by Kenny Soward
Jake, Atlanta, Georgia
Jake let out a sigh of defeat as Captain Stern called in vain for her soldiers to reply. It was only when Assault Two entered the building that they received confirmation of what had happened.
“Captain Stern, this is Assault Two. Reporting one hundred percent casualties on team one. Two crawlers down. The threat is not neutralized. I repeat, the threat is not neutralized.”
The radio silence that followed sent a chill up Jake’s spine. It seemed all was lost, yet he couldn’t accept defeat.
Captain Stern’s voice cut the stillness with supreme confidence, although Jake could read a hint of fear in her tone which she masked behind a wall of professionalism. “Let me guess, soldier. You’ve tracked them to the stairwell?”
“Affirmative,” the soldier said. “They fired down on us as soon as we poked our heads in. No injuries, Captain.”
“Good. Work your way up the stairs slowly. Push them to the top. We’ll come down from the roof and trap them between us in a pincer move.”
“They’ve armed the bomb,” Spitz said quietly.
Jake jerked his head to see what Spitz was looking at on his laptop screen. “What do you mean? How do you know? We spotted their dropped computer equipment several blocks back.” The only reason they’d caught up to the crawlers was because they’d spotted them crossing the Jackson Street Bridge.
Spitz turned the laptop toward Jake where a block of text had just appeared. “The bomb must have sent an automatic message to the New Block central command when they started the clock.”
“Did I just hear you correctly?” Captain Stern asked. “Did you say they’ve armed the bomb and there is now a countdown?”
“I can confirm that,” Jake said with sinking hope. “Based on the message that was sent, we’ve got twelve minutes to disarm it.”
“Did you hear that Assault Two?” Stern raised her voice. “Don’t take your time. Get up there, now!”
“Roger that, Captain Stern.”
The helicopter suddenly lurched upward, and Jake clenched his teeth as wind whipped through the crew area and nearly blew his headset off. The chopper lifted over the top of the Marriott and set down on a flat part of the roof.
Jake’s head swam as Collier and Ostrosky unsnapped their harnesses and leapt eagerly out of the crew section to land hard on the roof. Captain Stern followed, only this time she wore a combat helmet and held an M4 carbine in her hands.
Unsnapping his harness and grabbing the pack of wiring tools the military had provided, Jake tried to stand in the shaking aircraft but nearly fell sideways. His head was still spinning from the rocky ride to the top, and his balance was completely off kilter. Clenching his jaw, Jake let out a growl and leapt from the opening. He hit the ground hard, stumbling until Collier caught him and pulled him to his feet.
Together, they turned and helped Spitz and his laptop down out of the helicopter, a nerve-racking exercise with the chopper blades cutting the air just above his head and the landing skids swaying slightly in the wind.
Once they were all down, Stern gave a thumbs-up, and the helicopter lifted away.
They sprinted to the roof door and found it locked. Collier took a step back and shot the handle to pieces, and the door creaked open on its own.
“So much for the element of surprise,” Stern said as she eased onto the first landing and looked down. “Assault Two, we’re at the top of the stairwell,” she said calmly before turning on the tactical flashlight attached to the end of her rifle. “Let’s proceed.”
“Roger that, Captain,” came the reply from Assault Two.
Stern led the way down the stairs with Collier and Ostrosky next. Jake went to the solid concrete rail and peeked over for just a moment. All he could see was pitch darkness below. Then Jake pulled his pistol from its holster and stepped onto the stairs with Spitz in tow, following a good distance behind the soldiers. Spitz carried his laptop folded shut and tucked under his arm. The hacker had loaded several nuclear weapons schematics and dismantling procedures on the hard drive and synced the countdown timer to his watch.
He glanced at his wrist and then whispered into his microphone. “Ten minutes.”
The stairwell was silent but for the quiet shuffling of their feet, although Jake’s heart beat loudly in his chest as sweat beaded on his brow. He moved down the stairs as carefully as he could, eyes pinned to the back of Ostrosky’s helmet as the trio moved quickly ahead of them.
