by David DeLee
The space had been turned into a bright, cheery family room. Beige painted walls. Curtained casement windows. A big-screen TV, gaming, and computer equipment along one wall. In the middle of the room was an arts and craft table and to one side was a Barbie playhouse, with all the cool things that went along with it.
A mattress had been thrown on the floor.
On it were the two little girls: Kacey and Karley. Tara didn’t know which was which, but they were definitely twins.
Behind one, the man tasked with watching them held her in a headlock. She struggled against his grip. Her cheeks tear-stained. He pressed a pistol to her temple.
The three of them stared at Tara as she crept down the last steps. She held out her empty hand. “Take it easy. No one needs to get hurt here.”
His dark eyes focused on the haladie. “Throw the knife away.”
When she hesitated, he shouted, “Now!”
“Okay. Okay.” She tossed it across the room. The duel-bladed knife bounced quietly on the carpeted floor.
“Take off your jacket.”
She unzipped the front. He tensed.
“Take it easy,” Tara warned. “It’s going to be okay, girls.”
Upstairs, there was a spat of gunfight.
Her guy twitched. His eyes darted to the ceiling.
“Pay attention to me,” she said, opening her jacket. “I’m unarmed.” She peeled the coat off her shoulders, pulled it down her arms. She tossed it aside.
“Who are you?” he asked. “You ain’t with Southwest.”
“No. I’m with Homeland Security. It’s over now.” She closed the distance between them. The girls, frightened, remained quiet and motionless. All the better.
“The only thing over is you,” the man said. He shifted his gun from the girl’s head and stretched his arm out toward Tara, aiming the gun at her.
At the sound of broken glass and another boom of Reynolds’ shotgun, followed by more gunfire, the terrorist tightened his grip on the gun.
Tara ducked as she seized the hilt of the urumi from around her waist and snapped it out. The blade whipped through the air and slashed across the gunman’s wrist like a whip. A deep cut opened up. Blood spurted. The gun went off.
He cried out and pulled his arm back but didn’t drop the gun. Blood trickled over his hand from the wound. Tara darted to the side and cracked the whip-blade again. It made a thunderclap snapping noise.
The girl pulled away from her captor’s grip and dropped down onto the mattress. She clutched her sister in a tight protective bearhug.
“Stay down, girls!” Tara shouted.
The man stepped away, squaring off with Tara. He raised his gun hand, wincing at the pain as he squeezed the trigger.
Tara snapped the blade down on his wrist again, then followed up with a quick left to right snap that caught the back of his hand, cutting yet another deep gash into his flesh. This time he dropped the gun and tried to shake the pain from his hand.
Tara charged him, spun, and slashed the whip-blade across his gut. It cut through his shirt, drawing blood. He doubled over, clutching his middle. Tara hit him in the jaw with a punch that knocked out a tooth.
He spun away and fell to his knees.
Tara smashed her left fist into the side of his head, still clutching the urumi hilt in her hand.
On his hands and knees now, he crawled for the dropped gun, leaving bloody handprints on the carpet. He lunged for it. Tara stomped her booted heel into his hand, crushing his fingers against the hard metal grip of the gun. He screamed in pain.
Defeated, he looked up at her, his eyes pleading with her not to kill him. There was another shotgun blast upstairs. Tara punched his bloody face. He collapsed, sprawled across the floor. The fight beaten out of him.
But that didn’t stop Tara.
She flipped his semi-conscious body on to his back and rained punches down on his face. Left and right. He grunted and made a failed attempt to cover up. Blood spurted from cuts opened up under his eyes, from his nose and lips, and still, Tara didn’t stop.
Her attack became feral, out of control. Blind with rage.
Somewhere in the back of her awareness, she heard her name being called. “Tara. Tara!”
She ignored it and kept swinging. Her knuckles became bloody and raw. She ignored that, too.
“Tara. Stop. Stop!”
Something—someone—grabbed her arm, pulled her back.
