Dead Reckoning (911 Book 3)

by Grace Hamilton

  Sara didn’t know what exactly it was that they were all seeing that she couldn’t. And yet, with Sammi’s eyes on her, she had to admit she felt a resurgence in confidence. If these people believed in her, that had to mean something.

  The women embraced as the Networkers climbed into the F-350s, and when they parted it was no longer as nurse and assistant, but as leader and soldier.

  “Okay!” Sara shouted to the others, leaping into the back of the lead F-350. “Move out!”

  Ava sprinted across the apron, Mace behind her with seven Networkers in formation. Dawn was still an hour away. They’d parked the Blazer one mile from the small Clay County Airstrip that served the area east of Brazil. There were three or four low one-story buildings used as aircraft shops for aviation companies, all in a row of small hangars for local businesses and private citizens to use for storing their light aircraft—Piper Cherokees and Cessna 172s, in the main. An office, café, reception area, and ticketing lobby ran the length of the short tarmac road leading into the airport. From the treeline, it looked sleepy and quiet, but even from the trees Ava could see exactly why Mace had suggested they use this airstrip to launch their phase of the assault on Indianapolis.

  Ava’s Beretta was drawn. With her left arm still in a sling and strapped to her body, she’d become accustomed to making do with one arm. Her shoulder was throbbing, and occasionally through the painkillers’ numbing effects she felt edges of bones crunching against other bones. But while ever she could move and shoot, she wasn’t going to be left out of this mission.

  Mace, like the other Networkers, was wearing body armor and an ACH. They were armed with M500 pump-action shotguns, MP5s, and M16s. He knelt beneath the café window, and lifted his head and looked in. He came away and reported to Ava.

  “One civilian, three FEMA, and three pilots, judging by their uniforms. Two asleep in chairs, one lying on a sleeping bag on the floor, four playing cards.”

  Ava nodded. She left four Networkers to set frame charges around the café window, and then went with Mace and the other three Networkers to the front of the building.

  They waited on either side of the door while Ava counted down the seconds on her watch.

  The thud of the frame charges blowing out the window and the flash-banging of three M84 stun grenades filled the air with the sharp stink of ignited ammonium nitrate and magnesium.

  Mace kicked the door in and Ava followed him inside. Inside, the FEMA soldiers who’d been playing cards with one of the pilots were variously stumbling about or waiting for the five seconds of retina burn to dissipate. Ava dropped one and Mace another as the other men among them stumbled and surrendered in turn. The civilian in the sleeping bag had had his eyes closed because he was asleep, and he sat up, instinctively covering his assailed ears with his hands. The pilots who’d been asleep in the chairs were already being covered by two Networkers who Ava had been introduced to as Bobby and Carol.

  “Gentlemen,” Ava spoke, her authority coming through as the smoke dissipated and the pilots’ streaming vision began to clear, “perhaps you’d like to take us to your aircrafts.”

  28

  Physically, Parker was in no position to stop Gace.

  The giant Mandingo could have picked him up with one hand and thrown him off the roof of the building without a second thought.

  When Gace had confirmed that Kleet was alive, and that he was being taken into the State House, he’d had to bite his knuckles to counter his rage. Minutes later, when marshals pushed Kleet out onto the roof—followed by Grayland, Spencer, and, finally, President Lassiter—and dragged Kleet to the cage, their group now complete, Gace had all but leapt from the building to tackle them himself.

  “They’re gonna fucking burn him, man!” he shouted, pointing to the pile of fuel cans beside the cage. “They’re gonna fucking set him on fire. Alive!”

  It had taken all of Parker’s considerable de-escalation skills to get Gace off the roof and back to the other Mandingos who’d been waiting on the service floor below.

  Kleet’s gang was intent on following Gace in a blind all-out attack on the State House, but Parker had somehow managed to hold them back, though he wasn’t sure how. At least, he’d held them back so far.

  “Have you ever seen anyone minced by an M240?” Parker asked, speaking low and calming the tension as best he could, though his heart was hammering in time to the copter blades he could hear in the distance. “Minced is a good way of describing exactly what will happen to you. Once the guns on those F-350s are finished with you, there won’t be enough left to fill a hamburger, let alone a coffin!”

  Silverdollar faced up to Parker, his breath fouled by his bad teeth and hot temper. “Fuck you, cop! Fuck you!”

  “Fine!” Parker faced Silverdollar straight back. “Go out there and die, then! Kleet will burn anyway!”

  The Mandingos seethed around Parker like a crater of boiling lava, and he tried to think what to do. They had weapons, sure, and the element of surprise, but getting past the troops ranged against them sure felt like a suicide mission.

  The intensity of the wind was increasing, though, if he could only figure out how to use that to give them some advantage; he could feel it lashing the rain against the roof above them, vibrating the metal structures and thrumming against the walls.

  Parker’s original plan had been that the Mandingos would attack the State House, prioritizing getting inside and eliminating as many of the Council forces as they could before they were stopped—as he knew they would be. The scaffold on the roof, the extra reinforcements, and the weather were all new complications that made any frontal assault certifiably insane, however. The pressing fact that the Mandingos wanted their leader back, and weren’t thinking clearly enough for Parker to rely on them as an effective fighting force, gave Parker only one choice.

