“So what happened to Wilde?” Otto asked. “Dead or fled?”
“He’s done for good this time.”
“Halle-fuckin-lujah!”
“And even you might not believe the truth behind him.”
“Why? I’ve studied Wilde for years.”
“Yeah... but you never met Grutik.”
“Who?”
Max shook his head. “I’ll explain later. Let’s pick it up. We got a bird to catch.”
“That ain’t all we got,” Swift announced from behind. “Best double time it.”
“You all move on. I’ll cover,” Flint said.
Max turned partially around, saw one of the man-eating dinosaurs dart across the lawn toward the burning truck. After Cleghorn, it’s us. “That thing moves past the truck, shoot it,” Max ordered Flint. “Otherwise leave it alone, maybe it won’t notice us.”
“I’ll catch you at the cliff.” Flint positioned at the edge of the tree line as the team filed into the jungle.
Max moved slowly, carefully, and quite uneasily through the lush undergrowth, knowing full well that he couldn’t survive another dinosaur attack.
Swift pulled abreast of Max. “Give the kid to me, Ahlgren; you’re too banged up to carry him.”
“Not happening. Just keep moving—”
Flint’s rifle cracked. He worked the bolt to chamber another round.
Fuck, and we’ve still got a ways to go.
Then came the second shot, which Max had been dreading. All he could do at this point was move and hope their luck would hold out.
Flint fired a third time before surrendering his position. He caught up to the team as they emerged from the jungle onto a plain of cracked gray rock. The scattered boulders and copses of shrubs terminated in a sheer drop some sixty feet away. An ocean breeze smacked Max in the face, cooling the sweat he’d worked up humping Josh through the jungle.
“Take cover there,” Max ordered, pointing toward a cluster of boulders halfway to the cliff’s edge.
“We have a few seconds, no more.” Flint steadied Max over the rough terrain.
“Then we better move faster.”
The dinosaur broke from the tree line as the team knelt amongst the boulders. Otto opened up on the beast with his M203, a brilliant shot that exploded at the creature’s feet and flipped him backward to the jungle’s edge. Streamers of blood trailed from its gut as it flew through the air. Flint took another shot at it, striking it in the neck.
The great lizard roared and flopped about as it attempted to right itself. Perhaps their storm of lead would convince it to find an easier meal.
“Mark us, Swift!” Max ordered.
Swift dropped one of his guns and tossed a smoke grenade toward the cliff’s edge.
Max tuned his radio to Duke’s frequency. “David to Marine1, where the fuck are you?” The time was now 1702. Duke had never let him down before, but the first time could well be the last.
Receiving no response, Max tried two more times as the others took on the beast, who, broken but not beaten, again advanced on them in hops and short sprints.
“Where is he?” Swift bellowed when he finished off one of his mags.
“Hang on; he’ll be here,” Max said, a little white lie to keep their hopes up.
The dinosaur ran across their field of fire, turned, then headed for them on a diagonal path. Otto had to reload; Flint couldn’t get a head shot on the bouncing lizard; and Swift’s 9mm bullets only annoyed the thing. Max added his UMP40 to the fight, and their combined firepower drove it back, at least for the moment.
Otto launched his final grenade. A swing and a miss. It sailed far over the creature to explode in the jungle.
“One mag left!” Swift shouted before he popped off another burst.
Max emptied his magazine and quickly slapped in another. Meanwhile, the dinosaur zigzagged across the rocks, leading their guns on a merry and mostly futile chase. We are fucked. Max pondered the better way to die—chewed up by the creature or a several-hundred-foot drop into the ocean.
Neither would occur until he’d exhausted his last bullet.
A sudden gust of tempestuous wind blasted across the rocky plain from the cliff’s edge, blowing away the final wisps of smoke and buffeting them with fine grit. Max turned and saw their salvation—Duke’s big blue cargo chopper—hovering next to the precipice.
