Williams smiled. “Of course, Colonel. As a token of my commitment to ending this incident peacefully, I am prepared to release ten thousand people. All you have to do is organize the transport to get them off the station and they are yours. Naturally, you will do nothing that would jeopardize this goodwill gesture on my behalf.”
“I don’t have the authority to approve this. I will have to speak with General Sadir and President Martinez before agreeing to your demands.”
“That was to be expected. Colonel, I will give you one hour to meet these demands. If you do not, I will begin to kill the hostages in the station by opening all of the airlocks on a floor-by-floor basis until you do as I say.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“I know you will. Williams, out.” He looked up at the screen and remembered the men in the greenhouse. He waved over a rough-looking insurgent with a shaved head to his side. “Saya, take four men and head up to the arboretum. There are two human intruders up there. I want them brought back here alive. I don’t care if you wound them, just don’t kill them. Got it?”
Saya nodded, picked up his rifle and went to round up the men he would need.
“Sir, how long do you want to keep the comms lines open?” asked the man at the communications console.
Williams glanced down at his watch. “Another ten minutes should do it. If people down on Earth thought it was bad when the people trapped below deck called home, just wait until they can’t reach them anymore. Fear for their loved ones and anger at the government for allowing this to happen will be our greatest allies over the next few hours.”
What started as a trickle quickly turned into a flood as the people trapped below deck realized that their phones weren’t being jammed anymore. Tens of thousands of people rushed to call home to tell their loved ones what was happening. Within minutes, panicked relatives and friends swamped the government and military communication lines with calls demanding that they do something to release the hostages. The media was only minutes behind the tsunami of hysteria. Before long, crying loved ones were paraded before the cameras pleading with the federation president to give the insurgents what they wanted.
President Martinez ground his teeth while he watched the whole thing unfold from his secure bunker in the Swiss Alps. If the story had been kept under wraps for just another hour, he could have dealt with it. Now it had taken on a life of its own. His presidency hung in the balance. He couldn’t be seen to be giving into terrorists. Nor could he allow a quarter of a million people to die while the world watched.
Chapter 26
Tarina lay on the cold floor of the gymnasium with her hands over her head. Her heart was jackhammering away in her chest. Her terrified friends were in the same boat. The sudden and unexpected murder of half of the Chosen insurgents by their colleagues had taken everyone by surprise. The dead lay sprawled around the room. Blood flowed like rivers from their wounds.
“Everyone on your feet,” yelled a man with a thick Russian accent.
Tarina hesitantly rose. She moved over by Wendy and placed a hand on her arm, trying to reassure her.
Miguel walked into the room and looked into the faces of hostages. The look of fear made him smile. “I’m sorry, people, but things have changed. I want the station commander, a technician, and a computer specialist to move to one side.”
The major hesitated. He had a feeling about what was going to happen next and chose the two youngest people under his command. “Kyle and Lucy, step forward.”
The two young specialists shuffled their feet to the officer’s side.
“The rest of you will follow my men outside.”
“Why?” demanded Commander Roy.
“Because I don’t have the manpower to guard you anymore, that’s why.”
“God, no. They’re going to kill us,” moaned Wendy.
“No, wait,” yelled Angela in Kurgan, taking the room by surprise.
Miguel’s eyes narrowed. “Who taught you to speak Kurgan?”
“My name is not Angela, it is Kitan, and I am a citizen of the Kurgan Empire.”
“What of it?”
“If you have read the scriptures you would know that Kurgans don’t kill Kurgans.”
Miguel paused for a moment not sure to do. He bit his lip and looked over at his fellow conspirators. They were equally perplexed. None of them were true citizens of the Empire. All of their knowledge of the Empire, its language, culture, and religion came from the brainwashing they had received as children. He wasn’t even sure that he had ever read the Book of Kurgan.
Tarina stood still barely able to follow the conversation. Her Kurgan was rudimentary at best. Still, she could see the confusion in their captors’ faces; perhaps their fate wasn’t sealed.
“Take her,” snapped Miguel to one of his men.
A man walked forward pushing people aside to reach Angela. He reached out, grabbed her arm, and dragged her out of the crowd.
“Watch her closely,” ordered Miguel. “Now, Pavel, take the rest outside and deal with them.”
“No, please no!” cried a terrified woman.
“Move or I’ll shoot you here!” snarled the big Russian.
Another woman took hold of the petrified girl and pulled her to her side. With feet that felt as if they were made of lead, the people in the gym turned about and walked to the door.
Tarina’s mind was a blur. She was trying to see a way out of their predicament. Unfortunately, none of them were armed, and only she and Wendy had any combat experience. Their odds of survival were slim at best unless she could figure something out, and fast.
Up ahead, the front doors were pushed open and the snow and cold air blew inside. It was like the fingers of death reaching out for them.
Tarina resolved to die on her feet. She would wait until they were outside before making her move. She glanced over at Wendy and then over at the closest guard. Wendy got the hint and nodded her concurrence.
The bright lights from the roof of the building lit up the outside area.
