Alaskan Storm (Part 1 of Blood Stone Impact): A Taskforce COBALT Action-Adventure Technothriller

by Kronos Ananthsimha

  “Now, what comes after a hundred years is the wrath of the Ottoman Turks who took over the Balkans from the Venetians. But the theory of this one castle was that the dying descendants of the Templars made a truce with the Turks so that they’d protect the stone with utmost secrecy and make sure it wouldn’t make it to the centers of their two religions-the Vatican and Arabia, where the stone would surely be misused.”

  Ryan shrugged and said, “SAT scans of the area show no castles on any mountain in the Balkans.”

  “Time changes everything. What’s the strike team for?”

  “We have intel that a part of the stone was used to make a cure for cancer in Alaska. Now that it’s stolen, Blood and his team must retrieve the shard of the stone and the vaccine before we’re all in trouble.”

  “What’s the concern in that?” Flynn was oblivious to certain things.

  “The vaccine can make a person immortal. Do you seriously want to fight someone who can’t be killed? We’ll worry about the vaccine. You be tough with the Turks, if it’s still them in the Balkans. ”

  6

  Chapter 6

  June 2nd

  00:30a.m

  New-Leaf Island

  South-East Alaska

  The sheer size, hungry growls and ferocious speed of the two beasts sent shivers down Nick Park. Just a few minutes before they were released from their cages, he was determined to lead an assault on hell. Now, his legs barely moved when he desperately needed to flee for his life.

  The beasts’ frosty white fur shone in the Alaskan twilight. Both the predators and their prey had their eyes fixed on the other. The beasts were still a few hundred yards from Park. His snow-cold hands gripped the Glocks, suddenly heavier. The two handguns now contained the same faith that once were in rosary beads. Religion and faith hit Park in a nostalgic tidal wave.

  The freezing soil layered with rocks and pebbles made the paws of the great Arctic beasts struggle towards their quarry. Their paws were designed for treading over ice and for swimming due to evolutionary genetics. At thirty-kilometers-per-hour, just a bit less than their maximum speed, they charged on. For all the beasts knew, they had outnumbered their prey. They were wrong.

  Park’s confused thoughts in faith and fear had worked well to distract his mind from his purpose. Neither did he notice the hovercraft’s engines howling loudly and making its way out, nor did he notice the incoming footsteps of his temporary savior. Not that a legend like Nick Park needed a savior, but the colorless and odorless gas released by the assassins in the hovercraft did two dangerous things. It enhanced different emotions in different organisms. For humans, it enhanced fear and for the polar bears, it enhanced aggression.

  The bears stood vertically over Park’s smaller figure. Each were more than 1.3 meters long and had an intimidating body mass of over 450 kilograms. Ego overcomes all beasts. They had to show their superiority before the kill. And that would be their downfall.

  Park raised his hands and pointed his trembling fists clutched on the triggers.

  Bhlam! Bhlam!

  Two shots exploded through the air into the brains of the bears. Park’s guns were not smoking. It took him a while to realize that he had not pulled the trigger and looked around in curiosity.

  Dominic Quill, the youngest cop of New-Leaf stood twenty yards behind him. The cop’s Beretta M9 clutched with both fists, a finger still on the trigger. Though he must have been confused to hell on the chaos Park’s work had unleashed on his town, a confident smile appeared on his face. An aura of mystery engulfed him.

  What Park saw happening to the gun-shot-wounds, made him swear with fear.

  The droplets of blood which had splattered around the entry wound and across the soil seemed to vaporize with a soft hiss. A very chaotic aroma filled the space.

  He noticed the small holes bored between the beasts’ eyes by the 9mm rounds were somehow getting tinier by each second. Park was a victim of his own success.

  “Holy hell! Do you smell that shit?” Quill’s words made Park flinch. The cop had not noticed the gun-shot-wounds.

  Nick Park took a deep breath of the blood and gun power in the cold air and shook himself free of his restraints.

