For the first time, Eden noticed the deep grooves in the general’s skin and the small liver spots that had appeared. His thinning grey-white hair and the slower, deliberate way he moved. Eden had never thought of Anderson as someone who’d get old. He would be around forever.
But we all come to the end sometime.
“No, no, no nononono—” Morena’s wail cut through Eden’s skull, and Anderson winced.
Her parents weren’t much better. “No fucking way,” David said. She could hear her mother cussing a blue streak in the background and threatening to fly out to Iowa just to kick Anderson’s ass.
Anderson just looked at Eden. The bags under his eyes had bags of their own. He was thinner now than she’d ever seen him. Under the harsh lights of Ops, he was the oldest person she’d ever seen. But his eyes were still bright and determined.
He let the others rant and rail and spoke to just her. “You understand, don’t you? Why this has to happen and why it has to be me?”
Eden thought for a moment, then nodded as a tear slipped from her eye. She hadn’t even realized she was crying. “Yes, sir. I… I wish there was another way, but I don’t see one. You sure he can’t get in?”
“Absolutely. This place is one big panic room as long as there’s someone inside working against anyone out there. That’s why I have to stay. It’s the only way we can be sure Dagger won’t get back in.” He smiled as he shook his head. “You know, your grandfather would be so proud of you. He talked about you a lot, said you were so much like your mother at her age. I didn’t know her back then, but I see her in you now. And your father too. I’m proud to have served with you, Eden. And to have known you.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that flowed now, and she rushed over to him. He met her halfway, and after a crushing hug, he let her go. How could he still be so strong, this whipcord-thin old man? Morena was still calling out to him through the speakers, as were her parents.
“Frank Ulysses Anderson, you answer me right now, goddamit!” Morena’s voice broke, and it hurt Eden’s heart to hear the pain and anguish in it. “You answer me, Frank!”
“I’m here, honey. I’m here.” He sat down once more and spoke into the mic. “You all know this is the right call. Someone has to stay to keep Dagger from shutting down the auto-destruct. I’m old and decrepit and losing my usefulness. I’m from the old world, and you need strong, young folks to lead you into the new one. My time is done.”
“Shut up shut up shut up,” Morena said. “You set it and get out, do you hear me? You set it and get out!”
“Morena, honey, we’ll talk in a minute, I promise. Right now, I need to say some things to the others. Is that okay?”
He could hear the tears she cried as she answered. “I guess so.”
“David, Kimberly, it’s been an honor knowing you. I wish we’d had more time. Take care of our new world. I expect you to take care of them.” Anderson looked over at Eden, who nodded.
“The honor is ours, Frank.” Eden could hear the tears in her father’s voice and knew they were both as heartbroken as she was. “Say hi to George for us. Eden, you get the hell out of there and on a plane back here as soon as fucking possible. That’s an order.”
“I will, Dad. I love you both.”
“Love you too. We’ll sign off now, Frank, and let the others know what’s going to happen.”
“Roger that, David. See you in another life.” The speaker clicked as Eden’s father hung up the line, and Anderson turned to Eden. “You heard them, Ms. Blake. Get out of here. Report to Marquez and tell him he’s in command now. You’re his XO. Take good care of these civilians.” He stood and clapped one hand on her shoulder. “They’re your responsibility now. Don’t let me down.”
Eden shook her head, unable to speak and overcome with grief. She hugged him once more, then stood at attention and saluted the general. He smiled as he returned it.
“Thank you for being with me here. I’m… I’m not sure I could have done it without your help.”
“All I did was stand here,” Eden said with a half-hearted laugh as she tried to stop crying.
“Maybe so, but it was just what I needed.” He smiled at her one more time. “Now go.”
She nodded, hefted her rifle, and turned to leave. She looked back just once at the doorway. Her last view of General Frank Anderson was him sitting back into the chair and pulling himself toward the control panel. He began to punch a sequence of commands into the keyboard. She heard him speak once more as she turned back around.
“Morena, I need you to put Donald on.”
“I can’t! He’s not here!”
“What do you mean he’s not there? Where is he?”
“He went on a rescue mission! The convoy from Bunker Seven was attacked.”
“Then you’ve gotta have our people patch me through. I have to talk to him.”
“I don’t… I can’t…”
“Honey, I don’t have much time, and there’s a lot I need to say…”
Eden wiped her tears as she ran for the emergency ladder that would take her to the surface and the waiting Humvee. She couldn’t bear to hear any more.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bunker Four
Vault Panic Room
The air was heavy and thick in Malcolm’s command center in the Vault, with the eight guys he’d brought down crowding around him. They were fascinated that the room had been hidden from everyone’s knowledge for so long. Malcolm reached over to adjust a camera angle, bumped into one of the men, and finally lost it.
“Get the fuck out of here! Now!” The men jumped and fled, except for Logan.
“It looks like they’re working on disabling the missile, doesn’t it, Logan?”
“That’s what I’d be doing, sir.”
“Right. And they can’t do that, can they?”
“No, sir. There’s no way around my encryption, not in the time they have left.”
