by Sean Ellis
What’s he doing?
She knew what he was doing: he was coming back for her. There was a throaty roar of engine braking as Atlas’ men slowed their quads and began cautiously angling across the dune face on an intercept course.
Problem solved!
With less caution than was perhaps warranted, she began bounding down the dune. She was light enough that she didn’t sink too deeply with each step, but a series of small avalanches marked her progress down the slope. If either of Atlas’ men glanced up the hill, they would probably see the disturbance and mark her presence, but she didn’t dare slow down now.
The sand grasping at the tires of the quad bikes made everything appear to happen in slow motion. The soldier was trying to gain the slope using the same serpentine technique that had worked before, but this time he had considerably less momentum and his quad was getting bogged down. The pursuers however were having an even harder time traversing the face of the dune, but if nothing unexpected happened, they would succeed in cutting across his path, and when they did, they would have a clear and unobstructed shot down at him.
Mira galloped headlong down the slope. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop when she reached her destination, but stopping wasn’t her first priority. When she was just ten yards away from the closest of Atlas’ men, she lifted the carbine above her head and started to swing.
Her timing was perfect. When her makeshift club came down, both she and the rider had closed the intervening distance. If he glimpsed her in his headlights, he didn’t have time to react. The metal body of the carbine’s upper receiver, with all of Mira’s strength and momentum, caught him squarely in the face and ripped him out of his seat. That was about the only thing that went according to plan
The shock of the impact vibrated up Mira’s arms, and the carbine was ripped from her nerveless fingers. The recoil caused her to twist in the direction the quad was traveling, and a fraction of a second later, she slammed into the rear of the vehicle as it rolled past. It was a glancing blow, but still enough to launch her over the quad and down the slope, her right leg nearly paralyzed from the throb of pain that radiated from mid-thigh. The hot abrasive sand cushioned her landing, though not as much as she would have liked, but did little to absorb the momentum she’d built up during her headlong charge. When she finally came to a rest, some fifty feet beyond where she had intercepted the rider, she felt like she’d been put through a potato masher.
She lay there stunned for a few seconds, not sure if she should feel grateful to be alive, but the roar of ATV engines was an insistent alarm, warning her to keep moving. As she tried to orient herself, she found herself transfixed in a pair headlight beams. The ATV was almost right on top of her, but before she could throw herself out of the way, the engine noise died away and the lights went out.
A smaller light flared above her and an urgent but friendly voice broke the sudden quiet. “Are you okay?”
It was the soldier.
She pondered his question as she struggled to sit up, and managed to gasp out an answer. “Don’t know.”
He swept the light over her quickly, probing her flesh with his free hand and eliciting more than a few winces of pain. “I don’t think anything’s broken,” he announced at length. “We need to get moving. Can you ride?”
Mira held off answering that question as she managed, with considerable help, to get to her feet. She glanced around, searching the darkness for some sign of hostile forces, but all was still. “Where’d they go?”
He chuckled. “You mean, ‘where did he go?’ You killed the other three, remember?”
She did, sort of.
“Are you trying to make me look bad?” There was a hint of mischief in his tone. “After that little stunt you pulled, the last guy decided to make a strategic withdrawal. I don’t know if he’s going back to get more reinforcements, and I’d rather not wait around to find out. You should probably ride with me.”
“Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you?” She was also trying to sound playful, but somewhere between her bruised ribs and here clenched teeth, it came out as defiant.
He gave a derisive snort. “Okay, I get it. You’re Indi-anna Jones, badass treasure hunter, who never has to ask for anyone’s help. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
“You win.” She tried to smile, hoping it didn’t look like a grimace, and reached out to take his hand.
His ATV was parked nearby, facing upslope. He threw one leg over the saddle-seat and then twisted around to help Mira get on. As she settled in behind him, he gripped her forearms and snugged them tight around his waist like a safety belt.
Despite everything that had happened—or maybe because of it—she was acutely aware of being close to him. She still wore the tactical vest, with pouches full of spare magazines for the weapon she’d lost, and he was wearing some kind of body armor, so there might as well have been a wall separating them, but in that moment she savored his proximity. It had been months since she’d had any kind of meaningful interaction with another person, let alone such a handsome, rugged, virile—
Noticed that, did you?
—person.
The ATV roared to life and after fishtailing back and forth for a few moments, finally got traction and began ascending the dune. Although the added weight of a passenger caused the machine to sink even deeper, further hampering upward progress, the simple fact that they didn’t have armed men nipping at their heels, made the journey seem that much shorter. When they finally topped the dune, Mira peered over her new companion’s shoulder to get her first good look at the place she had spent the last several months of her life.
Atlas’ compound, just a mile or so away, was perched on the edge of a vast body of midnight-black water. The compound was dark, but she had no trouble making out the silhouettes of buildings peeking up above the circle of Hesko barriers that had been stacked up like massive stones in an ancient fortress wall. A faint glow moving in the midst of the facility betrayed the presence of a vehicle—probably the fourth ATV rider, looking for reinforcements or maybe just a place to hide. Aside from that though, the compound appeared still, perhaps even deserted.
