by Kyla Stone
In the end, the feds only wanted results. The General would give them those results.
Just as soon as he took care of this little problem.
The General stared at Coleman kneeling on the floor. The prisoner cowered before him, wretched and pathetic, his shoulders hunched, head down in abject misery.
Blood dripped from his hairline. Cuts, scrapes, and old scars marred his bare, muscled chest. The wound in his side leaked red. The tendons in his neck stood out.
He trembled, quaking with terror and dread. A man gripped by the terrible knowledge of imminent death. Finally, he’d revealed himself as the gutless coward that he was. That deep down, all men were.
The General smiled.
All men were made of flesh and blood and bone. All men broke.
The General broke them.
He stepped forward. Raised the pistol.
“Don’t get too close,” Gibbs warned, but the General ignored him.
Dark energy hummed through him. He would relish this moment, would wring every ounce of pleasure from it. “My troops are moving in on Fall Creek right now. Your friends are about to die.”
Coleman said nothing.
“Look at me!”
He wanted to stare into Liam Coleman’s desperate eyes as he squeezed the trigger and fired the kill shot. He wanted the man to know who brought his death. Who wielded ultimate power and meted out ultimate defeat.
He longed to see the despair in his gaze.
The man refused to raise his head.
The General took another step closer. “I said, look at me!”
Still, the man remained motionless.
An unreasoning fury seized the General. He strode forward, intending to press the muzzle against his prisoner’s lowered forehead. “You will obey—!”
General Byron Sinclair never finished his sentence.
Liam Coleman exploded into motion.
The General’s brain barely registered that the prisoner’s hands were no longer bound. The pistol was struck from his startled grip.
Before his bodyguards could react, Liam pounced upon him.
A glint of something small and pointed streaked toward his face. A blur of sharpened steel.
The point pierced the General’s right eyeball. It punctured the cornea, drilling through the lens and plunged deep into the vitreous body.
Agony exploded inside his skull. Searing white-hot pain.
The General howled. Blinded, his hands flailed.
The man still on him, his arm surging forward for a second blow. The savage strike entered the side of the General’s throat.
With incredible speed and precision, the steel point of the tactical pen stabbed deep, gouging through muscle, tendons, and cartilage to rupture the carotid artery.
The General collapsed as if his spine had been ripped out of him. He landed hard on his back. The impact jarred him, knocking the breath from his body.
His one good eye bulged as he gazed unseeing at the ceiling, his vision draped in bright red. He clutched in vain at the liquid gushing from the hole in his neck.
Hot red blood pumped from his body. His lifeblood drained onto the concrete floor.
Dimly, he registered shouting and screaming. Figures bursting into action. Gunshots blasting.
His last coherent thought was one of astonishment. That this could be happening to him. That he wouldn’t get to finish his magnus opus.
That he, too, was made of flesh and blood and bone.
And then darkness claimed him.
63
Liam
Day One Hundred and Fifteen
Liam rolled off the General’s body.
The dropped pistol glinted. Not two feet away.
In one fluid motion, he grasped it as he rolled. He came up behind the man’s head and shoulders in a crouch.
He lifted the General’s torso. Using the man’s body as a shield, he shoved the barrel of the pistol beneath the man’s armpit. Still alive, the General gasped and twitched. Slippery blood coursed from his throat.
The world slowed.
For half a second, the guards stiffened, stunned. Their brains struggled to comprehend the rapid turnaround of the last second. Their weapons rose, but slowly, too slow.
The difference between action and reaction.
The determination between life and death caught in that frozen fraction of time.
Liam shifted his aim upward and fired a double tap.
Two bullets ripped into Dobson’s unprotected chest. He wasn’t wearing the bulky ceramic plates in his chest rig. With a startled gasp, he dropped.
Liam shifted and squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. McArthur looked down at the new holes in his torso, shocked. His body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Mayhem erupted. Shouts of alarm. Bodies bursting into motion, hands going for weapons, carbine muzzles raising toward him.
Liam spun, searching for his next target.
It happened within the span of a second. Hundredths of a second.
Not seven feet away, Gibbs had a bead on Liam.
No time to react. No time to pull his muzzle to the left and fire.
Gibbs fired first. Three rapid shots. The rounds impacted the General’s chest and vibrated through the dead man’s flesh against Liam’s ribs.
The man filled his vision. The muzzle lifting, aimed toward his head. No way he would miss.
Two blasts.
A stunned look contorted Gibbs’ face. He crumpled.
Behind Gibbs, Luther spun toward the door, Liam’s M4 in his hands. He’d shot Gibbs in the back.
Before Liam could react, Redding pounded through the doorway.
Luther emptied a half-dozen rounds into his face. The man toppled, gurgling and gasping.
Three mercs plunged through the narrow doorway after him, bottlenecking at Redding’s fallen body, shouting in alarm, guns up but not shooting yet. Still in protection mode, not sure what they would find. They didn’t know the General was dead.
Across the room, Luther dropped to one knee and opened fire.
