by Rick Jones
The monitor had shown different angles from different locations as Deep Mountain techs responded to the danger with no apparent direction to go, the people simply scattering from the sound of gunfire.
This is turning into a cluster, Caspari told himself.
But then the territorial gains on the part of Salt’s unit were beginning to be made, which pleased Caspari as he sat before the TV monitor in his front-row seat. A member of the Consortium was manning the console when he took a bullet to the head, a kill shot that diminished the Consortium’s number by one, and something that brought a smile to Caspari’s face.
Perhaps Salt had his strategy after all, he considered. Maybe to corral them into an inescapable corner, press them tight, and execute them.
But that wasn’t the case when members of the Consortium had spread themselves across the room. One even exited the chamber on the dash towards the Vault that contained the high-valued treasures.
In the subsequent sequence of events, Salt gave chase while Max Ueli stood over a hostile opponent with his weapon poised to kill. With the others scattered, Elias Caspari felt more at ease about the situation. His group had the numbers and the knowledge of the terrain, as well as the advantage of Salt’s wisdom as a fighter.
Everything was going to be all right, Caspari thought.
And then it wasn’t.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Max Ueli stood over Mr. Spartan with a twisted grin of malicious amusement, while pointing the mouth of the gun’s barrel at Spartan’s face. “Ever see a man with his face blown off?” Ueli stated spitefully. And then: “You want to be the man with his face blown off?” His ugly smile blossomed.
However, when Mr. Spartan proffered his own smile after raising the control in his hand, Ueli’s smile disappeared after recognizing the switch. Just as he was about to pull the trigger of his AK47, Mr. Spartan depressed the button.
Semtex is a highly explosive plastique. So, when the detonators ignited, the explosion was catastrophic. The concussive waves from the blast lifted Ueli off his feet and slammed him hard against a concrete pillar. The sound of his body impacting against the column sounded like a melon hitting the pavement when dropped from the height of a rooftop, the man instantly dead upon contact. But the effects didn’t begin and end with Max Ueli. Those who had been converging on Mr. Spartan’s unit had also been lifted and carried through space, with their bodies pinwheeling in blinding revolutions before hitting distant walls or against laboratory equipment. Most were killed in the explosion whereas others had been crippled or maimed, though they were barely alive. Some managed to crawl a few feet with their battered bodies leaving behind bloodied trails in the wake of their insignificant little journey, only to find Death waiting for them in the end with cloak and scythe.
Five members of the Klansman had been taken out with this one charge, including Ueli. That left seven including Salt, who went on the run after Kimball Hayden.
Mr. Spartan, who was clinging to the floor at the time of depressing the button, was nevertheless lifted, and tossed by the force of the blast. But he was carried only a few feet before he landed and slid across the floor. When he attempted to get to his feet, he discovered that his knee was bloody, the fabric of his uniform ripped. Parting the tear to view the damage, he noticed the lips of his wound, a deep gash. However, the pain had been blunted by his adrenaline flow.
Scanning the area of hostiles, he saw the twisted shapes along the floor and a crater where the console once stood. Smoke and dust continued to drift with visibility less than twenty feet.
Turning on his feet despite the cloud cover, Mr. Spartan knew exactly where he had to go.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The console that had been destroyed in the blast was also a major part of Deep Mountain’s nerve center. The moment the Sem-charge destroyed the unit, all communications to the cable-car platform across the valley ceased to exist.
Security personnel made numerous attempts to get back online but failed, only to realize that the system had been downed by intrusion. After trying to reconnect with the Deep Mountain Team and Elias Caspari, but receiving no response from neither, certain protocols had to be implemented by the security staff.
A team of six security officers entered the cable-car. From the base-level platform, a console pilot was able to maneuver the officers along the cable to the facility’s platform, which was close to a mile across the gorge and hundreds of feet above the valley floor.
As the cable-car casually made its way upward at a 45-degree angle to the platform, the officers noted the pulse and glow of flashing red lights inside the facility’s main lobby. With power down and communications lost, it must always be assumed by staff that flashing red lights meant an immediate moment of battle readiness.
Racking their weapons, the security guards knew their jobs well. They would enter the facility with guns leveled, fire off commands for everyone to ‘get down,’ and those who refused to follow through with the orders were to be regarded as hostiles and summarily terminated.
The action had been proficiently practiced by this unit hundreds of times until their actions became instinctive rather than trained.
Now, as the cable-car neared the precipice, the winds began to buffer the gondola, which caused it to rock mightily above a valley floor.
When the wheels of the cable-car reached its final stop and locked into place, the doors to the vehicle swung open, and the team rushed forward into the cold towards the facility with their weapons raised to kill.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Misters Galileo and Plato heard the explosion. They even felt the slight push of the concussive blast that caused them to waver in their stance as they took strategic positions within the chamber.
Mr. Plato observed three soldiers from Salt’s military Klansman maneuvering through the corridors with weapons raised to eye-level, searching for targets.
