Emerald

by Brian January

  In his remaining hand he clenched the AK-47, ready to fire.

  Skarda lunged, hitting the floor hard and grabbing the AA-12. His hand snaked into April’s vest, yanking out an explosive shell. Ramming it into the breech, he pointed and fired, just as Zandak’s head and upper torso loomed high in his vision.

  The warhead struck Zandak at the top of his sternum, blowing his head and neck to gory ribbons of flesh. What was left of him dropped out of sight.

  April groaned. Her eyes opened.

  Skarda scuttled to her side, staring into her ashen face. “You look like hell,” he said with a grin.

  “You don’t look so good yourself.”

  Blood dripped from his wounds. The women knelt down next to him, quickly applying field dressings to the worst of them.

  He got to his feet. “I’ve got to shut down that computer room.”

  Wobbling a bit, he started for the open door. The din of gunfire and explosions was loud in his ears.

  But Rachel shot up, spinning around and fixing him with an intent gaze. She held up the bag of grenades. “For my country,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Before he could stop her she had snatched up Zandak’s pistol and went racing through the doorway, sprinting across the open floor, heading for the entrance to the command center corridor. An instant later a hail of bullets cracked around her, following the path of her pounding feet. At the doorway an Atlantean soldier appeared. He dropped to a crouch, aiming his rifle at her onrushing figure. Lifting the pistol, she shot him in the head and he flew back with a red-rimmed hole in his forehead, out of sight.

  Another holocaust of bullets pulverized the wall in front of her. Zigzagging in a corkscrew pattern, she made a lunge for the doorway. Then slugs punched into the armor of her vest and she staggered forward, losing her balance, lurching to right herself as another round of bullets drilled through the muscles of her thigh.

  Crying out, she dropped to one knee, throwing her hands out in front of her and slapping her palms against the limestone wall. On her right was the open doorway. In agony, she hauled herself toward it. Another round blasted her, smashing against her chest like a succession of fist blows, spinning her around. Another bullet tore off her right ear in a geyser of blood. Blasted from the wall, a jagged shard of limestone sliced through her cheek. White bone glistened under the wound.

  With scrabbling fingers she grabbed the edge of the door opening, grinding her teeth together as she hauled herself through. With a desperate lunge she threw herself to the ground and rolled, hearing a volley of slugs blasting apart the wall where she’d stood just seconds before. Strength ebbed from her body.

  Flipping over, she raked her eyes down the hallway, cringing, expecting more bullets to come blasting in her direction from the door of the command center.

  Then she froze.

  Pteor was advancing toward her, a monstrous presence in the gloom of the corridor, his jewel-like eyes blazing with lust. Behind his moving legs she could see two black-suited commandos guarding the entrance to the computer room, staring at her.

  Realization struck her like a club and she almost laughed. They weren’t Atlanteans.

  Tomilin had betrayed them, too!

  The gigantic man stalked closer, his fingers flexing. The thought of his hands touching her again filled her with terror.

  Her hand as heavy as lead, she brought up the pistol and fired.

  The bullet seemed to have no effect. He kept on coming.

  She fired again.

  No effect.

  The hammer clicked. Empty.

  Dragging the ammo bag in front of her, she reached in with both hands and grabbed a grenade, pulling the pin and keeping her hands hidden while she counted down to three. Then she whipped her arm forward, lobbing the bomb at the spot between the giant’s shoes. With a little bounce it rolled behind him toward the commandos’ position.

  Pteor saw it. An emotion tore across his face.

  Fear.

  Through a dizzy haze, she recognized it. She barked out a vicious laugh. “Payback’s a bitch, buddy.”

  With a sharp bang the grenade exploded, blowing up in the faces of Charbonnet’s men and hurling jagged metal fragments into Pteor’s back and legs as he was blown against the wall in splatters of blood and shredded flesh. What was left of his shattered corpse smacked against the floor with a meaty thud.

  Coughing out lungfuls of smoke, Rachel groaned. The giant’s huge body had protected her from the blast, but she had suffered terrible wounds from the gunfire. Putting out a hand, she hauled herself to her knees. Pain shot through her like searing razor blades. Blood sluiced from the hole where her ear had been. Woozily she looked down, seeing a pool of bright red blood where she had lain. A curtain of blackness closed over her consciousness. She felt life slipping away.

  But she knew what she had to do. Using the wall to drag herself to her feet, she stood and drove herself forward toward the doorway of the control room, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Each step was an agony. Opening the ammo bag, she pulled the pin on another grenade, holding the spoon in place inside the bag as she staggered ahead.

  She reached the open doorway, slick and streaming with the blood and guts of the commandos. Their twisted, shredded bodies lay in heaps.

