by E H Jennings
Unlike Ancic’s group of hired guns, these men were professionals. They were MP operatives. There was no showboating, no wasted movement. They had come here to do a job.
They stood over Carson and raised their weapons.
Carson closed his eyes.
• • •
Bradford sprinted up the hill, swatting away branches. His time behind the desk at Langley had dulled his conditioning as well as his instincts. He was breathing heavily, holding his pistol at his side. As the hill got steeper, he started grabbing oak saplings, using them to pull himself up.
He had to get to the helicopter. Those were his orders.
Unfortunately for Bradford, those were also Mick Travis’s orders.
Mick struck him just above the waist and executed a form tackle Dick Butkus would have admired. He drove upward with his massive legs, lifting Bradford off the ground and slamming him onto his back. His momentum sent them careening down the steep embankment.
The former Operation Mordor comrades toppled violently, thrashing as they went. Mick had the upper hand until they clipped a log and went airborne over a gully.
They landed in a pile of brush and Bradford finally broke free of Mick’s grasp. The air was driven out of Mick’s lungs when he slid into a stump and suddenly Bradford was on him, thrusting at his throat with a Ka-bar knife.
Mick parried the first blow, and the second, but the third clipped him, the razor-sharp edge tearing away a chunk of his flesh. Blood poured.
Bradford jabbed at him again but Mick caught his wrist and twisted hard, severing nerves and causing a temporary loss of grip strength. Bradford dropped the knife and Mick deadlifted him, sending him sprawling into the trunk of a walnut tree. His back hit first, whiplashing his head into the hard wood.
Bradford went for his ankle holster but never reached it. Mick landed on top of him, his knees pinning both of Bradford’s arms to the ground. He let his full weight press into his chest, and when Bradford tried to lift his head Mick grabbed his throat and squeezed.
Mick spoke softly. “My wife and son were innocent.” He squeezed harder, cutting off Bradford’s airway. “But you, Carter, you are not innocent. You hid your corruption behind a thick curtain of power, but tonight the veil is torn. Tonight, everything changes. Red Shire ends and Requiem begins.” He shifted his weight, felt Bradford’s esophagus start to collapse. “And tonight…you die.”
Mick squeezed until he made good on his promise. Then he hoisted Bradford’s body onto his shoulders and started the climb back up to the helicopters.
• • •
Olivia’s lung had collapsed again. Every step was accompanied by searing pain; every breath was shallow. She was bleeding.
But she kept running.
“Switch me!” she yelled.
She and Ferrell were coming up the corridor. They were almost to the barracks.
Ferrell handed Olivia the M16 and took her pistol. “You keep left. I’ll go right.”
They were coming through the opening when the first charge blew. The mountain trembled beneath them, but they didn’t slow down. Ferrell turned right. Olivia dropped onto one knee, pulled the trigger on the M16, and refused to let go.
• • •
When Carson forced his eyes open, part of him wasn’t surprised to see Olivia. She was, as Stonehill had told him in Gstaad, the greatest ally he would ever have.
Both assassins lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullet holes.
Chaos reigned, but for a moment everything stopped. They stared at one another—Carson trapped beneath the rubble, Olivia collapsed on the ground—and they smiled.
It was a moment Carson would never forget for two reasons. One, it was the moment he did the one thing he thought he could never do—fall in love again. And two, it was the moment his greatest nightmare became a reality—he lost her, again.
The detonation of the second charge sent violent tremors through the barracks. And Carson watched, unable to move, as a sprawling segment of the ceiling gave way and crashed through the floor, catapulting Olivia Lazarus into the crevice.
• • •
McManus stood over Chuck Rosario’s mangled body and surveyed the madness. It was a cluster to be sure, but all wasn’t lost. Rosario had set the charges and they were starting to blow. In the distance, he heard the steady thump of helicopter wings.
Rosario wasn’t dead but he was about to be. McManus had outmaneuvered his former subject, and now he had his pistol.