“Again, you do something right. I should make a note.” Dagger pounded the table with a fist. “So where the hell are the rest of the men? I get why they evacuated, but why’s he still here? They should all be running for the hills, shutting themselves into their bunkers by now.
Dagger swore as he stepped away from the panel. “He’s gotta know by now that you’ve locked them out of the missile’s systems. There’s nothing he can do to stop it. So why’s he still here? And the girl, what’s she doing with him?”
“Too bad there’s no sound,” Logan said.
“One more of your fuck-ups. Don’t remind me.”
“Hey, there’s nothing I can do about shorts in the fucking walls, man! I can’t just magic—” Logan stood as he yelled, and Dagger met him with a crazed look in his eye.
“What is it?” Dagger asked in a voice Logan found terrifying. “You wanna take me out? I only let you live this long because you discovered that remote Wildfire Protocol and disabled it. That could’ve ended everything rather more quickly. I can see it in your eyes, though. You want to kill me now, don’t you? Want to take over from me?”
Logan raised his hands in defense. “No, I—”
“Cause you know what would happen. You’ll never turn on me. I’d use my last bullet to shoot you in the head if you did.”
Logan sat back down and tried to make himself as small as possible. He’d never been a fighter, only a tech, and that wasn’t ever going to change. “I’m sor—”
Dagger waved him off as he turned back to the controls. “Shut up, shut up. She’s crying. Why’s she crying? Who are they talking to?” He motioned to the other man. “Well, find out!”
Logan sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.” He rolled over to another control panel and typed some commands. He shook his head. “I can’t stop them from here. They’ve locked me out too. But it looks like he’s talking to Bunker One and Bunker Eight.”
“She’s hugging him now?” Dagger said. “What the fuck is going on?”
Logan ignored it, knowing the
man wasn’t expecting an answer. The man was certifiable—a lunatic—and he controlled Logan’s world at the moment. Logan watched as the girl left and the guy Dagger called Anderson sat back down at the console and began typing.
“What’s he doing now?” Dagger asked. “Track that!”
Logan attempted to track the commands Anderson was entering, and his fingers flew across the keyboard. But he didn’t understand the codes he was seeing. Nothing like these commands were in his manuals in the operations controls. Shutting off valves, sealing levels. It was like Anderson was locking the whole place down somehow. And now these last commands, something to do with the reactor… “Oh, shit,” he whispered.
Logan stood up, grabbing his rifle. “I, uh, have to use the head. I’ll be back.” He walked out of the room without listening to Dagger yelling at him to get back there. There was only one reason Anderson would be fucking with the reactor, and damned if Logan was gonna die for this asshole. He’d almost made it to the Vault’s main door when the alarms started going off.
“Warning! Warning! Auto-destruct activated. You have ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Warning! Warning!”
Logan didn’t pause, didn’t even break stride as the warning blared from the speakers. He arrived at the metal panel next to the massive concrete slab, placed his hand on the scanner, and prayed. He let out a held breath when the light flashed green and the slab slid upward.
No fucking way was he going to be stuck down here with a madman and no way out. He’d programmed his own overrides into the system years before when he realized just how insane Dagger was. After the stuff he’d done to Davies…
But there had been no way of knowing if this system he’d never seen would accept those overrides. Logan shivered and measured the space between the floor and the bottom of the slab to see if he could squeeze through. Not quite yet. Just a few more inches…
“Going somewhere?” The voice chilled him to the bone, but not as much as the sound of the hammer of a .357 Magnum clicking back. Dagger’s chosen sidearm had a distinctive sound when cocked. There was nothing quite like it that he’d ever heard. Logan laughed, hoping Dagger couldn’t hear the shake in his voice.
“Just thought I might be able to do more from upstairs, is all.” He wasn’t stupid enough to turn, not knowing what sort of movement would set the looney tune off.
“Ah, I see. So not running out on me, then.”
“What?” Logan said, drawing the word out. “Me? I’m with you, man. I helped you escape all those years ago. Why would I run now?”
“Oh, I dunno… Fear of death maybe?”
“No way! I’m with you till the end, boss. You know that.”
“Can you stop the auto-destruct from here?”
Logan shook his head. “No way. Only from Ops. I can do it if we can get in there.”
There was a long pause. When he heard the hammer click back into the rest position once more, his shoulders slumped, and he let out another long-held breath. Logan turned around to see Dagger put the gun away.
“All right, you live for now.” Dagger yelled over his shoulder. “Suit up, fellas! We’ve got a little less than eighteen minutes to get into Ops and stop the countdown.”
The other men ran out into the hallway, and they all left through the now-open Vault door. Logan glanced over at the main elevator but knew it would take way too long to get back up top with that. “We have to—”
“Yeah, I know,” Dagger interrupted him. “Secondary elevators. Let’s go!”
They hopped in the carts and sped as fast as they could for the secondary elevators. Dagger slid his ident card into the slot in the elevator, then held it out through the doors for the other team to use. He punched the button marked MAIN LEVEL, and they all held on as the elevator whisked upward.
“Rank hath its privileges,” Dagger muttered, grinning at the speed. Soon enough, they’d reached the main level and were racing on foot for Ops at the other end of the floor. The door was, of course, locked, and Dagger turned to Logan, pointing at the keypad next to it.