  Sucking in a deep breath, she stepped over a severed arm and swung her body around the corner, seeing more body parts and two more shrapnel-riddled corpses sprawled out over their console stations.

  The other stations were empty. Blood pounded in her head, making her thinking fuzzy. It didn’t make sense. There should be more people here. Tomilin should be here so she could kill him. They must have all run away when the grenade exploded.

  It didn’t matter. She could still destroy the computers.

  She was about to toss the grenade satchel into the center of the room when Tomilin stepped through a doorway on the opposite side, aiming a pistol at her

  “Too bad,” he said evenly. “It would have been fun.”

  Then he shot her between the eyes.

  Rachel fell backward, her nerveless fingers releasing the grenade’s spoon. The bag hit the floor, flopping open to reveal its deadly contents.

  The glint of metal caught Tomilin’s eye. With instant appraisal he leapt back, racing through the doorway just as the improvised cluster bomb exploded, blowing the computer room to rubble.

  ___

  When he heard the blast from the command center, Skarda stooped to help April get to her feet. Her strength was shaky, but the trauma dressing had staunched the flow of blood. But her vest and pant leg were soaked with red.

  His vision reeled and he had to steady himself. He’d lost a lot of blood, too.

  “Looks like Rachel made it,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Think you can run?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  But he could feel her body trembling under his arm. He knew she had incredible reserves of strength she could tap at will, but still he said, “We can’t risk it. We’re going to have to take the Chinook and you’re the only one who can fly it. I’m going to have to carry you.”

  Steadying her, he ducked down and slung her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  “Flinders!” he called out. “Grenades!”

  Instantly deducing his plan, she snatched two grenades from her vest pouches and pulled the pins, lobbing the bombs at the nearest barricade of broken columns. She dropped back behind the safety of the wall.

  When the twin explosions erupted, the three sprinted out into the open. Seconds later they flattened themselves against the inside walls of the opposite corridor, their chests heaving with exertion.

  “Oh, my God!” Flinders stared at the devastation Rachel’s attack had made. Pteor’s body lay sprawled over the floor, a red mess of mangled flesh and splintered bone. Beyond him lay the severed arms and legs of the guards.

  She turned, clutching the wall, fighting down a surge of vomit.

  Skard
a laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Almost imperceptibly she bobbed her head, then pushed herself away from the wall, heading for the command center doorway, eyes locked straight ahead.

  The computer room looked like a slaughterhouse. Lowering April to the floor, he crouched low over a blood-drenched mass of pulp, then turned his face up to the women. “Rachel.”

  Flinders sucked in a breath and spun away, her face going ash-white.

  A chill raced up Skarda’s spine, followed by a wave of cold fury. But he shut off the emotion. With a grim nod, he made a quick survey of the corpses. “No Tomilin.”

  “His jet was out on the tarmac,” April said. “He can still access the other dish with a laptop from there. We have to stop him.”

  Skarda twisted his head to catch her eye. “Think you can fly?”

  “Just get me to the pilot’s seat.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Gulf of Mexico

  ON Candy Man’s big monitor, readouts from communications satellites in orbit around the Earth tiled up in overlapping windows. Tapping a key, he brought up the file for the Russian RSCC Express-AM33 telecommunications satellite, the bird Skarda would be using in Crimea to connect to the Stealth.

  The signal was weak and flickering.

  Then it stopped altogether.

  ___

  Mount Tavrida

  Stepping out into the frigid air, Tomilin looked up at the stump of the shattered satellite dish on the fortress roof. Silently he cursed Rachel. The technicians had just finalized the link between the Roman-Kosh satellite and Tavrida when she began her attack. But the thought brought a confident smile to his face. Maybe the bitch had blown up the computer room, but he couldn’t be stopped that easily. There was a laptop on the Challenger. From there he could access the dish on Roman-Kosh and fire the laser into the Arctic Ocean.

  Checking the magazine of the AK-47 he had snatched up, he headed east, hurrying along the shelter of the exterior wall, listening to the crackle of rifle fire in the distance. Ahead the wall turned south. Jogging up, he stopped, peering around the corner. Without a coat or gloves, he was shivering now, his teeth chattering. From here he could see the twisted wreckage of the Mi-25’s, still gushing flame and smoke, mingled with the ruins of the shattered exterior wall. Some of the fighting had moved outside as men raced out through the breach, firing their weapons. A grenade exploded, sending two Atlanteans pinwheeling through the air.

  Then through the ruptured wall he saw David Charbonnet appear, sweeping his SCAR at the enemy before he ducked into the cover of an outcrop of snow-covered rocks. With swift appraisal Tomilin surveyed the open ground between his position and Charbonnet. It would be suicide to make a run for it. But to his left ran a patch of uneven ground upthrust with jagged boulders.

  Crouching low, he darted for the shelter of the nearest rock.

