by David DeLee
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
After abruptly ending his call with Agent Goodwell, Lang led Holloway and Grayson at gunpoint back down to Neptune’s Glen a level below. POTUS sat at a booth looking fatigued, his white hair unkempt. His forearms resting on the table, hands cupped together.
The pilot, Garcia, stood protectively over him.
Her job, Holloway thought glumly, realizing what a mess she’d made of things.
Lang shot a short video exchange with Kingsley, having Grayson—at gunpoint—authenticate the time and date before he transmitted the file via satellite phone to Goodwell on the Putnam.
The next nearly thirty minutes ticked by agonizingly slowly while Lang paced the room, issuing orders, and listening to updates from his search teams looking for Bannon.
Her earpiece clicked with a crackle of static heard only by her, followed by Bannon’s voice. “Holloway. This is Bannon. We’re on our way to Neptune’s Glen, but we’re not going to make it in time.”
She turned away from the others, looked for something to do away from the group that wouldn’t look suspicious. At the empty salad bar, she found a pile of bottled water left out for the hostages. No one was around them. She crossed the room to get one as Bannon said in her ear, “Stall Lang. Stop him from killing any more innocent lives. I’m on my way to surrender.”
Holloway whispered, “Is my family safe?”
Bannon didn’t answer.
She asked again as she picked up a bottle and cracked the cap open. “Are they?”
Finally, Bannon said, “Yes. They’re fine. My people got to them. Got them out. Your husband and your girls are perfectly fine.”
She closed her eyes, relieved, but remained cautious, suspicious. “How do you know?”
“Dr. Larson tapped into an old communication feed. A redundant system after upgrades were made. I spoke to my people. Your family…”
Holloway glanced over her shoulder. Lang remained on the phone with his men, his back to her. No one else seemed to pay her any mind. She asked again. “Is safe?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes as relief washed over her. “I’ll do what I can to stall him. But get here fast.”
“On our way.”
She heard the earpiece click off. She took a long swallow of water. Warm, it did little to refresh. It had been a long time since their meal on the Putnam. But the hungry growl in the pit of her stomach would have to wait. Her family was safe, she thought with tremendous relief. That meant she had work to do. Her work. Her job to do.
She returned to the group.
Lang looked at his watch. “It’s almost time.”
Holloway cleared her throat. “You keep killing hostages, it’ll only serve to piss Wright off. If you truly wanted America’s help in your struggle against Juan Cabrillo’s illegitimate regime—”
“She’s right,” Kingsley interrupted. “I’ve already publicly voiced my support for your efforts, have implemented sanctions against Cabrillo for his human right violations. But this? This only serves to undermine our efforts. To make it more difficult to help the RRA.”
“Don’t you see, David,” Grayson said. “That is the point. This was never about helping the Revolutionary Republic Army, about giving them military aid or fiscal support to unseat Cabrillo and return he newly formed Boca Las Casas government to the people. That was never going to happen. We all knew that.”
Kingsley twisted in his seat. “Then what was it all for, for God’s sakes?”
“To do the exact opposite,” she said. “To create an international incident that would shift world sympathy away from the RRA. Your kidnapping, your death, was orchestrated to shift the U.S. alliance to Cabrillo, to justify our retaliation against the RRA. A retaliation that would remove all who oppose Cabrillo.”
“But why for God’s sake?” Kingsley asked.
Lang smiled, amused they were finally piecing the puzzle together.
Grayson laid the final pieces down. “Uranium. Boca Las Casas’ violent secession from Venezuela came before deposits of uranium were discovered in the Sumaria River Mines. Prior to that, half the world’s uranium was produced by Canada, Australia, Niger, Kazakhstan, and Russia. The Sumaria River Mine is now third in worldwide production behind Canada and Kazakhstan. Uranium usage accounts for twenty percent of the U.S. electricity consumption, some twenty-five percent of the global uranium supply each year. Yet our own production doesn’t exceed five percent, forcing us to import ninety percent of the uranium we need.”
