Kenzie found it simpler to dart around the edges of the fray, damaging those she could and bemoaning the fact that she still didn’t have her katana. Dahl knew she possessed a learned, special skill and could have assailed one legionnaire after another, each a one-thrust kill, saving the team precious time. But this day was almost done.
One way or another.
Drake found his fist flurry deflected. He fell to the side as the legionnaire caught his wrist and twisted. Pain warped his features. He rolled with the abnormal bend, relieved the pressure, and found himself face to face with his assailant.
“Why?” he asked.
“Just here to slow you down,” the legionnaire smirked. “Tick tock. Tick tock.”
Drake pushed hard, now on his feet. “You’ll die too.”
“We all die, fool.”
Faced with such fanaticism, Drake struck without an ounce of mercy, breaking the man’s nose and jaw, his ribs too. These people knew exactly what they were doing, and still they struggled on. Not a man among them deserved to draw another breath.
Gasping, the legionnaire thrust his knife at Drake. The Yorkshireman caught it, twisted it clear, and reversed it so that it sat up to the hilt in the other man’s skull. Before the body hit the grass Drake joined the main melee.
It was a bizarre and crazy battle. Blow upon blow and defense after defense, endless pivoting for position. Blood wiped from the eyes, elbow and knuckle collisions shaken off in mid-skirmish and even one dislocated shoulder slammed back into place using Smyth’s own bulk. It was raw, as real as anything ever got.
And then Kinimaka ranged around it all, slamming, barging, destroying where he could. At least three of the downed, broken, legionnaires were his doing. Beau took care of two more and then Mai and Alicia finished the last together. As he fell they came face to face, fists raised, battle rage and blood lust flashing between them, catching fire like lasers from their eyes, but it was Beau who split them apart.
“The bomb,” he said.
And then, suddenly, every single face turned to Drake.
“How long do we have left?” Dahl asked.
Drake didn’t even know. The battle had taken every scrap of concentration. He looked down now, dreading what he would see, pulling back his sleeve and checking his watch.
“We haven’t even seen the bomb yet,” Kenzie said.
“Fifteen minutes,” Drake said.
And then the shots rang out.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Kenzie felt the impact like a missile strike. It knocked her off her feet, hammered her lungs, and momentarily tore all consciousness from her mind. Drake saw the bullet strike and dropped to his knees, breaking the inevitable fall. She had never seen it coming, but then neither had anyone else. Smyth had taken a hit too. Luckily, both bullets struck vests.
Reacting fastest, still with the words “fifteen minutes” bombarding his brain, was Torsten Dahl. As the two legionnaires rose from the ground, bullets rapidly fired and now taking better aim, he charged them, arms out, roaring like a train carrying lost souls from the blood-coated depths of Hell. They hesitated in surprise, and then the Swede battered them, one with each arm, and propelled them both backwards into the side of a wooden hut.
The structure shattered apart around the men, planks of wood breaking, splintering and tumbling through the air. The men fell on their backs among its contents, which proved to be most useful to the mad Swede.
It had been a workman’s shed, a place full of tools. As the legionnaires struggled to pick up their guns, one groaning and the other spitting teeth, Dahl lifted a well-used sledgehammer. The fallen men saw him coming out of the corner of their eyes and froze, disbelief unmanning them.
Beau came alongside him, saw their reaction. “End them. Remember what they are.”
Kinimaka paused too, chaffing at the bit as if he wanted to stomp them into dust. “They shot Kenzie. And Smyth.”
“I know,” Dahl said, dropping the sledgehammer and leaning on its handle. “I know that.”
Both men saw the pause as a sign of weakness and went for their guns. Dahl launched himself through the air, raising the sledgehammer at the same time, and brought it down as his body descended. One blow smashed a legionnaire in the center of the forehead, and he still had strength and skill enough to turn, lift the shaft and pulverize the temple of the other man. When he was done he rose to his knees, gritting his teeth, and threw the sledgehammer over his shoulder.
Another legionnaire then sat up, groaning, head canted to the side as if in agony, and raised a pistol held between shaking hands. In that split second it was Kenzie who was fastest to react and put herself at great personal risk. Without pause she shrugged off the previous bruises, blocked the man’s sights and rushed at him. The gun she held in her hand launched like a brick, end over end so that it impacted with the center of his face. He fired as he fell backwards, the shot passing overhead. When she reached him Kenzie retrieved her own weapon, but not before emptying his into his chest.
“How long?” Dahl breathed as he stormed toward the door that led to the Tropical Zone.
Drake raced past.
“Seven minutes.”
That’s not long enough to disarm an unfamiliar nuke.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Six minutes.
Drake rushed into the Tropical Zone, shouting until his throat hurt, desperate to get a fix on the bomb. The low cry that answered did not come from Hayden, but he followed it as best he could. Veins pounded all along his forehead. Tension curled his hands into fists. As the entire team entered the building, faced with winding wooden walkways and a tree-lined habitat, they spread out to take advantage of their numbers.
