by Hawk, Nate
Niko was tempted to wait out the man with the gun. On the other hand, surely the police had been called and dispatched on their way. Niko knew what prison would feel like. Horrific thoughts of his teenage years came flooding back. Niko figured it was now or never. He had an extended magazine that hung slightly lower than the grip on the Glock that he was preparing to use again. Surely, the extra ammunition could only help his cause. Niko turned the knob of the control tower door slowly, with restrained precision. Sure that the latch no longer secured the door, he pushed it forcefully with his shoulder as he swung his gun into position for the easy shot. After all, the man on the footbridge had nowhere to maneuver unless he jumped into the water below. That would suit Niko well as he could make his escape into the night as the dam over-topped and his mission was accomplished.
As the door flew open, Kelly was ready. He simultaneously dropped one knee to the floor of the bridge and released a fusillade of gunfire. Niko used the door as partial cover and it successfully shielded him from the shots. Unfortunately for Niko, his first shot was premature, as he attempted to line up the sights of the pistol. The shot was misplaced, partially because his own weapon had been struck by one of Kelly’s bullets and partially because the man had kneeled down in an effort to become a smaller target. In the split second that these events occurred, Niko realized that he had a problem. It was a big problem. He pulled the trigger of the Glock but it was malfunctioning. Nothing was happening. Malfunctions were nearly unheard of with a Glock. What had happened?
Before the gun’s malfunction, Niko’s one shot had gone over Kelly’s head. Now, Niko found himself in a world of unexpected problems. The other man was back up on his feet and closing in. A bright-light beamed horizontally, blinding Niko. How had that happened? Niko rapidly assessed his body to ensure that somehow he had not been hit by the gunfire. He stayed behind the partially opened door to minimize the chances of being shot while he inspected his gun. He had to see what was wrong with it. The incoming beam of light was blinding and Niko could no longer see the silhouette of the aggressor. Niko had just needed one more shot to take care of the problem that the man had posed to him. Just one more shot to conclude the mission and flee to safety. But what the hell had happened?
Now the intruder’s light was closing in fast. That’s when Niko realized that a stray bullet had struck the extended magazine of his automatic pistol, shearing off the magazine’s bottom plate. In doing so, the internal spring had relieved itself of all compression, liberating itself and all of the ammunition. Every last cartridge had fallen out of the bottom of the magazine. Niko collapsed into a kneeling position as he tried to locate a bullet to manually slide into the chamber. He franticly crawled away from the cover of the steel door, searching for a cartridge. He just needed one. The bullets had rolled into the steel mesh flooring that made up the walkway. He tried to pry a bullet out in one last attempt to save himself. Just one!
Niko was miles beyond bewilderment. How had this happened? This sure as hell wasn’t part of his carefully finessed plan. And it had all turned bad so quickly. Awe, shit, he thought as the man’s right foot flew through the air striking the hand that held the Glock. The gun bounced and clanked, first off of the railing and then off of the steel mesh flooring. Its momentum continued as it was lost to the darkness and the water below.
“You took my family from me, you son-of-a-bitch,” Kelly said.
Niko didn’t recognize the voice but he could surmise who it was based on the man’s narrative. After all, it had been Niko’s intent to have Jen killed.
“You! How did you survive the train?” Niko asked as he rubbed his sore hand.
Niko didn’t care to converse with Kelly but he was buying time. He knew his plan could still work marvelously well.
“You’re one relentless asshole,” Niko added.
Kelly’s foot swung out of the darkness once more and made contact with Niko’s temple. Niko tumbled over in agony, as he grabbed onto the railing in an effort to keep himself from falling into the water. He knew Kelly had him dead to rights. He lay in an awkward position on his side for a moment and then up righted himself again. Niko ran thoughts through his mind in an effort to discover how best to eliminate Kelly. At that point, he was beginning to wonder if it was even possible to do so.
“Then, I find out that you like to keep women in cages. You kept Jen in a cage while you brutally raped her, you sick bastard. Three months of you sweating all over her you disgusting son-of-a-bitch!”
Niko knew better than to antagonize Kelly. Niko realized that he needed to put his efforts into escaping the situation. He had almost cleaned-up his past misdeeds but this obstinate man had proven to be more trouble than Niko had anticipated. As he was thinking, Kelly quickly jabbed a front kick towards Niko’s face and broke his nose. The blood instantly began to run down the back of Niko’s throat as he coughed and spat on the steel mesh.
Kelly’s mind raced back to the altercation that Jen and Kristin had found themselves in. He was sure that he had the mastermind of that incident, right there in front of him. How had Niko known Jen would be there? How had he pitted Bekhan against Jen and convinced him to set the bomb at her feet? Kelly did not have any real evidence but he knew Niko was cunning enough to pull it off.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” Niko spewed at the man whom he still could not see behind the light. “Put me out of my misery. Kill me!”
“I will kill you,” Kelly promised. “But I’ve got a question first.”
“What?” Niko asked, searching for a way out.
“The boy that was killed was named Brady. He was smart and one-of-a-kind. How did it feel when you realized that your terror cell had killed your own son?”
Kelly studied Niko for an answer but saw nothing sincere.