The first man jittered and fell. The second received a zipper of rounds from his crotch to his neck. He crashed backward onto the third hostile. He stumbled, weapon flailing.
Liam drilled two rounds into his skull. The reports exploded in the enclosed room. His ears buzzed.
There were too many hostiles. More swarmed into the kitchen and headed for the freezer. Luther lay down suppressing fire and drove them back.
“I count six more on the opposite end of the kitchen!” Luther said. “They’ve fallen back behind the stairwell!”
A hostile on the floor groaned. Liam swiveled and fired security shots into the heads of the operators on the floor. His slide locked back.
The air stank of blood, urine, and feces. Their bowels had loosened in death.
Liam dropped the spent Colt 1911 and dragged the General’s corpse off himself. With a sideways lurch, he seized a fresh carbine from the still warm but very dead hands of Dobson.
He came up on his knees and pointed the weapon at Luther. “You betrayed me!”
Luther didn’t turn around. He crouched behind the insulated wall. “I did what I had to do!”
Liam clambered to his feet. He staggered to the right of the doorway, seeking cover. He moved sideways, swiveling the carbine, and kept it trained on Luther.
Adrenaline kept him upright, but he was limping. His limbs weren’t working right. The intense pain left him shaken and lightheaded.
He tried to put it in a box and lock it away.
It didn’t work.
He’d reached the limits of human endurance. His tortured body was giving out on him.
His jaw clenched. “I should kill you.”
Luther kept his eyes on the kitchen. He fired rounds to suppress the next wave of hostiles from rushing them. “Gibbs suspected me, sniffed a trap. One of their guys searched you after I did. I knew they would. They were just waiting for me to
trip up. I had to do it, act like I was playing both sides for the General.”
“Sounds like you played both sides for real.”
“I left you the tactical pen, didn’t I? No one bothered to inspect it, but I knew what it was. You’re special forces. I had a hunch you had a back-up plan. That you could figure it out.”
Liam stepped back, breathing hard. “A lot riding on a hunch.”
He fired two suppressing shots, then ducked back behind cover. “I got everyone out of the room to give you a shot. I had Baxter contact the General’s people in Lansing, to get the Secretary of State to call him. That was me!”
“You signed your own death warrant. We’re trapped.”
“We’ll find a way,” Luther said.
Several rounds struck the outside wall, hitting steel with a metallic ping. Luther fired and ducked back behind cover.
He dared a glance back at Liam. Something haunted in his eyes. “I’m going to get you out of here. For Hannah.”
Liam’s anger didn’t dissipate, but reason took hold. Luther wasn’t a snitch. Things had gone sideways—as they always did. He’d made the best of it.
Besides, Liam needed him if they were going to have a snowball’s chance in hell.
Maybe he would survive this night, after all.
A flare of hope ignited in Liam’s chest.
64
Hannah
Day One Hundred and Fifteen
The ATV raced through the countryside, jostling over ruts in the road.
Hannah leaned forward, gripping the handles, her bad hand stiff and awkward. Dark shapes whizzed by. Cold air blasted her face.
They’d taken the off-road trail to get outside the town perimeter before turning onto a rural country road. The headlights bathed the pockmarked pavement in an eerie red glow. Perez had attached a transparent red film over the headlights to keep from attracting the wrong sort of attention. The growl of the engine was enticing enough.
Luckily, it was four in the morning, and most enterprising criminals were sleeping like everyone else. Everyone not intent on invasion.
To their right, two dark shapes appeared on the front porch of a white house thirty yards from the road. Mere shadows in deeper shadows. Hannah barely registered their presence.
Perez fired a warning shot. The shadows retreated into the house.
Then the ATV rocketed past, and they turned west on Shawnee Road, tires squealing, and headed toward Stevensville.
The darkness stretched out forever and ever, without end.
In thirty minutes, they arrived at Cook Nuclear Power Plant.
As before, four armed soldiers stopped them at the front gate. The guards pointed their weapons at them, hostile until Hannah identified themselves and explained their mission.
A female soldier radioed Major Hamilton, and a few minutes later, two soldiers escorted them past the gates. Hannah and Perez approached the makeshift barracks on foot, flanked by guardsmen carrying M4s.
Hannah caught only a glimpse of large concrete buildings clustered behind the tall razor-wired fencing. In the darkness, she couldn’t see the twin concrete cylindrical domes rising above them—the containment facilities for the reactors.
Dozens of RVs crowded the parking lots. Red coals smoldering from a few campfires illuminated the darkness like scattered stars in a galaxy of night.
While the civilian sector was quiet and still, dozens of soldiers were moving about. Dressed in full tactical gear, they carried crates of supplies and canvas duffle bags between several transport vehicles.
Like they were preparing for a mission. Or to ship out.
Their escorts led them into an industrial building, down a long dark hallway, and into a room illuminated by a single electric lamp.
Charlie Hamilton sat before a desk surrounded by crates of weapons and ammo. Several bullet-proof vests were slung over the back of a nearby chair.
