The Fall

by R. J. Pineiro

Jack jumped at the last second, saving his ACL, getting out of the way, before stretching his left leg, striking a perfect jumping sidekick to the side of Pete’s face, between the jawbone and the chin. He felt it crushing bones.

  Pete rolled away, a hand on his cheek, his mouth bleeding, his feet staggering as he tried to force control.

  Jack landed and spun, closing the gap, swinging his right arm around to deliver a finishing blow to the back of his neck, to knock him out by triggering a vasovagal episode.

  Pete shifted back like a ghost, avoiding the blow while delivering a painful palm-strike to the same side of Jack’s face, exactly where his first kick had landed, shocking Jack’s auriculotemporal nerve, the branch of the mandibular nerve that ran with the superficial temporal artery providing sensory input to the side of his head.

  Jack nearly collapsed, his legs trembling, but he somehow managed to roll back, to get away from the next two strikes, as Pete followed him down the hallway, trying to finish him, kicking, spinning, throwing blow after blow.

  Jack shifted, ducked, and jumped, forcing savage control to ignore his pounding head, the crippling headache that almost made it impossible to even keep his eyes open as his jaws suddenly contracted from the extreme pain, as the stressed nerve system prevented him from moving his mouth, forcing him to breathe through his nose.

  Jack continued retreating, avoiding what would certainly be a final blow as Pete kept coming at him, hands and feet swinging with precision, each attack carefully aimed at disabling him, like a professional.

  But Jack had something few people did: years of training, of abuse, of conditioning in the unprecedented Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training course, in the harshest environments, developing a physical strength deep in his DNA to earn the coveted trident, his ribbon of honor, his ticket into an elite class of warriors who performed best under duress, under severe stress, even while in extreme agony.

  And it was this training, as the world slowed down around him, that allowed him not only to avoid and block, but also to counterstrike, to hit back, hard, unexpectedly, delivering an uppercut the moment Pete spun into position to deliver a front kick, nearly ripping his head from his shoulders.

  Jack spun, adding momentum to his turning kick, snapping his leg straight, driving the heel deep in Pete’s solar plexus, shocking the radiating nerve fibers just below his sternum, where renal arteries branched from the abdominal aorta, momentarily collapsing his diaphragm, inducing spasms.

  He watched Pete fall, retreat, crawl back toward the lab.

  Jack considered his options as he grabbed the Sig and aimed it at Pete while inserting the earplug and looking at the security camera covering the hallway.

  “Your call, Angie.”

  “Shoot the bastard,” she said.

  Jack aimed the pistol at Pete’s head when he felt a hand grabbing his ankle, almost making him lose his balance.

  One of the guards he had disabled was coming around, blood dripping from his mouth as he tugged at Jack’s battle dress, his other hand reaching for his holstered sidearm.

  Jack kicked him across the temple, knocking him out before returning his attention to Pete, but he had made it to the lab, closing and locking the door behind him.

  Damn.

  “Get out, Jack!”

  He hesitated, staring at the locked door.

  “Jack! Get the fuck out!”

  He did, sprinting toward the exit, reaching it a moment later, scrambling down the stairs, flying through the double glass doors, where a second pair of guards still lay there unconscious.

  And that’s when alarms went off across the Kennedy Space Center.

  * * *

  Alarms blared in her head as she hung up the disposable mobile phone and stared at it awhile.

  “What’s wrong, Angela?” asked Dago, standing by his Harley next to her Triumph at a large gas station off of IH-95, sunlight reflecting from the mirror tint of his large sunglasses. Art-Z was inside getting drinks from a machine while they fueled the bikes.

  “Not sure. Pete sounded … strange.”

  “What do you mean ‘strange’?”

  She looked over at the traffic on the highway. “First he’s over twelve hours late calling and when he does … well, he sounded a little weird. He even called me Angie. No one calls me that except for Jack.”

  “You think they grabbed him and Riggs?”