“If we were to ally ourselves with Cabrillo it would go a long way toward shoring up that shortfall,” Holloway said.
“Which many in both parties have advocated, willing to ignore Cabrillo’s brutality,” Grayson said. “To make America less energy dependent on our enemies.”
“And putting us in bed with the devil,” Kingsley said. “Cabrillo’s a monster. A man who slaughters his own people; women and children, has greedily thrown his country into an unprecedented economic upheaval for his own best interest. I’ll never allow such an alliance. That will never happen.”
Lang said, “Please say over my dead body, Mr. President. Please.”
“Stop the charade, Chase,” Grayson said, pulling the man’s attention back to her. “Stop acting like you care about any of that.”
Lang leveled her with a long, hard stare. “At one point I might have. But, you’re right. I don’t. On the other hand, the people who hired me do.”
“Who are they?” Grayson asked.
Holloway cared little about world politics, followed it only because her job demanded it. She realized from Grayson’s revelation, the only way for this scheme to work, to swing American and world sympathies to Cabrillo would be for the President to die. Nothing less would generate the justification needed to go to war against the RRA. All along there were just two goals; kill the President and pin the blame on the RRA.
It was time to act. Time for her to do her job. She stepped forward. “This insanity ends now.”
Lang smiled, seemingly amused by her outburst. “Really, Agent Holloway. And what are you prepared to do?”
“Stop you,” she said, full of conviction.
Grayson intervened, placing a hand on Holloway’s shoulder. “Chase, listen to reason. Sucre is dead. The Vice-President isn’t going to give in to your demands. The charade is paper-thin and would never stand up to scrutiny anyway. You see that, don’t you?”
Lang didn’t answer. Holloway wondered if Grayson was getting to him.
She pressed on. “Wright. The government. The American people. The world will see through it. We’ll tell them.”
“You wrongly assume any of you will get out of this alive,” Lang said.
His words chilled Holloway. “The intention from the beginning…”
“That there were to be no survivors,” Lang finished for her. “Myself excluded, of course.” He looked around the room. “Speaking of which, it’s past time.” Forty minutes had passed since his declaration someone dies every thirty minutes.
“You’ve only delayed the inevitable, not prevented it.” He clapped his hands together. “So,” with a grin, he said, “Who’s next?”
His gaze settled on a young Hispanic woman seated at the far end of a table. She had her hands folded over rosary beads and her lips moved in silent prayer. She looked up at him. Holloway could read the fear in the woman’s eyes.
Holloway rushed forward. “Don’t.”
She grabbed Lang’s gun arm, intent on disarming him.
Garcia, still standing behind Kingsley shoved him to the booth seat. He pushed him under the table to protect him from any stray bullets if any shooting started and covered POTUS’s body with his own.
Grayson stepped forward and shouted, “Holloway! No!”
Lang pushed Holloway back with a strong shove. He swung the gun away from the praying Hispanic woman and aimed it at Holloway instead. He pulled the satellite phone from his pocket with his other hand. “Ne
ed I remind you not all the soon to be dead are in this room.”
“You can’t touch my family,” she said defiantly. “They’re free. Your plan’s coming apart and you’re too stupid to realize it.”
She saw the crack in his confidence and almost smiled.
“Impossible. And even if it were true, how would you know?”
Holloway saw no downside to telling him.
“Bannon got word to the surface. He arranged a team to take out your people and save my family.”
As she spoke, Lang dialed the phone with his thumb. After the third ring someone picked up, but no one answered.
“Sinay. Johan?” Lang shouted. “Is that you? Talk to me, damn it. Tell me what’s going on?” He paused, frowning. No one spoke back. “Sinay! Talk to me!”
A male voice finally answered. “Who is this?”
Lang screamed, “Who is this?”
“The Virginia State Police. To whom am I speaking?”
Lang severed the connection and tossed the phone away like it was radioactive. “Damn it. How?” He looked at Holloway. “How?”
“What does it matter, Chase,” Grayson said. “She’s right. It’s over.”
