Swords of Exodus

by Larry Correia

  Not knowing if my disguise had been damaged, I tried to keep my head down. “Valentine’s escaping.”

  “We’re under attack!”

  No shit.

  They ran through the break room, a small entry room, and out a back door and I followed. Gunshots echoed from outside. From the rear of the group, I couldn’t see what was happening.

  “I want him alive!” a woman shrieked. She had platinum blonde hair, a bloody lab coat, and was limping her way up a flight of stairs that led down into the basement. Blood was trickling down her face and she held her right arm as if she was injured. Dr. Silvers, I presume?

  Before anyone else could make it outside, more shots rang out. Bullets zipped into the doorway. That had been close. One of the men in front of me, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a pistol, snarled in pain as a round struck him in the wrist. Now Valentine had almost shot me too. Dude was on a roll.

  The gunfire let up and the guards rushed forward. A man lay dead on the ground, skull emptied. The guards and Silvers rushed forward. I hung back so I could keep everyone in sight. “Get him. Hurry.” The doctor saw me. “Smoot, where the hell have you been? Valentine is escaping!” More gunfire resonated from the other side of the building. Exodus was still in the fight.

  “He dropped his gun. Sic the dog on him!”

  Valentine had reached the perimeter, but the guards had converged on him. Valentine hit the fence climbing like mad, only to be pulled down by a huge dog. It dragged him through the snow by the leg. It yelped and let go as he smacked it with a stick, but it circled around for another attack. The North Gap guards clustered around the scene, apparently confident Valentine was out of ammunition, and happy to give the dog a minute to work.

  Valentine rose, screaming like a berserker. His face was covered in blood. His clothing was ripped, a baton in one fist, and every vein and muscle bulged on his face. The dog, snarling, leapt at him.

  Valentine clenched the baton in both hands, holding it horizontally. The dog’s slobbering jaws clamped onto the stick, and Valentine wrenched it brutally to the side. The German Shepherd’s spine snapped audibly. Its limp form slammed into Valentine, pushing him back against the fence.

  He tossed the dog aside and screamed for more. I had never seen a man so angry.

  “Now!” One of the guards ordered. Pairs of taser barbs latched into Valentine’s body. He twitched as electricity crackled through his muscles. They hit him long and hard, multiple guns sparking.

  “Take him,” Dr. Silvers said raggedly, walking through the snow with a limp. “Do not kill him! I’m not going to tell you idiots again!” The remaining guards swarmed forward, clubbing Valentine with their batons, sticks rising and falling rhythmically. Four men all tackled him at once, and even then they could barely contain his rage beneath their weight.

  Enough of this shit. There were five of them left alive. They all had their backs to me. I was the only one armed with a rifle. I raised the stubby carbine and pulled the trigger. The gun roared in the cold air. I put a round into each of them, and 5.56 makes a horrible mess of people at such close range. I wheeled around and double-tapped the man who had been hit in the wrist. Then I went back and plugged each of the guards again, just to be sure.

  It was suddenly very quiet. I stood there, hot carbine in my hands, bolt locked to the rear. Dr. Silvers was the only other person standing. She didn’t move, she just stood there, staring at me, wide-eyed. She began to shiver, realizing that I was not who she thought I was. The shock of it hit her like a train.

  A shape moved in the carnage. Valentine slowly rose, pushing limbs off of him. Now he stood, coated in a pink mush that was half snow and half blood. He saw me, surely not understanding why one of his tormentors had murdered the others, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. He looked at Dr. Silvers intently, his bloodied form heaving as he gasped for air. Valentine got up, made it a few halting steps toward her, but then he began to shake, fell to his knees, and face-planted in the snow, like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Chapter 7: The Sum of Our Parts

  LORENZO

  North Gap, Montana

  The gray sky was slowly brightened as the Sun climbed over the horizon. It was still overcast and lightly snowing, but the darkness was receding to the west.

  Near as I could tell, we had killed every last one of the North Gap facility’s personnel, except for Dr. Silvers. There was a chance that there were some in hiding and they’d called for help. So we needed to get the hell out of Dodge.

