Siege at Tiamat Bluff

by David DeLee

  Sucre glowered. “Yes,” he vowed. “We will.”

  But for the moment, he grabbed Holloway’s arm and pulled her toward the door. Two of his men felling in behind him, following them out.

  Lang shouted, “And don’t come back until you have him. Dead or alive!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  After completing his call to Tara, Bannon sat in the ethereal glow of the cockpit’s instrument panel, listening to the silence of the dead connection in the tubular minisub. Upon hearing Tara’s words, he’d dropped heavily into the pilot seat and stared through the cockpit window. Stared out into the dark abyss of the ocean floor that lay beyond him, but he saw nothing.

  Skyjack’s dead?

  He immediately rejected the notion. Impossible.

  He’d told Tara we’ll see, confident that if the Grim Reaper had confronted McMurphy, the tough-as-granite Irishman would’ve sent the Specter of Death packing, more than likely with a bloody nose. But alone in the DSRV with his thoughts, the very real possibility that he was wrong hit him hard. Someday his stubborn old friend would take a chance too great, and pay the ultimate price. They all might. Why not today?

  He’d heard the explosions. Saw the devastating damage the mines had done to the SEAL delivery vessel that had crashed into the Kanaloa Park dome. If Skyjack was onboard that one, no one could’ve survived that.

  Bannon gripped the arms of the chair and squeezed, steeling himself to again reject the idea. Until he saw a body. Until he was confronted with irrefutable proof, Bannon wouldn’t believe it. He would not accept it.

  “You’ve survived tougher scraps than that, old friend.” He forced himself to his feet, repeating what he told Tara. “We’ll see.”

  He grabbed the machine pistol he’d set down on the instrument panel when he froze. The sound of alarms, muted through the thick walls of the sub and the double hatch, reached him.

  “That can’t be good.” Bannon made his way to the rear of the sub. By the time he reached the hatch and muscled it open, Larson was in the corridor anxiously waiting for him. With only the pale blue running lights to see by, he caught her worried expression.

  “I take it, that wasn’t part of the plan?”

  “No,” she said. “They must be on to us.”

  “Then let’s find a place to lay low until we can initiate part two of our plan.”

  He took her by the hand and steered her down the corridor. Behind them came the metallic clatter of equipment. The familiar sound of approaching soldiers who didn’t care about noise discipline.

  Bannon pulled Larson faster in the opposite direction, only to hear the approach of more men coming from that direction as well. He stopped and handed her one machine pistol while he slipped the second off his shoulder.

  She took it, but said, “I don’t know how to shoot this thing.”

  “See this end?” He tapped the tip of the barrel. “Point it at the bad guys and squeeze this.” He pressed her finger lightly to the trigger. “Killing you is their objective. Don’t be afraid to kill them back.”

  He knew he was asking a lot of her. She’d been through so much already, but they had little choice. It was kill or be killed. He hoped she was up to the task.

  They stood back-to-back. Machine pistols at the ready.

  She said, “You’re going to want to pay more attention to the ones coming this way.”

  Over his shoulder, Bannon said, “Why?”

  “Because I left a little gift in the machine room.”

  “Gift? What sort of gift?”

  His question was answered by an explosion.

  Ahead of him, a group of three armed men had just come around the bend, advancing past the machine room at the same time the steel doors were blasted off their hinges and flew across the open space. They slammed into several of Sucre’s men, knocking them to the floor before the heavy doors slammed against the opposite wall, then crashed to the floor.

  A hot, orange and red fireball roared out of the room. The men screamed in surprise and pain. Splashed with some sort of flaming accelerant, one guy’s uniform caught fire. He ran chaotically in circles, screaming, trying to beat the flames down before his body was completely engulfed. He fell to the floor, immolated.

  The smoky smell of burning fuel and roasted flesh permeated the air.

  A wave of heat washed over Bannon. He covered his face and turned away.

