“You should have been ‘at me’ first. Any real man would.”
Hunt stared at Hayden’s lips, seemingly transfixed at the trickle of blood. “So you’d rather bleed than scream,” he noted. “But you will soon do both,” he promised. “First I gotta teach this foreigner some manners.”
Hayden stared up at him, waiting for an opportunity. As his head lifted she saw it—and smashed her forehead against the bridge of his nose. “You bleed first,” she said. Her legs weren’t tied, so she twisted hard to wrap her thighs about his neck. Hunt saw her and rotated out of reach.
Several mercs laughed at him. “Run away and hide,” one of them muttered. “Hunt’s goddamn motto.”
Hunt was furious. Jumping up, he stalked back to Hayden’s feet, blowing strings of blood from his nose.
“Untie me,” Hayden snapped. “Then we’ll see how you do.”
“Yeah, untie her!” a merc shouted. “See if you can take her down, ya fuckin’ psychopath.”
The mercs were all becoming unruly as they waited for the others to finish. The leader came back, looking angry, but Hunt pushed him aside.
“Fuck off.”
Then he attacked Hayden for all that he was worth. Arms bulging, he punched at the side of her head, rammed another into her gut. Hayden rolled with it, but the punches still hurt. She caught a third blow on her arm, saw an ounce of leeway, and flung her body backward whilst kicking upward.
The kick smashed Hunt across the cheek, snapping his head sideways and eliciting a cheer from the other mercs. Hayden rolled with the momentum, three hundred and sixty degrees, and then kicked again. This time Hunt was ready, catching her ankle in mid-air. Dahl and Kinimaka moved toward her, but the sudden appearance of handguns stopped them in their tracks. The mercs were okay for a tied woman to fight back, it seemed, but unhappy with her tied male colleagues trying to help her. Hunt jerked Hayden’s ankle, dragging her body toward him, then twisted it so that she flipped onto her stomach. Helpless now, she could only stare into Kinimaka’s eyes.
Hunt sat heavily on the backs of her knees. The leader told him to hurry up. The seconds were ticking by. Hayden faced the office wall with the wider facility behind her, listening to the jeers of men. Hunt ignored it all and punched into the back of her right thigh.
“Tell me what you know. Tell me about SPEAR. Tell me who you answer to.”
The pain was excruciating but if that was the worse Hunt could do in the next minute or two then Hayden could easily take it. Concentrating on Mano and Dahl, she shut the pain away and concentrated on the best of what was to come.
It was a truly surreal moment that caused her more disquiet than Hunt’s continual punching. A voice floated out of nowhere. A voice she knew couldn’t possibly be here. A voice she would now love forever.
“You’d get a lot more out of her if you tanned that ass real slow, not punched so frantically below it.”
Instantly Hunt drew away and Hayden rolled, just in time to see a blond blur, dressed in black, leap from a gantry above to land among the hooting, dissatisfied mercs. Two chops and two were disarmed. An arm around a throat and she had a shield. Her left hand held a compact machine pistol which she fired without mercy or pause into the group to her left. They screamed and pinwheeled, and bled and died. Once her shield was thoroughly ventilated she spun and grabbed another, still shooting. Those mercs who were close found their knees broken, their ankles twisted, and their groins jabbed. Some barely blinked before they hit the floor, gut-shot.
Seconds had passed and Alicia Myles had decimated half the mercenary force.
Hayden shuffled closer, as did Kinimaka and Dahl. The merc leader was roaring orders.
“Protect the package and get her!”
Alicia hurled her second shield straight at two more opponents, shouting “Strike!” as might anyone playing human ten-pin bowling. Her pistol took out two more. The leader ran past his dwindling men, wrenched open the office door, and screamed at both laptop carriers.
“Are you done? Then get the fuck outta there!”
Spinning, he fired, hitting his own man as Alicia employed a third shield. Then he sent a boot smashing across Dahl’s face as the Swede tried to entangle him. The two men carrying laptops charged through. Alicia ignored them, intent only on saving her friends. Four more mercs now faced her.
Only four.
