Damn it, I can’t even warn him ... Focus on Volkov, he scolded himself. He’s the mission.
Bradley entered the western building. The ground floor stretched two stories high, crowned by striated rusty girders. It housed a chow hall, latrine, and showers. An earthquake-damaged stairwell, propped up by a trestle of two-by-fours, led to a one-room barracks, a forest of sistered supports packed with cots and mattresses pilfered from nearby neighborhoods.
Definitely no civilian hostages here, he thought, head panning to capture that reality on the cellphone-sized video recorder plastered to his chest.
He descended via a different stairwell, feeling smothered by the merciless heat. His parched mouth craved a glass of ice water; his broiling body, an ice bath.
Bradley moved on to the eastern building and halted at the threshold of the brightly lit command center. Then, relieved that his magic suit was not casting a shadow, he crept into the stairwell.
The second floor resembled the barracks, a sagging roof bolstered by a maze of braces; but this room was crammed with rows of desks, fashioned from raw plywood and outfitted with a hodgepodge of kitchen chairs. Its workers appeared to be dealing with logistics rather than operations.
Zero American civilians, he thought, returning to the ops center. A ten-foot-tall cube of wooden crates was stacked in a corner, capped by a pyramid that nearly touched the ceiling.
Bradley strolled around the periphery, documenting rows of computer terminals and a bank of large monitors. Heavy gauge wires snaked from a brand-new electrical panel, traversed the ceiling, and twisted down a series of support columns, arteries providing the lifeblood of any modern operations center—electric.
Beside the panel, there was a UPS unit—an uninterruptible power source—the size of a large gun safe; and Bradley reached for the cables supplying the battery backup. It was a surreal test of eye-hand coordination, feeling the wires yet unable to see his fingers, and he quickly learned to rely on tactile senses instead of visual input.
If I had to type on a keyboard, I’d be totally screwed, he thought, flipping the main circuit breaker, cutting power to the entire building.
Flabbergasted soldiers looked up from their blank computer screens; wall-mounted monitors faded to black; and a fiftyish man began shouting in Russian.
Volkov!
Aided by the dim glow of two battery-operated lanterns, Bradley crossed the room. He studied the crazy general, the man who had slaughtered Captain Defina and Staff Sergeant Gallagher, abducted Franny, and attempted to kill Abby. In person, he seemed ordinary, disappointingly so. Bradley had expected evil of that magnitude to be instantly recognizable, either by sight or subconscious perception.
Maybe the suit is repelling his spiteful, bloodthirsty vibe; shielding me from his diabolical energy.
Slowly, Bradley maneuvered behind his nemesis.
He gripped the general’s head; and with a rapid motion—left hand pulling his chin; right, pushing the top of his head—he snapped Volkov’s neck.
To the rank and file, it looked like the general had violently jerked his head to the right then collapsed. Corporals through colonels stood agape, unsure what had just happened.
Exit, stage right, Bradley thought, meandering across the room, giving each soldier a wide berth.
He was still yards from the exit when shouts erupted, a mixture of Russian and English.
The roll-up garage door began to descend, and the soldiers drew their weapons.
115
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
“NO LUCK RAISING 3A or 3B, sir.”
Ryan resisted the urge to pace. Three major missions were underway, and he couldn’t establish contact with any of his operators. Bradley had no comms inside the Russian forward operating base; and thanks to Hurricane Anna’s suspicious left turn toward D.C., Abby and his teams in pursuit of Rear Admiral Murray were unreachable.
I’m so sorry, Grace, he thought, teeth biting down on a snippet of flesh below his lower lip. Satellite signals were intermittent; drones and aircraft, grounded; his warriors, cut off. The category three assault was endangering his teams and delaying the rescue mission, allowing the enemy precious time to torture the Cyber Commander.
The door to the ops center flung open. Acknowledging Colonel Gardner, Ryan straightened to attention. The base commander looked somber, arms forming a V-shape, hands clutching a laptop.
