At the first checkpoint stood two older men in army fatigues and baseball caps. About ten feet behind them was a second checkpoint of sandbags, set at the base of the stone steps leading into the fortress. An American flag hung from the awning set over the steps, and in its shadow stood three ROT soldiers next to their own flag, all dressed in black fatigues, with automatic rifles cradled across their sculpted armor.
“Trouble,” Soprano said.
“They can handle it,” Lemke said.
Ringgold appreciated the confidence, but the bead of sweat dripping down the admiral’s weathered forehead told her he was nervous.
Churchill had stopped at the first barrier to talk to the guards there. Everyone inside the flag bridge went silent. It was quiet enough that Ringgold could hear Soprano’s labored breathing. He was sweating heavily too.
Another message was relayed over the comm frequency. It was Ingves again, and there was tension in his normally calm voice.
“I just got a message from Captain Davis, and I have bad news,” he said, pausing.
One of the ROT soldiers outside the embassy was moving down the stairs, distracting Ringgold for a moment. She gripped the back of her chair, her eyes flitting from the approaching ROT soldier on-screen to the captain’s transmission.
“The PEOC was a loss,” Ingves continued. “The air-filtration system failed, infecting everyone inside with the hemorrhage virus. However, Senior Chief Blade and Captain Davis were able to recover an audio message from Wood about the attack. We should have everything we need to send it out to the other SZTs now. This will clear your name, President Ringgold.”
Her heart ached at the news of Vice President Johnson’s death, but she couldn’t help but feel relief about the intel SEAL Team Four had uncovered. She would mourn those she’d lost once Wood had been defeated.
“Blade and Davis are downloading more data now, and then they’re going to head back here,” Ingves said.
“Any word on Captain Beckham?” Ringgold asked.
“We left him at the chopper, but he wasn’t showing any signs of infection aside from a headache,” Ingves replied.
“That’s two pieces of good news,” she said and finally sat in her chair to watch the video feed. “Soprano, see if you can get a message to Kate. I want her to know that Captain Beckham is okay.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Soprano replied.
Pushing away thoughts of Vice President Johnson and everything else, she focused on Churchill and his men. They were being directed through the first gate, but the ROT soldier on the stairs raised a hand as they approached the next checkpoint.
Not being able to hear the conversation was beyond frustrating, but the USS Abraham Lincoln was almost half a world away. Even if she had been able to hear it, she was powerless to do anything to help anyway.
The ROT soldier still had a hand up, and his lips were moving. He stepped closer and pulled off his sunglasses, as if he was trying to get a better look at Churchill and his men.
“What’s happening?” Ringgold asked.
Before anyone could answer her, the ROT soldier’s mouth opened as though he was screaming an order, and he dropped his sunglasses. An instant later, he raised his rifle.
The Army Ranger on Churchill’s right, a veritable Viking who rivaled Horn in size, had already flipped open a trench coat. He pulled out two submachine guns and pointed them up the stairs while Churchill raised a sawed-off shotgun at the lead ROT soldier.
Churchill fired. The blast hit the man in the chest, tearing into his rib cage.
Ringgold laced her fingers together tightly as the battle broke out in front of the embassy building. She couldn’t see what happened to the first two guards at the barricade, but no one tried to stop Churchill as he bolted toward the second checkpoint, leaped over the concrete blocks, and then loped up the stairs.
The three Army Rangers moved into a tiled lobby with vaulted ceilings. One of them fired on the soldier stationed at the front desk, and he slumped over the surface, blood gushing out of his neck.
“Ha! Got it,” Nelson said.
The speakers on the wall-mounted monitor inside the flag bridge suddenly crackled with audio. The boom of a shotgun sounded as Churchill fired at another ROT guard who had run into the open space.
The first blast missed, splintering the wooden desk the soldier took refuge behind. But the Ranger with the submachine guns put three holes into him from a different angle.
Blood pooled across the tile floor, and empty shell casings clanked in the warm fluid from the automatic gunfire.
