by Rob Jones
She dodged the strike and returned fire with a savage spear hand strike at his neck which knocked him staggering back to Reaper, gasping for breath. Except for a few taekwondo moves, the former legionnaire was untrained in the finer martial arts, so he leaned his weight into Garza and made do with a no-nonsense shovel hook thrown hard into his jaw.
Lexi heard Garza’s teeth shattering as Reaper’s broad fist smashed his lower jaw up into his top teeth. The Mexican screamed in agony as he fell down on his backside.
“Get up,” Lexi said. “I haven’t finished playing with you yet.”
She struck a savage salvo of blows against Garza in an unrelenting attack, pounding him all over as her head filled with the thought of all the women he had attacked over the years.
She struck him in the throat and then a double axe-kick as fast as two lightning bolts smashed his balls and he fell forward howling like a baby. Still she fought on, and Reaper began to see another side to her. A darkness she rarely let escape from her gravity. She kicked his shins and then planted a heavy boot in his stomach, striking his diaphragm and blasting the air out of his lungs.
He gasped, but she was merciless. She stood over him and slammed her hand down on his head in a savage palm strike which knocked his head back on the rocks and killed him.
“You think I went too far?” she said.
Reaper gave a Gallic shrug. “Pas du tout. C’était dingue...”
“Let’s get back to Hawke.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Terror consumed Kim Taylor as she stared at the monstrous cobalt bomb before her, almost humming with power. It felt like it was alive, breathing almost – a hideous lead-gray beast intent on the annihilation of everything she had ever loved or known. This wasn’t something Wade was using to destroy San Francisco. This inhuman, obscene creation had used Wade to get what it wanted, and it terrified her. She hadn’t exactly led a sheltered life since becoming a field agent, but this was something else. Just looking at its sleek, lead-colored casing made her feel sick and that was before she even contemplated the extermination it was capable of delivering.
“Holy shit,” was all she could say, but everyone agreed with her.
After Camacho lowered Alex to the bunk, they all moved in closer and beheld Wade’s monstrous Hummingbird. When Scarlet saw the whirring numbers on Sobotka’s digital timer she shook her head in horror. “Less than nine minutes now…”
Kim glanced at the pale, sweat-soaked faces of her friends and swallowed hard. These people had fought with her across Mexico and California to stop the Order of the Sixth Sun and their insane suicide cult, but they could still lose everything if they failed to deactivate the weapon. The weight of eight million lives was on her shoulders and she felt every ounce of it.
8:37 to detonation…
Kim tried to focus. Back when the island was used as a prison, the inmates could hear the sounds of San Francisco blowing on the wind across the bay, but now all she could hear was the sound of SWAT teams as they cleared up the last stragglers of the Sixth Sun who were trying to flee on their boats.
8:31
Jack Camacho moved forward to do his thing. He was fully trained in explosive ordinance disposal techniques as part of the years he spent with the CIA’s bomb squad, not to mention the time in Afghanistan and Iraq in the US Army he spent diffusing IEDs. He knew the buck stopped with him. He’d stopped many threats over the years, but nothing like this had ever crossed his path.
8:11
He lifted the housing from around Sobotka’s jerry-rigged timer. It was good work, especially considering that he’d done it while Wade and Mendoza were pointing a gun in his face, but it was done fast and might give him options. Like all bomb disposal professionals, Camacho knew the preferable option was a controlled explosion, but that method was kind of unavailable when dealing with a nuclear device of this magnitude.
Instead, he knew he had only one option left to him – neutralizing the device right here on the island – and it was time to get to work.
Time.
He looked at the timer.
7:24
Time to move faster… But this was no ordinary bomb with a blast cap, batteries, duct tape and sticks of explosive… this was a Soviet-era cobalt bomb which like everyone else he had thought a mere myth until today.
Camacho knew the bomb was useless if the trigger failed to fire enough uranium along the cylinder into the main store of uranium in the heart of the bomb. This was how critical mass would be achieved and what would cause the nuclear reaction – but it was all dependent on the trigger, and that was linked to Sobotka’s timer.