“Major, I need a moment of your time.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan led him across the ops center, opened his office door, and invited the Colonel to enter ahead of him.
The fifty-year-old Airman walked along the wall of heroes. Ryan’s clerk had painted over the disrespectful graffiti and replaced the defiled photographs with unblemished duplicates; and Gardner’s gaze roamed from Izzy to Master Sergeant Bissel to Colonel Ludington.
Then sighing heavily, Gardner closed within arm’s reach and said, “Major, there’s been a terrorist attack at our Basic Training facility and Sybil’s been shot ...”
The pain of losing Izzy and Gwen reared up, and Ryan’s teeth chomped down in a desperate effort to hold his emotions in check.
“... She’s undergoing surgery at Med Center South.”
Guilt, regret, and heartache swelling inside him, he croaked out the words, “Thank you,” and started toward the door.
Gardner clasped onto his elbow, forcing eye contact, and when he spoke, his voice was soft with compassion. “She’ll be in surgery for another hour and ... And I think you need to understand what happened.”
Ryan drew in an unsteady breath and rubbed his hands over his face, worried about Franny and the baby. This was sure to dredge up the pain of losing Sierra and Izzy; and he still hadn’t broken the news about Gwen.
What do I say to Franny? How do I comfort her?
“I’ve had Langden under constant drone surveillance since your office was breached,” Gardner said, opening the laptop. It awakened from sleep, and a picture appeared, a two-column formation of recruits toting toy M16s.
Ryan closed his eyes, momentarily shutting out the image, and shuttering his outrage.
He wants me to watch my adopted daughter get shot? What the fuck is wrong with him?
“Major, I know this is unorthodox, and may seem crass ... or even cruel, but I honestly believe you need to see this.”
Ryan’s thoughts jumped to Volkov. Did that bastard target Sybil to punish me and Franny?
Unable to rally his voice, he nodded for the Colonel to proceed. With pride and dread, he watched Sybil heroically herd the recruits into a gully, selflessly evacuate the injured, and calmly administer first aid; and although the video had no sound, Ryan flinched when the bullet carved into her back. Searing hot sympathy pains surged through him. His teeth sliced into flesh, and his mouth filled with the taste of blood.
The soldier in him was proud of her valor; the father in him was mad as hell.
The Colonel cleared his throat. “Perimeter guards dispatched the shooter, Aiguo Chen ... a PLA soldier mistakenly released as a worker because of a database breach ...”
Ryan’s emotions yo-yoed from grief back to rage. He wanted someone to blame, someone to hold accountable; he wanted to smash that fucking laptop into a million pieces.
“... Your daughter acted when others froze; she led when others cowered. Sybil is a hero, Major. And I showed you that video because no matter how I tried to phrase it, my words just weren’t powerful enough to convey the scope of her courage.”
116
District Six, Texas
GOVERNOR KYLE MURPHY was still reeling from the mind-boggling attack.
The street outside the sheriff’s station was littered with shell casings and shrapnel, stained with American blood. Eight teenagers had lost their lives to pipe bombs; a deputy had taken a bullet to the neck, dying within minutes; and another was still in surgery.
How could I let this happen? Kyle asked himself for the hundredth time. Self-loathing was rising inside him. A counterproductive emot
ion, he knew; but in the contest between the head and heart, his feelings were like raging floodwaters, indomitable and destructive.
Hands jammed into his pockets, he patrolled the emergency room, thoughts shifting to Peter. Although the medical staff had stopped the bleeding, they’d refused to operate, concerned that the cocktail of unknown drugs injected into his body could react adversely with the anesthesia. The poor kid was lying on a gurney, fully conscious, bearing the bullet wound without the benefit of pain medication and mourning the death of his first love.
I put him in an emotionally devastating situation, Kyle thought, forcing him to choose between my life and Lydia’s. I never should’ve allowed a fifteen-year-old to join the security forces. What was I thinking?