Captain Stern’s tall form stayed close to the wall as they moved down floor after floor, passing doors that opened up into the hotel corridors. Jake counted twelve main landings before Stern began to slow down. Her flashlight occasionally flashed across the concrete stairs, and Jake realized she must be searching the ground for blood. If the crawlers had been injured, they would have left evidence to indicate they’d entered a corridor.
“Stay frosty,” the captain said as she stopped on each landing and peered around the next turn before moving forward. It wouldn’t be hard for the crawlers to lay across the stairwell and mow them down as they came around the corner, so Jake figured she was being as careful as was necessary while racing the clock.
Jake’s blood pulsed through his body in anticipation of certain conflict. Anger and fear churned in his gut. He’d become friends with the men and women stalking down the stairwell ahead of him. Even Spitz with his dark humor. He didn’t want to lose them, though he couldn’t help feeling they were running into a meat grinder.
Jake wiped the sweat off his face, thinking about Sara and the kids. He’d been lucky enough to see them before this final mission, even if it was only just for a few hours. However, he desperately wanted to see them again despite the odds against him.
Someone grunted into the microphone, then came the sounds of a scuffle.
“Contact!” Assault Two’s leader screamed into the microphone as gunfire ripped through the stairwell below them. Jake jerked when the ear-popping rounds went off in the enclosed space. Several rounds shot up the shaft, ricocheting off the rails. Jake put his back against the wall and kept moving down the stairwell in the near pitch dark.
Something exploded. A man screamed and the air shifted violently for a moment before settling into silence once more. Without another word, Stern flew down the stairs, taking two at a time, outdistancing even Collier and Ostrosky.
“Captain, I’ve got my Ruger,” Jake whispered harshly into his microphone. “Let me help.”
“Stay back,” Stern snapped at him. “If you die, we’re done.”
Jake lost sight of the soldiers as they bounded down the stairs and around a corner. While Jake should have been horrified to run forward into danger, losing sight of his friends seemed somehow worse.
He practically dove down the stairs, taking four and five at a time, landing hard on the next landing down and half stumbling to his knees. He threw himself against the rail just in time to see Stern, Ostrosky, and Collier come around the bend where the shadows of the crawlers were hidden, barely illuminated by Stern’s approaching light.
Pointing, Jake shouted. “Stern, they’re right there!”
He caught sight of a rifle barrel sweeping up toward him, and Jake jerked back from the rail as bullets sprayed the concrete around him. A moment later, rifles erupted in a single, brutal burst. A guttural scream ripped the air—he thought it was Collier—before the sounds of intense hand-to-hand fighting broke out.
Jake lifted his Ruger and threw himself against the rail, looking down on the horrific scene. Shadows whipped back and forth across the wall as Stern’s rifle light jerked around. Collier held a crawler against the rail, one hand wrapped around the man’s throat as he lifted him up and over. The man tried to cling to Collier, but Collier slammed his fist into the man’s face and sent him plunging to his death without so much as a scream.
A shadow slunk in behind Collier, and before Jake could cry a warning, a knife plunged into Collier’s back. His friend reared with a cry and turned
to punch his attacker. Another shadow rose from the opposite direction, and this time Jake was ready.
He squeezed off two quick rounds, expelling a satisfied grunt when the crawler’s body bucked under the impact of the bullets. The shadows painted a chaotic scene, impossible for Jake to pick another target. He flew down the stairs with complete abandon, the bomb’s ticking in the back of his brain.
Coming around the corner, Jake saw the tall form of Captain Stern locked in mortal combat with another man one landing up from the others. Stern raised up, twisted, and stabbed with her knife, even as the enemy’s blade dove toward her midsection.
The captain cried out in anguish as the man drove her against the wall, twisting his blade back and forth in her gut. Jake skidded down the stairs, nearly falling. Then he brought his Ruger up, put it to the crawler’s head, and pulled the trigger, painting the wall behind them in blood.
He threw the corpse aside before turning to help the captain.
“No,” she hissed, and her eyes flashed to the landing below.