McManus had always been gifted with the ability to see the whole board. He was a man with foresight, with a vision for the future. Ultimately, that’s how he hoped to be remembered: as a man with vision and the fortitude to see it through to fruition.
Vision.
His greatest strength.
And in the end, his ultimate undoing.
He never saw her.
Teresa Ferrell fired the shot from Olivia’s pistol and it entered McManus’s head just to the left of his nose. He was dead instantly, but as he fell to the ground his finger pulled the trigger one final time.
When the third charge detonated, the only thing louder than the explosion was the deafening cry of Amy King.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Carson heard the screams but couldn’t tell what happened. The cave floor had split and jutted upwards, forming a barrier between him and the rest of his family.
He couldn’t see much, but what he could see was his little brother sprinting toward him. Seeing Colton’s face was like seeing a dead man brought back to life. He had been beaten and his face was swollen, but it was him. He was alive.
“Carson!” he screamed, picking up stones and tossing them aside. “Alyssa’s been hit!”
The warmth he felt at the sight of Colton vanished just as quickly as it appeared. When Colton removed the final rocks off his legs, Carson shoved himself to his feet. Something was badly wrong with one of his ankles, but he could stand. He and Colton quickly uncovered Lazarus, who was breathing but still unconscious.
Carson held his brother’s face in his hands. “Listen to me, Colton. You take Zeke and make sure everyone gets on that helicopter. Sayid, Chuck, everyone. Get ‘em all out. No matter what, you get ‘em on that chopper!”
“No way we’re leaving you,” said Colton. “No one will stand for it!”
“There’s something I have to do. I’ll hurry, but you have to promise to leave me if I don’t make it before this place collapses. Sayid can help Alyssa but she’ll need a hospital.”
Tears filled Colton’s eyes. “Carson…”
“Just go, Colt!”
Colton wrapped his arms around his brother and squeezed as hard as he could. “Thank you for finding me,” he whispered.
Carson nodded and helped him pick up Zeke. With the extent of Colton’s injuries, getting Zeke to the helicopter wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t even know who Zeke Lazarus was, but he did it because he trusted Carson.
“Go,” Carson said again. “I’ll make it out.”
Colton turned and started limping toward the ledge, where Mick was hovering in the chopper.
Carson didn’t waste any time. His right ankle was severely broken and couldn’t bear weight, so he let it drag as he stumbled across the barracks. When he reached the break in the floor, he used his good leg to jump up onto the massive pile of rock. He found narrow handholds and pulled himself along, careful not to dislodge the stack and bury himself.
Once he reached a certain height, he could see all the way to the ledge. Sayid had Alyssa in his arms and Amy was right behind him, pulling Audrey along with her.
Chuck was nowhere to be seen so Carson assumed he was already on the helicopter. But when he reappeared off the ledge, Carson saw he was carrying a body. It was Bradford’s.
Carson felt a weight lift off his chest as he watched Sayid, Amy, and both girls climb into the helicopter. Sayid had wrapped Alyssa’s torso in something white and was holding her very gently in his arms.
Carso
n prayed they could reach a hospital in time. The nearest facility with the capacity to treat a gunshot wound was in Somerset, no more than a twenty-minute flight.
Then Carson had to look away, refocus on what he was doing. He reached up, grasped the tip of the stone, and pulled himself to the edge. He looked down and saw the magnitude of the crevice: it was a dark, bottomless abyss, a mammoth orifice in the mountain torn wider by the ten-ton chunk of rock that had just crashed through it.
He could see the jagged walls of the crevice for about fifteen feet. Everything beyond that was lost.
Then the pebble hit him square in the chest.
At first he thought it was just another piece of the ceiling breaking loose, but it couldn’t be. It had to have come from down, not up.
A second pebble hit him, this time in the shoulder.
He desperately searched the darkness.
