by English, Ben
Alonzo turned the corner and came face-to-face with the huge Chinese in the Saville Row suit, standing there, silently, in the dark. Before Alonzo could bring his machine gun around he found himself lifted in one oversized, manicured fist. The man’s other hand neatly covered the grip of the MP-5, and Alonzo winced as the frowning man tore it from him. Breath hissing from between clenched teeth, he groped blindly for his other gun, but felt that hand also immobilized.
“Roaches, capering in the dark,” Michael whispered, squeezing Alonzo up against a support. He began grinding the air out of the little man.
Then Michael bellowed as Alonzo’s free hand rammed a combat knife hilt-deep into his elbow. The razor ridges on the blade’s spine cut as well through flesh as they did the expensive fabric of the suit.
Alonzo writhed out of the weakening grasp and dodged to the side as his opponent surged, growling, after him. Backpedaling, he breathed in as fully as he was able. His chest ached hideously where Michael had pressed his knuckles, though he cut the pain off before it reached his face. Michael slowed, favoring his wounded arm, eyes riveted on Alonzo. The knife still stuck horrifically from his extremity.
If the man’s abilities had any roots whatsoever in the old Soviet doctrines, this was not going to be easy. Spetznatz hand-to-hand training was never completed until the student was able to deliver over one hundred and fifty potentially lethal blows in under a minute.
Both men circled sinuously around the room, measuring, judging, defining. The battle was joined.
Ian noted the dumbfounded look on each face in the squad as the D-11 men filtered into the vault and took their first look at the machine. No one was quite sure how to proceed.
“How do we get down to it, then?” asked the lead man. He had to shout over the grating din which echoed all about them. It was as though they’d entered the nightmare heart of a colony of demon wasps.
The single massive tube extending through the ceiling, which had been glossy before, now shone pure white, and Ian saw the inner core had turned a hellish gold-red. The indistinct, wraithlike shapes within were all but beating themselves to pieces. “I think we’d better leave,” he said.
Another tremor began, prompting the men to clutch at the platform railing. The crystal core abruptly went from gold-red to pure white, accompanied by an infernal shrieking wail, as if something unearthly were being racked with unbearable pain. The officers nearest Ian began backing toward the door. The walls and other surfaces shivered all around them. A terrible crashing preceded the growing network of luminous cracks suddenly crisscrossing the walls and ceiling. “Back!” the commander shouted needlessly. His other words were drowned out by a tumultuous rending peal, a thunderclap of solid cement.
Ian shoved men ahead of himself as he ran. Raines’ property was shaking itself to dust.
Vibrations passed up from the steel floor through Miklos’ boots as the helicopter engine warmed. Miklos sat next to Raines in a cushioned seat of the Sikorsky and considered the digital sweep of numbers on the other man’s computer screen. The Hradek program was operating exactly as the tests at Rockwell Island predicted. The palmtop was shielded, like the systems in the helicopter, to withstand certain microwave frequencies. Hradek would not disable their technology.
In one corner of the miniature screen, a colorless CCD-type video rotated through the various approaches to the hanger. Raines could continue monitoring the security cameras and access any of the building’s programs as long as they were within 12 kilometers of the Tower. As Miklos understood it, every component of the maser was preprogrammed and functioned perfectly without the input of the creator, but Raines seemed to enjoy the ringside seat that his computer provided to each process. Either he would execute the final command from the helicopter as they left the city, or allow the maser to activate on its own.
Miklos regretted they hadn’t been able to televise the mock demands they’d prepared, set to broadcast one minute before CNN would televise the footage of the princess killing everyone on the steps of Buckingham Palace. He’d been forced to endure the presence of the diminutive, fascist motion picture director for nothing, not even the pleasure of killing the man. Nothing to be done about that now.
An assistant approached the open cargo door. “Everything is done, sir. Computer records are clean and the hard copies of all your personal records in London have been destroyed as well.”