  But first, I found Dr. Silvers’ office and ransacked it, taking everything I could get my hands on. Shen and I searched for intelligence on the Majestic organization while Ling and Antoine got Valentine secured for transport. I wasn’t ever going to get a better opportunity to learn about the organization that was after my brother, and after everything I’d risked and everyone I’d killed, I wasn’t about to let that opportunity go to waste.

  Reaper would love this. The chance to explore an actual shadow-government secret interrogation facility? The kid would probably pee himself with conspiratorial glee. Looking around the basement, I began to wonder if maybe there wasn’t a lot more to Reaper’s conspiracy theories than I thought. The place was full of strange machines that I couldn’t identify, like some kind of science-fiction torture dungeon. One of the computers in that room had a red sticker on it that said Secret. Which meant it could probably access the secure network Greg Spanner had told me about. I snagged every electronic storage device that wasn’t nailed down.

  Shen had broken open a metal container with a crowbar. He called me over to see something.

  “What is it?” I looked into the storage bin he’d busted the lock off of. Inside were what looked like Valentine’s personal belongings from when they’d nabbed him in Virginia. Clothing, wallet, watch, keys, that sort of thing, but right on top was a large, stainless steel .44 magnum revolver. I picked the Smith & Wesson up, opened the cylinder, and inspected it. “I hate this gun.” For good reason. Valentine had basically shot me three times with the goddamn thing in Zubara, once right through an arms dealer. My tinnitus was a permanent reminder of how much I hated that gun, but Shen didn’t know all that, and he looked puzzled. “Never mind. Grab it all.”

  Ling was waiting for us on the first floor. All three of the Exodus people were dressed in Mossy Oak camouflage we’d picked up in town. Dr. Silvers was with her, zip-tied to a chair. The good doctor was bitching at Ling about something when we came to the top of the stairs. Ling stared her down and said nothing until we entered the room.

  “Did you find everything you were looking for?” she asked me.

  “Yeah. We should go.” We’d only been in here for a few minutes, but already that felt far too long.

  Dr. Silvers saw her iPad in my hands, and her eyes went wide. She began to say something, but Ling jabbed her with the suppressor of her MP-9 subgun and told her to be quiet.

  “It says I need a passcode to unlock this.” I held up the iPad. “What is it?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Kneecap her,” I said.

  “Wait . . .” She hadn’t even given the Exodus folks a chance to be threatening. “Seven, three, one, nine.”

  I tried the code and it worked. “Awesome.”

  “What of the other captives?” Antoine asked.

  “Not our problem,” I said. They might have been pure as the driven snow, but on the other hand, they might deserve to be in a place like this.

  “Unlock their doors,” Ling ordered. “We do not have time to sort out who they are. They are on their own.”

  I shrugged.

  Dr. Silvers finally piped up. “You people have a lot of nerve, coming in here. Do you have any idea the hornet’s nest you’ve just kicked? Do you have any idea at all what you’re bringing down on yourselves?”

  “Not entirely, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Thanks for the hard drives.”

  The Majestic scientist shook her head in bewild
erment. “You. You’re not Roger Smoot. Who are you? What the hell is going on? Why did you take Valentine?”

  I smiled at her but offered no answers.

  She grew frustrated. “It doesn’t matter. You will never get away with this. We’re too powerful. We’re everywhere.”

  “You mean Majestic?”

  She sneered at me. “They’ll catch you, and then they’ll bring you to someone like me. They’ll drill out every last piece of information you know. There’s nowhere you can run to, noplace you can hide, where they won’t find you. Sooner or later, you’ll end up in a place like this, and someone like me will be there to make you regret this decision. I promise you that . . .”

  Ling stepped in front of Silvers. Her dark eyes were like daggers. Silvers trailed off as the Chinese Exodus operative stared her down. “You never imagined this day would come, did you?” Ling asked quietly. “I know your kind. You sit here in your little kingdom, removed from the world, committing your little atrocities because it’s your job. You say you do these things because powerful men tell you to, but really, you do these things because you enjoy them. You never imagined that you’d have to account for your actions, did you?”

