Project Maigo

by Jeremy Robinson

  I open the next three cases to reveal three different weapons. I take the smallest of them, an FN P90, which has a super high rate of fire and Secret Service-issue, armor-piercing rounds. It’s also small and light, so my mobility won’t be compromised. And that’s important, because I’m probably going to be running for my life sooner than later. Endo takes the second weapon, an M4 Carbine, powerful enough to punch straight through an engine block, and hopefully through Gordon’s skin. Dunne, now ready for battle, takes an MP5 and slaps on a Beta C-Mag, a dual drum magazine that holds a hundred rounds. He can hold down that trigger and spray bullets until the sun comes up.

  Dunne reaches beneath his jacket and draws his FN Five-seven pistol, spins it around and holds it out to Beck. “This your idea?” I ask Endo.

  “I think it’s better if he can defend himself,” Endo says.

  “He’s likely to shoot himself accidentally,” I complain.

  “Just tell him he’s a good shot.”

  I shake my head. This plan is getting stupider by the minute.

  A string of Harrier jets roar by above, heading east, derailing my train of thought. Missiles scream from their undersides, rocketing ahead of the jets. The mix of jets and missiles pass by quickly. For some reason, the wailing air-raid sirens fall silent. The sound of screams fills the void, rising from all over the city—police sirens, squealing tires, people. If there was a soundtrack to Hell, it would probably sound something like this. I cringe, knowing that people are already dying in the city. And it’s my fault. I put them in harm’s way.

  Tense voices, closer by, rise up next. The remaining Secret Service are taking up positions. Activating defenses. While we call the building a house, it is actually something closer to a fortress, with reinforced walls and windows, hidden chain guns, missile defense systems and now, a nearby battalion of tanks, which I know are there, because I recommended them. In fact, all of the protocols being activated right now are, in part, my creation, put in place when I still had the President’s ear.

  Despite all this, it’s not enough. The weaponry might slow down a single Kaiju, but we’ve got three stomping toward the city. And a fourth somewhere else. And it’s that fourth, which we know carries Gordon around in its mouth, that is my true concern.

  In the distance, missiles explode, filling the night with the sound of distant thunder. A roar follows, even louder. And it’s not a wounded cry, it’s just pissed. And closer than I would like.

  A rumbling shakes my legs. The grinding squeal of tank treads scoring pavement. M1 Abrams tanks take up positions around the White House, on the far side of the South Lawn and along Executive Avenue, defending an empty building. Well, almost empty. They must know that Beck has decided to stay.

  Proving this assumption correct, a ten-man squad of fully armored and armed Secret Service agents burst from the White House and take up defensive positions around Beck, and us. Endo and I share a grin. Now this is more like it.

  Amid the chaos, I become aware of a pulse moving through the colonnade floor, slowly growing more intense. With the White House empty of people and the Secret Service on board, it’s time to move. I focus on the sentence I want the President to say.

  “Let’s move to the roof,” Beck says. “So we can see what we’re up against.”

  Before any of the agents can complain about this tactic, Dunne says, “Right this way, sir,” and charges back into the Oval Office. When Endo and I, dressed as agents now, quickly follow, leading Beck inside, the rest fall in line. It’s like high school again, leading innocent Freshman behind the gym to smoke their first doobie, except that those freshman had a good time and weren’t in danger of a violent death.

  We hurry through the White House in a blur. After being here day after day with halls full of tourists and employees, seeing the place empty feels surreal. We charge up a flight of stairs, and while Beck is encircled by agents, he’s holding his handgun at the ready, looking fearless. The most awkward part of a roofward charge is the elevator. We hurry inside, cram in tightly and then stand still while the elevator rises. I want to ask if the elevator exits at the roof. I want to make a Muzak joke. Both would invite suspicion, though, so I keep my mouth shut. The elevator doors open and all fourteen of us are vomited into the hallway beyond. The hall is black. Red emergency lights glow from the ceiling, allowing us to see while acclimating our eyes to the night. We hurry down the long stretch to a short staircase, at the top of which is a solid-looking door with a numeric keypad and a hand print security system. I step aside and let Dunne do the deed. Cool night air washes over us, along with the sounds of a panicked populace, the din of distant battle and the sound of something approaching.