Mr. Plato had wedged himself in between a bevy of stacked 55-gallon drums, which gave him a small visual window of opportunity. As the Klansman began to enter his attack zone, Mr. Plato, through a ridiculously small opening between the barrels, slowly projected the point of his MP7 forward.
As soon as they crossed into his kill zone, Mr. Plato pulled the trigger. After a multitude of muted pops and the area lighting up with muzzle flashes, Mr. Plato immediately hit his mark with the point man, whose head erupted with a ropy gout of blood before he fell. The other two, after receiving rounds to their Kevlar that obviously caused minimal damage, dove for cover.
Surrendering his position, Mr. Plato moved into the corridor to finish the job. With the point of his weapon elevated, he stepped over the body of the first Klansman and made his way towards a wall of darkness, which was also a great place for concealment. Then Mr. Plato began to strafe the area with gunfire. The muzzle flashes illuminated the area with quick bursts of light.
But the shadows were empty.
During that moment which confused Mr. Plato, the two Klansman had repositioned themselves. Instead of diving for the natural surety of cover that shadows provided, they had spread themselves wide to circle back on Mr. Plato, who was concentrating on what may be ahead of him instead of those who were surrounding him.
From the outermost corner of Mr. Plato’s vision, he saw movement from his left. Mr. Plato responded accordingly by bringing his weapon around in a sweeping arc that caught the point of his opponent’s Ak47, which knocked it off target the moment the Klansman pulled the trigger. Errant rounds went off to punch holes into a concrete wall with the bullets stitching across in a diagonal design.
Then finding himself in a close-quarter’s fight, Mr. Plato tried to raise his weapon to get off a burst. Couldn’t. The second Klansman closed in and put Mr. Plato into a clench. Since a firefight at such proximity would only spell disaster with ammo striking everyone in the zone, Mr. Plato tossed his weapon at Klansman Number One to distract him, while throwing a bladed chop of his hand
into the throat of the second Klansman. Eyes popped fantastically from their socketed orbs as the second Klansman clutched his throat and fell to his knees, the man gasping for air. In a subsequent move, Mr. Plato kicked the weapon from his grasp and reverted his attention back to Number One, who was trying to reposition the point of his weapon onto Mr. Plato. In a move so fast as hands and feet rearranged themselves for combat mode, Mr. Plato came across with a roundhouse kick and struck Number One along the temple, dazing him. In the opportune moment that his opponent was phasing in and out of awareness, Mr. Plato grabbed the Klansman’s weapon while it was still within the Klansman’s clutches, jammed the rifle’s point against the soft tissue beneath the man’s chin, placed his finger over the Klansman’s, and pulled the trigger. As soon as the AK47 discharged and took off the crown of his assailant’s head, Mr. Plato turned on Number Two, who was beginning to labor to his feet. Removing his knife fluidly from its sheath with a sweeping move, Mr. Plato closed in and drove the point deep, a mercy-kill right through the heart. Even with the man wearing a vest, a Kevlar was not made to stop the point of a knife.
Standing back to check his handiwork, Mr. Plato knew that he had whittled Salt’s team down to a remaining few.
After grabbing his weapon, he went off the find the head of the snake.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Mr. Galileo did not move through the facility without problems of his own. Having been assigned to strategically post charges to bring the establishment down, Mr. Galileo discovered that it was difficult to plant Sem devices without being observed by the keen eyes of Salt’s assassin team. Though the unit had been diminished greatly in numbers by the Consortium, a severe threat remained.
As Mr. Galileo was planting charges against concrete pillars and attaching timers not yet activated, he was about to set another Semtex wad against a major support beam when he glimpsed a pair of shadows moving towards his position. It was obvious by the way they moved that he had been spotted. After applying the detonators and retreating into the shadows, Mr. Galileo lost sight of his hostiles. Now with three charges left in his military rucksack, he wondered if he had done enough to bring Deep Mountain down, should he be deactivated from service.
In the shadows he waited and listened, then he brought his weapon up.
Silence.
In the art of stealth, he considered, Salt’s men were good, if not elite, at approaching unseen.
Just as he was about to doubt if he’d been seen at all, that perhaps the two-man team had ventured off into deeper shadows in exploration, bullets skipped and ricocheted around the floor beside him.
Falling back against the volley, Mr. Galileo took refuge behind a concrete post. He looked up to see the charge clinging to the column with its detonation wires and timer exposed. Should it be discovered, it would give cause for the Klansman to search for other units and disable them, which would compromise the primary objective of bringing down Deep Mountain and Elias Caspari.
Reaching into his rucksack and grabbing the master remote as rounds continued to zero in on his position with precision, Mr. Galileo set the frequency for activation.
Twenty minutes.
All he had to do now was to activate the switch that would send a frequency to empower the planted Sem charges, which would then count down in unison to the moment of a shared explosion.
Then a round struck the left side of his chest, the collision knocking him backwards. Though his dragon-skin vest stopped the penetration, it had not blunted the powerful blow. Grimacing as he lay on the floor, the impacted area throbbed and ached with red-hot pain.
