Overture

by Mark Wandrey

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  Volant left at a dead run, heading for the main entrance at 100th Street. Ominously, the sounds of fully automatic fire were just beginning to slow.

  As he ran, he grabbed the ear piece for his tactical radio from the breast pocket of his torn and bloody suit jacket. Some small part of his mind wondered where the blood had come from as he set the unit into his left ear. Instantly, he heard a tangle of uncontrolled ramblings as defensive perimeter units yelled about contact, shots fired, and men down.

  His lungs pumping as he ran, Volant cursed himself for not having enough time to exercise. He reached into his pocket and changed the radio’s channel by feel.

  “NSA team control!” he snapped, the radio automatically broadcasting.

  “Go!” came the reply.

  “This is Volant. We have attacks on the perimeter from all sides. Key agents fall back to the center of camp. Defend the portal dome first, headquarters next, and then the scientists. Tactical team to main entrances at 100th Street and the Vanderbilt Gate!”

  Volant burst through a copse of trees within view of the main gate where delivery trucks arrived and departed. Flanking lines of heavy concrete barriers created a funnel, narrowing the two-lane road to one. Temporary guard shacks flanked both sides of the road, and both were now aflame. Civilian personnel controlled the entrance, and they were attacking the heavy metal gate with acetylene torches. The bodies of at least a dozen agents and guardsmen lay on the ground, mixed with many more civilian bodies.

  Volant cut sideways to get closer, moving until he was behind a bulky semi-truck with ‘Energy’ stenciled on the side that arrived hours ago.

  From a position of cover, he sighted and opened fire on the pair of men working on the gate. He left the M4 on full auto, but held the weapon to rapid bursts, firing several at each man. The one with the torch went down first; the other dropped the tanks he carried and looked around in surprise, and Volant put him down next.

  Bullets bounced off the blacktop at his feet, making the agent drop back behind the truck. He felt a tug at his pants leg and cursed himself for not being more alert.

  “Get him!” someone yelled.

  Volant popped out and saw a pair of men running toward him. He put them both down with a long burst, then activated his radio.

  “This is Volant, main gate is nearly breached! Send a tac team ASAP!” He heard more footsteps. Volant popped around and emptied his magazine in one long burst. He thought he hit a trio, but was not sure. He fell back behind cover and reloaded. There was no reply on the radio.

  Volant cursed steadily as he reloaded the rifle with a fresh magazine. The gunfire from outside the park was increasing. He could hear rounds bouncing off the concrete, smacking into the ground, and thunking into the truck he was hiding behind. One went whang off the truck’s underside, and he felt fire lance his left arm.

  “Time to move,” he hissed, feeling warmth spread down the sleeve of his suit jacket. He got to his feet and moved in the opposite direction from which he’d been firing, coming face to face with a dozen men. One of them yelled and fired a shotgun. Volant felt his hair rustle as pellets just missed his face.

  Volant shot, wasting a dozen rounds to stitch the man from his thigh to his head. Several of the others turned and ran, but a woman raised a pistol and shot Volant square in the center of the chest with an expert double-tap.

  He staggered and grunted from the impact. The second shot had split the rifle harness and the shock of the shot made it fall from his hands. The woman looked at him, surprised. She was even more surprised when he drew his Sig P220 and put a .45 round into her face. Blood, bones and teeth flew, and she spun away, her hands groping at the horrible wound. Volant put two more rounds into her back, one for each lung.

  He had planned to move toward the barricade, but an enormous volley of gunfire forced him back behind the truck. He slid his left hand inside his suit, unbuttoned the now torn dress shirt and reached tentatively under the vest.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled as he felt the welts. The vest had saved his life, but it hurt like a motherfucker.

  A rifle boomed not far off. It was not an AR, but a big hunting rifle. It boomed again, and he heard the round impact the truck. This one didn’t bounce, it penetrated with a gong-like sound, and he heard hissing. Hissing? Jesus Jumping Christ, was this a gas truck? He knew there were natural gas generators on site, but he had heard the eggheads were replacing those with something else. What, he could not remember. The answer danced somewhere in the back of his mind.

