by Ed Kovacs
When Meg lunged to keep the security door from closing, Ramirez hit an alarm under the front counter which blared with an ear-splitting insistence. Meg’s first step into the operations room was met by three loud rounds from Ramirez’ ten-millimeter semi-auto, but they all went wide. Meg returned fire as Kraus scrambled to join her at the door. Eyes wild with fright, Ramirez charged, firing, screaming, and the killers had to spin clear. Deputy Ramirez nearly tripped on Hawkin’s corpse as she slammed the security door shut and engaged a heavy iron dead bolt.
###
Burdette stopped short in a hallway, handed Sky his .357 revolver, then fumbled for a key to a gun safe as the pulsing alarm pierced the station. “Cover that door.”
Wilder took a bead on the door at the end of the hallway. “How long for backup?”
“This ain’t New York. Could take fifteen minutes.” Burdette got the safe open, grabbed an M-4 and slammed in a preloaded magazine, then repeated the process with a second weapon. “This worth fightin’ for?” He asked it straightforward, matter-of-fact.
“We got a choice?”
“You do. Get ta the command bunker and hit that tunnel.”
“I brought this here, Lou. So I'm not running from it and leave the mess to you.”
“Then aim for center mass, these are armor piercin’ rounds.”
Both men released the safeties of the black rifles and moved off down the hall.
###
Three para-military operators in black fatigues, heavily laden Kevlar-lined assault vests and wearing black balaclava masks and comm-links entered the reception area wielding silenced HK MP7A2’s with red dot lasers and ACOG optics.
Steve Kraus turned to the men, and barked, “Podunk cop shop like this, I can’t believe we didn’t do this clean. Whoever has the shaped-charge, get us in there, now!” Kraus then turned away and spoke into his comm-link. “Morehouse, take out the communications towers. Popes, standby with that fifty cal of yours.”
One operator stuck a small shaped-explosive charge to the thick glass near where Deputy Ramirez had sat. Kraus and the others watched Ramirez through the glass as she dragged Sgt. Hawkin’s body behind a desk, even though he was clearly dead.
Ramirez looked up from her position of cover and locked eyes with Kraus, but then the intruders all took cover. She pulled the tactical radio from her police belt and turned it on. “Mayday, Mayday, officer down, officer down, Camp Verde Sheriff’s—”
A blast exploded the blood-covered window into thousands of sparkling shards, causing Ramirez to drop her radio. As she fumbled for it, two operators suddenly hurtled over the counter firing their silenced HKs. Ramirez got off two shots before catching a burst in the neck that decapitated her. Mitchell, a tall and laconic operator, then opened the security door letting Kraus, Meg and another killer hurry in.
“Who’s left?” Kraus demanded.
“The Lieutenant and Wilder,” said Mitchell.
“We take Wilder alive and find the damn tablet,” barked Kraus, irritated that the op had become so messy.
The killers were then startled as a voice called out, “Screw you!” Burdette sprayed fully automatic fire from the hallway door, stitching up the left thigh of an operator, blowing off his testicles, and then piercing his body armor with a kill shot to the heart.
The invaders took cover but couldn’t return fire because when Burdette stepped back from the door Wilder stepped up and fired short bursts into the room.
“Jesus!” yelled Kraus, as he took a round to his left forearm. “Wilder shot me!” He quickly tied off his arm with his belt.
Burdette popped in a new clip and yelled out, “Ya’ll under arrest! Throw down the damn weapons! This is a police station, for Christ's sake! Hawkins... Ramirez?!”
Mitchell pulled the pin on a flash/bang grenade and made a perfect toss into the open doorway at Burdette’s feet.
“Flash/bang!” shouted Burdette, backing away, but Wilder angrily kicked the grenade right back into the room with the intruders. The grenade exploded with a brilliant burst of white and an unnervingly sharp report.
Steve Kraus squinted his eyes, temporarily blinded. “Son-of-a-bitch!” Kraus then spoke into his comm-link. “Popes, put a round into that fat cop right now. And why haven't I heard the communications blow?” He looked up in time to see Wilder slam the hallway door closed.