Right away people started to pull up the collars on their coveralls to keep out the cold. Foolish, thought Tarina. What’s a little snow compared to your life?”
“Get in line,” snapped Pavel.
Tarina knew it was now or never. She turned on her heel to strike the man closest to her in the throat when Roy ran from the group and charged straight for the Russian. “Run!” she screamed as she ran forward.
Pavel pulled back on the trigger of his weapon. A burst of automatic fire hit Roy in the chest, tearing through her clothes and skin. Her bloodied body fell face-first onto the snow.
With a yell on her lips, Tarina shot her clenched fist into the nearest insurgent’s nose, shattering it. Instinctively, he reached up for his bloodied face. Tarina saw his hands move and yanked his rifle from his hands. To her right, Wendy tried the same move but only struck her opponent in the face. Still, it was enough. The operative staggered back on her feet and was cut down a split second later by a shot from Tarina’s weapon.
Pavel saw what was happening and turned his attention to the two pilots. He didn’t care who was between them. He let loose a long burst, cutting down several terrified technicians who were running to get out the way. Two other guards stepped forward and joined in.
Tarina felt a bullet whiz past her face. No matter how much it pained her, she knew there was nothing she could do for the rest of the people. They only had one gun against three. She turned, grabbed ahold of Wendy, and ran for the shadows.
“Come back here and die, you two bitches!” hollered Pavel as he lost sight of the escaping women in the snowstorm. He looked over at two of his men and said, “Get after them. Don’t come back until you have their heads to show me.”
“Yes, sir,” replied one of the guards. They quickly reloaded their rifles and jogged off in the direction the two pilots had run. Beneath their feet lay the murdered people from the station. In minutes, the snow would cover their remains, hiding
the crime from the outside world.
Chapter 27
Sheridan shed his survival suit in record time. He hoped the cover provided by the apple orchard they had hidden in would buy them some time. If the cameras had thermal capability, which he doubted, they would have stood out against the cooler background.
“I think I saw an elevator over to our left,” said Cole as he picked up his carbine and made sure that the safety was still on.
“On the base schematic, the control center is directly below us,” explained Sheridan. “I doubt we could shoot our way in there. So I say we go one more floor down and see if we can find a way to use the station’s mainframe to access the ops room’s computers to see if the virus is on the base. If it is, we can let Elba know where it is being stored, so she can deal with it.”
“And if it’s not?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
A rustling sound behind them made both men freeze in place. The sound grew closer. Sheridan cautiously turned around and brought up his weapon to fire when all of a sudden a young man in blue coveralls ran out the bushes with his hands in the air.
“For the love of God, please don’t shoot me,” pleaded the man.
Cole grabbed him by the collar, thrust the barrel of his weapon the man’s side, and forced him to his knees. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Private Colm Cunningham,” replied the man with an Irish accent.
“What are you doing up here, Private?” asked Sheridan.
“I was in the bathroom when the ops center was hijacked. When I saw those men rounding up all of the techs, I panicked and ran for my life. I hid in the bamboo field until I saw you come in through the airlock. I just knew you had to be station security and not one of them.”
Cole hauled Cunningham to his feet. “Well, mate, you’re right, we’re not insurgents but we’re not station security, either.”
Cunningham looked at the Marines with a troubled look in his eyes. “So who are you then?”
“Captain Michael Sheridan and Master Sergeant Cole,” said Sheridan. “We’re with the Marine Corps and that’s all you need to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you do up here?” asked Cole.
“I’m a computer technician.”
Sheridan asked, “Do know anything about the station’s mainframe?”
“Sure, lots . . . why?”
“Because that’s where we’re going next.”
Before the young tech could object, the lights in the greenhouse switched off. Right away red emergency lights came on, indicating where the exits were. The light from the moon shone in through the thick glass bathing everything in a silvery glow.
Cole threw Cunningham to the ground and dropped to one knee as Sheridan took cover behind a tree.
“What’s going on?” asked the scared private.
“Company’s coming,” replied Cole. “Keep your head down and your mouth shut and you might just come out of this alive.”
Sheridan switched on the thermal sight on his carbine and brought his weapon up to his shoulder. He looked through the scope, trying to see if he could spot anyone moving around in the shadows. He swung his carbine over when the door to an elevator slid open. With his finger pressed against the trigger, he waited for someone to appear. A couple of seconds passed before the doors closed. There was no one there . . . or was there? Something in his gut told him that they weren’t alone. On a hunch, he switched off his thermal sight and looked through his telescopic scope. At first he didn’t see their opponents, then ever so slowly, a man crept out from behind some machinery with his weapon at the ready. Sheridan took dead aim and pulled back on his carbine’s trigger. A three-round burst hit the man in the chest, sending him tumbling to the ground.
Sheridan dropped down and ran back from where he had been hiding and dove to the ground near Cole and the scared technician. “They’re wearing thermal stealth suits,” said Sheridan.
“Cheating bastards,” said Cole, turning off his weapon’s thermal sight. Designed to mask a person’s body heat, the suits made the wearer invisible to a person looking for them using a thermal imager. “How many of them did you see?”
