The Edge of Armageddon

by David Leadbeater

  “Why?”

  “I’m happy to die,” Price said miserably. “I want to die.”

  “To help save this piece of shit?” She clambered across the floor, kicking out.

  “I have one more play left,” Ramses murmured.

  Hayden felt the ground shaking beneath her, the basement walls juddering and discharging puffs of mortar. The very cell bars started to shake. Resetting her hands and knees she steadied herself and looked up and down, left and right. Hayden glared at the lights as they flickered again and again.

  Now what? What the hell is this . . .

  But she already knew.

  The precinct was under ground assault.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Hayden gasped as the walls continued to shake. Ramses tried to stand but the room swayed all around him. The terrorist fell to his knees. Price watched in awe as the very angle of the room shifted, joints relocated and rejigged, inclines and slopes distorted by the second. Hayden escaped a falling chunk of mortar as part of the ceiling collapsed. Wires and ducting swung down from the roof, swaying like multi-colored pendulums.

  Hayden went for the cell door, but Ramses had retained enough gumption to block her way. It was a moment before she realized she still held the Glock, and by then more of the ceiling was collapsing and the very bars themselves were bending inward, close to shattering.

  “I think . . . you’ve overdone it,” Price panted.

  “The whole goddamn place is coming down,” Hayden shouted into Ramses’ face.

  “Not yet.”

  The terrorist rose and lunged toward the far wall, clouds of mortar and chunks of concrete and plaster drifting and dropping down all around him. The outer door buckled and then burst open. Hayden grabbed a bar and hauled herself up and after the madman, Price shambling along behind. They had people up top. Ramses could only get so far.

  With that thought Hayden searched for her phone but barely had time to keep up with Ramses. The man was fast, tough and ruthless. He stomped up the stairs, brushing aside the challenge of one cop and hurling him head-first at Hayden. She caught the guy, steadied him, and by then Ramses was pushing through the upper door.

  Hayden pounded up in hot pursuit. The upper door stood wide open, its glass cracked, its jambs splintered. Of the monitor-room she could only see Moore at first, picking himself up off the floor and reaching out to correct some of the skewed-up screens. Others had been jarred from their moorings, coming off the wall and breaking as they landed. Kinimaka now rose with a screen falling from his shoulders, glass and plastic stuck in his hair. Two other agents in the room were pulling themselves together.

  “What were we hit with?” Moore raced out of the room, spying Hayden.

  “Where the hell is Ramses?” she yelled. “Didn’t you see him?”

  Moore gaped. “He’s supposed to be in the cell block.”

  Kinimaka brushed glass and other rubble from his shoulders. “I was watching . . . then all hell broke loose.”

  Hayden cursed out loud, spying the stairs to her left and then the balcony ahead that overlooked the precinct’s main office area. There was no way out of the building other than to cross it. She ran toward the rail, grabbed hold, and studied the room below. The staff had been thinned out, as the terrorists had planned, but some workstations were occupied along the ground floor. Both men and women were picking their belongings up, but most were headed toward the main entrance with guns drawn as if expecting an assault. No way was Ramses among them.

  Where then?

  Waiting. Watching. This wasn’t . . .

  “It’s not over!” she yelled. “Come away from the windows!”

  Too late. The blitz began with a colossal explosion; the front windows imploded and part of the wall collapsed. Hayden’s entire viewpoint shifted, the roofline falling down. Rubble blasted across the station as the cops fell. Some climbed to their knees or crawled away. Others were hurt or discovered they were trapped. An RPG sizzled through the broken façade and impacted with the station desk, sending gouts of flame, smoke and wreckage fragments through the nearby area. Next, Hayden saw running legs as many masked men appeared, all with guns strapped to their shoulders. Ranging around they took aim at anything that moved and then, after careful contemplation, opened fire. Hayden, Kinimaka and Moore instantly fired back.

