by James Hunt
The face in the middle of the screen was blurred out. While the rest of the board didn’t mind the openness of the meeting, this particular investor enjoyed his anonymity, which Rick didn’t mind. The man’s money was still valid regardless of what his face looked like. “I was told we have a setback with Global Power, Rick. I hope that isn’t true.” The man’s voice was distorted when he spoke, using a scrambler to conceal his words.
“Nothing but a slight bump in the road, gentlemen. In fact, I was informed this morning that we are go for our test tomorrow, which will give us plenty of time before the markets open on Friday,” Rick replied.
“We have our contracts ready for the buyout once the stock plummets,” another face added, the fat under his chin wiggling with excitement.
Rick’s secretary returned with a bucket of ice and champagne. She poured Rick a glass and handed it to him. He raised it to the air, and the faces on the screen reciprocated. “Gentlemen, it’s a wonderful new world. Our world.”
A rusted, sagging chain-link fence surrounded Tirreno Power just outside of the city of Rome. The power station provided electricity to over 2.5 million people. The night lights flickered in the backdrop. The bustling city had just started its evening of food and wine. A black van pulled up to the fence’s perimeter, and out poured six men dressed in matching black gear complemented with masks and assault rifles.
The tip of a blowtorch ignited, and the light-blue flame cut a six-foot-tall, three-foot-wide hole through the thin pieces of metal like a hot knife through butter. The six men piled through, stomping over the rusty mesh and onto Tirreno Power’s property.
The massive smokestacks billowed pollutants into the air as the factory pumped out its 1,980 megawatts of power to Italian citizens. The old concrete buildings, platforms, and piping looked as if it was in the same sagging condition as the fence they’d just breached.
Due to the hour, the only staff present was the night shift, which rotated out on a skeleton crew to keep the plant operational. A guard tower was stationed near the front entrance, where two guards yapped back and forth over the soccer game on the small television in their sheet-metal box. Two of the masked men broke off from the main group, making their way over to the unsuspecting guards.
Before either sentry had a chance to reach for the alarm on their dashboard, both their necks were snapped, and their lifeless bodies dropped to the floor. The two masked men rejoined the main group as they infiltrated the station inside.
Once they made it into the building, they maneuvered through the halls in organized patterns, like fire ants collectively swarming against an enemy far greater in size. One by one, the masked men choked, snapped, and slit any neck or throat they came across. A trickle of blood flowed to the edge of the platform where one of the workers was slain, and it dripped off the edge in slow, tiny globules to the floor below.
The door to the control room, a massive piece of welded steel at least five inches thick, required a key to enter. The men gathered outside the door, three on either side, and one of them pounded the door with his fists, which sent deep, bellowing echoes through the hall. “Aprire!” one of the men yelled.
“Chi e la?” a faint Italian voice relayed back.
The man flipped over the badge in his hand to see a picture of a skinny man next to the name Alessio Bugemio. “E Alessio.”
“Alessio? Che cosa hai fatto con il tuo distintivo?” the man asked, and the behemoth door squeaked open. Alessio’s colleague was greeted with the muzzle of an AK-47 shoved in his face, upon which his hands immediately flew into the air. “Per favore! Per favore!” the man begged, dropping to his knees.
“Shut. Up,” the masked man said. The rest of his unit hastily dismantled the cover of the computer’s dashboard. Wires were stripped and then rebound and hooked up to a laptop. One of the men gave a thumbs-up. The lead man pulled off his mask, revealing a scarred and boil-covered face. He reached for the satellite phone and dialed a number. “We’re live.”
Both the Italian man on the floor and his unexpected visitors were frozen and silent, one stricken by fear, the other in anticipation. When the scarred man received the all clear, he looked to his unit and gave a firm nod. A few quick keystrokes later, the lights in the control room started to fluctuate. The gauges on what was left of the dashboard began to vacillate sporadically, tipping back and forth between safe and dangerous levels.
The hum of the plant’s generators grew to a roar, and the lights in the control room exploded, sending bits of glass raining down amid a resplendent shower of sparks, before the entire room and plant were cast into darkness.
The intruders flicked on the lights attached to their rifles, and the white beams illuminated the room. The scarred man brought his light to the quivering Italian man, his palms still frozen to the floor. He squinted in the intrusive light, beathing heavily and sweating profusely.
“Per favore! Per favore! Non uccidermi!”
The scarred man cocked his head to the side. “And why wouldn’t I want to kill you?” Quicker than the Italian man could blink, the flash of the AK-47’s muzzle sent four bullets into his chest, killing him instantly. The scarred man pulled his radio out and pressed the side bar. “You’re clear.”
One by one, the lights of Rome shut down in massive blocks. The cafés filled with patrons emptied onto the sidewalks, and the streets clogged with traffic came to a halt. People held up cell phones to light the spaces around them, a foreboding sense of panic overtaking them.
Those that got out of their cars on the six bridges over the Fiume Tevere River that cut through the middle of the city were suddenly flooded with men wielding rifles and shooting into the crowds at random.