“On me, Shepherd!” Churchill shouted. “Perry, you hold security here.”
The three men pushed through the lobby, yelling and gesturing for the civilians inside the open space to get on the ground. Churchill and the larger Ranger, who must have been the one he called Shepherd, moved into a hallway and then down a stairwell.
Ingves relayed another message over the comm channel. “We just got a message from Lieutenant General Frank Curtis. He’s aboard one of those Seahawks, and he claims to know where the Zumwalt is. They should be landing in a few minutes.”
A grinning Soprano clapped Nelson on the back, and Ringgold closed her eyes for a moment to let the news sink in. She wasn’t smiling yet, but the tide did appear to be turning in their favor.
The mission to the PEOC at the White House had revealed the intel they needed to bring down Wood, and now they had the location of his stealth ship, as well as his location. Maybe they could win this war after all. All they had to do now was catch the weasel.
Churchill had his side arm out now. He moved around a corner with the pistol directed down the landing. Two muzzle flashes lit up the dim passage, and a soldier in black hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs.
Bullets lanced into the wall next to Churchill. The camera rattled, bobbing up and down as he moved for cover. He tripped and fell on the stairs, sliding to the bottom while firing his pistol at targets Ringgold couldn’t see.
Shepherd squeezed past on the left and took a knee at the bottom of the stairs near the dead ROT soldier.
“Two contacts!” Churchill shouted.
“Stay down!” Shepherd yelled back.
That’s when Ringgold saw Churchill had been hit. He was lying on the stairs, trying to flatten his body to avoid the bullets punching into the wall. The camera was angled to show only part of the hallway.
“Get to cover!” Churchill yelled at Shepherd.
The camera jolted again, going topsy-turvy and then focusing back on the hallway. Churchill had fallen down the stairs and was on his back, providing a view of Shepherd, who was still firing from a kneeling position.
More gunfire streaked down the passage. At the other end, two ROT soldiers hid behind a corner, taking potshots at Churchill and Shepherd.
“They have to get out of there,” Ringgold said.
Shepherd went to change his magazine and was hit with several rounds in the arm and chest. He slumped against the wall. He raised a pistol and fired off a few more shots before his body gave out.
Churchill was crawling, using his elbows to drag himself away. The two ROT soldiers at the other end of the hall emerged from around the corner with their rifles shouldered.
“Drop your weapons!” one of them shouted. The other man fired, and a red streak lanced into Churchill’s chest. Blood bloomed around the camera, blocking the view.
This wasn’t the first time she’d seen men die on her watch, and Ringgold knew it wouldn’t be the last. She hoped none of the others noticed as she reached up to swipe the tears from her cheeks.
“Jesus Christ,” Nelson said.
“Where are the other Rangers?” Soprano asked. “What about Perry?”
Ingves shook his head. “Perry was KIA, but we have another team moving in.”
Lemke pounded the table. “Do not let Wood escape.”
The hatch opened, and an officer walked inside the flag bridge. Every eye flitted toward the young man
who said, “Sir, Lieutenant General Frank Curtis just landed on the deck.”
“Bring him up here,” Lemke said, frustration in his voice.
“Yes, sir,” the officer said, hastily retreating into the other room.
They could still win this, Ringgold reminded herself. The other Ranger teams were closing in around the embassy, and there were snipers set up to prevent Wood from escaping. While she waited for a report, there was another knock on the hatch, and this time it opened to reveal a tall man in an army uniform with a chestful of medals.
“Lieutenant General Frank Curtis, I presume?” Ringgold said.
The man nodded, did a quick scan of the room, and said without preamble, “I’m here on behalf of General Nixon. We know the location of the USS Zumwalt and are prepared to take you there.”
“We’re in the process of tracking Wood down right now,” Lemke said. “Have a seat if you’d like to watch us catch the piece of shit.”
