Harbinger

by S L Shelton

  “Monkey Wrench!” Nick yelled.

  “Busy!” I yelled as Harbinger lunged at me.

  I fell as I scrambled backward. Harbinger crashed into the cases, but not before he got a handful of his trailing cables and looped them around my neck and shoulder, yanking the transmitter from my hands. It seemed his shoulder was fine.

  I heard the gondola scrape to a halt on the other side of the sliding plank door before Harbinger rolled over.

  “Those are my men,” he said with a smile as he pulled a thick handful of wires toward him, drawing me closer as my feet searched desperately for a hold.

  Scrambling on all fours, I then rose to my feet and let my forward momentum throw a powerful kick to his jaw, snapping his head back.

  No fumbling. Disconnect the power cord and go, I thought as I scooped the device from the floor and tried to unwind myself from my snare. But the sound of the cable car door opening on the other side of the wooden slider increased the urgency. I yanked desperately at the power supply as I tried to leave, but a hard jerk on the wires spun me around.

  Harbinger charged again. This time, I had no place to go, tethered to him like a pair of shoes knotted at the laces. I moved to get clear of the wooden door, the device still tightly clasped to my chest, but arms as thick as my legs wrapped around me before driving us backward. I tossed a loop of wire around his neck and twisted desperately. However, as the door opened, my back smashed against someone who then fell to the side, wrenching my arm away through the coils. I couldn’t see who it was through Harbinger’s bulk, but I was certain I was about to be descended upon by several more of Harbinger’s men.

  Disconnect the cord, I thought to myself, but clamped as I was in Harbinger’s grip, and now tangled in the same cables, my hands were nowhere near the power supply.

  I was trapped and being shoved backward into the gondola.

  My feet stumbled over something. It didn’t dawn on me immediately, but as Harbinger continued to shove me toward the back of the car, I realized I was tripping over bodies. Only the giant’s forward momentum kept me on my feet.

  I need a weapon, I thought, ignoring the fleshy puzzle on the floor.

  He shoved me until my back pressed against the rear glass and the backs of my knees hit the bench at the rear of the gondola. For an instant, the oversized pane flexed against my weight, but Harbinger continued to drive me backward. The glass splintered and popped from the frame, falling, tumbling, and flipping toward the rocks below. Then a thought occurred to me.

  You angry troll…you are my weapon! I realized as he bent me backward through the opening. I pushed against him, straining, opening a gap between our bodies. If I’m going, I’m taking you with me…and the transmitter.

  When my center of gravity reached its tipping point, I brought my knees up, planting them firmly in Harbinger’s gut. With the muscles in my legs compressed painfully against my wounds, I lifted Harbinger, flipping him over and through the opening. As we tipped backward and began to fall, I lashed out in reflexive panic, reaching for any hold I could find. The fingers of one hand managed to close tightly, gripping the frame of the missing window of the gondola.

  I flipped backward out of the car but kept my grip.

  The transmitter dangled just outside of the cable car next to me. My heart froze, seeing the LED lights flashing on the device.

  It’s still running! I realized before Harbinger’s fall took up the slack on the cables that tethered us together.

  As the plastic coated wires dug deep into the flesh of my bicep and shoulder, his weight ripped my hand away from the transmitter before tearing me off the side of the gondola.

  My freefall lasted less than a second. The cords above snagged on something inside the cable car. Harbinger’s bulk jerked to a halt, binding the wire tighter across my flesh. I screamed out, feeling as if the cable noose would sever my arm and shoulder.

  “You son of a bitch,” I yelled as he yanked downward on the cable, digging the wires more deeply into my arm.

  I looked down at Harbinger, anger and pain shaping my face. When he looked up to meet my stare, his eyes flashed briefly toward the transmitter before he smiled.

  “You missed one,” he hissed as dots of blood bloomed in the whites of his eyes.

  “Give me a minute,” I replied, sneering.

  I desperately reached up with my free arm and tried to grasp a loop of wire, but Harbinger yanked down with all his weight, pulling me away from it and further tightening the garrote around my shoulder and arm.

