by Michael Todd
What was their plan? Rodrigo leaned forward in his seat as he studied the vehicles in an effort to discern what Salinger Jacobs and Madigan Kennedy might be thinking. He should have put more money into higher-quality people, he mused. He could have hand-picked a couple of long-range shooters who would be able to find a weak spot in the armor and disable the vehicles. That would allow them to deal with the people inside at their leisure.
Instead, he was stuck there in a frustrating attempt to anticipate whether they would run or fight.
Movement from the vehicles held his attention. Doors peeled open from both of the Hammerheads and six armored figured exited each one. Most wore what looked like the armor that was regularly used by the military out there, which made it simpler to identify the suit that Madigan Kennedy usually wore. It was heavier and sturdier than the rest, and he knew that she had a couple of shoulder-mounted rockets to launch should things go poorly, the sign of a well-funded freelancer.
One of the Hammerheads reversed a couple of dozen meters before it stopped once more and the second pushed forward a few feet. This seemed to be a coordinated effort as a few seconds later, the men in the barricade yelled a warning.
“Take cover!” At the loud cry, the men ducked quickly. Rodrigo resisted the urge to mimic them since he wasn’t in the line of fire, but the man whose HUD had streamed to him had gone suspiciously still and a handful of holes appeared in the glass of the windshield. He knew that it was supposed to be bulletproof, but that didn’t help much when the bullets were armor-piercing and punched through the impact-resistant glass like it was made of…well, glass.
The point where Rodrigo actually did take cover was when the shoulder mount on Kennedy’s suit raised and a white trail of smoke appeared. This clearly demonstrated that they had come ready for a fight and didn’t have any inclination to avoid resistance either. The small rocket streaked towards them at an impossible speed, exploded in a white-hot flash, and left them coated in a cloud of smoke for a few seconds.
It was a diversion tactic. He knew this almost before he raised his head once more. It pained him that he’d actually had to duck but he hadn’t worn a suit of his own, knowing that he couldn’t be involved in any of the fighting. He still needed legal exculpation from all this.
As the smoke cleared, two Hammerhead engines roared to their full capacity. He peered into one of the streaming HUDs that remained functional and immediately detected the ruse. Most of the men and woman in armor had dismounted from the two ATVs and now fired relentlessly. One of the ATVs accelerated toward the blockade. He couldn’t see if there actually was a driver, but it seemed that they planned to ram the three vehicles that blocked the road.
It was all a diversion, of course. Rodrigo couldn’t see Jacob’s hybrid suit among those who had dismounted, and the second ATV hurtled away from the road and into the desert, away from the Zoo and toward the wall and the Staging Area.
“We’re in pursuit,” Rodrigo advised through his mic. “My Hammerhead will pursue the one that has broken away. That has to be Jacobs in there. The rest of you, hold the blockade and take these motherfuckers out.”
“Roger that!” came the response from the men in charge of each vehicle. They dismounted hastily from their vehicles in anticipation of being rammed by the oncoming Hammerhead, while Rodrigo remained in the vehicle that roared onto the sand to pursue Jacobs.
He assumed that Gutierrez had been responsible for armoring the vehicles, and she had done one hell of a good job, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t drawbacks. In a heavy fight, they had an advantage, and the men holding the blockade would have their work cut out for them to keep that one from busting through. Which, of course, made it a good idea to leave the vehicle, but that was neither here nor there. The real prize now attempted to escape, and with the added weight of the extra armor, it wouldn’t get far.
A resounding crash indicated that the first vehicle had impacted the blockade. The men’s weapons exploded into life as they engaged the Heavy Metal team. It would be an interesting fight, since the men and woman on Jacob’s side were better armored, armed, and trained for a fight like this. The men he’d hired wore suits that where already three years old and it showed. While they were able enough as bounty hunters, they lacked in the kind of training and coordination that came with a proper military background. They would be slowly picked apart out there, and Rodrigo knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone would miss them too badly. He’d read their records. To a man, they were all amoral sons of bitches.
But none of that mattered if he obtained his prize. Sal had broken away too quickly. He’d obviously seen his people outnumbered and wanted to make a break for it. As skilled a scientist as he was, he certainly lacked in the same qualities that the men and women he’d hired for protection possessed, and that would be his last mistake.
And what was better, it seemed that his quarry was alone in that vehicle. Heavy Metal had hired a twelve-man team. Assuming someone was driving the vehicle that had crashed into the blockade and Salinger himself was driving this one, that accounted for all fourteen people on this mission. Rodrigo gripped his arm rest with one hand and his seatbelt with the other and his heart raced with anticipation as they closed the gap on Jacobs.
He could tell that the scientist knew they were in pursuit due to the crazed way that he drove. The vehicle raced almost blindly across the sand and didn’t slow, even for the sharp drops through the dunes. The idiot was headed for a bad crash, and that definitely would not work for Rodrigo. They were there for something in particular, after all—a plant that could very easily be destroyed in the crash. That was a risk that he wasn’t willing to take. They needed to find a way to stop him without destroying the Hammerhead.