  So, he resigned to give himself up to the Council.

  Parker walked from the building with his hands up, moving slowly into the squally rain and punishing wind.

  With the gray clouds tumbling overhead, he felt like he was walking into an all new apocalypse; to the southeast, the sky was filled with blade-sharp light, a yellow glow streaking portions of the sky an ethereal, sickly green that matched his churning gut, and to the north, the sky was even darker and more elemental.

  The wind was coming from the southeast, though, heading his way.

  As he continued walking toward the troops parked outside the State House, it occurred to Parker that if the weather event that was coming toward them developed fully, there was a chance that the Council, president, and his retinue would all get back into Marine One and hightail it out of there. Parker’s chance to at least eliminate some of them would be lost. It seemed that whatever forces were controlling the universe today were making nothing easy.

  He was ten yards away from the nearest FEMA truck before anyone saw him. The troops on guard were all hunkered down as best they could, sheltering from the whipping rain that had been pulsing in curling curtains down the street.

  A private came out from behind the truck, M16 at his shoulder.

  “Sergeant?” he called behind him. A sergeant appeared, his face wet with rain, a SIG Sauer M17 P320 already drawn. Parker noted that the stocky sergeant wasn’t already on a personal comms unit telling his commanding officers what was happening. The Council may have prioritized getting the radio and TV transmissions back on for their propaganda act that day, but their forces were still suffering the after-effects of the EMP Event. There was still no electronic communication for the grunts on the ground.

  They were operating on word of mouth. That gave Parker the edge.

  Now fully exposed on the street, Parker could see the weather system approaching. In the distance, over the southern portion of the city, the base of the thunderheads was beginning to rotate, a wide wall of cloud slowly descending as he watched.

  A tornado was forming, and it was coming this way.

  Without all the usual weather sat
ellite and meteorological information coming in, the Council couldn’t have predicted the formation of a storm cell like this. In fact, the very nature of their EMP attack on America was right now shooting them in the foot, Parker figured. They were as vulnerable as anyone to natural events like this.

  Maybe the forces controlling the universe aren’t so fickle after all.

  The rain was visibly slowing as the FEMA soldiers approached Parker, weapons hot, and with some eyes trained beyond him to the strange condition of the sky. Shafts of sunlight lanced across the saturated streets and over the FEMA men, making them squint as they splashed through puddles.

  Parker kept his hands high as they reached him.

  The sergeant patted him down. “And who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m James Parker.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, asshole. James Parker is up on the roof about to get toasted.”

  Parker shook his head. “No, I’m James Parker; the guy they have on the roof is a lookali—”

  “What are you, fucking Spartacus?”

  “I thought they might like to kill the real one instead. I’m cooperative like that,” Parker commented easily, offering the sergeant in charge a flash of a grin that, he hoped, suggested he was just crazy and cocky enough to make such a move.

  There was an eerie rumble echoing through the city now that the rain had stopped; it was a far-off winding sound, like a visceral grumble of impending doom. Parker could see that the whirling, rotating weather was dropping in a classic wall of thick black cloud as the speed increased. It would drop a funnel soon enough, and then it would start tearing through buildings like a hot wire through hard cheese.

  He knew he didn’t have long now. As soon as someone in the State House made the connection with the weather event and its trajectory, there would be scant time for them to act, and get away.

  “You know that’s a tornado forming out there, don’t you?” he asked.

  The sergeant put his gun right in Parker’s face. “So, now you’re the fucking weather-girl? Why don’t you make up your mind what the fuck you are?”

  A flash of light from above the portico of the State House told Parker that Grayland wasn’t letting the threat of a little tornado throw them off their exercise in Propagandist Public Relations. The TV lights were coming on for the cameras.

  It was showtime.

  Bombastic music blasted from speakers on the roof, making the sergeant turn his head, a look of confusion on his face. Parker knew they were going to get this over with as quickly as possible. Make their transmission to whoever could receive it, un-tell the “Parker” story, and crush hope from minds so low they’d been relying on a failed cop, failed husband, and failed father for inspiration.

  “Yeah, I guess they’ve seen the approaching weather, and they’re going to go early,” Parker said. “So, do you want to disappoint them and not take me into the building? I’m sure you know what happens to guys who disappoint them, don’t you, Sergeant? Do you really want to run the risk of denying them their pleasure of killing me? What do you think that will do to your career prospects if you do? And, by career, I mean your life, obviously.”

  His comment had the desired effect.

  The sergeant kept the gun at Parker’s neck and pushed him past the truck, across the sidewalk and up to the Morton statue.

  And then the world exploded.

  Parker, the sergeant, and the private dived for cover as machine gun fire tore up the concrete behind them and then began crashing into the truck. The bullets tore into the underside of the six-wheeler, thudding into the transmission and tearing the fuel tank.

  Had the Mandingos gone too early? Parker looked across the street, but the Mandingos weren’t exiting the building.

  Who the fuck’s shooting at us?

