Brandt was clearly not one of them.
“The rest of us will split into two teams, approaching from perpendicular paths to the snipers. Red team will secure the perimeter. Blue team will secure the weapon and stay with it to prevent anyone from blowing it.”
“And who is red and who is blue?”
To her surprise Brandt answered, “Lopez and I are Red. You, Jester, and Svengurd are Blue. You will take the civvies with you.”
Even Lopez raised an eyebrow at that. Normally Brandt was all about being on the inside of the action. However, Van knew the reason. Red team was actually taking the greater risk, taking on the entirety of the camp, whereas Van just had to secure the one tent. If the nuke was, in fact, in that tent.
“You will identify and secure the missile, quietly,” Brandt emphasized. “We won’t fire a shot until you are dug in and give the signal.” After Van nodded Brandt continued. “If anything goes sideways, and I mean anything, we will rally here,” Brandt explained, pointing to a spot under the tree that Davidson was going to be perched in.
The group nodded in unison. This was the play. It was nearly insane in its simplicity and low rate of success, but no one complained. A nuclear weapon was in play. Insane and doomed were pretty much their only options.
“Are we going to be able to be patched in?” Van asked.
“You would think with all of the hundreds of billions spent in telecommunications that we could. Apparently though, they can’t quite synch up our channels.”
Van rolled her eyes. Sometimes the seemingly simplest things were the hardest to accomplish out in the field.
The group split off into their teams. BQ trotted off to her perch as Doyle took Neali’s hand. Jester brought up the rear. They headed into the dripping jungle. A light rain had begun to fall. She wasn’t actually feeling the rain, but instead the gathering of drops on the wide leaves. They would collect the moisture, then when it became too heavy, the leaves would droop and pour down on you. It was like walking under a perpetual showerhead.
Van glanced behind her. Brandt, Davidson, and Lopez had already disappeared behind a sheet of green. She turned to find Svengurd nearly obscured in front of her. She needed to remember how quickly the tall Swede moved. She trotted until she was on his heel. Doyle and Neali caught up as well.
With precision, Svengurd guided them through the jungle, avoiding large puddles, tangles of roots and underbrush that could snap underfoot. Silently they slipped through the trees, striking for the tent that should be holding the missile.
Far more quickly than it should have taken, they stood outside a tent. She could hear the men inside, chuckle, cough and move around the tent. From thermal imagining, there were four men in there plus another two guarding the entrance to the tent. They were going to have to dispatch the four quietly enough not to raise an alarm until they could take out the two at the entrance.
Svengurd pulled them to a stop. He looked to her. His glacial blue eyes, piercing deep into her skull. One question clear on his mind. Are you ready?
She glanced over her shoulder and asked the same silent question of Jester. His dark features seemed to blend in with the jungle behind them. They were losing the light, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing.
Jester gave a curt nod. This wasn’t his first rodeo. Maybe his first with a nuclear bull, but not his first rodeo. They’d gone into way too many hostile villages together for her to doubt his mettle.
Van turned to Svengurd and gave him the final nod. Doyle and Neali moved to the back and Jester came up alongside Van. Jester would take the man on the right. Van the middle guy and Svengurd would get the two to the left. He swung his gun up and over his shoulder, pulling two nine inch knives. Van and Jester pulled theirs out as well although they were not nine inches.
Svengurd held up his fingers. Three. Two. One.
* * *
Gol couldn’t stop his foot from tapping. He knew it was driving everyone crazy, but how could he keep his toes under wraps given what was going down?
On one screen, thermal imaging showed the strike team entering the tent. With lethal efficiency, they took down the four men. One moment there were four red hot terrorists, the next minute there were four orange-yellowish blobs on the floor, being replaced by five new red hot good guys.
On the other screen, Yulov was nearly done decrypting the terrorist message regarding the safeguards.
So far the message read… “In addition, we have added the following precaution.”
What a place to leave off.
