by Reece Hinze
A Heartbeat from Destruction
For Steve: Who opened the door.
For Pam: Who was sent by God.
Chapter I: The Incident
James Lasko gasped for air. He cursed himself for losing his hard fought conditioning to ride a desk. Overhead lights sparked on and off as he hustled down the abandoned hallway. Fire sprinklers had long ago soaked him to the bone, his expensive suit ruined. A cush job they said. Nine to five weekends off they said. Do the same thing you’re doing in the Army but work for the C.I.A. Get paid twice as much they said.
No more combat they said.
But somehow, as it had his entire life, trouble found him. Fallujah, Afghanistan, Pakistan…
Boom!
James covered his head instinctively as a deafening explosion rocked the hallway and sent a choking swirl of dust his way. He hadn’t thought much of the earlier blast which spilled his morning coffee on his T.P.S. reports, fresh out of the copier. He thought the rumble was an earth quake, not uncommon for this part of California, but then a much louder blast sounded, toppling over a huge bookshelf he kept near the window. His soldier’s instincts went on high alert. The concussion had shut down the power and engaged the emergency sprinklers.
During orientation, the desk jockey geniuses informed him no one, besides the authorized security firm, was allowed to carry weapons in the facility. You never need them until you need them he had said.
Hope that firm is worth the money, he had thought glancing out his window at the security kiosk on his first day.
As he had suspected, they were not.
This place is state of the art, smack in the middle of the Golden State. Whoever attacked it had balls. Balls enough to deal with any security firm bought at the lowest bid.
James mind reeled. He had to make it to the armory.
Besides the Dudes setting off explosives all over the place, fire was his biggest fear. Fire could be waiting behind any closed door, patiently ready to devour the very air he breathed. He turned down a dark hallway. Eerie flashes from a half-functioning emergency light allowed James to follow the signs leading to the armory. The damned thing better not be locked. At the armory, he half expected to see a pile of bullet ridden or fire charred bodies but when his legs finally delivered him to the cache of guns, all was quiet.
Suddenly, the glow of lights came from the opposite direction. James assumed the lights were held by soldiers, judging from their heavy stride, and ducked behind the corner of the hall and waited.
"Delta group in position," said a muffled voice. James risked a glance around the wall. The man, one of six, talked into his shoulder mounted radio. They wore black B.D.U.s, body armor, and gas masks.
And were armed to the teeth.
James had never seen them before. They weren’t gang bangers or raggedy religious extremists. These guys were pros.
Inaudible radio chatter.
"Copy that Colonel. Moving out.” A stocky man holding a huge machine gun, turned to his companions, ordered them to hold position, and moved down the hall in James’ direction. James’ heart beat out of his chest. He frantically searched for a place to hide. After a heartbeat of deliberation, he decided on a small metal cart piled high with papers and manila folders and held his breath as the boots thumped towards him. Somehow the man never saw him hiding behind the thin pieces of metal but in life you never see what you aren’t looking for.
James put his whole weight into a swift punch to the man’s throat, disarming and silencing him instantly. While the man struggled for breath, James snatched his rifle before it clanked loudly to the floor and pulled the sidearm from his leg holster and dragged him into the first door he could find. Row after row of cubicles lined the big room. Scattered paper, chairs, and other office equipment silently endured the bombardment of the emergency sprinklers. James ripped off the man’s tinted gas mask to find a middle aged black man staring at him angrily.
"Who are you?" James pointed his stolen pistol between the man’s eyes.
"I'm not telling you sh-." James broke a few of the man’s teeth before he could finish.
"You just told me you're American.” James had broken men before. “Who are you working for?” James roared. He bore hard into the man but the soldier just laughed. “Why are you here?"
Tough son of a bitch.
James summoned his deepest, darkest growl. "Tell me who you are working for or I'll rip off your head and shit down your neck!"
Instead of quaking in fear, the solider laughed even harder. Broken teeth and blood flew out of his mouth.
