by James Hunt
Johnny sprinted out of the armory, and Sarah and Bryce both raised their eyebrows. The two rushed to Bryce’s computer where the alert came through, and a few brushes of the keystrokes later, they had video feed of the apartment. “Holy shit,” Bryce said.
“They blew my door down!” Sarah exclaimed. One of the men had his feet rested on the couch while the rest of them were turning the place upside down. They tore into walls, cabinets, the carpet—anything they could get their hands on. The one T-shirt she had at the place was thrown on the ground and covered in dusty boot prints. “So that’s where I left that shirt.”
Bryce adjusted the feed to the building’s exterior, where twenty men sat, positioned in different locations along the street. “I think they’re waiting for you to show up.”
“Well, you know how much I hate to disappoint.”
Bryce grabbed her wrist. “Sarah, you’re going to need backup for this.”
She pulled her hand back. “That’s what I have you for.” She pulled the pistol from her holster and flicked the safety lever off.
***
Clifton Avenue was in worse shape than Sarah remembered. She passed a yard with a cluster of beer cans and children’s toys littered in it. “I’m all for lowering the drinking age, but that’s just ridiculous.” She kept her eyes peeled on her decoy apartment building down the street. The sniper rifle on her back smacked against it in two pieces. She snuck around the side of one of the apartment buildings and climbed the fire escape. “When was the last time you actually fired one of these things?”
“During my annual training review last year,” Bryce answered.
Sarah grabbed hold of the roof’s ledge and pulled herself up, as the stairs wouldn’t take her all the rest of the way. “And when was the last time you actually fired one of these in the field?”
“Sarah, the training exercises are perfectly realistic.”
“Says the man who has a plastic sex doll.”
“You’re the one who bought that for me! I didn’t want it!”
Sarah chuckled and pulled the two pieces of massive steel off her back and put them together. “I just wish I could have seen the look on your family’s face when you opened that at Christmas. Best hundred bucks I ever spent.” She pulled the stand down from the stock and positioned the rifle on the edge of the roof.
“You know my cousin didn’t invite me to her wedding because of that stunt.”
“Hey, at least you didn’t have to buy them a gift.”
“I did still have to buy them a gift.”
“Really? If that’s the case, then I think I know why my extended family doesn’t talk to me anymore.” Sarah locked the stand into place and booted up the rifle’s connection link to the satellite. “How’s it looking?”
“I’m live.”
“Just make sure you don’t shoot me.” Sarah scaled down the side of the building and retreated toward the back. The row of apartment buildings was backed up against a chain-link fence, and beyond that was a large lake that stretched for a few hundred yards to another set of apartment buildings on the other side. She continued down the back until she made it to the last building, where there wasn’t a gaggle of henchmen standing guard. “Light ’em up, Cowboy.”
The gunfire from the automated rifle on the rooftop boomed and targeted as many pieces of flesh as Bryce could locate with the target sensor. The sudden burst of gunfire confused them, causing the men to duck for the cover of the alleyways to avoid the rain of lead.
Sarah worked her way from the rear of the alleyway, her feet swift and light as four guards concentrated their efforts on the rooftop ruse. She wielded both pistols and put a bullet in each of their heads before they could turn around. She sprinted back along the fence behind the apartment and moved on to the next alleyway.
The .50 caliber gunfire blasted whatever bits of brick and concrete the goons tried hiding behind, and if Bryce’s shots didn’t kill them, Sarah’s did. She crept along the back side, taking them out in small clusters. None of them heard her gunshots, as they fitted neatly into the bullet-ridden chaos surrounding them. Ten bodies lay in her wake before Bryce’s rifle’s magazine was spent.
The gunfire stopped, and the remaining henchmen stretched out their necks from behind the buildings, looking into the street for their hidden assassin. Three men were at the front of the alleyway as Sarah crept forward, keeping her steps light. Before one of them turned, she squeezed the triggers of both pistols, killing all three of them before they could lift their rifles.
The breach of silence triggered the remaining henchmen to gather at the front of the alleyway, where they funneled their bullets toward Sarah, who ducked behind a dumpster for cover. Loud thumps smacked the opposite side of her metal shield, sending vibrations through her body as she ejected both empty magazines and reloaded.
“You’ve got company headed around the back,” Bryce said.
A few seconds later, three men turned the corner from the back side of the building, and Sarah kept her arms steady as two bullets pierced the metal less than three inches from her head. She lined up both pistols simultaneously to the foreheads of two of the assailants and squeezed the triggers then shifted her left hand, bringing the third man’s neck into view. The man hit the ground before the ejected shell did. Sarah looked to her left and her right to examine the bullet holes only inches from her head. “Is it just me, or are these guys getting worse at shooting? I mean, I’m not even moving right now.”
“Three more are heading to the roof,” Bryce said. “You’re in a kill box, Sarah. Get out of there now!”
Sarah peeked around the corner of the dumpster toward the front of the alley, where the rest of the men had gathered, slowly turning the metal trash container into Swiss cheese. She looked down at the wheels locked in place under the dumpster and slammed her foot on the lever, releasing the brake. She shoulder checked the massive container and pushed it forward.