The detonation of the fourth charge split the rock Carson was on and sent him headfirst over the edge. He slammed into the narrow beam of stone bordering the crevice rim, then toppled over it and fell ten feet onto his back.
Lying there, breathless, he looked up through the opening and watched as the barracks tumbled down toward him. He rolled hard to his right as a dozen rocks the size of cars flew past the ledge and tumbled into the depths.
When he rolled back over, still coughing, he saw her. She was on the opposite side of the crevice, a few feet below him. From his previous vantage point, she had been just outside the light.
“Olivia!”
She lifted her head and saw him. Then she laid her head back down. That wasn’t a good sign. Olivia Lazarus was a fighter; if she could move at all, she would.
Carson was up instantly, maneuvering carefully along the narrow shelf, still dragging his right leg behind him. The walls were trembling, resonance from the explosions, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before another explosion rocked the cavern. When that happened, it was all over. Blackstone would implode and he and Olivia would be forever interred with some of the vilest criminals the world had ever known.
That thought galvanized him.
Olivia would not die here. His first love was taken from him; he’d had no opportunity to save her. But this time he did, and he would not fail.
Several times he nearly slipped and fell to what would surely be an instant death, but he held on, clinging to the wall with every ounce of strength he had left. When he finally reached her, he realized he had underestimated the height difference; she was every bit of six feet beneath him, sprawled on a thin sliver of stone.
“Olivia!” he yelled down. “Can you move your arms?”
She shook her head that she could.
Grabbing the sharp edge of the shelf, Carson swept his legs over the side and slowly lowered himself down. “Grab my legs!”
When she didn’t, he twisted his shoulders so he could look down and realized she was trying to reach him but he wasn’t low enough. She couldn’t stand up; he would have to get his legs all the way to her.
He took a deep breath and extended his arms, leaving only his hands to bear his weight. His fingers ached and threatened to slip off the wet stone, but he squeezed tighter, begging them to hold.
This time, he felt Olivia’s hands grasping at his legs. He screamed when she latched onto his broken ankle, but he stifled it and started pulling them up.
It was a near impossible task—lifting two grown adults with nothing more than your fingertips—but Carson had a lot to fight for.
He wanted to see his nieces grow up; he wanted to watch Colton get married. Hell, he wanted to get married and have kids of his own. So he gritted his teeth and summoned the strength. Every tendon and ligament in his arms threatened to tear, but he kept pulling, inch-by-inch, until finally he drug his gimp leg over the side of the shelf, Olivia still hanging on tight.
Both her legs were broken, so Carson lifted her torso over his shoulder and pinned them against his chest, hoping to splint the broken bones and keep the femoral artery from puncturing.
“You okay?” he asked, moving quickly toward the only segment of wall that offered any hope of getting them back to the surface.
She squeezed his shoulder in reply.
He picked up the pace. At least a minute had passed, maybe more. They were now dealing in seconds until the next charge.
“Can you tighten your abs? Try to seal yourself to me.”
She did. It was weak, but it was enough to where he could let go of her and use both hands to climb. A jagged spine had been formed by the fracture of the cave wall and it ran all the way from the shelf to the surface of the barracks, a climb of about twenty feet. Carson’s arms were already aching but he had no choice.
Thirty seconds.
He grabbed the first handhold he could find and drove with his left leg. They moved slowly. Too slowly. He screamed and pushed harder, using only one hand on each hold and continued driving with his left leg. Olivia kept her core flexed and Carson’s shirt clinched in her hands.
Ten seconds.
By some miracle, they made it all the way to the surface. Unfortunately, they found the scene had only gotten worse. Large segments of the floor and ceiling were missing, forming a veritable minefield to pass through.
Blackstone was on its last leg.
And so was Carson.
Five seconds.
The adrenaline surge drowned Carson’s brain and he pushed forward, navigating the barracks in a full sprint. He ran harder, held Olivia tighter, fled past the lifeless bodies of McManus, Ancic, and Bradford and lurched through the opening in the west wall.