  The lights around them blinked out and then snapped on as emergency backup generators took over. Bannon noticed the soft hum of machinery he hadn’t really been aware of until it was gone, had stopped. In the dim red glow of emergency lighting, he glanced at Larson.

  Bannon didn’t waste time as he stepped away from the curved inner wall and opened fire at the hostiles moving forward on their position from Larson’s side. With the Steyr machine pistol on full-automatic, it spit out bullets at a rate of eight-hundred-fifty rounds per minute in an ear-splitting barrage of gunfire. Those not killed by the flaming splashed diesel fuel and accompanying explosion were cut down by Bannon’s red tracer bullets or retreated back beyond the curved corridor wall.

  Bannon twisted around.

  Larson struggled to hold her machine pistol down as she fired. Tracer fire stitched chaotic patterns up the walls and even into the ceiling.

  Ineffective, but it was enough to keep the advancing troops back.

  Bannon shouted over the reverberating echo. “Come on!”

  He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back, leading her past the crumbled, burning doors, and dead bodies—some of them still aflame—at a run.

  “What the hell was that?” he shouted over alarms and the hiss of fire-retardant spray.

  “On the Putnam I told you the facility is powered by a nuclear reactor, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  She kept up with his long, running strides. “What I didn’t go into detail about was that the reactor powers a number of large diesel engines that power our lithium battery generators that actually run this facility. A super-eco-friendly system.”

  “Which you rigged to explode?” Bannon concluded.

  “After flooding the room with diesel fuel,” Larson said, adding, “For Dr. Nomura.”

  Not sure whether to be scared or impressed, Bannon went with grateful.

  They didn’t get far before having to skid to a stop. Three armed men filled the corridor in front of them, their machine pistols aimed and ready to fire. Behind them stood Holloway and Sucre.

  Sucre stepped between his men, a pistol in his hand. He aimed it straight-armed at Bannon and Larson.

  Bannon pushed Larson to his rear, shielding her body with his.

  “End of the line, Commander,” Sucre said.

  Confidently, Bannon said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Actually, it is,” Holloway said. “For you, General.”

  Sucre twisted around. A quizzical expression on his face.

  Holloway aimed her gun and fired. The bullet slammed into Sucre’s neck. Sucre grabbed his throat and fell to his knees, then keeled over.

  The others, at first confused by the unexpected shooting half-turned. Slow to react.

  Holloway shot one in the chest. He staggered back with a grunt but didn’t go down. No blood leaked from the hole in his coveralls.

  Bannon shouted, “Vest!”

  He’d started to bring the machine pistol up before. Now, he adjusted his aim higher and took out two of the gunmen with carefully plucked headshots.

  Holloway fired once more and hit the armed man she’d already shot. This time it was a bullet to the face. He got off a short burst of fire. Tracer bullets chased a line up the wall as the dying man fell back. The gun fell silent and he hit the floor, dead.

  Holloway stepped forward, over the crumbled dead, and lowered her weapon.

  “We need to stop meeting this way, agent,” Bannon said.

  Larson followed closely behind him, clutching his hand and arm. She looked down at the gunman Holloway killed. Hi
s nose was gone. In its place was a bloody and blackened hole. Wide-open eyes stared back. She gasped and turned her face into Bannon’s shoulder doing her best to shut out the gruesomeness of it all.

  Bannon turned his attention to Sucre, surprised to see the man was still alive. He dropped down to one knee beside him. Sucre clutched at the wound in his neck. Blood bubbled through his fingers. The man would bleed out in minutes, or less. His eyes were wide with pain and the fear of facing his own mortality.

  Sucre coughed. “Help me.”

  Bannon said, “It’s too late. You’re bleeding out.”

  Still, he lifted the man from the floor, propped him up on his bent leg. “What’s Lang’s real game?” Sucre’s skin was clammy and sheened with perspiration.

  He gasped, pleading, “Help me.”

  Bannon had begun to solve the puzzle, but he was missing some of the pieces. “What’s Lang’s endgame? Tell me.”

