by Brian Nelson
“You’d better leave,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Jane said. “And neither are you.”
Eric found that he literally could not move. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but something very close: a numbing confusion, a sense of not knowing what to do and of having no memory or experience to guide him. He knew that death was very close, yet he didn’t know how to save himself or his friends. He was merely a spectator, watching as if it were a movie. And just as if watching a movie, he was waiting like an idiot for the next thing to happen, hoping someone else would do something so he wouldn’t have to act. So he wouldn’t have to be brave.
Then Ryan lunged forward, and fire and death followed.
Chapter Twelve
Project Crimson
July 4, 2025
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Phase 1 Deadline: T-minus five months and six days
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
—George S. Patton
For some reason, the drinking fountain was important. It was an old one, tall, with gray sides, a stainless steel basin, and a white toggle on the spout that said push.
Ryan rushed toward Jian-min.
“Wait!” Isaac cried, going after Ryan—not to help him stop Jian-min, but to pull him away, to get him to safety. But Ryan swung and clawed at Jian-min before Isaac could pull him back.
Jian-min emerged with blood oozing from his eyebrow. Blocked from getting into the library by Ryan and Isaac, he began to retreat down the other hallway.
That was when the drinking fountain became important.
As Jian-min moved past it, Eric saw a subtle movement against the cuff of his pants. Jian-min must have felt it, too. “No,” he whispered.
Eric would never know how he had sensed what was about to happen, but it was he and Isaac who acted quickest. Eric grabbed Jane, and Isaac grabbed Ryan. On Eric’s side of the hall, there was an entryway to an office, but on Isaac’s side there was nothing. That made all the difference. Eric spun Jane into the recessed entryway. As he fell on top of her, he caught one last glimpse of Jian-min before he disappeared at the center of the light.
There were at least two explosions; he was pretty certain of that. But they were right on top of each other. The first was a deep thump in his chest, like being hit by a big fist. The second was a hot iron locomotive, unfairly, brutally matched against his soft flesh—an unstoppable wall of force. His brain sloshed to one side of his skull, and all the air was sucked out of his lungs. Something sharp smacked into his shoulder. Sudden pain. Then all went quiet and he was in a silent movie … a silent horror movie. The lights had gone out, but the walls had been splashed by an orange liquid fire.
Can’t track … Can’t focus … Can’t see. Breathe! Breathe!
Reflexively, he made short, desperate sucks, but he couldn’t get enough air. Breathe! The smell of melting plastic, and paint and burning clothes, and hair and skin underneath. Light coming from strange places, light coming from his leg. Get out! his inner voice said. More desperate sucking. The sprinklers came on. Rain. A red light: exit this way. He wanted to move, but his body wouldn’t respond. His mind not firing on all cylinders, thinking stupid things. Wow, cool colors.
His shoulder. There was something very wrong with his shoulder. He didn’t want to move it. That would be bad. So he kept it pinned to his side.
Then someone was pulling him. Under his arm, not that shoulder. He tried to cry out, but there was too little air in his lungs. Things began to blur. Black smoke billowed.
* * *
One hundred eight miles above Washington, DC, a Chinese SAR reconnaissance satellite slid silently through space, its synthetic aperture lens sending crystal clear images of the Anderson Library to General Meng’s command center in Tangshan, China.
Meng sat on the edge of his seat, waiting.
There!
The explosion. Debris and dust erupted around the target building as if it were a dirty rug being whacked on a clothesline. The general nodded, deep satisfaction and relief washing over him. Several of his staff raised their fists and cheered. It was shaping up to be a good night. Now they just had to hope she burned. They waited a minute, then two. “Burn, damn it, burn.” Slowly, the building began to blur as the rising heat signature distorted the satellite’s infrared imaging. Yes, it was burning. Getting hotter. That was when he noticed a door swing open and two people stumble out. The figures were white in the infrared, white against a dark gray earth, moving like ghostly apparitions. Their heads seemed oddly distorted. Why? Ah, he realized, their hair was on fire.
“Zoom in,” he ordered.
