If they touch you, you’re dead.
Chapter 31
Yóulóng Village
LACEY BIT HER LIP as Pete sneaked toward the two soldiers. She was tucked in the trees opposite the landing strip, watching through her night-vision scope. Pete was fifty yards ahead of her.
Since the position of their trucks on the other side of the ridge had been compromised, they’d figured the only way out was going to be with Jake on the plane. In the original plan, the C-130 was going to be used as nothing more than a feint, buying the time necessary for everyone else to get over the ridge and into the trucks. Jake had pinpointed the airport as the first place Jiaolong’s people would cover if an alarm sounded, and he’d argued that even if they made it off the ground, the likelihood of being shot down or tracked was too high.
He’d said, So I’ll give ’em exactly what they’re expecting while the rest of you sneak off in the trucks. Then I’ll find a way to hook up with you at the secondary rally point. No one could come up with a better plan so that was that.
But at this point the aircraft was their only way out of this damn valley. She’d thought all was lost until they’d heard the klaxon signal. Pete had guessed—and she’d prayed—that Jake had somehow freed the others, and that he needed the power and the lights shut down so he could lead everyone to the plane unnoticed. Of course, that meant Pete needed to deactivate his diversionary devices. If they went off as originally intended, they’d draw the entire army toward the airfield. Pete had stopped the timers with his remote, and he and Lacey had huddled in the trees, searching for signs of Jake and the rest of them.
Including my husband.
Then the Humvee had driven up and three soldiers had piled out. One of them stayed with the vehicle but the other two had started walking into the brush. One held an instrument out in front of him, and the way he swept it back and forth indicated it was a sensor of some type. The two men were tracking something, and it was leading them directly to the first of Pete’s gadgets.
If the wankers tamper with it, Pete had said, it’s going to go off. And so will the rest of ’em. He’d taken her MP5 and set off to do damage control. The weapon had a suppressor on the end of the barrel, but he wanted to get close enough to be certain he could drop all three of the soldiers. She watched through the scope as he pulled up next to a tree thirty meters behind them.
Close enough.
The soldier with the instrument pointed at the ground. The second one crouched down and separated the brush. Pete raised the submachine gun.
She held her breath.
Something shimmered over Pete’s head and she realized the swarm had found him. Pete must have noticed, too, because he dropped the weapon and held up his hands.
It happened so fast that the two crouched soldiers hadn’t even noticed. They kept fussing in the brush. But the third soldier by the vehicle was another matter. He seemed to be staring straight at her, and that’s when she noticed he was wearing a headset. At the same moment she heard a flurry of buzzes over her head. She remembered Marshall’s warning about the drones so she froze, her eyes locked on the distant soldier.
Then Skylar’s voice whispered from the shadows, “Don’t move a muscle.”
Already doing that! Lacey thought, not willing to even twitch her lips to say it aloud. She imagined tiny robotic eyes focused on her neck, waiting anxiously for the order to attack. She focused on the soldier controlling the swarm and willed him to accept her surrender. Then three muffled spits from Skylar’s weapon blew the man off his feet. The other two soldiers flattened themselves in the brush, and a dozen metallic hummingbirds rained to the ground around Lacey. One landed on her shoulder. She turned her head slowly and saw a single drop of amber liquid drip from its needle-tipped beak.
“Time to move, deary,” Skylar whispered, swatting it away and yanking Lacey behind the stand of trees.
“What about Pete?” Lacey asked.
“No worries. He’s got an angel looking after him, too.”
And what about the hair trigger on the diversionary devices?
***
Jake turned his back on the Center complex and peered over the wall. The airport in front of him was steeped in darkness but he could still make out the silhouettes of the small Cessnas, the helicopter, and, beyond those, the C-130. He checked his watch. Phase two of Pete’s diversion would commence in three minutes. By then he needed to be sitting in the cockpit of that aircraft with the engines winding up. He gauged the distance to the plane at five hundred meters. He needed to hurry.
A shout from the Center drew his attention back around. A large group of soldiers had formed outside the entrance of the main building. A gray-haired man, who Jake assumed was Wong, stood on the steps before them. Two of the sisters stood beside him and Jake wondered where the third had gone. The old man shouted questions, and his enraged tone told Jake he’d discovered that Alex, Ahmed, and Sarafina weren’t in the Center. When another soldier came running from the barracks area shouting and waving his arms, Jake knew their escape had been discovered.
Wong shouted an order and it was like shooting a bullet into a hornet’s nest. Wong and one of the sisters jumped into a black SUV and turned toward the airport. The other sister disappeared into the shadows in the opposite direction. Two squads of soldiers followed her, and even more began searching the nearby buildings.
The swarm had vanished.
A sound resembling a backup generator turning over came from near the hangars behind him, and he knew the lights could flash on any moment.
He leaped the wall and started running.
Twenty paces later, the blast of a flash-bang grenade punched through the darkness along the airstrip. He slid to a crouch. In the brief flare of light he spotted two soldiers diving backward from the blast. There was an eruption of gunfire, then two more explosions, each one closer to the airfield, and more gunshots echoed from the distance. The diversionary noisemakers had been unleashed way too early. He heard a muffled cry and saw the two soldiers rushing toward a Humvee. They were nearly there when a shorter man popped up from the scrub, raised a weapon, and mowed them down. Then the killer dashed and skipped through the brush like he’d been doing it all his life.
