by James Hunt
All three of the terrorists’ backs were to the SEALs, and in one synchronized motion, the Americans brought their arms over the terrorists’ necks and twisted. With one quick snap, the Egyptians collapsed to the ground. Typhin led his men through the rest of the field, on the lookout for any more perimeter guards.
Each SEAL unit had been stationed strategically to take out the scout teams. The closer they all moved to the center of the base, where the entrance to the bunker was located, the thicker the cluster of terrorists became. The strike had to be in one swift motion. One radio call to Perry below, and the nuke would be launched.
Typhin and his men set up the machine guns, quietly loading the ammo into the automatic canisters and applying the suppressors to the muzzles. They set up four of them, all controlled by one computer, with heat-sensor targeting and enough bullets to take out anyone in their path.
All the units had been instructed to set them up, and with the combined rifles of each man there, they’d take down the rest of the terrorists in one assault. Typhin posted up at the mangled corner of a tank, the armor shredded and crumbly to the touch.
At least eighty terrorists patrolled the area outside the bunker, all of them armed, all of them close to a radio, and all of them looking for an excuse to use both. Typhin checked his watch, the seconds ticking by toward the moment of their strike. And then, with less than thirty seconds before the other teams were in place, Typhin felt his heart sink as he watched a tall, gangly, bearded Egyptian start screaming to his men, sending the base into a panic.
The base came alive with gunfire, the machine guns pumping round after round of lead that connected those bullets with heads, legs, arms, and torsos. Typhin brought the scope of his own rifle to one of the terrorists sprinting toward the bunker and felt the recoil of the shot as he added another kill to his file.
“We need to move to the bunker!” It was Typhin’s team in charge of the infiltration, and with the shitstorm circling them, they didn’t have a lot of time. With protocol already broken, he radioed the other SEAL units. “Cut machine gun fire. My team is moving in for the bunker infiltration.”
“Copy that.”
Typhin sprinted over the corpses on the ground, shooting anyone who was still alive and in his path. He and his team skidded to a stop just before the bunker and started unloading their gear. The blast door itself was easy enough to override, as they had the intel and knowledge on how to break in. The hard part was getting down there before Perry realized what was happening.
Once the lock was broken on the door, a signal would be sent down to the bunker. They couldn’t stop the signal from being triggered, but they could slow it down. Typhin’s lieutenant set the process into motion. “It’s all set, Captain.”
“All right, let’s move!” Typhin charged into the bunker’s elevator, the gunfire around the base still thundering like a terrible storm. All six of Typhin’s men made it inside, and the elevator descended. “Check your weapons. Make sure you’re fully loaded, and have your NVDs ready. Power will be out once we make it down.”
Typhin squeezed the pistol grip on his rifle, the leather of his gloves creaking with each pull. He closed his eyes, trying to control his heart rate. Almost there.
The elevator suddenly jolted to a stop, causing Typhin and his men to waver. “Lieutenant, what the hell was that?”
The computer screen that the lieutenant had used scrambled then went black. “The elevator lost power, and I don’t have a connection into the network anymore.” He worked the keyboard, trying to get something back up, but it was for naught.
“Keep your heads together, sailors. Lieutenant, we need eyes on this now. What are our communications?”
“I can’t get through to Command. We’re too far below the surface now.”
With no contact and no way to reach the bunker, there wasn’t any way to stop Perry from launching a nuke, and he found himself praying that whatever city was hit wasn’t his. “Keep working on it, Lieutenant. Find a way around the problem.”
***
Perry watched the SEAL team in the elevator squirm on the security feed. Despite their attempt at slowing the alarm signal, it still managed to get to the bunker before the SEAL team could. Perry had to admit it was a clever play and a dangerous one. Ozier and the other officials eyed the elevator, licking their lips at the promise of such a close kill.
“Ozier,” Perry called out to the terrorist leader. “We’ll let them fidget a while longer before you and your men decide to have your way with them.” Perry pressed his finger to his lips, which then curled into a smile. “But I’m wondering if you would be more interested in prolonging their deaths. Make them feel the burn, so to speak?”
Ozier reciprocated Perry’s smile then barked orders to his men in Arabic. Perry fired up his laptop and reached out to Dylan, who answered immediately. “Captain, I’m disappointed in you.” Perry lowered his eyebrows, shaking his head. “I would have hoped you wouldn’t have seemed so eager to answer. At least wait till the second or third ring. It makes you look desperate.”
“We need more time, Perry.”
“We all need more time, Captain. I need more time on this earth to finish what I’ve started. And you need more time to be with your family. Time is the one constant in life that is endless, but sadly it does not wait for you or me.”
“Dammit, Perry, you’ve made your point. Stop this madness. Now!”
Perry rotated the camera on the laptop to show the full view of the SEALs in the elevator and made sure Dylan had a good look. “Do you remember what I told you about burning flesh when you gave me the key to all of this?”
The color drained away from Dylan’s cheeks, leaving them a pale shade of fleshy grey-white. “Perry, don’t do this.”
