Skystorm (Ryan Decker)

by Steven Konkoly

  “What happened?” she asked, skipping right to the point.

  “SKYSTORM is dead in the water,” said Quinn. “Literally and figuratively. Decker and his crew nearly sank our ship in Houston. They blew up the rudder and put three holes in the port side at the waterline.”

  Dammit. They should have killed Decker months ago. Along with Senator Steele. It had been a mistake to assume the two sides had reached a truce.

  “Just transfer the cargo off the ship. The terminal and port authority should be doing that anyway if the ship is in danger of sinking,” said Dalton. “We can put it on another one. They took their one shot. Decker can’t keep blowing up ships. I assume the cargo is intact?”

  “The cargo is fine, but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” said Quinn. “The police have evacuated and closed off the terminal, and it sounds like every SWAT team in the greater Houston area is on the scene. Port authority and Coast Guard fast boats are in the channel.”

  “The authorities will sort this out soon enough. Once EOD sweeps the ship and hull, we’ll be able to move the cargo,” said Dalton.

  “I wish it were that simple,” said Quinn. “But before they detonated the charges, Decker and his SEAL buddy, Brad Pierce, killed at least twenty members of our security detachment. I emphasize the words at least because the most senior surviving member of the detachment could only take a rough guess based on a sweep through the superstructure and a quick scan of the pier.”

  “Please tell me he’s not still on the ship,” said Dalton.

  “He managed to gather up whoever he could find and flee the harbor in the detachment’s fast boat. Eight that could walk out of a forty-strong detachment. From what he told me, it sounded like a war zone at the pier—even before the explosions woke up Houston. And ready for this?”

  “Not really,” she said, still trying to process the unmitigated disaster he’d just described.

  “Decker escaped in a helicopter, after the helicopter machine-gunned the hell out of the ship and its team. So I think it’s fair to say that the ship and pier are now a high-priority crime scene, and the SKYSTORM cargo will be in federal hands within a few days. I’m going to recommend that we cut all ties to the program. Turn our back on it completely.”

  She took a moment to compose her thoughts.

  “Have you notified Harold?”

  “He’s up next. I wanted to give you a heads-up, because you’ll be his next call,” said Quinn. “Decker will go to ground again, but Senator Steele can’t stay away from her job forever. Be prepared to authorize and execute a very public killing the moment she surfaces. Right on the Capitol steps or inside her office if that’s the only option. Whatever it takes.”

  “We have her house covered,” said Dalton. “I’ll start working on public scenarios. Hitting Steele at her office might be the best option. We can hire independents and pay them a fortune.”

  “Like I said, whatever it takes,” said Quinn. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some calls to make.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Save it for yourself,” said Quinn. “Mine ran out about forty minutes ago.”

  She lay there for a few minutes, staring through the floor-to-ceiling windows next to the bed and wishing the whole thing had been a bad dream. Her phone buzzed, killing the silly fantasy.

  IMMEDIATE TIER 1 AND 2 RECALL. THREATCON DELTA.

  Within moments, she heard a knock at her bedroom door.

  “Ms. Dalton?”

  “I saw the message. I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” she said.

  “Can I make you a cappuccino to go?” said the rapid security team leader assigned to her personal protective detail.

  “Thank you, John. That would be great,” she said, before getting up to pack.

  Dalton pulled a carry-on-size suitcase out of a compartment in her walk-in closet and placed it on the wide cushioned bench. She stared at it for a moment, deciding to swap it for a larger bag. There was no telling how long the Institute would stay at THREATCON DELTA, which required all directors and division leaders to remain onsite in temporary living quarters until the threat against APEX was neutralized or downgraded.

  The thought of spending any more time than absolutely necessary with the rest of the board was incentive enough to find and kill Senator Steele.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “One minute!” said Randy, never looking away from the glowing screens in front of him.

