by Justin Bell
“We’re getting there,” Gerard said.
“And what about the rest of the family?” Lydia asked.
“What about them?” Jodi replied, turning toward her.
“How will they find us? When are we all going to be together again?”
“We left word with those we left behind at the warehouse,” Jodi said. “Asked them to stay there and wait for us. We’ll come back after the Summit and we’ll all be together once again.”
Lydia smiled, leaning back in her seat. This seemed to satisfy her. “When was the last time you spoke with them?” she asked.
“Directly?” Jodi asked. “It’s been a very long time, dear. But we have friends who have. We have people watching out for them.”
“Good.”
Jodi looked over at Gerard, who smiled back at her. He offered his hand and she took it, their fingers intertwining as the road and trees passed by them in blurring streaks of pale green and a dark, chalkboard gray.
***
Brad gritted his teeth as the truck charged over the road, the tires crashing and slamming over the lumps of misshapen pavement underneath the truck. There were no creature comforts in the back of the box truck. It was as it sounded, a plain square box, metal walls bolted together over a wooden floor, self-contained and echoing a dull, consistent roar of noise.
The boy was pinned in the corner, knees pulled up to his chest, his hands draped over them. They hadn’t tied him up when they threw him in this particular box truck, but there were several Ironclad operatives inside, all holding onto taut leather strap handholds tacked up throughout the rear compartment of the truck.
Each of the operatives had an M4A1 automatic slung over their shoulder in a strap cinched tight, leaving them one hand free to hold on as the truck barreled down the curving street. Brad looked from gunman to gunman, silently proud that he had somehow warranted four commandos just to guard him in this small, enclosed space. There was no device in this truck, no strange contraptions, so it seemed to him that if there was a bomb, and he was certain there was, it must have been in the other truck. There were two trucks and a Humvee that he saw, and he hoped that Tamar had seen them, too. Things had come together so quickly after he’d been captured, and he knew if Tamar went to get help, by the time they got there, the convoy was long gone. Long gone and on its way to the First National Summit. On its way to detonate yet another low yield nuclear device.
Low enough yield to be contained in a small housing in the back of a box truck, but a high enough yield to wipe out fifty square miles in one shot. Fifty square miles, including two delivery trucks. Fifty square miles including him.
Was that what the Kruellers were going to do? Keep him locked in this truck to be incinerated when the device detonated while they jumped in the Humvee and took off for the hills?
“I can’t believe Max is related to these people,” he said quietly.
“What was that?” one of the gunmen asked, glaring over at him. “What did you say, little boy?”
Brad shook his head. “Nothing important.”
The road they drove on pitched sharply right, and he had to adjust his lean as the truck pulled the sharp corner. He could have sworn the two right tires left the ground as it did. A quick squeal of rubber on road belted from the rear right of the vehicle, but it corrected itself and pushed on forward.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Brad asked, knowing full well he’d never get an answer.
“Just shut up and sit there,” the gunman barked back.
“Where are all those Korean guys?”
“What did I tell you?” the gunman hissed.
“Are they allowed to stay back and stay alive while all you guys end up in the epicenter? That’s some cold stuff right there, man.”
The gunman sneered at him. “I said shut up, kid, or we’ll put a bullet in you before the nuke burns your skin from your bones. Is that what you want?”
Brad shrugged, legitimately not sure if he really did want that or not. He shook that thought off. It had been a rough road to get to this point. A long and hard struggle, but he’d made it this far, it wasn’t in his nature to quit now. As far as he’d come, he intended to stick it through to the end. Once everything was over he’d have to figure out where he stood with the Frasers and what he might do next. They wouldn’t be happy about what he had done, and he had to prepare himself for those consequences. They’d done a lot for him over the past few months, and he owed them a measure of thanks for that, but he knew their kids had to come first. He wasn’t sure there was room for him in their increasingly expanding group.
Brad closed his eyes and pictured the Frasers and their group. He could see them all clearly in his mind’s eye. Angel, the mechanic. Rebecca, the FBI tough guy. Tamar the martial artist, Phil the strategist and Winnie the one who could sneak in and spy on just about anyone. Even Max had found his place as a soldier in the Fraser army, it had come almost naturally to him.
Where did that leave Brad? What role could he possibly fill in this new dynamic? “The friend?”
He was a third wheel no matter how he looked at it, especially once Greer was gone. He didn’t fit, and he was finally starting to accept that.
But he would see this through. He had to see this through, for his parents’ sake. And for Clancy’s.
As his eyes pressed closed, the threat of sleep clawed at his mind, snaking into his brain and threatening to drag him into slumber. Way off in the distance, the back roads of Delaware rumbled under the tires of the convoy.
***
“Slow it down, Hyun Ki, they’re taking that turn pretty sharp.” Rita Kramer leaned forward in the passenger seat of the hatchback, holding on to the handle mounted above the passenger window.
Park glanced over at her, a cocky smile on his face. “You always a back-seat driver, Rita? I make you uncomfortable?”
