by James Hunt
“The inside of the building looks clear aside from your pest problems in the ceiling,” Bryce said. “I should be able to narrow down the radiation signal now that all of that body heat is out of the building. Oh, and cops are on the way.”
Sarah groaned. “When was the last time you gave me any good news?” The slides on her Colts pushed forward, and she reloaded.
“So now would be a bad time to ask for a souvenir?” Bryce asked, his tone childishly sheepish.
The heavy sniper rounds thumped into the wall and floor near Sarah’s boots, and she tucked her legs farther under cover. “Yeah. Now’s a bad time.” She rolled left, aiming into the rafters and this time connecting with one of the snipers. The bullet entered his hip, and in the blinding moment of pain, he rolled, falling the hundred-plus feet from the ceiling to the floor, the screaming ending with a noticeable splat.
“Cleanup on aisle three!” Sarah peered out from under the cover once more, her breath still labored from the prior run, but the ring of a gunshot and the subsequent thump in the wall near her head pulled her back. Sarah unzipped the pack, noticing a wet patch at the bottom. When she peered inside, the iodine vial had ruptured. “Ah, crap.” She removed a cluster of smoke canisters, pulled the tops on at least a dozen, and then tossed them out onto the convention floor, the hazy grey smoke drifting outward and upward.
Sarah removed the mini rail gun from her bag and smiled. “Let’s see how these bastards handle this bad boy.” Under the cover of smoke, Sarah sprinted from the hallway and immediately aimed the laser pistol to the first steel beam on which she spotted a sniper.
The hot burst of white light jettisoned from the end of the pistol and connected to the thick steel beam above, scorching the metal to a liquid, crumbling the tress that it was attached to—and the sniper—to the floor.
The other snipers fired blindly into the smoke, their shots thick with desperation, as Sarah easily maneuvered through the low clouds of cover, picking off the enemy one by one. But by the time Sarah had rid herself of all of them save two, the smoke canisters had run their course.
Both snipers retreated to the sides of the roof, chasing Sarah on the floor as she fought to take aim while evading their shots among the wreckage of what remained on the convention floor. She skidded around the corner of an aisle and took shelter behind one of the few concrete walls on the open convention floor. She waved her hand to disperse some of the lingering smoke and glanced to her right.
A large cardboard display had been erected awkwardly near a comic book stand, and between the cracks of whatever manga monster it was supposed to resemble, Sarah saw the distinct edges of metal and the glowing light of what had to be a timer. “I think I’ve found the bomb.”
“Let me know when you can get close enough to defuse it and I’ll upload the instructions to your display,” Bryce said.
Sarah craned her neck around the corner of the wall and was immediately met with a barrage of bullets that forced her back behind cover. “I’ll get right on that.” With her back still flush against the wall, she glided to the opposite side and, mapping out the remaining two snipers on the rafters in her mind, planted her foot, spun, and fired into the ceiling. Two quick bursts of light morphed the snipers and subsequent structures into nothing more than a red mist of blood, bone, steel, and flesh.
Sarah examined the pistol in her hand, both eyebrows arched, and then tucked it back behind her waist. “Remind me never to use that when kids are around.” She sprinted back to the bathroom hallway to grab her pack with the tools, then tore down the cardboard structure and revealed a bomb the size of a boxy, fifty-inch-screen television. The red numbers of the timer ticked down, with less than three minutes left.
“Okay, you’ll need to remove the side panel to bypass the plutonium core and remove the detonation chip,” Bryce said.
“Isn’t there just an off switch?” Sarah quickly pried open the side of the bomb just as the back doors were flung open and a cluster of police dressed from head to toe in SWAT gear stormed inside. Seeing a woman crouching over the side of an open nuke with nothing more than a screwdriver in hand, the officers froze. Sarah smiled. “So, I know this looks bad, but I can explain.”
Sarah wasn’t sure what they screamed because she didn’t speak Mandarin, but judging from the gunfire that was sent her way, she understood the subtext. She retreated to the previous concrete wall, foregoing the urge to reach for the laser pistol and show Hong Kong’s finest her latest toy.
“Less than two minutes, Sarah.”
“Working on it!” She plucked two flash grenades from her belt and pulled the pins. The group of eight SWAT team members had flanked the bomb symmetrically, four officers in each formation. She chucked a grenade at each group, and the officers dove for cover. Two quick percussive blasts shook the floor, and Sarah sprinted to the first SWAT team on her left, twisting arms and ankles while knocking their rifles out of reach.
When she pivoted to the second group, two of them had already risen to their feet, and Sarah took two bullets to the ribs. She kicked the assault rifle from the officer’s hands then knocked him into his partner, crashing all three of them to the floor.
With her back on the tile, Sarah slammed her foot into the nose of another officer still in shell shock from the blast, forcing his concentration to the gushing blood pouring from his nostrils. The last officer reached for his rifle, but Sarah drew both Colts. “I’d reconsider that if I were you.”