Raines nodded. “Very good.” He painstakingly lit a cigarette. He flicked his lighter shut, then leaned forward abruptly, staring at the tiny video screen on his computer. He pressed a series of keys, frowning.
Miklos regarded his employer intently. Was this a trace of dismay? Raines turned to him. “Flynn is coming.” He spoke in a soft, distant voice, cool, absent of all emotion but amusement. Almost as if he were trying to encourage or reassure Miklos.
“Who?”
“Jack Flynn. I saw him a moment ago. He’s coming here to stop us.”
“Same name as the American actor? What—” This was absurd. The older man seemed on the verge of giddiness, though he remained quiet.
Raines continued, still speaking gently, the damned sly Cheshire grin unearthly beneath his dead eyes.
“Alert your men.” He exited the helicopter, engrossed in the video streaming through his computer.
Miklos joined him. “Tovik!” he barked. He looked to Raines, finding the man grinning expectantly and looking up at the storage loft on the opposite side of the helicopter from where they’d descended. A brief yell, and then a shriek of mismatched metal giving way heralded the appearance of two struggling figures.
Alonzo hit the drywall with his shoulder, and let his momentum carry him all the way through to the other side. The shallow laceration on the underside of his arm opened up again, and he was bleeding from at least three other minor cuts and abrasions. Alonzo grunted as he landed next to a loose stack of short, narrow beams. He only hoped he didn’t look as bad as the raging behemoth who barreled after him through the shards of drywall. Michael’s expensive suit hadn’t proven an adequate defense when Alonzo threw a bucket of nails in his face. One eye had swollen completely shut.
The huge man continued past Alonzo, snatching a thin beam from the pile. Alonzo twisted himself to his feet, slapping the end of one of the thick stakes so the other end flipped over in the air and into his waiting palm.
Though their staves were equal, the Chinese had a longer reach, and pressed his advantage. Alonzo backed away along the edge of the loft, doing his best to avoid meeting Michael’s massive swings and blocking two-handedly when he was forced to. Each time the rods met Alonzo’s entire frame quivered. He wouldn’t be able to take much more of this.
As each man below turned towards the opposite loft, Jack adjusted his grip around the Glock. Raines stood barely twenty feet away, the back of his head a ripe target against the dark metal of the helicopter’s hull. Jack took a deep breath as he lined up his front and rear sights, then paused, recognizing his friend’s pained breathing.
Michael battered Al back; pursued him around a stack of sawhorses, then kicked the entire mass at him, closing in immediately with the staff. Though he returned each blow with his own, Jack could tell Alonzo was tiring in the deadly, whirling pas-de-deux.
The others in the room stood watching, nervously idle. Jack lined his sights with Raine’s skull. Logic, strategy, hell, any and all his training screamed for him to pull the trigger and end Alex Raines. Cut off the head and the body will fall. Remove the leader and you diminish the whole.
Alonzo gasped in exertion. Michael’s tattered suit made an easy target. Raines stood below, rapt with concentration, all senses turned towards the unfolding action.
Cut off the head and the body will fall.
Your friend will die unless you move now, Jack.
Bright Wings
Miklos spun as four rapid shots rang out in the enclosed space of the vault. An American actor, sheathed in a dark jacket, leaped from the rail-less st
orage space and jumped towards them, touching down only briefly on a stack of drywall powder, then soaring again, somersaulting over the heads of two of his men, aiming for Raines, who, for once, stood in shock.
An ammunition clip hit the floor beneath the loft even as Miklos grasped his weapon and interposed himself between his employer and the newcomer. The man twisted liquidly in the air, landing on his feet within reach of the three guards and backhanding one to the floor with a closed fist. He moved so fast, seizing the closest man’s gun and slamming him into the third. He dodged to one side and down, as if evading the bullets Miklos had not yet loosed, and came up with one of the MAC-10's.
Interesting. Miklos began to squeeze the trigger just as another quake clutched the Tower in a shivering grip. Everyone around him lost their feet, including the new man, and Miklos’ aim was ruined. Barrels of supplies crashed down from the loft. A long rack of power tools toppled to the floor as well, sending loose circle blades bouncing and chipping across the floor. Miklos alone remained standing.