Alicia ran hard at them, propelling her four-limbed shield at breakneck pace. Two of the mercs peeled off and chased their leader, clearly having had enough. Alicia poked her pistol under the arm of her shield and fired, taking one remaining merc down. The other bounded aside, but Alicia dropped the shield and dived right into him, striking him hard on the breastbone with her shoulder. As they landed she punched and thrust and dug hard. The man was unconscious before he could even move.
She whirled to face Hunt, who had just watched the decimation.
“I know, I know,” she said. “You wanna date me. You wanna love me. Kiss me all over. Let’s both check our diaries first, huh?”
Faster than a turbocharged viper she struck with stiffened fingers. Blows to the sternum, cheekbone and pit of the stomach brought an even more abhorrent smile to Hunt’s face. He moved in whilst grunting in pain, landing a blow on Alicia’s ribcage. A knife then appeared in his left hand. Alicia, visibly tired after taking out so many men, backed off.
“So now you respect me?” Hunt sneered. “Wait till I jab you with this.”
“Dude, that’s not even six inches. Don’t make me laugh.”
Hunt looked enraged and then lunged, Alicia’s words having had their effect on his pumped-up machismo. It was an easy task to sidestep and then break Hunt’s wrist. The blade rattled to the floor.
“What the—”
Alicia incapacitated him with a crunching kick to the knee. The sound of the bone breaking made even Hayden wince and the man’s scream brought both laptop men to a halt.
“Keep going!” the leader wailed. “Out!”
Alicia made sure Hunt was relieved of all weapons before bouncing over to Hayden. With a sassy smile she eyed the American’s bonds. “Ah, a dream come true.”
“Stop showboating and cut me the hell free.”
“Bitch, at least give me a kiss. I just saved your ass.”
Alicia drew a superfluous knife and quickly sawed through all three of her comrades’ bonds. After much credit was accrued to the blonde, Dahl ventured the question all of them were dying to ask.
“How on earth did you get here?”
“Drake called and suggested I use your GPS. Whilst en route I caught up on events, and then heard about the third and last facility being hit and your dilemma seemed to be worse than his. Once I arrived I saw the standard assault team being formed outside and decided to handle it myself.”
“Guys,” Kinimaka cut in and gestured to the rear exit door. “Shall we?”
“They’re long gone,” Hayden said. “Beat us here. Arranged the exit before we even showed up, I’ll warrant. But be my guest.”
The team jogged to the door, wary of booby traps, and opened it. Outside, dark was falling and nothing stirred, not even the branches or leaves on the stunted trees.
“Y’see?” Hayden drawled. “Long gone. Question is—what the hell comes next? And I mean hell in a literal sense.”
“They have everything they need,” Dahl said quietly. “To do as they promised and take America back to the dark ages.”
“The leader spoke about Path 26,” Kinimaka remembered.
“Their plan was laid long ago,” Dahl went on. “So . . . if they have everything they need, what are they waiting for?”
Alicia squinted through the descending dark. “Actually, I do see something beyond the fence there. A . . . a van? See the shape? It’s—”
And then it happened. Something terrible, something ruinous. The low hum that accompanied all the equipment around them and the facility itself suddenly died away. Lights flickered. Hayden was in a position to see downhill to where the li
ghts of a distant town glowed softly.
And then the night went totally pitch black.
“Oh no,” Hayden whispered. “They’ve done it.”
“Blackout.” Dahl’s voice was intensely soft. “Those mad tyrannical bastards.”
“They’ve taken out California,” Hayden guessed as she began to receive and flick through her cellphone’s messages. “As a statement. Remember? To prove to the government what they could do. At the expense of all those people. The risk of all those lives.”
“Riots,” Kinimaka said. “Robberies. Murder. Kidnapping. The list is terrifying.”
Hayden knew only the innocent would truly suffer. She tapped at her Android, seeking any new leaked information and quieter sources of her own as Alicia brought Dahl’s attention back full circle to the van.
“Shall we?”
“Do you think they’re in that van?”
“I think there’s a very good chance, my fine Swedish hunk of manliness. The only question is—do you wanna crush them as much as I do? Do you wanna teach them that it is really, really wrong to mess with good people’s lives?”