  She exhaled heavily, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach at the thought. “I have to assume that, for now.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We pretend to stick to the plan,” she said. “And in the meantime, we’ll light a fire under his ass that’s so damn hot he won’t have a choice but to come after us … and just to be sure he follows, we’ll leave a little trail of cyber crumbs.”

  Art-Z returned with two Red Bulls and a Coke.

  Dago took the soda, popped the lid, and took a swig before saying, “Ready?”

  She looked at her watch. “Yeah.”

  Art-Z hopped behind Dago and they started their bikes, heading toward the Vero Beach motel, where she had told Pete to meet up with them, getting off the interstate at Highway 60 East, which turned into Twentieth Street as it reached downtown Vero, steering the bikes into the crowded parking lot behind a restaurant a block from the motel.

  Angela walked off alone, leaving Dago and Art-Z by the bikes. She reached the front of the restaurant and was glad to see people waiting to get to their tables, many sitting in the patio in front of the building.

  She gave the hostess a fake name, was told it would be around twenty minutes, and blended in with the two dozen waiting patrons, her eyes gazing across and down the four-lane street, waiting.

  But she didn’t need to wait long.

  Two white Ford vans with tinted windows rushed down the street a few minutes later, pulling up in front of the motel.

  Four Hispanic-looking men got out of the lead vehicle. Three large and muscular and a fourth one who looked half their size and had a thick beard, and who appeared to be in charge. He sent two men around the back before signaling the second vehicle. The side door slid open and Pete stepped out flanked by two of the men, before all four went inside.

  Oh, Pete, she thought, not even wanting to think what had happened to Riggs and his family.

  She returned to the parking lot, tears filling her eyes.

  “Bonnie? You okay?”

  She slowly shook her head while getting on her bike. “They got them,” she finally said, strapping on her helmet. “Bastards got them.”

  “They’re there already?” asked Dago.

  She nodded. “And they have Pete.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do for him here,” she said.

  Dago understood and started his Harley. “Ready to come home?”

  She nodded, wedging the kick-starter pedal against the sole of her riding boot before using her weight to drive it down. The British bike came alive, idling to a low rumble.

  Angela clenched her jaw, angry for not listening to her gut, for letting Pete—and Riggs—walk straight into a trap.

  Get out of here.

  Angela listened to the same inner voice now. She most definitely needed to get away, to put some distance between her and Hastings’s posse.

  She needed to head home.

  To South Miami.

  The area where she grew up, where they would have options, friends, and most important, a place to stay that was truly off the reservation.

  A place where she could plan out her revenge and hopefully figure out a way to help Pete.

  16

  RUNNING MAN

  The only easy day was yesterday.

  —Unofficial U.S. Navy SEAL motto

  He moved quickly but soundlessly, remaining in dark recesses, like a shifting shadow, using his knowledge of the area to get away, to escape, just as he had done in Colombia, anticipating, avoiding, hiding, striking only when required, as h
e just did, when he spotted a guard in his way.

  Jack had disabled him easily, before running away again, making it down Fourth Street while sirens blared, while security personnel rushed to their posts, as all access bridges lifted, gates closed, emergency procedures were activated, and this militarized version of Cape Kennedy performed an emergency lockdown.

  “I lost you, Jack! Where are you?”

  “On Fourth and C,” he said, spotting a pair of guards running in his direction a block away down C Avenue.

  He ignored them, just as he ignored the helicopters taking flight in the distance, turbines screaming, blades biting into the air, their reverberating sound drowning the alarms.

  “Stay on Fourth.”

  He did, reaching the edge of the road at Fourth and D Avenue, and dropping to a crouch when immersing himself in woods surrounding the southeast border of the industrial area.

  Jack heard their shouts behind him, heard shots fired, though none in his direction as helicopters took flight, searchlights piercing the edge of the woods.

  He focused on the terrain ahead, on the darkness beyond, listening to their sounds as the guards reached the woods.