One of the men in his vehicle shoved the top hatch up and heaved himself through the hole before he drew his rifle from the holster on his back. It wasn’t the newest of weapons but considering the stagnancy in firearms over the past couple of decades, it wasn’t like the gun itself made much of a difference. They were always made with reliability in mind, so he didn’t have to worry about its quality.
The quality of the shooter was another story altogether.
“Shoot the engine block out,” Rodrigo commanded through the comm line. “If that Hammerhead tips and our prize is destroyed in the chaos, none of you will be paid. Keep that in mind.”
“Roger that,” the man said and clearly sounded irritated at the lack of respect their leader had for their abilities. He didn’t care. These men would be paid a lot more than their worth if they obtained that plant, and he would make damn sure that nobody would be paid if he didn’t get what Pegasus wanted. Too much money had already been wasted in down payments on failed expeditions.
The man raised his rifle close to his face, more out of habit than necessity. While you wore a suit, you couldn’t pull the gun close enough to your face for it to make a difference. Most of the suits, even ones as old as these mutts wore, would have the aiming software embedded in the HUDs that would make all that irrelevant anyway.
He’d hired people who weren’t trained or experienced in the use of power combat suits. That was discouraging information to find out this late in the game.
The merc opened fire. Rodrigo could hear the shots even without needing to patch into the man’s HUD. He did anyway but quit hastily after the first few seconds. It was bumpy up there and bouncing around in the back of an ATV at high speed over desert terrain made it all hellishly more nauseating to add the experience from another perspective as well. He simply patched into the more stable and reliable viewpoint from the driver and leaned back in his seat. The highly trained driver would know how to corral Jacobs in a way that would hopefully leave their prize intact.
Eventually, all his schemes and concerns were unnecessary. Rodrigo was pleasantly surprised when the cut-rate mercs came through instead of the drivers. Smoke issued from the engine of Jacobs’ ATV and while he pushed it harder, it eventually ground to a hal
t when it crested one of the dunes.
Rodrigo’s ATV circled to block any escape that Sal might have with an open demonstration of menace by the man at the top who held the heavy rifle aimed at the driver’s side door.
Relief washed over him as he connected to the Hammerhead’s speaker system.
“There’s nowhere to run, Jacobs,” he said in as convincing a voice as he could manage. “Step out of the vehicle with your hands above your head. Hand over the merchandise, and we’ll let you walk out of here alive.” It was a lie, of course, but a necessary one. He didn’t want Jacobs to put up any kind of last-stand fight that would put lives at risk unnecessarily.
Rodrigo could see the merc who manned the hatch tense, ready to shoot.
“Don’t shoot until we have the merchandise,” he warned. After a few moments of thought, Sal made the right choice, pushed the door of his Hammerhead open, and stepped out with his hands raised above his head.
“Aren’t you a clever boy?” Rodrigo said to himself and a small smile played on his face. The lack of noise on their comm channel told him that the fight back at the blockade was already over and his men had probably not fared as well as their superior numbers might have suggested, but who cared about that? It was actually a good thing, since he had to pay fewer salaries and would have less loose ends to tie up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sal stepped slowly out of the Hammerhead. He had to admit that, all things considered, his circumstances certainly appeared disappointingly bleak. As he moved and registered the comfort of the pack that he carried at his side, he looked at the six men who simply stood and stared at him. They’d dismounted from their ATV with alacrity and speed, determined to aim as many guns at him as possible. He wondered if it was an intimidation tactic.
It was rather impressive, he acknowledged. There weren’t many people in the world who would have thought that he was worth enough trouble to put this much security on him. He wondered vaguely if he should feel flattered.
An eighth man stepped out of the Hammerhead. Most of the men, including the one who glared at him from the hatch at the top of the vehicle, wore suits of armor. Older but still sturdy and reliable, and more importantly, necessary for anyone who worked this close to the Zoo.
The final man wore a suit. It looked expensive, but Sal’s knowledge of which suits were expensive or not was rather limited. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that. It was all a matter of perspective, and he hadn’t owned enough to know which was which. The fact that the man was out there in a suit, though, and carried only a pair of glasses that seemed to be his only HUD connection to the rest of the team, made it a fair guess that he was the one in charge. He was tall, lean, and good-looking. A sharp crew-cut and no hint of a beard made him look younger than the gray that glistened in his black hair might suggest. Sal wondered if he was some kind of pencil pusher who ran this operation. It made sense, all things considered.
“Salinger Jacobs,” the man said and his accent indicated some Mediterranean heritage, though it wouldn’t be easy to pinpoint from where, exactly. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person.”
“Yeah, no, the pleasure is all mine, I assure you…dude,” he said with an offhand shrug. He didn’t really want to offend anyone, but it wasn’t like he even knew who this guy was. Then again, the man obviously thought he didn’t need to introduce himself to a soon to be dead scientist. It was all about priorities, after all.
“You’ve been a problem for me over the past few months, I’ll admit,” the man said with a smile as he removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses nonchalantly with a handkerchief from his pocket. “But you’ve been a lot more profitable than problematic, which is the only reason why you’re still alive. And, incidentally, the only reason why I’m willing to give you this one chance. Give us the plant, walk away, and you’ll be allowed to live.”