  “Lang…” Sucre said, his voice rising and falling. “Just the beginning…bring down...government. Grayson…revenge.”

  “Bring down the government? How?”

  “Le…leviathan…”

  His eyes went blank as the life slipped away from him. The bleeding in his neck stopped pumping. Sucre’s limp hand slipped away from the wound and dropped to the floor. Bannon laid him gently back on the floor and closed the dead man’s eyes.

  Larson asked, “What’s Leviathan?”

  “Other than a biblical sea monster from ancient mythology?” Bannon shook his head. “I have no idea. Whatever it is, we’ll have to deal with it later. For now, we need to move.”

  Larson led them to a room she opened with her palm print and a keypad passcode. Inside, the motion-sensitive lights came on. A row of sinks on one side and toilet stalls on the other. A restroom. Holloway paced the length of the tile floor.

  Then stopped. She looked up, confronting Bannon.

  “My family?”

  “I’ve contacted the people I needed to. They’ll be safe. I need you to—”

  Holloway wagged a finger in front of his face. “They aren’t safe yet? No deal.”

  Bannon checked his dive watch. “You and I talked less than an hour ago. I’ve got people handling it. The best in the business.”

  “It’s my family! Do you have family, Bannon? A wife? Kids?”

  “No. but—”

  “But, nothing. My girls, Bannon. My husband. They’re my life.” On the verge of tears, she said, ‘I’m not doing anything more to help you until I know they’re safe.”

  Bannon grabbed her by the arm. He shook her, gently, not threatening, but enough to catch her attention. “They’ll be safe. I promise. Until then—”

  “Nothing. Until then nothing.” She slapped a blue tooth device in his hand. “Take this. It can’t call out but you can reach me on it. It’s set to the Secret Service frequency we’re using down here. When my family is safe, you contact me. But trust me when I tell you, I’ll do nothing more to jeopardize them until then.”

  Bannon reluctantly accepted the device. “Understood.”

  “Find somewhere to lay low. When you get word from the surface, word my family is okay. You contact me. Not before.”

  She stormed out of the restroom, slamming the door behind her. The sound reverberated hollowly in the empty space.

  “What do we do now?” Larson asked.

  “I’ll tell you what we won’t do,” Bannon said. “We won’t be laying low and doing nothing.” He took her by the hand. “Come on.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Holloway returned to Ops, in response to Chase Lang’s screaming through her earpiece demanding to know what the explosion had been. At the closed door, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and uttered a silent prayer. She stared up at the camera looking down on her. Never so scared before in her life.

  The door whooshed open and she stepped inside.

  Grayson remained in the room, standing off to one side. Lang paced behind a console where an operator was scrolling through video images, presumably searching for Bannon and Larson.

  He turned as the door whispered shut behind her. “He slipped through your fingers. Again? How? You had them trapped. You had six armed men.”

  “And they’re all dead. The woman. Larson. She blew up a generator or something. I barely escaped with my life.”

  Lang shouted, “I don’t care!’

  “Blame Sucre,” Holloway shouted back. “If he hadn’t rushed—”

  “Happy to,” Lang said. “Where is the little weasel?”

  “He’s dead, too. Survived the blast only to take one in the neck.” She didn’t mention it was she who’d pulled the trigger. “You think you can do better? Be my guest.”

  Lang fisted his hands and pounded the console shelf. The console was too solid to make the result either fear-inducing or satisfying. Grayson smirked and caught Lang’s ire.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  Grayson, a smile still on her face. “You. All these years running, hiding, formulating this great plan of yours, whatever you’ve been doing, has done nothing for you. You’ve become sloppy, undisciplined. Not even a shadowy shell of the operator you used to be.”

  Lang turned red.

  “The operator I made you.”

  “Careful Colonel.”

  “Bannon’s better than you even were, even at your best. Which you certainly aren’t now. You’ve met your match and that scares you. It should. Because when Brice Bannon catches up with you—and he will—he’ll end you. There’s no question of that. Unless…”

  Lang narrowed his eyes. “Unless what?”

