The Koda Files Boxed Set - Books 1 & 2

by Ivan Bridgewater

  Abruptly, the radio bud in my ear came alive, and I heard Tim say, "Attention all house guests! We have rats in the field! Be aware that the bad guys are out for a walk."

  Koda and I were at the front door of the house. I looked out, and could see two armed men walking up the main road that ran between the houses. Just past them, were two more men taking up positions to lay down covering fire on Kathy's house. The men were all wearing grey coveralls. They worked like a military team, and as I watched them, I realized I could see at least another dozen men moving up in a staggered skirmish line.

  "I've got fleas over here," Shooter announced over the radio in a matter of fact voice.

  "Are you okay, Shooter?" I asked, keying into the throat mike.

  "Yeah! I'm Fine!" he replied. "I feel like crap, but I'm still in better shape than these clowns!"

  "Infrared is tracking over four dozen targets on the move," observed Tim.

  "Think there's enough of them?" Koda asked aloud, seemingly to herself.

  "You better follow me," I told her, already moving back toward the weapons closet. I grabbed a short-barreled M-16 off the rack, and Koda snatched up an UZI. We each grabbed some spare ammo clips, and headed back toward the door.

  Far away, I could hear a jet turbine kicking to life. Koda and I got to the door just in time to see Bugs lift off, and bank north, heading off into the distance. Dozens of men fired on him, but the chopper was armored, and left without any sign of obvious damage.

  On the Radio, I heard Kathy say, "I'm getting ready to light them up! Are you on line Tim?"

  "Almost!" responded Tim. "Give me a few seconds!" There was three seconds of silence. Then he quietly said, "There are three... make that four aircraft inbound! They don't look friendly!"

  "Fast or slow?" asked Shooter over the communications link.

  "Slow!" noted Tim. "I'd say they're choppers!"

  Turning, I yelled, "Be right back!" and went running back to the weapons closet. I came back seconds later with a half dozen of the little surface to air missiles that work so well against helicopters. Tossing one to Koda, I asked, "Have you used one of these before?"

  "No," she responded, watching me snap open the length of tube. "But I'm a fast learner!" She repeated what I was doing step by step. By the time we heard the choppers coming, we were ready for them.

  As I had returned with the missiles, I heard Kathy yell, "Where are you, Tim?"

  "I'm bringing all weapons on line," he replied over the radio.

  Koda and I were looking out the two small windows that were on either side of the front door. Across the street at Kathy's house, Koda and I watched as the two small towers at each end of the house snapped open, and large barreled weapons came jutting out.

  A large weapon like a 50 caliber machine gun makes a very distinctive noise. It's also a hell of a killing machine. Out in the open, the men in grey were diving for cover. In Florida, everything is flat, and cover can be hard to find. It was almost funny watching them try to hide behind the tiny little fence posts along the road.

  With a loud roar, the first two helicopters flew over the house Koda and I were in, and opened fire on the gun emplacements attached to Kathy's house. I smiled at Koda, and told her, "Time to go to work! Just do as I do!"

  Stepping out the front door with the handheld launcher, I sighted on the first chopper I saw, and squeezed the trigger. With a loud whoosh, the rocket headed straight for the lead helicopter. A bright flash erupted from the first hit, and the enemy chopper vaporized into small bits of debris, raining down on the greys standing below.

  The wooden porch railing next to me splintered as enemies on the ground opened fire on us. Glancing over, I saw Koda standing next to me, seeming unfazed by the gunfire all around us. She sighted the second helicopter, and an instant later, it was a fireball on its way to the ground.

  Koda and I were already on the way in the door before the helicopter she targeted hit the ground. With a thunderous crash, the whole mess slammed into the lawn right behind us. We could feel the heat as the front door snapped shut, as though it might keep the bad things out.

  We both knew better!

  Two bullets came through the door, dispelling any confusion over the possible security the door provided. The one closest to me threw a wooden splinter that went straight into my shoulder. I glanced down, and could see the stupid thing lodged there. I caught Koda's eyes locked on the thing. As I reached up and withdrew the bloody stick, I noticed her eyes growing larger and larger.