“No.”
Lang aimed the gun and fired.
The first bullet hit Holloway in the gut. The pain, the burning, was like a hot poker driven through her stomach. The second bullet hit higher than the first, slammed into her chest. The impact drove her back, like a punch.
She let go of Lang’s arm and staggered back.
He fired a third, unnecessary shot.
Holloway gasped, fighting for breath as her lung collapsed.
She fell to the floor.
Grayson dropped down to her knees beside the woman. She grasped Holloway’s hand, squeezed it while she pressed her hand into the gut wound that was bubbling blood. Holloway struggled to breathe, gasping for air. Her mouth filled with blood. She coughed. Blood dribbled down her chin.
“Hang in there, Kate. You’re going to be fine,” Grayson said. “You’re going to be okay.”
Holloway squeezed her hand. “Don’t…don’t lie to me.”
Grayson forced a smile.
“Okay.”
Holloway gasped. “Keep POTUS safe.”
Grayson nodded. “You have my word.”
More coughing, a gasp.
“And…tell my girls…my Roger…I’m sorry and that…I love them.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Kate. I’ll tell them. I will. I promise.”
The last thing Holloway heard was Lang’s voice.
“Oh, how touching.” He paused, then said, “Not the hostage I would’ve chosen, but she’ll do. Tick tock, Colonel.” He tapped the face of his watch with the barrel of his gun. “It’s your turn in the barrel’s next.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Luis Roche and Paco Molero, two of Sucre’s men sat lounged in Moon Pool Alpha, smoking rolled cigarettes laced with just enough pot they didn’t mind the long hours of boredom they’d endured since arriving on Tiamat Bluff, guarding a room where nothing happened. Luis passed a small silver flask of Black Label scotch to Paco. He sipped. Their machine pistols were propped up against the hard-plastic crate they sat on. No one had been back to check on them for hours.
The two men hadn’t known each other before being recruited by Sucre for this mission, so they didn’t talk much. Just smoked and drank and thought about how they’d spend the money this job would pay.
Luis furrowed his thick black brow and cocked his head. Like a puppy who’d heard a high-pitched sound. “You feel that?”
“Feel what?” Paco took a long drag from his laced cigarette. “I don’t feel nothing. Here.” He handed the flask back, with a giggle. “This will help calm your nerves. Drink up.”
“If my nerves become any calmer, I will be asleep.”
Still, he accepted the booze and drank. Maybe he hadn’t felt something after all. Just his imagination.
He stood up. Needed to move to stay awake. Doing so, he was sure he’d felt a vibration under his feet this time. He was sure of it.
They had heard and felt the earlier explosions, of course, but General Sucre had ordered that they remain in position and to stay alert. Not an easy order to follow as his eyelids drooped. He crossed the wet, diamond-plated metal floor to the low wall surrounding the moon pool. He leaned over and looked down into the dark water below
“I think something’s down there, Paco.”
Paco sighed. He finished his cigarette and ground it into the sole of his boot before dropping it into a shallow puddle on the floor. It sizzled going out. Reluctantly, he got up, stretched, cracked his back, and slung his weapon over her shoulder, crossing the room to join Luis.
“Dude, you’re loco in the head. There’s nothing down there but water and fish,” he insisted.
Luis cautiously peered over the wall. He squinted, not seeing anything at first. But as he leaned further over. He could swear the water below had become darker. Like a black cloud had crossed under the large opening.
Maybe it was a shark. Or a whale.
Pointing and about to crow about his being right, the water in the moon pool bubbled and frothed. Rather than jump out of the way, Luis bunched his eyebrows and leaned in farther for a closer look. “Look! I told you!”
Just as he said it, a large gray dolphin leaped up through the opening. It arched through the air. Water streamed off its slick flank, splashing across the chipped, yellow deck. Strangely it didn’t make the trills and squeaking sound either man associated with dolphins, but instead, they heard a low humming engine noise accompanying the animal’s sudden arrival.