  I kicked down, uselessly trying to separate the giant from our mutual entanglement—he was hanging too far below for my feet to reach. Again, I reached up with my free arm, stretching for the loop in the wire.

  “Come back here,” he grunted, almost gleefully as he yanked downward on the cables again.

  “Shit!” I yelled in frustration as my fingers failed to close on the coil above me.

  To my horror, several plumes of white smoke rose from the mountaintop to the west. I was too late. The missiles were streaking toward their target.

  If I didn’t disable the transmitter, the missiles would continue to receive their radio commands. If I were able to reach it and cut the power, the missiles would have to revert to painting the plane on their own. At least then, the automatic countermeasures on the plane might save Director Burgess and the Secretary.

  “You lose,” Harbinger hissed from below me.

  “Only because you weigh like a thousand pounds,” I muttered before reaching upward again.

  Harbinger yanked down roughly but this time, I timed my thrust, waiting until after he had yanked to pull myself up. My fingers closed around the thick loop of cable dangling just inches from the transmitter.

  Harbinger began flailing and jerking, desperately trying to pull me from my task, but my handheld tight as I swung my feet out and raised my legs up over my head like a gymnast on rings. When my feet were above me, I locked them around the transmitter.

  Upside down, I looked backward into Harbinger’s face. “See you at the bottom,” I said as I released my grip on the loop.

  My full weight—and Harbinger’s—fell against the clips that held the power cord connected to the RETRANS device. It separated and tumbled downward, nearly striking me in the face as it fell.

  Harbinger lurched to the side, trying to avoid the now-worthless transmitter as it plummeted toward the jagged ground. Both of us jerked to a painful halt again as my legs swung back down—I had been certain that jolt would send us both falling to our deaths. I looked up and yanked at the cables, wondering what they had snagged on.

  I looked down again in time to watch Harbinger’s missile-controlling transmitter shatter into a thousand tiny pieces.

  “I don’t think you’ll get your deposit back on that,” I said, grinning at him and now desperately trying to think of a way to untangle myself before the wires released or snapped.

  He reached up and grasped a handful of cable, pulling himself up several inches. As the cord cut into me, I mused at how I no longer had feeling in my now-purple arm.

  A sound, like that of gunfire, popped in the sky, drawing my attention upward. Above the mountain range to our north, a dense cluster of flares burst from the tail of a medium-sized jet, seeding the air with red flame. As the stream of white missile trails arced toward their target, the jet veered up in a steep climb, leaving the bright flares in the space where it had just been. The missile contrails intersected at the center of the flares and exploded into a brilliant daytime fireworks display.

  Burgess and the Secretary are safe, I thought before looking down again—Harbinger had climbed to within inches of my dangling legs.

  “Hey!” someone yelled above us. “Are you going to be much longer? This shit’s heavy.”

  I looked up and saw Mac, the Navy SEAL who had tried to stomp me at the Farm during my training. Several loops of cable gouged into his straining hands as Harbinger’s and my combined weight slowly pulled him o
ver the edge.

  “Mac!” I yelled up. “Knife!”

  Mac released his grip from one loop of wire and then groaned from the strain on his remaining arm as he reached behind him.

  Harbinger grabbed my ankle, snapping my attention downward.

  “Heads up,” Mac grunted.

  I looked up in time to see his dive knife dropping toward me. I reached out and snatched it from the air.

  “We are going to die together,” Harbinger growled, tightening his grip on my ankle.

  I kicked sharply at his fingers with my free foot, but he just dropped his head and began pulling himself up my leg. Looking down at the top of his head, I saw three tiny, interlocking circles tattooed behind his ear.

  “Gold Rush,” I muttered.

  His head snapped up with a glare of pure rage. The whites of his eyes filled with red dots so completely that they ceased to be white at all. With his face open to me, I stomped hard, smashing my heel into his nose and cheek. Still, he held firm.