  “Jack, they’re following—”

  “I know,” he said, scrambling through thick vegetation, his mind flashing back, remembering Colombia, the jungle, the cartel’s militia, the threats, which he now heard again, as Pete unleashed every asset at his disposal to track him down, to take back the one thing in this world that Jack needed to get home. He required that membrane, needed its almost-magical ability to generate the power required to achieve his dimension jump.

  So he ran, sprinting away from the incoming threat, the battle dress protecting him from razor-sharp palms, tree bark, and branches swatting around him like invisible whips.

  He heard them behind him and he now also detected them from his far right, as Pete deployed his forces to flank him, to cut off his retreat.

  He needed to get to the water before they did, needed to reach his gear and—

  He spotted them straight ahead. Two of them, their silhouettes clear against the light diffusing from the other end of the forest leading to the marsh, to the narrow bay, and safety.

  Jack dropped to a deep crouch, clutching the SOG knife in one hand and the Sig in the other, pointing his momentum directly at them as they swept the forest searching for him. But he had the advantage, the dark woods behind him, shielding his figure, masking his approach as he narrowed the gap to ten feet. One of the guards whipped his head toward him, finally noticing him.

  Jack fired once just as the guard swung his weapon around, unable to loose a single shot before the bullet found its mark. Switching targets, Jack fired a second time, but missed, the guard seeking shelter behind the wide trunk of a towering pine.

  Bark exploded as he fired again to keep him trapped as he rushed to the tree, dropped to a deep crouch, and swung around the wide trunk, surprising the guard from beneath, driving the SOG’s blade upward, from groin to sternum, gutting him while pressing a hand against his mouth.

  The guard trembled, going into shock, entrails hanging, before his legs gave. Jack let him fall in place and took off toward the tall grass beyond the woods just as bark exploded to his left, then his right.

  Damn.

  He ducked, hearing a third round buzzing just past his right ear before he raced around a tree and squinted back, realizing that the tables had just been turned, that he was now the one exposed, the one backlit by the light streaming from the clearing beyond the trees.

  He needed a distraction, something to level out the playing field if he expected to cross the final fifty feet of jungle unharmed.

  His back pressed against a tree trunk as the incoming guards plastered the pine with bullets, trapping him, giving him a taste of his own medicine, Jack holstered the Sig and the knife and removed two fragmentation grenades, removing the safety pins as he heard them approach his tree, before flinging them in a cross pattern over his left and right shoulders.

  He dropped to the ground, counting, waiting, eyes closed.

  The blasts came a moment later, deafening, blinding, followed by cries and shouts.

  Jack jumped to his feet and scrambled away, this time reaching for an M84 stun grenade, turning around for an instant to throw it back at the forest with all his might, before continuing his escape, putting as much distance from it as his legs would allow, finally reaching the waist-high grass swaying in the breeze just as the grenade went off, reverberating in the woods.

  His feet sunk in the sandy terrain, his mind focused on the approaching shore, on the narrow bay leading to the river.

  “Talk to me, Jack.”

  “In the marsh,” he said, the sound of alarms deafening as searchlights crisscrossed each other around him. He kicked harder, pushing himself, realizing he only had a minute, maybe less before more guards converged on his position.

  He heard the sound of approaching helicopters, could see their searchlights looming above the treetops just as he reached his gear and dropped to the sand and rolled into the water, dragging his equipment.

  “Get to the extraction point,” he said into his throat mike before taking a deep breath and immersing himself in the dark waters as searchlights glowed across the marsh, almost overhead, as he used the weights in the BCD to keep him submerged in the waist-deep water.

  Get outta here, Jack, he thought, powering the SeaScooter, gripping it with one hand while holding the rest of his gear with the other, letting it take him deeper, farther, until he could no longer feel the bottom.

  In total darkness, Jack donned his BCD with ease, thanking his BUD/S instructors for the relentless drills, for the physical punishment that allowed him to keep calm while the world above him exploded in a rainbow of colors from search beams and flares.