The computer’s little beach ball swirled in front of their eyes almost taunting them. The answer is here, I just aren’t going to give it to you. Everyone was assembled waiting for the answer as the soldiers cleared the tent, even Qanti. Then two figures, Gol could only guess Svengurd and Van moved forward, snatching the guards from the front, dragging them to their death inside the tent.
He could imagine the hot blood oozing in their fingers. Just thinking about the sensation kind of made Gol’s skin crawl. He was glad that he was here in this nice air-conditioned building with nice clean hands, thank you very much.
A ding came from the computer and the words scrolled across the screen…
“A static electrical sensor has been installed and if triggered will…”
* * *
“Do not touch the bomb!” a voice called out in Van’s ear.
Unfortunately, that information was a little late as Neali ran her hand along the metal side of the bomb.
“What if that ship has already sailed?” Doyle asked. Neali’s hand dropped from the missile.
“Do not, under any circumstances, remove your hand.”
Van watched Doyle gulp. “Again, what if that ship has left port?”
“Not sure, the message is still decoding, but we can only guess it isn’t going to be good. We should have the rest decoded in just a minute.”
Well, they didn’t have to wait that sixty seconds as an LED screen, that just a moment ago had been dark suddenly went alive. “5:00” blinked several times then began to count down.
“The sensor triggered a timer,” Doyle stated. “With less than five minutes on the clock.”
Van had to give whoever was on the other line credit. They didn’t stain their shorts. As a matter of fact they stayed pretty calm. Of course, they were on the other side of the world so not a whole lot of reason to panic for them.
“You can defuse it in that amount of time. Do you have your tool kit on you?”
“Am I in the field?” Doyle snorted.
“Sorry,” the voice said in Van’s ear. “Of course you do. Okay, you’ve got to take the panel off that covers the detonator.”
Doyle moved to do so, then staggered, coughing. Van caught him before he hit the dirt. This wasn’t a normal cough, though. It was moist and he hacked up blood. Not that little spattering that happened in movies and got caught by a nice white handkerchief. This was thick and clotted. Then blood just started pouring from his mouth.
As his body went rigid, Doyle grabbed Van’s arm. For a moment she feared they’d all been exposed to radiation, but wouldn’t Doyle’s skin be blistered? Wouldn’t they all be ill? She wasn’t a nuclear scientist, but this didn’t make any sense.
“One thousand rems,” Doyle managed to choke out.
“Don’t talk,” Van said, stroking back his dark hair. “Save your strength.”
“Breakfast,” Doyle rattled. “Scone.”
Then, the man died. It wasn’t pretty. Radiation deaths never were she’d heard. His body convulsed as he spewed blood, then choked on it. With one final rattle, he fell silent.
“What’s going on?” the voice in her ear demanded.
Van took a few breaths. She looked to Svengurd and Jester but neither could help her.
“I’m sorry,” Van said. “But he’s dead. Doyle is dead.”
“What?” the voice answered with a high-pitched shriek. There was that panic Van had been waiting for.
“Could you please clarify your last statement?”
“Doyle just spit up blood and died. His last words were 1,000 rems, breakfast. Scone. If that makes any sense.”
“Are we in any danger?” Jester asked.
There wasn’t an immediate answer. They all just stood there as the clock ticked down.
* * *
Gol choked back a sob. Doyle had been his friend. His good friend. He understood that Classic Trek was the only Trek. Come on, it had Scotty, of course Doyle was going to roll with Gol.
Even Qanti seemed knocked back.
“Four minutes,” another tech stated.
Gol licked his lips. “They are never going to be able to deactivate the detonator in that amount of time without the skill and training Doyle had.”
Qanti nodded. Everyone in the room knew Gol was right. And because of that, they were all going to get to witness a nuclear missile explosion with ringside seats. Their entire department’s mission gone up in a billowing mushroom cloud.
Qanti found his voice again. “No, Captain, you are in no danger from radiation. It appears Doyle was poisoned earlier this morning.”