He closed in on the fallen outsider as the tremors subsided, kicking the weapon from his hand. Such a temptation to take the other up by the throat, to break him apart with his bare hands. He could practically taste the blood fountaining and sluicing from the corpse.
Instead, as the newcomer began to move, Miklos stepped back and leveled his own machine pistol at the fellow’s head. A few of the other guards, shaken as much by the newcomer’s arrival as the shuddering floor, raised their weapons as well.
Miklos met the grim stare. “Think you’re faster than a speeding bullet, my friend?” he asked.
Alonzo countered, fell short, and used his momentum to push into Michael, kneeing the man in the groin and managing an elbow strike to his armpit. As the Chinese stumbled back, Alonzo continued forward, past his opponent, further away from the central hanger, and found himself in a corner room, without walls.
Why wouldn’t Michael fall? He’d been shot at least once, taken a grazing bullet across his back from whoever had fired. The larger man’s defense was becoming ragged; basic mistakes became more and more frequent, though for all the blood he’d lost, he seemed as powerful as ever. Even now, he drew himself up, grinning weirdly, the bright wooden stave a smear of lighter color across Alonzo’s clouding vision. The harder I strike, the stronger he becomes, like some sort of vampiric--
The cold wind snapped over his body, enlivening Alonzo as Michael suddenly pressed in, hammering from two angles at once. As the other’s guard fell, Alonzo was able to get in a half-dozen solid hits, but his opponent’s double-sided attack worked the inevitable.
Michael’s staff slipped past that of the smaller man. Alonzo’s scream nearly masked the crack of his breaking rib. He spun with the impact, and realized the motive behind his opponent’s reckless attack: beyond a thin sheet of plastic and five bare feet of plywood hung empty space.
Michael shouted incoherently and swung at Alonzo’s fingers. He managed to jerk them out of the way, but his staff went flying. Michael stood back, eyeing the cornered man.
Alonzo grimaced. There would be no Jack to pull him up from this drop. If there was only something he could–
–His opponent shuffled his feet.
Alonzo reacted without thinking, crouching to the floor as the other man’s foot ripped through the air over his head. Michael’s other foot lashed upward in a snap kick, and Alonzo dodged back and to the side, ribs on fire. It was just a matter of time, now. He couldn’t watch the other man’s feet forever, and even as the thought ran through his head, he felt his heels hang in space.
Michael laughed, bubbling through the blood on his lips. “Goodbye, cockroach.” As he rushed forward Alonzo crouched and let himself fall. The Chinese began another devastating lunge with the staff, and when it did not meet the expected resistance, he overbalanced and fell forward. Alonzo caught the rough edge of the roof, nearly dislocating his shoulder with the jolt. As he swung forward into the building, he felt more than saw the huge bodyguard sail past him, gasping with astonishment.
Alonzo hung there for a moment, arms and shoulders quickly numbing with pain. It seemed the simplest idea in the world to let go, to let the blithe darkness swallow him whole. It hurt so much.
Then, groaning, he levered himself slowly back up over the edge. He lay gasping for a long moment, his ribcage a shapeless, blinding fire against the cold, cold floor.
“I’m afraid you’re all out of allies, Mr. Flynn,” said the gaunt, smiling man in the white suit as he lit another cigarette.
Jack forced his face to remain expressionless; kept his eyes on Raines while his mind roamed the hanger, working furiously. He sat crosslegged with his hands on his head. The four remaining guards all watched from positions safely outside his reach, except for the gloating, pacing Miklos. As he walked he adjusted the angle of his machine pistol accordingly, keeping it even with Jack’s head. He supposed it was some sort of terror technique. It was a good one. The empty blackness at the end of his MAC-10 seemed impossibly large.
“You mean this man here led the assault tonight? He was with them?” Miklos scoffed.
