“I gotta take a whiz first,” he stood, hopped on one leg over to his improvised crutch and tested his weight. Moonlight streamed through the slats of the wooden boathouse and water gently lapped against the airboats, which in turn bumped against the tires protecting the crafts from damaging themselves against the water’s edge.
Sophie sat up, stretched, smiled and gazed at Luke’s battered face in the moonlight. He had dried scabs and bruises from fighting the soldiers earlier, his torso equally damaged. He would be sore and ache for a while, but would heal with time. Unlike his leg, as her temporary repair would only do for the moment. She would need breaking again and re-setting properly, or Luke would have a limp for life.
She hadn’t told him that good news yet. She finally let herself plan a future together for them. Everything was going to be wonderful and they would live a long and happy life together, and the last few days would eventually fade into a distant memory. They would live their lives to the maximum; they owed it to themselves and to those that made the ultimate sacrifice for them. Their work would have to have meaning, a purpose, for the betterment of mankind, be it a humanitarian action aboard, or feeding the needy back home, anything rather than the desperate search for more wealth and the accumulation of consumer products. She smiled as Luke wobbled, she shone her flashlight to illuminate his journey and tallied his injuries, all the scars and bruises until he turned fully and she saw his back and the first of the buboes . . .
CHAPTER 46
23:35 PM
General Malloy smashed his way through the foliage and had their scent in his nostrils he would show ‘em. Sloppy, he thought, he despised them even more for making their escape route too easy to follow. Tracking in the jungle had been his specialty. He seemed to have the knack, to know how the opposing forces thought, where they would go, where they might hide. None had ever bested him and that wasn’t about to change for this pair who had ruined Florida and embarrassed his country. He wondered if they were prepared to die for their mission. He was soon going to find out. Would they die a martyr’s death, proud to give their lives for what they believed in, or would they snivel and beg like wretches? He'd show them all how to deal with terrorists, he’d hunt ‘em down and shoot ‘em like the dogs they were. He felt like yelling with the thrill of the chase and the expectation of the kill.
He hadn’t felt this good since his fighting days in Bolivia, before he became a career soldier. This is where he felt best, in the heat of battle, where he felt truly alive.
23:36 PM
Luke hobbled back through the door, holding his crotch. “Man my balls hurt and I’ve got this swelling . . .,” He pointed at his crutch; he looked up at Sophie and knew instantly by her horror-stricken face what it meant. “. . . Oh no . . .”
She ran to him and hugged him for all she was worth, he tried to untangle himself from her, worried that he might give her the infection. “Shush, it does not matter,” she said soothingly. “If you have it, then so must I.” She became aware of the sound of a helicopter and froze. They peeked from the door and saw a chopper preparing to land not too far away. “That must be near the barge,” she said.
“They’re on to us, let’s go.”
23:37 PM
“Gotcha!” General Malloy said, seeing the wooden boathouse and the flashlight beams showing through the slats of the structure. He stealthily approached the building, deciding which way to kill them. Shoot them? No, far too quick. Maybe slowly with his ka-bar knife, up close and personal, he wanted to watch the pain in their eyes while he drew out their deaths. That would be his personal favorite and the least this pair of bastards deserved. However, as he had less than twenty minutes to get back to the chopper he had better make it quick.
He drew his sidearm, released the safety catch, held it pointing down by his side, and crept forward. His eyes popped out at the sight of the terrorist identified as Luke Spencer as he finished urinating and hobbled back into the boathouse.
The general was too flabbergasted to move. This was a master terrorist!? This hobbling cripple had disarmed and killed two trained soldiers? How in the name of God was that possible? He moved forward, and was almost at the boathouse door when he heard the unmistakable roar of an airboat engine, and a moment later saw the terrorists whoosh from the boathouse aboard an airboat. He cursed, raised his arm, standing with a two-handed grip on his pistol, aimed and fired.