“Fuck!” Kinimaka cried, stress almost destroying him now. “Hayden!”
Another muffled cry. Drake spread his arms in utter frustration, unable to pinpoint the exact location. Seconds ticked by. A brightly colored parrot bombarded them, making Alicia take a step back. Drake couldn’t help but check his watch again.
Five minutes.
The White House would now be exuding such a flood of anxiety it would wash right up Capitol Hill. The approaching NEST team, the bomb squad, the cops and agents and firefighters who were aware, would be either sprinting until their legs gave out or falling to their knees, searching the skies and praying for their lives. If any world leaders had been briefed they too would be on their feet, watching the clock, and preparing a few sentences.
The world held sway.
Drake shuddered in relief on hearing a shout from Mai, then took more seconds finding its source. The team met as one, but what they found confounded all their expectations. Yorgi was standing back alongside Lauren; Beau and Kenzie tried to work it out from afar, and the rest of the team either fell to their knees or crawled alongside the mass.
Drake stared. The first thing he saw was the body of a naked woman, wrapped around with duct tape and blue wire, laying spread-eagled about two meters off the ground. Still baffled he saw that below the soles of her feet stuck another pair of feet, these belonging to a man judging by the hairy legs that were attached to them.
Hayden is the bomb, Ramses had told him.
But . . . what the hell . . .
Below the naked man he now saw boots that he recognized. Hayden, it seemed, lay at the bottom of this pile.
Then where the hell is the nuke?
Alicia raised her head from her position next to the unknown female. “Listen up. Zoe says the bomb is strapped underneath Hayden, at the bottom of this peculiarity. It is armed, has a pretty robust motion sensor and is protected by a backpack. The wires wrapped all around their bodies are attached to the bloody trigger.” She shook her head. “I can’t see a way through. This is the time for bright ideas, guys.”
Drake stared at the bodies, the endless trail of wires, all the same blue color. His first reaction was to agree.
“Does it have a collapsing circuit?” Kinimaka asked.
“My best
guess is ‘no’,” Dahl said. “That would be too risky, since the people attached to it might shift. The collapsing circuit—an anti-handling device—would detect Hayden’s movement, assume someone would be touching the bomb, and boom.”
“Don’t say that.” Alicia cringed.
Drake fell to his knees close to where he assumed Hayden’s head was. “By the same principal then, the motion detector would be fairly loose. Again, to allow some movement from the captives.”
“Yes.”
His head hurt from tension overload. “We have the deactivation codes,” he said.
“Which could still be fake. And worse, we have to input them on the pad attached to the trigger underneath Hayden.”
“You guys had better hurry,” Kenzie said softly. “We have three minutes left.”
Drake rubbed his scalp furiously. This was no time to entertain doubts. He shared a look with Dahl.
What next, my friend? Have we finally come to the end of the line?
Julian Marsh spoke up. “I saw them arm it,” he said. “I can disarm it. This was never supposed to happen. Money was the only objective . . . not this millions die, end of the world crap.”
“Webb knew,” Lauren said. “Your boss. He knew all along.”
Marsh only coughed. “Just get me out of here.”
Drake didn’t move. To expose the bomb they would have to turn the human pile. They didn’t have time to snip off all the tape. But there was a faster way to disarm a bomb, always had been. They didn’t show it on TV because it hardly made for edge-of-the-seat viewing.
You didn’t cut the wire. You just pulled them all out.
But that was as risky as cutting the wrong wire. He knelt down so that his eyes were at the same level as Marsh’s.
“Julian. Do you want to die?”
“No!”
“I see no other way,” he breathed. “Guys, let’s move them around.”
Directing the team, he slowly, slowly, turned the body pile until Hayden’s stomach came off the floor and the backpack was revealed. Groans escaped from Zoe and Marsh and even Hayden as they all rolled on to their sides, and Kinimaka urged all of them to remain still. Despite Zoe’s claims no one knew how sensitive the motion detector actually was, although it seemed clear if it had lasted this long it wasn’t set on anything near a hair-trigger. Indeed, it had to have been programmed to be all but impervious to ensure Drake would arrive before it exploded.
It was necessary to unloop the wires from Marsh’s body and pick them from Zoe’s extremities, a dirty job but one the team barely noticed. The ones wrapped around Hayden’s frame came away easily, as they were hampered by her clothing. Now, under direction, and still held with duct tape, Marsh brought his hands up so that they passed around Hayden’s right side and hovered over the backpack. The Pythian flexed his fingers.
“Pins and needles.”
Mai placed her hands on the backpack, over the nuclear bomb. With deft fingers she undid the buckles and pulled the top flap away. Then, utilizing great and dexterous strength, she held the sides of the backpack and slid the bomb with its metal casing right out.
A black casing surrounded it. Mai threw the pack away and rotated the bomb very slowly, sweating now as the seconds ticked down. Hayden’s eyes were bright as she stared at the bomb, and Kinimaka was already kneeling at her side, clutching a hand.
