by Ben English
—and recoiled in horror when the light of a bursting rocket overhead revealed the body of a Secret Service agent at her feet. Mercedes stumbled back against the wall as the door whispered shut.
Her right hand clawed at the knob. Locked. Mercedes' brain was shrieking for her to run when she heard someone swear on the other side of the stairwell housing. A few feet away. It sounded like Spanish.
*
Miklos watched the woman stumble over the body, then grope for the door. The scope of his M76 brought everything into quick, sharp focus, but he didn’t linger on her form. Not a combatant, not part of the mission.
The four other men with him were still at work, their rifles cycling and coughing out spent shells. Across the plaza, at nearly every door and window, Secret Service agents and Cuban Guards fell at their posts, silently.
Lopez was in full rant, pacing around and across the skylight, slipping in and out of the sheltering darkness. Truly, a psychotic—but he was off his leash now, and good riddance.
Miklos waited, counting seconds in his head, watching for signs of discovery through the long lens of his sniper rifle. When this task was finished, there would be another. The night was a series of tasks to Miklos, errands and duties he would simply complete. But his heart leaped as he found another guard who wasn’t walking the route he’d been assigned. Checking on your comrade, he wondered, and stilled the writhing young man with a second hissing bullet.
This was the toil he was built for.
Miklos counted the seconds in his head. “Now,” he said, and his team shouldered their weapons and left him, withdrawing across the roof to the adjoining building. They didn’t bother to collect their used bullet casings, and each steered clear of the spotlights fixed on the American flag above them.
One of the men remained, a technician, necessary to manage the second weapon, which lay at his feet. Its construction made the Zavasta M-76 look as primitive and quaint as a crossbow, a spear, a stone axe.
Miklos counted the seconds. Scant sixty left.
*
From his terminal in the air traffic control tower, Rogiberto Revillame watched the helicopter approach. Slow down, he thought. You shouldn’t be able to go this fast.
The moment it entered airspace he’d reclassified it as a civilian charter, but the pilot was either too nervy or someone thought they were behind schedule. They’d be fine, he told himself. Still, they were coming in so fast.
It was a Bell 430, sleek, shiny, and quiet. Built to hold two pilots and seven passengers, but they’d added a gun, so there were only five men in the crewspace. Five would be enough.
The twin turbine engines, Rolls-Royce 250s, allowed a cruising speed of 140 mph. That’s about what they moved at now, threading through the streets of Havana, popping up now and then into radar coverage like . . . what was that American rodent? Prairie dog.
Berto watched their progress carefully, instructing the computer to reclassify them each time the radar reported a signal. It was simple, far easier than he’d described to Nasim. He saw the aircraft dip out one final time, and knew the helicopter turned down the main thoroughfare toward the American Interests section of the city.
Thirty seconds left. Half a minute and he’d be a millionaire. Berto raised his hand and signaled for a smoking break. His replacement stepped up immediately. Keeping the smile off his face was effortless, and as Berto exited the control room for his first break of the evening he took great satisfaction in knowing that nothing terrible would happen to his country while he had been officially logged in and performing his duties.
*
Mercedes pressed her forehead against the smooth, cool concrete wall, forcing her heartbeat to retreat to a barely audible level. Slowly she edged away from the body and peered around the corner of the stairwell housing.
The man kneeling at the rim of the skylight was dressed all in black and held some sort of heavy assault rifle. Light from below cast distorted shadows on his face, making it seem all the more malevolent.
Instant recognition. Although she had never taken his picture Mercedes had seen the image of Armand Lopez on the news last night with the rest of the world. Newspapers and television programs preaching or decrying his death under his leveled drug lab hadn’t been able to reproduce the dangerous luminosity she now saw dancing behind his eyes. He leaped up and began pacing around the circle.
"No leprechaun, no four-leaf nothing, you’re mine now, you are mine. Mine.”
He laughed giddily, then spun to face the direction of the waterfront, an icy frown creasing his face. Mercedes shivered despite the heat. Whether his agitated state was due to a special fringe cocktail of drugs or something else, Armand Lopez seemed to her the personified incarnation of hatred. The man glared at his watch, then worked the action on his rifle again, ignoring the wasted bullet he ejected. Mercedes wondered what he waited for.
Then she saw the helicopter. The chopping of its blades rose above the sounds of the traffic and crowds as it swung around a corner far down the street and shot over the plaza, weaving deftly as an insect around the spotlight beams. A side panel opened, and Mercedes imagined more than saw the men inside as they readied their weapons. The huge helicopter couldn't have been more than fifteen feet from the pavement, yet it seemed to leap forward with new speed as it drew near the building.
Lopez pulled his lips back over his chipped teeth in a grotesque smile and stepped out onto the glass. Again he addressed the skylight. "This time, Miguel, nothing between us." He paused a moment, listening for the slice of the helicopter rotors. "The Bible says it took ten plagues to rid Israel of its oppressors." He stood on the crystal disk and leaned close. The light cast him in a frenzied glow. "I am Cuba’s tenth plague, eh brother?" He lifted the weapon to his shoulder. A thin laser beam shot downward as the thrum of the unseen helicopter grew into a roar.