Sophie perched high up on the operators seat of the noisy airboat. Luke tried to get comfortable as the unusual craft skimmed the surface of the water. Due to the noise of the rear mounted aircraft propeller that drove the shallow-bottomed craft, neither of them heard the gunshot or were aware of the imminent danger they were in.
“Fuck!” said the general as the bullet ‘pinged’ off the grill covering the giant propeller. He cursed himself again, for failing to keep up with his target practice. It was a shot he would have made easily ten years ago. Marksmanship was another of his natural talents – usually. He lined up another shot and fired at the moving target once more before they were out of sight.
23:38 PM
The air supply aboard the nuclear powered submarine USS Amarillo dwindled rapidly making it difficult for submariner Pete Williams to breath. He realized that it was the end for him, and knew he must mount some sort of retaliatory defense. He sat at the captain’s desk and read his stream of incoming e-mails; he shifted through the day-to-day garbage, while he tried to break the captain’s pass-code.
He had been a seasoned hacker; in fact, he had once caused a major incident as a youth, when he had successfully hacked into a US top-secret military computer. A supposedly impregnable computer. The army had been highly embarrassed that this young kid had broken in to their system so easily. However, they wanted to play down the breach of their security, and the evidence proved that the young man was a harmless geek, apparently on a quest to find concrete evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrial beings and in particular, the secrecy surrounding Area 51.
Instead of prosecuting him, they waited for the media interest to die down then offered the teenager a job, as he clearly had talent, and they thought he would be of more use to them as a member of staff. Better on the inside testing their systems, as opposed to being on the outside trying to break in.
This was how Pete Williams, who’d previously had no interest in the armed forces as a career found himself aboard the USS Amarillo, glad to escape the glare of infamy. He hadn’t enjoyed his moment in the media spotlight. His duties apart from the odd bit of code breaking and unofficial hacking was as one of the contingent to muster the nuclear weapons should they ever be needed.
However, the thin diminishing air didn’t help his concentration as he’d tried his damndest to break the codes. He sweated profusely and the stench from the captain’s remains made him gag. He glanced at the corpse slumped on the floor, with dried, congealed blood around his orifices.
He regarded the elderly captain, one of the last old-school leaders and he found himself remembering that for twenty years during the cold war years all codes on the US nuclear missiles were set at 00000000. The official thinking being that it would be too much for the men launching the missiles to have to remember complicated codes, it would speed their launches, instead of having to find the codes, they would have the edge over their Russian counterparts, and these few valuable seconds could prove vital. Incredibly, this went on for two decades, and it was pure luck that some disgruntled, suicidal soldier had not launched a missile with such a simple code and sent them all to Armageddon.
More recently, hackers revealed that the Syrian government’s top-secret communication pass-codes were set to 12345 and if the memorandum was above top-secret they took the extra precaution of adding another digit making the pass-code 123456, and it had been this simple code Pete Williams had used to open the captain’s wall-safe and had retrieved the nuclear launch-codes. He shook his head to get his mind back on track. Why not try it again, he tapped, 00000000 into the pass-code box, and r
emarkably the computer sprung into life. “You idiot,” he said to the captain’s cadaver. He now had access to the submarines arsenal of forty-eight tomahawk nuclear weapons and he had the launch codes. Payback time, he thought bleakly.
23:39 PM
General Malloy rushed into the boathouse and without breaking step leaped onto an airboat, took a moment to start it, and moved out of the boathouse in pursuit of the fugitives. He had used an airboat once before, on maneuvers in Alaska of all places where airboats were used extensively as they were equally suited to a snowy terrain and could skim over ice as easily as water.
He listened and detected the rough direction of the fleeing craft. He put on his night-vision goggles and searched slowly from east to west getting used to the green imagery. Then he spotted them. “Outstanding!” he declared, locking onto the fleeing terrorists.
He could tell by the way the fleeing airboat moved that it was piloted by an inexperienced driver and he knew that he would catch them effortlessly. He opened the throttle and gave chase.