He looked up as they entered, his face breaking into a wide smile. Built like a fire hydrant, he was short but brawny. His features were strong—thick brows, large nose, dark eyes. “Hannah. This is a bit of a surprise.”
“I’m sorry to intrude so late—or rather, so early.”
“How’s my favorite Delta? Where is that ugly mug? I’ve missed him.”
She struggled to rein in the sudden surge of emotion. “He’s not here.”
His face fell a little, but he maintained that warm, gregarious smile. “Can’t say I’m not disappointed. Don’t tell him that, though.”
He had an open, honest face. Hannah had liked the former Army Ranger the moment she met him. “Well, what can I do for you?”
She eyed the magazines spread across the desk. He was loading them from several boxes of 5.56 mm ammunition. “I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“Can’t tell you how much I wish I was.” He scrubbed at his face with the back of his arm. His eyes were bloodshot. “No rest for the weary. We just received marching orders. We’re to link up with General Sinclair to take out a dug-in group of domestic terrorists.”
Hannah’s heart seized. Terrorists. Anger vibrated through her. She could feel Perez shaking at her side.
She placed a restraining hand on the other woman’s arm. They needed to do this very, very carefully. “I thought you weren’t supposed to involve yourselves with local disputes.”
His eyes narrowed. “We’re not. These orders came straight from the top. Brass says to jump, we say how high.”
“Do you know the specific target?” she asked.
He shot her a funny look. “We’ll be debriefed upon arrival. Why do you ask?”
She took a breath, steeling herself. “Major Hamilton, may I speak plainly? It’s important.”
He set down the half-loaded magazine and looked up at her. The jovial tilt to his mouth faded as he sensed the seriousness of their visit. “Of course.”
“If Liam were here, he’d be having this conversation with you. But he’s not. He surrendered himself to General Sinclair’s custody last night.”
Hamilton stared at her. “What?”
“We are those ‘domestic terrorists.’ The entire town of Fall Creek. Women, children, elderly—everyone. And Liam Coleman is General Sinclair’s number one target. An enemy of the state.”
Hamilton pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “I find that difficult to believe.”
“That’s because it’s a lie. All of it. A cover up to justify one man’s twisted desire for vengeance.”
Hamilton turned and glanced at the map of Michigan hung on the opposite wall. Small colored pins were stuck in various towns and cities, most of them clustered in Detroit, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids.
Hamilton ran a hand through his scruffy, too-long hair. Gray stubble bristled along his jaw. He looked like a man in desperate need of a shower.
Perez started to say something, but Hannah shook her head. Perez shut her mouth and frowned.
“Coleman’s no terrorist,” Hamilton said. “I’ve known him for a decade. He’s a good man. A patriot. He served and sacrificed for this country same as I did.”
“He hasn’t changed. I can promise you that.”
“Have you spoken to the General yourself?” Perez asked, unable to help herself. “Did he give you the orders?”
“No, I haven’t. But they came through the proper channels. I can’t just defy orders from my superiors. It came straight from Lansing.”
“They’re relying on faulty information. The General is unhinged. According to our intelligence, he’s not even a real general. Not anymore. Years ago, he was dishonorably discharged. After the Collapse, Governor Duffield appointed him as his security advisor.”
“You have an inside source?”
Hannah nodded.
“I need to speak to them. Immediately.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t do that. He’s imbedded within the General’s inner circle. Liam was his point of contact, but Liam is in the General’s custody now.”
He
paced the narrow room. His mouth pressed into a thin line. “I need to think about this.”
“There’s no time!” Perez said.
Hannah squeezed her arm. With a calmness she didn’t feel, she said, “Right now, a small band of citizens are making their last stand. They don’t expect to live through the night, but they’re fighting anyway, in the desperate hope of protecting what they love most.”
She took a breath. “American soldiers who don’t know any better are about to murder innocent civilians. While the real threat—the Syndicate—threatens us all.”
He stilled. “My orders—”
“You have your orders. You also know what’s right, and what’s wrong.”
He looked straight at her. “What do you want me to do?”
“My people are going to defend themselves. But they’re going to lose. None of us have the connections, clout, or authority to intervene. You do. If we don’t do something, there will be a bloodbath. Good people will die on both sides.”
Perez shrugged Hannah’s hand off her arm. “The Syndicate has crossed the Michigan border.”
Hamilton blanched. “What? We haven’t been informed of this!”
“That’s intentional,” Hannah said. “You can bet the General already knows.”
Hamilton signaled to the soldier waiting beside the door, who nodded and slipped from the room.
Hamilton headed after him. “I’m going to make a couple of calls on the sat phone. I need to verify a few things. If what you’ve just told me is true…” He paused in the doorway. “Stay here. I may need you to relay your intel to brass.”
Hannah nodded. Panic lodged like a stone in her throat, her nerves on edge. What if it was too little, too late? What if no one would listen?
It was the longest five minutes of her life. Neither she nor Perez spoke a word.
Several minutes later, Hamilton ducked back into the room. His expression was grim. “Governor Duffield is dead.”
Hannah gaped at him. “What does that mean?”