Then he went back to the call and said, “Hold on. Let me put the call on speaker.” He pressed a button and held onto the mic option and said, “I wasn’t paying attention. So General, could you please explain everything again?”
The voice of General George Campbell erupted, “Fine. But don’t mistake my patience and kindness for weakness. I’m willing to pay your price if you can retrieve a historic and mythical stone from Serbia and rain hell on those who would stop you.”
Flynn cut him off. “Why would the head of DARPA want a mythical stone? I’d like to know my stakes.” He now found the half empty bottle of Scotch and took a big gulp.
“It’s the damn Haemus stone. We sent in a team of consultants a few days ago to retrieve it and they were eliminated hours ago. I’ll fill you in on the details and help you with the logistics and finance once you’re in the air. We need you in the Balkans by tomorrow morning.”
“I’m sorry but that’s not possible. We’ll be having some trouble with the local authorities soon. There are two injured and knocked out assassins lying in our suite,” said Rao.
“I can take care of that. You can expect a cleanup crew in less than an hour,” said the General.
Flynn’s drunken curiosity hyped up and asked, “Who were the consultants? I’m guessing that they were off the books and personal. If they were official, you’d have sent the paramilitary. And if the consultants were expendable, you’d not be willing to pay someone like me.” He took another long gulp of scotch and tripped around.
The General said, “It was my son and his wife. I’ll pay you extra to brutally avenge their deaths. We have minimum intelligence on what happened to them. What’s your price?’
“How the hell are you sure I’m taking the job? You’re still as overconfident as ever. . .”
“Listen to me, you piece of shit! You may not be a patriot or hero. But it is the duty of commanders like me to influence and guide young lost warriors like you back onto the right path. The Haemus stone has a lot of power, scientifically, and can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. I’m not asking you to serve your country. I’m paying you to be a hero and save the world. Do you understand?”
“After it’s all over, just transfer me two hundred percent of all my expenses.”
Flynn cut the call and took a sip.
Rao stared at him and said, “Good analysis and talk under the influence. I’ll prep the plane.”
She moved towards the assassins and removed their jackets to search their contents. Instead, when she turned the body, there was a startling surprise.
Behind the two assassins’ shirts, under their jackets, were blocks of Semtex and countdown displays.
00:19 00:24
00:18 00:23
00:17 00:22
“It must have started when they were knocked out,” said Flynn.
Rao placed both bodies on the floor face up and jackets out of the way. She took out a Swiss Army Knife from her pant pocket and tried to analyze the charges.
Flynn was calm and cool. He knew it was a 50:50 chance of living or dying and gulped down the rest of the scotch and passed out. He fell with his hands spread out on the two bodies, pushing Rao aside. As he fell, his hands hit the wires connecting the two blocks of Semtex with their respective timers. The wires were pulled free and the countdowns froze.
00:12 00:17
Neha Rao stood at the spectacle shaking her head in disbelief. All she let out was, “Lucky son of a bitch!”
2
Chapter 2
June 1st
10p.m
New-Leaf Island
South-East Alaska
The lone building that stood a fair distance from the town seemed desolate. From above, the building looked like it was being eaten by the green woods on all sides. Only a small road connected it to town.
New-Leaf town, which lay on a small island by the same name, didn’t exist fifteen years ago. Like the name suggested, this was a place to turn over a new leaf in life and get a fresh start away from one’s problems. An Alaskan oil billionaire had found keen interest in this place and had invested millions in the town, owning almost everything. He even owned the New-Leaf Labs which lay in the cover of the trees.
The guards had been given a day off due to the lab’s recent achievement and had passed out in the town’s pub. This day off was a bad decision by the owner.
Though the lab was closed for the day and the guards were not present, the two assassins used a back window to enter. The security devices would not be a problem for them. They were extremely well trained and would survive the day at any cost.
They wore black-clad tactical gear and body armor. On their faces were black woolen balaclavas. Without making any sound, they leaped into the lab through the window. Their eyes were used to the shadows. They relied on their natural senses and instincts for this job. They did not need any directions to nudge their way through. Every inch of the building was in their memory like they had lived here all their lives. Yet, it was the first time they were in Alaska.
The building had only two floors and a basement. Each floor consisted of an enormous lab and a small living quarters connected to it. In it were technologies which had played their part in creating something that could change the world. This was also the home to two innocent researchers.
In the ground floor lab, the two men searched the tables with their hands and a tiny flashlight.
The shorter man’s hand clicked two glass test-tubes together. They listened for sounds of anyone hearing them. When they were none, they continued their search. At the end of an aisle, between two long tables, stood a steel desk. Behind it were many armchairs and a few bunk beds hidden from their line of sight.
On the desk were their prizes just lying there like they awaited them.
Nick Park partially opened his eyes to see two men in balaclavas laying their hands on what was most important to him. He let the ruse play on as he waited for an opportunity. He lay in the lower bunk bed and spied on the intruders. They reminded him of the British Special Air Service commandos due to their balaclavas and black stealth fatigues. Park had seen a few members of the SAS when he had trained with them for a week. That felt like a lifetime ago.
