Brainrush 03 - Beyond Judgment

by Bard, Richard

  Becker wrapped his lips around his regulator and nodded. Tony was about to do the same when he noticed movement over Becker’s shoulder.

  A lone gunman staggered into the clearing, the soldier apparently shielded from the remote guns by his implanted RFID chip. Smoke drifted from the remnants of his uniform. His torso and head were scorched, and his eyelids had shriveled into his skull, exposing milky eyeballs that stared at nothing. But his hearing apparently still worked. The man turned his head to one side and aimed with his ear. The muzzle of his assault rifle rose, and he let loose on full auto. The first blast nearly cut Hollister in half. The operator was dead before he hit the water. An advancing line of pockmarks stitched their way toward Becker.

  Tony lunged forward, shoving Becker so hard that the Aussie was swept off his feet and hurled across the water. Tony grunted in pain as a slug bit hotly into his thigh. His body twisted from the impact, and he splashed into the pool. More bullets zipped past him.

  Strong hands pulled Tony under. A regulator was shoved into his mouth, and he was yanked deeper. He resisted at first, unsure what was happening. He blocked his body’s instinctual urge to panic and forced his vision to focus. Stern eyes stared at him from behind a face mask. It was Becker, urging him to awareness.

  Tony stopped struggling, allowing himself to sink with the Aussie. Becker used his buoyancy compensator to stabilize them ten feet or so below the surface. They were well clear of the underwater funnel. Becker held his palm in front of Tony’s face mask. It was a signal to wait. Then he pointed to two dark shadows swimming upward toward the surface. It was Jonesy and Sergeant Fletcher. Going to take care of business.

  Tony nodded. He used his fingers to make the okay sign. His leg was on fire, and a thick trail of blood swirled from the bullet wound. A minute later, Jonesy was at his side. He and Becker led Tony to the surface and helped him to shore. Sergeant Fletcher was on the radio with Cal. Hollister’s body had been pulled to the water’s edge. Operator Karch knelt beside him, his weapon panning the tree line.

  Jonesy cinched a tourniquet above Tony’s wound. He cut through the uniform at Tony’s thigh and probed. Tony winced. It felt like a branding iron. “Hold still,” Jonesy said, pulling out his knife. “The bullet’s lodged right next to your femoral artery. I’ve got to remove it. It’s gonna hurt.”

  Becker crouched beside him. He cocked his arm as if he were about to throw a dart. Tony saw it just in time, and his meaty hand caught the Aussie’s wrist just before the morphine needle went into Tony’s shoulder.

  “None of that shit!” Tony snapped.

  “Stop moving,” Jonesy ordered.

  “Just do it!” Tony said behind clenched teeth. He let out a steady growl as the knife went in. The pain blurred his vision.

  But he didn’t move his leg.

  “Got it,” Jonesy said, dropping the bullet into Tony’s hand. “Looks like a five-six-two. Must’ve ricocheted off the water. Otherwise it would’ve gone clean through. You’re lucky.” He slowly released the pressure on the tourniquets. The wound bled but didn’t spurt. He nodded and applied a thick pressure bandage. “You’re going to limp for a while. But you’ll live.”

  “Good,” Tony said. “Then you can tell Cal we don’t need him. I’m going with you.”

  Becker said, “Sorry, Tony. I can’t allow it. Neither would you if you were in charge. And you know it. You’ll endanger the rest of us. You’ve done your part, but you’re gonna have to sit the rest of this one out.”

  “Bullshit!” Tony said. But the word came out slurred. And he suddenly felt dizzy.

  “Yeah, I figured you’d say that,” Becker said. “Which is why Jonesy dosed you when you grabbed my wrist. Sorry, but you’re going for a chopper ride.”

  The last thing Tony remembered was Becker saying, “Thanks for saving my life, mate. I promise I’ll put it to good use.”

  Chapter 75

  Grid Countdown: 1h:20m:30s

  The Island

  6:11 a.m.