  The splinter had penetrated about four inches, and there was some serious blood flowing out of the wound. As soon as the thing came free, I dropped it to the floor. It landed with a wet thud.

  Koda calmly told me, "I hate pain! Doesn't that hurt?"

  "I can shut the pain off," I stated dryly. "The blood loss will still kill me, but I can control the pain."

  "That must be handy," she noted. Another stray round smashed out a window in the living room. I could hear the other two helicopters approaching from the east. The steady thump of the turbine blades mixed with the heavy weapons fire, creating a sound that was deafening. We started working our way around to the broken window so we could return fire. The view through the blown out front section of the house looked more like a war movie than a neighborhood in the US.

  The twisted wreckage from the two helicopters we had destroyed was burning in the front yard. About a dozen men in grey were shooting at the house we were in. Across the street, Kathy and Tim had started to engage the two new threats approaching at high speed from the east.

  Through the smoke and burning rubble, I saw a man dressed in Ninja Black appear. He was carrying a Samurai Sword, and he beheaded one of the grey clad soldiers with a single slice of his blade. In an instant, the assassin was gone, only to reappear fifty yards away, killing another grey clad man.

  I held my fire, watching as the most proficient killer I've ever seen slaughtered our enemies. He was moving through space far too fast for it to be natural. He had to be using teleportation. Just as the woman, Dona, had done.

  Tracer rounds were trading back and forth between the second pair of choppers, and Kathy's main house. It appeared the house was getting the worst end of the deal. One of the choppers had a mini-gun, and it was outclassing the two, 50 caliber machine guns, that Kathy and Tim were using.

  A rocket screamed in from the north, and smashed into the closest chopper to the house. It erupted in flames, and spiraled toward the ground, crashing with a large plume of flames billowing from it. Skimming along, close to the ground in the wake of the missile, came Bugs in his concept of a personal aircraft.

  The last remaining enemy helicopter seemed to back pedal. It had the mini-gun, but Bugs was advancing so fast that it must have sensed what was coming. The ship Bugs piloted seemed to roll sideways as it banked around. For the first time. I saw the sleek mini-gun jutting from the belly of Bug’s aircraft.

  At the very instant I saw the gun, Bugs opened fire. In effect, he was coming up right under the enemy ship. Within a hundred yards of his target, with his ship's guns blazing, Bugs launched a second rocket at the last helicopter. The larger, enemy craft evaporated in the fireball, and it appeared Bugs flew right into the debris as it started down. I could hear metal on metal, and as Bugs exited the other side of the fireball, it was obvious he was in trouble.

  His ship slewed sharply to the left. It appeared part of the aircraft's tail section was gone. The whole thing seemed to do a slow arc to the left, and the rotor blade disintegrated as the ship hit the ground.

  The smoking mass came to rest in the middle of the road, sitting there for just a moment, before I heard the whoosh, and the fire started.

  I started to rise, and a bullet slammed into the wall next to me. As I peered out to find the shooter, I saw Dona, in uniform, appear next to our downed chopper. The Ninja appeared next to her, and he must have been immensely strong, because he ripped the door off the chopper with his bare hands. Reaching th
rough the smoke, and growing flames, the man pulled Bugs out of the helicopter as easy as he might a child.

  I saw a round hit the chopper's frame next to Dona's head. She pulled her service revolver, and started advancing on the man in grey that was firing at her.

  She had a pistol, and he had a rifle, but she just kept advancing, firing off rounds. On her third shot, the attacker screamed, and went down. Dona calmly turned, heading back to Bugs, and the crashed, burning chopper.

  I had been focused on Dona. It was only as she turned to walk back toward the chopper wreckage that I realized the Ninja was gone from sight.

  At this point, I felt I had seen it all. A full blown terrorist attack in Southern Florida was hard for even me to imagine. I could still hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. Then I caught sight of something moving through the brush, toward Dona and Bugs. Almost instantly, I realized there was more than one. They moved like dogs through the brush, and as soon as they got to the road, they stood up.