From the bunk above Park’s, a young man in his early twenties rolled out and fell on the ground with a ‘Thud!’
The young intern was surprised and managed to slip out a few words in his sleepy yet shocked state. “Who the hell are you freaks?”
No sooner had he said that, the two assassins drew a Ruger SR40 pistol each from their thigh holsters and aimed at the intern. The handguns had long, thick, black suppressors screwed into the threaded barrels.
Before the intern could see the figures of the assassins clearly in the shadows, he realized what was aimed at him. Without realizing his fate, he was awestruck and speechless at the sight of the suppressors.
Nick Park froze at the sight of danger that he had avoided for five years. But what happened next unfroze him and sent the whole river of adrenaline flooding through his veins.
The two masked figures discharged their weapons and sent two suppressed rounds from each weapon-Cough! Cough! Cough! Cough!-through the intern’s chest, ripping it open with red ribbons of dark blood flowing down from the wounds. Roy Miller fell forward on a chair, bounced and fell backwards beside it. His lifeless eyes were open and a dark pool of blood was growing around him. All he had wanted when he came to this lab was to help cure the most dangerous disease known to man.
Park rolled down and slid sideways, away from the assassins and started sprinting. The two assassins shifted their aim and began firing continuously at him. The .40 S&W bullets hit electronic screens, steel walls and glass containers causing a wave of destruction that was targeted towards their elusive prey. Park went in a wide arc around the assassins and reached the door. He got on one knee to avoid the bullets, swung the door open and shot away.
The last bullet from their fifteen round magazines hit
the door shattering its glass structure, spraying shards all around the floor. But to the assassins’ luck they found bloody red footprints in the path Park had taken.
Assuming that Park wouldn’t be a problem, the two killers firmly held the handles of two cases which lay on the desk and continued with their plan. The first case was an animal cage which contained a resting rabbit. The second case contained shards of a special stone and a few vials of the vaccine Park had created. The assassins looked at each other and exchanged wicked smiles beneath their balaclavas directed at the foolishness of Nick Park and his ignorant sense of security. Park was wrong to assume that he was truly isolated from the world. The two killers exited the lab room with their loot.
In the basement, Nick Park was unaware that his plan would collide with that of his enemies. He had just gotten downstairs and was juggling his options. Making up his mind, he punched the building’s alarm switch near him. A klaxon started wailing loudly and so did the blinking of red lights all around him.
His next choice was to call the town’s sheriff but the soft sounds of footsteps changed his mind. He had to do things himself.
The two gigantic emergency power generators hindered the view of the stairs. Getting down in a crouch, he found the weapons cabinet that he had secretly installed when the building was built five years ago. He pressed a sequence of buttons for the five-digit security code and the small doors of the cabinet slid open. Inside were two Glock 22 pistols, a few magazines and many boxes of .40 caliber rounds.
Park tucked a Glock into the back of his pants and stuffed a fifteen-round magazine into the other pistol and pulled the slide. He put all the filled magazines into his pockets and took a peek from behind the generators.
Now, his mistake hit him. The stairs and the basement had bloody footprints leading to his location. But that didn’t matter for the two assassins who stood on the other side of the generators. One of them looked like he was readying some sort of a device from his gear. The other killer stood with a steady aim of a SR40 at the sides of the generators expecting Park to strike.
Park’s heart was racing. He peeked through the space between the two generators. It took a full five seconds for him to recognize the device being set up and it brought chills to his spine.
The device looked like a metal container with a diameter of a foot and a half. It had two small devices fixed to it. The deadly device was an FAE. A Fuel-Air-Explosive is a thermobaric bomb which uses fuel and air equally to create an amplified explosion. Its first charge releases the gaseous fuel into the atmosphere to get settled into the air at the blast area. The second charge ignites the fuel which burns better using the oxygen in the atmosphere.
Park knew that this was their mission’s eraser of sorts. An eraser is any explosive device that is used in case of a failed operation to remove all evidence of the operation. It is usually set up before the mission and a timer of sorts must be deactivated regularly by the team which sets it up. If they did not survive, the charge would detonate taking all the evidence with it. Here, it wasn’t a failed mission, but an eraser was being used to obliterate all traces of Park’s research.
Nick Park had to do something or all his efforts would be in vain. It was now or never. But he knew he was outnumbered. The town’s sheriff’s department wouldn’t be here for at least a few minutes.
He could blindly put himself in harm’s way if it meant a clear shot at the two killers. But he didn’t know if the bomb was activated or not. Neither did he know if it had a timer nor where its detonator was. He focused on two options-either the lab and the research must live or he must. He assumed that the assassins wouldn’t sacrifice themselves at any cost as they had to live to transport their loot. So, he took a gamble.
Park crouched towards the wall near the next generator and leaped high. With one hand, he held onto the window circulating air into the basement. With the other he shot wildly at the two assassins with his Glock 22. It didn’t have a suppressor and the shots exploded loudly within the basement. The assassins ducked and spread out to survive. Now that no one was firing at him, he pulled himself out through the window and rolled on the pavement outside the lab.