“Get us in there!” he yelled, then pounded on the door as Logan turned to his work. “I know you can hear me, Frank!” Dagger continued, still yelling. “Open the fucking door now, and I won’t tear you to pieces when I get in there. I’ll make it quick.”
“Quick?” Anderson replied through the thick, sealed door. “I’ve seen what you do to people, Malcolm. We found Davies. I don’t know how you passed our psych evals, you sick fuck, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you kill thousands more innocent people just to feed your own demented ego. I’d say I can’t believe you built another Driebach bomb, but that’d be lying. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Logan could feel Dagger’s eyes on him as he took apart the keypad. Kill thousands of people? A Driebach bomb? He’d heard rumors that Dagger had done some truly awful shit, but Anderson had said another bomb, which meant… Oh hell, the rumors were true. Dagger had created thousands of them, and he was going to do it again.
Launching an ICBM was one thing. Logan had seen Dagger do worse—don’t think about Davies—and he’d been a party to some of it himself. But this… This was just too much. No fucking way could Logan let this go, no matter how scared he was of the madman.
“What’s taking so fucking long, Logan?” Dagger asked.
“Warning! Warning! Auto-destruct activated. You have five minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Warning! Warning!” The voice of the automated alarm cut through his head. What the hell was he still doing here? This was nuts! This whole place was going to go up in flames…
“Fuck this,” one of the other men said. He broke into a run back toward the main elevator area and the emergency exit ladders. His movement spooked two of the other men, who followed. Five shots from the .357 Magnum rang out, way too close to Logan’s ear. He cried out, falling back against the wall and holding one hand to his head.
A blink later, he felt the now-hot muzzle of the gun sear the skin on the back of his neck. He yelped again, but Dagger had a grip on him now. Dagger forced Logan to stand, and the now-deaf technician could see the body of one of the men laying across the hallway entrance. Blood pooled around what remained of his head, but the other two men must’ve made it.
The weirdest things go through the mind of someone about to die, Logan had heard. In his case, he thought that Dagger was a horrible shot. Three targets and five shots and he only took down one?
There was a ringing in his ears, and Logan looked at the gloved hand he pulled away from the side of his head. He wasn’t surprised to see blood on it. He wouldn’t hear anything from that ear again. Dagger spun him around and Logan swayed, almost losing his balance before he could steady himself against the wall. He was still loopy from the gunshot, but Dagger was yelling at him.
Not that he could hear anything the man said. His hearing was gone in the one ear, and he only heard ringing in the other.
Dagger must have realized what had happened, because he held up four fingers and mouthed the word minutes.
Then he put the gun to Logan’s head.
Logan looked down at the keypad, then back up at Dagger. Four minutes was no time at all. Four minutes wasn’t long enough for Anderson to get out, even if he threw open the door and blasted Dagger to kingdom come and then ran for the exit. None of them were getting out alive unless that countdown was stopped.
Logan thought about all the psychological crap that Dagger had put him through. He thought about all the innocents who’d died under the man’s tyranny, about Davies, and about Bunker Nine. The madness and horror would only continue if he got Dagger through that door and managed to stop the countdown somehow.
No, now was his chance to take back what little was left of his life. Now was his chance to help put down the madman. Now was his chance for vengeance for himself and everyone else. He took one last look at Dagger and the gun pointed at his head and made his decision.
As he turned back to the keypad,
he could feel Dagger click back the hammer of the gun one more time, and he remembered what the man had said earlier. A Magnum only held six rounds.
Logan smiled as he took his lucky pair of needlenose pliers from his vest and slammed them over and over again into the circuitry of the door. He’d finally stood up to Dagger, and the madman would never get in now.
It was a mercy that he never felt the shot that ended his life.
Abandoned Costco
Clayton, New Mexico
It was shaping up to be another hot day in northeastern New Mexico, and Rachel was more than ready to leave. They had a long trip still back to Bunker Eight, and who knew what they would encounter on the way.
Captain Anderson had impressed her already with the way he’d assessed their situation, offered suggestions, and taken command in a way that felt so natural, she’d barely noticed it. That probably had as much to do with his father as Donald himself. The son of the famed General Frank Anderson had a big shadow to grow up in, but it appeared as though he’d managed it well.
Rachel was looking forward to getting to know him better and hearing the stories Donald could tell her about his dad and hers. The two men were best friends for years, and she was sure the captain had some great stories about them both that she’d never heard.
She, the captain, and Sergeant Carson were going over the plans for the trip back when Charlie Livermore, comm technician extraordinaire, raced up, out of breath and red-faced.
“Sir…” Charlie said, panting. “Urgent… father.”
Captain Anderson’s face tensed, and he nodded. “Lead on,” he said and took off at a run with the technician. Rachel ran with them, with a glance back at Carson, who waved her on. His leg still hadn’t healed enough for him to get around easily, much less run.
They reached one of the Strykers in moments. It served as a mobile comm station as they arranged for the trip to the bunker. The captain leapt up the ramp and was in the seat hitting keys before she’d even clambered inside.
The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning Page 38