I haven’t gone that soft have I?
Frustrated by the man’s mocking laughter, James pistol whipped him hard. The soldier collapsed like a sack of potatoes. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his tongue lulled to the side. The black man’s soaked clothes were harder to strip then he thought. They were ill-fitting and smelled of rotten ass but by the time James stepped back into the hallway, he was no longer a desk jockey in soaked clothes but a mysterious soldier in soaked clothes.
James stowed the 9mm pistol into a well-worn thigh holster and shrugged the big machine gun onto his shoulder. A voice boomed on his shoulder mounted radio. James heart leapt at the unexpected sound. “All units proceed to building A.” The noise was hugely loud, echoing through the abandoned hallway. James had considered “asking for orders” but had immediately dismissed the idea. The booming voice was just the break he was looking for.
A few paces down the hallway took him to a flight of stairs, normally packed at this time of day with hurried people heading towards the parking garage to get a jump on the commute, now all but abandoned and dark. James clicked the grip mounted flashlight on his machine gun. He walked to the top level of the building, where an all glass breezeway linked the building that housed his office, building “B”, and the R&D building, building “A”.
James rarely found a reason to venture to this part of the facility, and less of a reason to look outside, but today the view from the glass-lined breezeway allowed him to put the pieces of the attack together. He had a clear view of the gate house, where he showed his I.D. to a pimple faced kid every day. It exhumed plumes of dark smoke. Further inside a security station, belched smoke at the fork in the road between his office and the A building.
Two explosions.
James frowned. That’s the way I would have done it too. He hustled down the breezeway. After walking through the door to “A” building, he lost his way almost immediately. After wondering for what seemed a long while, muted gunfire erupted from deeper in the building and James jogged that direction, down an endless hall with endless doors creatively titled room “A”, room “B”, and so on.
After a while, he feared he was lost again. But as he turned a corner, his balls caught in his throat. Twenty soldiers, clad in black with the same black gas masks he had on, lined a wide lunch room. One of the soldiers noticed him enter. As if shot off by a rocket, the man jumped towards James screaming, "What are you waiting for solider? Get in goddamn position!"
James did as he the man said and hustled past turned over tables and abandoned lunches to a side of the vast room near a group of other soldiers, hoping he was “in position.” Apparently he was because the man turned his attention elsewhere.
This was a break room unlike any James had seen before. Even as a government employee himself, he wondered how his tax dollars were being spent. The place must have sat over a hundred with microwaves enough to prepare all of their brown bag lunches at once. Where he entered, several hallways converged together while at the other, a huge locked metal bay
door dominated the wall.
A table toppled over, crashing loudly to its side. Several terrified security personnel peered heads over a thin wooden table in a huddled corner of the break room. They aimed pathetically small pistols at the platoon of menacing soldiers all armed to the teeth. A tall man, wearing a gasmask and a long black military duster that swished softly against the tile, casually called out to them as he walked. "Lower your weapons and none of you shall die needlessly." He spoke with a Cajun twist on the edge of his lips. It was the man from the radio. Unreachable recognition gnawed at James. He knew this man, that voice.
The security officers, who were more like overweight rent-a-cops, immediately tossed their pistols aside and threw their hands in the air. “Don’t shoot,” one man pleaded. “I have a newborn baby and wife at home.” James couldn’t see the Cajun’s face but he was sure the man rolled his eyes. The black clad soldiers had the group hog tied in seconds.
"What is the door code?" The Cajun asked as he distractedly picked lent off of his coat. After a long moment, he sighed and nodded. A stocky solider backhanded a sweaty bald man across the face. The bald man whimpered. "The door code?" The Cajun repeated. The rent-a-cop spilled his guts without another moment’s hesitation.
"Thank you sir," the Cajun said politely, as if the man had volunteered the information willingly. He turned to address his soldiers. "Corporal, open that door. Sergeant," a tall strong man that looked as if he shit steel bricks jogged over. "Kill them."