“Only the one. But you can bet Harry won’t have sent only one man up here.”
“What do you say, Captain. Rather than be hunted, why don’t we take the fight to them?”
“My thoughts exactly,” replied Sheridan looking around. “You go left and I’ll go right, and we’ll meet up somewhere over by the elevator shaft.”
Cole pressed his hand onto Cunningham’s back. “Don’t move a muscle until this thing is over.”
The terrified private nodded and tried lying as flat as he could in the grass.
Like a pair of wraiths rising from the grave, Sheridan, and Cole got up and crept after their prey.
Saya bent down, placed a hand on the back of his dead comrade, and said a quick prayer for the man’s soul to join his ancestors in heaven. He stood up, brought up his rifle, and looked through his thermal scope trying to spot the man who had shot his friend. Lacking thermal suits, the two Marines would stand out like bright ghosts against the trees when they were spotted. Saya, however, hadn’t the patience to wait while his three other men tracked their adversaries down. He opened a pouch on his belt and brought out a small disc no larger than his hand. He flipped it over and pressed a button, turning it on. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it flying up into the air. When it was ten meters away, the outer shell flew off and a tiny dirigible inflated. Saya looked down at his watch and smiled when he saw the feed coming back from the miniature thermal camera built into the surveillance balloon. He moved his finger along the face of his watch until the drone was stationary over the forest. It didn’t take him long to spot three glowing shapes. One was not moving while the two others were creeping through the undergrowth trying to locate his men. He decided to ignore the one lying down and focus his attention on the other two.
He whispered into a mic built into his suit. “Jacobs, Rasil, you’ve got a man about fifty meters to your right. Huan, you’ve got one at your eleven o’clock. He’s closing in on you.”
“Roger, that,” replied Huan.
Saya got to his feet. He looked over to Huan and decide to help her track down and capture the man closest to her. He turned on his feet and sprinted to her side. After what had happened to his comrade, he wanted revenge, but Williams’ orders had been explicit and as a loyal Chosen warrior, he followed his orders.
Sheridan moved up behind the small hill that overlooked a slender, flowing river and took cover. He took a moment to look around and swore when he saw the drone floating above the treetops. He brought his carbine up, took aim, and fired off a burst at the balloon. Two of the three rounds fired went wide. However, one flew straight through the thin skin on the drone, deflating it. Without their eye in the sky, the odds for the Chosen agents had just dropped appreciably. Sheridan crawled back and quietly made his way toward a clump of palm trees. His eyes and ears worked overtime trying to detect his opponents in the shadows cast by the tall trees all around him.
A shot rang out.
Sheridan dove forward and landed behind a droid. He scrambled to get under cover when another burst of gunfire cut through the air, striking the side of the robot. Sheridan raised his head slightly and looked for the person who had fired on him. Through a gap in the trees, he spotted someone moving forward with their rifle tight in their shoulder. He waited a couple of seconds until the insurgent was less than fifty meters away before firing off a single shot into the person’s chest.
Saya watched in anger as Huan fell to the ground. He knew her wound was mortal. Although he had been in the military for a number of years, Saya could see that neither he nor his men were a match for the professional soldiers they were up against. Without his drone to track the humans, he felt blind. His mouth began to turn dry with fear. He backtracked and made his way out of the woods. He thought about ask
ing Williams for more men but decided that it would make him look weak in the eyes of his leader. Saya needed something to turn the fight in his favor. He looked over his shoulder at a group of stationary droids and grinned. He had found his answer.
Three hundred meters away, Saya’s two other men, Jacobs and Rasil, edged their way around a clump of rocks. A few seconds earlier they had spotted someone moving through the trees and were trying to get behind their prey.
“Cover me,” whispered Jacobs to his partner.
Rasil nodded and brought up his rifle.
As quiet as a cat, Jacobs walked forward scanning the ground in front of him for the man they had seen. His heart began to race when he saw a shape though his thermal sight taking cover behind some bushes beside a pond that glimmered in the moonlight. He flipped the selector switch on his rifle to automatic and pulled back on the trigger. A long burst of gunfire struck the man hiding in the bushes. Jacobs dashed forward, firing as he ran. He emptied a full magazine into his quarry before letting go of the trigger. He stopped at the body, pulled down his hood, and removed his combat glasses to get a good look at the man he had just killed. His stomach dropped when he saw that he had just shot at a canvas tarp. Jacobs dropped to one knee and yanked back the sheet to see a flare sputtering away on the ground.
His skin broke out in a cold sweat when he realized that he had walked into a trap. Jacobs spun about and looked behind him. His eyes widened when he saw Rasil’s body on the ground with a knife sticking out of his back. He reached for a fresh magazine on his belt. His fingers fumbled to grab hold of the magazine when he heard a twig snap somewhere off to his right. He panicked and dropped his rifle. Jacobs stood up and drew his pistol from its holster.
“Show yourself!” he yelled into the dark.
Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) Page 15