“Too bloody right I do.”
Hayden squinted at the far-off shadow, noting where it was parked in deepest darkness. How it almost seemed planned. “All right. There’s a good chance they’re working out of there, but be careful. The Pythians won’t be silly enough to leave that truck without a heavy guard even if the mercs are. I’ll coordinate our forces from here, call Drake, and get an update for California and its surrounds. Contact me before you act, okay?”
Alicia clasped her hands behind her back and pouted. “Okay, Mommmmy.”
“Shit, just go.” Hayden waved them away and then regarded the absolute darkness that had almost certainly befallen the state.
Kinimaka, always at her side, spoke the words. “God help the people.”
Hayden could only imagine the terror as homes were plunged into total night all over Los Angeles and San Diego; mothers rushing upstairs to their crying babies; fathers digging out flashlights and candles and double-checking all the locks. The drapes and blinds twitched aside as people assessed the neighborhood, the folks next door, and prayed. Those who reached automatically to check their TVs and then found out the truth on the Internet. But would they? What misinformation would the government feed the masses, if any?
Then there would be cars and buses driving down cavern-dark streets, lingering overlong at inoperative stop lights, caught in fender-benders not of their own making. The disruption, the chaos; it would live in memories forever. She thought of the cops fielding hysterical call after call, the bedlam they would be forced to attend. Madness would affect even those who normally kept a low profile, and they would pay for their mistakes for years to come. Darkness was a chilling race memory, the intimidating equalizer, the haunt of all that is evil. A candle could not save you. The good people were even now sat in their mortgaged homes, willing the light to return, keeping their children calm and putting their trust in the authorities.
Indirectly, in Hayden. In Drake and Alicia and Torsten Dahl.
And, for the people they cared about, they would deliver at any cost.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Alicia embraced the darkness like a close friend, inviting it inside as well as all around her. Her life had led up to this. The recent quest where she and her second team discovered hidden Crusader’s gold had led to this. The time was at hand.
No more running. No more avoiding.
Life would always pursue her and now that it had caught up she was ready to accept the explosion. Who would suffer? Only those closest to her, who would say that it was a long time coming and would take everything that she gave.
So . . . soon. Today. Tomorrow. When events dictated.
God help whoever got caught inside her blast zone. And she meant that, truly, in a religious way.
For now though, it was Dahl who had her back, and there was only one other whom she would prefer. The Swede crept beside her like a capable hound, eyes spotting traces even she might miss. The ground underfoot was gravel-strewn, and not even they could stop the occasional crunch. At the perimeter of the property, however, soil and earth returned. Dahl fell to his knees.
“Thirty meters,” he said. “Ready?”
Alicia didn’t need to check. “Do you recall a time when I wasn’t? For anything?”
Dahl crawled off. Alicia dropped behind him. They crept under an overhanging tree, stroked by the long branches, pausing in the deepest shadow near its trunk. Dahl then scooted to the bottom of a shallow ditch and crabbed along its bottom. As they neared the truck they paused to listen.
Alicia heard the faintest scuffling sound and then footfalls coming from the back of the truck. Somebody was definitely moving around inside there. Dahl waited patiently, scanning the almost impenetrable surroundings.
Can’t see fuck all, he mouthed back at her eventually.
She strained to read his lips, then shrugged and indicated the tomb of darkness all around. Neither can California.
Dahl nodded. Decision made, they moved rapidly. Dahl ran up to the rear of the truck and flattened his back against one of the doors. Alicia reached for the handle. A booming sound erupted and for half a second Alicia thought a bomb might have gone off, but then enormous round lights fixed to the back and sides of the truck’s roof illuminated, bathing the whole area in brightness.
“Now that’s a major clusterfuck,” a voice said—the mercenary leader’s. “You really think we wouldn’t have backup?”
Alicia stared away from the blinding truck, into the overhanging forest at its side and the thick brush at its back. Groups of men were emerging, all carrying rifles and machine pistols, and with faces painted black, wearing bulletproof vests and combat boots and backpacks full of spare ammo. The leader’s next comment gave her a flash of hope though.