“You’re going the wrong way!” Bryce said.
“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked, her face turning a light shade of red from the effort of pushing the massive steel tank. “The party’s out front.” Bullets ricocheted into the brick building next to her as her feet gained some momentum. She reached up top and pulled the dumpster’s steel lid over her head just before the shooters on the roof showered a storm of hot lead upon her.
Thunderous vibrations echoed above her from the deadly rain, and keeping one hand supporting the top of the lid and the other pushed up against the side of the dumpster, her legs finally started to break out into a sprint. “Okay, maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”
“You have three above, four on the left, and seven on the right,” Bryce said.
“Left it is!”
Sarah pivoted her weight to shift the behemoth dumpster toward her target, and she scraped against the other side of the alleyway, losing some of her momentum.
“There’s a wall there,” Bryce said.
“Shut up.” Sarah dug her heels in and ramped the dumpster back up to the speed she had attained before.
“Ten feet,” Bryce said.
The bullets attacked from all angles now, almost completely drowning out Bryce’s voice as she pushed harder.
“Five feet.”
The fire in her legs reached a fever pitch as her muscles sensed the end of their journey. She clenched her teeth, pushing through the pain, feeling the pounding of her pulse in every vein in her body.
“Three feet!”
Sarah dropped her arm from the lid, and it swung down and smacked her side. She reached for both pistols, using nothing but her shoulder to guide the dumpster now.
“Contact!”
The front of the dumpster knocked into two of the men on the side railing of the left building, and the recoil reverberated through the dumpster and into Sarah. She wielded both pistols and jumped from the left side of the dumpster, eliminating the threats there, then pushed her back against the dumpster, positioning it to g
uard her from the barrage of bullets on her right.
One of the guards on the left made contact with the Kevlar on her chest before she put him down, but the rest were easy kills. Sarah leaned into the dumpster’s far corner to continue its spinning slide, and she made sure to keep the dumpster between herself and the gunfire still coming from the right and the roof. She scooped up one of the rifles from the grip of a dead mercenary and tucked it under her shoulder. She smiled. “Did you see that?”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“Hey, Bryce.”
“No, please, don’t say it.”
“Time to take out the trash.”
“Aaaaand you said it.”
Sarah rolled the dumpster along the front side of the steps of the right building, where the remaining henchmen fired at her. She brought the scope of the rifle out from the side of the dumpster and aimed at the seven armed men on the stoop, half of them reloading and the other half still unloading their magazines into the dumpster’s side. The crosshairs of the scope on the assault rifle found five of the seven by the time the last two finished reloading their clips. The second-to-last shooter managed to graze her right arm with a bullet but was dead before he got another chance. The other was killed before his finger hit the trigger.
Smoke wafted from the tip of the rifle as Sarah lifted the muzzle to the roof, but the men had already scattered. Before she could ask, Bryce was already feeding the information into her ear. “Two went back down into the building, and the other one is heading down the fire escape on the north end of the building.”
“Taking the two inside.”
One of the men she’d killed had fallen inside the foyer of the building, staining the tile red. She stepped over the man’s side, keeping the rifle pointed up the winding staircase as she ascended one step at a time. “The landlord is gonna be pissed.”
“Keep in mind we need at least one of them alive,” Bryce said. “You can’t question a corpse.”
“Technically, you can question a corpse. They just don’t say anything back.” Sarah pushed open one of the doors, checking inside, but all she found was a quivering Ms. Hobbs as she huddled next to her cats, all meowing incessantly. “Hi, Ms. Hobbs, I’d just stay inside for a little while longer.” The woman nodded gravely, and Sarah smiled back at her. “Love what you did with the place, by the way. Hey, Whiskers!” She gently closed the door and continued up the stairs.
With each floor she ascended, she checked the apartments for bad guys and had Bryce do a thermal scan. Once she made it to the fourth floor, which was just below her apartment, Bryce got a good read on two bodies waiting for her at the top of the stairs.
The floors in the building were old, wooden, and not up to fire-safety code. The times when Sarah had had to stay here, she could’ve sworn the walls were made of cardboard. She lifted the rifle’s muzzle, right under the feet of the men upstairs.
“An inch to the left,” Bryce said, “and then your next target will be ten degrees north.”
Sarah shifted the rifle’s barrel slightly and rested her finger on the trigger. The staircase was dead quiet. Not even the sound of breathing could be heard. The boards above her finally creaked with the shifted weight of the man above, and she squeezed the trigger then immediately hit the next target. Two thuds and moaning cries followed, and before they sent a bullet through the floor and into her skull, she rushed up the stairs, shooting both of them in their Kevlar-protected chests. They dropped their rifles and focused on sucking air, trying to catch their breath. “Aw, what’s the matter, boys? Can’t breathe and shoot at the same time?”
Both were shot in the left foot, and one of them tried crawling away. “Oh, no you don’t.” Sarah stepped on his ankle, and he cried out. She shifted the barrel of the gun back and forth between the two of them. Their faces were etched with pain. “So, who wants a get-out-of-jail-free card? First person to tell me where your boss is gets it.”
