Brainrush 03 - Beyond Judgment

by Bard, Richard

The Island

  7:10 a.m.

  ONE HUNDRED FORTY men, women, and children were stacked behind Jake at the double doorway. A child sobbed. Others were hushed by parents. The air was thick with tension. Seven of the adults were armed. Four were posted at the back of the pack as a rear guard. The other three were beside Jake, including Eloise. Francesca and Ahmed were behind them. Alex had latched onto Ahmed’s hand. A group of young teens had crowded around Sarafina.

  “You ready?” Jake said to Lacey. She stood beside him.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. She’d removed the rest of the padding from around her torso, knotting the leading edges of her button-down blouse snug around her slim waist. Her hair was loose, her glasses were gone, and her expression was fierce. She held Jake’s pistol in a comfortable grip.

  Jake had procured a submachine gun from one of the more nervous teachers. It was an MP7 personal defense weapon, with a forty-round mag and a reflex sight. He extended the telescoping buttstock, tucked it into his shoulder, and pried open the door.

  The shadowed corridor was empty—and uncomfortably warm. He motioned the group forward, moving swiftly.

  So far, so good.

  The line of people behind Jake was so long that when he approached the door to the private stairwell, only half the group was out of the cafeteria. He reached for the keypad. That’s when the screaming began. A man shouted, children cried out, and an exchange of gunfire echoed from within the cafeteria. Security teams must have entered from the back door.

  Jake’s adrenaline spiked. One of the armed men beside him ran toward the sounds. Jake swiveled to follow when angry shouts drew his attention toward the T-shaped intersection ahead. There was a heavy pounding of footsteps around the corner to his right. A lot of them.

  “Get them into the stairwell!” he said to Eloise. “The code is seven-seven-four-six-two.”

  Jake raced past the door, sliding to his belly as he neared the intersection. A snap glance around the corner confirmed the worst. A squad of heavily armed guards trotted toward him. They were led by the teacher who had left the cafeteria during Victor’s video. Jake flipped the MP7’s selector switch to full auto. He stuck the barrel around the corner and sprayed the hallway with lead.

  There were cries of pain and the heavy thuds of bodies toppling to the floor. “Cover!” someone ordered.

  One of the armed teachers stood over Jake. He followed Jake’s lead, firing blindly around the corner. Return fire sounded, and chunks of the corner wall exploded over Jake’s head. There was a guttural moan, and the teacher’s weapon clattered to the floor. He fell into the intersection, and his body danced and jiggled as more rounds impacted.

  Jake cringed. He sent more lead downrange, and another man took the place of his dead associate. He held his weapon around the corner and opened fire. The weapon shook and kicked in the man’s inexperienced grip. The rounds went wild. But damn, Jake thought, he sure as hell appreciated the courage of these men.

  Behind him Jake heard Eloise shout, “Up the stairs. Hurry!” A corner of his mind prayed that Francesca and the children were among the first inside. Gunfire from the cafeteria still sounded. He wondered at the slaughter.

  Around the corner, someone issued a series of sharp orders. Jake couldn’t make out what was said, but he imagined the man was coordinating with other teams. They’d converge on Jake’s group from all sides. Distant noises around the left corner seemed to confirm his suspicion. He glanced over his shoulder. Lacey knelt down beside him, backlit by the emergency light behind her. Families ducked into the stairwell as fast as they could, but there was still a thick line behind them. They’d be easy targets. “Shoot out those lights!” Jake said, motioning behind Lacey.

  Lacey swiveled in her crouch, bringing the pistol around in a steady two-handed grip. Jake knew she drew on the lessons she’d learned as an action star on the big screen. But it wasn’t just the moves that made her look like a pro. She could shoot. She fired three quick shots. Each one took out a light, and a blanket of darkness fell over the refugees.

  The man above Jake stopped shooting. “I’m out!” he said, pulling back from the corner.

  “Go help the others,” Jake said. “Hurry ’em up!” The teacher ran off. That’s when Jake noticed that the gunfire within the cafeteria had ceased. He didn’t know if that was good news or bad. He hoped for the best, but he feared the worst. In any case, he had his hands full here.