  JAKE ESTIMATED THE size of the four-story underground complex at 150,000 square feet, about half the size of a Forrestal-class aircraft carrier. It could easily house a couple thousand people. It had been carved out of the base of one of the island’s twin peaks. He walked briskly down the underground corridor. Colored stripes on the floor coincided with directional wall placards. He used the memorized schematic to make his way toward the top-level exit, at one point ducking into the FIRE DEPARTMENT to avoid a group of guards. He followed a circuitous route, avoiding the DORM, SCHOOL, and MEDICAL areas, sticking to less-used corridors and utility stairwells.

  He was halfway to the surface when he encountered a group of women and children walking in the opposite direction. They pulled suitcases behind them. The woman in the lead glared at him.

  “You there!” she said. “Come here.”

  Jake hid his dismay at the sight of the young children. They stared at him with star-cast gazes. He sensed their trepidation. Of course it made sense that the Order had brought their children, he thought. He simply hadn’t considered it before. Sure, every adult here knew what was going on. They were as guilty as sin, in Jake’s book. But not the kids. Any more than Sarafina and Alex.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “Take this,” she said, rolling her suitcase toward him as if he were a bellboy. “We need an escort.”

  Jake ignored the suitcase. He’d met her type before. Better than everyone else, or so she thought. Jake held his anger in check. “You’re looking for the dorms, right?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” she said, motioning to her entourage. “But we’re supposed to drop the children at the cafeteria first.” She nudged the suitcase toward him. “We’ll follow you.”

  “Sorry, but we don’t provide escort service on the island,” he said with a condescending tone of his own. He motioned over her shoulder. “Instead, we placed easy-to-read directional placards on the walls.” He pointed to the floor. “And color-coded stripes on the floor. That way even a child can’t get lost.”

  The scowl was still forming on her face when he pointed in the direction she’d just come from and said, “It’s that way. Follow the yellow line. You can’t miss it.”

  He tipped his hat, and as he started to walk off, he caught the eyes of the young girl standing beside the woman. From her features it was apparent she was the woman’s daughter. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. She glanced nervously at her mother as if to ensure that she wasn’t watching. Then she mouthed a silent thank you that melted Jake’s heart. The subtle smile he offered her belied the twist he felt in his gut.

  His mind raced through the implications as he left the group behind him. His children weren’t the only innocents in this complex.

  Jake picked up the pace. He passed storerooms, laboratories, and a vast underground farm with rows of vegetables. He skirted the kitchen and dining areas, though he was close enough to catch the aroma of cooked food and the din of voices and silverware. It smelled like spaghetti. Two security guards stood outside the WEAPONS TRAINING room. They nodded as he walked past. There were a lot of new faces here in the past twenty-four hours, Jake thought. He was one of many. He kept moving, his mind reeling with the magnitude of the task before him. He passed the MUSEUM, GYMNASIUM, SWIMMING POOL, and RELIGIOUS CENTER.

  All the comforts of home.

  The lone exit was one floor up. He climbed the last set of stairs two at a time, stepping into a wide corridor that was busy with people. A dozen waited by a bank of elevators, most with suitcases. More gathered around an information kiosk just inside the gaping entrance. The opening to the outside world had been bored through solid rock. It was the width of a single-lane highway. The twenty-foot-long tunnel was framed in steel and concrete. At the exit point, massive blast doors were suspended on hinges to either side. The doors were at least thirty inches thick, with a network of hydraulic steel pins thicker than a man’s thigh. Once those doors were sealed, he th
ought, nothing could get in.

  Or out.

  Jake exited the tunnel and stepped into a new world. The air was fresh and clean. The sun shone bright overhead. The sight before him took his breath away.

  It was a deepwater lagoon surrounded by towering mountains. A latticework of Gothic structures rose and fell around three sides of the cove. Ornate spires and pinnacles peeked through lush trees and foliage. He saw homes, shops, and gathering places. In the background, waterfalls cascaded from one level to the next, joining to form twisting streams that flowed to the water’s edge. The sprawling community was connected by graceful bridges and arched walkways that teemed with people in colorful garb. They all seemed to be headed his way.