  Dr. Silvers said nothing. Fear was on her face.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Ling continued. “You never dreamed such a thing could happen, that one day it would all come crashing down, that your insulated world would fall apart. That day has come.”

  The doctor stumbled on her words as she tried to speak. “If . . . if you want information . . .” she trailed off as Ling seemed unimpressed with her attempt to negotiate. “What is this?”

  “I would like nothing more than to shoot you and be done with it, however . . .” Ling’s eyes narrowed. “My order has an old saying, when a criminal has been caught and justice must be satisfied, the wisest judges are his victims . . . Carry her downstairs. Leave her bound. Unlock the doors. We will let her prisoner’s decide her fate.”

  “No! No!” Silvers began to scream as Shen and Antoine picked up her chair and carried her away.

  “Harsh.” Then I thought of the weird machines. “But fair.”

  “I am confident she will receive as much mercy as she has given . . . Come, Mr. Lorenzo, we’ve been here too long already.”

  I followed her outside. Valentine was wrapped in a blanket, passed out in the back of our car. He looked like shit. “Son of a bitch better live.” I muttered. “I didn’t just audition for public enemy number one for nothing.”

  Ling glared at me. “How can you—”

  “Be so heartless?” She was obviously distressed by Valentine’s condition, and she had to suppress anger at my callousness to his fate. I’d grown to like the Exodus operatives over the last few days, but that didn’t make me their errand boy. “I just killed a whole mess of people to get your boyfriend back. I fulfilled my part of the bargain. So where the fuck is my brother?”

  Ling sighed. “Altay Krai, in the Golden Mountains.”

  “The Crossroads?”

  Ling nodded.

  I couldn’t believe it. I knew that area well. “Shit . . . Bob, you stupid idiot . . . And the rest of the note?” I demanded. Ling reached into a pocket on her black fatigue shirt and pulled out half a paper napkin and handed it over. It was the bottom half of the note that Bob had left me. “You had it the whole time?” I shouted. I was used to being lied to, but it didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “Yes. It wasn’t my wish to be untruthful.”

  “Well, you did a bang-up job.”

  “It was your brother’s idea.”

  Son of a bitch. I unfolded the torn napkin. “It’s blank.”

  “Bob said you wouldn’t trust us. He said you would not help unless you had an incentive.”

  I didn’t answer. I was too mad. But Bob had been right. I stood there in the gently falling snow and the grey light of the Montana sunrise and cursed him to hell.

  “Bob said you were the only man who would be able to free Valentine, and even at the last moment, when your brother knew he was going to be captured or killed, the very last thing he did was write that note and make us swear to free Valentine, no matter what . . .” Ling paused, uncomfortable. “He said you would react exactly as you did, and that you only had one weakness we could exploit.”

  “Loyalty,” I spat the word.

  “Yes, your brother knew that you would do anything to help those few people you’ve claimed as your family. But Bob said that Valentine was more important, or rather, something he knows, is so important that . . .” She trailed off.

  “What?” I did not like where this was going, and the combination of fatigue and anger boiling through my system was threatening to blow.

  “That if you tried to hinder us, or betray us, or anything that would stop us from retrieving Valentine, we were to kill you,” Ling stated calmly. “If necessary,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  It was like being hit in the stomach with a hammer. I could taste sour bile in the back of my throat, and the idea of being betrayed by my own brother physically hurt. The napkin was still in my hand. I crumpled it into a tight ball and squeezed until my fingers ached.

  What did Valentine know? What was so important that Bob would jeopardize his own life, ruin his career, endanger his family, and be willing to sacrifice his own brother? “Damn it, Bob . . .” That didn’t matter now because tonight Majestic was going after Bob’s wife and kids. His family. My family. I didn’t know if I could do anything, but I wasn’t about to do nothing.

  “Ling, change in plans. We need to go to Arizona.”