Jake got the message and plunged down to the next landing. His eyes scanned the darkness, but the fighting had all but finished. He spotted Collier sitting against the rail, and Jake rushed over and knelt beside him.
“Are there any more?” Jake asked in an urgent, hushed tone.
“I think Ostrosky…got them.” The soldier moaned and held his side, and even in the faint light, Jake could see the shiny wetness covering the man’s hand.
“Jenkins, you read me?” Jake said into his headset microphone.
“I hear you, Jake. Where are you?”
Jake looked up, eyes searching the wall next to the doorway. He saw the number splattered with blood. “Twenty-fourth floor. The crawlers are down, but so are Stern, Collier, and Ostrosky. Get a medic here quick.” In the back of his mind, Jake wasn’t sure a medic could reach them before the nuke went off, but Jake had to plan on winning. “Spitz and I are moving into the twenty-fourth-floor hallway to locate the bomb.”
“Got it, Jake,” Jenkins said. “I’ll send Chopper Three up with a medic.”
Jake started to stand, but Collier grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. The soldier’s eyes were filled with pain behind a solid wall of resolve. “Finish this, my man. Don’t let me die for nothing.”
“I won’t—” Jake started to say, but the soldier had already faded to unconsciousness.
“Come on, Spitz,” Jake said, standing in front of the door.
“I’m here,” said the hacker, and Jake glanced to his right to see the kid coming carefully down the stairs, his eyes wide as he took in the bloodshed.
Realizing he was still holding the bundle of tools in his left hand, Jake tucked them along with his Ruger into the waistline of his jeans. Then he picked up Collier’s rifle, grasped the door handle, and pulled it open. Leading with the barrel of his weapon, Jake stepped into the hallway with Spitz in tow and let the door fall softly shut behind them. He removed his flashlight from his jacket pocket and shined it at the floor.
A trail of blood led far down the hallway before it pooled in front of one of the hotel rooms. “They must have taken the nuke in there,” he said. “Wait here, Spitz. Be ready with the schematics.”
“Okay,” Spitz said, grimly. “Be careful, Jake.”
Jake walked along the hallway alone, his boots falling noiselessly on the soft carpet. As he drew within ten yards of the door, he saw the number read 2415. It was partially open, like an invitation to his own death. He didn’t know how many crawlers were inside, or if they’d simply blow him away the second they saw him. Glancing down at Collier’s rifle in his hands, Jake wondered if the weapon would even be useful in this situation.
“Jenkins, you still there?” Jake whispered, eyes narrowed as he thought.
“I hear you loud and clear, Jake. What’s up?”
“I’m going to need some help.”
“Where and when?”
“Twenty-fourth floor. South side, I think. But before you swing around, I need you to listen carefully to what I’m about to say, because we’re going to be cutting it close.”
“Go ahead, Jake,” the gunner acknowledged. “I’m listening.”
Chapter 28
Yi, Atlanta, Georgia
Yi sat on the hotel bed, leaning back against the headboard with his leg propped up and his hand resting in his lap. The curtains were thrown open and the blinds drawn back, revealing a night sky full of stars. It was the first time he had gotten a good look at the sky since arriving in America, thanks to the storms, and he found the stars incredibly moving in the peace of the moment.
A hundred thoughts raced through his mind. Mostly, they were of his time as a warrior here in America, his greatest mission. The battles. The killings. The explosion of the Douglas Dam. He remembered all those who’d ascended into the arms of the Dragon before him: Daiyu, Jiao, Ivan, Elsa, Edet, and probably Chen, too. All of them had been supreme warriors. Some of them he would even call friends.
He thought about his family, too. His mother and father. His two brothers. His wife and daughter, all of whom he’d left behind to take up the greater cause. To spread the breath of the Dragon across the land.
In that, he was about to reach the pinnacle of glory.
Yi was bleeding out, dripping slowly down the mattress and onto the floor. He’d tied a tourniquet tightly around his upper thigh in hopes of stopping the bleeding, although nothing seemed to work. Clearly, he’d had an artery or vein nicked when he’d been shot down in the lobby.