The image sharpened. Now he saw that it was not two people, but three. One of them, a woman, was carrying a full-grown man. Meng marveled at her strength. He could see her long hair burning, yet she did not drop the man she carried. What self-control! Meng wondered whether his best soldiers would do the same.
The woman set the man down gently, then pulled her shirt up over her head to smother the flames. He had never seen such composure in his life.
Soon, several MPs arrived and began giving them first aid. Then came the firefighters and their big rectangular trucks. Then came Curtiss.
Meng recognized him immediately. His gait. His presence. How the heads turned to him. He recognized him the way one soldier recognizes another. “There you are! Well, Admiral, I hope you are ready. The show is just starting.”
* * *
The next thing Eric knew, he was on his back in the grass. He was soaking wet. Jane was kneeling beside him, and so was a man he didn’t know. Jane’s hair was half gone, her scalp black and red. It disturbed him to look at her. The lights from the emergency trucks were dancing on the side of the building. God damn, his shoulder hurt. The other man, a paramedic, was snapping his fingers in Eric’s face, trying to get his attention. His mouth was moving, but no sound came out. The pain in his shoulder was too much for him to focus through. He tried to turn his head to look at the pain. He didn’t like what he saw. There was a thin trail of black smoke coming out of his shoulder. He wasn’t on fire, but something inside him was smoldering. What the—! Then it went dark again.
* * *
The fire sent pounding waves of heat against Admiral Curtiss’s face. It was so hot that, at sixty yards, he felt sure his hair would burst into flame. He watched as the iron light posts closest to the building began to bend on their stalks like wilting flowers. Despite the heat, he found his eyes seduced by the inferno, drawn to the raging towers of orange and yellow and blue. And the sound. It had an unearthly roar that made him feel small and insignificant.
Focus, damn it. He tried to appraise the situation. Jian-min was dead, and the entire library had been destroyed. The enemy had succeeded, which meant their precious spy was safe. Lee and Hunter were burned but on their feet. Hill was seriously, perhaps critically, injured. And Isaac Zyrckowski was still inside, certainly dead, consumed by the fire. Curtiss spat bitterly. Was it worth it all to save one spy? Yet he knew what Admiral Garrett and the rest of the Pentagon brass would say: that these were perfectly acceptable losses.
Just then the lights all over campus went off. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. The glowing fire and the twirling lights of the fire trucks were now the only lights he could see. People stopped and looked at each other, unsure what it meant.
It was at that moment that Curtiss understood. With vivid clarity, he knew the mind of his enemy. At that moment, he was General Meng.
Cutting the power would provide no tactical advantage in any of the research facilities on base, because they all ran on auxiliary power. Even as he thought this, the lights were coming back on as the emergency generators kicked in. The only place—the only place—affected by a power outage was the row
of bungalows that ran along River Drive, where the senior officers and head scientists lived. The only reason the enemy would cut the power was if they meant to assault the bungalows. Son of a bitch!
Meng was going to assassinate Bill Eastman.
Curtiss had been fully aware that the bombing of the Cray might be part of a one-two punch—a diversion—and that Project Crimson was even more than the Fly had discovered. That was why Curtiss had increased security around the base, including assigning a personal bodyguard to the lead scientists. Johnny Cloud, his very best SEAL, was guarding Eastman. His number two SEAL, Tommy Evans, was guarding Behrmann. But now he feared it would not be enough. He had spread his resources too thin because he didn’t know the real target. He had underestimated the Chinese general. Why? Perhaps it was the rather amateurish use of Jian-min as the bomber. It had blinded him to the second blow that Meng had planned. Something smarter, more professional.
Curtiss touched his earpiece. “Alpha Dog to Buster, come in.”
There was no answer.
“Alpha Dog to Buster. Code black. I say again, code black.”
The seconds ticked by. Were Cloud and Evans already dead? The tactical and personal implications of the thought made his mouth go dry. If they got to Eastman, it would all be over. Without him, the project could only limp, lame and pathetic, toward a distant finish line. And then there were Evans and Cloud, especially Cloud. The intimate wound that his death would cause … He was almost a son to Curtiss. The admiral had been guiding him through the navy for more than a decade, ever since Curtiss rescued the recon marine from a heroin addiction, a court martial, and a dishonorable discharge. One dysfunctional Indian looking after another.