6:15
“Bloody hell, Jackie Boy – get a move on!” Scarlet said. “If you carry on at this rate half the population of California’s going to be glowing like the Ready Brek kid.”
Camacho glanced over his shoulder, a look of confusion on his face. “Huh?”
“Ignore her,” Lexi. “We’re told this is how she deals with pressure.”
“But at least she does it with good poise,” Kim said, her words dripping with sarcasm.
5:51
“Something like this has to be finessed,” Camacho said, glancing at Scarlet. “I guess like taking you on a date.”
A grim ripple of laughter went around the group.
“Good job Hawke’s not here in that case,” Scarlet said, ignoring Camacho’s jibe. “He’d probably put it under his arm and try and swim it out into the ocean.”
Camacho said nothing, but crouched down and looked closer at the timer mechanism installed by Viktor Sobotka.
“So what do you think?” Alex asked.
Camacho sighed as he lifted the front panel off the timer. “Looks like we got three wires to play with – red, blue and yellow.”
“Is that good?” Kim said.
He shook his head slowly. “No. The timer only needs one wire to send a signal to the bomb in order to activate it.”
“What are you saying, Jack?” Scarlet said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“I think those sons of bitches put a couple of booby trap wires in here, and that means while one of these wires cuts the timer feed, the other two will detonate the bomb if and when they’re cut.”
Kim sighed and rubbed her temples. “And now we have less than five minutes to decide which is which. Damn it…”
Camacho sighed and pushed the sweat off his forehead. “Get Jackson to bring the girl back in here. She might know something.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hawke and Lea leaped over the dead Sixth Sun soldiers and found themselves at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. They jogged down with guns raised, leaving the sound of the ground battle raging behind them.
When they reached the bottom they were faced with two tunnels, one running north and the other south. It didn’t take long to figure out that they needed to go north – the terrified screams of Wade’s sacrifice victims showed them the way, and they sprinted ever closer to the final battle.
When they reached the sacrificial chamber, Lea’s eyes opened wide with a confusing blend of amazement and horror.
They had reached the dark heart of Mictlan – an enormous underground cave with endless tributary tunnels twisting away from it, and in the center was the main attraction – a sacrificial altar carved out of the bedrock, illuminated by the ghostly light of Wade’s glow sticks, and beside it was a heap of human skulls and other bones. Worse still was Morton Wade, dressed up as some kind of Aztec god as he directed an insane production of terror in the hideous chamber. Ryan Bale, along with half a dozen terrified people, was standing in chains, guarded by a handful of what was left of his Jaguar Knights, and surrounding Wade were the last surviving members of the Order of the Sixth Sun.
“Is that Silvio Mendoza?” Hawke said.
“Sure is,” Lea replied. “He’s in cuffs.”
“Must have crossed Wade.”
“I see Ryan,” Lea said, “but where the hell is Maria?”
Wade and the cultists were gathered around the altar, mumbling some kind of alien mantra. Wade turned to his right as one of his followers handed him a dagger… a sacrificial dagger made of obsidian volcanic glass, its blade hideously crude and jagged. As Wade raised it above his head, they heard a scream and then Lea saw it.
“Jesus almighty…” she said, her voice trailing away in disbelief. “Maria’s on the altar!”
They saw with horror the vision of Maria chained down on the altar, and just for good measure she was being held down by four members of Wade’s cult. She was angry, not scared, and trying to kick out against the men but it was pointless. Then they saw an alcove behind the altar, in which someone had put a glow stick. There, in the middle of the neon green glow in the alcove was a strange golden idol like nothing either of them had ever seen before. Around eight inches high, it looked like some kind of goddess, but there was something unsettling and strange about it.
“What the hell is that?” Lea asked, almost mesmerized by the strange idol.