Though Park was away from his enemy’s line of fire, he still had the FAE to worry about. He crouched to see through the windows and moved around to a position from where he assumed he could take out the killers with his Glock.
But, none were there. The bomb had a countdown screen, but, from here, he couldn’t see the numbers. Thoughts of entering the building again and attempting to diffuse the bomb occurred to him, but those were cut short by the .40 caliber rounds which barely missed his ears.
The researcher realized that the two masked men had also gotten out through some windows. From a corner of the building, two silenced pistols kept firing at Park as he sprinted towards the woods and took cover behind a tree. The wooden trunk of the spruce broke apart from the impact of the bullets and sprayed on Park’s face.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of a way through. Soon, the bullets stopped coming and he saw the men in the balaclavas jogging away from the building and ignoring him. Park took the opportunity to sprint after them.
When he was within five feet of his enemy, the taller assassin turned and swung hard at his face. Park’s training and instincts took over and he ducked. The killer who had swung, dropped his case just as his partner picked it up swiftly and began to run. Between Park and the cases, stood the tall man in a balaclava.
Park struck his enemy’s temple with a chop and kicked the killer’s abdomen. The tall man bounced back and sent three rapid punches to Park’s chest.
While Park’s chest ached a lot, he sent a power-packed blow to the masked man’s head. It missed by an inch. Just as he did that, he received a brutal kick to his groin. This sent Park tripping back a few yards in severe pain. He had not experienced physical pain in a long time. Yet, he would not give up. There was too much at stake here. Nick Park was paranoid of his research being misused.
Due to the pain, Park had dropped to his knees. He pulled both his Glocks and was about to aim when something happened.
With a loud roar, the New-Leaf Lab erupted in a thick enormous cloud of reddish-yellow flame. Park didn’t see this, as he was facing away from the lab but he was sent flying a good ten yards forwards. He fell face down and couldn’t move due to the loud ringing in his ears and head. It felt like his body was hit by a speeding train.
He tried to pick himself up but his body ached a lot. Along with the stench of fuel, he smelled his own blood. While his jeans and pullover were burned and torn a bit, his neck and ears, which were exposed, had many cuts and bruises.
Slowly, with the help of his hands which dripped blood due to the wounds from the explosion, he picked himself up. The sirens from the sheriff’s department were approaching from the distance. As Park stood, he found two heavy sets of shoe prints leading into the woods, away from the lab, mostly towards the coast.
Though his limbs felt broken, he began to jog towards the shoeprints. He would surely avenge the death of Roy Miller, his helpful intern. He would make sure that this could be the first and last thermobaric explosion on New-Leaf.
3
Chapter 3
June 1st
11:45p.m
Near Discovery Park
Southern Seattle
Colonel Harold Ryan sat patiently in his underground office awaiting his top man. The stuffy room had wide LED screens on the walls, constantly relaying live data to him. He did not waste his thought on those screens. His mind was already busy with a recent situation that desperately needed him.
Located on the beach, to the south of Discovery Park in Seattle, the mansion was a joint investment of DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) and DARPA. Above ground, it looked like a research and analysis unit. But deep underground, located within the nuclear bunkers, were the offices of an ultra-secret paramilitary, quick-response and action unit called Taskforce COBALT.
COBALT
was a joint venture to eliminate scientific and historical threats. This unit had full access to everything in the Defense, Intelligence and the Legal departments. Though their existence was never acknowledged publicly to the secrets-hungry media, they were heavily funded.
Their primary operatives were all ex-special forces and trained well in various academic aspects. They mostly stayed in the COBALT mansion, above the bunker, as they were deployed around the world within a moment’s notice. This unit had secured and destroyed numerous scientifically advanced objects that could end the world or change it badly. They would get the chance to do so again, very soon.
This taskforce’s director, Colonel Ryan, had just been alerted about a spike in hostile activity in a place where his unit had set up long distance electronic surveillance for a year. Since the Cobalt mansion stood under the ruse of a civilian building, he wore casuals. Adjacent to his table, sat his chief analyst, operations manager and second in command.
She was short, blonde and in her early thirties. Linda Moore sat eagerly both working on her phone and glancing at her boss with worry of what was at stake. Though she had a childish face and voice, she was tactically the most brilliant person present at the mansion. At least that’s how the Colonel regarded her.
After graduating at the Strategic Studies Institute, she spent a couple of years running and analyzing operations at the DIA. When her work collided with a Major Harold Ryan almost five years ago, it changed her fate as well as her career.
The then Delta Force field leader’s fateful operation in which he was the sole survivor, eventually gave birth to COBALT. There were rumors suggesting that this unit’s name was derived from the events of that fateful operation. But no one other than the two people currently in this office knew about the rumors’ accuracy.
Alaskan Storm (Part 1 of Blood Stone Impact): A Taskforce COBALT Action-Adventure Technothriller Page 2