“Mr. Flynn apparently hires a cell of mercenaries from time to time to help with—certain humanitarian projects he fancies.”
Miklos sneered. “But he’s an actor. Hollywood. An American sham.”
“That’s just my day job.” Jack said amicably. It was bloody hard to concentrate with that gun a few inches from his face. He had their attention, however, and Raines grinned again. How can one man smile and show so many teeth?
The Albanian terrorist was the real professional, he realized. The man would have already shot him if Raines hadn’t desired a diversion as the last few men returned. Three men in flight suits approached dispassionately and entered the helicopter. The metallic tap-click-tap of their steel briefcases against the zippers on their flight suits sounded like three misaligned clocks ticking. If diverting Raines would buy him a few minutes—
“What’s that down in your basement, Alex? Looks like a giant lava lamp.”
“A bit more than that, I’m afraid.” He chortled good-naturedly. “Would you like to see exactly what it does?”
Jack looked him dead in the eye. “You built a maser.”
Perversely, this seemed to entertain Raines even further. He finished his cigarette and spoke. His voice was crystal clear. “Lightning is an amazing thing, Flynn. Pure chaos.
“When I was a teenager, growing up on the unfashionable side of the old Iron Curtain,” he continued, “I saw a man, a political prisoner, tortured and cut into little pieces by electricity in my parent’s laboratory. Fascinating. Sterile–not a drop of blood, as all the bits were instantly cauterized. My mother and father were quite horrified, you can imagine. They’d simply followed an eighty-year-old recipe left behind by another scientist, one who’d managed to harness more raw power during his life than any other man ever has, living or otherwise.”
“Nikola Tesla,” said Jack.
Raines looked up, surprised. “Tesla.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know what happens if you pump enough energy into a steel rod? It magnetizes, yes, but as it continues to increase in power, you can set up an electromagnetic resonance that gives you even more power--”
Jack cut him off “You’re talking about the photoelectric effect. Are you saying this Tower is some kind of photovoltaic cell?”
Raines mouth twitched. “The device does considerably more than convert light into electrical energy. Tesla found a way to span the entire spectrum, produce so much more in terms of frequency.”
“So the reaction gives off energy. Starts simple enough, but eventually you pass upwards through the visible light spectrum and into ultraviolet light, then eventually x-rays, then eventually—”
Raines’ dead eyes gleamed in the light. “The raw power rippling off breaks things on a molecular level. Molecular bonds separate, atoms crack away from one another. The very air itself turns to fire. Heat stress fractures e
verything into splinters, and the wildly fluctuating magnetic fields force everything further apart.
“Just like a nuclear bomb.” Jack’s blood turned icy.
“Exactly like a nuclear bomb. And this entire wonderful structure you see around us is nothing more than a giant electromagnetic resonator.”
Raines paused as another minor tremor rattled up through the building. Weak, it lasted considerably longer than any of the others. The lights dimmed. A look of puzzlement struck the older man’s face, and he withdrew a miniature computer.
“No, these levels are all wrong. Insufficient power is reaching the array.” The look of dismay that fell across his features had a curious effect on the Albanian. As Raines began typing and clicking one-handedly, Miklos stepped close and glanced rapidly between the small screen and his employer’s face, his own countenance shifting from boredom to annoyance to concern to frustration. The gun on Jack never wavered, though Miklos shifted his grip on it several times.
He doesn’t trust Raines, Jack realized. Before he could think how to turn this new fact into any kind of advantage, the lights completely failed, and darkness swarmed up around them on velvet wings.
Even as darkness fell, even before he realized instinct was taking over, Jack moved. Jerking his feet, he rolled backwards and shoved into the legs of a guard. Using the man’s bulk for resistance, he quickly stood, found the MAC-10, and fumbled for the trigger as his opponent blustered and flailed with his free arm.
A series of explosions just off the hangar entrance cast a reflected strobe effect through the room. Miklos, now a silhouette against the interior cockpit lights, reeled back, pushing Raines with him toward the helicopter. He kept his weapon close.