Rita’s fingers tightened, her knuckles pulling white against the curved surface of the handle. “I’m fine, I just would rather not die before we get to the right spot, okay?”
“You planning on dying once we make it there?”
“Not by a long shot.”
“Good,” Hyun Ki replied, “me neither.”
Up ahead the second truck leaned to its left as it made the turn, but navigated it smoothly, shifting in the pale glow of the dawn light. Hyun Ki slowed slightly, but zipped around the corner a little faster than Rita was comfortable with and she sucked in a breath, squeezing her fingers even more tightly around the handle.
“Last I heard, Washington isn’t going anywhere,” Rita said.
“Maybe not yet,” Park replied. “Give it a couple of hours.”
“Hopefully longer than that. We need time to get far, far away.”
Park smirked and looked over at her. “Oh you’re not a captain going down with the ship?”
“Uhhhh, no. That was never part of the plan. Never once.”
Park turned back toward the road, keeping the trucks in view. He looked out Rita’s window at the green Humvee keeping pace with them.
“So what is the plan exactly?” he asked. “I mean, I know my role. My country’s role. As close as we’ve gotten, you’ve never really opened up completely about how you got where you are.”
“It’s not all that complicated,” Rita replied. “I wasn’t always on this side of the fence. I helped start the task force after the incident. I was one of the white hats back in the day.”
“So what happened?”
Rita glanced over at him. “You know what happened,” she said quietly.
“I swept you off your feet?” Park asked with a wink.
“Well, if you remember, I was already talking to Green before we even met. It started out as an investigation but as I peeled the layers away, I started to get a feel for the how’s and why’s.”
“And Green’s crazy views won you over?”
“Green’s ideas of a new, individually based system of government won me over.”
“Why, because you’d be the one in charge?”
Rita didn’t answer. She never liked to admit out loud that it was all a power play, even though she knew, deep down, that it was. To everyone else, she had done it for the people. To wrest away the anchors of this new style of corporate democracy and return control of the country to the people. In the annals of history, that’s what she wanted it to say.
But at the end of the day she’d have been lying to herself if she said that her sitting on top of the leadership structure after returning the power to the people wasn’t at least somewhat appealing.
Maybe very appealing.
Maybe the most appealing thing of all.
“What makes you think I’d be in charge?” she asked.
Park chuckled. “Call it a hunch, I suppose, sweetheart.”
“You think you know me so well.”
“We know each other pretty well,” he replied. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Do we?” she asked.
He glanced over at her. “Do we what?”
“Know each other? Well?”
His mouth straightened and he turned back to face the road.
“I mean, you know my story. My parents down in Florida. My sister, dying of cancer, wasting away with her husband by her side in South Carolina. Me with no husband or kids, no relationship lasting more than six months.”
“So you’ve said,” he replied. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
“You ask why I might be tempted to do what I’m doing. Why I made the decision I made, and this is my way of telling you. Nearly forty years on this planet, my career is my sole focus. Always has been. I’m okay with that.”
“But?”
She glanced out her window, watching the trees streak by over the straight roof of the Humvee. “What if I’d gotten cancer? What if it was me instead of my sister? What if there was no one to sit by my side?”
“Rita…”
“Seriously? My parents stay down in Florida while their eldest daughter’s body slowly eats itself from within. Are you telling me if that was me, they’d be any different? I need a legacy. I need a legacy and someone to share it with.” She looked toward him. “Once I met you, I knew I could have both.”
Her eyes drifted back to the road ahead and they drove in silence for a few moments.
“I admire that,” Park said finally. “The desire for legacy. Too many of us are only focused on the present. The here and now.”
“So what’s your motivation? We always talk about me, never about you.”
“You know I must operate under the veil of secrecy.”
“Of course… the North Korean spy credo,” Rita said, rolling her eyes slightly.
“Spy is such a dirty word.”
“Fine… North Korean intelligence operative credo. Is that better?”
“Much.”
He turned the wheel slightly, matching pace with the box truck just ahead. The hatchback handled well, but the acceleration was for crap, even when compared to the large vehicle ahead.
“Does my nationality bother you?” Hyun Ki asked as he caught up within thirty feet of the truck again.
“I don’t know, does mine bother you?”
Park looked over at her and she was looking back. Their eyes met and they both silently agreed the conversation was over.
As the sun continued to rise above the trees, the convoy pressed on, making good time toward Washington.
***
It was an early summer morning, the year inching toward autumn. A cool air blew from the trees, the crosswind pelting the two unmarked delivery trucks as they surged over the curving back roads, crawling through rural Delaware, moving a touch faster than they had been, but far from full speed. They carried a delicate cargo and with the First National Summit going on not too far away they had no desire to draw attention to themselves. A pair of white box trucks led the charge, a green Humvee coasting along to the right, with a small hatchback flanking their left. An innocuous group of vehicles on the surface.
Innocuous and harmless. A makeshift convoy of innocent vehicles, piloted by civilians merely trying to commute to survive.
But one of the trucks, the truck travelling along the left-hand lane was far from innocuous. Far from innocent. It was, in fact, the essence of malevolence.