The officer looked at the rest of his group and their mangled bodies and groans, then slowly lifted his hands in the air, then ran out of the building, helping his fellow SWAT officers out the door. “Smart man.” Sarah returned to the nuke, the clock now ticking below one minute as the remaining officers retreated.
“Police are assembling a bomb squad,” Bryce said.
“Now they want to do something helpful.” Sarah referenced the dismantling instructions on her arm as she removed another chunk of metal to reach the detonator chip. She reached her arm inside, her fingers grazing the chip’s edge. She stretched deeper, grabbed hold, and pulled back hard.
The chip disconnected, and Sarah sailed backward and landed hard on her ass, but when she lifted her head, she saw the timer on the nuke stop with thirty seconds to spare. Both she and Bryce let out a sigh of relief. She rested her head against the cool tile, where she felt the edge of something poke her skull. She grabbed the item and smiled when she saw that it was an action figure from the latest superhero movie that Bryce kept bringing up. “At least I got my Christmas shopping done.”
The doors to the convention hall opened, and Sarah looked over to see a man dressed in bomb gear lumber inside. She rolled to her side and propped her hand underneath her head for support. “You’re a little late to the party, pal.”
The moment the words left her mouth, the timer on the nuke flashed and then started the countdown from thirty seconds. Sarah flapped her arms in the air. “OH, C’MON!”
“Someone’s restarted the bomb,” Bryce said, his voice disbelieving.
“You think?” Sarah sprinted toward the device, scrolling through the manual on her arm. “There isn’t anything in here about this!” The timer ticked to twenty-five seconds.
“That’s because it’s impossible!” Bryce said. “You can’t detonate a weapon this complex without the supporting systems in place!”
Sarah ran her hands along the sides. “Yep, definitely no off switch.”
“You have to take out the plutonium core,” Bryce said. “That will separate the explosive material and stop the reaction.”
Sarah ripped off her jacket and dismantled the top half of the bomb, tossing components aside. Suddenly she stopped and reached for the radiation blanket in her pack, keeping it close while the clock dipped below fifteen seconds. The tools trembled in her hands, and the casing around the plutonium core hummed when she finally peeled back the last barrier. “I better not start glowing after this.” Using the blanket, she gripped the cor
e, her muscles straining to lift the heavy material, as the clock ticked below ten seconds.
“Pull, Sarah!” Bryce screamed in her ear.
“AAARGH!” Sarah offered one final pull and then yanked the core from inside the device as the clock ticked off the last few seconds to zero. She landed on her back, and the core, rolled up in the blanket, fell from her arms and across the floor. Sweat soaked her shirt and beaded on her forehead as she looked down at her palms, which were blistered and swollen from the heat of the device.
The core bubbled underneath the blanket, dissolving to a liquid, eating away at the tile and blanket until it was nothing more than a puddle of blackened crust like a burnt pancake.
“On a scale of normal to what the hell,” Sarah said, “I would say that ranks pretty high.” But with the police still outside and a handful of dead bodies, she bolted for one of the side exits, Bryce guiding her on a clear path back to New York.
Chapter 10
The GSF locker room was empty, and Sarah sat on the bench in front of her locker where she flexed her fingers, the burns on her palms shining a bright pink along with a sting that she didn’t think was going to disappear anytime soon.
Sarah peeled the jacket off her and tossed it aside, along with the shoulder holster that held both Colts. She stood, rotating her shoulder and opened her locker. The contents inside were in disarray. Random bullet casings, boxes of ammunition, and candy bar wrappers were strewn across the bottom, but her attention was pulled to the pictures on the inside of the door. The first was a photo of Ben, Becca, and the twins, which made her smile.
But when she drifted her eyes to the six pictures below her family, the smile faded. One by one she tore the four pictures with X’s crossed over them from the inside. When she reached the picture of Vince hovered it over the trashcan, the edge pinched between her index finger and thumb.
Two years of chasing him down, two years of her life and concentration and hours of lost sleep gone forever. She couldn’t get that time back, and she knew that Becca and Mack were right. Even if she did kill every single person that had a hand in her brother’s death it still wouldn’t be enough. She would lose herself. And there was still so much work to be done.
Sarah released Vince’s picture and it floated into the trash with the others. But when she removed the last picture, she paused. The photograph was blurry, and you couldn’t really see his eyes, but Sarah still felt the same cold chill run down her back as the first time she heard him speak. Branston Clark had been the puppet master behind all of it. “You’re probably already dead.”
Sarah tossed the picture into the trash with the others, her mind already feeling lighter after letting go. She headed to the infirmary to get her hands looked at and make sure whatever radiation she received wouldn’t kill her anytime soon.
The nurse in the infirmary gave Sarah a frown when she hopped up on the examining board and held out her palms. He wrapped her hands in fresh gauze doused in a solution that would help speed up the recovery at ten times the normal pace. “I haven’t gotten burned this bad since my last blind date.” She bobbed her shoulders up and down in exaggeration, though her nurse didn’t appreciate the humor.