  Parker had just enough time to duck behind a statue before the truck exploded. The detonation sent a blast wave around both sides of the stone plinth like a rushing river pushing past a mid-stream island. The sergeant and the grunt weren’t as fortunate as Parker had been; their ACUs ignited and they rolled about on the ground screaming as the burning fuel took hold of their bodies.

  Parker didn’t pause to watch; he huddled down further at the center back of what was left of the statue. More streams of M240 rounds crashed around him from at least three directions.

  Waiting for a lull in the firing that never came, troops scattered, surprised by the incoming fire which seemed to be coming from their own ranks. Three F-350s from the line that had arrived with the reinforcing troops had turned their weaponry around, and their M240s were barking and spitting. Parker didn’t understand.

  Why are the troops firing on their own ranks?

  He didn’t have time to work it out.

  When he saw an opportunity, he put his head down and ran up the steps to the State House.

  Sara gave the signal to Sammi and the other Networkers disguised as FEMA troops. It was time to set things alight. Each of their three F-350 mounted M240s lit up simultaneously. Raking the trucks, the FEMA F-350s and the troops assembled around the State House. The FEMA troops didn’t stand a chance. Thirty of them were cut down where they stood and the two FEMA F-350s detonated in blossoming explosions, robbing the Council of their parade of military propaganda.

  Sara and the Networkers had had no trouble joining the convoy as it had rumbled into Indianapolis, headed for the State House. The command and control structures of the FEMA forces were so out of whack that only one lieutenant had checked the passes and laminates Sara had liberated from the supply house in the woods. He had waved them into the line of vehicles without a second look. Their equipment and uniforms had been proof enough that they were on the same side, headed into the city for the big execution.

  Sara had been amazed by their luck at the time, but as they’d moved into the city, she’d realized luck had nothing to do with it. For all the Council’s efforts to control the United States and suppress resistance, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, and they were basically making this shit up as they went along.

  It spoke of a cancerous brain at the top. Feverish and frenzied. All it wanted to do was dominate, but it had the emotions of a child. Sara knew that, if they were successful today, managing to rescue Parker and escape with light casualties, it would be a major victory and a real blow to the confidence of the Council. And if news of myth-like actions on the part of Parker had spread, Sara couldn’t wait to see how fast a real success like this would garner attention to their side, and give people something real to believe in.

  The line of trucks burned, fuel tanks still blowing at regular intervals.

  Not one shot had been returned.

  Sara looked at her watch, and then at the worsening sky. She had three minutes before the next phase of the plan would come into play.

  The wind was building, though, and with clear dread in her heart, she could see over the roofs that the wall cloud of the developing tornado was starting to form a funnel. It was reaching for the ground like an accusing finger. Once it touched down, there was no telling which direction it would head, but looking at the sky rushing overhead, it seemed to her that there was a good chance of it coming their way. She signaled to Sammi and the other Networkers—it was time to take the State House and rescue her dad.

  The grunt in the doorway was too busy looking at the conflagration caused by the exploding trucks and the oncoming tornado to worry about the civilian rushing up the steps of the State House toward him.

  And that’s what killed him.

  Parker rammed into the FEMA soldier, knelt down on his chest before he had time to draw his weapon, and punched him in the throat. He reached down with one smooth movement, pulled the soldier’s SIG Sauer from his belt holster, and then put two bullets in his face.

  Parker ran into the heart of the building, through the marble-floored and Doric-pillared entrance hall, dropping another soldier who was running away from the front doors in a panic.

 
; Parker took his guns, too, plus magazines.

  If the Mandingos had followed his instructions—which he could never have been certain they would, even without the extra excitement—they should have been sprinting across the concourse now, past the burning trucks that they hadn’t expected to be burning. He scanned the area around him, catching his breath. Statues and blushed marble. A wooden reception desk to his right, which might contain exactly what he needed.

  A pile of visitor maps was in a caddy for greeters to hand to tour groups. The leaflets provided a color-coded floor plan, and explanation of the various areas within the State House—Governor’s Office, Senate, and historical points of interest. But what it told him specifically, what he needed, was where he might climb the stairs to get to the roof.

  On cue, Parker heard a bang as the entrance doors crashed open. Gace and the others squeezed through.

  Silverdollar was last. He came in, eyes darting about in a way that suggested he was more distracted than anything. His eyes burned brighter as they caught sight of Parker. He raised his MP5 and peppered an alcove that was filled with a statue entitled “Justice”—the statue fell apart as the bullets smashed into it. Silverdollar nodded at the wreckage.

  “Sure ain’t none o’ that these days!” he called out.

  “Come on!” Parker hollered, and with that he led the Mandingos into the body of the building, across the marble floor of the vaulted atrium.

  FEMA guards were stationed on the balcony behind stone balustrades. Their position was good, they had great vision, and as soon as Parker and the others trotted into view, they opened up with M16s.

  The Mandingos scattered, running back into the wide corridor. Parker and Gace thudded into the wall by the first staircase, out of the kill zone. One Mandingo was down. It was Slammer. He writhed on the floor, hit in the knee, shoulder, and arm. He fired off the whole magazine from his Beretta before one of the soldiers above zeroed in on his forehead with a double shot that burst his head open like a soft-boiled egg stabbed with a butter knife.