  “Let go—you fucking—science—project,” I said, stomping with each word.

  “Jesus!” Mac yelled down. “Kill that fucker and get up here! I’m losing you!”

  I arched my foot backward in the air and propelled it forward, as if I were kicking for the extra point.

  Crack! The toe of my boot connected solidly with the side of his head, easing his grip on my ankle. One last hard stomp to his fingers separated him from my leg, and he fell backward. As the wire jerked taut, I sliced across all three strands with Mac’s knife, permanently separating Harbinger’s destiny from my own.

  He fell silently. As his body rotated around once, his eyes locked on mine. His face opened into a look of calm that I wouldn’t have thought possible for the rage-driven monster. A tug inside my chest briefly tempted me to follow him down and ask what he was feeling.

  Regret washed over me. I realized I had been bracing against the fear of this man’s retribution for so long that I was no longer certain I had a course in life besides outmaneuvering him.

  “Hey,” Mac yelled, snapping my reverie just as Harbinger smashed into the jagged rocks below.

  I looked up. “What?” I asked harshly as if his intrusion were an annoyance.

  “Do you mind?” he asked. “There’s a fight going on, and I’d like to get to it.”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” I muttered as I tucked Mac’s knife into my belt.

  Without Harbinger’s weight on me, I suddenly felt strong enough to do anything. Dangling by the tight coil seemed like nothing more than a minor nuisance. I reached up, gripping the loop above me and then took enough weight from my throbbing, purple arm to unwind the wire from around it. As the blood flowed into my formerly constricted limb, pain flashed in my shoulder and bicep in rhythm with my pulse.

  I shook my hand for a moment until the pins and needles sensation diminished to actual feeling.

  “Anytime now,” Mac groaned.

  “Let me get the feeling back in my arm,” I yelled up in complaint.

  I reached up and pulled myself, hand over hand, to the window opening.

  Mac looked over the edge. “You think he’s dead?” he asked in a quiet tone.

  “I’m pretty sure,” I replied, looking down at the giant’s broken corpse.

  Mac’s other arm extended past my head, his SIG Sauer clutched within. He fired three shots at the mass that was once Harbinger.

  “Just to be safe,” he said before grabbing me under the arm and pulling me into the gondola with a thud. I landed in a motionless heap on top of him.

  As I breathed a tension-melting breath into my lungs, I finally pieced together what had happened inside the gondola. There were six dead Harbinger reinforcements scattered on the floor and benches.

  “Did you do that?” I asked, nodding toward the corpses.

  “They seemed put off that I wanted a ride to the top,” Mac said as he shoved me off him. “You good?”

  I nodded.

  “Good work down there,” he said with a wink as he rose and then turned to enter the building. Down the corridor, Seifert and Marsh turned the corner, sweeping their rifles side to side, searching for threats.

  “Did I miss the party?” Mac called as he jogged toward them.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Seifert yelled.

  “Got hung up at the bottom and then had to save Monkey Wrench,” Mac replied.

  “Yeah, right,” Seifert scoffed.

  “It’s true!” Mac said defensively before turning to me. “Tell ’em.”

  “Yeah,” I said down the hall as I tried to push myself to my feet. “He saved me.”

  Marsh shot me a knowing grin as Mac turned back to them. “What? I did!”

  I stumbled toward them as Seifert ran to help me. “Where’s the big guy?” he asked.

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the gondola. Seifert peered backward in that direction.

  “He didn’t give you too much trouble, did he?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Piece of cake.”

  Seifert laughed as he sat me down in the hall. Marsh and Mac continued going room-to-room, searching for any remaining bad guys.

  “Where’s Kathrin?” I asked.

  Seifert pinched the thumb trigger on his mic. “Spartan, this is Majesty.”

  “Go, Majesty.” Nick’s voice cracked over the radio that had fallen from my shirt during the struggle with Harbinger.

  “Monkey Wrench is asking for Gretel High Kicker,” Seifert said with a grin.

  “Is he okay?” Nick asked.