23:40 PM
“What do you mean, ‘it’s got no brakes?!” Luke yelled over the din of the propeller.
“There are no brakes on airboats,” she replied with a shrug.
“Then, how do you stop?” he asked incredulously.
“You decelerate,” she said simply, while she tried to steer by moonlight.
“What if you want to avoid something?”
“That’s why you sit high up, looking for debris or marine animals, you swerve to avoid in most cases. There’s no reverse either,” she told him knowing she’d enjoy his reaction to this piece of news.
“Huh? What happens if we go up a dead-end?”
“Let’s pray that we don’t.” She smiled.
“Maaan, that’s crazy, what sorta lunatic invents a high speed vehicle with no means of stopping?” He cut short his ranting as a helicopter passed overhead, and they swapped anxious glances. Luke realized with a sinking heart that they were caught, when, strangely the helicopter continued its journey ignoring them, swiftly followed by another three choppers flying in formation northbound. “That ain’t cool,” he said.
“Maybe they didn’t see us?” she suggested.
“Or they’re no longer looking for us,” he said hopefully.
She smiled, loving him more and more by the minute, when a plume of blood exploded from his shoulder as a high velocity bullet ripped through it. The impact made him twist and he fell forward.
Her mouth dropped open in disbelief. She hardly had time to register he’d been shot, and by whom? She slowed and squinted into the darkness, when a second airboat loomed from the darkness and the general rammed her.
The airboat clipped Sophie’s and the angle sent her into a high-speed tailspin, which almost pitched Luke into the swamp. Sophie fought for control of the spinning airboat and thought that she would topple from the seat high up, in her unbalanced position. Sophie saw the lake edge loom up and knew that impact was going to be inevitable.
She braced herself, but the crash caused her to fall to the bottom of the craft and she landed on top of Luke. She felt concussed and confused, her senses told her to help Luke, but found her body unable to respond to her commands. She intensified her efforts and felt the airboat rock. She knew without looking up that someone else was onboard.
She turned and glanced up to see General Malloy, grinning wickedly down at her.
23:41 PM
Hamilton excused himself and went to use the bathroom. He checked his reflection and smiled. As soon as he initiated his plan, the Florida problem would be over, and then he could concentrate on issues that were more important; like running the country, and humping the hell out of Miss April. Thinking of her brought an even broader smile to his face. Boy, she was something. He ached for her; in fact, his groin had felt funny all day.
He’d caught something off her in all probability. He wasn’t too concerned, he knew she wasn’t a virgin, hell no, not with her bag of tricks, you didn’t learn those skills in a nunnery.
Still, once he had her safely seconded there would be no messing about. He’d have to find a discreet doctor to treat the sexually transmitted disease. He’d had an STD once before, it came with the territory, he thought pragmatically. Nope, nothing to worry about, it was an occupational hazard as far as he was concerned, if you were a hound-dog an STD was something you had to allow for. He needed to find a friendly, discreet quack to medicate him. Not that prig, Quinn Martell, that was for damn sure. The devil in him wanted to tell him, to watch his face, but he daren’t.
He gazed at his reflection, noticing that the hickeys were showing through again. He attended to them, covering them liberally with his wife’s make-up. He felt great discomfort from his nether regions and scratched through his pants, which gave him slight relief. He saw another hickey poking from the top of his shirt. He tugged at the collar; sure enough, there was another bruise-like hickey. How had he missed that? His wife might have seen it. That would have left him with some serious explaining to do. How embarrassing.
He unbuttoned his shirt and saw the blemish, and thought he’d better remove the garment to attend to it properly, when to his utter horror he saw that his torso was covered in dark rings. What the fuck? What kind of SDT had that bitch given him? He paced the bathroom cursing her. Then it dawned on him. This wasn’t a sexually transmitted disease. This must be the work of his enemies; it’ll be the vice-admiral, or the surgeon general. Goddamnit, he’d been too trusting. Had one of them slipped something into his drink? He’d soon find out.