Curtis grabbed the chair next to Ringgold. She looked back at the screen. The feed was still blurred from the blood gushing from Churchill’s wounds. There was movement and voices in the hallway, but she couldn’t tell if they were friendly or hostile.
Another message crackled over the comms. “Admiral Lemke, this is Captain Konkoly—we just had a radar hit on a submarine.”
Lemke slowly stood and narrowed his brows at Ringgold.
“Submarine?” he said.
The hatch banged opened, and the same officer who had interrupted them before said, “Sir, we’ve got torpedoes incoming!”
“How the hell did this happen?” Lemke roared.
An answer surged over the comms: It was Konkoly again, and there was a flat note to his voice that scared Ringgold far more than Lemke’s yelling. “We’ve been betrayed.”
The Klaxon on the USS Abraham Lincoln went off as an explosion echoed through the ship.
“Are we hit?” Nelson shouted.
“That wasn’t us,” Ingves replied. “Oh God, the Florida. Sir, the …”
“Captain,” Lemke said. “Captain Konkoly, do you copy, over?”
There was no answer, and for a moment everyone in the room remained still, all eyes flitting to Curtis. The lieutenant general stood stiffly and said, “Listen very carefully if you want to live.”
“What is this?” Lemke said, his features twisted with confusion and anger.
Curtis cut a glance at Ringgold. She couldn’t read his expression; he looked almost rueful. “Wood and Nixon have made a deal, and unfortunately that deal is to deliver Madam President to the USS Zumwalt,” he said.
“You son of a bitch,” Nelson said.
“We won’t let you take her,” Lemke said.
Curtis swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Nixon was afraid of that, which is why our submarine just sank the Florida. It was your last out. Our weapons are now targeting this ship, as well as every other ship in your fleet. I’m sorry, but it’s over. You have nowhere to run, Ms. Ringgold. Please come quietly, and no one else will be hurt.”
Lemke reached for his side arm, but Ringgold put a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s over,” she said, hardly believing the words. She drew herself up to her full height and met Curtis’s gaze. The officer looked away first.
“The bloodshed ends now,” she said. “I have to go with them.”
21
Andrew Wood had never wanted to be president. As a kid, he had dreamed of being an astronaut, of finding new worlds and bending them to his vision.
Now, as an adult, he looked at fourteen-year-old Madeline Nixon and wondered what she wanted to be when she got older. He almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea. The girl wasn’t going to grow up to be anything if her father betrayed him.
She glanced up from the shadows of her prison cell, a ten-by-six concrete block that had once been used as the drunk tank in the old Los Angeles police station. Now it housed General Nixon’s only daughter.
Madeline sat cross-legged, clearly rattled by the gunfire in the halls outside but still pretending to be tough. She glared murder at him. This time, he did laugh.
“Scary,” he said.
“Fuck you,” she spat.
He shook his head. The language these kids used today. Wood rapped on the metal door leading into the station once, then twice. Kufman opened it, holding his SCAR-H at the ready. The former Delta operator said he preferred the gas-operated battle rifle that fired 7.62-millimeter rounds over the SCAR-L due to the caliber. Judging by his determined gaze, Kufman was itching to use it.
“Sir, I need to get up there and bury these fuckers,” he said.
“Settle down, Kufman.” Wood kept his voice low to make sure the girl couldn’t hear them. “Do you have a sitrep?”
“The hostiles in the embassy have been neutralized. We’ve got three birds en route with reinforcements, but we think there are other hostiles in the SZT. Snipers, maybe two additional teams.”
“Who the fuck are these guys, and how did they find out I was here?”
“Ringgold’s people would be my guess, but we won’t know until we catch one and interrogate ’em.” Kufman spat on the ground. “We managed to take down a guy in the next hallway who’s still breathing, but we don’t know for how long. He’s shot up pretty bad.”
Next hallway? Damn, they got close, Wood thought.
Out loud, he said, “I’ll come meet the breathing fucker in a few minutes, when I’m done with this brat.”