  Jake loosed another burst around the corner. His mag clicked empty after three rounds. “We can’t hold ’em much longer,” he said to Lacey, discarding the weapon and grabbing the MP7 that the first teacher had dropped. “See if you can get them moving faster back there.”

  “Bullshit,” Lacey said. “I’m not leaving until you do.” Light spilled from the two adjacent hallways, but with the lights out behind them, their position was shadowed.

  “Count your rounds,” Jake said.

  “Did that when you first handed me the gun,” she said. “Eight rounds then. Just used three. Five left.”

  “Make ’em count.”

  “No problem. Five bullets. Five assholes.”

  Jake checked the magazine on the teacher’s weapon. He was down to eight rounds.

  A hushed order from their right. Pounding footsteps. Jake readied himself, set to plunge his weapons around the corner at the last second. Lacey huddled beside him, the pistol ready.

  Suddenly, there were several simultaneous spits from the left hallway. All of the emergency lights within the intersecting hallway seemed to go out at once. The charging footsteps faltered. Suppressed, controlled bursts from the left. Yelps of pain on the right. Heavy thuds. Weapons clattered to the floor. The gunfire ceased for a second. A moan. Twin spits. Then dead silence.

  Jake braced himself. Lacey nudged against him. Padded steps approached from their left.

  “Raider One, clear,” someone whispered from around the corner.

  Then Becker’s voice said, “I sure as hell hope that’s you, Jake.”

  Jesus!

  “Beck?”

  “Too right,” Becker said, stepping around the corner. It was too dark to make out anything but a vague shadow. A flashlight flicked on, pointed toward the ceiling. “You’re a tough bloke to follow!”

  Becker flipped up the night vision goggles he was wearing. Jonesy did the same. “Enough lounging around on the floor,” Becker said, extending a hand to help Jake to his feet. “We better keep this parade moving.”

  “We were flanked,” Jake said.

  “No worries—Sergeant Fletcher and Sam took care of them,” Becker said. He pointed to a hand radio stuffed under his combat harness. A wire connected it to his comm pack. “One of Brun’s men donated this. We’ve been listening in.”

  “Only four of you?” Jake asked, fearing the worst. There’d been nine of them when he’d dived into the pool.

  Becker nodded, his expression grim. “Tony and Andrew were wounded. But they’ll be okay. Philly, Hollister, and Karch didn’t make it.”

  Two flashlights shone at the rear of the line of families. “That’s the last of them,” Sergeant Fletcher reported.

  Becker’s eyes went distant. He was listening to something on his headset.

  “Move it!” he shouted, motioning toward the door. “Two large groups headed our way.”

  Sam brought up the rear, closing the door behind them. The stairwell was packed with people. Those who wouldn’t fit on the single flight above were lined up on the lower staircases. Several of them were talking.

  “Quiet!” Becker said in an urgent whisper. The space went silent.

  Jake shouldered to the upper landing. Becker, Jonesy, and Lacey followed. They bunched at the top door. Ahmed, Francesca, and the children were already there.

  “We have less than five minutes to get topside,” Becker said. “The power outage prevented them from closing the blast doors automatically. But they’ve got a crew working on a manual override. In the meantime, they’ve deployed h
eavily armed fire teams outside to guard against incursion.”

  Jake gritted his teeth. Beads of sweat dripped down his cheeks. “It’s like a sauna in here,” he said absently. His mind was elsewhere, racing through options. None of them were good.

  “Yeah,” Becker said, wiping his brow. “That’s because we broke something downstairs during our infil.”

  Jake ignored the comment. A plan was taking form. When he noticed Francesca and Alex both studying him, he closed off his mind. He couldn’t allow them to know what he was contemplating. Sarafina crossed her arms as if she knew something was up.

  Jake ignored them. This was on him. No time for a family conference. Step one, he needed eyes outside. He shouldered the MP7. Then he buttoned his shirt to the collar and tucked the tails into his trousers. “Don’t move until I give you the signal,” he said to Becker, avoiding Francesca’s gaze. “Three raps on the door. Then get everybody moving out the front exit as fast as you can. Make for the nearest boat. There was a hundred-footer on the dock less than an hour ago. Load ’em up and get the hell out.”