###
Two more men in black lurked outside. The wiry one, Morehouse, prepared a satchel charge near the cluster of communication antenna, while Popes, a big bear of a man swept the exterior walls of the substation with the thermal sight of an AI AX50, a heavy fifty caliber sniper rifle, looking for heat signatures from inside the buildings.
###
Rounds tore into the locked hallway door as Wilder tugged tugged Burdette into retreat. They ducked into a training room, where the Lieutenant reached for his tactical radio, only to discover it had taken two rounds and probably saved his life. Then a large explosion rocked the building. The lights dimmed, emergency generators kicked on.
“This ain’t good.”
“I think we both better visit that command bunker,” said Sky, drilling his friend with a steely stare.
“Through here.” They hustled off via a second door and darted along a narrow hallway, with Burdette moving faster than he had in years.
In his office, Burdette bolted the door. At the hatch, Sky turned the steering wheel-sized handle until he heard a click, then popped open the heavy steel lid. Burdette bent over the police radio, but could raise only static. “That big explosion, they must’a—”
It all happened in slow motion, a warp of time as Sky had taken his first step down onto the ladder leading into the bunker, at the same elongated moment hearing something suggestive of a muffled cannon shot, seeing from the corner of his eye a mini-explosion of concrete chips and white dust as a large caliber slug tore through the hollow cinder block and then found the lieutenant, spinning him around awkwardly as it instantly bore through his Level Two vest and knocked him into the propane heater with such force, the gas connection was ripped free from the unit.
In that moment of utter clarity and horror, that poetically insane instant that took forever where there was no pain or fear or physical encumbrance, just pure consciousness far removed from animal instinct, their eyes met and they both knew Burdette would not live, but that Wilder must, in order to avenge the dead.
There existed in that space, immeasurable by time, a crystalline understanding of exactly what it was going to take to successfully prevail in the quest for the tablets of Hui. Wilder understood in the essence of his soul that he would have to become more than himself, bigger than he had ever been, and still did not know if that would be enough.
Bullets ripped into the door and jamb, splintering it like matchsticks. He calmly leveled the M-4 and as the door shattered open, soundlessly to him, liquidly floating, he squeezed the trigger just as an operator stepped into the doorway kill zone, sealing the man’s demise. With effortless ease Wilder stepped further down the ladder and pulled the hatch shut above him, tightening the handle, but shocked back into his body with the wrenching realization there was no way to lock it. He dropped to the floor, slightly twisting his left ankle and losing the rifle which went clattering.
A gray steel door, four feet tall beckoned. He slid the heavy iron latch aside as he heard the turning of the hatch handle above. He entered the tunnel and closed the door behind him, but again, no way to lock it as he heard and felt the loud report and concussion of a flash/bang grenade which must have been dropped into the bunker.
The tunnel would never have passed a building code. Shored up with four-by-fours and one-by-tens like some crude smuggler’s tunnel, a string of bare bulbs—one every seven meters or so—glowed at minimum wattage.
Wilder crouched low and moved as fast as he could, his lower back and thighs immediately tightening up. He moved faster than crawling, but not by much. As the dim lights flickered dimmer, he became awar
e he’d lost the M-4. A cold sweat broke along his brow as he pulled the .38 snub nose from his fanny pack just as he reached a right angle turn in the tunnel. He stumbled down to all fours as he executed the turn, just as he heard muffled sounds behind him from the command bunker.
He alternated between crouching and scurrying along on all fours. Even without killers on his tail, convincing himself he was safe down here was useless. When would one of these journeys to the underworld be his last? How many times could he encroach upon the spirits of the deep, of the Earth, before his return to the surface would be denied? He knew all too well the creation myths of the Maya and Hopi and other ancient cultures which claimed to originate from the Sacred Underworld, and that defiling trespass upon same was not tolerated lightly. He’d seen enough shamanic mischief to completely honor the rites and beliefs of all cultures and simply trust that a pure intent would pave his way.
All these esoteric notions loitering on the fringes of his fear cluttered his thinking until broken by the sight of the tunnel with no end in dim sight. But it couldn’t be so, it had to be only about fifty meters to the restaurant. Mathematics and geometry made him acutely aware that once his pursuers made it to the right angle turn, they’d have a straight line-of-sight to his position and he’d be a sitting duck. And his six-shot thirty-eight caliber revolver was no match for what they carried. He calculated they would arrive at that corner in a matter of seconds.
