He chooses the song in order to put himself in a mood. Deep within, he knows he will soon fight an adversary over something he values. The song’s intro is one of his favorites, and it begins to play, not with the sound of a base guitar, or of a lead guitar’s riff, or of fast beating drums, but rather, with a choir singing what sounds like a hallelujah chorus. He turns up the volume, and the chorus resounds loudly over the heavy rain, with heavenly voices echoing against the nearby mountains.
Crossing his arms over his chest, his mind follows the missile, while he patiently listens and enjoys the forty-second intro to the ten-minute song.
After a few more seconds, his thoughts turn to seek guidance from his God. “Whoever it was that was hitting me up there and taking my abilities away…he’s going to be there,” he says out loud. “What should I do?”
The answer comes.
Gazing up, he responds in his thoughts with quiet confidence, So then, what I have - what you’ve given me - is sufficient.
From the playing song, the choir’s singing ends, and then, after a loud, electronically synthesized clap, the drumbeats immediately begin. Just as he hears the transition, he lowers his arms, leaps into the air, and flies away through the rain, wind, and clouds, at speeds greater than that of the fifth missile itself.
The song remains playing in the air around the mantis, as it watches the man’s form shrink into the distance. Just as the first words of the lyrics start singing, the man vanishes, and for effect, he adds a bright flash of light to his wake.
Less than a minute remains before the last missile detonates.
Leaving, the mantis dissolves into particles of green and black that waft away.
Seen from a short distance above, where the man and the mantis used to be, a large and deep imprint, as wide as the base of a house, is visible on the soft mud. The rain has been eroding its detail.
Just before his unconscious body struck the ground, someone, using flashes of lightning, etched a large symbol on the earth. It is a circle within a circle, the symbol on the man’s wrist and the mark of the one who saved him in his fall - the mark of the hooded man.
* * * * * * *
The rhythmic whoosh of the wind through the concrete support columns of the Oakland Bay Bridge signals Sik’s high-speed path, as his truck begins its merge eastbound into the lower deck of the bridge.
From his rearview mirror, Sik sees Stevens’ black sedan, many car lengths behind him; and behind Stevens is Detective Kwan’s vehicle, with two police cars flanking them on either side. Further back, a dense pack of cars trail the chase.
“I can handle this,” Sik states confidently, as he enters the bridge’s lower deck and hears the resounding echo of the ten cylinders of his full-sized truck, roaring off of the solid metal support crossbeams and the broad upper deck. At that moment, he notices a police car, on his right, attempting to pass, and he immediately swerves into it to cut it off. But as he does, one police car, on his left, overtakes him, positions itself directly in front of him, and then begins to intentionally slow down.
Sik keeps his foot on the gas pedal and jerks the steering wheel to one side. The police in front follows his movement. Sik veers to the other side and the police car does the same.
Irritated, Sik slams down his foot on the gas and rams the solid chrome bumper of the truck into the back of the police car. Simultaneously, he jerks the wheel to the left. The collision causes the police car to swerve away, momentarily out of control, and allowing the powerful truck to zoom by.
As Sik positions the truck in the center of the five-lane road, his hands grip the wheel and his eyes dart left and right, guarding the lanes at his sides.
The sirens behind him are incessant and so too are the tenacity of the police. Once again, two of them attempt to pass him simultaneously, on either side.
Sik crashes into the side of one of them, as the other passes him. Taunting, he exclaims, “How about you handle this?!” Suddenly, Sik slams down on his breaks, and all four tires of his truck seize and burn into the asphalt, stopping the vehicle.
Behind Sik, Agent Stevens is unprepared for the abrupt halt. He slams on his brakes, and behind him, Detective Kwan’s car screeches to the side to avoid a crash. The front of Stevens’ sedan impales itself into the truck’s heavy chrome rear bumper. The front grill smashes into pieces, and the hood rises up, as it crunches in on itself.
Etelson’s head snaps forward, with her seatbelt digging into her chest, and she loses her breath momentarily.