It didn’t matter. The bomb sat on the floor in front of the television. He’d lifted the control panel cover to find that there were only seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds left before the nuke would explode, turning him to ash in the blink of an eye. He heard the inner mechanisms of the bomb slipping slowly and carefully into place within the encasement, as precise as a Swiss watch.
A sound from the hallway reached Yi’s ears, and he cocked his head to the side to listen. It came again, the soft sound of boots on carpet. Yi quietly lifted himself off the bed, slid around the bomb, and crossed to the door in three limping strides.
He hid behind the door and drew his carbon-edged blade from it sheath.
As the door started to push open, Yi grabbed the edge and threw it back to reveal a man standing in the doorway with a military headset on, holding a rifle awkwardly in his hands. In the space of a second, Yi saw that he wasn’t a soldier by the way he was dressed. And while tall and rugged, his body language did not indicate he wanted to fight.
Yi ripped the rifle out of the man’s hands and raised his knife, aiming to slash the man’s neck in one fatal sweep.
“Wait, wait!” The man raised his hands and ducked. “I’m Jake. I’m Sara’s husband. Sara from Pine Bluff Mountain. I helped Captain Stern track you to this hotel using a piece of your own equipment.”
Yi narrowed his eyes, thinking through the haze of pain shooting up the back of his leg and into his spine. He recalled the family picture on the mantle of the cabin back at Pine Bluff Mountain. This was definitely the man in the picture. The one holding the little girl nearly upside down as she giggled. “Yes, I recognize you. I should kill you,” Yi stated, flatly. “You’re partially responsible for my entire team being wiped out.”
“Considering you’re about to blow up the entire city and take a few hundred thousand Americans with you, it seems like a fair trade.”
Yi nodded his understanding. “So, they sent you to negotiate with me?”
“Not really,” Jake shrugged. “I’m just the only one left.”
“But they can hear what we’re saying?” Yi indicated Jake’s headset.
“I think so,” Jake said.
Yi thought about it a moment. There’d been gunshots out in the stairwell a few minutes ago, and the fact that this man was alone in the room proved his warriors had defeated the US soldiers in the stairwell.
“Come in then,” Yi said tiredly, gesturing with his
blade toward an office chair on the near side of the room. “While I had intended to spend my last few moments in this world alone, perhaps I can share them with the husband of a woman as fierce as Sara.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, moving to the chair Yi indicated.
As Jake walked by, Yi removed his pistol from its holster and tossed it to the far side of the bed. Then he sidled past the bomb and retook his position on the bed, propping himself up against the headboard as he placed the captured rifle across his lap.
Jake sat down and glanced at the bomb with unease.
“So, Jake.” Yi grinned. “What would you like to talk about in the last five minutes and forty-seven seconds we have left?”
Chapter 29
Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Sara paced inside the kitchen as the news reports played from her laptop speakers.
While they did not specify the threat to Atlanta, Sara knew it was a nuclear weapon. She knew what was at risk, and every bone in her body vibrated with dread and fear. Occasionally, she stopped in front of her laptop and watched as reporters homed in on the military activity surrounding a major downtown hotel. Police lights were everywhere. Helicopters hovered in the skies, choppers that looked exactly like the one Jake had boarded with Captain Stern.
“Where are you guys?” Sara asked, biting her lip.
Todd and Barbara were supposed to have come up from Squirrel’s Nest fifteen minutes ago. They’d planned on watching the events unfold together, accepting the outcome no matter how it ended.
Refusing to watch the screen anymore, Sara paced the kitchen again. Her stomach was torn with nervousness and the effects of several cups of coffee, yet she couldn’t help but stay hot-wired to the situation, unable to sit down or take a moment to breathe until it was over.
She’d sent Zoe upstairs to sleep with Rex and Astro. She didn’t want the girl to watch in case Atlanta went up in flames and her father along with it. Just the thought made Sara’s eyes prickle with tears, and she quickly wiped them away with the back of her hand as she stalked to the other side of the kitchen.