She reacted by swinging. She heard a scream, almost guttural before she realized the sounds were coming from her. Her wildly thrown punch was blocked. Kayla stood facing her, her arms raised, blocking further punches. “Stop!”
Breathless, Tara stepped back. She looked down at the man at her feet, bloody and beaten. She couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. She staggered back and caught sight of the little girls looking at her. Karley and Kacey. The horror she saw in their eyes, aimed at her, was no different than the frightened expressions they’d had earlier, in the company of a terrorist with every intention of killing them.
“Skyjack,” Tara said, looking at the girls as if to explain. “They killed Skyjack.”
Kayla threw her arms around her friend. She embraced her, squeezed her, tears flowing from both their eyes. “I know.”
“They need to pay for that. All of them.” Numb to the embrace at first, Tara slowly raised her hands, then she held Kayla tightly, too. Holding on tightly to her friend. Holding on for dear life.
“I know,” Kayla said. “They will.”
Tara pulled back. “Reynolds? Holloway?”
“Okay. They’re both okay.”
“The other two?”
“Dead.”
She nodded. As if that was acceptable. “We need to get word to Brice. Let him know the family is safe.”
“Good idea,” Kayla nodded, agreeing, but realizing the problem with it. “Any suggestions on how we can do that?”
Tara didn’t have an answer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Elizabeth Grayson sat at a booth in Neptune’s Glen alongside Kingsley and Garcia. Other hostages sat at other tables, some sat on the floor, their backs to the wall. No one spoke. An occasional cough or the noise of someone shifting positions were the only sounds heard. An oppressive sense of dread hung over the room like a fog. Yet even under their dire circumstances and the somber mood, Grayson could appreciate how breathtaking the restaurant was, especially the bank of windows overlooking Georges Bank outside.
But her attention was on three men guarding them. She watched, two at the main door, one by the spiral staircase leading up to the facility’s operational center. Like Bannon earlier, she was impressed by the sense of discipline they demonstrated. A factor that only made things worse for them.
Someone had given her a bottle of water. She clutched it in her hands while she stared at the surveillance camera in the ceiling, silently daring Lang to acknowledge her.
With Bannon loose somewhere in the facility she knew their chances of escaping this nightmare were greatly improved, but that didn’t mean she’d idly sit by. She needed to talk to Lang, reason with him, get him to stop this madness.
She glared at the two men guarding the door. Her patience had run out. She stood up and called out to them. “Tell your boss I want to speak to him.”
Kingsley started to get up. “Liz, what are you doing?”
Grayson waved him down but otherwise ignored him.
“Your boss!” she shouted.
One of the men stepped forward.
She hurled her bottle of water at him.
He dodged it. The bottle the wall behind him with a hollow thwap. It splattered water everywhere.
“Now!” she demanded.
Under his breath, Kingsley hissed, “Liz. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Lang’s not here for the RRA or even you, David. He’s here for me. Eighteen years ago, I abandoned him in the desert, left him to die. He’s here to get revenge on me.” She shouted
again, “Get me your boss!”
The one who’d stepped forward said, “General Sucre will not speak with you.”
“I don’t want to speak with Sucre. He’s a puppet. A yes man for Lang. Get me Chase Lang!”
She grabbed another water bottle off the table and pitched it at the door, too.
That did it. The guard stormed across the room and grabbed her by the arm. He yanked her away from the booth.
Kingsley jumped to his feet. Garcia beside him.
The others in the room watched. A few of them stood up.
“Unhand her!” Kingsley demanded.
The other man at the door rushed over and backhanded Kingsley across the face. He staggered back against the booth. Garcia caught him, arresting his fall.
“Stop this!” the pilot shouted. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”
“Right you are, Mr. Garcia,” Lang said, suddenly appearing behind them. He waved his men back to their post. “It’s all right. Settle down, everyone.”
Kingsley picked himself up off the bench, using Garcia’s help to steady himself.