  Bullets crisscrossed the demolished station. Hayden counted eleven men below before the wooden balcony that protected her began to get ripped to shreds. Rounds were passing through. Splinters and shards were fragmenting off, becoming dangerous slivers. Hayden fell back onto her behind and then rolled. Her vest caught two minor impacts, not bullets, and an intense pain in her lower calf told her that a wooden spike had struck unprotected flesh. Kinimaka also gasped and Moore rose to shrug off his jacket and remove shavings from his shoulder.

  Hayden crawled back to the balcony. Through gaps she watched the assault team advance and heard guttural grunts as they called out for their leader. Ramses ran like a hunting lion, passing beyond Hayden’s field of vision in less than a second. She squeezed a shot off but already knew the bullet wouldn’t come close.

  “Fuck!”

  Hayden rose, glared at Kinimaka and started the sprint for the staircase. They couldn’t let the terrorist prince escape. On his word, the bomb would be detonated. Hayden had a feeling he wouldn’t wait long.

  “Go, go!” she howled at Mano. “We have to get Ramses back now!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  The intersection right outside the precinct was normally bustling with people, the crossing crammed with pedestrians and the roads rumbling to the constant cadence of passing cars. Tall, many-windowed buildings usually rebounded the sounds of honking horns and laughter between them, an upsurge of human interaction, but the scene was very different today.

  Smoke swirled across the road and billowed toward the sky. Window fragments littered the sidewalks. Hushed voices whispered around the hub as the shell-shocked and the injured picked themselves up or emerged from hiding. In the near-distance, sirens shrieked. The side of their building that fronted 3rd Avenue looked like a giant mouse had mistaken it for a lump of gray cheese and taken enormous nibbles out of it.

  Hayden registered little of this, jogging out of the station and then slowing as she cast around for the escapees. Dead ahead, loping down 51st, they were the only people running—eleven men clad in black and the unmistakable Ramses—towering above the rest. Hayden raced across the rubble-strewn intersection, amazed at the stillness that surrounded her, the clamor of quiet, and the swelling clouds of dust that sought to blind her. Above, in patches between the roofs of the office buildings—the straight columns of concrete marking a perpendicular path like lines on a grid—the morning sunlight struggled to compete. The sun rarely hit the streets before midday, it would reflect off the windows for a while early on and burnish only the cross-streets, until it rose overhead and could find a path down between buildings.

  Kinimaka, the faithful old dog, hurried along at her side. “That’s twelve of them,” he said. “Moore is following our position. We follow them until we get backup, agreed?”

  “Ramses,” she said. “Is our priority. We get him back at all costs.”

  “Hayden,” Kinimaka barely missed colliding with a parked van. “You’re not thinking this through. Ramses planned everything. And even if he didn’t—even if his whereabouts was somehow leaked to the fifth cell—it doesn’t matter now. It’s the bomb we have to find.”

  “Another reason to nab Ramses.”

  “He will never tell us,” Kinimaka said. “But maybe one of his disciples will.”

  “The longer we can keep Ramses off-balance,” Hayden said. “The better chance this city has of making it through all this.”

  They raced along the sidewalk, keeping to the few shadows offered by the high-rises, and trying to stay quiet. Ramses was at the center of his pack, issuing orders, and Hayden remembered now that, back at the bazaar, he used to call th
ese men his “legionnaires”. Every single one was lethal and true to the cause, many steps above the regular mercs. At first, the twelve men hurried without much thought, gaining a little distance between themselves and the precinct, but after a minute they started to slow and two cast around to check for pursuers.

  Hayden opened fire, the Glock barking angrily. One man fell and the others spun, shooting back. The two ex-CIA agents ducked behind a concrete planter, staying low. Hayden peered around its circular edge, unwilling to lose sight of her enemy. Ramses was down low, shielded by his men. Robert Price, she now saw, was being left to fend for himself and barely able to keep up, but still doing well for a battered, aging man. Her concentration switched back to Ramses.

  “He’s right there, Mano. Let’s finish this. You think they’ll still detonate if he’s dead?”

  “Shit, I dunno. Taking him alive would work better. Maybe we could ransom him.”