  Something large.

  The roof has been transformed. Chain guns line the roof walls, two to the north, two to the south. What normally look like air conditioning units have been revealed for what they really are—missile launchers—controlled from inside the security room buried several levels below us. In addition to Secret Service, there are soldiers on the roof, armed with an array of weapons, including anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers.

  “The men look afraid,” Beck says.

  Endo shoots me a questioning glance. I shrug. I didn’t put the words in his mouth. I’m barely looking at the soldiers hurrying about. My eyes are turned southward, past the South Lawn and the Ellipse, all the way to the Washington Monument.

  “Men!” Beck shouts, raising his hands in the air.

  Someone says, “Oh my God, is that the President?”

  “Our darkest hour is upon us, but we must stand together, as brothers, as equals! I will fight with you, and if I must, I will die with you!”

  The number of cheers equals the number of confused faces.

  “Now let’s send these Kaiju sons-a-bi—”

  A roar interrupts Beck’s speech. It comes from the south. All heads turn.

  Drakon, now 200 feet long from snout to tail comes flailing out of the reflecting pool at a dead run. The monster still has a low to the ground body, like a lizard, but like all the other Kaiju, it’s wearing a Nemesis skin, with coils of dark flesh, a jagged spike-covered back and glowing membranes, which are thankfully on its underside, illuminating its approach like a punk-ass teenager’s undercar lighting.

  As its wide limbs scramble and claw at the grass, the thing tumbles and rolls, slamming into the Washington Monument. The sound of stone cracking is like a cannon blast. I swear I see the obelisk waver, but it doesn’t fall. Then Drakon is back up and charging straight toward the White House. It will cover the half-mile distance in seconds.

  Beck steps forward, hands on the south wall of the White House’s roof. “Fire!”

  39

  The thunder that follows the President’s order drowns out the sounds of the wailing city. The sirens. The screaming. Even Drakon’s roar. The amount of firepower launched from the White House is mind numbing. Missiles cruise over the South Lawn. I can feel the heat from their fiery rockets on my face. A wall of bright orange tracer rounds follows the missiles, showing the paths of thousands of bullets, all headed for Drakon. And then there’s the ordinance we can’t see: grenades launched above it all, tumbling through the air toward the monster’s back.

  While the modern and primal destructive forces race toward each other, I turn to Dunne and grab his arm and point to Beck. “Get him to the PEOC!” The Presidential Emergency Operations Center is a bunker beneath the East Wing, and it was built to withstand a nuclear blast. It won’t stop four Kaiju from digging him out like colossal dogs going after a buried bone, but it will protect him if one of these sons-a-bitches self-immolates. And while I’m not a fan of Beck—at least before I gave him a bravery boost and a moral adjustment—he’s still the President, and my boss.

  Dunne looks confused for a moment, but then Endo turns to him and says, “Go. Now.” The agent nods and takes Beck’s arm. The President resists for a moment, but I give him a mental shove, and the pair runs for the roof exit.r />
  A series of explosions nearly knocks me over. I turn back to the south and see Drakon emerge from a billowing mass of fire. Tracer rounds greet her on the way out of the flames, hot metal digging into her thick skin, but doing no real damage. That is, until a line of orange, spewing from one of the chain guns, strikes her left eye. The orb absorbs hundreds of rounds before bursting liquid nasty all over the monster’s face.

  Drakon shrieks in pain and thrashes as she continues forward. When the dark lizard reaches the South Lawn Fountain, the top of her lowered snout slams into the thick stone wall. The head stops while the body moves forward. The giant head folds under the body as it lifts up and over. The angle is so extreme that I find myself hoping the thing’s neck will be snapped.

  The monster’s tail thrashes wildly, trying to find some kind of equilibrium, but the body continues up and over, landing in the fountain with a splash. For a moment, it appears that we’ve managed a small victory, but then a grenade bursts—directly over one of the orange membranes on the creature’s exposed underside—sending shards of metal downward and plumes of glowing fluid upward.