  Shangri-la, Jake thought. Or at least that’s what the Order’s designers had attempted to emulate. A peaceful enclave that spoke of a gentler time—with an accompanying modern-day bomb shelter to protect them from an Armageddon that they prayed would come.

  Smoke and mirrors, Jake thought. Just like the man in charge.

  Rows of boats and luxury yachts were moored at the far side of the lagoon. Which meant there had to be a hidden inlet somewhere, he thought, something the drones had overlooked. This end of the lagoon was lined by a long dock, where a hundred-foot yacht was disembarking a score of passengers. They were filing through a security checkpoint at the end of the pier. Wands were drawn. The new arrivals wound their way up the rising cobbled path leading to Jake’s elevated position. He noticed a sense of urgency in their movements. Several of them glanced at their watches.

  Jake shared their apprehension.

  One hour and counting, he thought. Less than that for the little surprise he’d set downstairs. He was running out of time. And he still had no clue where his children were. One thing was for sure: he wasn’t going to find them by standing here enjoying the view. He needed to speak to the man in charge.

  Now.

  There was an embedded camera over the blast doors. He removed his hat and turned to face it. Then he unholstered his sidearm, aimed at the sky, and opened fire.

  Chapter 76

  Grid Countdown: 1h:10m:30s

  The Island

  6:21 a.m.

  VICTOR CHUCKLED OVER a joke voiced by the member from Texas. Others joined him.

  That’s more like it, Victor thought, appreciating the return to normalcy. He’d calmed the room after the previous tension, and when Hans returned after issuing orders to his teams, Victor rested easy with the belief that the Australian incursion force would no longer be a threat. The remote machine guns would have ripped them to shreds by now. In any case, the tunnels had been sealed. The only remaining way into or out of the facility was the front blast door.

  A startled shout from the other side of the room interrupted Victor’s thoughts. A champagne glass crashed to the floor. A woman pointed at the streaming image on the wall screen.

  A hatless security guard stood outside the blast doors. He was firing his weapon into the sky.

  Why on earth…

  The man stared at the camera, and someone zoomed the image.

  Jake Bronson’s defiant stare stole the oxygen from the room.

  The sight jolted Victor like a live electric current.

  “Curse that bastard!” he shouted.

  The outburst shocked everyone in the room. No one more so than Victor.

  “What are you waiting for?” he snarled, making no effort to ease the scowl from his face. He knew that if Bronson had made it inside, others would follow. “We’ve trained for this possibility countless times. Sound the alert. Security teams to their stations. All civilians need to be moved inside the facility. It’s time to seal the complex.”

  The Order leaders responded swiftly. They knew what must be done. They advanced through either exit with military precision.

  Victor was fuming. “Have the American brought to the chair room,” he said to Hans. “And bring my tools!”

  Chapter 77

  Grid Countdown: 0h:050m:30s

  The Island

  6:41 a.m.

  JAKE CRINGED AS Victor unrolled the leather tool pouch. The felt interior was filled with an assortment of long-stemmed hooks, clamps, snips, and knives. Victor’s eyes went half-mast as he ran his fingers across their ancient bone handles. These were the tools of a master torturer, Jake thought. They appeared worn from use.

  Victor slid a twelve-inch fillet knife from its sleeve. The blade glimmered under the overhead lights. The bone handle was deeply furrowed. He held it with the reverence of a priest with a chalice, and Jake imagined a lifetime of memories tracing across the man’s mind.

  After several long moments, Victor eased the leading edge of the blade across his own thumb. Blood dripped down either side of the neat slice—yet the man didn’t flinch. Instead, Jake sensed that he embraced a perverse pleasure from the act. He placed the thumb in his mouth and—for the first time since he had entered the room—he looked at Jake.

  “Sucking your thumb?” Jake asked. “Aren’t you a little old for that?” He was strapped in the same chair as before. He was shirtless. The chair vibrated beneath him, and the fiber-optic lines leading from the chair into the ceiling were alive with activity. But his brain wasn’t hooked into it. Instead, the skullcap hung loose overhead. A bundle of lead wires affixed to the underside of the cap led to a workstation with computer and comm equipment.