  Their crew chief’s southern-accented voice barely betrayed the sense of anticipation felt by everyone in the cargo hold.

  They were sixty very short seconds away from landing another blow against the APEX Institute. Nowhere nearly as damaging as the container ship mission, but it would drive a final nail into SKYSTORM’s coffin and amplify the message that they were through playing games. Of course, this night’s festivities were just the beginning. Tomorrow would prove to be an extremely long and trying day for APEX.

  Harlow dry heaved into the dangerously full plastic bag provided by Randy—right before Bernie dropped the aircraft from twenty thousand feet to four hundred feet AGL (above ground level) to spoof local air traffic control radars. Nap-of-the-earth (NOE) flying required Bernie to maintain a constant altitude, which meant frequent adjustments to match the terrain. The aircraft had pitched up and down nonstop for forty-five minutes. Harlow’s face had been attached to the bag the entire time.

  Decker squeezed her knee and kissed the side of her head. She lowered the bag and tried to speak, unable to form a word before the bag came up again. He owed her a long, relaxing vacation after the hell he’d put her through on this trip. Nearly all their time had been spent in the air—Harlow’s Achilles’ heel. Brave didn’t even begin to describe how she had leaned into the past forty-eight hours. Fearless came close. Tenacious and fearless. Even closer. More like indomitable.

  “Thirty seconds!” said Randy. “Remember! Do not disengage your harness until you see the green light! We’re looking at a hard stop on the runway and a possible full-throttle departure if things look too hairy around the hangars.”

  Decker gave the crew chief a thumbs-up, which was repeated by everyone else directly involved in the airfield raid—Pierce, Pam, and Mazzie. The rear cargo ramp lowered a few seconds later, instantly flooding the aircraft with crisp, early-morning high plains air. Decker tightened his grip on the bulky grenade launcher between his legs. Pam did the same with the light machine gun lying across her lap. She looked entirely at ease with the Serbian weapon. The aircraft suddenly pitched downward, feeling like it had slowed significantly.

  “This is almost over,” he said to Harlow, who just shook her head and groaned.

  The unmarked runway rose to meet them, biting into the C-123’s landing gear with a punishing jolt that slammed his bottom side into the stretched canvas bench seat and whipped his head forward. Before he could straighten his neck, the aircraft’s powerful twin engines thundered, their propellers reversed to bring the thirty-ton beast to a rapid stop near the target hangar. The sudden deceleration pinned him against Harlow, who had lost her grip on the bag when they hit the runway, emptying its contents onto her lap.

  Quincy Rohm’s voice boomed over the loudspeakers a moment later. Harlow was on her own for the next minute or two.

  “Primary target confirmed inside the first hangar. Secondary targets at last hangar,” she said. “One armed vehicle guarding each target, along with visible security team. Make this quick. Green light in three . . . two . . . one.”

  The aircraft lurched to a stop, and the green light next to the ramp illuminated.

  “Go!” said Quincy.

  Decker released his harness and raced for the open ramp, Pierce’s automatic rifle already pounding away from one of the fuselage windows before he set foot on the runway. He sprinted a good fifteen feet past the bottom of the ramp to make room for Pam, who ran down the ramp a second later. While he sighted in on the machine gun–equipped dune buggy parked next to the open hangar door
, Pam dropped to the asphalt just beyond the ramp and extended her machine gun’s bipod.

  His first shot landed several feet short but close enough to momentarily disrupt the vehicle’s machine gunner. Decker mentally applied a quick adjustment to the sight picture and fired again. The second forty-millimeter high-explosive grenade detonated inside the front seating area, erasing the driver and tossing the gunner’s mangled body onto the tarmac.

  Pam’s machine gun boomed simultaneously, ripping into a group of heavily armed mercenaries who had made the unfortunate mistake of barreling out of the dark hangar—into the open. While a stream of green tracers stitched through the four-man team, Decker shifted his aim to the boxy Thrush aircraft deep inside the hangar and applied pressure to the trigger. A burst of gunfire snapped past his head, throwing him off. His third shot went high and wide, striking the back of the hangar. A bullet cracked off the runway a few feet from where he had knelt, followed immediately by another—just inches away. Both strong indicators that he was running out of time.