“You don’t care! Do you?” Kelly asked, understanding that Niko lacked any inclination towards empathy.
Niko stared dumbly with pain throbbing through his head.
“She was jogging through the woods practically calling for a man! She was asking for it and Allah saw fit to punish her for her unholy lifestyle. Why did the filthy American whore keep the offspring?” he asked as an afterthought, his words trailing off into the stillness of the night.
Kelly knew the answer because he had already asked himself the same question.
“Because she was a lot better person than either one of us.”
Niko didn’t care about anybody that had died in the blasts but he was working on a plan. He knew he had to play Kelly just right if he were to survive. Niko fell forward onto the walkway, in a display of raw emotion. As he did so, he quickly pulled a knife and lurched towards Kelly. Kelly was quick enough to step back slightly and avoid most of the danger. As the blade arched through the air and missed its intended target, it did make contact with Kelly’s left boot. It entered the dead space in his shoe where his missing toes should have been. Lacking the reaction that he had expected, Niko thought to himself, this man is indestructible. He’s got a knife in his foot and he didn’t even flinch!
Niko was never one to quit, though. He attempted to go for Stan’s revolver that was located in his jacket pocket. Kelly had Niko covered with the MP5 and Niko’s movement was well telegraphed so Kelly knew what he was up to. Kelly squeezed his own trigger and shot a nine-millimeter parabellum into Niko’s right shoulder joint. The bone shattered and his arm was completely immobilized. Niko shrieked in pain as he knew instantly that his limp arm would forever be useless.
That was the first time in Niko’s life that he felt true helplessness. He had been brutalized before, more times than he could remember, but that fear had a beginning, middle and end. Plus, he had conquered the abuse by escaping and doling out pain himself. He had no concept of how to escape from this man that was still hidden behind the light that lit up Niko’s face. It was like Kelly could read his mind. Was Kelly some pure white force that had come to destroy him and his evil ways? Was Kelly a lightning bolt from above? Maybe t
his man was something more earthly; a kind of brother warrior, but admittedly, a superior one. Niko glanced beside him, past the handrail and into the darkness below. He asked himself what his chances were if he rolled off the walkway and dove into the water below. It might just burn enough time. There was even the possibility of escape.
“Your friends already got those toes,” Kelly said, as he looked down towards his boot.
Niko turned his head away from the darkness and back towards the blinding light.
“You’re a coward and your life is going to end right now, you worthless piece of shit.”
Kelly kicked Niko hard in the head for the third time. The sidekick was almost hard enough to knock him out. Kelly wanted Niko to be conscious for the remainder of the procedure. He pulled the revolver from Niko’s pocket, placing it in his own as he rolled the man over on his back. Kneeling on Niko’s upper back, Kelly bent down and extracted the razor sharp knife that was protruding from his left boot. He pulled the dazed man’s shirt up to reveal the small of his back, as he felt for the cartilage between two of the man’s lumbar vertebrae. Satisfied of the location, he thrust the knife deep between the bones. Niko wiggled and shrieked while Kelly forced the blade side-to-side through the intervertebral discs. The horrendous pain seemed to inform Niko of his impending death. Kelly jabbed several more times at the man’s lower back, just to be sure. It looked as if Kelly had worked over the man’s back with a chainsaw.
Kelly was satisfied when Niko’s legs stopped flailing. Then he took the knife and stabbed it into the flesh of Niko’s thigh, like a chef might stick a thermometer into a Thanksgiving turkey. There was no reaction so Kelly was satisfied that Niko had lost the use of his legs. They would just act to weigh down Niko, now. He left the knife stuck in his leg and pushed the man to the edge of the walkway. Niko’s wounds oozed fresh liquid that flowed through the mesh and cascaded to the water below. His long hair lay flat around his head like a janitor’s mop. His damaged body hardly moved as nearly all of it had been rendered useless. Kelly braced himself with the railing as he draped Niko’s feet over the edge. Then Kelly did something that Niko did not anticipate. He adjusted his flashlight to illuminate the features of his own face. Niko was finally able to see what the man who had outmaneuvered him looked like.
Then Kelly said, “While you are drowning down there, think of me. You got off easy. I’m the one who has to live with what you’ve done.”
Niko thought about the time bomb that was set to blow the motor that controlled the radial gates. He knew it was only a matter of moments now until it went off. Once it blew, there would be no way to open the gates in time. The dam would over top and be wiped out. Munich would be a floodplain and humanitarian disaster. Even though Niko realized that he would die, he knew that he had accomplished his assignment.
Niko looked Kelly in the eyes and said, “Time is just about up. You killed me but I still won, asshole.”
Then he gave a blood-gargled laugh that came out more like a combination of a cough and a smile. Kelly had heard enough. He used his foot to push on Niko’s torso with his punctured boot. The man slid slowly at first, until his body gained an increasing amount of momentum. Niko whipped over the edge into a momentary free-fall. Despite death waiting for the man, Kelly saw satisfaction written on Niko’s face as he disappeared into the depth and darkness of the solitary reservoir below.