  Volant looked for the gun and saw it out in the open. There were two or three dozen crazy fuckers racing toward him now. Worse, a fucking garbage truck was revving its huge diesel engine as it prepared to ram the barricade. He raised his Sig and put the six rounds left in the magazine into the garbage truck’s windshield, alternating between the driver and passenger side.

  He must have tagged the driver with at least one round, because the engine went from a roar to a scream as black smoke poured from the stacks. It swerved for a second, then corrected. Volant swapped magazines and aimed as a round caught him high on the left shoulder, above the vest.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as pain tore through him. He shifted aim and fired indiscriminately into the crowd rushing toward him. “You fucks, you fucking fucks!” he screamed at them. Several staggered and one dropped, the top of his head shot away, and the others faltered in the face of his onslaught.

  His left hand hung useless at his side. He holstered the shot-out Sig, walked calmly three steps and scooped up the M4 he’d dropped. The crowd stopped in confusion. He raised the gun, flipped the selector to single shot, and, one-handed, started pumping rounds into them.

  “Federal agent,” he shouted. Blam! “Get out of my compound!” Blam! He walked toward them steadily as round after round hit. The .223 round passed clean through, surprising some as they staggered, uncertain if they’d even been shot.

  They broke. Those who could, scattered away from the agent who wouldn’t go down. Volant emptied his rifle and dropped the magazine out. Walking toward the barricade, he tucked the gun under his nearly useless left arm and fitted a new magazine with his right. Blood ran from his left hand’s fingertips in a steady stream.

  “I need to do something about that,” he said as he released the slide, and the gun reloaded.

  The garbage truck was almost to the barrier. Volant raised the rifle as well as he could in his right and pumped rounds into the windshield. He gambled it was the passenger keeping the truck on target and concentrated on the left side. On his sixth shot, the truck swerved violently.

  “Bingo,” he snarled. The truck swerved right toward him, and into the main barrier. They had designed the barriers to stop traffic, but not a 15-ton garbage truck going almost 60 mph. The truck hit the concrete barrier and, impossibly, seemed to leap into the air as the barrier caught the undercarriage and propelled it upwards.

  “Fuck me,” Volant cried and half-shambled, half-fell to his left. He landed on his shot arm and screamed as white-hot pain filled his being.

  The truck came down, its front wheels just missing his legs. It jumped back into the air and he rolled as the rear wheels brushed him. Just then he saw the truck he’d used for cover. On its side was a symbol that looked like a gas pump with the letters HYD in the center.

  As the truck hit the transport, he clearly recalled the new fuel source. Hydrogen, the scientists had told him with a big grin.

  “Very green!” Dr. Osgood assured him.

  The tank, pierced in several places by gunfire, had been leaking odorless, colorless hydrogen gas for almost a minute. Sparks and hydrogen could be a bad combination. The truck’s tank and framework were carbon fiber and aluminum. However, when a 15-ton garbage truck plows into something at over 50 mph, non-ferrous metals are not an issue.

  The transport truck became a fireball of purest blue and white. The garbage truck shielded Volant from the thermal shockwave, but
the blast also picked it up and spun it backwards. The shockwave tossed Volant upward like a leaf and flung him toward Central Park West. He had a dizzying view of spinning landscape and ground before hitting something, and everything went black.

  * * *

  Central Manhattan was in a panic. To many, the memory of September 11th was still fresh. As the area around Central Park reverberated with the cracks of small arms fire and intermittent explosions, the fear started.

  Lt. Billy Harper stepped out of the 96th Street high rise, where he’d been taking a breaking and entering report, just as a massive explosion rocked midtown. He froze, his hand halfway to the door handle of his unmarked car, as the blast reverberated through the city’s canyons.

  Everyone on the sidewalk froze, the usual sounds of the street noticeably diminished. His radio beeped, and he heard the panicked voice of the dispatcher.