“Beats me,” Hawke said. “But whatever it is, it’s obviously pretty central to this whole nightmare.”
“Look, Joe!” Lea said as she saw Wade raise the dagger over Maria. “He’s going to kill her.”
Hawke clicked his last magazine into the grip of his gun. “Like fuck is he,” he said, and began firing at the gathering around the altar. “I’ll send you where the sun doesn’t set, dickhead!” he yelled over the roar of the gunfire.
The Sixth Sun members and Jaguar Knights scattered like sheep, diving for cover wherever they could find it. Wade instinctively grabbed Ryan and pulled him closer, holding a knife at his throat as he stepped back into the shadows while Maria writhed helplessly on the sacrificial altar. Mendoza took advantage of the unfolding chaos and raised his cuffed hands to the alcove. Swiping the golden idol and the glow stick, he darted into one of the tunnels and was gone.
Hawke raised his gun hand and pointed his weapon at the tunnel where Mendoza had scarpered like a cut-purse on the run from the law. He fired and struck his arm, but it was too late to get a second good shot so he saved the ammunition. Then, as he lowered the gun he felt a stabbing pain in his side and turned to see an obsidian dagger hanging out of his body. One of Wade’s insane acolytes had thrown it through the air and buried the tip of the blade in his side.
The Englishman pulled the blade out and suppressed a scream of agony as the rough obsidian clawed its way out of his flesh, but there was no time to stop. The other cult members had seen Mendoza flee and now ran for another of the tunnels. Hawke fired wildly and planted almost an entire magazine in their backs. They screamed but went down hard, landing face first in the dirt.
“Waiting ages to do that,” he said, before turning the weapon on the surviving Jaguar Knights as they took up defensive positions and began returning fire.
Beside him, Lea fought harder than ever before – throwing everything she had at the enemy forces as they closed in on the final kill. Now, she saw Wade through the smoke and chaos. He had re-emerged and was skulking backwards toward one of the tunnels with Ryan as a human shield, but out of nowhere Ryan rammed his elbow into his captor’s ribcage. As Wade released him and doubled over, Ryan spun around and kicked him in the face sending him staggering back into the darkness of one of the tunnels.
With his liberty restored, Ryan ran to free Maria and then they leaped for the cover of one of the serpent shrines, while Lea took aim at the vanishing Wade. Before she could fire, a Jaguar Knight kicked the gun from her hand and punched her in the face. He almost knocked her off her feet but she caught her balance by gripping the side of the tunnel mouth and pulling herself back up.
He tried a second punch, but this time she was ready. She spun around and struck the man in the side of the face with her boot. The high-velocity roundhouse kick knocked him out and he crumpled to the ground. “Take that, you nasty little shite,” she said, dusting her hands off. “Hit a lady, would ya?”
She picked up her gun but now Wade was gone.
With the last of Wade’s acolytes dead, the chamber was now silent except for the terrified sobbing of the men and women the Texan had intended to sacrifice to the god of the dead.
Hawke picked up one of the macuahuitls and walked over to them. They flinched when they saw him carrying the horrific blade toward them but he calmed them with some quiet words in Spanish, and then gestured at the woman in the front of the group.
“Put your hands on the end of the altar,” he said in Spanish.
The woman was scared, but did as he told her.
Hawke raised the macuahuitl above his head, took aim and brought it thundering down on the handcuffs. The chain links burst apart and she was free. The Englishman looked up to see the others move toward him with their cuffed hands raised in the air.
“Stand in line, please,” he said, and raised the macuahuitl for the second strike.
It took a few seconds to free the other victims, and afterwards they thanked him with tears in their eyes, but he knew from the look in those eyes what they needed more than anything.
He pointed at the tunnel where he had last seen Morton Wade. “He went that way,” he said, knowing he was sentencing the Texan to a horrific death. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, was all he thought.
One of the men held out his hand and Hawke handed him the macuahuitl while the others took up the Sixth Sun’s obsidian daggers.