Mercedes couldn't believe what she did next. Setting her camera for automatic focus and widest flash, she stepped out and clicked off a picture of Lopez. His finger tightened convulsively and the rifle gave a metallic cough. Mercedes snapped another photo for good measure and ducked back around the side of the stairwell, leaving Lopez astonished, gaping incredulously at her. She heard his animal howl of anger and the clatter as he dropped his rifle.
Without hesitation she bent over the Secret Service agent and reached inside his coat for his pistol. It seemed strangely obvious what to do now that her life depended on it. She slipped back to the corner, gun in hand.
Mercedes half expected him to be kneeling on the skylight pounding his fists against it in frustration. She wasn't ready for him to drop from the roof above her and smash her gun hand numbingly into the wall. His face was even more terrifying up close, as he clutched her camera strap and a handful of dress and dragged her against him.
Lopez's face contorted wildly. It might have been a smile. "The night’s getting better."
His English was thickly accented and Mercedes could barely breathe in the stench of old garlic and cinnamon that hung around him.
“How long can you hang from your pretty, pretty ankles?” he asked.
She’d heard the rumors of his early days in Colombia. Presence of mind was a slippery, fleeting thing, but Mercedes somehow managed to answer him in Spanish. “There aren’t any Postobon billboards in Havana.”
Lopez giggled at this, and replied, “We’ll find somewhere else to stick you. You will last a long time.” He gave her a long, frank look, and despite herself Mercedes felt a corkscrew of fear. Like icewater, fingering its way down and through her. Memory betrayed her, and in the fear she recognized something ancient, elemental, familiar.
His face was utterly empty. There was nothing there, nothing but a vacant kind of hunger. It was an appetite without satisfaction, a lust without passion, a hopelessness resigned. It was a blank expression she’d seen many times on the face of her husband, usually after the drugs. That expression was always the forerunner of mindless, heartbreaking violence.
Paralyzed with fear, time seemed to slow down for Mercedes as Lopez stared at her a moment more, then dragged her across the skylight. The fact that he took care to step on the thin steel spires embedded in the glass captivated her, and the music and shimmering brilliance from below seemed to flow sluggishly around them both.
(The calm, dry voice inside her head explained to Mercedes that she was only having an adrenaline reaction and wasn't losing her mind.)
Mercedes kicked out at Lopez. He laughed, easily dodging her attack, and threw her down against the glass. It creaked under their weight.
She watched in terror as he reached for his rifle, still leering at her. She barely heard the doorknob turn behind her.
*
It was time.
Berto lit his cigarette and dropped the match. It spiraled down, trailing a gray ghost instead of a flame.
*
Miklos triggered the weapon.
*
Behind Mercedes, the stairwell door opened.
*
This is it, thought Jack, this is how I'll die. I'm going to fall asleep right in the middle of this party and break my neck falling off the balcony. Below him President Espinosa and the American Vice President, William Burns, raised another toast. The men around him mumbled their agreement and also hefted glasses. Without warning, Espinosa's goblet shattered in his hand, and he stared at the stem uncomprehendingly for a moment.
The lights flickered and went out as if doused. Then they came on again, twice as bright. Several fixtures burst, spraying glass, sparks, and fear.
Music continued to play for a moment, but at an uncertain cadence. Jack’s cell phone suddenly burned in his pocket, and he threw a questioning look down the balcony towards Pete, who was suddenly doubled over as if nauseous. Had he ever seen Pete sick?
The other man shook his head, baffled, then grimaced again.
“Groucho, situation report.”
Steve didn’t answer. Below, Vern put his hand over his ear and looked up at Jack, nodding. At least local communications were still online.
Below, the crowd surged.
Surge.
An idea tickled his mind.
Jack looked down the long ballroom, in the direction of the security operations center. The wall lights in that side of the room were flaring and exploding, one by one.
“Everyone,” he said, directly into his microphone. “Team, EMP. Say again, EMP!”
His cell phone was already heating again. The screen was a scatter of jangled electrons. Jack fished out his earpiece and tossed his phone away just as it sparked and caught flame.
Everywhere around him, electronic devices reacted to a massive, sudden overload of their circuits. Pockets burst and handbags kindled. Phones, cameras, locator bracelets, hearing aids, and the myriad of personal devices each member of the crowd relied on as proof they lived in an enlightened society burst suddenly into pure sound and fury.
He couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, but Jack knew the room was awash in a tsunami of electrons. A fixed-point electromagnetic pulse beam was being played over the room, creating temporary magnetic fields, eddies of electricity which jumped from device to device to device, roaring along lines of hard wiring and airborne communication. Was there anyone who didn’t carry a phone? Was there anyone who wasn’t carrying a bomb?
Most of the Secret Service hadn’t heard his warning. Two remained standing, their heads bloody and ragged where the electromagnetic pulse had found their earpieces.
The President and American Vice President still stood. A line of Cuban Guard formed up quickly around them as an unearthly roar filled the room.