  But he heard nothing in his underwater realm as he shouldered the dual tanks, clearing his mask with a burst of compressed air and putting it on, taking a deep breath and holding it for as much as two minutes before exhaling slowly to minimize bubbles while the SeaScooter dragged him away at a depth of ten feet.

  He heard propellers in the water, sudden, loud, signaling patrol boats.

  Jack focused on the task at hand, forgetting about guards, about alarms, about explosions and helicopters, his eyes glued to the compass on the back of the SeaScooter, pointing the way out of the bay, toward the river and the safety of deep waters.

  He forced his body to remain almost still, minimizing oxygen consumption while disciplining his breathing, watching the second hand of his watch mark two minutes before he allowed himself to exhale very, very slowly, taking another deep breath, wishing for his SEAL Draeger rebreather unit.

  He kept course and depth, deciding against going deeper because that meant a higher oxygen demand, which then meant shorter intervals between releasing bubbles.

  Jack sensed the current pushing him south the instant he cleared the bay and turned to one eight five for twenty minutes, only breathing nine times, his heart rate slowing, his senses dulling as the early stages of hypoxia set in.

  But he persisted, conditioned to operate this way for long periods of time, forced to become one with the water by his Coronado instructors, until the sea became his home, the place where he could hide from a world above the surface intent on terminating him on sight. He knew that was the order given, the instructions that Pete had shouted at his men as they found him beaten inside his own lab, as alarms reverberated across the complex.

  Minute by minute, breath after agonizing breath, Jack slowly, painfully, got away from the kill zone, from the searchlights, flares, and patrol boats, reaching the middle of the river and going farther south, toward the tip of Merritt Island, where the river ran just west of Cocoa Beach.

  He turned off the SeaScooter and just drifted with neutral buoyancy ten feet under, waiting for the signal, which came about ten minutes later.

  He heard the propellers of a nearby boat revving up from idle three times
in rapid succession, his cue to come up.

  Slowly, with caution, he did, eyes just breaking the surface, avoiding any ripples, performing a 360 scan before locating the Sundancer, Pete’s yacht.

  Despite the way he felt—tired, bruised, and even a little cold—Jack couldn’t help a small grin.

  Slowly, he made his way to it, reaching the rear swim platform, where Dago helped him in. The biker had a bandage on his shoulder but he was a big strong man and after a good night’s sleep, he had woken up this morning ready to cause some trouble, shouting orders to his team in Miami to make the final preparations for Jack’s upcoming launch, for the next phase of his return home.

  * * *

  Pete sat in his office contemplating his options while rubbing his aching chest. Jack had vanished, and with him any hopes of retrieving this amazing technology.

  He got on the phone and ordered his men to expand the search, to comb every last square inch of river between here and Vero Beach. Jack had escaped by water, like a SEAL, of course, but that also meant an extraction somewhere by some sort of vessel.

  He dispatched dozens of helicopters and once again reached out to Homeland Security to divert drones to the area. Al-Qaeda, he claimed, had struck the Kennedy Space Center, and he wanted the terrorists terminated on site.

  The first piece of news came ten minutes later, when his IT manager informed him that the security cameras had been hijacked during the intrusion through an old backdoor account set up by none other than Dr. Angela Taylor.

  The second piece of news arrived fifteen minutes after that, when the Coast Guard reported a large yacht abandoned by a rocky beach near the Pineda Causeway, ten miles south of the Cape.

  The third piece of news arrived five minutes later, when the IT manager informed him that the hack had originated from Pete’s own IP address.

  But the most shocking news came within a few more minutes, when the Coast Guard identified the yacht as a fifty-eight-foot Sundancer registered to one Pete Flaherty.

  * * *

  They ditched the yacht by the Pineda Causeway, where Dago’s gang waited for them with trucks and bikes to take them to a remote farm on the edge of the Everglades, arriving just past four in the morning.