The countdown panel came into view, attached by four screws to the outside of the bomb. Blue wires snaked under it and into the heart of utter disaster. Marsh stared at the wires, four of them, tangled and wrapped together.
“Take the panel off. I need to see which one is which.”
Drake bit his tongue as he eyed his watch.
Seconds left now.
Fifty nine, fifty eight . . .
Smyth fell to his knees beside them, the soldier already with his utility blade out. Taking everyone’s life into his hands he took the responsibility of removing the screws. One scrape, one stubborn thread, one lack of concentration and they would either lose time or cause a terrifying detonation. Drake closed his eyes for a moment as the man worked. Behind him, Dahl breathed heavily and even Kenzie fidgeted.
As Smyth worked on the last screw, Alicia suddenly screamed. The entire group jolted, hearts in their mouths.
Drake whirled around. “What is it?”
“A snake! I saw a snake! Big yellow bastard it was.”
Smyth growled angrily as he held up the plate and carefully removed the countdown panel with its flashing red clock face. “Which wire?”
They were down to thirty seven seconds.
Marsh crawled closer, eyes searching through the interwoven tangle of blue wires, seeking the point where he remembered seeing Gator arm the device.
“I don’t see it! I don’t fucking see it!”
“That’s it,” Drake threw him aside. “I’m pulling all the wires!”
“No,” Dahl landed heavily at his side. “If you do that this bomb will explode.”
“Then what do we do, Torsten? What do we do?”
Twenty nine . . . twenty eight . . . twenty seven . . .
CHAPTER FORTY
Drake’s memory snapped to the fore. Ramses had deliberately told him that Hayden was the bomb. But what the hell did that really mean?
Looking now, he saw the three wires wrapped around her. Which one led to the trigger? Dahl pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
“The codes,” he said. “There is now no other way.”
“Let Marsh try again. Ramses made a point of mentioning Hayden.”
“We use the codes.”
“They could be bloody fake! Their own trigger!”
Marsh was already peering at Hayden’s body. Drake scrambled across and grabbed Kinimaka’s attention. “Roll her.”
Hayden helped as best she could, muscles and tendons no doubt screaming their agony, but receiving no relief. The clock ticked. The bomb neared fruition. And the world waited.
Marsh leaned in, following the wires around her body as Drake raised one arm, then a leg and finally unbuckled her belt where two wires crossed. When he saw the knotted pair passing again through her knees he pointed at Kinimaka. “There.”
Suffering a nightmare game of Twister, Hayden watched as Marsh followed the path of every wire back to the timer.
“For sure,” he said, squinting hard, one eye wide, the other closed. “It’s the one on the right.”
Drake glared at the suitcase nuke. Kenzie joined him and Dahl on the floor right beside it. “A specific configuration of parts and mechanisms is required to detonate this thing. It is . . . so delicate. Do we really trust the man who brought it into the country at this point?”
Drake drew the deepest breath of his life.
“No choice.”
He pulled the wire.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Drake yanked swiftly and the wire came away in his hand, coppery end exposed. On a knife edge, everyone present leaned forward to check the countdown.
Twelve . . . eleven . . . ten . . .
“It’s still armed!” Alicia cried.
Drake fell away onto his backside, stunned, still holding the wire up as if it might even now spark and kill the bomb. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Still ticking!” Alicia wailed.
Dahl dived in, forehead-palming the Yorkshireman away. “My way,” he said. “We’ll be lucky if we have time now.”
Eight . . .
Zoe started to cry. Marsh blubbered, apologizing for every mistake he’d ever made. Hayden and Kinimaka stared without emotion as the team worked, hands white and locked together, accepting that they could do nothing. Smyth let the utility knife fall from his hands and looked for Lauren, reaching with shaking fingers to touch hers. Yorgi sank to the ground. Drake looked at Alicia and Alicia stared at Mai, unable to tear her eyes away. Beau stood between them, his expression clear as he watched Dahl work.
The Swede tapped the deactivation codes into the panel. Eac
h one registered with a bleep. Only seconds remained as he entered the final number.
Five . . .
Dahl hit the “enter” button and stopped breathing.
But the clock still ticked down.
Three . . . two . . . one . . .
*
In the final second Torsten Dahl did not despair. He did not give up and turn away to die. He had a family to go back to—a wife and two children—and nothing would stop him from keeping them safe tonight.
There was always a Plan B. Drake had taught him that.
He was ready.
Crazy mode kicked in, calculated insanity fell over him, giving him strength beyond normal. For the last hour he had been listening to one person or another flout the perfection, the accurate and exact equipment that comprised a suitcase nuke. He had been hearing how precise it all was.
Well, what if it was subjected to a bit of Dahl madness. How would that work?
As the display showed one, the Swede already had the sledgehammer in hand. He brought it down with last-gasp, final-move strength, swinging with all his might. The sledgehammer smashed into the heart of the nuclear bomb and even in that endless second he saw Drake’s horror, Alicia’s acceptance. And then he saw no more.
The clock ticked
Zero.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Time stopped for nobody, and especially at this crucial hour.
The Edge of Armageddon Page 17