  The things were not human. Their arms appeared to be double hinged, and they started across the open space separating them from our downed chopper.

  I had seen enough!

  Rising, I stepped through the remains of the window casing. Bringing my gun up, I fired from the hip. The M-16 has a lot of power, and one of the creatures went down on my second shot. As it laid in the road screaming, a dozen more ran past, intent on Dona and Bugs.

  Looking up, Dona saw the creatures racing up the road toward her. With calm deliberation she stood her ground, clipping off rounds as they charged. Then her gun ran out of ammo, and I heard the click of the empty weapon.

  Running past me, more of the creatures were moving forward, running in a crouch. I was firing on them, and so was Koda, but I could see they were ready to overrun Dona and Bugs.

  As clearly as if she stood next to me, I heard Dona say, "There are Critz attacking at my location! I need assistance!"

  A half dozen of the Ninja killers appeared right out of the air, and the fight turned into a sword battle. The creatures were starting to build in numbers, and despite the fact that Koda and I were shooting them, they would soon overrun Dona and her people.

  Koda and I had worked our way north along the fence line, and had reached a position about fifty yards from Dona. There was the sound of a hand held chain gun, and the creatures started to fall like fresh wheat, mowed down in the field. Looking far up the road, I could see Shooter moving forward, using his favorite toy, a hand held mini-gun.

  With great care, he was sweeping aside the creatures as they tried to rush him. A mere one second burst would rip three or four apart, but he had to be careful not to hit our people.

  Back further in the brush, I could see Harold covering Shooter with a pair of UZIs. The two men kept moving forward, but the whole scene had become confused, and the smoke was not helping.

  In the midst of all this carnage, I became aware of a mass of minds. In an instant, dozens of the Ninjas appeared. From the smoking ruins of our chopper, I heard Dona yell out, "Guardians! Stand by me!"

  An army of the Ninjas appeared. Dona called them Guardians, but I had never seen their like before. They overran our position and brutally slaughtered the creatures. Like smoke, they vanished seconds later. One minute they were there, the next they were gone. If it hadn't been for the dead bodies everywhere, I’d have thought it was a dream, or more likely, a nightmare.

  Dona looked right at me, and said, "I need to go report in, or this place will be crawling in cops ten minutes from now!" She glanced around, and said, "I well send people to help clean this up. Try not to shoot them!"

  Then she vanished into thin air!

  This would take some getting used to!

  Bugs was trying to stand, but he had a gash above his right eye, and I suspected he had a slight concussion. He kept staggering as if he would drop at any moment. Harold took ahold of him, and we started to move toward the main house. As we came close to the front door, Kathy came out of the house, with Tim right behind her.

  As soon as we were all together, Shooter said what was on all our minds. "Can somebody please explain to me what just went on here?" he asked. "Or should I just wait on my alarm next to the bed to wake me up?"

  "Dona will be back in a few minutes," said Kathy. "She is going to be the person most likely to explain all this!"

  We had gotten to the front of the main house, when I saw a woman appear in the yard. I was already getting used to the way people just appeared and disappeared. Stepping closer to the woman, I asked, "May I help you?"

  "Actually, we're here to help you. Dona sent us," she replied with a warm smile. More people began appearing, and it was soon evident they were here to cart off the mess. I turned, and followed the rest of our group into Kathy's house. The whole house was filled with voices. Sounds of confusion permeated everything.

  Everyone present in the group was laughing and joking with one exception. Lisa was obviously upset. She had never imagined such violence, let alone survived it. I stepped close to her, and she clutched my arm. Her hands trembled violently, and I wrapped my arms around her out of instinct.

  She looked up at me and said, "Nobody ever shot at me before! I'm not used to this!" The terror was evident in her face. I could feel the fear radiating from her. It was a palpable force, like body heat. I abruptly realized I was looking into her mind. I could see her thoughts. One minute nothing, the next, I could read her mind as clearly as I could hear her voice.

  It was the most powerful experience I’ve ever had!