A bright flash from somewhere past the compound, out over the water, caught her attention. It was, she knew, an explosion, and while it seemed too far away to concern her, she recalled the soldier’s earlier comment about an airstrike, and was overcome with a sense of foreboding.
She shouted to be heard over the whine of the engine. “We need to get down!”
The soldier seemed not to have heard. “Damn. They’re early.”
She was about to repeat herself, but somehow knew there wasn’t even time for that. With her arms still tight around his waist, she threw her weight sideways.
He must have understood what she was trying to do; outweighing her as he did, with body hunched forward and his hands gripping the controls, there was no way she could have moved him without help. Whatever the explanation, a moment later they hit the sand at the dune crest and were rolling back down the hill they’d just climbed.
There was a roar like a runaway freight train passing overhead, and Mira felt a hot rush of wind stirring the sand all around, sucking the breath from her lungs. Then the world jumped.
The detonation had unleashed a wave of seismic energy that rippled through the ground. Like a bully kicking a young child’s sandbox, the tremor briefly caused the desert sand to behave like a liquid. The dunes—which had been sculpted by weeks and months of persistent wind action into high peaks and low valleys that were as distinctive and unique as snowflakes—were flattened, and everything on the surface sank like a stone in a pond.
Mira spread-eagled, stretching out her arms and legs in a desperate and ultimately futile effort to keep from being swallowed by the desert. The roar of the wind was silenced as tons of sand poured over her, crushing the air from her lungs and pinning her limbs in place.
She was not normally claustrophobic, but in that moment, Mi
ra understood what it meant to live in fear of being buried alive. She could do nothing to win her freedom.
The sand was pressing in from all sides, filling her ears, trying to force itself into her nose and mouth and eyes. She felt the pressure grow even heavier on her shoulders, and for a moment, felt like her arms and legs were being pulled from their sockets.
She could not claw or kick her way free…she couldn’t see or hear or breathe….
Or even scream.
16.
Although he was following the bomb’s descent, Collier had no sense of its location relative to the helicopter. It wasn’t until the bomb detonated, and he heard frantic curses from the cockpit, that he realized what he’d done.
“Shit. They missed! Veer right, veer right!”
As he started to draw his awareness back from the detonation site out in the Gulf of Sirte, some ten miles from shore, the expanding cloud of vaporized aluminum ignited in a massive secondary explosion. The storm of fire and force could not harm his projected consciousness, but for just a moment, he was stunned by the sheer magnitude of the blast. Then he grasped the reason for the pilot’s panic.
Immediately upon lifting off, the helicopter had turned toward the sea. The plan was to rendezvous with a naval warship out in the Mediterranean, and since the GPS guided MOAB was supposed to strike the compound, heading for open water was doubly desirable.
Except the smart bomb had gone dumb at the last second and deviated from its programmed course to detonate over water. Instead of a nice safe standoff distance, the helicopter was barely a mile east of the explosion. When the expanding bubble of heat and air, compressed to the hardness of steel, caught up to the helicopter, it and everyone aboard would be smashed like a bug on a windshield.
My fault, Collier thought, and he wasn’t wrong. But neither was he helpless. He had been able to force the eleven-ton bomb off course by reaching out in the opposite direction—extending his awareness toward the desert floor below and behind them—and bracing himself against the ground rather than the airborne platform of the helicopter deck, as he pushed the bomb away from its target coordinates.
He could do the same thing to save the helicopter now.
He reached out once more toward the desert floor, more than ten miles behind them, and established a psychic foundation to buttress the protective “umbrella” he simultaneously opened around the helicopter.
The Seahawk lurched a little as the firestorm broke over it like tidal surf, but Collier knew that this was just the result of the pilot’s panicked efforts to anticipate and evade the shockwave; the bomb’s energy had been completely deflected around the helicopter.
Collier knew the danger was not yet past. The massive explosion had pushed all the air away from its blast center, creating an enormous void. That emptiness was all around the helicopter now, but Collier’s protective bubble of psychic energy preserved enough atmosphere so that the jet turbines did not flame out, the rotors continued to beat the air, and the passengers did not suffocate. Yet that was not the real danger of the vacuum. When the shock wave dispersed, everything that hadn’t been blasted away or incinerated would be blown inward by the hurricane force of air filling the sucking void. He shifted his umbrella into the approaching gale, and anchored himself firmly to the ground, and when the air rushed past, the helicopter again weathered the storm with no discernible effect.
There was an audible, collective sigh of relief as the Seahawk powered on toward its destination, but no one said anything. It was almost as if by speaking, by acknowledging their survival, the miracle might be undone, their salvation transformed into some kind of bizarre death-dream.
Collier wasn’t paying attention to them. He was miles away, searching the ruins of Atlas’ compound.
There it is!
“Turn around,” he ordered, speaking into the headset microphone. “We have to go back.”