“Kill them quiet. Lights have been illuminated all around the substation so the cops won’t figure this out too quick, but the sound of gunfire might help them.”
Alicia reached for her gun, but the mercs charged in a tight cluster. Knives appeared in their hands, wide military knives with serrated edges. Just one shot . . .
But they were too close. Dahl readied his hands and diverted two knife thrusts simultaneously. Alicia turned one lunge against another, making one man stab his partner through the wrist. Their entanglement stalled those coming behind.
Dahl barged another attacker to one side and then grabbed one of the truck’s vertical rear bars, heaving himself up and above the heads of the mercs. First, he kicked out, dropping another man. As more congregated though he launched himself with a great yell, slamming down on top of them. Bodies tumbled and sprawled. Legs and arms jerked and broke. Dahl twisted instantly upon landing, allowing no easy target, but causing maximum chaos.
Alicia parried and dodged, her vision a blur of knives and fists. The entire scene reflected in her eyes with a vivid intensity. It grew clear in her mind that this was everything the Pythians had been driving for—thwart this attack and their plan was in tatters. And maybe the entire organization along with it.
The downside was they were but a few soldiers, the very same problem that had been frustrating the team all along. The upside was that they were two of the best soldiers in the world.
Alicia caused chaos with every blink of an eye, every slight move. Legs and arms, even the bump of her hips, sent an unwary mercenary off balance. She plucked blade after blade from her opponents’ hands, depositing them in the next attacker. Fingers were broken and wrists fractured. She slipped past the side of the truck, then realized there was empty space at her back.
Bad move.
Dahl smashed heads left and right. Like Alicia he too wore a stab vest. Without it he would have been brought down four times already. The mercs were becoming more and more desperate as they saw the caliber of their adversaries. They stumbled, they dropped weapons, and Dahl maneuvered his way over to Alicia.
Another wave of mercs struck. Alicia approved of Dahl’s quick thinking and positioned herself so that they stood back to back with the truck at one side. Again the wave broke over them, flooding past, bleeding and gashed and dying, yet leaving nothing but bruises on the rocks that it hit. For a moment Alicia saw nothing but snarling faces and shaven skulls; not the sky, not the mountains, not the enormous facility all around them. Life was made up of sweat and screaming and blood, and she felt that it always had been. A knife thrust against her vest, bouncing to the side even as the bruise it formed screamed at her. A punch connected solidly with her forehead, shaking her brain, but she did not flinch. Fingernails scraped at her cheek. A knee rose into her abdomen. Her response was elbows and knees, boots, fists and forehead all flashing back and forth faster than a Ferrari paddle-shifted, faster than anything these mercenaries had ever seen. As more fell the rest found it harder to get close. Alicia saw an opportunity to draw her gun.
She slipped it free. A merc dived on it, desperate to keep the noise down. She relinquished her grip rather than pull free of Dahl. And so the two gladiators stood, back to back, jabbing and punching left and right, fencing with knives, as bloody as any two warriors who ever lived. When Alicia stumbled, Dahl sensed it as it happened and caught her under the arm. When the Swede took a mighty blow and staggered, Alicia performed a vicious, spinning elbow, devastating his opponent and barely taking her eyes off her own. Terrified yells could already be heard from inside the van. Alicia pressed hard against Dahl’s spine and stood her ground. Both used the van’s side to crack heads with. The intensity of the battle was so strong Alicia couldn’t even find a second to pose a wisecrack. Her arms were on fire, her muscles screaming. Even her reserves were beginning to dwindle.
Dahl breathed hard at her back. With a destructive effort he smashed three men against each other, cracking skulls, and stomped another. It was the last merc and a warning shout went up. Immediately, the back doors of the van swung open, but both Dahl and Alicia knew what to expect. Without pause they rolled and drew weapons, firing the instant they caught sight of a body. Their bullets struck legs. A man fell out face-first, his machine pistol hitting the grass at his side. A second went the same way, squirming as he dropped hard. Dahl rolled underneath the swinging doors, gun up, trigger finger at three-quarter pull weight.
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