Max covered his eyes with combat goggles. He didn’t need to give the order; the team simply broke for the chopper, Swift lagging behind to help Max with Josh.
Flint, already aboard the chopper with Otto, fired over their heads at the pursuing dinosaur, which might have been right behind Max for all he knew.
Get Josh aboard, then get out; that’s all that matters.
The chopper’s wheels hovered two feet above the rocks, literally at the cliff’s edge. Otto and Flint continued shooting as Max and Swift heaved Josh through the side door into the bird. Once Josh was safely aboard, Max swallowed down his various pains one last time as he clambered aboard the chopper. Right beside him, Swift also tumbled through the cargo door.
Max hit the floor, then looked back at the rocky plain. The bleeding dinosaur stood some twenty feet from the chopper, its thick rear legs poised for one final leap. “Go, go!” Max shouted.
Turbos whined above pounding rotors as Duke throttled up, breaking upward and away from the cliff.
Made it. Somehow.
Something hit the chopper, tilting it slightly over to starboard. Max, also a fair helicopter pilot, felt Duke compensating for the shift in weight, probably their own since they’d loaded in such a haphazard fashion.
Nevertheless, the tilt worried him. Are we damaged? Did that lizard finish us with one final leap?
“What the hell is going on back there!” Duke yelled over his shoulder as he wrestled with the controls.
Flint, apparently wondering the same thing, crawled to the open doorway to peek over the side.
A hand emerged from below the door, seized Flint by the neck, and tossed him from the bird as if he weighed no more than an action figure.
“The fuck—?” Swift shouted.
Grutik leapt through the side door of the chopper. With everyone in a panic, he wasted no time. First, he chopped Swift across the Adam’s apple with a lightning-quick left, putting the big man out of commission for at least a few seconds. Otto fired on him point-blank. Three bullets struck Grutik center mass before the bolt locked back on his empty rifle. Grutik grabbed the barrel of Otto’s rifle and yanked hard. Otto had the good sense to relinquish his grip on the weapon, otherwise he would have followed it out the side door.
Max, on the floor next to Josh, drew his pistol and fired on Grutik’s scaly head, but only grazed his right cheek.
“You will all pay with your lives for this.” Grutik turned his attention to Max, who was relieved to see he hadn’t regrown his fried eye.
Otto’s pistol shot blasted Grutik in the left shoulder. He roared, more in annoyance than pain, and turned to deliver a backhand that knocked Otto halfway down the spacious cargo hold.
Still gagging, Swift reached for his .45.
Grutik smiled at Max. “Now, where were we, exactly?”
Max responded by punching him twice in the groin, quick blows that would have put any normal man on his knees. But Grutik only laughed as he grabbed Max by the back of the helmet. He then brought his knee up to smash Max in the face.
It was Max’s turn not to be fazed; his nose had been broken several times. He grabbed Grutik around both legs and squeezed, then lifted him off his feet and slammed him down on the floor of the hold. With Grutik’s head out the side door, Max eagerly volunteered to assist his exit, grabbing him by the ankles and heaving.
Grutik flailed his arms, got a hand on the edge of the door, and spread his legs, the toe of
his right shoe finding purchase on the sliding door.
Max stood, put a big boot on Grutik’s ass, and kicked him out of the bird.
“What the fuck was that thing?” Swift gasped, still recovering from the throat blow.
The chopper again listed to starboard. And I know why. Max stepped to the door, braced a hand against the ceiling, and looked down.
Grutik, like some preternatural gymnast, had grabbed the step and climbed back to the hold. He shot out a hand, trying to grab Max’s ankle as he made his entrance.
Max saw it coming. He raised his right boot high, then brought the heel down hard on Grutik’s hand. The lizard man barely felt the stomp, but that attack was merely a distraction before the coup de grâce. A moment later, Max drove his left boot into Grutik’s face.
This time it was enough. Grutik’s body followed his head into thin air as his hands clawed for purchase on the cargo door, finding none. His roar of anger and surprise faded quickly beneath the sound of the rotors.