  “You give up now. Surender and there’s a chance—a slim one—but a chance you survive this. Life behind bars. That’s your best-case scenario.”

  “Locked away. To rot in yet another prison. You call that surviving?”

  “You only have yourself to blame.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I have you to blame.” He spun around to face Holloway. “What did Bannon say? Did he indicate where they were going, what he had planned?”

  Lang raised the sat phone and waved it in at her. A not-so-subtle reminder her family’s safety hung in the balance. “Tell me.”

  “There wasn’t a whole lot of talking,” she said. “We were in a firefight. People were dying.”

  “And yet you didn’t,” Lang said. “The sole survivor of said firefight. Curious.”

  Holloway advanced on him. She fisted her own hands. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Simply that being a traitor isn’t easy, especially a reluctant one.”

  “Says a man speaking from experience,” Grayson said. “Except it actually seems to have come very easily to you. Sell out.”

  Lang whirled on her. “Watch your mouth. Or have you forgotten how expendable you are, Colonel?”

  Grayson bit back a retort, calculating how hard to push him. Unstable to begin with, Chase Lang was becoming unhinged right in front of her eyes.

  “I wouldn’t risk my family like that,” Holloway said. “Trust me on that.”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Lang said, adding, “And since everyone around me has proven to be so utterly inept, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” To the operator viewing the video images on screen, he said, “Open up the facility-wide communications. I want to make sure everyone hears this. Everyone.”

  The operator nodded. He began to punch buttons and fiddle with dials.

  Lang waiting, tapping his toe and becoming increasingly irritated.

  The operator said, “I’ve opened up communications to the entire facility. The system’s ready when you are.”

  “Took you long enough,” Lang said. “Patch this through to the Putnam as well. Get that FBI asshat on the line. He needs to hear this, too.”

  Lang again impatiently waited.

  Holloway and Grayson exchanged a glance, curious as to what Lang had in mind. Nothing was said between them, but Grayson sensed in the harr
ied woman’s worried expression, that maybe the Secret Service agent was still on the side of good.

  A blink and you missed it nod, but the Secretary Director received the message. Her instincts were right. Holloway hadn’t gone over to the dark side. At least not yet.

  Holloway felt a wave of relief wash over her. Perhaps by the time this was all over she wouldn’t go down as the greatest traitor in American history since Benedict Arnold. And even more importantly, that her family would survive this unharmed.

  A voice, tinny and crackling, that sounded far, far away, filled the ops center. “This is the Putnam. Agent Goodwell speaking.”

  “Goodwell,” Lang said. “Update me. Where are we?”

  “General Sucre, I’m glad you called.”

  “This isn’t General Sucre!” he shouted. “My name is Chace Lang and I’m in charge down here.”

  “Where’s Sucre?”

  “He’s dead and more people will be dead if you don’t answer my question. Where are we?”

  Goodwell cleared his throat. “The Vice-President and select members of Congress are reviewing your demands and determining a course of action.”

  “You got Congress involved and you expect something to get done?”

  “The law requires it, Mr. Lang. It’s very specific—”

  “You think I give a damn about the law?”

  “No,” Goodwell said. “I suspect you don’t, but we do. Also, before we can act further, we require something from you.”

  “Are you serious? You’re in no position to make demands, Goodwell.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Lang. A second Coast Guard cutter and a naval destroyer are making their way here at top speed even as we speak. On board are three more SEAL and Special Forces teams.”

  “They’ll die just like the last ones did.”

  Goodwell went on as if he didn’t hear. “Your position will be surrounded. You will have no means of escape.”

  “I’ll kill your President.”

  “And that’ll seal your fate,” Goodwell said calmly. “Let’s work together to avoid all that, shall we? We require proof of life. Hourly.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m extremely angry. Yes. But that’s beside the point. My instructions from Vice-President Wright and members of Congress are to secure hourly updates, verifiable video proof, that President Kingsley continues to live and is unharmed.”