  Victor chuckled at Jake’s quip. The man’s calm confidence was unnerving. He removed his thumb from his mouth. “You Americans are all the same. You imagine yourself as heroes. Making jokes in the face of death. It seems as if it’s been embedded into your genetic codes by the movies you watch. I’ll bet you’re a Bruce Willis fan.”

  “You got that right,” Jake said. He glanced at the computer display in front of the bank of equipment. It depicted streaming images of the island’s population in prayer and the peaceful pursuit of art, science, and family. All of the scenes took place on the island. The rest of the world was conspicuously absent. So touching, Jake thought. Such a lie. This had to be the outgoing signal that Marshall and Timmy had used to isolate this island as their target. It was the Order’s private appeal to the ultimate judge overhead. Victor would have assumed that the alien visitors would ultimately gain unlimited access to the historical evidence of man’s violence, which made this transmission more critical than ever. It was like a defense attorney’s closing argument, intended to sway opinion in favor of his particular client while throwing the other defendants—the remainder of humanity—under the bus. Although the sound was muted, Jake could imagine Victor’s voice-over agreeing that mankind as a whole was not worthy, while proclaiming the Order’s nonviolent pledge—and blah, blah, blah. The thought of it pissed him off.

  Jake added, “And I guess it makes sense that you wouldn’t be a Bruce Willis fan—seeing as how the megalomaniac bad guys he faces always get what’s coming to them in the end. Just like you will.”

  He and Victor were alone. The room was sparse. Victor stood beside a rolling cart that held his tools. There were a couple chairs against one wall and a blacked-out observation window embedded in another. A suspended monitor in the corner streamed the images of violence that were being sent from the grid to devices across the planet. The countdown was at forty-five minutes.

  Victor shook his head like a professor would to an ill-prepared student. He used a remote to switch off the monitor. Then he turned off the computer display. Apparently he didn’t want any distractions.

  “Poor Mr. Bronson,” he said. “All tied up and nowhere to go. Did you really think you had even the slightest chance of standing in the way of plans that were centuries in the making? Some of the greatest minds in the world joined together to make this possible. Didn’t you appreciate the level of detail that you encountered while wandering around our private world? Every contingency has been addressed.”

  “Is that so?” Jake said. He worried whether he’d done the right thing by allowing himself to be taken. At t
he time, it had seemed as if facing Victor was the only plausible shortcut. Now he wasn’t so sure. They’d brought him to the chair, just like he had figured they would. But the energy surge he’d hoped for from the mini wasn’t happening.

  An announcement over the PA system proclaimed it was now 6:51 a.m. and that the blast doors were closing in fifteen minutes. He was running out of time.

  “Keep talking,” Victor said, stepping in front of Jake. “That will make the next few moments so much more satisfying.” He moved the knife from side to side in front of Jake’s face. The blade was inches from his skin, and he smelled the earthy aroma of the aged bone handle.

  But he needed Victor closer yet.

  “You think you’re in charge,” Jake said, returning Victor’s stare. “But the truth is, you’re not in control at all. You never were. Otherwise you and your lunatic buddies would have figured out a way to activate the pyramids long ago. No, it took an American action-film lover like me to start the countdown. You had nothing to do with it. In fact, I’ll bet you shit your pants when the pyramid you brought here launched itself straight up out of the mountain, burning a hole in your electronic shield. Or was that part of your plans, too?”

  Victor’s face didn’t flinch. But when the knife’s smooth arc wavered for an instant, Jake knew he’d hit pay dirt. He pressed on.

  “And you can bet that our buddies up in the sky aren’t about to let you and your pals slide when the world’s population is brought to judgment. In fact, I’m sure of it.” It was Jake’s turn to exude confidence. “And I should know, shouldn’t I?” he added. “After all, I’m the only one who’s ever had a two-way communication with them, right?”

  Jake saw it. The man’s tell. “Oooh, was that a little twitch in the eye?”

  Victor drew back as if Jake had spit fire at his face. His nostrils flared, his face reddened, and the knuckles wrapped around the knife handle went white. The calm veneer vanished, replaced by a glare that was filled with hate.