Gol did the calculations in his head. Even dying, Doyle had been the consummate professional. He had explained his own death. Since he had no signs of external exposure, the inspector had surmised that he must have ingested the radiation and if he had ingested it, it must have been at his last meal which was breakfast, a scone in particular and then, while dying had calculated how much radiation it must have been based on the number of hours between ingestion and death.
One thousand rems. His assassin wasn’t messing around.
“What about Neali?” another tech asked. “She’s at the least been through routine disarmament.”
“Captain, is Neali available?”
* * *
Van glanced around the small tent as the timer insisted on counting down. They now had just over three minutes. There was no exotic beauty to be found.
“I think she rabbited,” Van said. The interpreter may be stunning and brilliant, however bravery did not appear to be high on her list. At least the chick wasn’t perfect. Van had begun to wonder.
“Can’t I just disarm it?” Van asked.
“Not with this much time,” the man on the other side stated.
Well, that was bullshit. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me?” Van pressed. “So sorry, but you’re going up in ash in a few minutes?”
“You can try, but if you cut the wrong wire, you might detonate the bomb even sooner. It is a very complicated system inside of there.”
Van looked to Jester, whose eyes were wide enough, you could see all the whites of his eyes. She thought of Brandt and all the unborn babies he wanted to have. Of Beauty Queen and the life she would never live if Van didn’t figure out how to pull this off.
She turned to Svengurd. “You’ve got C4 on you?”
He snorted in a very similar way as Doyle had regarding his tool kit. He was in the field, so of course he had C4.
“What are you thinking?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“I’m thinking if we can blow the timer and detonator, we can stop the bomb from going off.”
The shriller voice returned. “Do you have any idea how much explosive the missile is packed with? If you try to blow the detonator, you’re going to set off a chain reaction that will set off the bomb.”
She ignored the multiple voices now arguing in her ear. “Svengurd, can you do it? Create a shape charge just shallow enough to take out the detonator but leave the rest of the explosives untouched?”
Again, Svengurd didn’t even bother to answer, he simply pulled out a small brick of C4, cut some off, then rolled it around in his palms, getting it warm. He was like an artist, crafting the C4 putty into a perfectly shaped charge.
“You cannot do this,” the deeper voice stated.
“Or what? You’ll blow me up in two minutes forty-five seconds?” Van responded.
Brass. It didn’t seem to matter if it was the US Army or the UN, they just didn’t understand field conditions.
“It is one thing for the bomb to explode on its own. It is quite another for the US military to set it off.”
“You know what, bill me,” Van answered, then shut off the connection. New York wasn’t a lot of help anyway.
Svengurd pushed in the detonation cap and stepped back. His finger over the red button.
Van gave the nod.
* * *
Brandt heard an explosion from the other side of the camp.
What the fuck?
That was not the signal, yet the explosion signaled trouble. If Van was blowing crap up, something had gone horribly wrong.
Every instinct he had demanded that he charge across the compound and rescue her, but he had to stand by his own orders. If anything went sideways, head to the rally point.
Clearly, Davidson and BQ knew that things had gone to hell as they fired, dropping terrorists in their tracks.
“Get the vehicle,” Brandt growled at Lopez. The corporal turned on his heel and was gone. Brandt pulled up his binoculars. He couldn’t see any movement in the nuke tent. What the hell had happened?
Grinding his teeth, Brandt backed away and headed to Davidson’s tree. He could only trust that Van knew what in the hell she was doing.
* * *
Tears rolled down Van’s cheek. She hadn’t vaporized herself and everyone around her. That was a total win.
They were taking fire though. They had to get out of there.
“Back the way we came,” Van stated, wiping the tears off her skin. No time for that.
Svengurd took them out of the tent, firing with precision, taking down three terrorists before Van had even noticed them. Jester was tight on her heel.