  “He looks alright to me,” Seifert replied.

  “Hold tight until—” Nick began, but then he seemed to get distracted. “Wait! Hold on until they clear the buil—”

  Seifert grinned.

  “Majesty. She’s on her way in,” Nick said with disgust in his voice after a second. “Don’t shoot her when she storms through.”

  “Gretel’s on the way in,” Seifert yelled down the hall. “Hold your fire.”

  A few seconds later, Kathrin ran around the corner before looking both ways. When she caught sight of me, she sprinted toward us.

  I stood, painfully extending my now-cramping thighs. It was a wasted gesture. She threw her arms around my neck, sending us both crashing backward before pressing her lips hard to mine.

  I looked into her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks as she pulled back from the long kiss. “Thanks for getting the big guy off of me,” she said, breathless as if the words were being squeezed out of her.

  “Thanks for coming to rescue me,” I replied, resisting the urge to chastise her for putting herself in danger after I had sacrificed myself for her in Basel.

  “What would Gretel do without her Monkey Wrench?” She kissed me again, in front of the dead guys, the good guys, and God.

  I loved stealing kisses with this girl.

  **

  Twenty minutes later

  I watched Nick quietly from the corner of the radio room, my back pressed against the stone wall, Kathrin’s arm draped across my shoulder. A SEAL whose name I didn’t know was stitching the gash in my left thigh. I barely knew he was there, instead absorbed by the conversation that was going on between Nick and the director over Harbinger’s satellite phone.

  “The weapons are all accounted for,” Nick said into the radio. “And the RRT is smashed at the bottom of the valley. No way to get the transponder codes they used.”

  I winced as Nick listened to the reply. That would have been useful INTEL. I wished I’d had time to extract the codes before I had to smash it…and I wished I could hear the other end of the conversation.

  “Do we have to worry about the Swiss?” Nick asked.

  Above us, I could hear a pair of jets make a close pass over the ridge. Nick looked up as well.

  “I think they’re off the ground now,” Nick said.

  He turned and looked at me before winking. He looked bad—pale as a sheet except for the deep, dark circles that hung
beneath his eyes like Christmas wreaths. Something had happened to him, but I hadn’t had time to find out what it was yet.

  “Right,” Nick said. “Ten minutes. We’ll be ready.”

  He ended the call and turned to Marsh, who had likewise been waiting.

  “What’s the scoop?” Marsh asked.

  “Our evac is inbound now,” Nick replied. “We need to bag up as much INTEL as we can and get out of here before the Swiss security forces get here. They’ve already got jets in the air.”

  Marsh nodded before running from the room. “Bag it up, boys,” he yelled down the hall. “Evac is inbound.”

  Nick turned his attention to me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Dude, I’m fine,” I breathed out. “That’s like the third time you’ve asked.”

  A mild sneer curled his lip before he put his hand on the SEAL’s shoulder. “Tie a knot in it and let’s go. We can get a professional to clean it up later.”

  “Aye, aye,” he replied before yanking the suture tight and snipping it off.

  I pulled my pants up before Kathrin helped me to my feet. Outside, the other SEALs and the pilot from the crashed helicopter stacked equipment, computers, phones, and any other material that might be of some value to the analysts back at Langley. Harbinger’s laptop caught my eye as Seifert dropped it into one of the empty equipment cases they were commandeering.

  “That interrogation equipment,” Nick said, snapping my attention back to him. “Did they use that on you?”

  I smiled weakly. “It wasn’t so bad,” I replied as I limped toward the laptop.

  “Did they get anything from you that we have to worry about?”

  I shook my head. “No…I even muddied the information they already had.”

  “Cool,” he replied. “Try to remember it all until we can do a debrief. Maybe we can use some of it against them.”

  I nodded. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked as I sat on the edge of the case that contained Harbinger’s laptop. “You look like death warmed over.”

  “He took a bullet to the chest saving your boy Storc,” Seifert said, walking over and dropping more cell phones and wallets into an open box.