  “Woah! Wait up. What do you think you’re doing?” yelled Quill. The ex-soldier had both his Glocks down to the heads of the bears and knelt. He prodded the wounds and a look of horror enveloped the face of the young cop. Park shot point-blank thrice each into the heads of the bears. Now the .40 caliber rounds had shredded and mutilated the faces to look like an accident at a slaughterhouse.

  Park looked level at the cop, understanding the demand for answers. “They’ve weaponized my research. We can’t defeat these bears with guns. Let’s keep moving at triple time. I’ll let you know about all this, when I can. This is a very dangerous place to be.”

  There was no reply. The kid had frozen. Park grabbed his shoulder and began to make his way through the woods like a beast dragging its quarry.

  After a couple of miles, Quill pulled free. But kept level speed.

  “I can imagine what your research is about. But why was that a dangerous place except for the bears? You were cold with fear before I fired,” yelled Quill who was losing speed despite his age.

  “I did not realize it before I smelt gunpowder from your Beretta, but the assassins had released a gas. Some sort of a neurological weapon.”

  “What do you mean?” he inquired.

  “Something that triggers the olfactory nerves to enhance emotions.” Park stopped to take a break. “Many countries were in a race to prepare this sort of stuff for a long time.”

  “Who were the assassins? I’m guessing it’s Roy Miller who is the burnt corpse at the lab.”

  “Yeah. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This whole thing smells like a set up. We need outside help or the kind of help Nate McCain can deliver.”

  Quill scanned between the trees with the flashlight. There was no movement. “The whole town knows that you’re a war hero. Why don’t you ask the military for help? By the way, you reckon those white teddies will catch up to us? Even I’ve no clue where we’ve traveled.”

  Park grew confident. “All plans are bad till they’re successful. Just trust me for a day. Desperate times only lead to bad decisions that we’ll all have to live through.”

  * * *

  June 2nd

  O1:40a.m

  Airborne

  North Pacific Ocean

  The SAIGA 12 semi-automatic shotgun’s pellets had torn through his chest a month ago. The very thought of the drum magazine and the thick muzzle of that deadly gun brought shivers through Blood. He shook it off and looked out of the enormous C-130’s window.

  That fateful event had occurred on a Hounds assignment in the Arctic to secure and retrieve a memory disk from a fallen satellite. He had recovered physically following one miraculous surgery and a week in an induced coma, but the mind never forgets things like this. He was strong in both mind and body, but this made him realize that he couldn’t outlive death, which his job brought him so close to.

  That memory disk from the recon satellite was said to contain intel on a research facility on an Arctic island. The contents of that disk were analyzed by DARPA. They had concluded that it was too monstrous to exist. So, they had deleted all traces of the data from the disk. Or so he had been told.

  While Blood was neck deep in an Arctic crevice on that fateful mission, trying to retrieve the disk from the wreckage of the satellite, chaos broke out. A chopper approached out of nowhere and an enormous Russian mercenary began to fire loud shots from the SAIGA 12 breaking apart the ice and the wreckage. One shot caught Blood right in the chest and the pellets had torn through his Kevlar. Had it not been for his best friend, Logan Tanner, who had ravaged the chopper with his .50 cal sniper, the chopper wouldn’t have retreated.

  Before the blonde former Spetsnaz commando turned mercenary could return to the crash on foot, Buck had pulled Blood out of the cre
vice and back into the Sea Stallion chopper that the Hounds were using. It wasn’t the first time the dog had saved his life.

  The mission was successful as Blood had placed the disk in his pocket before the Russians had arrived. The doctors had found his bloodstream poisoned by the radiation from the pellets in his chest. An antidote developed by a Panama based scientific research firm had saved his life. But the only side effect was that the antidote created mood swings. Not that he didn’t already have mood swings during his downtime, but now they happened even during missions.

  That’s why the Colonel was reluctant to send him back to the field. Now the assignment in Alaska was the first time Blood was back in the field after the Arctic event.