  In simplest terms, it meant there were no more secrets between us. I knew Lisa on the most intimate level. She was a beautiful person. She had loved her husband dearly, and when he died, she had mistakenly misplaced some of her affections onto me. Billy had told her things about me that made me seem a better person than I was. If she knew me, she would have known better.

  Even as I thought it, she shook her head no, and said, "I've been scanning your mind for two days! You're exactly the man Billy told me you were!"

  It was an awe-shucks moment that left me speechless. I quietly said, "My soul is drenched in blood! You can't look up to a man with a trail of dead bodies behind him!"

  "Have you started seeing the auras yet?" asked Lisa. I was totally caught off guard by the question. Shaking my head no, I wondered what she was talking about.

  "I started seeing them yesterday," Lisa said. "I asked Dona about them, and she said they're normal, everyone has one. It's as if we each have a slight glow. All living things have an aura, even a leaf of a tree, or a small bug. Yours is a brilliant flame. It stands out in the room. We all glow, but you burn like the sun!"

  "She's right, Mike," said Kathy. "I can see it too. You're different from the rest of us."

  "Of course I'm different," I noted. "I'm years older than you!"

  "That's not it," stated Lisa. "Even Dona acknowledged it to me! You're not like us Mike! You burn a hundred times brighter than anyone Dona has ever seen. She talks about others that might be like you, but she's never see a person that can match your energy levels!"

  By now, everyone in the room was listening to us talk. I ran out of things to say. Shooter was dressing the wound over Bugs's eye. Lisa stepped away from me, and started to help him. Kathy looked over at Koda and Tim, saying, "I need your help to get the house security systems back on line!"

  "Let’s get to work," said Tim. I followed, in spite of not having been asked.

  The Command Center was running on battery backups. We stepped in, and I realized I could see several spots where bullets had entered the house, and sunlight was now streaming through. The more I looked, the more holes I found. I could easily see why Lisa had been scared. It was more blind luck than skill and grace that one of us hadn't been hit.

  Kathy and Tim stayed inside, while Koda and I were sent to find out why the house battery backups had kicked in. We soon found the cause. A damaged fuse box had the marks where two rounds had passed through. One of the
rounds had hit, and smashed, a circuit breaker in the box. Pulling the metal box cover, I snapped in a new breaker, and the meter to the house started madly spinning again. I could tell the power was turned back on inside.

  Koda glanced up suddenly. I was busy putting the cover panel on the fuse box, but I could see her staring at me out of the corner of my eye. After about thirty seconds, she muttered, "Jesus Mike! You're a hell of a man!"

  "You're just figuring that out?" I asked, trying to make light of her comment.

  "I'm serious, Mike," she said softly. "I could get to like reading minds. It takes all the deceit out of a relationship."

  "We don't have a relationship," I corrected. "You showed up at my house and tried to kill me. I make it a point to not get involved with psycho killers."

  "You mean like Kathy?" she asked.

  "That was different," I replied. "I trained her!"

  "And now you're training me," she observed. An odd smile started to spread across her face. She looked at me closely, and said, "I'm embarrassing you, aren't I?"

  "Yes," I growled. "And that's not a good thing! Stop It! And you can stop looking in my head too! You're freaking me out!"

  She looked at me for several seconds more. Then she broke eye contact, and told me, "I'm sorry Mike! I feel as if I suddenly know you!"

  "You don't," I corrected her again. "You don't know me at all!"

  She looked back up at me, and quietly said, "I know all you think about is Nancy! She's on you mind constantly! You better focus on what's happening, or we're in trouble!"

  I gave her the look, and exclaimed, "Just shut the hell up! My personal life is none of your business!"

  My heart went bang! Pain stabbed through my chest. It was incredible. I've been shot several times. It feels much the same.

  In that same instant, Koda realized there was a problem. I must have turned white as a sheet. I had replaced the fuse box cover, and I now just leaned back against the exterior wall of the house. My arms felt like dead weight. I could barely move them. Koda reached into my shirt, and snatched out the little pills. She opened the bottle, took one of the pills out, and shoved the tiny bit of medicine into my mouth.