“Governor, we need to storm that ‘sanctuary zone’ and arrest the whole lot of them,” Sheriff Turner said, brow clenched, arms folded across his chest. “Peter’s testimony gives us probable cause for arrest.”
“You’re correct,” Kyle told him, “but it’s absolutely the wrong move. Alex Ivans and his goons will be ready for a raid. Have you forgotten about those machine gun parts and sandbags we found in the rubble after the drone strike?”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Turner demanded, his dark eyes burning with disdain. “Wait ...? Give them time to concoct another attack? To kill more innocents?”
“I’m not promoting inaction. We just have to stop being so damn predictable. We need to start playing them ... instead of allowing them to play us.”
“Okay, I’ll ask again,” Turner said in a decidedly clipped tone. “What ... do you want me ... to do?”
“Round up the uninjured deputies. And have our security forces start fabricating protest signs—pertaining to the dead teens.”
“Because ...?”
“Because we’re going to start an insurrection.”
117
District Three, Washington, D.C.
A MOURNFUL BANSHEE wail coursed through the subway tunnel and echoed through Abby Webber’s skull, making it difficult to think. Chunks of plastic, glass, and metal were pummeling the trash can; and when the tornado finally moved off, the silence proved even more unsettling.
Where the hell is General Sun? Did I lose him?
Her injured arm throbbing, she crawled from the foul-smelling trash can and cringed, certain that some of the liquid refuse had oozed into her wound. Then she readied her rifle and climbed the stairs to street level.
The rain and wind had ceased, and an arcing swath of blue sky glowed overhead.
The eye of the hurricane, she thought. Figures, just when I could use a downpour to rinse this gunk off me.
The west side of Thirteenth Street had been razed by the twister. Entire sections of buildings were gone, revealing a honeycomb of rooms devoid of furniture. Partially buried bodies lay scattered in unnatural poses, one wearing a black balaclava.
Keeping low to the ground, Abby scrambled across F Street, wobbling over loose hunks of granite and cement.
A sudden burst of bullets pinged; and she dove onto her stomach, slipping and sinking, swimming through rubble until she reached a denuded column that used to be part of a McDonald’s.
Distant voices were shouting in Mandarin, and she hazarded a peek. Nine peacekeepers had formed a protective circle around a short, pudgy middle-aged man.
General Sun!
Abby raised her rifle then abruptly curled into a fetal position.
Ten yards to her right, a pair of grenades clunked against the dunes of debris. One rolled into a random void and detonated harmlessly; a second sent shrapnel slamming into the column.
The roving cluster of bodyguards was turning west on E Street, and—rather than make herself a slow-moving target crossing an unstable mountain of wreckage—she moved west on F Street, paralleling their path.
What happened to the other three Germans? Were they killed by the tornado? she wondered.
Noting the absence of smoke rising from the White House, she glanced toward the southeast. The U.S. Capitol Building was no longer smoldering.
The rain must’ve extinguished the fires, Abby thought, gazing skyward giving silent thanks, then she frowned. The placid eye of the hurricane was sliding off to the northwest. A wall of clouds was closing. The backside of the storm was poised to assault the city, and winds were already picking up. Where would Sun take cover? His entourage had already bypassed Federal Triangle Metro Station.
Reacting to a sequence of explosions, Abby’s attention shifted westward. The concussions occurred at brief intervals, booming like fireworks; and given the dark smoke trails, they appeared to be moving south along the Potomac River.
Oh shit! Abby thought. Did the Chinese just blow all the bridges?
Or was it the Russians?
Or the Germans?
In any event, the move signaled an imminent, more significant attack on the nation’s capital.
Elephantine raindrops began splattering against the road surface, individual thwacks that progressed into a steady cadence. Erratic wind gusts tested her balance, and she hastened her stride to keep pace with the peacekeepers marching along Fourteenth Street. They passed between the National Mall and the Washington Monument, then swarmed inside a red brick, castlelike building with decorative arcading, round arches, and a large clock tower on its western end. Although its circle-topped windows had been blown out by the hurricane, the structure had evaded the cataclysmic wrath of the tornado.