  We drove down a lonely two-lane highway, heading into the sunrise, as we made our way back to the airport. The sooner we were in the air and the farther from North Gap we got, the better off we’d be. The longer it took them to discover our attack, the greater our chances of getting away. Every minute we traveled increased the diameter of the search they would have to undertake, and since we were talking about an outfit that probably had access to spy satellites and massive databases, I hoped to turn minutes into hours.

  Valentine was in the back, on a litter, still unconscious. Shen had hooked him up to an IV. Our wagon had a poorly-done tint job on the windows that kept our patient out of the sight of prying eyes. That would be important when we stopped for gas. Antoine drove just below the speed limit. We wanted to avoid attention and law enforcement at all costs.

  Ling and I went through Dr. Silvers’ iPad. I was definitely curious about what they were doing to the kid, but I wasn’t nearly as interested as Ling was. I was mostly looking for anything that would help me figure out what happened to my brother.

  Some of the hard drives we grabbed were sure to be encrypted. I didn’t know much about that kind of stuff. That’s why I had Reaper. Silvers had used her iPad to keep notes on her work, and she’d been lousy with information security. I’m sure Majestic, being secret black-ops types, had rules against this sort of thing, but over the years I’d found that the know-it-all academic types considered themselves too smart to listen to mere operators. Silvers had been interrogating him about something called Project Blue, and specifically, something called the Alpha Point. Ling didn’t know what that meant either.

  “Big Eddie mentioned this back in Quagmire,” I muttered. Ling looked at me curiously. “That’s why Gordon Willis turned traitor. Those two were in on it together. It’s something huge.”

  “Your brother was concerned about it as well, but he was unclear on what it entailed. It was this search that brought him to The Crossroads.”

  “Do you know who this Evangeline person is?”

  Ling shrugged.

  They’d sure worked him over good trying to find out. Whoever she was, Valentine had no clue one way or another. Dr. Silvers had become convinced of that early on.

  So why did they keep him alive?

  VALENTINE

  The morning Sun was still below the horizon as I turned onto the long gravel driveway that led to our ho
use. I’d been driving a long time and was happy to be home. Three of my friends and I had gone on a road trip to Detroit, and we’d driven all night on the way back. I’d dropped them off at their houses before heading home myself.

  As I pulled to a stop in front of the house, I was making plans to sleep through the day. It was my last day of Spring Break, and I’d have to be back in school the next morning. I doubted that I’d get much sleep. Knowing my mom, in a few hours she’d drag me out of bed to help shovel the horses’ stalls.

  I parked next to my mom’s pickup. There was a truck, one I didn’t recognize, parked in the drive. I quietly made my way to the front door, wondering who could be over so early.

  Holy crap, I thought. I wonder if Mom had some guy over while I was gone? I was uncomfortable with that thought. Being honest, I couldn’t blame her. It’d been eight years since my dad had died. My mom had been alone for a long time. Maybe she has a boyfriend?

  Those thoughts faded away as I walked into the house. I expected to find my mom sitting at the table, eating some toast and smoking a cigarette like she always did.

  Whatever I may have expected, it wasn’t what I found. The kitchen was trashed. There was broken glass everywhere. The chairs around the table were dumped over. The refrigerator was wide open, and food was out on the counter.

  My mom was on her back in a chair that was lying on the floor. She stared up at the ceiling and didn’t say anything.

  “Mom?” I asked, stepping closer. There were extension cords wrapped around her, like she was tied to the chair. Her shirt was stained with little red blotches; around her was a pool of dark red liquid.

  “Mom?” I repeated. Why is she lying on the floor wrapped up in extension cords? Is this a joke or something? It clicked a second later. My mom is dead. She’d been tied to a chair and stabbed over and over again.

  My breathing sped up. My heart began pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I became dizzy. My knees went weak. My stomach twisted, and pain shot through my groin. My mouth was dry. There was a loud buzzing in my ears. I stepped back, stumbled, and fell to the floor. My mouth was open. I was trying to scream, but no sound came out.