Becker!
Jake’s friend was a long ways off, but Jake had run alongside the sinewy Aussie enough times to know it was him. And when Becker caught up with four other figures who were converging on the Humvee, Jake’s brain matched their movements and shapes to their names—Lacey, Skylar, Pete, and Jonesy. They jumped into the vehicle and it spun around and raced toward the tunnel exit Jake had just used.
All hell was breaking loose but the escape plan still had a chance to succeed.
As long as I do my part.
He ran for all he was worth.
***
I was the smallest of all of us, but my heart pounded so fast I didn’t have trouble keeping up as we raced through the tunnel.
I was grateful for the darkness because I couldn’t keep the tears from sliding down my cheeks. Dad had taken the mini, and the fact that he’d tried to keep it hidden from me made me fear the worst. He’d put up walls around his mind and that meant he was keeping something from Mom, too—something more than his taking the pyramid. In all the confusion, I didn’t think she’d felt it. But I had, and it’d frightened me. I had the awful feeling I’d never see my dad again.
When we reached the end of the tunnel, Little Star clambered up the ladder and cracked open the door. I heard the pops of gunshots right away, echoing from the distance.
“Holy crap,” Uncle Marshall said, looking at his watch. “It’s the diversion devices. But they’ve gone off too soon.”
“Let’s get up there,” Uncle Tony said.
Little Star pushed the door open the rest of the way and slipped outside. Ahmed was next and I was right behind him. As soon as the others were up, we hurried toward the truck. Little Star got behind the wheel. Uncle Tony jumped in next to him and held his p
istol out the window. The rest of us climbed in the back. My sister and I sat on either side of Mom; she draped her arms around us and pulled us close. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, but the quiver in her voice told me she wasn’t convinced.
Dolphin and Shamer sat across from us. They seemed worried about me. Shamer leaned forward and whispered, “You’re a rock star.”
I wanted to smile, but couldn’t.
Ahmed sat next to me, and his lips moved in silent prayer. Uncle Marshall paced behind the truck. He kept checking his watch.
We were safely out of the action up here, but it obviously wasn’t making any of us feel much better. Because now we had to sit here. And wait. Hoping the rest of them would arrive soon.
The distant pops and bangs of the diversionary devices stopped. That meant my dad should be in the cockpit and rolling down the runway to lead the soldiers away from us. I closed my eyes and thought of him, praying that he was okay.
***
Jake raced across the tarmac faster than a bee-stung horse, blurring past the hangars, the helicopter, and the two small Cessnas. The C-130 Airlifter was a hundred meters ahead, and for a moment he thought he might actually make it.
Then the airfield lights kicked on and he slowed to a stop, his eyes narrowed.
Min stood between him and the aircraft, with a dozen soldiers backing her up. Worse yet, one of them wore a headset and a score of drones hovered above him.
Min smiled and sauntered forward. The soldiers moved with her. They held their weapons in relaxed grips.
A lone man on the tarmac poses no risk.
The drones moved forward as well. Then, as if to add one final insult to the impossible situation, there was a squeal of tires and Jake glanced over to see Wong’s SUV racing toward him.
The vehicle pulled up and the two rear passenger doors swung open. Zhin and her grandfather stepped out to face Jake, the sister holding a pistol aimed at his gut.
Wong fixed him with a smug stare.
Jake looked from them to Min, the soldiers, and up to the swarm overhead.
So is this where it all ends? Am I really going to allow them to win this easily?
No. Way.
Fueled by the energy of the mini, his mind carved the scene into manageable bites, tracing dozens of alternative lines of attack in the blink of an eye, imagining the moves he’d make before his opponents realized what they were up against.
The biggest variable is the robotic swarm.
The soldier wearing the Spider turned his head and the swarm shifted as one.
The head of the snake, Jake thought, and the succession of tactics in his mind began to fall like dominos.
“We meet at last,” Wong said, with a hint of disgust.
Jake remained silent. His mind was busy absorbing and recalculating every detail of the changing situation before him—Min stepping closer, soldiers shifting behind her, the swarm adjusting its position.
“You have been quite a problem, Mr. Bronson,” Wong continued. “Not only did you disrupt my plans when you brought death and destruction to the island two years ago, murdering my only daughter in the process...” He paused, Zhin and Min’s expressions tightened, and Jake realized Wong was speaking of the sisters’ mother. “But your actions in the past couple of days nearly resulted in the loss of many years of hard work.” He nodded toward Zhin. “Had it not been for my granddaughter’s foresight in backing up the software and its data, your antics might have actually created a problem.” Zhin’s arm tightened against the bag strapped across her chest, and Jake adjusted his priorities.