A long silence followed and Collier was about to repeat himself when the pilot said, “That ain’t happening, sir. Our next stop is the Ramage.” Then, as if to show that there was nothing personal about his refusal, he added, “Admiral Pentecost’s orders.”
Collier just smiled. “I’m afraid I have to answer to a higher power.”
17.
When she was finally able to scream, there was no need. Her intuition confirmed what her extremities were already telling her; the pressure was gone, the premature burial had been interrupted. Instead of a scream, she simply spat out a mouthful of sand with a curse that she rarely indulged.
“I guess that means you’re okay.”
She tried—unsuccessfully—to brush the grit from her eyes, before opening them to look at the soldier. He was kneeling over her, and even the darkness could not hide the look of concern on his face. “You pulled me out?”
He nodded. “I managed to throw my assault bag out before I started sinking. It floated on top and I was able to pull myself free. Then I went in after you.”
Mira glanced at the misshapen lump of camouflage-pattern nylon that had evidently served as an impromptu life preserver. She could sense the Trinity concealed within, and knew that was probably the real source of their salvation.
Well, his at least. He didn’t have to pull me out.
“I guess I owe you one,” she remarked.
“I like the sound of that.”
She couldn’t decide whether to reward him with a smile or tease him with mock umbrage, so instead she got to hands and knees, and then stood up, shaking away the sand that had insinuated itself into every orifice of her body.
The dunes were gone, completely flattened by the same seismic ripple that briefly liquefied the ground. There was no sign of the quads, or the bodies of Atlas’ men; the settling sands had erased all trace of their existence.
To the northeast, she saw what remained of Atlas’ compound. The north-facing Hesko wall had collapsed and a section of shore several hundred yards wide had been inundated with seawater, probably the result of a tsunami generated by the explosion. A few walls and exposed girders jutted up from water but very little remained that was recognizable.
She turned back to face him. “So I guess we’re walking?”
He shook his head. “Listen. Do you hear that?”
Mira couldn’t hear much of anything through the sand in her ears, but in a few seconds, even that limitation could not mask the distinctive rhythmic beat of helicopter rotor blades chopping through the sky. A few seconds later, she could distinguish the outline of the aircraft, and soon thereafter, was engulfed in a whirlwind of sand as it touched down less than a hundred feet away.
The rotors continued spinning, but over the roar of the jet engines, she could hear someone shouting. “Del?”
“Here!”
The soldier took Mira’s arm and guided her toward the waiting craft. A light flashed out of the darkness, and she saw that the man holding it, coming to meet them, was the same person that her companion—Del—had spoken with briefly before they’d escaped the laboratory building. He looked considerably better now, than when they had left him, a fact that did not escape Del’s notice.
“How…?”
The other man just shook his head. “I’ll explain everything when we’re back home.”
He led them back to the helicopter, and to the relative quiet of the cabin. Two commandoes wearing gear just like Del’s, and two other men wearing olive-drab flight coveralls, stared at the new arrivals in stunned disbelief.
“I see you made a new friend,” the man observed.
Del glanced at Mira. “Yeah. This is Mira Raiden—”
“I know who she is.” He appraised her for a second. “Good to meet you, Ms. Raiden. I’m Captain Eric Collier, Booker’s team leader. There’ll be time for proper introductions later.”
Collier fitted a headset over his ears and keyed the microphone. “We’ve got what we came for. The bird’s all yours again. Take us home.”
Then the commander returned his attention to Booker.
“You have it, Del? I know you do, I can feel it.”
Booker held up the assault bag. “Right here.”
Collier smiled. “Congratulations, sailor. You may have just saved the world.”
A smile creased the corners of the younger man’s mouth, but as he looked around at the helicopter’s other occupants, the grin faded. “Sir, why’s everyone staring at you like that?”
18.
Though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, Mira slept through most of the flight. One minute she was watching the broken rubble of Atlas’ compound fall away beneath the helicopter, and the next, Booker was gently shaking her.
“Pit stop,” he said, in a stage whisper. “Dad says to use the head, even if you don’t have to.”
It took her several seconds to figure out what he meant. Her eyes were nearly pasted shut with a combination of sleep sand and the real stuff, and it wasn’t until she rubbed away the crust that she realized they had landed—or more precisely, set down—on the deck of a US naval warship. Still in a fugue of dislocation, she allowed herself to be led from the open platform and into the interior of the vessel. She couldn’t tell if the handsome SEAL had taken her under his personal protection, like a stray cat he wanted bring home, or if she was merely in his custody. It was only after she emerged from the washroom, feeling marginally more human, that she thought to ask if there were other amenities she could take advantage of.
“I’d kill for a shower and something else to wear? Any chance of getting something like that? And maybe some food?”
He shook his head. “We’re not going to be here that long. Just topping off the tanks and then bouncing to a base in Italy. I’m sure we can set you up with everything you need there.”
“What happens after that?”
He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Honestly, I don’t know. This operation…it, ah, didn’t exactly go off according plan. They might quarantine us until we’re fully debriefed, and have a better idea of what the fallout on this is going to look like.”