Hawke didn’t need an astrology chart to know Morton Wade’s fate, but he also knew Silvio Mendoza was still loose and on the run.
Ryan and Maria walked over from the shrine and Ryan held out his cuffs. “Couldn’t get these off could you?” he asked casually. “Then we can go and get that bastard Mendoza.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Two of Jackson’s SWAT men walked Juana Diaz back into the cell. She looked scared, and Alex studied the bruising around her eye with pity. This was a woman who looked like she’d had enough violence and terror for many lifetimes and there was a burning hatred of life in her eyes that frightened her.
“Hurry it up, will you, Camacho?” Jackson said. “You think I got nothing better to do tonight than visit the stratosphere with you losers?”
“Can you help us?” Alex said, looking at Juana. She squeezed her eyes shut as another wave of pain from her legs coursed through her body.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Jackson said. “Gomez here translates.”
One of the SWAT men stepped forward and translated Alex’s words. There was a brief, clipped conversation in mumbled Spanish, and then Gomez spoke. “She says, yes, but it’s not as easy as that.”
Camacho sighed. “What the hell does that mean?”
More Spanish. “She says she’s not afraid of dying, and that is why she joined the cult. She says she knows how to deactivate the bomb. She knows which wire to cut to stop the timer feed.”
Camacho looked hopeful. “Great, which one – I think it has to be the yellow one, right?”
“She says she will not tell you which one is safe, only that the red wire is one of the wires that will activate the bomb if you cut it. She says she overheard the scientist when he was setting it up.”
“That still leaves me with two wires… That’s just great. Get her the fuck outta here.”
Jackson and his men led Juana away from the cell and Scarlet sighed. “Back to where we started.”
“Not really… I guess now we know not to cut the red one,” Kim said. “But what now?”
4:27
Camacho sighed heavily. “Hate to tell you this, guys, but now it just comes down to one of these two wires – blue and yellow.”
“You still think the yellow one cuts the timer?” Scarlet said.
Camacho shook his head. Glanced at his watch. “I can’t be sure. All I know is that one of these wires cuts the timer feed, stopping the bomb, while the other detonates the worst explosion in history. Which do I cut? Guess I’ll go with my gut and snip the yel
low.”
Camacho placed the blades of the wire cutters on the yellow wire and started to squeeze the handles.
“No, wait!” Alex yelled.
Everyone turned to her as she pulled herself up straight against the wall, her motionless legs hanging off the bunk above Jorge’s corpse.
“What is it, Alex?” Scarlet asked.
“It’s the classic Monty Hall Problem…” she said, wincing at the pain in her legs.
Scarlet turned to her. “And that’s what, exactly?”
“It’s a probability puzzle named after the original presenter of Let’s Make a Deal.”
Camacho nodded. “I remember Monty Hall, sure. He did the show from 63 into the eighties.”
“Right,” continued Alex. “So what you’ve got right there is the Monty Hall Problem.”
“Wait,” Scarlet said urgently. “Are you two freaking kidding me?”
Alex ignored her. “The Monty Hall Problem is about statistics, and basically says that you can increase the chance of getting what you want by changing your mind.”
Camacho shook his head. “Doesn’t make a difference if I change my mind. One of the wires detonates the bomb and the other wire deactivates the bomb so the chance of setting the bomb off is fifty-fifty. I should go with my instinct.”
“Wrong,” Alex said flatly.
Scarlet threw her hands into the air and turned around in despair. “No, they’re not kidding.”
Alex continued. “On the show a contestant had to pick a prize that was concealed behind one of three doors. He would pick a door, at which point he had a one in three chance of getting it right.”
3:43
“So far so good,” Kim said.
“Right, so at that point the host, who knows where everything is, opens one of the other doors to reveal a booby prize and he asks the contestant if he wants to change his original choice or not. Instead of the host opening the door to reveal one of the booby prizes, Juana told you the red wire is one of the booby prizes, as in one of the wires that activate the bomb.”