“I’ll be happy to speak with you, Colonel,” Lang said. His tone void of any respect for her as he spit out her rank like a curse. Lang waved a hand toward the spiral staircase.
“Where are you taking her? I demand to know.”
Lang turned toward Kingsley. “You demand nothing. Haven’t you realized that yet? You’re nothing. A pawn. A dead man walking.”
He jiggled Grayson’s arm. “Come along, Colonel. You want to talk. Let’s talk.”
She followed him up the spiral stairs. Their footfalls rang on the metal steps. She glanced at David Kingsley and mouthed the words: I’ll be fine.
To Garcia, she said, “Stay with him.”
The pilot nodded, looking grim.
In her mind, Lang’s most recent words chilled her most. A dead man walking. That told her Bannon had been right. There was never any intention of releasing the President, or any of them, regardless of the outcome. Taking the President hostage was just one piece of the puzzle. A much bigger play was at hand, but what was it?
At the top of the stairs, Lang held the door open and Grayson entered Ops. It was abuzz with muted activity. The consoles—several convex-shaped, gunmetal gray cabinets—with men and women seated at them were bright with colorful computer screen displays. Most of the people there wore blue Tiamat Bluff coveralls or the security staff Polo shirts, making it hard to distinguish between the legitimate workers and Lang’s men. Except for one thing…
She guessed the ones holding the guns were the bad guys.
Sucre stood with his back against a wall. As Lang let the door close, Sucre approached them, a worried expression on his face. “There’s been a series of rolling power surges and failure throughout the facility.”
Lang creased his forehead. “What’s causing them?”
Sucre ushered over a nervous-looking woman with brown hair tied in a ponytail and wearing fashionable, dark-rimmed glasses.
She cleared her throat. “Um, we saw this a lot during our early stages of operations. The system, it’s AI, is designed to automatically sense service interruptions, needs, and divert—"
Lang held up his hand. “I don’t need a science lesson. Why’s it happening and do I need to be concerned about it?”
“I do not believe so,” she said. “It’s because of the dome’s collapse, the power from the rest of the facility is being directed to reinforce—”
Lang waved, dismissing her. “Fine. Enough. Go away.”
As he turned his attention back to her, Grayson said, “What happened to you, Chase?”
“Haven’t we been through this already? You abandoned me. You left me and my men behind to die. Because of you, we spent a decade in Iranian captivity. Shuttled from prison to prison, one hellhole worse than the last. Tortured every day. For years. In ways that would make waterboard seem like a spring break splashdown. Forced to fight for our food. Abused in ways that are…quite unimaginable. And you left us there!”
“We didn’t know,” she said. “We thought you were dead.”
“How would you know? You never checked. You never tried to find us.”
“That’s not true,” she said, but her voice was soft, lacked the conviction she wished she could muster. Had they looked hard enough? Did they give up too easily?
“Do you know how many of us survived?” he asked. “Five of us watched you fly away in that chopper. Leave us to die. Peterson. Schwartz. Cortes. Koerner. Rijo. They’re all dead now. None of ’em made it through what the Iranians did to us. Except me.”
“If we’d known…”
“You have any idea what being a prisoner in Iran is like? An American prisoner? Well, Colonel, to answer your question. That’s what happened to me. I was broken and discarded and left for dead. I was dead in every way but physically. And when I finally escaped, I figured out how to rebuild myself. A part of that was to abandon all the things that made me weak. Love. Compassion. Humanity.”
“Your soul.”
He smiled at that. “Yes, especially my soul.”
Agent Holloway rushed through a door, interrupting them. Her hair was a mess, her clothing in disarray. A nasty-looking bruise was developing over her left eye.
“What the hell happened to you?” Lang asked.
Grayson thought she was too old, had experienced too much to be surprised by anything. But this shook her to her core. “Kate? You’re a part of this?”
The accusation was laced with anger and hatred. “How could you?”