“Shit, we got company!” Duke shouted through the headset.
Two French Rafale fighter jets approached the island, soaring hawks ready to pounce on Duke’s flying dodo bird. The fighters would soon be in missile lock range, if they weren’t already.
So this is how it ends. Max could only shake his head in futility as he waited for Duke to launch the flares—if he had any—that probably wouldn’t fool the heat-seeking missiles. The jets reached the island and cruised over the chateau, flying at roughly the same altitude as Duke and turning slightly to follow them.
Seconds now.
Ordinance dropped from the planes’ wings, followed by a flash of brilliant light that enveloped and vaporized the chateau. Max shielded his head from the blast, hoping the intense light hadn’t fucked up his eyes for good. At present he saw only flickering spots before the vague outline of the hold.
We’ll be finished off next, phase two of the cleanup operation.
Instead the jets broke off in the other direction.
“They’re buggin’ out.” Duke cackled in relief. “We’re gonna make it after all!” The side door began to slide closed with a whine of hydraulics.
Not all of us.
Heat no longer existed. Leseur had probably been devoured by a dinosaur. And Max would have to break the news of Flint’s death to his family, the commanding officer’s most onerous and dreaded task.
“What the fuck was that thing?” Otto asked as he resumed his place near the front of the hold. “Surely it wasn’t Wilde?” He paused. “Fuck, tell me that wasn’t Wilde!”
Max shook his head. “It wasn’t. That was Grutik.”
“Shit, man, you gotta fill us in,” Swift said.
“I will.” But not right now. Max leaned back against the wall, removed his helmet, and rested his head against the vibrating steel.
You’re likely to discover things you’d rather not know during your quest for vengeance, Marklin had uttered.
True enough... But it’ll be worth it. And you’d better pay me with a concrete lead.
As if Marklin’s I-told-you-so wasn’t enough, the odious Mr. Shackle decided to chime in: You make everyone around you suffer for your sins.
Max thought of Flint lying dead on the rocks or floating in the sea, wherever he’d happened to land. You’ll pay for that one in your dreams. His eyelids drooped closed. Unlike Flint, whom he’d cajoled relentlessly to join the mission, Heat deserved no pity. Her own worst enemy.
Max plummeted into a pained and fitful sleep, where he relived his battles with Grutik.
EPILOGUE
Max made his way gingerly down the sloping path in Meridian Hill Park, his body still aching mercilessly almost a week later. He’d been barely functional leaving French Guiana and spent three days recovering in a Miami hospital. The rest of the team, each in far better shape, had returned home to await their payment.
Josh left Miami in a straitjacket, aboard a private jet bound for a mental hospital outside of DC that catered to the rich and famous. Max wondered how he was getting along. Marklin will have some info, no doubt.
Max’s injuries were easy enough to ignore when he took the opiate pain medications prescribed him. But today he would allow nothing to muddy his mind while meeting with Marklin.
He’d completed one of his most difficult and draining missions to date. While the money was nice—Senator Pierce had already paid in full—for Max it was just means to an end. Max’s true reward would come straight from Marklin in just a few short minutes. Finally, I’ll have a name from a reliable source to start a real investigation. The very prospect quickened his step a bit down the sun-dappled path.
Running a few minutes early, Max found their usual bench empty. He carefully sat down to wait, enduring a symphony of agony. The knife wound in his gut still bothered him the most, though his shoulder came in a close second despite the sling on his right arm. He dreaded the months of rehab he would endure to get it back to full mobility. Even his broken nose throbbed unceasingly as he sat.
With a few minutes to kill, Max pulled out his phone and brought up the Washington Post online. Heat had spoken of many contacts yet never mentioned whom Max should submit her data to in the event of her death. So he’d gone to see Paws, who had been devastated upon hearing of Heat’s passing. After recovering his composure for several awkward minutes, Paws referred him to Ann Parkinson, a reporter from the Post whom Heat had considered a crusading sister-in-arms, at least according to Paws.