Against every instinct branded into his psyche through years of heart-stopping adrenaline-laced panic episodes he could never seem to control, he took out his Gerber pocket tool, opened the pliers/wire cutters, and with a trembling hand snapped the light strand, plunging the tunnel in front of him into end-of-the-world blackness.
Voices. They must be at the turn now. He now needed to kill the lights behind him. He pulled at the rubber wire, separating the hot from the ground line, then touched the tips together. Nothing.
Wilder looked back to see a diffused chimera emerge in the dimness at the corner. This man was in civilian clothes; it was the man he'd shot in the arm. He touched the wires again. Nothing.
“Hold it right there, doctor,” said Steve Kraus. “I’d rather take you out alive than dead.” Kraus aimed the mini-Uzi.
Wilder jammed the wires together forcefully, mashing back the insulation so metal could touch metal... and he was instantly jolted by electricity with such force that he was slammed backward into a wooden joist, momentarily stunning him as the wires sparked and the tunnel snapped into the terror of absolute black.
Invariably, when his research had required spelunking with new companions, at a rest break in what was usually a newly experienced cave room, some joker would insist upon everyone turning off the lanterns and carbide lamps to experience total darkness. Comforting to some, curious or disquieting to others, absolute black rattled Wilder to the core of his soul and always ruined an expedition for him, sometimes the fear dallying for days, so that he no longer indulged the requests for a blackout.
“Dammit, where's the flashlight?” shouted Kraus.
Wilder struggled to his feet. His pursuers couldn’t be more than twenty meters away. He needed to move, and fast, and forced himself to do the impossible—press on into the inky nothingness, slobbering, panting hard as he gasped for breath.
###
Meg Lee kicked Lou Burdette’s pistol away from his reach as she stood over him in his office. She could see that he barely clung to life, and decided not to cap him until they left, if he hadn’t bled to death by then. She spotted the two Styrofoam cups on his desk, Sky Wilder’s book Lost Secrets of Old Africa, and his rental car keys, then looked up as Morehouse entered the office.
“This is taking too long,” said Morehouse.
“No kidding.” They began a cursory search, then she spotted a safe. “Wall safe over here. Use a small charge to blow it, the tablet might be inside.”
He crossed to the safe and brought out some materials from a knapsack. But before he could get to work, he crinkled his nose. “I smell gas.”
Meg spun toward Burdette who lay wedged against the propane heater. Her jaw dropped as soon as she saw it. Next to an open gas main, in Burdette’s weak, bluing hand was something else that was blue, fluorescent blue, a cheap fifty-nine cent throw-away lighter. She lunged forward, knowing the muzzle blast from her Glock could cook off the room, and just as she reached Burdette he smiled faintly and struck a light...
The gas explosion vaporized the station in a tremendous explosion. Meg simply disintegrated. Morehouse, the demo man, was blown completely out of the building and his limbless torso was impaled by a two-by-four, staking him like a hood ornament onto the black Suburban.
###
Kraus took a flashlight from Mitchell and shot the beam forward, just barely illuminating their prey crawling about twenty-five meters ahead. “Doctor Wilder, stop right now or I’ll put a bullet right up your sorry ass.”
Wilder halted. “Who do you work for?” he growled as he slowly turned, buying a few seconds as he eased the snubby into position.
“You can ask him yourself, when—”
A deep rumble suddenly thudded down into the ground. Lumber creaked and groaned and Kraus and Mitchell looked up just as terra firma buried them. Completely. Hello darkness, my old friend.
Sediment poured down, choking Wilder’s breath and plunging him into a maelstrom of unseen confusion. Screaming now, he trampled away on all fours, choking and spitting through the swirling thick cloud of dirt and dust. Another five meters then his head slammed into something hard: a thick solid wooden door. Panting, he reached up and found a door knob. It turned, and he tried pulling, then pushing, but the door was frozen. He stood crouching and put his shoulder to the door. Again. Then again. Then... a very faint light behind him, tiny shadow particles dancing on the door from the swirling muck.