Puzzled, Abby halted at Constitution Avenue.
Why are they sheltering inside an old masonry building with a vast supply of deadly projectiles? Especially when Smithsonian Metro Station is just one block east?
Parked cars, abandoned since the pulse, lined Fourteenth Street, and she prowled closer, one vehicle at a time. Lightning flickered, the heavens opened, unleashing a deluge, and the wind propelled her into a rusting Corvette. Straight ahead, the skeletal remains of a tree were slapping the brick building, shedding bark and branches in a suicidal dance.
Then Abby sucked in an astonished breath.
A pickup truck was moving along Independence Avenue, body dented, windshield missing, and rear axel riding on flat tires. The vehicle coasted to a stop adjacent to a brick stairway, then peacekeepers spilled from the building and lined the railing, a veritable wall of human sandbags.
Abby dropped to a knee, peeking from behind a green Kia, and watched General Sun emerge, the right half of his body concealed by the truck’s cab.
Rifle on the upswing, calculations whipped through her mind. Ordinarily, a hundred yard shot on level terrain would be ridiculously easy; but today was hardly ordinary.
Unpredictable crosswinds are going to mangle the bullet’s trajectory, she thought, and airborne debris could cause deflections.
Should I take the risky shot and alert them to my presence?
If not, how far can I possibly tail a vehicle when I’m on foot?
A nagging voice reminded her that the storm would only worsen.
Then, leading into the wind, holding a little high to offset the downward pressure of the rain, her finger grazed the two-stage trigger.
In the space between heartbeats, she fired; and Abby’s recurring nightmare became reality.
118
North of Scoville Air Force Base
District Five, Illinois
BRADLEY WEBBER HAD NO chance of making it out the roll-up garage door.
Instinctively, he retreated deeper into the building, headed toward a ten-foot pyramid-capped cube of wooden crates in the rear corner; then he squinted as if his eyes were deceiving him. A doorway opened in the middle of the span, and he had to spin out of the way to avoid bumping headlong into a soldier with colorless hair and pale-blue eyes.
The man paused in the doorway, barely two feet from him, and sniffed twice, prompting a troubling thought.
Heat can’t penetrate this suit, but what about the smell of sweat?
The Sniffer resumed his journey, confidence an
d authority evident in his stride, left hand swinging at his side, right hand immobile hovering next to his holstered pistol.
Who is that guy? Bradley wondered. His eyes zeroed on the man’s shoulder boards, which boasted a large yellow star and a smaller red one engulfed by a laurel wreath. He’s high ranking ... A visiting general, maybe?
“General’nyy Volkov!”
The entire room snapped to attention.
Bradley felt like the ground had given way, plunging him into an abyss.
Son of a bitch ... ! If that’s General Volkov, who the fuck did I just kill?
A lieutenant shouted something in Russian, and the firing squad dispersed, barricading every window with their bodies.
A sergeant presented Volkov with a rifle, fitted with a peculiar-looking scope. Speaking English with an anemic Russian accent, the crazy general said, “Master Sergeant Webber ...? Cyber hackers switched out my photograph with that of poor Colonel McNeil over there ... for just such an occasion.
“And you are to be congratulated. Your invisibility suit is impeccable. However, with this sophisticated omniscient scope, I will have no difficulty finding you.”
Bradley’s pulse quickened.
The rifle barrel veered toward him, and an unanswered question screamed through his mind.
Did the Russians find a way to defeat my magic green long johns?
119
District Three, Washington, D.C.
LYING SUPINE ON A COT, Rear Admiral Grace Murray opened her eyes a fraction, focusing on the vaulted roof of a metallic tent. The air was humid yet cool, a netherworld of discomfort where you could feel both hot and cold simultaneously. She could hear Hurricane Anna’s violent winds demolishing a structure above her.
Am I in a basement? she wondered. And why did the storm make landfall?
To her left, raucous voices were gathered around a lantern, soldiers playing cards.
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