“Fuck you, lady!”
Sarah aimed for the femoral artery in the man’s left leg and fired. A geyser of blood spurted from his leg, across his chest, and over the side of the railing. His face slowly drained of color until his fingers stopped twitching and his chest stopped moving up and down. She aimed the rifle at the other man, who held up his hands in surrender. “Looks like you’re our winner. And don’t be too upset that you won by default. Like my high school soccer coach always said, ‘Get off the field! You’re not even on the team!’” Sarah laughed. “He didn’t like me at all.”
***
The line of protestors outside the chancellor’s building in Berlin reached the tipping point. Crowd-control tactics had been deployed, but the agitation levels of the German people were beginning to become immune to the tear gas, beanbags, and batons. The dark clouds above, blocking out the summer sun, reflected the encroaching doom over the capitol building. It wouldn’t be long until the clouds burst with rain.
Chancellor Andrea Jollenbeck watched the growing crowd from the window of her study. The tops of their signs jutted up and down from the hedge of the bushes around her security fence, along with a few sporadic fists. The front lawn of her administration building was littered with glass bottles, sticks, cans—everything and anything her people could chuck over the fence.
It was hard for her to hear the shouts and chants over the generators and the thick bulletproof glass, but she could imagine what they were saying. Her country was in pain. The whole world was in pain, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to save them.
“Chancellor, they’re all ready for you.”
Andrea drew the curtain back and adjusted the jacket of her suit. She checked the mirror before heading into the conference room, catching a glimpse of the dark circles under her eyes she was no longer able to hide. The two service agents escorting her opened the double wooden doors to the conference room and closed them behind her, sealing her inside the secure room with the digital images of the other world leaders on the monitors mounted on the back wall.
“Mr. Presidents, Mr. Prime Ministers, I appreciate the time. I know how busy all of us are,” Andrea said.
The leaders joining her were the American president, the UK prime minister, the president of India, the Japanese prime minister, and the Italian president. While each face was unique to its respective culture, all of them shared the same lines of stress and fatigue that Andrea herself felt.
“I don’t have a lot of time, Andrea,” the American president said. “What was so urgent?”
“Every modern country in the world with public utilities and power plants is experiencing massive rioting, looting, and crime,” Andrea said. “Luckily, the safety features installed in most of our nuclear power plants here in Europe have been stabilized until we can get a handle on the situation, but I think we’re all ignoring the bigger threat here.”
“And what threat is that?” the Japanese Prime Minister asked.
“War.”
The faces on the screen shifted uncomfortably until the American president finally spoke up. “There isn’t a single first-world country that isn’t experiencing chaos. Everyone is barely containing the riots within their own borders.”
“All our intelligence indicates that the cause of the blackout was Global Power,” the UK prime minister replied. “None of our enemies knew about the program. We’re still working on tracking down those who are responsible.”
“What is it exactly that you’re suggesting, Chancellor?” the Italian president asked.
Andrea slid her palms across the desk’s smooth, glossy surface. She kept her head down, looking for the right words. Whatever she said next could trigger paranoia in each of her allies, something that was unadvisable in the current climate. “While I don’t believe that any coordinated plans are currently in motion, I believe that some may happen quickly. Since the events at the G7 Summit, we’ve had our own program used against us in the worst ways possible. It was a coordinated attack that over a dozen terrorist organizations are taking credit
for, though we have determined none had a hand in orchestrating it. We’re dealing with someone who is organized, who is lethal, and who is intelligent. We need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.”
“And how would you like us to do that, Chancellor?” the Japanese prime minister asked. “Everyone is barely limping along as it is.”
“I will petition the European Union and the UN to back Germany’s troops in establishing a western line of defense against Russia,” the chancellor said. “I would also advise that the Americans increase their naval presence in the North Indian Ocean as well as the perimeter of the East China Sea. All military levels would of course remain at a low alert status to ensure their presence wouldn’t be misconstrued as hostile.”
“That’s a bold move, Andrea,” the American president said. “The Chinese and the Russians will misconstrue any move in those areas as hostile, no matter what threat level we position ourselves as.”
“I believe it’s a risk that’s work taking, Mr. President.” Andrea folded her hands together. She examined the rest of the faces, studying the lines and movements of their mouths, eyes, and body language. She could tell it was making the majority of them uncomfortable, but they didn’t disagree with her.
“All right,” the American president said. “I’ll deploy carriers in both areas.”
“And I will back your petition to the UN and EU,” the UK prime minister replied. “We’ll put in our own petition for British troops in the area.”
“As will I,” the Italian president said.
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
The only one who hadn’t spoken was the Indian president. This was the first time India had taken a seat at the table on a major scale. Andrea didn’t want to exclude India, especially knowing the situation between that country and Pakistan. She was worried the president might construe the invitation as insulting once she spoke her piece about the Americans’ presence close to India’s waters, but she wanted to ensure there wasn’t any miscommunication in what they were trying to accomplish. It was Russia and China that were the main concerns. Not India.