Curtiss looked around. He could call the special-reaction team—that was SOP—but they were much too far away. He imagined them getting the call, way down by the main gate, scrambling for their body armor and M4s, hopping in their jeeps, and driving down to Eastman’s bungalow. No, it would take way too long.
He looked to the river. Eastman’s bungalow was only five hundred yards from where he now stood, on the far side of the woods. He began barking orders. “Adams, Patel, Sawyer, Loc! With me. The target is Eastman. Walters, give me your goggles.” Curtiss snatched the heavy night-vision goggles out of the air. “Walters, you’re in charge here. Let’s go.”
The five men set off at a sprint toward the woods.
* * *
Meng watched as the men set off, disappearing under a canopy of trees.
“I’m afraid you’re too late, my friend,” he said. “It will take you at least three minutes to get there. But in sixty seconds, it will all be over. I’ve already got Behrmann. In another minute, Eastman will be dead, too.”
* * *
In Bill Eastman’s bungalow the lights went out and the steady blowing of the air conditioner stopped, creating a sudden silence. Johnny Cloud reacted. Coolly, calmly, but quickly. Out came the night-vision goggles, which he strapped to his forehead, ready. Then out came a small penlight, and then the Heckler and Koch P2000 .40-caliber pistol. “Gentlemen, follow me.”
Eastman and Behrmann were sitting in the study, passing an iSheet back and forth. Now the glow from its screen was the only light in the room. Both men stood with no hesitation. The soldier’s tone was enough to make them move.
Cloud had to get them to the basement quickly, to Eastman’s small private laboratory. That was the safest place and the easiest to defend.
“Tommy, I need a sitrep here. We are on the move.”
Tommy “Gun” Evans, the other SEAL in the house, was Behrmann’s bodyguard. He had been on the front porch when the lights went out. A wiry little Texas boy, Evans was the best shot of any SEAL Cloud had ever seen. The man never missed.
“Tommy, come in,” he repeated. For reply, he heard the sharp crack of Tommy’s Mk 11 rifle. One. Two. Three shots.
Three shots for Tommy meant he had three targets. Cloud’s adrenaline surged. This was real.
Two more shots.
They were being overrun.
He turned off the penlight, lest it give away their position. He slipped it into Eastman’s back pocket and eased his night-vision goggles over his eyes. “Gentlemen, we are running.” Cloud let them go first, placing his hand on Behrmann’s shoulder and guiding him down the first flight of stairs toward the basement. Halfway down the stairs was the landing to the back door. Cloud didn’t like that. What if another squad was heading for the back door right now?
Just as Eastman and Behrmann made the turn toward the cellar, the door exploded inward from a small explosive charge.
For Cloud, time slowed. “Combat time.” He was entering a different consciousness—a consciousness heightened by adrenaline, yet calmed by countless hours of repetition and training. He knew instantly what he was up against: a fire team of at least four men. He himself had practiced entering and clearing houses with the same type of team at least two thousand times. Now he was on the other side: one man trying to protect two civilians. The enemy would try to get through the door frame—the breach. His goal was to keep them there, in the kill funnel.
They would be good. He would have to be better.
Cloud pushed Behrmann down the steps, then threw his back to the wall just inside the door frame.
The number one man came in, green and ghostly in the night vision, rifle stock at his shoulder, panning left, textbook perfect. Cloud came off the door frame, stood the man up—crowd the doorway—pushed the man’s rifle barrel up with one hand, and placed the snout of his HK under the man’s chin and fired. Blood sprayed white in the night-vision goggles.
The second man would be just behind the first man, coming from the right. Cloud fired at him through the first man’s neck, holding up the body, hoping that the second man would hesitate to shoot his buddy in the back. He fired as fast as he could. Bang-bang-bang-bang. The second man went down.