Under different circumstances, Kelly might have taken some time to think about what had just happened. However, the water level was getting dangerously close to over-topping the dam. Kelly knew that Niko hadn’t placed enough explosives to wipe out the dam. Instead, Kelly figured that when he had seen Niko running earlier, the man must have just placed an explosive to blow the floodgate components so that they could not be opened. Kelly knew that he had no time to waste. He sprinted off the walkway and ran hard to the area where he had seen Niko emerge. As Kelly removed his Gerber multi-tool he spotted the device. The timer showed thirty six seconds. Plenty of time, Kelly thought. The device was very crudely made and had a magnet holding it on to a high-reduction gear drive that actuated the gates. It was like amateur hour to Kelly. It was one of the most basic bombs Kelly had seen. He didn’t have to guess on the wires, he knew exactly which one to sever to cut power to the detonator. He sliced it with twenty-five seconds remaining.
Then he took a deep breath and started to think about how to get the gates back open. He started to move towards the control tower when he had some thoughts of uncertainty. The entire time that Kelly had chased Niko, the man had been witty. The bomb that he had just disarmed was too easy. On top of that, Kelly knew improvised explosive devices have a way of not working. Several things could prevent them from functioning properly; old components, bad connectors and dead batteries, just to name a few. Niko was too careful for that. Surely he would have added another explosive device for redundancy. Kelly began looking around frantically.
There was a door to what seemed to be a concrete maintenance bunker. Kelly checked it and the door pushed open. Apparently, it had been kicked in by Niko. The humble concrete structure housed the motor that ran the driveshaft, which opened the gates. Oh shit, Kelly thought as he pictured Niko’s final cunning remarks. Now he was sure there was another device. Kelly turned on his flashlight and scoured the room. Between the motor and the wall was a rudimentary box with a timer on top. Kelly saw the countdown window at seven seconds. There was no time to open the box and figure out how to disarm it. What could he do in seven seconds to stop the explosion?
As he reached over and clutched the box, he knew. He sure wasn’t going to lay down on it and take the blast if he didn’t have to. Kelly dropped his rifle. He ran out the door with the box and threw it with the strength and agility of a professional discus thrower. Kelly dove back into the small shed seeking shelter from the imminent explosion. As the bomb hit the surface of the water, the timer sent the corresponding signal to the detonator and the blast occurred. It was a deep noise and the blast produced a geyser that made Old Faithful seem irrelevant. Water came down everywhere after its brief foray into the atmosphere.
Kelly quickly got to his feet and went back to the same area, searching for a third device. He didn’t think Niko had had enough time to prepare one device, much less two. Was it possible that there was a third one? Kelly moved fast and inspected the integral parts of the actuating system for the floodgates. Satisfied that there were no more devices, he sprinted towards the control tower. He knew damn well that if the gates weren’t opened quickly, the entire structure would begin eroding downstream, under a building wall of deadly water.
The door of the control tower was still ajar. Kelly opened the door fully to reveal the hydrologist, who had picked himself up off of the floor and taken a seat behind a variety of computer monitors. As he locked eyes with Kelly, he had painful dedication written all over his face. The man’s eyes seemed to Kelly to be filled with life-experience. He had a level of cool-headedness that revealed a more detailed background; there was something additional to his engineering knowledge. The hydrologist was frantically entering a code in an effort to open the radial gates of the emergency spillway. He knew only too well what the consequences of a dam failure would be downstream.
“Come to finish the job?” he asked Kelly, as he prepared himself to be shot again. Kelly noticed the lack of an accent and determined the man was an American.
“No, sir. We’re on the same side. I believe that your structure is still intact,” he answered respectfully.
“What the hell was that explosion?” the man asked, clearly in pain.
“It was outside, in the water. Besides the rising water, I believe all threats here have been eliminated,” he said modestly.
Kelly looked down to see that the man had stuck his left thumb inside the gunshot wound in an apparent effort to stop the bleeding. Kelly quickly understood that the man was a veteran.
“How bad are you hit?” Kelly asked, as he pulled out his own individual
first aid kit from his gear.
“It’s not good but I had it worse in ‘Nam. I’ll survive, providing that I get to a hospital in the next couple of hours.”
Kelly handed the man a pressure bandage and a roll of tape.
“I’ll call it in,” Kelly said as he picked up his phone.
Just then the motor for the radial gates fired up and the relief on the man’s face told Kelly that the crisis had been averted.
“Who did you fight with?” Kelly asked, hoping to keep the man focused and out of shock.
“Army. Grunt. Sixty-eight and Sixty-nine. Thought I was going to live the rest of my life in peace though, working as a civilian for the Corps of Engineers. They positioned me over here in Germany. Trying to assist the Germans in any way we can to advert a humanitarian crisis. For a while there I thought it might have all been for nothing.”
Kelly found peace knowing that this part of the terror plot had been thwarted. However, he knew that he had no time to lose in getting back to Munich. He looked at the injured man.
Kelly said, “Now that those gates are open, let’s extract you the hell out of here soldier.”
***
Chapter 65
Kelly saw that he was pushing the upper limits of the time proposal that he had suggested to Owen. So, Kelly grabbed his phone and seeing that he had one bar, called Owen.