In a choreographed stampede of fear and panic, people trampled and crashed into one another as they blindly jumped back behind the wheels of their cars or ran screaming from the bridge, abandoning whatever possessions they had to keep the blood pumping swiftly through their veins.
The men on the bridges wore the same black outfits as their comrades at the power plant. Bloodied Italians, some dead, some still clutching their wounds, trying to crawl to safety, surrounded the boots of the men marching over the bridge like a swarm of death.
Once the rest of the bridge was cleared, one of the black-clad men reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device with a red switch. With one flick of the man’s hand, the entire bridge erupted in a series of detonations that sent chunks of concrete flying into the air, crumpling cars and splashing into the river below in meteoric fashion.
Rome had already been dark for ten hours when Sarah’s boots hit the ground. Portions of the grid were coming back up, but it was slow going, and patches of light were few and far between. She maneuvered through the crowd, dressed in casual street clothes that revealed nothing that would portray anything other than a concerned tourist. The only piece of equipment that suggested anything else was the small black dot embedded on the inside of her ear that connected her with Bryce more than four thousand miles away.
“You’re still on track,” Bryce said. “You’ll want to take a left at the next cross street. And you should know that an organization called Red Brigade just took credit for the attack.”
“They haven’t done anything in over a decade. Where did they get the resources for something like this?” Sarah asked, running across the street before one of the police guards had a chance to stop her as they attempted to keep some form of ordered traffic running at the downed stoplights.
“I don’t know, but we just received the plant security feed. One of the guys took off his mask. Aurelio Macai. Sending the data to your phone.”
A notification pinged, and Sarah slid the device out of her pocket. The man’s face was incredibly scarred and disfigured. “How come these guys never smile in their pictures?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t think a happy demeanor would portray the level of truculent behavior that goes with their line of work.”
Relief tents, sobs, screa
ms, and confusion were the norm as Sarah walked the next fifteen blocks to the outskirts of Rome, where Aurelio was said to be sitting in a safe house. The building was run down, slummed to the point that it no longer looked inhabitable, but with the rest of the city still dark, it was hard to tell the difference between the slums and the cafés.
“How many inside?” Sarah asked.
“Seven. Four downstairs and three upstairs judging by the heat signatures.”
“Let’s go say hello.”
“I’m sure they’re excited to see you.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
The narrow streets of Rome didn’t allow for a lot of wiggle room as she squeezed her way down the pavement beside the building. She saw that no fire escapes rested on the side of the building as she stared at a small window on the second floor. She pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket and slid them on. She squeezed both hands into fists and held for three seconds, activating the adhesive.
Sarah spread her gloved palm on the wall above her head. She pulled herself up and set her other palm slightly higher and made sure both had a good grip. She placed both feet on the wall, took a few short breaths, then lifted the middle finger of her left hand to deactivate the adhesive and start the climb. Her shoulders and arms burned from the pressure of pulling her frame up the side of the wall. The higher she climbed, the louder the whispers from the window grew. She stopped just below the windowsill and stretched her body upward just enough to peek inside.
Three men sat around a table with the glow of a candle flickering across their faces. And on one of the faces Sarah could see the disfiguring scars and disgruntled features of Aurelio Macai. Each of the men carried a pistol at his side, 9mm from the looks of them, and a stack of AK-47s sat in the corner. Other than the men, the table, the guns, and the candle, the place was empty.
Sarah slowly lowered herself just below the edge of the window. A thick sheen of sweat coated her body as her muscles continued their labored effort of keeping her attached to the wall, avoiding the ten-foot fall below. The window was large enough for her to sneak inside, but she couldn’t get Aurelio out with his henchmen around without the risk of shooting him, and she needed him alive.
A stray dog found its way down the side street and looked up at Sarah, panting heavily and wagging its tail. The first bark caused her to look down, and she almost lost her hold as she waved it away, which only triggered louder, more frequent barks from the mutt.
Aurelio and the men inside yelled in Italian, most likely to quiet the dog. The dog’s incessant yelping only continued until one of the men came to the window, looked down and, stopped mid-sentence as Sarah gave a grin at the shocked terrorist above her. “So, funny story.”
“Intruso!” the man yelled then disappeared from the window.
“Ah, shit.” Sarah two-timed it up the rest of the wall toward the roof, with the dog’s barking reaching a crescendo from the increased excitement. Sarah gripped the edge of the roof with her fingertips as the same man from before poked his head back out of the window, wielding one of the AK-47s. With one tiring lift, she flung herself onto the roof as a mixture of gunfire and screams erupted from beneath her. “Bryce, I need you to keep eyes on the package.”
“There’s a lot of movement happening inside. It looks like they’re heading out the back.”
Sarah’s ankles pivoted awkwardly against the thick pieces of clay shelling that lined the roof on her sprint toward the rear of the house, with the echoes of gunfire and barking behind her. She skidded to a stop just on the edge of the roof and watched Aurelio jump into a car and speed down the street.
Keeping to the roof, Sarah followed the line of the road and kept her eye on the car fading in the distance. The narrow streets between the buildings made for easy jumps as she trotted along the rooftops, keeping on the lookout for any mode of transportation below. “I could use a ride, Bryce, if you see anything.”