  “Get down!” I shout, tackling Endo to the roof.

  The resulting explosion knocks everyone down and knocks the air from my lungs, but we’re spared from the searing heat and flames. The metal fragments created relatively small holes. Had it been a missile, the White House and everyone on this roof, would have been reduced to ash.

  “Hold your fire!” I shout, and then remember that I’ve got access to Devine. Crouching behind the wall, I pull out my smart phone, activate the Devine network and broadcast to all emergency personnel listening, careful not to identify myself. “This is Agent Dunne of the Secret Service, do not, I repeat do not hit the target’s membranes!” I don’t need to explain why to the people atop the White House roof. They all just got a stark reminder. But with three more Kaiju incoming, each containing enough boom-juice to level D.C., I think a quick refresher is a good idea.

  As confirmations start to come in from various military and emergency sources, I hang up the phone and hit the call button for Ranger.

  He answers, out of breath. “What?”

  “Ranger, I need an ETA.”

  “Two minutes for me,” he says. His voice shakes as he runs. “One for...our special friend.”

  “Copy that,” I say, and hang up, dialing Woodstock. The line connects, and I don’t wait for a greeting. “Status?”

  “In the air and hanging back,” Woodstock replies. “But these guys are moving fast; seventy miles per hour, straight through the suburbs. They’re getting shot to shit, but they’re not even feeling it.”

  “ETA?”

  “We’re about twenty miles out. We’ll be inside the city limits in ten minutes. To the White House in fifteen.”

  “Copy that,” I say. “Be safe.”

  I hang up the phone and pocket it. My job here isn’t to coordinate the response, it’s to respond. Personally. As much as I hate it, that’s the only way this mess is going to be resolved.

  With a high pitched squeal I can feel in my teeth, Drakon rolls over. Seeing an opportunity, the first of the M1 Abrams tanks to react to the Kaiju’s sudden appearance, launches a round at Drakon’s side. The tank fires a supersonic 120mm kinetic round with a depleted uranium tip. It’s capable of punching through just about anything on the planet. Including, it would seem, Kaiju flesh.

  The round strikes Drakon’s right forelimb, exploding with tremendous force and spraying chunks of brown meat and black skin across the lawn.

  Drakon roars in pain and bounces on its feet, turning back and forth. It’s almost comical, like the thing is saying, ‘What hit me? What hit me?’ It must figure out the answer because it leaps through the air and drops down on the tank, crushing it with the creature’s weight. Adding insult to injury, Drakon takes hold of the tank’s gun turret, lifts the crumpled tank off the ground and throws it across the lawn, toward a second tank still taking aim. The tanks collide in a tangle of very expensive metal, and the men buried somewhere within.

  Drakon settles its one good eye back on the White House and charges. She’s limping heavily, but doesn’t seem to have been slowed, and certainly doesn’t mind the pain.

  Gunfire and grenades pepper the monster as it closes the distance, but the missiles hold back. The target is too close. Just as I hear the chop of approaching helicopters, Drakon arrives. The monster rises above us like a tidal wave, bathing us in orange light from its glowing membranes, forcing the men on the roof to hold their fire—not that a few bullets would change anything. The monster’s jaws snap open, splitting both vertically and horizontally, revealing four sets of sharp teeth and giving the creature a bite radius that would make Mick Jagger jealous. But it doesn’t roar or even bite. From within the ring of sharp, arm-sized teeth, a black sphere launches up and over the White House roof.

  At first it looks like a glob of tar, but then it opens up, revealing thick limbs, hooked fingers and claws. Gordon. While his entrance is impressively flamboyant, the man’s arrival—if he’s still a man at all—makes me ill.

  Before anyone even thinks to react, Gordon lands on the tallest point of the roof, denting the metal surface. He scans the frozen groups of soldiers, looking for someone. Looking for me, I realize.