  “Code zero, code zero, central district! All units report to Central Park. Code zero!”

  “Jesus,” Billy cursed and dove into the car. Code zero was disaster response. He flipped the control on his dash, turning on the lights and siren. A second later the car’s oversized engine roared to life, and he squealed into traffic.

  As he dodged the midday traffic, he listened to the details coming in on the radio. None of it surprised him. The federal perimeter in Central Park was under attack. The Feds weren’t responding, and civilians were under fire. The closer he got, the more he realized this was more than some crazy terrorist incident. Dozens were involved, maybe hundreds.

  A minute later, racing down Columbus Avenue, he found traffic in a complete snarl just within view of 79th Street, and no amount of riding the siren would create a gap. He heard the pronounced sounds of battle, and gunfire interspersed with explosions rocked the city. People on the sidewalks stood wide-eyed, many abandoned their vehicles in the middle of the road. Cabbies jumped out and yelled in protest. But the damage was done.

  He maneuvered his car as close to the side of the road as possible, and clambered out. He used his keys to open the trunk and entered the code to the electronic lock on the reinforced security safe. It popped open, and he pushed the lid open all the way.

  Inside was his tactical vest and a Remington 870 with a sling full of extra rounds. Next to that was the M4 carbine the department issued him after 9/11. He hadn’t so much as touched it since the last qualification period a year ago.

  “Damn it,” he growled, taking his suit jacket off and tossing it into the trunk. Another explosion reverberated through the city as he shrugged into the tactical vest, its pouches full of magazines for the M4 as well as his Glock 22. He buckled it in place and slung the Remington over his shoulder, and after a moment’s hesitation, took the rifle as well. Relocking the safe and trunk, he turned south and took off at a trot.

  Two blocks south his brother officers almost killed him. He rounded the corner, angling toward the park, and found himself facing down two uniformed patrolmen with their Glocks pointed at his head.

  “Hey!” Billy barked and came to a stop so fast he nearly fell over backwards. Their eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “Easy, boys!” he said, and pointed to the big yellow NYPD emblazoned on the front of his tactical vest. Both officers stared at him for a second then lowered their guns, but they didn’t put them away.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” one of them said, “they were shooting at us a second ago.” He pointed to a big plate glass store front window that was spider webbed from a bullet.

  Billy examined the single, small caliber bullet impact for a second and concluded it was probably a .223. Equally probably, it was a wild round.

  “Okay, come with me,” he told them.

  “Lieutenant?” the younger patrolman said, his eyes even wider. There were several seconds of intense firing, now much closer, as they were only a few blocks from the Sheep Meadow. Civilians were screaming and running in all directions, generally away from the park.

  “People are hurt,” Billy said and gestured with his carbine toward the park. “We’re police officers, damn it. We took an oath to protect the innocent. So buck up, and follow me!”

  He didn’t wait any longer for the other officers. The sound of gunfire wasn’t diminishing, it was moving, and that was a bad thing. He could hear sirens getting louder as they moved in his direction. Without quick and salient action from first responders like himself, the situation could stabilize in favor of the active shooters, and that was a worst-case scenario he didn’t want to be part of. After running just a few feet, he heard the two officers follow.

  The closer to the park he got, the more profound the chaos became. He found civilians panicking at the echoing sounds of gunfire and explosions. The canyons created by thousands of tall buildings often made the direction of noises misleading, but Billy knew where the disturbance was.

  Cars, mostly abandoned as their occupants got out to see what was happening or to flee, choked the streets. After only a block, he heard the first bullet whiz past. It caught him by surprise. He’d only been shot at once, when he stumbled upon an armed robbery while still a rookie. The ‘vup’ sound of a bullet passing his head had been as distinctive as it was unforgettable.

  For a second he almost shirked his duty. ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ he wondered as his formerly assured steps faltered. You’re a robbery detective, not SWAT. Then he heard several more shots and a scream of pain or terror, and his resolve returned.