“You’ll need to keep that on for the next twelve hours,” he said. “And keep them still. No moving around.”
“Good luck with that.” Bryce stood in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest.
The nurse left the room, and Sarah raised both of her wrapped hands. “Check it out.” Her arms now resembled those of cartoon turkey legs with dressed drumsticks. “They’re like little battering rams.”
Bryce stepped inside and stopped just short of the cot’s edge. Then, without a word, he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her. Sarah sat there with both arms straight by her sides but then slowly reciprocated the embrace. But only for a second, then she shoved him away. “Getting soft on me, Milks?” Sarah asked.
“No more than you’re getting a little slow on the trigger,” Bryce answered.
“Are you kidding?” She looked down to her wrapped hands. “Even with these things on, I’m still the best shot in the GSF.”
Bryce shook his head and furrowed his brow the same way he always did whenever there was a problem he couldn’t solve. “I’ve looked it over every which way with the satellite, and the only thing I’ve been able to find that could have reactivated that bomb was that the plutonium core itself was triggered by bypassing the detonator. That’s why it melted into the floor.”
“So someone out there can turn a nuke on without having the on switch,” Sarah said. “That can’t be good.”
Bryce’s pocket buzzed, and he removed his phone. “I got a hit on the shooter!” He opened the attachment, and Sarah slid off the side of the cot and crowded right next to him.
A picture of Taylor Grimes appeared on the screen, the data points from the scan showing a ninety-nine percent match. Sarah snatched the phone from Bryce’s hands. “That can’t be right.”
“Guys!” Grace sped around the corner, her cheeks flushed as she gulped down air to catch her breath. “You need to come see this.”
The GSF floor was in an uproar. Every screen across every support agent’s desk was flashing with their level-seven code-red warnings, which indicated a nuclear threat. Sarah’s jaw went slack as Bryce swiveled around into his chair and plugged into the GSF satellite. “What country is it?”
Mack burst out of his office, making a beeline straight for Bryce’s desk. “All of them.” He inched close to Bryce’s side and leaned forward on the desk. “I want tabs on every nuclear weapon in the field, and I want that up now.”
“Got it.” Bryce’s screens lit up with a map of the world that was peppered with red dots in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. “Christ, they’re all in pre-launch mode.”
“Are they counting down?” Mack asked.
Bryce pulled up a small screen in the bottom left-hand corner, typing code faster than Sarah could blink, then shook his head. “No, but they’re one button click away from being set off.”
“Mack,” Grace said, holding up his cell phone. “Directory Mallory is on the line for you.”
“Tell him I know about the nukes,” Mack answered, waving her off with a dismissive hand.
But Grace forced her way into the clustered circle of Mack, Bryce, and Sarah, still holding the phone. “He says that’s why he needs to speak to you.”
“Bryce,” Mack said, snatching the phone from Grace. “Throw the call up on your main screen.”
Bryce complied, and Mallory’s panicked voice blared through Bryce’s speakers. “Mack! We’ve got a problem.”
“You’re telling me,” Mack said, looking at the blinking red dots that represented the nukes ready for detonation.
“Taylor Grimes kidnapped the Ghost Twins!” Mallory said.
The omission left Bryce and Sarah with their jaws slacked, and when none of them responded, Mallory continued.
“Grimes has been missing from work since yesterday, and we have him taking flights all over the world. Finland and Cairo. And that facility where your agent stole the detonator chip, it wasn’t the only thing that was taken.”
Sarah squinted her eyes shut, remembering what Vince had told her. “He’s coming for you,” she whispered. She slapped her hands on the desk and whirled around to face Mack. “The bomb was a diversion. The end game was never the nuke. Vince wanted me to find him. He wanted me to break into that manufacturing facility. He needed the diversion.”
“What was taken?” Bryce asked.
“Some kind of high powered processing chip,” Mallory answered. “My people checked and there were eleven similar chips created from separate companies around the world. Some type of processor arm’s race, but get this: they’ve all been reported stolen.”
“What?” The question came from all four of them, though Sarah added a few choice words the others omitted.
“Yeah,” Mallory said. “Except none of
them reported it because they were under contract with the NSA. The only reason I found out about it was because the NSA director just called me up and told me that with the current state of affairs he found it necessary to share that piece of intelligence. Can you believe that?”
Sarah turned to Mack and Bryce. “Vince and the twins weren’t working for the Islamic State, they were working for Grimes.” She turned to the flashing red dots that represented the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He triggered the ignition of the nuke in Hong Kong.”
“Everyone!” Mack shouted above the murmur and alarms. “We are at threat level seven! I want every agent scrambled and in the field immediately. Let’s move!”
The floor burst into action, and Sarah stepped toward Bryce’s desk, the two staring in disbelief. Bryce’s mouth hung ajar. “How the hell is Grimes doing this?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But I’m going to find out.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story!
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