The man he'd shot lay partially buried at the edge of where the cave-in stopped. Wilder was just able to make out in the dimness behind him, mere meters away as the man clawed to free himself, lungs exploding for breath, as he dropped the light outside the mound of his near-grave. Scrambling and fighting it all the way, the man gulped in the thick compound that now passed for oxygen in the tunnel. A few more breaths then he pulled his whole body free and turned the flashlight back behind himself. “Mitchell?”
It occurred to Wilder that “Mitchel” was answering a higher call, with some reckoning no doubt in store. As he kept trying to force the door, the surviving killer seemed to turn the full focus of his rage over premature burial and a blown operation toward the only other person left alive in the tunnel.
Wilder only had seconds now before he'd have to use the gun, when he was suddenly hit; hit with the serendipity of an epiphany. He instantly knew the shaking had knocked the door out of square. As the footsteps behind him closed in, angry shadows pirouetting crazily on the wood in front of him now, he pulled forcibly down on the doorknob simultaneously pulling out, and the door popped open out of the frame.
He stepped inside, a charging madman almost upon him, then pulled down on the inside knob as he slammed the door closed. A dim bulb hung above and he saw the sliding bolt and engaged it just as the man slammed into the door from the other side.
“Open this door!” Kraus banged. Loudly.
Wilder stepped aside, expecting him to open fire, but he only wrenched the knob as he cursed and made a blistering ruckus, sealed inside the tunnel.
The light, the fact he stood in a basement now, a concrete basement, not a tunnel, a few breaths of clean damp air and Wilder revived like he’d just had a couple of espressos, a shot of B-12 and a Snickers bar.
“OPEN THE DOOR!”
He smiled, drunk on adrenaline and giddy to be alive. Then he saw Lou Burdette in his mind’s eye... dying. And he thought of the other deputies who were surely dead. And he knew that the man on the other side of the door wasn’t going to shut up. When the rescue workers finally arrived, someone would hear him, and somehow h
e wouldn’t be held accountable. He would walk... and live to kill another day.
A new game with new rules demanded Wilder play differently, so he silently slid the bolt open, flung open the door and leveled the thirty-eight at the startled man’s chest. “Door's open. Happy now?” asked Sky.
Kraus’ eyes went big and he wheeled with the mini-Uzi. Wilder fired at point blank range hitting Kraus at his sternum, who then stumbled backward and fell flat on his back.
Wilder felt no satisfaction, only determination as he climbed the steel ladder to a narrow landing. He turned the knob on an old wooden door and found himself standing in a restaurant pantry. Men’s work clothes hung from a peg over several pairs of old sneakers. As he started to disrobe he heard sirens.
###
Deputy Timmerman, a.k.a. Slim, a twenty-five year-old newbie couldn’t believe his eyes as he stopped his cruiser in the street in front of the burning remains of the station. He couldn’t further believe it when, as he stepped out of the car, his shoulder exploded, blowing his left arm completely off.
The two-man paramedic van pulling up behind Timmerman saw the blood gush from the Deputy’s torso. But then the operator in black known as Popes leveled the fifty caliber sniper rifle at the medics. The first shot killed the driver instantly with the same bullet wounding his partner. The second shot blew apart the partner and sent the van into a tree.
More sirens in the distance. Popes jogged over to the minivan and pulled out the keys. Time to go.
“Who do you work for?” Sporting ill-fitting jeans, a flannel shirt and large sneakers, Wilder held his pistol as he stepped out from a shadow within spitting distance of Popes.
The big man had the fifty slung over his shoulder so he reached for his sidearm. Wilder hesitated, their eyes locked. Popes had his pistol out of its holster when the first round sliced into his neck. The next shot missed, the third round from the thirty-eight entered Popes’ cheek.
Still gripping his sidearm Popes dropped to one knee, so Wilder cold-cocked him with the snubby's butt handle. The operator collapsed to the ground, where Sky relieved him of the SIG semi-auto, a few extra mags and the minivan keys. In a state of lucid shock, he took some deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating. Lou Burdette and other deputies he'd known for years were now dead, all because of him. Feeling absolutely gutted, Wilder fought back tears as he drove away from the carnage.