  “Understood,” Becker said, ushering the group away from the door.

  Jake was reaching for the handle when the first explosions sounded from outside the facility.

  Chapter 85

  Grid Countdown: 0h:42m:00s and Holding

  The Island

  7:10 a.m.

  “STAND BY,” TONY said into his tactical headset. He sat in a swivel chair on the megayacht’s compass bridge. He flexed his injured leg out and back, preparing himself for what was to come. The ship’s captain and first officer sat beside him. The navigation and control console stretched in front of them.

  The ship was at maximum speed. Steep cliff walls rushed along either side of them—so close that Tony figured he could’ve spit on ’em. Three seconds later, the bow pushed through the inlet and into the lagoon. The towering mountains, the storybook village and structures, the expansive body of water with its rows of parked boats and yachts—it was all much grander than it had appeared from the overhead UAV images.

  He couldn’t care less.

  “Jammers now!” he ordered, happy to be throwing in some of their own electronic interference for a change.

  Marshall was in the control room down below with Kenny and Timmy. They were in charge of communications and the drones. “Jamming commenced,” Marshall’s voice reported over the intercom.

  “Mother Ship Two away,” Kenny added.

  Tony wished Kenny had brought a dozen of the little Mothers along. The first one had saved his ass. Mother Two was the only one left. She would have to do.

  Tony lifted the binoculars. The dock was one thousand meters ahead. A good-size bay cruiser and a hundred-foot yacht were tied off alongside. They were in the way. “That’s where we gotta go,” he said to the captain, pointing to the dock.

  The uniformed officer narrowed his eyes on the scene. He knew what was at stake. There was a joystick in front of him. He ignored it. Instead, he used the padded steering wheel to change the ship’s angle of approach. “It’s going to be messy,” he said, scratching his gray beard. “But I’ll make it happen.”

  Tony turned his attention to the bow of the ship, where several operators crouched beneath the front rail. Each of them carried a Spike shoulder-launched missile system, equipped with heat-seeking and GPS fire-and-forget guidance. They were loaded with thermobaric “fuel-air” rounds—capable of creating a superheated inferno and blast wave that would bring down structures and incinerate anything within a ten-meter radius of impact. They were ideal for taking out gun positions.

  Additional operators were hidden in sniper positions above deck. The remainder waited by the gangway.

  “Hostile targets identified,” Kenny reported.

  The central monitor was linked to the imagery streaming from Kenny’s drones. Tony saw at least a hundred individual targets moving within the trees and village. More streamed from the mouth of the blast doors. They all wore the blue uniforms that Tony had seen on the other side of the island. On the screen, each one was encased in a red square.

  Ignoring them for the moment, he focused on the stationary targets along the ridgeline. Those were the fixed emplacements. And even though their sensors were being jammed by one of the drones, they still could shoot line of sight. They had to be dealt with first.

  Kenny was all over it. “Stationary emplacements designated targets one through eight,” he reported.

  There was a rush of movement among the operators at the bow. Launchers were propped on the railing. A beat later, Sergeant Major Abercrombie reported, “Locked on targets one through eight.”

  “Open fire!” Tony ordered.

  Hollow whoops sounded as each of the missiles left its tube, followed an instant later by the deep-throated roar of the ignition of solid fuel rockets. Eight trails of smoke arced into the sky, seeming to disappear at their apex. Two seconds later, a series of massive explosions thundered across the ridgelines.

  “Launch boats!” Tony ordered. He glanced at the wall of video monitors embedded above the windscreen. The first of the two high-speed Special Operations Craft Riverines—SOC-Rs—slid down the yacht’s aft launching ramp. The thirty-three-foot-long low-profile boat bristled with tripod-mounted armament, including two M134 Miniguns that could spew out 7.62mm bullets at a rate of six thousand rounds per minute. There were six operators onboard the first SOC-R, hungry for action. It splashed into the water and sped out of view. The second boat hit the water a moment later.