The airbags immediately deploy.
Stevens can hear cars behind him crash into each other.
Caught by Sik’s sudden stop, police cars pass Sik’s truck, and then quickly screech to a halt. They pull into reverse, with their tires spinning and burning a black trail in the road, to make their way back to the large black truck.
Without wasting a second, Sik jams his foot down onto the gas pedal. The truck roars to life once again, and its wide tires spin and spew smoke and burnt rubber into the air. Sik threads his truck in between the police cars headed back his way, passing them once again.
As his airbag deflates, Stevens pushes it aside and tears it away from the steering wheel. He looks at Etelson and quickly asks, “You ok, Etti?”
Her body and shoulders are hunched into the tight seat belt, and her arms fall limp at her sides. She breathes in deep and shakes her head in disbelief. Feeling the pain in her chest, and with her eyes half-closed, she meekly says, “Yeah…better than ever.”
Stevens tosses the airbag to the back seat and wipes the white powder residue from his face and suit. Smiling at Etelson he says, “I better leave this chase to the pros. I think I’ll be happy just hanging back a good, safe distance.”
At halfway across the bridge, Sik reaches the tunnel through Yerba Buena Island. With the soft yellow lights of the tunnel glowing around him, he quickly glances into the back seat at Paige. She is still unconscious. As his eyes dart through the back window, he asks in his thoughts, Where are they now? Then, he sees the flashing lights of police cars fast approaching.
Seconds later, at a curve of the bridge, the police make their way immediately behind Sik, once again, with two on either side of him, and with the detective trailing further back.
As one police car draws in closer to the side of his rear bumper, Sik sees it and swerves his truck away.
The police car follows him. This time, approaching much more quickly, the police car shoves the corner of its front bumper into the truck bed’s corner. The sudden contact causes the truck bed to fishtail rapidly to the side.
Sik tries to maintain control of the truck and immediately steers into the direction of the slide. But the rear tires begin to bounce as they skid. With one final bounce, the tires ricochet off the road, swinging the truck almost perpendicular to the road.
Sik loses control of the truck. Frantically, he spins the steering wheel one way then the other. Just as he slams on the brakes, the truck whips clockwise. The rear of the truck crashes into the right guard wall of the bridge. As the metal of the truck crunches and grinds into the concrete wall, bright sparks are strewn into the air. At his side, Sik sees chunks of concrete break off and spay over the road.
The truck comes to a stop, facing the opposite direction of the police cars.
Instantly, one police car backs into the rear of the truck; another pulls into the front of the truck, pinning it in.
Like a chased animal caught in a corner, but now turning to fight, Sik drenches his fiery lungs with explosive heat sifting through his clenched teeth. As adrenaline pumps through his veins, his head snaps to the left - he can see the waters of the bay below. He jerks to the right - two other police cars screech to a stop, at his side, and close up the open space. He is completely boxed in.
Hearing the solid hum of his V10 engine, Sik’s body tenses, and spewing out pure heat, he snarls, “I’ll rip and claw my way out!”
Quickly, he puts the truck in reverse and pounds down
on the gas. The truck crashes into the police car behind it.
The policeman inside shoves both feet down over his brake pedal.
All four wheels of the truck spin and dig into the road. Smoke from the melting rubber rises up to the upper deck. But the truck barely moves.
Sik slams on the brakes, puts the gears into drive, and crushes the gas pedal.
Lurching forward, the truck hurls directly into the police car in front of it.
As Sik sees the policemen, at his side, hurriedly make their way out of their cars to head towards him, he shifts the truck into reverse and once more slams his foot down on the gas.
With rubber and asphalt once again consuming each other in dizzying, spinning friction, Sik turns his head back and growls, “Come on!!”
The powerful truck propels itself backward, with tremendous force from its heavy metal, and drives the police car back with a violent lunge.
Able to move, Sik’s truck passes the police vehicles on his right that once boxed him in. He sees the space widen to make an opening.