Kill them?
James prayed the man would disobey and for a heartbeat, it seemed as if he would but echoing gunshots left no doubt. One bullet per man. Efficient and brutal. Their slumped bodies, hands still bound, littered the break room floor. A pool of blood oozed slowly over the bullet chipped tile.
"We're in," a man shouted. He stood at a keypad near the big double doors.
"Open the doors. Deploy the gas." The Cajun seemed almost bored with the matter.
The men did as their commander bade and James did his best to keep up. Two men covered the blast doors with guns and as they crept open, two more tossed smoking grenades inside. The soldiers were content to let their gas do its work and after a long moment, they entered. James, a man who had trained soldiers and led them in battle, couldn’t help but be impressed by the group’s efficiency.
When James passed the threshold into the other room, he scarcely believed his eyes. The vault opened onto some sort of huge laboratory. Thousands of glass tubes filled with strange liquids filled every counter top. He walked past a twirling tube suspended over a Bunsen burner. Dark red liquid bubbled violently.
Men and women lay everywhere, unconscious. Some wore the white coats of scientists while others lay in suit and tie. James stepped over one man, his clipboard scattered a few feet away. He saw the claw marks the man scratched down his own throat as the choking gas invaded his lungs. Grimaced and panicked eyes stared blankly at James as he passed the bodies. But the soldiers seemed uninterested in it all, walking directly towards another door at the end of the room. This door was similar to the one they just breached but much larger, thicker, and displaying a large red bio hazard symbol. The Cajun in the black duster snatched a keycard from the body of a white coated scientists and swiped it near the door.
James shuffled along acting casual and confident like the others. The lights turned off. The soldiers flicked on their flashlights without missing a beat. The Cajun looked at his watch and shook his head. "So predictable," he said, taking off his gas mask and smiling.
James’ heart caught in his throat as he saw the man’s face. He knew he recognized that voice. The soldiers followed their leader’s example and took their masks off. The big one who murdered the guards had a grisly scar running down his cheek. There was a dark man who had an easy going smile dancing across his lips and many more, and all of whom right at him. If James took his mask off they would recognize him.
His hands gripped his stolen rifle tighter. Everyone was bare faced except him. The tension in the air was thick enough to stir.
"Corporal, load the charges," the Cajun ordered and swung his attention towards James. The man had eyes that could instantly unsettle the hardest of men. He always had. The smiling black man rattled off a yes sir and hustled to the door, pulling several plastic explosives from his pack. "Sir," the Cajun addressed James directly now. "You have five seconds to drop that rifle before a platoon of the world’s finest soldiers rips you to shreds."
The huge lab suddenly felt very small, his own breathing very loud. Almost forty hungry looking shadows surrounded him. Lasers danced across his chest. A few aimed their rifles at his head, fingers on the trigger, and others simply stared, stone faced. Desperate decisions ran through James’ mind but he knew the truth. If he didn't obey the command of the Cajun, he had roughly two heartbeats left on this earth.
Where there is life, there is hope.
His rifle clattered as he dropped it to the floor.
"Predictable," the Cajun said with a crooked smile. He was a striking figure in all black. His uniform was immaculate. The olive leaves of a Colonel decorated his duster’s collar. Not a hair was out of place on his perfectly trimmed head. His teeth were as white as bleached bone. He leaned on one leg, casually tapping a holstered pistol with a gloved hand while delicately twisting his long mustache with the other. He tapped once a second, keeping perfect timing.
"30 seconds colonel," the black man shouted as he ran for cover.
"Get on your knees," the Cajun commanded James but even a hopelessly outnumbered, outmuscled, and outgunned solider has pride. James refused for all of two seconds until the big man with the scar on his face slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of his skull. Pain shot down his spine like a bolt of lightning. The blow doubled him over. His blurry eyes swam and circled as his knees slammed into the tile floor.