  The two boats whipped past either side of the yacht like it was standing still. They raced toward the shoreline. The distinctive high-pitched buzz of their Miniguns battled with the rumble of their four-hundred-forty-horsepower diesel engines. Fire flashed from the barrels of their guns. Tracers arced across the water.

  The initial volley must have stunned the island’s forces.

  But only for a moment.

  All at once, return fire erupted from positions along the shoreline. Staccato cracks echoed across the water. RPG smoke trails burst from windows in the village. Spouts of water exploded around the Riverines. Heavy machine-gun fire spit from the trees, and white phosphorus tracers snaked wavy arcs in the air as shooters adjusted their aim at the dodging and weaving boats.

  The ship’s captain didn’t waver. He motioned to the first officer. “Time to get below, Scott. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the first officer said. He disappeared down a spiral staircase at the back of the room.

  The captain sat forward in his chair, maneuvering the ship so as to angle into the dock from behind the two parked boats. His plan was simple: keep his speed up and shove ’em out of the way. Tony appreciated the straightforward approach. But it sure looked to him like they were moving way too fast.

  Most of the gunfire from the shore was directed at the fast movers. But as the megayacht neared the dock, Tony saw a string of tracers swerve in their direction.

  “Down!” Tony shouted. He grabbed the captain’s arm and yanked him to the deck. The windshield exploded above them. Heavy rounds slugged through the chairs and into the rear walls of the room.

  “Time to steer this thing from below!” Tony said.

  The wide-eyed captain didn’t argue. He smacked Tony on the shoulder as a quick gesture of thanks. “Godspeed,” he said, before scrambling on all fours to the spiral staircase. There was a duplicate control station in the watertight compartment beneath them. The first officer would’ve taken control by now. As long as the exterior cameras didn’t get blown to shreds, they’d be able to park the ship from there.

  Tony exited the bridge in a crouch. Waves of pain shot up his injured thigh as he hobbled down two flights of stairs to the main deck. Twin RPG explosions sounded overhead, and the compass bridge exploded in a ball of fire. Debris cascaded around him. He moved toward the gangway, where a score of operators already waited.

  “Brace for impact,” the captain’s voice soun
ded over the comm net.

  Tony slid next to the Aussie sergeant major. The soldier had a broad grin on his face. “Into the breach!” he said.

  Both men placed their backs against the sidewall. Tony reached over his shoulder and grabbed hold of the rail.

  “Five seconds!” the captain said.

  The lurching impact threw Tony forward. His grip on the rail didn’t give way, but he winced when his body twisted and his leg slapped the sidewall. The bow seemed to lift into the air in slow motion. There was an awful crunching sound, and Tony imagined the cruiser being crushed like a melon under an elephant’s foot. The bow dropped, and then there was a second impact. This time, the nose of the ship jerked to the left toward the dock. Tony figured it must have wedged between the stern of the second ship and the pier. The yacht shuddered as its tonnage ripped through the dock’s timber planks and pilings, causing an explosion of wood slivers that rained down on Tony and the operators.

  After an extended, ear-piercing scraping sound, the yacht lurched to a stop.

  The gangway was down faster than Tony could take his next breath. Operators charged onto the shredded pier, dodging around an upheaval of timber. Tony trotted after them, favoring his leg. He could almost feel Kenny’s eyes on him through Mother Ship’s cameras. By now the kid would have identified the proximity targets and was probably itchin’ to throw the switch.

  “Clear us a path to the door, Kenny,” Tony ordered.

  “Mother Ship, go native,” Kenny said over the comm net.

  “Confirm go native command,” the computer’s sultry voice said.

  “Go native confirmed!” Kenny said.

  Tony skirted the last bit of rubble and hobble-skipped forward. Operators charged past either side of him. One of them went down, and a medic slid to his side.

  “Incoming!” Tony shouted, going down to one knee and returning fire. The rest of the raiding party did the same. They knew the drill.

  An instant later, the tree line on either side of the cobbled path lit up. Blinding flashes of white phosphorus were followed by shrieks of pain. As the last of Mother’s swarm delivered its deadly cargo, squads of operators peeled left and right. They disappeared into the trees to clean up any leftovers and establish a perimeter.