  “Yeah, well, we gotta get close enough first.”

  The cell took off again, this time covering their escape. Hayden ducked from planter to planter, chasing them along the street. Bullets whizzed between the two groups, shattering windows and impacting against parked vehicles. A series of strewn yellow cabs offered Hayden better cover, and a chance to get closer, and she didn’t hesitate to take it.

  “C’mon!”

  She made the first cab, slipped around the side and used another that had been abandoned side-on, to cover herself as she ran to the next. Windows exploded all around her as the cell sought to pick them off, but the cover meant Ramses’ new legionnaires never quite knew where they were. Four cabs later and they were forcing the runners to take cover, slowing them down.

  Kinimaka’s earpiece crackled. “Help is five minutes away.”

  But even that was uncertain.

  Again, the cell ran as a compact group. Hayden gave chase, unable to safely close the gap now and also having to conserve ammo. It became obvious that the cell was also starting to worry about the possibility of backup arriving as their movements became more frantic, less careful. Hayden lined one of the rearguards up in her sights and missed only because he passed by a sculpted tree as she fired.

  Pure bad luck.

  “Mano,” she said suddenly. “Did we lose one of them somewhere?”

  “Count again.”

  She could only count ten figures!

  He came out of nowhere, rolling stylishly out from under a parked car. His first kick was to the back of Kinimaka’s knee, making the big man buckle. As he kicked out, his right hand brought a small PPK around, the size making it no less deadly. Hayden smashed Kinimaka aside, her comparatively small frame as powerful and energized as any world-class athletes, but even that could only move the big man a little.

  The bullet passed between them, stunning, breath-taking, the briefest moment of sheer hell, and then the legionnaire was shifting again. Another kick connected with Hayden’s knee and Mano continued his fall, slamming his chest into the same parked car their enemy had used for concealment. A grunt escaped him as he caught himself, now trying desperately to spin on his knees.

  Hayden felt a stab of pain around her knee and, more importantly, a sudden lack of balance. She was more aware of the escaping Ramses and the nightmarish smorgasbord that entailed than the fighting legionnaire, and wanted with every ounce of her being to end this quickly. But the man was a fighter, a real scrapper, and clearly wanted to survive.

  He fired the gun once more. Hayden was now glad she’d overbalanced because she wasn’t where he’d anticipated she would be. The bullet nevertheless grazed her shoulder. Kinimaka launched himself at the gun arm, burying it beneath a mountain of brawn.

  The legionnaire relinquished it instantly, seeing the futility of struggling with the Hawaiian. He then withdrew a terrifying eight inch blade and swooped at Hayden. Awkwardly, she twisted, gaining a fraction of space to avert the deadly cutting edge. Kinimaka came up with the gun but the legionnaire anticipated it and swung far faster, the knife slashing hard across the Hawaiian’s chest, rendered trivial by the man’s vest, but still knocking him back onto his haunches.

  The exchange gave Hayden the chance she needed. Removing her gun she guessed what the legionnaire would do—spin back and throw the knife underhand—so she sidestepped as she squeezed the trigger.

  Three bullets took the man’s chest apart as the knife bounced off a car door and clattered harmlessly to the floor.

  “Grab his Walther,” Hayden told Kinimaka. “We’re gonna need every bullet.”

  Rising up, she saw the unmistakable group of armed men hustling along the street, several hundred yards distant. It was getting harder now—knots of people had emerged and were wandering along, heading home or checking out the damage or even standing exposed and flicking at their android devices—but the sight of Ramses’ head popping up every few feet was instantly recognizable.

  “Now move,” she said, forcing aching, bruised limbs to work beyond their limits.

  The cell vanished.

  “What the—”

  Kinimaka skirted a car as she vaulted over the hood.

  “A large sports store,” the Hawaiian panted. “They ducked inside.”