As soon as Wood stepped back into the room, Madeline spat at his feet. “My dad is going to come get me,” she snarled, showing the braces on her teeth.
“You’re the daughter of a general, indeed.”
She pushed herself to her feet, testing his patience further by pulling on the chains binding her right leg to the wall.
“And you’re the son of a psycho bitch. I heard your brother was—”
Wood backhanded Madeline before she could finish her sentence. The smack reverberated in the room. She cupped her face with a hand, letting out a gasp and moving away from Wood.
“You’re right about my mom, but no one talks about my brother. Got it?”
Madeline glared back, but didn’t reply.
“Got it?”
“Sure,” she replied.
That was good. Wood really didn’t like hurting kids. That was a red line that he normally didn’t cross unless absolutely necessary. At least, he tried not to hurt them personally. The kids who had been hit by the hemorrhage virus when he’d dropped it on the SZTs were inevitable casualties.
He shook away the thoughts and took a moment to size up the feisty girl. She was in her teens, with blemished skin, dark brown eyes, and braces: not much different from him at that age. He even had the acne scars to prove it, and straight teeth from four years of braces.
“What are you going to do with me?” Madeline asked, pulling her hand away from her cheek.
“That depends a lot on your dad.”
She shook her head and, to his surprise, smirked.
“My dad is going to wring your neck and throw you into jail for the rest of your life.”
“You really don’t learn, do you?” he said. She was a teenager, but damn, she was really testing his patience. “Your dad is going to be lucky if he survives Europe. Stupid fuck should never have gone over there. If he makes it back from the war, I might have a spot for him in my army, especially after what he did for me, but …”
Madeline narrowed her thick eyebrows. “What he did?”
“Well, what you did too,” Wood said slyly.
“What are you talking about?”
He turned back to the door and knocked twice. Kufman opened the hatch and looked in.
“How’s it coming out there?” Wood asked.
“Still searching the territory,” Kufman replied. “Found a sniper. What do you want me to do with ’em?”
Wood thought back to the mayor of SZT 15 and said, “Skin him and hang him from the top of those hipp
ie farms.”
“It’s not a him,” Kufman said.
Wood could see a slight hesitation in the soldier’s eyes. “Do you have a point you’d like to make?” Wood asked.
“No, sir.”
Wood slammed the door again and kicked the dog food bowl at Madeline’s bare feet. The soup, or whatever was in it, sloshed over the sides.
“What are you talking about?” she asked again, pulling at her restraints.
Wood smiled again. She was starting to remind him of the creatures he would capture as a kid, right before he would torture them or toss them against the barn—frantic and terrified. Kind of like her dad. It had taken only a single message to General Nixon to get him to betray President Ringgold. Thinking of that short conversation reminded him of how weak the general was.
Wood needed a man with the balls of a horse, not a pony.
“Yeah …” Wood said, squinting. “I really don’t think I’m going to keep your dad around, but I’ll have to see about you. We did make a deal.”
“Deal?”
Wood shrugged and told her the truth. “I told your dad I was going to feed you to a Variant unless he gave up Jan Ringgold and her allies.” He paused to watch her reaction and then added, “I still might if you don’t start acting like a lady.”
A gunshot rang out down the hall, distracting him. He unholstered his favorite gun—a 1911A1 with an ivory grip. It had been a gift from his brother, Zach, back in 1979, just seven years before the military switched to Beretta M9s as the standard-issue pistol. After checking the magazine, he palmed it back in and tapped twice on the door.
“What are you doing?” Madeline said.
“Going to finish these fuckers off. Be good while I’m gone, and I’ll think twice about giving you to the Variants outside the walls as a snack.” He winked at Madeline and left.
Kufman had his SCAR directed down the hallway. “Two men got past the defenses,” he said. “Better stay inside, sir.”
“Fuck that. If you guys can’t handle this shit, I will.” Wood pulled back the slide to chamber a .45 round. Then he directed Kufman to take point down the hallway.
Extinction War Page 26