The panes started to tremble and clatter in the huge window along the wall, then shattered outright as machine gun fire from the helicopter outside began to strafe the walls and ceiling. They were aiming for the lights!
Jack took a small breath and allowed reflex to take over. His men would handle whatever happened on the main floor; his objective lay in cutting off the helicopter's avenue of attack before the guns inside started selecting human targets.
Blinding shafts of light blasted into the crowd from high-powered spotlights mounted on the helicopter.
The security measures for the room flickered through his mind as he leaped up onto the railing and sprinted for the windows. Several practical measures had been taken to protect the Cuban President and his guests. The computer-activated steel shutters over the windows must have been overridden. In theory they should automatically shut as the curtains closed.
As Jack dove off the balcony into the cluster of drawn curtains he prayed that the shutter mechanism hadn't been totally disarmed. Bullets tore through the folds of fabric above and beneath him as Jack grasped the edge of the curtain and kicked off the wall. As the curtains flew closed across the windows, the steel shutters automatically slid out and closed behind them. Jack rode the curtains all the way across the room, grinning humorlessly at the astonished gunmen as their bullets clanged back into the helicopter.
All hell had broken loose in the pandemonium below. Half the lights were out. A grenade skittered across the floor near where Jack landed, too far for him to reach and too close for him to escape before it went off. Before Jack could think to react, Peter darted out of the crowd. Almost inhumanly fast, he scooped up the black globe and heaved it through the window. The last shutter slammed behind it and muffled the crackling explosion.
Neither man had time for words as the chaos continued to escalate. The chandelier swung crazily overhead, hurling light and pieces of crystal as bullets clanged and plinked through it. Who was shooting?
Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw one of the band members throw open a trumpet case and withdraw a rifle. Mack Tanner was on him in an instant, driving a shoulder into his side and bringing him level with the ground. Jack moved on through the crowd.
President Espinosa rose above them all, standing fully upright on a table. "My friends, I apologize for this rude interruption." Four armed figures formed a protective circle around the President as he continued to speak. Jack recognized Nicole, gowned, perfumed, but unmistakably a warrior, in the group defending the President.
“If you please, move toward the service exit,” he indicated a wide doorway where fluorescents glowed weirdly. “We can remove ourselves to the floor below. I assure you, it is most secure. You will find it simplicity itself to contact your embassies...should the need arise."
They actually listened. Babel and bedlam reigned, but the mass of partygoers lurched to the broad passageway. No one else burst out of the crowd with a weapon, and people seemed to be tending to the injured.
Jack looked around for Alonzo. The shorter man was nowhere to be seen. Then his gaze snapped up to the skylight as the sounds of muffled automatic gunfire reached his ears.
*
Mercedes screamed as the blond, tuxedoed waiter she remembered from Seattle coughed and reeled backward off the stairwell housing, dropping his pistol. Lopez smacked his lips in satisfaction at the meaty thud, then calmly flicked his rifle from full-auto to single shot, peering down through the glass at his feet.
Light from the swinging chandelier, angling brighter and brighter, washed over them.
*
The figures beyond the smoked glass were indistinct, but a feeling of dread engulfed Jack. He glanced around for a plan. "Mack and Vern, with Espinosa." he called to his men. "The rest of you get up to the roof!" Jack ran to one of the chains anchoring the chandelier, jerked it from the wall, and looped it in a knot about six feet from its end.
"What are you going to do?" Peter shouted from the balcony, weapon in hand.
"Something that will probably seem extremely stupid at first," replied Jack. He pointed at the other taut chains to either side of him. "Shoot these out!" he snapped, wrapping the chain tightly
around his forearms.
This is insane, he thought. Before he could let go, twin explosions to either side of him severed part of the chandelier's support. Jack was whipped from the floor as the three chains instantly threaded through the hooks and the chandelier canted wildly to one side. Surrounded by a thunderous screech of protesting metal, Jack forced his body rigid as the ceiling shot down to meet him.
The knot he had tied clanged into the smaller hook, yanking the remaining few feet of chain against the skylight. His arms felt like they would burst from their sockets as Jack's feet whipped toward the glass. Glass or crystal?
He aimed for a space between the iron spires and closed his eyes.
*
They were dead, the lines were all dead. “Jack, Alonzo, anybody!” Steve tried accessing the security feeds from the ballroom again, but they were gone. Vanished. The entire operations center over at the convention center gone totally dark, and now here he was, caught halfway through a pack of cookies & cream Pop-Tarts.
System failure warnings bloomed onscreen.
Steve tried calling up the traffic webcams outside the convention center, but almost all of them were down and the others pointed the wrong way.
His fingers hammered the keyboard, each stroke like a gunshot in the empty room. A key snapped under his calluses, and Steve shoved the keyboard off the desk and pulled a replacement from his duffel of extra boards without breaking stride. These things happen. A million cellular phones in the city, three dozen internet cafes in the immediate area, a video blog broadcasting from the convention center itself, and still he couldn’t get a picture of what was going on.