Cloud pivoted the body to shoot at the third man, knowing he would come off the opposite shoulder. He kept firing through the first man’s neck—no time for anything else. Bang-bang-bang. He wasn’t really thinking now; it was all instinct and training. He felt the first man’s body jiggle in his grip. The third man was firing into it, but the man’s body armor was protecting him. Cloud kept firing; then he heard the third man cry out. That was good, because the third man was usually the team leader. The fourth man (and the watchover team, if there was one) might pause at the loss of the leader.
The fourth man typically hung back and would be armed with a bigger, automatic weapon. There he was, coming up the steps—a big fucker, a jade menace in the night vision, lugging a Soviet-era RPD with a round ammo drum.
Cloud gave the corpse in his arms a hard shove with all his strength, and the body went backward while the head, held on only by thin bands of flesh, flopped sickly forward. The fourth man vacillated just long enough for Cloud to put the man’s nose in his tritium sights and pull the trigger. He heard a clang like a cowbell as the bullet slapped the back of the man’s helmet. The man fell backward, his legs still trying to run.
Cloud retreated. He had to get out of the exposed door frame. He backpedaled, firing into the yard, giving himself covering fire. Bang-bang-bang-bang-click-click. He was empty.
Then came the deafening burr of automatic fire from the back of the lawn, so fast it melded into one long BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Cloud saw tracer rounds tear past him—over his shoulder, under his arm. He dived for the stairs, sliding and bumping his way down, but then slammed into a body. Jack Behrmann was slumped facedown, holding his belly and moaning deeply.
Holstering his pistol, Cloud grabbed Behrmann under the arms and heaved with all his might. The giant hardly budged. Around them, the walls were disintegrating under the ravaging fire from the machine gun. Wood splinters and chunks of plaster and insulation rained down on them.
“Help me, damn it!” he yelled
in Behrmann’s ear.
He heaved again, and with a sharp cry of pain, Behrmann kicked with his feet, and both men went bouncing down the rest of the stairs, Behrmann issuing sharp cries of pain all the way down.
Cloud had to think. What was going on? He had killed four men—a typical fire team. But the machine gun meant there was probably an overwatch team as well. He likely had five to ten seconds before this second team tried to breach the doorway. He pulled the Glock 30 SF from his rear holster and lay on his back at the bottom of the stairs, Behrmann moaning beside him. There was no time to help him now. He waited, looking up through the night-vision goggles at the emerald frame of the back door, the pasty-green sky beyond, and the stars of the summer night, burning extra bright in the goggles. Waiting. He considered trying to find a better position but discarded the idea. He dare not move. The seconds ticked by. Where was the other fire team? Mind racing, he began to doubt. Maybe there wasn’t another team. Maybe he’d gotten them all except for the machine gunner. And Tommy—had he bagged all the bad guys at the front of the house? No. If that were the case, why hadn’t Tommy come to help him? No, there were more. This thing was far from over.
He refocused on the door. It was then that he felt a sudden fatigue—a great weariness that he should not feel at a moment like this. And he knew what it meant. He tried to bring his consciousness back from the doorway, back from the outside, to look inward with his mind. And in the process, he felt it: pain, a wetness. The tracer round he had seen, the one that appeared to go under his armpit, had not missed him. He’d been hit, and he was losing blood fast.
He shook his head. More time. I need more time. He returned his focus to the outside, peering through his tritium sights at the door frame.
The first man came in. They locked eyes. They both fired, but Cloud’s aim was better. The man’s head sprouted white liquid like a fountain. Cloud waited for the second man, but he didn’t come. The Glock began to tremble in his hand. Hold on. Hold on.
Another long beat of silence. He heard Behrmann moan. The image in his goggles began to fade. They were losing power. But no, that wasn’t it. It was him. He was dying. A narrowing tunnel of awareness. He was losing too much blood. He squinted and tried to shake it off. Tried to will more blood to his eyes. He thought of his wife, Steph, and their son, Josh. He thought of the new bicycle that remained unridden, in a box in the basement for the past month because he hadn’t taken the half hour he needed to put the thing together. Damn it, damn it, damn it.