“A civilian on a motorbike just parked in the yard two houses north of you. Keys in hand.”
Two more leaps across the rooftops, and Sarah jumped from the roof and buckled her knees upon impact, rolling forward to absorb the momentum. She stood up to the view of a slack-jawed Italian teenager with the keys to his motorbike in one hand and his helmet in the other. Sarah snatched both and jumped on the bike. “Grazie.”
Smoke flew into the air as the tires spun out, with Sarah’s hand cranking the throttle back as far as it would go. They were far enough away from the inner city for the roads to be cleared of most congestion, but the power outage had caused a lot of the city’s inhabitants to crowd the streets in small block parties, drinking lots of wine. “The Italians sure know how to keep it light when shit hits the fan.”
“Aurelio is three blocks ahead of you. It looks like they’re staying on their path heading north.”
“They won’t try and go west; it’ll just lead them to the river. The only options are the coast or the mountains. That’s where they think they’ll lose me.”
Sarah shifted gears, and the bike’s engine whined from the sudden burst of speed. She leaned left and right, blaring her horn and dodging the street vendors and pedestrians spilling onto the cobbled roadways. The shambled condition of the roads made for a rough ride. The vibrations from the bike radiated through her entire body. The taillights of Aurelio’s car glowed in the distance as the bulky vehicle had a harder time maneuvering through the streets.
Sarah pulled her pistol and lined up the sights on her target. She squeezed off a few rounds, cracking the rear window and providing a warning shot to whoever still remained in the street, sending citizens running for the cover of their homes and shops before the real gunfight started.
On cue, two of the terrorists in the backseat swung out the windows and emptied their clips back at Sarah, who swerved down a side street and came out on the road parallel to the one Aurelio was on. “Bryce, what’s the next major crossing?”
“Half a mile. It’s a village named Monte dell-ara-valle Santa. There’s crossroads all over the place there.”
The speedometer on her bike ticked to 100 kph, and her attention was spread between the road in front of her and glancing down the side streets to keep a visible line of sight on Aurelio. With the bike almost topped out, she redlined it for an adrenaline shot to the engine and sped past the terrorists. “Keep an eye on them for me, will you?”
“What are you doing?” Bryce said.
“What did the review board call it? Oh, something narcissistic that would put myself or another member of my team in danger.”
“But you never have a team.”
“That’s what I said!”
The bike’s engine started smoking, and she could feel the seat grow hot against her pants. She looked to her right again through narrow side streets between the buildings, and Aurelio’s car was nowhere to be seen. “Tell me when to turn.”
“Christ, Sarah, it didn’t work last time.”
“There’s a first time for everything!”
The needle of the speedometer bent as far as it would go. Smoke and heat exuding from the engine had doubled, sending plumes of the carbon effluvia into her lungs.
“Wait for it,” Bryce said.
Sarah used the pegs to push herself off the seat and stood up. The tires bounced along the cobblestones more violently from the increased speed.
“Wait for it,” Bryce repeated.
“Any day now would be great.”
“Now!”
The back wheel of the bike slid forward as Sarah turned the handlebars sharply, using her foot as a way to pivot her trajectory down the narrow alleyway, where the bike struggled to regain momentum.
“You need to pick up the pace, Sarah,” Bryce said.
“This isn’t exactly a Ducati!”
The exhaust sputtered, and Sarah shifted gears as fast as she could while the engine struggled to keep up. The road in front of her was running out as she sped closer and closer to the end of the alleyway. Just b
efore the bike penetrated the threshold, she jumped backward, sending the bike crashing into the car full of terrorists, which careened into the side of a building, crumpling the front half of the hood and rendering it impotent.
Sarah landed hard on her back and was slow getting up. She propped herself up on her elbows and took in the smoking wreckage in front of her. She laughed. “It worked!”
“You’re welcome,” Bryce said.
“For what? I did the hard part.” Sarah pushed herself off the ground, her arms tinged red from the scrapes against the concrete. She aimed her pistol at the car while two of the terrorists stumbled out and collapsed to the ground. She zip-tied the wrists of the ones that weren’t dead, then picked up Aurelio by the collar and dragged him down an alley.
The safe house was far from the epicenter of Rome, and the fact that Sarah had to drag an injured, two-hundred-pound pile of sweating, bleeding piece of meat without drawing attention to herself in a city that was still struggling to turn the power back on hadn’t put her in the best of moods.
“Hey,” Sarah said, smacking Aurelio’s cheek lightly, “wake up.” But the man simply moaned and rolled his head from side to side, his eyelids blinking rapidly. The next smack between Sarah’s palm and the side of Aurelio’s cheek echoed like a crack of thunder and brought Aurelio’s senses back to life, along with a red imprint of Sarah’s hand. “There we go. Thought I lost you.”
Aurelio looked down at the chair he was tied to. His ankles were bound together, his hands were tied behind his back, and another restraint ran across his stomach and the back of the chair. He pulled and shook violently against the chains. “Lo ti uccidero e tutta la tua famiglia, se non mi lasci andare. Mi hai capito, cagna? Vi uccidero cazzo!”
“Bryce, did you get all that?” Sarah asked.