  He reacquired the Thrush through the launcher’s red dot sight and fired. The moment the grenade left the barrel, he knew it would strike dead center. While the projectile sailed into the hangar, Decker fired the remaining two rounds. The three grenades exploded in rapid succession, two detonating against the fuselage and one slamming into the right wing.

  Decker didn’t wait around to assess the damage. Despite Pam and Pierce’s best efforts, the incoming gunfire had become too intense. They’d have to settle for whatever damage the three grenades had inflicted. He took off, sidestepping Pam when he reached the ramp.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  Pam fired a long, sustained burst into the hangar, dozens of green tracers creating a light show inside as they ricocheted off the walls and concrete deck. The C-123’s engines roared as soon as they piled into the cargo compartment, the behemoth rapidly accelerating for takeoff. Decker raced to reload the grenade launcher, desperately hoping to do some damage to the secondary targets before they took off.

  “Decker. Move!” said Pam, before nearly yanking him off his feet.

  A quadcopter drone buzzed past, disappearing into the darkness beyond the cargo compartment’s muted red glow. Shit. In all of the excitement, he’d forgotten about the drone. Mazzie would deliver the coup de grâce to the airfield from her seat at Randy’s crew chief station.

  He went back to work on the grenade launcher, replacing four of the grenades before Pierce stopped firing his automatic rifle long enough to shout a warning.

  “We’re coming up on the semis!” he said, before resuming his barrage of suppressive fire through the window.

  Return fire started to punch through the starboard-side fuselage, a long string of bullets passing a few feet over his head and continuing toward the front of the aircraft. He instantly turned his head, relieved to see that Harlow had already released her harness and was helping Joshua take cover on the deck. If either of them had still been upright in their seats, he would have abandoned the final grenade salvo.

  “Help me out with this,” said Decker, lying flat at the top of the ramp. “Just make sure I don’t fall out. I’m going to crawl down about halfway.”

  “This isn’t a good idea,” said Pam, taking a knee behind him and grabbing his ankles.

  “What else is new?” he said. “Nice shooting, by the way. You’re a natural with that thing.”

  “I was just getting warmed up,” said Pam.

  Decker crawled down the ramp until he had a clear view of the hangar doors, the abrasive nonskid surface scraping the skin off his elbows the entire way. He nestled the grenade launcher’s stock into his shoulder, just as the first semitruck face appeared in his peripheral vision. The front of a second semitrailer, parked immediately adjacent to the first, materialized a moment later. Followed by a third. Decker did some very rough trajectory math in his head, taking the C-123’s forward motion into account—and fired the four grenades as fast as the launcher’s cylinder would cycle.

  The first grenade missed, exploding against the edge of the hangar door just to the right of the first semitruck. The rest hit home, destroying the three tractor trailers and effectively stranding the last three APEX containers at the airfield. Pam helped him up the ramp as the aircraft picked up speed. Decker sat against the side of the aircraft next to Pam, staring into the darkness beyond the ramp. The C-123 lifted off from the runway after several more seconds of rapid acceleration, Bernie putting them into an immediate steep climb to get as far away from the airfield as possible before the climax.

  “Good hits!” said Pierce, securing the window he’d used as a firing port. “We left them a big enough mess without the finale.”

  “Mazzie! How long until the fireworks?” said Decker.

  “Not long!” she said. “I’m almost there!”

  Senator Steele’s mercenary friends had sent Joshua and Mazzie the necessary instructions to equip a quadcopter drone with remote detonatable explosives. They had identified a sizable fuel tank behind one of the hangars, which they assumed had been the primary source of fuel for test flights. The drone carried a half-pound block of C-4, the largest charge Mazzie felt comfortable attaching to the quadcopter. Pierce figured it would be enough to detonate the fuel used by the Thrush’s turboprop engines, if she could land it directly on the tank. No problem for a semiprofessional drone racer.