He was still reeling when the concussion of the explosion hit him.
“Take off his mask,” the Cajun ordered, seemingly undaunted by the massive explosion directly behind him. The big man grabbed James by the throat, forcing him painfully backwards, and ripped the mask off of his head. There was silence for a moment. The Cajun laughed. He laughed hard and long, an odd sound that made even his own men shuffle uncomfortably.
“The Great James Lasko,” the Cajun said with a mocking bow. “An honor to see you again old friend.”
“Devreaux,” James growled. “I thought I smelled your foul stench.”
“Colonel Fennimore Devreaux now Captain,” he corrected.
“Colonel? In what army? What are you doing here Devreaux?”
The Cajun ignored his questioning and walked toward him keeping time with his finger on his pistol. “The art of war,” he said vaguely. “I knew that if I focused on one objective, the other would present itself willingly enough.” He pointed a gloved hand behind him. “The primary objective being what lies just beyond that doorway. The secondary being...”
The Cajun’s mocking eyes stared at James’… Through James.
The lump in James’ throat grew larger.
“You,” he said, pointing a laughing finger at James.
“Retrieve the package,” he ordered loudly and four men scrambled through the dark hole in the wall. “Making the enemy do as you wish. That is the supreme art of war... You taught me that.”
“All you know is butchery and cruelty,” James spat.
The smile on the Colonel’s face froze. He tapped his pistol once with each passing second. James stared at it. The low hanging holster held an immaculately engraved, .45 caliber handgun. As fast as a bolt of lightning, the Cajun drew and fired a round from the hip. It tore through James’ shoulder spattering wall behind with a fine mist of red.
Soldiers appeared from behind the ruined door, one carrying a metal briefcase. “The package is secure,” a man shouted. The Colonel didn’t seem to notice. He stared bug eyed at James.
“It’s a 1911,” he said, walking towards James. His tall boots
clicked on the tile. “.45 caliber. Engraved with a grim reaper. It was given to me as a gift.”
James writhed around on the floor in pain.
“A memento to celebrate a bonding through the fellowship of arms.”
“Colonel,” the big man said.
“You don’t recognize it?” The Cajun crouched low shoved the barrel into James’ mouth, his sharp eyes glazed over in pleasure. “You don’t recognize the pistol you gave me?”
“Colonel,” the big man said, more forcefully this time.
Devreaux flinched, looking back at the big man and seemingly surprised. “Prepare for evac,” the Cajun ordered, combing a stray hair back into place.
“Corporal,” Devreaux barked.
“Yes sir.”
“Bag him. He’s coming with us.”
Chapter II: Old Sins
Sometime later…
Paul Slaughter shed the faded orange jumpsuit of Bear County Corrections like a butterfly shedding its cocoon. The tattered jeans and greasy old t-shirt he was arrested in, all those years ago, felt like silk on his skin. His immense black beard, now sprinkled with tendrils of white, hung past his broad chest. He wore his hair, as he had when he was a boy, buzzed short. Paul looked around the tiny cage that had served as his home for so many years, his paltry belongings fitting into a single cardboard box on the naked pinstriped mattress.
So much time wasted. So much life.
Echoing footsteps delivered his cell block’s new-blood correction officer. “Let’s go Slaughter,” he commanded, placing his hand around Paul’s elbow without thinking much of it. After all, that’s what C.O.s do, right?
God damn newbie.
The boy’s fingers didn’t even reach around half of Paul’s tattooed bicep. Paul, who towered well over six feet, slowly tilted his head towards the kid like a tank’s rotating gun turret. He looked at him through his thick, dark framed glasses. Like his hair, the big black frames were a style he stuck with since boyhood. Paul shirked his elbow away, causing the kid to recoil in shock. He boomed each syllable. “Get your fucking hands off me, son. I’m a free man effective today I’ve taken my last order from Bear County.”