  “Open fire!” I shout, counting on the men to remember avoiding those explosive orange membranes that make such tempting targets. Gordon spots me just as the men on the roof send a barrage of bullets in his direction. He leaps down to the far side of the roof. I’m no longer able to see him, but I don’t need to. The screams rising up are image enough.

  Working in concert with Gordon, Drakon assaults the roof, slamming her giant hand down, crushing men and tearing through the top two floors of the White House. With a gleeful roar, the monster leans down and catches two men within her jaws, lifting them up and silencing their screams with a quick chomp, before tilting her head back and swallowing them whole.

  Next, Drakon turns her attention to my side of the roof. She reaches out, but pauses, as though confused. With a shake of her head, the monster yanks her hand away like a child who touched a hot stove. Gordon wants me for himself.

  “Down!” Endo shouts, returning the favor of tackling him, by shoving me down and jumping on top of me. A twisting mass of helicopter launched rockets scream overhead, striking Drakon with enough force to knock her sideways. As the monster falls from view and Endo pulls me to my feet, I say, “Didn’t realize you cared.”

  “Our plan hinges on you not dying,” he says.

  Yeah, no pressure.

  “Hudson!” The voice is deep, booming and hits me like an emotional missile. Gordon charges across the roof, covered in other men’s blood. His eyes burn with fury. Froth slides from his clenched teeth with each step.

  I lift my P90 and hold the trigger down, unleashing fifty rounds in seconds. His body shakes from the barrage, but he doesn’t slow. While I reload, Endo takes aim with his more powerful assault rifle, punching round after round into Gordon’s forehead. The engine-killing rounds just get stuck in the thick flesh. But it hurts. Gordon, unlike his Kaiju, still experiences pain like a human being. He reacts like one, too, raising his meaty hand, to defend his face.

  With the P90 reloaded, I aim more carefully, but hold the trigger down again. I have to fight the recoil, but I manage to send most of the rounds into my target—Gordon’s knee. The leg buckles as Gordon shouts in pain, but he lunges forward with his good leg, arms outstretched.

  My brain tells me to move. To dive. To duck. But there’s no avoiding this freight train. The best I can do is take it like a man, or in this case, like a ragdoll.

  Gordon hits hard, but he doesn’t slam me to the roof as expected. Instead, he lifts me up and over the sidewall, tackling me over the edge of the roof. On the inside, I’m rolling my eyes and thinking, “Shiiiit.” On the outside, I’m screaming.

  40

  The world turns through Jell-O. Or at least that�
��s what it feels like. I’m falling, wrapped in the tight embrace of my mortal enemy. But I’m also spinning. No, not spinning...flipping. I’m fli—

  The impact sends a wave of pain through my body, numbing my toes and fingers. But I’m not dead! And I’m no longer held in place. Despite my body screaming to remain motionless, I sit up and stagger away.

  Gordon lies atop the granite staircase of the White House’s south portico. We fell two stories down, but rolled so that Gordon absorbed most of the impact. A stroke of good luck.

  Gordon sits up, grinning.

  Or...not.

  He could have killed me if he wanted to. It’s obvious now. He could have popped my head in his hand like a too-full water balloon. He could have not flipped over. But he wanted me alive for a little while longer. Although that suits me just fine, it confuses me.

  Until I see the look in his eye. He’s enjoying this. Like a cat, toying with a mouse, he’s going to kill me slowly, savoring each injury. And then, he’ll kill me. It’s a strategic risk, but why would he doubt victory? He’s virtually impervious to harm and has four Kaiju for back up. He has enough power to destroy entire nations. What would he have to fear from me?

  I smile back at him, knowing the answer to the unasked question. I’m a sneaky son-of-a-bitch.

  “I admire your confidence,” Gordon says, getting to his feet. “But it’s misguided.”

  I stagger away, clutching my side, acting a bit more injured than I am. Doesn’t take much acting. I’m pretty messed up, but the pain is still so broad that I can’t identify specific injuries. As Gordon stalks toward me, I glance over my shoulder, but all I can see is Drakon, rampaging around the East Wing of the White House. I try not to react to it. It’s where I sent Beck. If they haven’t made it to the PEOC yet, they might be in real trouble.