Holloway shrank from the wraith in Grayson’s voice.
“No.” She hesitated, searching for the words. “It’s hard to explain.”
“It’s impossible to explain,” Grayson said with disgust. “Traitor.”
Lang shouted over Grayson at Holloway. “What happened?”
“Bannon,” she said. “I had him. I thought I had him. But…I got careless. The woman distracted me.”
Lang, with a raised eyebrow. “What woman?”
“Dr. Larson. She’s with him.”
Lang shot a withering look at Sucre. “You told me everyone was accounted for! You assured me!”
Sucre shrugged. “What’s the difference? She’s just one woman.”
“A woman who built this place, who knows every damn thing there is to know about it. You idiot. Find her!”
One of Sucre’s men whispered something in his ear. He turned toward a console and gave whispered instructions to the operator. Grayson didn’t know if the operator was a coerced Tiamat Bluff worker or one of Sucre’s men.
Lang returned his attention to Grayson and Holloway.
To Grayson, he said, “Agent Holloway’s got a certain…incentive to assist me. Which she’s getting back to doing right now.”
Holloway avoided Grayson’s scornful look. She moved across the room to join Sucre at a console. Grayson watched as they called up various camera angles on the monitors, tapping into the facility’s video surveillance. Stepping up their search for Bannon.
“What’s so important you had to make such a spectacle of yourself over, colonel?”
“I wanted to talk to you about stopping this insanity. To appeal to your humanity.”
Lang laughed in her face. “Well, we’ve already determined that’s a lost cause.”
“Where does it end, Chase? You’re going to end up dead, or worse.”
Lang countered. “I’ve been through worse already. Because of you.”
“You blame me,” she said. “I get that. But this won’t change anything.”
“It’ll get me what I’ve craved for the past eighteen years. Payback. Revenge. Retribution. That may sound petty to you, but it’s what kept me going all these years. It’s been the one, singular driving force in my life. Gave me something to live for.”
“Then just kill me.” She spread her arms. “Get your revenge. Get it over with. Don’t take it out on all these people.”
Lang smiled his reptilian grin.
“Oh, no. Nothing so simple as that. I’m going to make you suffer. I’m going to bring the country you love to its knees. Kill your President. Riddle your government with scandal and chaos, destroy the public trust in anything American. I’m going to obliterate everything and everyone in the world you care about. And then, maybe, if I’m feeling generous, maybe then I’ll put you out of your misery.”
She knew at that moment, there would be no reasoning with him. No call for his compassion, his humanity. He was right. It was gone. There was nothing left of the man she knew. The man she once…
Grayson shook the thought away. “That was why you attacked Bannon and McMurphy at Hampton Beach. To get back at me.”
He didn’t confirm or deny, but instead glanced over at Sucre and Holloway hunched over a console. “Have you found them yet?”
To his apparent surprise and delight, they said they had.
“They’re at the docking level,” Sucre said. “Where the rescue subs are.” He paused, leveling Lang with a scornful look of his own. “Or should be.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Go get them.”
Sucre straightened up. “All but one of the subs have been released. They’re gone.”
Lang paused for a telling second before recovering. “That’s not important at the moment.”
To Sucre, it was. “Where’d they go? One’s not enough to get us all out of here.”
“And the true Chase Lang is revealed,” Grayson said. If she couldn’t appeal to his humanity, maybe she could turn his team against him, sow the seeds of mistrust. “You’ve turned on your own people. Even they can’t trust you.”
Lang glared at her. “Shut up!”
The focus of the workers and their armed counterparts shifted to Lang. He waved a hand at them. “Get back to work.” To Sucre, he said, “Bannon and Larson. Where is he?”
“On the last remaining sub.”
“The coward’s trying to escape. Get down there. Stop him!”
“The system will not allow him to launch. Not without help from someone here,” Sucre said. “Where are the other subs, Lang?”
“Get Bannon. We’ll deal with the rest later.”