Still in reverse, Sik instinctively turns the steering wheel left, and the front of the truck immediately whips into the opened space. In an instant, the truck is turned completely around. With his heart pumping hard and lungs hot with anger, Sik slams on the brakes, shoves the gears from reverse to drive, and pounds down on the gas pedal to blaze through the opening.
An instant later, the truck tears away with a thunderous roar from the triumphant high-octane engine.
* * * * * * *
Gul is back behind the large glass panes that enclose the theater, where inside General Parsin and General Tomer gravely stand. Earlier, Gul was not able to bear the tension in the theater, and so he had to excuse himself. Now, he cannot avert his eyes from the two center large screens.
From the images of Screen 2, Gul sees that the earth’s atmosphere is in turmoil. A gigantic storm looms over the Atlantic, another over the U.S. east coast, and another - significantly more massive - over the U.S. west coast.
Shifting his eyes to Screen 3, he follows the curtailed paths of the second, third, and fourth ICBMs up to the point of their disappearance. The fifth ICBM was, only seconds ago, detected on its reentry into the atmosphere, and a red line marks its relentless path to northern California.
Gul watches General Parsin speak into a phone.
The General has no clear and definitive explanation for the disappearance of the missiles. The sudden emergence of the massive storms has also left both him and his men mystified. Unsure of whether the fifth missile will indeed not detonate, Parsin’s reasons for recommending the delay of retaliatory strikes do not allay the grave concerns at the other end of the line. With a somber face, he slowly lowers the phone from his ear down to his chest.
The same heavy look appears in General Tomer’s eyes, as he turns to watch the images on the screens.
Gul’s heart is faint. He raises his hands, places them against the glass pane, and whispers, “No, please wait.”
All see the fifth warhead’s unhindered path, as it is about to encroach the west coast.
Sitting at a station in front of Parsin, the controller announces something that diminishes into a muffled sound, as it filters through the glass pane and into Gul’s ears.
Gul’s fingers slowly descend, leaving narrow streaks down the glass while his warm, worried breath forms a thin haze over them.
Reflecting from Gul’s wide-open eyes, centered over the northern plains of the U.S. Midwest, are the five blue paths of the United States’ retaliatory strikes.
With a sinking heart, Gul whispers, “Lord, please tell him.”
* * * * * * *
From the very top of the south suspension tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, the scene inspires awe, as the longhaired man stands watching and waiting.
The sun is an hour from disappearing into the horizon and is still shining brightly in the sky. Its rays strike foreign particles in the upper atmosphere, and then disperse, painting a glistening light-green canopy above. The very few layers of rays that pass through unaffected trace thin, long, undulating ribbons of bright blue across the canvas of green.
The breeze is cold and brisk against his face, as he stands atop the highest crossbeam, facing southwest over the ocean. With his mind on the rapidly approaching projectile, he prepares himself in his thoughts, Be ready. This is gonna happen fast.
At only a few seconds before impact, the missile has no herald but the dead silence of its approach.
Soon, his eyes detect the reflection from its hot metal. It is a tiny spec amongst the scattered clouds, as it quickly burns an angled path down to the earth.
Needing to read the warhead’s composition before transforming it, his mind scans it. The warhead’s construction and destructive power are exactly the same as the fourth ICBM.
Suddenly though, his concentration is broken, as if something interferes with his thoughts while it reads the warhead.
From the periphery of his vision, his eyes detect a high-energy beam of light similar to the extraordinarily sharp, powerful laser that triggered the previous explosions.
Traveling at an unimaginable speed, the warhead is now less than five seconds from impact, drilling a clean, hot path through the sky.
Quickly, he diffuses the laser-like beam of light. But he is still unable to focus back on the warhead.
Undetected and far away on top of the north suspension tower, the hooded man stands, with his right hand raised in the direction of the missile. The sleeve of the long black coat droops down from the right wrist, revealing a marking.
The fast-approaching missile is three seconds from impact.