  “You’re a damned sworn officer,” he said silently through clenched teeth, “and those are the people you are sworn to protect!” He gripped the stock of the M4 as if it were a magical talisman and rushed onward. One block later, the barricades erected by the government came into sight.

  Billy stopped as he rounded the end of a city bus to look at the concrete barricades. The two officers he’d collected caught up with him. Several people were standing on the other side of the barricade. They were holding something. One of them pointed at Billy and his two patrolmen, and together they raised what they were holding.

  “Are those…?” The officer to Billy’s right was about to ask if those were rifles when the men behind the barricade fired. The officer never asked his question, because a bullet took off the right side of his head in an explosion of bone, blood, and brains.

  Everything happened in the blink of an eye. One moment Billy was standing there with two men next to him, the next he was standing with one man, and a fallen corpse.

  Billy backpedaled, more out of shock and surprise than any sort of tactical awareness. The other officer raised the shotgun he held and fired, as the men manning the barricade fired again. Just as Billy retreated behind the bus, he felt something smack him in the chest and he grunted.

  “Get back here,” he growled at the other officer, finally coming to his senses. The officer’s shotgun boomed once more as the other men continued to fire. Billy blindly reached around the corner of the bus, found the officer’s uniform jacket and grabbed it, pulling the man backwards. As he rounded the corner to join Billy behind cover, he fell backwards and landed on his butt with a thud, the shotgun clattering from his hands. He looked up at Billy with confusion, blood pouring from a torn neck wound.

  “Oh, Lord,” Billy gasped and tried to staunch the flow of blood. It was rushing like a river.

  “Lieutenant?” the man gurgled, blood coming up with a gasping cough. “I’m shot.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Billy said and reached for his radio. The patrolman gave a hesitant smile and nodded, blood running from his nose.

  “I feel…” the patrolman said, and the blood pulsed one more time and stopped. He was dead.

  “Damn it,” Billy said, and lowered the man gently to the ground. Bullets ricocheted around the end of the bus where they’d stood only moments ago. The corpse of the first officer jerked once as a round found his body. Billy became aware that his chest hurt.

  He put a hand inside his jacket and felt around. There was white hot pain just under his left nipple.
<
br />   “Fuck, I’m shot,” he realized. He set the rifle down and wormed his hand inside his dress shirt. His probing fingers found a wet spot and his heart began to race. His hands were shaking as he undid his jacket and shirt, and exposed the light ballistic vest. There, at the source of the pain, was a tiny hole. It was about the size a .223 bullet made when he’d fired them at the M4 qualifications after 9/11. “Oh God,” he said and unzipped the vest.

  The vest was a stop gap, never meant to stop all bullets. They all knew that. It stopped most pistol rounds and some rifle rounds. However, the venerable little .223, favored by a good part of the world’s military powers, tended to go right through the Kevlar weave like a pencil through cardboard.

  He opened the vest to expose his chest and found it smeared with blood, but not much. He gingerly wiped it away to revel a bleeding wound. Probing the wound, he found it extremely painful, and then felt something hard. Forgetting his training entirely, he continued to probe. There was something just under the skin. Gritting his teeth, he squeezed and out popped an object.

  The deformed bullet was smaller than his pinky fingernail. He guessed it was a .22 long rifle round. They were also known to occasionally penetrate vests. This one had maintained just enough energy to penetrate the vest and his skin, but no more. He zipped up the vest and buttoned his shirt. There was nothing he could do about the bleeding wound; his first aid kit was still in the car. He thanked whatever deity was looking after him and went back to work.

  Snatching up the M4, he thumbed off the safety. Bullets had stopped flying behind the bus. His training told him not to go around the other end of the bus, but he wasn’t going to simply retreat.

  He got down on his hands and knees in the debris-filled street. He ignored the pain in his chest and glanced under the bus from behind the rear wheel. There was a surprising amount of space under it. He could see four men at the barricade; three were standing behind it, and one had climbed over and was walking toward the rear of the bus to investigate.