  “Five seconds!” said Mazzie.

  Pierce joined Pam and Decker at the top of the ramp.

  “Harlow’s out cold, by the way,” said Pierce. “You owe her big-time.”

  Decker glanced over his shoulder. She lay flat on the deck next to Joshua.

  “Yeah. I don’t know how I’m going to make this up to her,” said Decker, turning his head back in time for the grand finale.

  “Three. Two. One!” said Mazzie.

  Night turned into day for a moment, close to a thousand gallons of aviation fuel exploding roughly a half mile behind them. His face warmed from the burst of radiant heat created by the blast, a single thunderous clap reaching them a few seconds later. He really hoped they hadn’t just erased the evidence Senator Steele had arranged to fall into the hands of a combined Texas Ranger–state trooper SWAT unit staged about fifteen miles south, along the only road in or out of the airfield.

  Not that the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and about a dozen other federal and local law enforcement agencies would have any trouble gathering plenty of evidence at the Port of Houston, where the bulk of SKYSTORM sat stranded by their earlier attack. The trick would be linking it all to APEX—a feat Steele was confident and determined that she could make happen.

  Decker watched the distant scene for a few more moments, the blinding fireball quickly replaced by hundreds of small dancing fires in the darkness below.

  “How long until the Nevada jump?” he asked.

  “About nine hours,” said Pam. “With a stop for fuel somewhere on the way.”

  “Long enough to get some well-needed sleep,” said Pierce.

  “That sounds heavenly,” said Decker, forcing himself onto his feet. “After I get Harlow cleaned up and settled in.”

  “I tried to convince her not to come,” said Pam. “But there’s no talking her out of anything when it comes to you.”

  “There’s no talking her out of anything—regardless of the subject,” said Decker.

  “Good point,” said Pam. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t owe her big-time. Like Pierce said.”

  “Don’t worry. I plan to make this up to her,” said Decker. “And all of you. I haven’t forgotten that I got everyone into this. From the very beginning.”

  “You’ve definitely made the past few years interesting,” said Pam.

  “I guess you could say that,” said Pierce. “If you consider almost getting killed several times interesting.”

  “Get some rest. There’s still one more opportunity to get killed ahead of us,” said Deck
er, before heading forward to take care of Harlow.

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  James Guthrie studied Senator Steele’s boat dock from the house across Weems Creek through a pair of binoculars, confirming what his sniper team had reported. He hadn’t driven down here because he doubted their judgment. The mission was simply too important for him not to double-check everything within his control. The assault team’s primary staging area was seven minutes away. Dalton would expect him to make the trip to see for himself.

  As conveyed by the team, Steele’s sailboat indeed looked as though it had been prepped for an afternoon or evening on the water. The mainsail cover was gone, the jib line and mainsheets had been wound around their winches, and the cockpit seat cushions were in place. Was it possible that she would actually show up? Something big had happened last night. That was for certain.

  He’d received a call from Dalton at four in the morning, changing her original order from capturing the senator to a kill on sight. That was enough to tell him that something had gone wrong. Big-picture wrong. Killing a US senator at her house would send shock waves throughout the Beltway and the country, guaranteeing a massive, thorough murder investigation. Whatever had occurred between his last check-in with Dalton late yesterday evening and the call he’d received early this morning had convinced APEX that the fallout was worth the risk.

  He shifted his view to a group of four people carrying two huge coolers across her expansive backyard. Guthrie studied them, looking for any signs that they could be a covert team. Three high school- or college-aged kids led by a portly middle-aged guy with long hair. All of them wore navy-blue polos with some kind of emblem and tan shorts. Definitely a boat service crew.