  There was heavy turbulence on the flight. Moore had warned him to expect a storm sooner or later in Alaska. That would not be a problem. Blood lived to fight through storms made deadlier by evil men. He always survived with his out-of-the-box thinking and ability to improvise in the heat of the situation.

  The C-130 jerked and danced its way through the stormy skies. With zero visibility, the Air-Force pilots were relying wholly on navigational devices.

  In the cargo compartment, five commandos and a dog sat strapped to seats, side by side.

  The tall, hulking figure seemed distant from the others. The bronze tanned Captain with a thick itchy beard and unkempt dark hair was at the end. At more than six and a half feet tall, he was intimidating to most men. But his disarming smile, dark red eyes that looked warm with blood and sometimes polite charm mystified most women.

  The appearance of a deadly commando had partly blinded many around him. Though he chose to maintain a low profile, Damian Blood was a great visionary and an inventor of next-generation weapons technology at DARPA. Most of his concepts had been sold by the government to private firms due to their high cost of production. He never cared about what eventually happened with his work. All he wanted was to toy around with technology when off-mission.

  And there had been a lot of time recently for that following his latest mishap. He reached to a storm case below his seat and opened it to reveal a COBALT issue laptop.

  The updates from Moore had arrived. While he was immersed in the files, Blood paid no heed to the peeping head beside him. Suddenly, when that head, covered with spiked fiery red hair, came between the laptop screen and his eyes, Blood pulled free the earphones dangling from the head in front of him.

  “Care to pitch in your opinion?” Blood asked calmly and he handed over the laptop to Logan Tanner. “Besides shouldn’t you be shaking away the hangover from yesterday?”

  “You and me both, Dame. Next time make sure the guys at Lewis-McChord reserve some coffee for us,” replied Tanner, Blood’s best friend since kindergarten. The half-Brit was one of the few people whom Blood tolerated all the time. They anchored each other at the toughest times. Tanner scrolled down and kept speed reading the profile. “Park’s a patriot whose life was turned topsy-turvy and not by the government. But this tragedy isn’t good enough to make stupid decisions like creating things that can surely be misused.”

  “Could happen to any of us.”

  Tanner turned to look at the others who were resting, eyes closed with music in their earphones. Then he grinned at Park.

  “What’s up there now?” asked Blood, worried.

  “How could it Dame? None of us here have anyone special in our lives. So, no hypothetical losses to knock us off the rocker.”

  “Like you could keep someone!” Blood let out a slight laugh. “By the way Loggy, you’re the one who is briefing the rest of the team on game plan when we land in Anchorage. I’m not cut out for this yet.”

  The short lean redhead scanned his Captain’s face for seriousness and found it.

  “Are you still taking the pain-pills?” was all he managed to ask.

  “Downed a lot along with my final Corona of the night. Sometimes I wish Ryan had some sort of order at the mansion. My ribs still hurt nasty but we’re forced to party every weekend,” Blood expressed.

  “Oh, you’re a downer. I ought to ask for a transfer for this.” Tanner grinned and stared at Blood. “Yeah. You know that’s never happening. Unfortunately, you’re a humongous hypocrite and everyone knows it. Maybe good beer is the secret to our success. And I have just the plan to wing this mission.”

  Will Lark who appeared asleep said, “I heard every word of that. If things go downhill, I’ll report your ass to the Colonel.”

  “I’ll shoot you both myself if you’re this childish in the field. Damn all of your hype,” cursed Jake Trevor. “Bloody drunks.”

  Dave Harper opened his eyelids and said, “If I go down in battle due to your mistakes, Blood, I’ll haunt you forever.”

  “Damn kids,” whispered Tanner and closed the laptop.

  “Now that we’re awake for real and landing is just a few minutes away, men, put your game faces on.” Blood’s commanding voice took over. “All of you know what the stakes are here. So, everyone do whatever I say, when I say it and how I say it. ‘Cause that will win the safety of the world and leave you with just a few scars and fractures. Otherwise, I’m gonna use my contacts to transfer you to McMurdo station in Antarctica where you’ll be freezing your asses off and may die of hypothermia, dreaming of a sunny beach.”