“How long did that smell linger in your nose? The first time is always the hardest, but it gets easier the more you experience it. Practice makes perfect, so they say.”
Dylan turned away from the laptop. “Stop the mission! Call them back!”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late for them, Dylan.” The SEALs in the elevator scrambled, searching for a way out. Perry typed a few quick keystrokes, and the elevator restarted its descent. “I have to admit it was a bold move. Only U.S. officials could think they could kill an elephant with a swarm of ants.”
The elevator came to a stop, and the SEALs inside all aimed their weapons at the door, trying to coordinate for their attack. But what the SEALs had no way of seeing or knowing was that Ozier and his men had opened the air shaft of the elevator so they had a full view of the sailors. Nor did the SEALs know about the incendiary grenades clutched in Ozier’s hands.
“I hope you have the stomach to watch, Dylan. It’s the least you could do, since it was you who failed to deliver on my requests.” Perry picked up his radio, hiding his smile behind the device. “Do it.”
“Perry, no!” But Dylan’s screams were quickly drowned out by those of the SEALs. The dark screen lit up as the bombs ignited, flames spreading through the elevator. Orange, yellow, red, devouring everything inside. Some of the SEALs shot themselves, no longer able to withstand the heat and fire that consumed them, while the rest were too blinded with pain to be able to end it themselves.
The fires burned until the cloth and bodies had charred to black, leaving nothing but smoke and death in their wake. Perry watched Dylan’s reaction. To the man’s credit, he never looked away. Perhaps it was his way of punishing himself.
The clock on the wall finally beeped to zero, signaling the end of the two hours that Perry had given the government to withdraw the troops. “Captain, it looks as though our time is up. So have the officials come through with my request?”
Dylan’s eyes were red and wet. His face and body were frozen. “No.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what.” Perry pulled out the Taipan, the device still hooked up to Perry’s computer and in control of every nuclear missile on the base. “Since you’ve been such a good sport abou
t all this, I’ll let you pick the city. That way you’ll know that your family is safe, at least for another two hours.”
“Fuck you.”
Defiance. The final emotion in a hopeless situation. When everything else was beyond your control, you could still denounce any affiliation to your fate. “Even though you join us, you do not come willingly, even until the end. Commendable, Captain. You’re stronger than your ex-wife let on.”
A map of the United States was laid out on the table next to Perry, and he looked it over, tracing his fingers over the east coast then across the Midwest, until they finally rested on the California Coast. “I suppose San Francisco is as good a place to start as any.”
Dylan remained motionless as Perry entered the coordinates. Even through the hundreds of feet of earth and concrete, when the missile launched, Perry could feel the vibrations through the bunker. He closed his eyes, smiling, as he knew the people of San Francisco would soon feel the life-altering vibrations of the nuclear blast that would kill more than one million American citizens.
Chapter 8
Any evacuation protocols were useless. In less than sixty seconds, the entire city of San Francisco was leveled. Moringer struggled to keep his food down as news channels started broadcasting the story, and Homeland’s dirty laundry was now national news.
Moringer and the other directors did their best to dismiss a conspiracy, saying it was an isolated incident, but it didn’t take long for eyewitness reports just south of the North Dakota base from which the missile was launched to say that it had come from an American military base.
“When I saw the smoke, I figured it was some test. I knew about the Air Force base out there. But when I heard about what happened in San Francisco, I knew it wasn’t any drill.”
News broadcasts were full of townspeople, on air, giving their testimony of what they had seen. In the end, Moringer and the rest of the directors had no choice but to offer the media something in exchange for cooperation in helping restore order to the rest of the country.
News soon got out that it was Perry, a high-level deputy director from Homeland Security, who was behind the attacks, the one institution that was supposed to stop terrorist threats from coming to fruition. It spun well into the narrative of Dylan’s involvement and Perry’s manipulation.
Homeland had spawned a lunatic with his itchy finger on the button. While Moringer and the rest of the officials conceded that it was Perry who had taken control of the base, they did not let the media know of the other nuclear missiles still within his control.
The CIA director slapped another folder onto Moringer’s desk. “We’ve got three more disarmed.”
“Where does that put us on the timeline?” Moringer and the rest of the directors knew that trying to get to Perry now was fruitless and they’d begun the arduous process of disarming the nukes at the military bases. While Perry controlled them, he couldn’t stop U.S. officials from disarming the weapons at the surface level.
“We’re bringing in more crews from around the country, as well as some international allies—”
“Where does that put us on the timeline?”
The CIA director let out a slight sigh. “We’re still at twenty-four hours.”
Moringer slammed his fists onto the table. “Dammit, Perry is not bluffing! That is twelve more nukes he’ll launch, and God knows what’ll happen if he changes the deadline or the number of targets.”
“Well, unless you have some sort of secret playbook that tells us what to do next in this situation, we’re doing what we can.”
Stress, lack of sleep, and an increased diet of caffeine and fast food lunches had left everyone on edge and out of patience. Moringer rubbed his eyes.
“I’ve been in this job for thirty years, and in all that time, I’ve never had anything like this happen before,” the CIA director replied. “I don’t think anyone would have thought about this in their wildest nightmares.”