Unlike the steady pace of their entrance, Svengurd was hauling ass. Leaping over downed branches and charging through the jungle, leaves whipping them in the face. Van had to full out run to keep up with the tall point man.
He was arcing them away from the compound, angling them toward BQ’s perch to pick her up on their way to the rally point.
Van nearly ran into the back of Svengurd as he skid to a sudden stop. What in the hell had brought the stoic Swede to a halt? Then she saw it. Blonde hair, splattered with blood. She stepped around Van to find BQ, Lori, the Midwestern beauty queen sprawled on the ground, her throat sliced open. She must have bled to death within seconds. Both carotids had been severed. But if one of the terrorists had done it, why hadn’t they raised the alarm?
“We’ve got to move on,” Svengurd said, picking Lori up, but Jester stepped forward.
“No, allow me.”
Svengurd handed the body over. Van had always suspected that Jester might have feelings for BQ, but had never pressed it. By the tender way he handled her body and his swollen eyes, brimming with un-spilt tears, she had been right.
Her own grief was going to have to wait as Svengurd took them back out into the jungle. They hadn’t gotten far when they heard a sob. Svengurd jerked his gun to the right, slowing their pace, taking them straight at the sound.
They found Neali on her knees, covered in blood, sobbing. A dead terrorist lay on the ground, a gunshot to the belly.
“He tried, he tried…”
Van could imagine what he tried to do. She helped the interpreter up and urged her forward, “Come on, we’ve got to rendezvous with Brandt.”
The woman was like a zombie, stumbling forward with no real muscle control. Svengurd had to slow their pace to accommodate the dazed interpreter. Slowly they made their way around the camp, finally angling toward Davidson’s tree.
The camp was ignited with gunfire and shouts. They were grossly outnumbered, if the terrorists ever regrouped and systematically came out them, they were done for, especially with the Gollum-like interpreter.
“I’ve got her,” Sveng
urd said, sweeping the woman off her feet. He then set off at a run. Jesus, the exercise regime Brandt must have them on. The Swede’s speed, even burdened with the woman, was hard for Van to keep up with.
Since she was the only one with her arms free, she had her gun up, ready for any attackers. But somehow they got lucky and found Brandt without incident.
* * *
“What the hell happened?” Brandt growled.
“Timer on the bomb. We had to take it out. On the plus side, the missile is now inert,” Van stated.
He wanted to be angry. He didn’t like it when his expertly planned missions were mucked up, but they usually didn’t involve an active nuclear weapon. Or Van. She’d probably just saved all of their lives.
“Where’s Doyle?” Brandt demanded “BQ?”
Van’s face clouded. “Doyle was poisoned earlier today and died in the tent. BQ…” She had to clear her throat to continue. “Was taken out by the enemy.”
Brandt wanted to reach out to comfort Van, but he knew she would see it as him thinking her weak.
And she was anything but weak.
A rumble came from over the tree line. Then a large, multicolored bullet bus came charging over the ridge. Lopez. The man truly did have a flare for the dramatic. If he weren’t in the Army, he’d probably be on Broadway.
“Aren’t they going to be able to catch us with all those Jeeps?” Van asked.
Brandt brought up a detonator and hit it. Every vehicle in the near vicinity blew in one glorious “eff you.”
Van’s lips turned up. “I love how you think.”
He had not been slacking while he waited for her to secure the bomb.
They all loaded into the vehicle except for Jester, who staggered around, then fell to his knees.
* * *
Van jumped out of the bus, reaching Jester as he pulled a dart out of his neck. He looked at it, then to her, like “I can’t be dying like this,” but he was.
His eyes rolled back into his head as he slumped over onto his side.
Brandt was next to her. “He’s gone.”
Van buried her face in Jester’s flak jacket. “No, no, no.”
Brandt pulled her away as Svengurd picked up Jester’s body. “We’ve got to go.”
The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection: Extremely Controversial Historical Thrillers (Betrayed Series Boxed set) Page 56