The goateed man concentrates. His mind hones in, trying to get a clearer image through the interference around the warhead. His face, neck, and whole body become tense. In a desperate effort to make his thoughts pierce the haze around the warhead, he quickly leans his body forward and stretches out his left arm. With an open palm, his fingers extend and curl, quivering in intense concentration and apprehension.
The symbol, his name, glows bright on his left wrist. Suddenly, it projects around him a sphere of golden light five times greater than his height, completely surrounding him.
A similar spherical glow appears, just as magnificently brilliant, on top of the north tower, at the other end of the bridge.
Two seconds from impact.
From a distance, one can see two figures standing atop the Golden Gate Bridge, facing the setting sun: one is on the south tower and the other on the north tower. One is in his torn, muddied clothes, and the other is in his long, hooded, black coat. Their opposite hands are raise up to the sky and from their wrists, a radiant golden light projects and encircles each of them, sparking in an electric dance.
Above the horizon and exactly between them is the unfathomable brilliance of the yellow-gold sun, equidistant from each being, not closer to one or the other, neither favoring one over the other.
Up high and askew from the sun, closer to the being in black, is the warhead: the fiery unrelenting bringer of destruction.
One second remains.
Even with all his will, strength, and might, the longhaired man cannot make his mind break through, in order to read and transform the missile.
Suddenly, in one colossal burst of energy, the warhead detonates one mile above ground. It is a midair detonation to maximize destruction. The explosion is a wondrous fright and a violent, powerful terror.
The hooded man, on the north tower, vanishes.
On the south tower, the longhaired man’s eyes light up, reflecting the fantastic power of the explosion.
He knows to do only one thing.
* * * * * * *
In pursuit, Agent Stevens drives their damaged black sedan south on the 880 Freeway. After leaving the Bay Bridge, they catch up to the pack of police cars chasing down Sik.
Agent Etelson glances away from the road and turns her head to the side, to look out from the closed pas
senger side window. Away in the distance, she sees, in front of the sun, the silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge.
With her head still turned, she asks, “Hey, Rye, have there always been those two bright lights on top of the bridge’s suspension towers? And they’re not red like the ones to warn airplanes. They’re kinda gold.”
“Hmm, I don’t know what that’s about, Ett,” Agent Stevens replies, tightly gripping the steering wheel, and intently watching the road.
With the sirens blaring from the police cars, vehicles ahead of them begin to pull over. But some are too slow to react, and Stevens is forced to quickly dodge and swerve around them.
As he raises a finger to point at the road ahead, Stevens quickly turns to Etelson and asks with some anxiety in his voice, “Uh, Ett, can we focus here? We’re kind of in a chase.” Turning his head back to the road, his eyes catch a brief image of the two lights on top of the bridge.
No response comes from his partner. Etelson sees a glimpse of another bright light from a fast approaching object, high above the center of the bridge.
Turning again to her, Stevens attempts to get her attention, “Hey, Ett…”
His words abruptly stop.
Both of them witness the tremendous and painfully blinding flash of light in the sky. An instant later, a massive cloud formation appears, as though the explosion naturally gives birth to a burgeoning, yet already gigantic, storm cloud, centered over bridge. It rapidly extends its girth and instantly spans over the complete width of the bay. The cloud continues to grow, approaching them with great speed.
In unison, they exclaim, “Whoa!”
Etelson quickly averts her eyes, and Stevens instinctively turns his eyes back onto the road.
The accompanying blast of sound and high velocity winds shatter both Etelson’s window and the window behind her. She quickly raises her arm to protect her face, as the sound trembles the outer shell of the sedan.
In a wave of motion, their vehicle and the others surrounding them swing uncontrollably to the left.
Just ahead of them, a driver is unable to correct the path of his car. As the driver jerks the car to one side, its rear whips to the other, becoming positioned at a sharp angle from the road. It starts to tumble over itself. Then, in a split second, it slams with terrific force on the street, crumbling the trunk and flinging shattered glass into the air.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 55