Moringer leaned back, thinking of Perry, all the years he’d been planning this, all the death and destruction he’d brought to millions of innocent lives and what he would continue to bring if they didn’t stop him. “I know of at least one person who has.”
The CIA director leaned in and lowered his voice. “You want some free advice? Shut it off. That part of you that connects you to all of this. It’ll help you distance yourself from it. And you’ll need that.”
“If we distance ourselves from it, we make ourselves more like Perry. Disconnected.”
“Trust me. Perry is more connected than any of us right now. For him, this is as personal as it gets.” The CIA director tapped Moringer’s desk then left, leaving the disarming reports.
Moringer turned the pages, looking at all of the data he now had access to. Data he never even wanted to know. Nuclear codes, waste disposal, computer components, classified documents—all of it was too much. He’d spent the last thirty minutes just processing what he’d seen on the news, what he’d already known the moment the clock hit zero. And now it had restarted, counting down to another attack on another city, killing more innocent citizens. Moringer picked up the phone and dialed Cooper, hoping she’d made some headway into the investigation. “Cooper, tell me you have some good news.”
“Perry manipulated some of his family tree. Melvin Perry was only his step-father, and I managed to find a step-aunt that he’s been taking care of. I think Dylan and Perry are connected more than we think.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that feeling too. Any way we can use the aunt to our advantage?”
“No, she’s on her way out, and she hasn’t seen Perry in a long time. But from the sound of it she was the only one in Perry’s past that tried to help. She also mentioned a half-brother Perry had. I put in a file request to get his information, but with everything that’s happened it’s been hard getting some of the documents. If you could get Jimmy to speed it along over there that’d be helpful.”
“I’ll make sure I talk to him about it. Where are you now?”
“Boston. I’m on my way to check out some files with the DCF Headquarters. According to the step-aunt Richard’s step-dad was pretty abusive, and the case workers assigned to him didn’t do much in terms of stopping it.”
“You think that has something to do with Perry’s attacks?”
“I think Perry covered a lot of this up for a reason, and I’m going to find out why.”
“Keep digging.”
“Yes, sir.”
Moringer hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, the weight of the day leaning with him. Sitting there, he wasn’t sure if he’d have the strength to get back up again. The television was still broadcasting the news from around the country. Every single network that still had the ability to send out a signal was on the air. He reached for the remote to turn it off but stopped when one of the reporters was standing next to an older gentleman, covered in dirt and dust, accentuating the lines of time on his face. Behind the old man and the reporter, fire fighters worked on putting out the flames. Columns of smoke rose high into the sky.
The reporter jammed the microphone into the old man’s face. “Sir, can you tell me what happened here?”
The old man shook his head, dust and ash falling from his eyelids. “We didn’t know what was going on with San Francisco, but my wife and I were at dinner there in our hotel when a bunch of people came rushing in and trashed the place. A few of them had guns, some had knives, and anyone who had a weapon started using it. People were screaming, crying. I grabbed my wife and ran. I just got out of there.” He looked back to the burning building. “Once I got my wife to the car, the building caught on fire. With everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure if help was on the way or not, so I dashed back inside and just started getting people out.”
“It must have been quite an experience, a lot of fear and panic.”
The old man started to tear up. “I just—” His voice caught in his throat, and he stopped. “I have three boys, and for s
ome reason I just thought that maybe someone else had a son or a daughter inside and had to get them out. I’d want someone to do that for my children.”
The reporter clapped the man on the back, and a cloud of dust whirled in the air behind him. “A brave man in a treacherous time. We’ll throw it back to the studio. In the mean time, I’m—”
Moringer turned the television off and tossed the remote onto the desk and jumped from his chair. The old man was right. There were still people out there who needed help, people who could still be saved.
***
The piece of wall Dylan had stared at for the past thirty minutes hadn’t changed. It was the same solid white it’d been since the beginning. He blinked his eyes, feeling the dryness of the long stare. The news played in the background on the television they’d put in his room. The anchors were still tallying up the death tolls. Dylan wasn’t sure if the television was placed in the room as a gift or a punishment. Right now it felt closer to torture.
Pinched between Dylan’s fingers was the faded picture of his children, the one he’d taken with him on so many fishing trips and kept through the missions with the terrorists. His thumb moved slowly over the crinkled lines that made up Sean’s and Mary’s faces. How many parents had just lost their children? All of them dead, so Dylan could save his own.
Dylan broke his stare at the wall and looked down at the worn paper. It was his burden and his weight to bear now. But, even then, he knew it would crush him. No man could pull himself out from under that type of weight. Millions of lives lost, and each and every one of those souls was on him. He barely recognized the knock at the door, and it wasn’t until Moringer was standing in front of him with his hand on Dylan’s shoulder that he understood what Moringer was saying.
“It’s Perry.”
Dylan nodded, and Moringer walked out, leaving Dylan circling the faces of his children with his thumb in silence. For them. Keep going for them. Dylan pushed himself off the edge of the bed and followed the guards that escorted him to a room where the laptop waited with Perry’s signal.