Rodrigo studied the young man with real interest. His file had placed his height at a couple of inches over six feet tall, which made him three inches shorter than Rodrigo himself. But with the armor he wore, Jacobs now stood a good foot taller than him. With the darkened, hybrid suit that looked sleek compared to the chunky and heavy armor his own men wore, he thought it was funny that Sal was the one at a disadvantage.
“That’s an awesome deal, it really is,” Sal replied with a quick nod and swept his gaze over the men who surrounded him. “You should know something about me, though. Something the government wouldn’t want you to know but I feel it’s only fair to warn you. When I was a teenager, they kidnapped me from my home and housed me in a secret base deep inside the Appalachians. They experimented on me in there. All in all, they did some spooky stuff to me. Annoyingly sexual stuff too, but I don’t like to talk about that. The point is, they turned me into a deadly mutant with telekinetic powers—not to be underestimated, I might add, no matter how outnumbered and outgunned I might seem to be.”
Rodrigo narrowed his eyes. Jacobs didn’t seem the type of man to play for time like this, and honestly, it was ridiculous and more than a little pathetic.
“Take your rifle out of the holster and toss it on the ground,” he ordered and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Once you do that, we can have a therapeutic talk about what happened to you in this secret government facility.”
The scientist nodded and calmly drew the rifle out of the holster and tossed it into the sand a few feet away from Rodrigo’s feet. He immediately raised his hands to point finger guns at the armored men around him. His eyes were narrowed, and he looked deadly serious.
“It’s time for you to make a choice, boys,” Sal said and deliberately edged his voice with a low growl. “You gotta ask yourselves one question. Do you want to walk away from this fight alive, or do you want to simply be another story in the legend of the…dangerous Zoo Experiment?”
“That’s a terrible superhero nickname,” Rodrigo pointed out blandly. “But enough of this childish game. Hand the plant over, and we’ll drive away, Jacobs.”
The scientist didn’t respond and instead, aimed his right hand with its finger gun at the man at the hatch. The merc, who aimed a real weapon at him, simply smirked and shook his head.
“Pow,” Jacobs said, narrowed his eyes once again, and cocked his thumb’s ‘hammer’ forward.
Against all kinds of logic and sanity, the man’s head exploded in a spray of blood, brain matter, and destroyed ceramic armor.
“No fucking way,” was the only thought that went through Rodrigo’s head as he turned to make sure that he’d actually seen what he thought he saw. Sure enough, the man who had manned the hatch of his ATV had lost most of his head.
Jacobs cocked his finger gun again and another man dropped soundlessly—and another, and another. Rodrigo’s logic warred with the apparent evidence of his own eyes. He almost began to question whether or not it was time to believe in real superheroes with actual powers. Stranger stuff had been known to come out of the Zoo, after all.
In the shocked silence, he heard the distant report of a shot from a high-powered sniper rifle. Jacobs hadn’t rushed out of the blockade at a whim, he realized. He’d deliberately planned to be intercepted and set up a trap for anyone who might come after them. And he’d made up that whole stupid kidnapped kid story simply to fuck with them. It was some interesting thinking on the man’s part.
Unfortunately, by the time he had processed everything about the situation, the seven men who had come with him were down and he was the only man left standing.
He drew a pistol that he’d secreted inside his jacket pocket. It was a personal favorite, an older .44 Magnum Colt revolver that had been gifted to him by one of the Saudi sheiks whom he’d worked with in his early years as a mercenary.
He balanced the heavy weapon easily in his hand and cocked the hammer. Jacobs would die out there. Rodrigo had made up his mind that he would not be killed by some geek out in the middle of a desert. That was so…lame!
Heavy, steel-reinforced and hydraulically pow
ered fingers wrapped around his wrist and twisted his arm savagely. Rodrigo managed to fire a single shot and the slug spun into the desert somewhere as the bones in his arm and wrist shattered. The same heavy, armored fist rose and he closed his eyes to block out the sight as it descended remorselessly.
Bone crunched as Sal hammered his fist down as hard as he could. The way the man’s head snapped back was more than enough to confirm that he was dead. He didn’t even need to see where the skull had caved in or the neck had snapped to tell him that. The body slumped, a limp and useless corpse.
He keyed his comm line and opened one to Kennedy. “How’s that for some action?”
“I really liked the part where you tried to pass my shooting off as superpowers,” she replied, and he could hear a grin in her voice. “I recorded that shit for posterity.”
“Come on, it was cool, you have to admit it.” He retrieved the large pistol the man had dropped after he’d had broken his arm. “Besides, seeing the man’s face when, for a second, he actually thought I had superpowers made it all worth it.”
“I hope that you saved that shit for posterity too,” she said as she strode across the sand toward him. Gutierrez had filled Kennedy’s suit impressively, but there was something about the way that Madigan moved that set her apart, even in the altered sniper suit they’d claimed from a man who had tried to attack their base. It had been altered with software meant for long-distance shooting, so that any soldier who knew their way around these suits could make shots at over a thousand yards with impressive accuracy and little trouble. A skilled marksman—or woman, in this case—could take it over fifteen hundred, which made it a long walk for her to reach him where he waited beside the vehicle.