Sometime during his fall, however, he had lost control of the remote and his assault weapon, with both sliding from his grasp and into an area where Salt’s men would be able to draw a bead on him.
Wincing, Mr. Galileo got to his hands and knees and scrambled for cover.
Since the remote was everything to the operation, his mind began to search for options, which were few and far between.
To expose himself to Salt’s fighters would only heighten the possibility of being gunned downed. To remain idle only invited their eventual approach. That left him with the element of surprise.
Sliding to his left and using the shadows as his ally, Mr. Galileo moved like a feline stalking its prey on padded feet. He was silent and moved with fluid grace, a shape that was blacker than black who moved against his targets.
Then the gunfire stopped.
Silence.
Mr. Galileo sensed that they were on the move, his prey reestablishing themselves as the alpha predators who were now on the hunt, searching.
Slowly, Mr. Galileo withdrew his Ka-Bar combat knife neatly from its sheath, a slow slide from the leather, and held it firm.
He listened.
He waited.
The shadows no longer seemed comforting to him.
And then he heard the soft padding of a footfall to his right, a mistake on the part of his aggressor.
Slowly, and with the edge of his knife readied for the swift slice across his enemy’s throat, Mr. Galileo approached the point of the sound.
Two silhouettes maneuvered side by side of one another, both panning their weapons while using their night-vision sights to pierce the darkness.
Mr. Galileo moved behind them, then beside them, drawing closer with a white-knuckled grip on his knife.
The assassins stopped, a motion Mr. Galileo accepted as them sensing danger, and something that every seasoned soldier was equipped with.
In unison, they pivoted on their feet to redirect their aim. But Mr. Galileo was just as swift as he lunged forward and drove the blade of his knife in a horizontal arc, knocking the points of both weapons off aim.
Then Mr. Galileo, with his free hand and fighting through the pain where he had been struck in the chest from the round, thrusted the palm of his hand upward into the nose of the assassin to his left and drove the blade of the bone into the assassin’s brain, killing him. The assassin to his right, however, was immediate in action and did not allow Mr. Galileo enough time to counter against him. Using the stock of his weapon, the assassin punched it home to the side of Galileo’s exposed ribs, though the blow was somewhat dulled by the vest. Nevertheless, the effect of drawing space between them succeeded. Then in a subsequent action, the assassin was able to draw his weapon up, take aim, and pull the trigger.
Bullets stitched across Mr. Galileo’s chest and knocked him off his feet and to the ground. And since dragon-scale armor was one of the best vests and held against penetration, it did not stop the barrage of gunfire from snapping the bones of his ribcage.
Under the spell of great pain, Mr. Galileo remained lucid. Then as he managed to raise himself to his elbows as the assassin approached with the bared teeth of blood lust and savagery, Mr. Galileo, holding the tip of his Ka-Bar, tossed the weapon with a side-armed throw.
The knife crossed the distance in a blur and lodged deep in the assassin’s throat, the action catching the operator by surprise. Bringing a hand to his throat as he gagged, he tried to dislodge the weapon by grabbing the hilt and pulling it free, only to fail in his effort to do so. Then as his eyes began to roll to half-mast, he at least had the presence of mind to aim his weapon and pull the trigger.
The first few rounds went wide and chipped the concrete floor around Mr. Galileo. But a single bullet had found its mark before the assassin turned his weapon skyward, then rolled onto his side and died with his finger still on the trigger, the rounds going skyward until the magazine finally emptied.
In an area not covered by the vest, which was just above the lining that covered the chest but not the bottom of the throat, a bullet had found its way to do considerable damage by striking the carotid.
Blood seemed to boil outward from the wound, the loss immense as the circular edges of his peripheral vision began to grow dark.
The remote.
Driven by will and conviction, Mr. Galileo, wi
th a hand to the wound to stem the flow, gained his feet and stumbled his way to the remote. After falling and then returning to his feet, as his vision continued to darken and close in, he saw the remote. It was highlighted by his growing tunnel-vision, an item of great importance that was situated dead center of his sight.
Grabbing the unit with a hand that was terribly greased with blood, Mr. Galileo toggled the switch that started the countdown. Then with a smile of accomplishment, Mr. Galileo, after alerting the others that the timers were enabled through his lip mic, fell forward and died with the satisfaction that he did all he could to see the mission through.
. . . 19:59 . . .
. . . 19:58 . . .
. . . 19:57 . . .
* * *
After Mr. Galileo alerted the unit, everyone had set the timers of their watches to reunite with the countdown sequence of the charges.
. . . 19:54 . . .
. . . 19:53 . . .
. . . 19:52 . . .
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
The moment the security forces from the cable-car landed on the Deep Mountain platform and advanced on the stronghold, Misters Archimedes and Michelangelo were ready to maintain the front.
The security team entered through the openings of shattered glass and spread themselves out with their weapons moving in the search for targets. These were skilled practitioners who maneuvered with meticulous training. But as they approached the bank of elevators, the Consortium team was waiting.