His crotch ached and he went to use the john. He unzipped himself and felt a dull pain. He felt around his groin and discovered a swelling each side. What the hell is this? He thought.
As he urinated he felt such a shooting pain from his penis that he thought he might pass out. He looked down and very nearly did. Not only did his urine smell pungent, but it dribbled out in thick black clots, his eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted.
CHAPTER 47
23:42 PM
Sophie saw her pistol lying nearby and instinctively reached for it, but the general was one-step ahead and stood on her wrist, making her scream in pain.
Maybe a little torture, thought the general. It’s the least the bitch deserves. He could see that the man was bleeding badly and would pose no threat.
He applied more pressure on her wrist with his boot. He enjoyed hearing her scream and watching her squirm in pain. Soon she would know it was the end, and that was his favorite moment, when his captives knew they faced the end and all hope drained from their being, their eyes becoming dead. Sophie kicked out at him, making him chuckle. She did not give up easily. Good, he thought, this would be fun. He assessed the situation, calculating if he had the time for a bit of fun and still make it back to the helicopter rendezvous point. His computations gave him a five-minute window and he grinned broadly.
He kicked her in the head, sending her half out of the airboat, however the boat rocked with the movement and his action almost sent him too into the swamp. He regained his balance, and adjusted his pose.
He gestured with his hand for her to stand and take a shot. She rose into a crouch and launched herself at him, but he swatted her away effortlessly with a back-hander, sending her into the cage of the still spinning propeller blade. He squashed her face into the wire-cage and she could feel the wind from the revolving blades and feared her hair might catch.
The general pushed her head further and hoped to grind her into the blade. Sophie tried desperately to push back from the propeller, but the general over-powered her. The wire cage started to give and she felt her face inch forward to the spinning blades. She twisted, and turned sharply making him lose his grip. She tried to pull away but was caught by her hair in a lose wire of the propeller cage.
The general laughed at her predicament, this was too easy he thought, confrontation between two great enemies should have demanded a long drawn out protracted affair, not
a push over. He gave her a moment for her to free herself, only sporting after all, and he had a few minutes to spare to indulge her. All she was doing was postponing the end, to live her last moments in pain and agony instead of a quick death.
She took a second to regain her breath, glanced over at Luke who stirred, which was a good sign she thought, and with an almighty tug she wrenched herself from the wire cage pulling the front cover with her, exposing the four-foot whirling blades as she squared up to the general.
He lashed out with a kick, she tried to deflect the blow, but it caught her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her and she crouched down, to get her breath back. She slowly stood on the rocking airboat. The general span on the spot with a high hip-kick and caught her below the rib cage and she felt something snap. She yelped and held her side. She tried to stand but the agony was too much.
The general re-adjusted his stance. Enough is enough, better get to the chopper he thought, one spinning head kick should do it, he started to execute the move, when; “Freeze, you bastard sonofabitch!” growled Luke.
Luke held the discarded pistol and pointed it at him. “You?” laughed the general. “A one-armed, one-legged plague-ridden victim. You really think so?” he shook his head in wonder, “Against me? I’m Jumpin’ Jack Malloy, a Four Star General who not only trained in, but relishes unarmed combat?”
“Leave her alone.”
“Well, if you really want to play,” he said, genuinely excited by the challenge. “Then, welcome to the party!”
“Back off,” Luke said, and coughed up blood.
“I don’t think so, son,” he said. It was pitiful, thought the general, as Luke tried to raise himself up on his one good leg. Blood poured from his shoulder wound and he raised the pistol with his good arm, but the effort made his arm tremble. The general chuckled and feigned ducking from side to side as if he could dodge the bullets, then quick as a flash he snatched the gun from Luke’s grasp, startling him, and pointed it at Sophie. “The bitch first,” he said, and pulled back on the trigger.
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