In the box truck near the right side of the road, James McCabe narrowed his eyes, squeezing the sleep from them. He’d tried to grab a few hours of shuteye along with some of the rest of them shortly after hitting the road, but sleep had evaded him. He’d watched everyone around him sleeping soundly and didn’t get it. With what they were about to do, how could any of them have slept a wink? So much depended on the next few hours. He wanted to be on top of his game, but even as he watched the other box truck, his vision blurred for a split second, the vehicle drifting right. McCabe caught himself and guided it back left, just touching the rumble strip.
“You want me to take over?” the man in the passenger seat asked. His English was slow and carefully formed, one of the North Korean operatives Park had recruited for this last leg of the operation.
“I’m good,” McCabe replied, his eyes lingering on the Daewoo submachine gun resting in the passenger’s lap. He was dressed in black tactical gear, just like McCabe was, but his arsenal was purely Korean.
“You sure?” the other man asked. “I don’t want you crashing us, man. We got delicate cargo.”
“Delicate cargo’s in the other truck,” James replied. “We just got the pain in the butt kid back there.”
“Should have killed that punk while we had the chance. Why didn’t we?” asked the Korean.
“Blame the granddaughter. I don’t think she knows quite what’s going on. I don’t think they wanted to kill him right in front of her.”
“So what are they gonna do, just leave him in the truck?”
James shrugged. “Not my problem.” He looked back toward the road, the fog of sleep deprivation numbing his head and clinging his eye lids together, a thick cake threatening to pull them closed. He focused on the taillights of the truck ahead of him and didn’t even see the thrashing trees to his right, or the blurred white streak that charged out in front of him.
***
“Look out!” screamed the Korean, pushing himself back up in the passenger seat as the streaking white shape bounded from the trees to the trucks right.
“Dammit!” McCabe shouted, slamming his foot hard on the brakes and yanking the wheel hard left, trying to avoid whatever had charged out in front of them. A dull whump rebounded from the front right corner of the truck, and he saw the white shape thrash, then dart the other direction, even as his truck skittered along the pavement, trying to maintain control.
“Watch it—” the Korean said, another quick warning, another warning too little too late. McCabe adjusted and whipped his head around, his eyes now wide and fully alert, and saw the broadside of the first box truck filling his windshield. He’d over-corrected and was screaming straight for the other vehicle, a collision course too far along to do anything about. Anything but tense his muscles and brace himself.
The hood smashed into the mid-right section of the box, folding in upon itself as the flat metal side puckered inward. A rending, screaming shatter of metal on metal blasted out across the desolate roads as one truck lifted slow off its right wheels, the second embedding itself in the storage compartment, driving them both sharply back. Two left tires gripped asphalt, desperate to hold and cling, but the truck toppled, tipping left and slamming hard onto the left shoulder of the two-lane road as the other truck crashed back down on its rear wheels, blasting both tires and shattering glass. Momentum carried the other truck over right, and it also tipped, smashing hard on the unforgiving ground, the lock on the rear door bursting, sending the doors rattling open.
“Hit the brakes!” shouted Rita Kramer in the hatchback and Park did, but too late, the small vehicle hurtling headlong into the rear of the firs
t capsized truck, slamming the rear doors open with the crumpled hood. On the other side, the green Humvee tried to adjust, but tires gripped and the back end whirled sharply around, the side of the vehicle punching into the back rear corner of the upended box truck, leaving a graceful arc of spent rubber on the gray pavement.
Horses charged from the trees.
On the ground, one of the white stallions whinnied, trying to pick itself up as Max and Tamar scrambled to their feet. Their hope of distracting the truck had worked, only the reflexes of the driver had been a fraction slower than they thought. Their beautiful mount was hit, but seemed to be mostly okay even as the enemies spread out, weapons drawn.
“We have hostiles!” screamed Hyun Ki Park, lifting his knee to his chest and slamming his driver’s side door open. He reached into the backseat and swept his own Daewoo automatic rifle from the rear seat, then tucked it up into his shoulder, spinning around and leaning on the hood of the small car, trying to calculate how many were currently rushing through them.
“Scatter, Frasers! Scatter!” shouted Rhonda as she guided her horse with Phil behind her right toward the first fallen box truck. She vaulted off left as Phil scrambled right, a chattering staccato of gunfire already exploding in the still morning air. Rhonda watched as the beast took off down the road, angling left and vanishing into the trees.
The doors of the Humvee blasted open and commandos spilled out, a tidal wave of black-clad gunmen charging, boots slamming on pavement, firing mechanisms clacking and muffled shouts barking commands, telling them to spread out and move toward cover.
Rebecca’s horse burst from the long grass and low trees and she’d shouldered her SIG battle rifle, tracing its extended barrel along the path of some of the scrambling gunmen. Even before she reached the capsized truck, she’d rattled off four swift, echoing shots and sent two of the enemies scrambling toward the pavement, face first.
She swung her leg back over the horse, dropping to the road as the creature continued running, Angel springing off himself along the way, landing in a less than graceful fallen crouch, his M4 clattering at his feet.