They reached The Ledge just as the fifth and final charge detonated.
And as the entire mountain fell in on itself, Blackstone’s dying breath, Carson wrapped both arms around Olivia and jumped into the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Three Months Later
The cemetery was empty but it felt crowded.
A thin layer of frost made the headstones sparkle in the morning sunlight, and a fresh blanket of snow covered the ground. It was the first snow of the New Year. The freshly dug graves didn’t yet have stones placed, so the snow seemed to hide reality; it was as if the graves weren’t there at all, as though the tragedy weren’t real.
It was numbing. But just like an anesthetic, the effect would eventually wear off. The relief would melt away and the crushing reality would return.
The graves were there, as were the bodies inside them.
In the weeks following the shootout at Blackstone, a number of significant events had taken place.
A three hundred-word article was run in the Wayne County Outlook, Monticello’s local newspaper. It explained that the explosions people had heard were attributable to the strategic demolition of dormant mine shafts in the area, which were polluting the ground water with lead. A representative from the Wayne County Coal Corporation confirmed the fact. The representative’s name was Clarence Dawes.
The nation mourned the loss of CIA Director Bradford, who was tragically killed while on a diplomatic visit to Afghanistan. ISIS claimed official responsibility for his assassination and America promised a heavy-handed response.
Senator Mark Prosser was elected President in November. ABC got the rights to his first television interview and it was conducted by none other than Peter Bosworth, America’s resurrected media darling.
Two weeks before Christmas, Teresa Ferrell was appointed Deputy Director of the CIA. Though Prosser wasn’t officially in office yet, he’d had everything to do with the appointment. For after a brief backroom conversation with Bosworth following the interview, Prosser was nothing more than a puppet. Lazarus was running the show now.
Carson leaned against the same tree, spit the same tobacco, and realized yet again that nothing was the same.
He was in an orthotic boot but was otherwise healthy. The thirty-foot fall off The Ledge at Blackstone had been cushioned by Rolly Creek, which coiled out of the mountain and flowed down to the f
ields below. He and Olivia had landed in a pool of water less than four feet deep, but it had been enough to save their lives.
The fall had knocked him out, but Carson remembered Connor and Colton splashing in the creek, yelling his name. He remembered Connor carrying Olivia back to the helicopter. She too had survived, though her injuries were far worse. They had life-flighted her from Somerset to Lexington where she had eventually pulled through two days later.
Carson spit again and looked out at the graves.
They had all attended the funeral—Olivia, Zeke, Sayid, Stonehill, Mick, and Chuck. But afterward, Carson had lost touch with all of them, even Olivia. He completely isolated himself, driven mad by grief.
Alyssa didn’t make it.
The bullet fired by McManus had severed her splenic artery. Sayid had done all he could, but she bled out internally before they ever got to Somerset.
Connor and Amy were broken beyond repair. So much so they almost didn’t attend the second funeral, the one that took place a month later.
Their graves were side by side: Alyssa and Carolyn King.
Carson’s mother had passed on December 1st from complications related to severe dementia. The timing couldn’t have been worse. It drove Carson deeper into isolation as depression consumed his heart. He locked himself in the attic of the General Store and hoped to die.
It was only a few days ago that he had started coming to the cemetery. He came to remember, to be present with what was left of his father, his mother, and his beloved niece. But he also came to think, for he had a decision to make.
The unmarked envelope had arrived at the Coal Creek Fire Station a week ago. Randy Acton brought it by the store.
Carson didn’t open it at first, actually thought very seriously about throwing it away. But after his first trip to the cemetery, he went back to the store, fixed a cup of coffee, and tore the thing open.
The cold wind stung his face as he sat among the silence of the dead. The letter was in his pocket but he didn’t need to read it; it was brief and the words were seared into his mind.
Justice and vengeance aren’t the same thing. I hope you find peace.