  Lark, Harper and Trevor wondered at the positive madness of their leader.

  The first one to break the silence was Buck with a few eager barks.

  Tanner couldn’t help but laugh. “So, does this mean the game plan is yours and not mine?”

  “Definitely,” Blood replied softly with a confident smile.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Even a tiny bit of positive criticism of my mistakes does a great amount of work for my mind. Thank you, my Hounds.”

  The rest of the Hounds nodded in pride and quickly put on their game faces, eager to hear Blood’s plan. They were as ready as they could be.

  7

  Chapter 7

  June 2nd

  01:00a.m

  New-Leaf Island

  South-East Alaska

  The muscle fibers in their legs were on fire; the pounding of their hearts exploded off their chests; sweat stained and flowed through their thick clothing in this cold night; yet the two men never stopped or slowed down in the woods.

  Nick Park’s grueling migraine due to the thermobaric explosion at his lab/residence, was growing unbearable. But it soon changed.

  His eyes spotted a villa. The array of automobiles parked before it gave Park hope. Finally, he knew how to be rid of the beasts that cannot die.

  They were just a few minutes ahead of the weaponized polar bears. Though Quill was dying for a break, he knew that he must not stop. But he had no idea where he was supposed to go. When Park stopped by a gray Sports Utility Vehicle, Quill quickly braked his run, almost skidding.

  “Now what?” Quill panted, almost bending towards Park.

  “Hand over your switch-knife.” Park scanned inside the Mercedes-Benz GLA-200 SUV and reached out a hand.

  “How do you even know about it? It’s not exactly legal. Everyone thinks that it is just a prop that I’ve collected.” Quill grew more worried than the situation demanded.

  “I couldn’t bother more about how and where you got it or why you lie about it. Just hand it over and let’s make something loud and hot.”

  Quill was still regaining his senses after the sprint and stood motionless. He wondered if all the problems of his town would surely end if he helped Park. The man was planning destruction to counter the problems caused by destruction. He was an oxymoron.

  The former soldier grunted at the hesitation of the young cop and went through Quill’s jacket with rough haste. Everything in the pockets were useless to him - a phone, a few magazine clips for the Beretta, a torch and even a pill bottle. In the back pocket of Quill’s jeans, Park found a Zlatoust tactical switch-knife.

  Park felt its dark ebony handle and pressed the autom
atic button to release a 3.5-inch long stainless-steel blade. It had a mirrored finish and a plain edge. Wasn’t much, but it ought to be enough for the job.

  He hoped that the residents of the villa were gazing at the fiery wreckage of the lab, giving excitement to their boring lives. The alarm systems in the SUV wouldn’t be a problem as he had bigger fish to fry.

  Nick Park clenched the small wooden handle of the Zlatuost in his fist and struck it into the tinted glass front window of the Mercedes. It barely cracked.

  He needed other options. And there was not enough time. His instinct made him draw out the Glock 22 and fire two quick rounds into the dark glass. It shattered instantly, spraying bits and pieces towards Park and some inwards, towards the seat.

  He cleared off the edges and sides of the window by pushing away the glass with his gun. When it was almost clear, he stuffed himself into the GLA-200, barely fitting in his torso.

  Quill stared blankly with confusion at this madness. He had given up hope and was planning on shooting the bears again when they would reappear. He checked the rounds in his magazine and chambered a 9mm.

  Just then, Park fell out of the window with an ice-cooler atop his chest. He opened it to find eight big bottles of Corbin vodka chilled and ready. He opened a bottle and took a big gulp. A sweet tinge of caramel burned through his throat.

  Oh, now’s a great time to celebrate. Thought Quill.

  After finishing half the bottle Park turned it upside down, spilling the rest of the Californian vodka. “Sad thing to waste such good stuff but we need it for a greater purpose,” mentioned Park.