  ___

  With Flinders running point in front of him, Skarda staggered along the length of the loading dock, the burden of April’s weight heavy on his shoulders. A nauseating dizziness threatened to overpower him, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving. Through the open door he could see the huge, twin-rotored Chinook squatting on its helipad, its metal skin dancing with warm reflections from the storeroom lights. The aft cargo ramp was still lowered.

  Breaking out into the open, they crunched through a snow drift and moved up the ramp, their boots clanging out metallic echoes on the floor of the main cabin. He carried April along the narrow space between twin rows of canvas-backed seats. At the cockpit door he helped her ease into the pilot’s seat. In the frigid darkness her face was a pale oval.

  “Can you make it?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make it. Get the wingpacks!”

  With that she turned her back to him and started the firing sequence for the engines.

  But he was worried. She looked like she was going to pass out. He turned and raced off for the rocks.

  Within three minutes he was back, dragging the flying wings behind him. Flinders, now wearing a bulky parka she’d found in a storage locker, raced down the ramp, grabbing one as the Chinook’s big turbine engines whined into life, growing louder as they warmed up. Together they hauled the wingpacks into the cabin.

  Skarda ran up to the cockpit. “How long?”

  April kept her eyes fixed on the instrument panel. Her face had regained some of its color now, but he knew she was working on pure adrenaline. “Another minute of warm-up, then let’s give him seven minutes.”

  “Okay.” He have her a thumbs-up. Taking out his Stealth, he typed in a message to Candy Man: “Target these coordinates in seven minutes.”

  He hit the “Send” button.

  The screen read: “NO SATELLITE SIGNAL.”

  He tried again.

  Same message.

  They had to go now, Candy Man or not. There was no choice.

  Racing to the open ramp, he programmed the Stealth for autosend. Then he rooted through a storage locker until he found a hammer and smashed a jagged hole in the nearest porthole. Clearing away the glass, he jammed the Stealth in between the two shattered panes of the double-glass window. The smartphone would keep trying to send the message over and over until the battery was exhausted.

  Grabbing a parka, he found a knife and cut out long strips of polyester from the back. In his ears the roar of the engines grew louder, rattling the fuselage as the rotor blades began to spin.

  Flinders helped him strap into his wingpack.

  “We’re not that high, so we won’t need the helmets to breathe,” he told her. “But the wind’s going to be brutal. And cold. So you take my helmet.”

  He fitted the helmet over her head.

  Then he reached around the small of her back and dragged her next to him so they were face-to-face. With first one hand and then the other she lashed her legs to his with two of the strips.

  Her face was next to his. Through the helmet’s visor she stared into his eyes and smiled. “And you said you weren’t ready.”

  He laughed. “When we jump, throw your arms around my neck and hang on.”

  “Don’t worry!”

  The hum of hydraulics came to his ears. He looked up, seeing the ramp closing shut as the Chinook lifted from the helipad.

  Then the helicopter rocked as an explosion blasted the cockpit.

  ___

  Tomilin’s shoes broke through a crust of snow as he crouch-ran to the shadow of another boulder. From this position he could catch a glimpse of Charbonnet, firing from the shelter of his own rock.

  Carefully aiming the AK-47, Tomilin squeezed off a single shot, chipping off flakes of stone about five feet above the other man’ head.

  Instantly Charbonnet whipped around, bringing his rifle to bear.

  Throwing out his hands to both sides, Tomilin dropped the rifle, rising up a little to let Charbonnet see him. The younger man’s teeth flashed. With an exaggerated motion Tomilin pointed at the runway.

  Charbonnet nodded.

  ___

  Gulf of Mexico

  Candy Man brought up a schematic of the DRO satellite hovering over the North Pole. He’d already hacked into the satellite’s systems, but the password still eluded him.

  At least the laser hadn’t fired.

  On the bottom of his screen the password cracker ripped through billions of keys. He’d already gone through the hashes on his rainbow tables without a hit.

  A signal beeped.

  He glanced down at the screen: “KEY FOUND”.

  Accessing the satellite data link, he tapped a key. A password box popped up. He typed in a string of characters and numbers and hit the enter key.

  “ACCESS GRANTED”.

  He was in!

  Now the firing codes.

  With his teeth he tore the wrapper from a Dove bar and gnawed off a huge bite.

  ___

  Mount Tavrida

  When the grenade exploded, April ducked instinctively, but the Chinook’s bullet-resistant glass blocked the hail
of steel fragments. A churning column of black smoke obscured her vision.

  Whipping her head around, she yelled out to Skarda. “What’s going on?”

  Looking out through the narrowing gap in the aft ramp, Skarda stared in disbelief.

  Silhouetted by the light from the loading dock, Jaz’s grisly figure staggered toward them, her right hand clutching a second grenade.