Max expected much from Ms. Parkinson, who had been duly shocked and disgusted by the photos he showed her, particularly that of Judge Gauge and the Runner. “Heat was the best, absolutely fearless,” she told Max. “She’ll be vindicated. It’s time people learned the truth about Wilde and how the French were colluding with him.”
The explosion on the island attracted a small share of media coverage in the states. The mushroom cloud had been visible for over a hundred miles, attracting the attention of planes and ships in the area, as well as witnesses on the coast. The French dismissed it as a terrorist attack against a top-secret military installation, denied that it had been a nuclear blast. They had since remained silent as their alleged investigation pended.
Parkinson had promised to break the story today. Yet as Max scrolled through the articles, he found no mention of the explosion near the top of the thread, just stories on the usual hijinks of DC’s political buffoons and baboons.
What the fuck? He figured the Guiana story would have been at the top of the thread, the lead story on page one of the print edition.
About twelve stories down he spotted the headline French officials: Guiana bombing suspect detained for questioning, photos released, under the byline of Ann Parkinson:
Cayenne, French Guiana — In a major breakthrough involving the explosion that took place six days ago at a top-secret military base on an island off the coast of French Guiana, French officials released photos of the destruction and a detained suspect believed to be the mastermind behind the attack.
Wael al-Musim, an Algerian national, was captured by police in French Guiana during a raid yesterday morning.
Max merely skimmed the rest of the article—bullshit from top to bottom. Never once did it mention Dr. Gideon Wilde, nor did it feature the photo of Judge Clarence Gauge posing with his trophy. The French supplied photos of the bunker they had reduced to rubble after Max’s departure, including a fake photo of a dead soldier lying face down on the ground, some blood pooled around his corpse. Yet he wore a French army uniform as opposed to the black suits of Wilde’s soldiers.
“This is shit,” Max muttered as he stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
What did you expect? Another reporter hell-bent on bringing down the establishment at any cost? Parkinson had broken many controversial stories during her career—Max had researched her credentials—but this time someone got to h
er. He appreciated Heat’s tenacity even more, even as he loathed the cowardice shown by Parkinson. She died for nothing. A crusader deserves a martyr’s death. But no one would applaud Heat for stirring up the muck this time. The news cycle would grind on, as it inevitably did, while dust settled on the name and career of Heat Keller.
Max considered vindicating her. Perhaps he would pay Ms. Parkinson another visit, trump the scare job she’d received from whoever had shut her up.
Don’t bother. Heat’s damning proof had already been seized and destroyed. You have enough problems of your own. For now, justice for Heat would have to wait.
Marklin approached along the path as the seconds wound down to 0900. Clad in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and red tie, he looked as DC as any congressman as he strode the final few steps to the bench. Though now retired the general still carried his former military aura that naturally commanded respect.
“You’re dressed like the President,” Max commented. “No golf today?”
Marklin took a seat beside him. “Have to hit the office after we’re done—even I have to work sometimes. We can’t all live a quiet life of leisure like you. I’m going skeet shooting in the afternoon though. I’d invite you along if you could raise a shotgun.”
“I’ll shoot from the hip.”
“All the more reason not to bring you.”
Max waved a hand. “Raincheck then. Frankly, I’m a little tired of shooting things at the moment.”
“I can imagine.”
“What’s the matter, don’t want to be debriefed on the gory details?” He’d told Marklin over the phone that Wilde was dead—hopefully, anyway—but had related little else.
Marklin shook his head. “Not particularly. You accomplished your mission. Senator Pierce relays her most sincere thanks. That’s good enough for me, though you sure did kick up one hell of a hornet’s nest down there. Besides, I wouldn’t believe half the shit you’d tell me.”
“Agreed, you probably wouldn’t. I have a hell of a time believing it myself. So how is Josh?”
Apex Page 27