“Stay tuned,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Yes, about that. Only a fool would underestimate you after everything you’ve done. And trust me, I am many things but a fool is not one—”
His satellite phone chimed. Frowning, he unclipped it from his belt. “Speak,” Wong said into the phone. His eyes widened as he listened. “How soon?” he asked, keeping the phone pressed to his ear as he turned and ran toward the SUV. He motioned toward Zhin and she dashed around the back of the vehicle to climb in the other side.
Min shifted her grip on her bobbles, the soldiers clustered forward, and the buzz of the drones seemed to accelerate. Each of the dart-shaped birds hovered with its beak aimed at Jake.
As Wong slid into the car, he tossed the phone onto the seat and cast a wild-eyed glance at the distant horizon. Jake realized the caller must have warned that the PLA’s Airborne Corps was on the way. Wong barked an order in Chinese to his driver and the engine revved to life. Reaching out to pull the door closed, Wong took one final look at Jake. His eyes spat fire.
Jake winked.
“Kill him!” Wong yelled as he slammed the door. The SUV screeched toward the parked helicopter.
Jake’s muscles coiled and adrenaline tightened his skin. The mini’s energy responded to his call, and he jerked into action so fast that his movements would have appeared as a blur to Min and the soldiers.
He snapped his arm around his back, grasped the protruding edge of the computer tablet tucked in his pocket, and whipped his hand upward, catapulting the tablet at the swarm.
All eyes followed its flight...
Except Jake’s.
He kept moving, and to him it was as if he’d switched a DVD to slow motion. In a single, fluid movement, he crossed his forearms in front of him, grabbed Skylar’s knives from their wrist sheaths, and hurled them simultaneously at the soldier controlling the swarm. They flew end over end, glimmering as they whipped past Min’s ear, then between two other soldiers, then finally impaled themselves deep in the chest of the man wearing the Spider. The blades plunged into the man’s heart, less than an inch apart, and the impact knocked him from his feet.
The drones dropped from the air like hailstones. Jake snatched one after another from the ground as he rushed forward in a crouch and harpooned them toward the front line of soldiers before they could react. The darts pierced flesh and the poison went to work instantly. Two men staggered and a third dropped to his knees, and Jake barreled through them like a running back into a goal line stand. He snatched a combat knife from a soldier’s leg sheath…
And became death.
He twisted and whirled from one soldier to the other, too close for them to bring their weapons to bear, too fast for them to block the blade as it performed its grim task, slicing arteries, severing fingers, jackhammering into torsos, necks, and limbs. He ducked and spun, kicked and slashed, his lips peeled back, his teeth bared. Blood sprayed, men screamed, and a wide-eyed Min backed away, whipping her bobbles toward his face.
He lunged and his free hand snatched them from the air as his blade buried itself in her gut with such force that it lifted her from the ground. She gasped. He waited a beat until the life left her eyes, then lowered the knife. Her slender body slid from the shaft and folded to the ground.
Swiveling, he found himself ankle deep in carnage. He sucked in a breath as the horror of his frenzy bombarded his consciousness. Though justice may have been served, his soul broke at the sight of it. He wanted to curl up and die—until the throb of the helicopter’s rotors echoed across the tarmac, reminding him it wasn’t finished.
The helicopter was still on the ground winding up, but even with his enhanced speed he’d never make it there before it took off.
That’s okay, he thought with a grim smile. It’s only a minor detour.
He knew what he needed to do, but when an image of Francesca and the children flashed across his mind, doubt engulfed him and froze him in his tracks. After what seemed like an eternity, his lips tightened, his eyes went flat, and he bent over and heaved one of the dead soldiers over his shoulder.
A blood-soaked field of twisted limbs and anguished expressions lay in his wake as he sprinted toward the C-130.
***
We were still in the panel truck.
Little Star had turned it around and pulled it up just short of the road. It was still hidden, but now it was
in position for a fast getaway. Little Star and Uncle Tony were still in the cab. The rest of us were standing in the back along one side of the truck bed, staring into the distance. Everyone else was tall enough to look over the wooden side rails, but I had to peek between two of the slats. We were parked on the ridgeline, and even though the trees disguised the truck’s silhouette in the darkness, we could still see past them to the valley below. The lights had come on at the airport, and everyone’s eyes were glued on the big airplane rolling down the runway.
I pretended to watch but my eyes were too watery to see much. A few moments earlier, Dolphin had said something to Uncle Marshall that made me realize that the man who had kidnapped us all had been looking for TurboHacker, not realizing it was me, not my uncle. Apparently, something about the way I’d played the game had caused a huge problem.
Which meant everything that had happened was my fault.
It made my bones feel oily. I loved my family and all our friends, and knowing I was responsible made me feel like something was eating me from the inside out. I finally understood how my dad had felt all this time. He’d blamed himself for everything that had happened. Not only the nightmare that had occurred over the past few days, but before then, too—since before I was born when he’d launched that first pyramid into the sky. It hadn’t mattered how many times Mom and his friends told him it wasn’t his fault, his guilt had never gone away. I’d sensed it all along and I’d felt bad for him about it. But until this moment, I’d never truly understood the depth of his pain. I glanced up at my mom, and my sister and brother and the others, too.
I’d do anything to keep them safe.
Brainrush 05 - Everlast 02: Ephemeral Page 18