  “End of the line, Prince Ramses,” Hayden spat the last two words with disdain. “Hurry it up, Mano. Like I said—we have to keep the bastard busy and his attention away from that nuke. Every minute, every second, counts.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Together, they passed through the still swinging front doors of the sports shop and into its vast, silent interior. Displays, shelving and clothes racks stood everywhere, along every aisle. Lighted tiles provided illumination, set up in the open-framework ceiling. Hayden stared at the reflective white floor and saw dust-smeared footprints leading into the heart of the store. Hurrying along she checked her mag and righted her vest. A face peeking out from under a clothes fixture made her flinch, but the fear etched into the features urged her to soften.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Stay low and keep quiet.”

  She didn’t have to ask for directions. Though they could follow the dirty footprints the noises ahead betrayed the positions of their targets. Price’s constant groans were an added boon. Hayden brushed under a metal arm full of leggings and squeezed around a bald dummy wearing a Nike running outfit into an area reserved for gym equipment. Barbell stands, weight trays, trampolines and treadmills lined up in uniform rows. Just passing into another section were the terrorist group.

  One man saw her, raised a warning, and opened fire. Hayden ran hard and at an angle, hearing a bullet zing off the metal arm of a rower only inches to her left. Kinimaka jumped aside, landing heavily on the conveyor section of a treadmill and rolling through the gap. Hayden returned the legionnaire’s compliment, perforating a shelf of trainers above his head.

  The man inched back as his colleagues spread out. Hayden threw a pink sports bag into the air to test their numbers, making a face when four separate shots took it down hard.

  “Could be covering Ramses’ escape,” Kinimaka breathed.

  “If ever we needed Torsten Dahl,” Hayden exhaled.

  “You want me to try crazy mode?”

  Hayden was unable to suppress a laugh. “I think it’s more of a lifestyle choice than a change of gear,” she said.

  “Whatever it is,” Kinimaka said. “Let’s be quick.”

  Hayden beat him to it, charging out of hiding and firing rapidly. One of the figures grunted and fell sideways, the others ducked down. Hayden stormed them, keeping obstacles in their way, but closing the gap as fast as she could. The legionnaires backed off, shooting high, and disappeared around the ceiling-height rack that sold every make and color of trainers available. Hayden and Kinimaka crouched down around the other side, pausing for a second.

  “Ready?” Hayden breathed, relieving the fallen cell member of his weapon.

  “Go,” Kinimaka said.

  As they rose, automatic machine gun fire minced the trainer rack
a fraction over their heads. Bits of metal and cardboard, canvas and plastic showered them. Hayden scrambled toward the edge even as the entire structure teetered.

  “Oh . . .” Kinimaka began.

  “Fuck!” Hayden finished and leapt.

  The entire top half of the wide rack collapsed, torn apart, and fell toward them. A huge looming wall of shelves, it discarded metal struts, cardboard boxes and heaps of new canvas shoes as it came. Kinimaka held a hand up as if to ward off the edifice and continued to move steadily, but his bulk left him lagging behind the scuttling Hayden. As she rolled clear of the descending mass, her trailing foot clipped by a metal support, Kinimaka buried his head beneath his arms and braced as it fell on top of him.

  Hayden finished her roll, gun in hand, and looked back. “Mano!”

  But her troubles were only just beginning.

  Four legionnaires descended upon her, kicking the gun away and slamming her body with their rifle butts. Hayden covered up and then rolled some more. A rack of basketballs tipped over and sent the orange spheres spilling in all directions. Hayden glanced over her shoulder, saw moving shadows and cast around for her Glock.

  A shot rang out. She heard the bullet strike something close to her head.

  “Stop right there,” a voice said.

  Hayden froze and looked up as the shadows of Ramses’ men descended upon her.

  “You are with us now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Drake rushed into the ravaged precinct, Alicia at his side. The first movement they saw was from Moore as he whirled at the balcony above and drew a gun on them. Half a moment later his face flooded with relief.

  “At last,” he breathed. “I guess you guys got here first.”

  “We had a little advanced warning,” Drake said. “Some clown called Gator?”

  Moore looked blank and beckoned them up. “I never heard of him. Is he the leader of the fifth cell?”