubt you can do the gyrations necessary to reach it. I need your help.”

  Lance stuck his head out the opening. “I see what you mean.”

  “That’s why you’re going to have to trust me. With your help I should be able to reach the cable. After I reach the floor, I’ll swing the cable over to you.”

  “What if the cable ends just below the fog? You’ll break every bone in your body dropping to the floor. Neither of us has ever been in a missile silo before. Who knows what might be down there?”

  Sounds of Pierce struggling to crawl through the narrow tunnel grew louder.

  “I can’t promise you this will work”—Cyndi pointed back down the dark tunnel—“but if we stay here, we die.” She cupped his hand in hers. “I’m willing to take the leap of faith if you are.”

  Lance was certain there was a double entendre hidden somewhere in her last sentence, but a bullet whistling past his ear persuaded him to concentrate on their only option for survival. “Time to go!”

  Cyndi maneuvered her body out of the opening and stood on the bottom edge. Lance provided the anchor by grabbing her left wrist. She grabbed his wrist as well.

  Lance could feel her pounding heartbeat in her wrist. “Are you okay?”

  “Don’t worry; I’ve got this.” Her trembling voice was less than reassuring.

  Facing the wall, Cyndi extended her right arm. The cable was still out of reach. She leaned to her right. The pathway to surviving their deadly dilemma was now only two inches from her grasp. “A little more. I’ve almost got it.”

  Lance extended his arm as far as he could.

  Cyndi lifted her right foot off the edge and swung her leg out to help extend her reach.

  Just as she opened her hand to grab the cable, Cyndi’s left foot slipped.

  She disappeared into the dense fog.