The two men backpedaled away from the sight, stumbling, and slipping on the wet metal floor. Their mouths hung open as they watched the dolphin’s trajectory overhead.
“Whoa!” Luis said.
“Santa mierda,” Paco shouted, crossing himself.
McMurphy threw Flipper’s canopy open and tossed a hand grenade—one of Tolliver’s special gifts—at the gaping men before they could raise the machine pistols they carried.
“Yipee-kai-yay, moth—oh, wait, that’s somebody else’s line.”
The grenade hit the deck with a metal clang and rolled. The two men stared watching it roll awkwardly towards them. As dumbfounded over the grenade as they were the sight of a man riding partially inside a dolphin. At the last second, they jumped, scrambling to get away before the grenade exploded.
McMurphy’s attention was drawn from the echoing blast to the chipped and scarred yellow metal wall fast approaching the hydrofoil’s blunt nose.
He crisscrossed his arms over his chest and grabbed the straps of the five-point harness, all control of the fourteen-hundred-pound vessel gone. He closed his eyes, winced, and turned his head away from the impact. For all the good that would do him.
Flipper slammed into the far wall, but not directly head on—luckily—but at enough of an angle the craft cascaded across the wall, scraping metal against metal, an ear-splitting sound, and leaving a shower of sparks in its wake.
McMurphy slammed forward in his seat on impact.
The heavy canvas straps bit into his skin but did their job, holding him in his seat so he remained in one piece. The hydrofoil continued its crazy ride around the room like a ball in a roulette wheel until it crashed to a stubborn stop, banging into one of the bubble-like submersibles used by the staff to ferry people back and forth.
McMurphy’s neck hurt and he felt something pop in his shoulder, but otherwise, he’d survived relatively unscathed. He thought about all the crash landings he’d endured already in his career, realizing one day the jig would be up.
But today wasn’t that day.
He started to climb out of his seat, pulling the Beretta from his holster as he did so.
The two men were picking themselves up off the diamond plated floor. Their shoes slipping and squeaking on the wet surface.
One kept shaking his head, as if to
clear the ringing in his ears from being too close to the grenade when it exploded. McMurphy knew the feeling. The other one stepped rather unsteadily toward Flipper, moving to the center of the room.
“I wouldn’t stand there if I were you,” McMurphy warned.
Defiant, but with his voice quivering, Paco raised his machine pistol. His back to the moon pool. “Done move!”
“I’m not,” McMurphy said. “But you might want to.”
Before either man could react to that, the moon pool bubbled and frothed and water splashed over the sides as Tara’s hydrofoil beached the opening and sailed through the air, following Flipper’s trajectory, except…
Tara’s leap had caught less air.
More line drive than pop-up, her hydrofoil came crashing down early than Flipper. It dipped down, nose-first, short of the wall, and skidded across the wet floor. It sideswiped toward Paco, standing with his machine pistol raised. He watched, wide-eyed, as the vehicle barreled toward him. His expression comical until the hydrofoil slammed into him and carried him across the room where it crashed into Flipper’s ruined flank, crushing the rebel soldier between the two vessels like a squashed bug.
McMurphy turned away to avoid most of the blood splatter and held onto the windshield to keep from being knocked out of the cockpit from the impact. Smoke billowed from the backend of Tara’s hydrofoil as she popped the canopy and flung it open.
Breathless, she said, “Of all the careless, hair-brained, dangerous, stupid stunts you’ve ever pulled Skyjack McMurphy…That absolutely takes the cake.”
McMurphy cleared his throat. “Mommy and Daddy shouldn’t argue in front of the children.”
He pointed at the remaining guard as he shakenly raised his weapon. Tara glanced over her shoulder, saw him, and casually pointed her Sig and fired. She hit him squarely in the forehead. The man went down and was dead before he hit the floor. The gunshot echoed in the chamber.
She returned her attention to McMurphy. All smiles now. “And it was awesome!”
She climbed out of the hydrofoil. “I’m so glad you didn’t die. Because I’d miss doing crazy stuff like that with you.”