Armand walked through the expansive cargo plane covered in black carpet. He entered his office and swept his eyes over the glass desk with a computer and three screens on its surface. An open bar sat on the port side with stools. Black leather couches tucked in a corner with the pentagram on each headrest came with a matching coffee table.
Armand sat behind his desk and turned on the computer, all three screens lit up. His hacker team broke into all the major cities street cameras still operating and streamed the videos real time to his office. Each screen displayed several active videos in little boxes. To his dismay, New York City fought on and repelled his soldiers. Washington, D.C. folded over like soggy bread. Los Angeles, weak from the first attack, collapsed like an old drunk.
The Satanist cared less about Heaven’s fall. God and Satan fought a battle he didn’t want to get entangled in. His focus remained on earth, an easier goal to conquer. He wanted things to return to normal, a satanic normal. The people needed to accept Satan without all the fuss and fight. They needed to brand or tattoo the three sixes on their foreheads and the war would end. Their constant fighting could not avoid the inevitable.
Armand shook his head and pressed a button on his desk. A steward knocked on his office door and poked his head in. “Jesse, can you make me a ham sandwich please? With extra mayo.”
“Yes, sir.” the steward slipped out the office to fulfill his master’s request.
Armand checked his bank accounts and they remained in the billions even though his war investment dented his funds. He checked his emails, several world leaders wanted to talk to him. CNN requested an interview along with other news agencies. Still a few world leaders, despite Satan’s arrival, refused to accept his rule within the new world order.
A flash caught his eyes on the far left screen. He studied the top box on the screen then tapped it with a finger, enlarging the video. His stomach knotted. “Daisy Lane and Juggernaut,” he said to the cool air.
Anger swept through him, he balled his hands into fists. He thought Oni captured them and took them away for execution. They should not be alive, or at least not in Houston, Texas fighting his Black Army, an army he spent a few billion dollars to train and equip.
The steward knocked and swung open the door. He carried in the sandwich on a black plate and set it on Armand’s desk and left the room. Armand’s hunger fled once his eyes settled on the video. He drummed his fingers on the desk and watched the two angels cut down his men.
He pulled out his smartphone and thumbed in an instant dial number. The phone on the other end rang three times, a slurred voice answered. “David, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“David, this is Armand wakeup.”
“Hello, Armand.”
“Do you have any active nukes?” Silence hung on the line for a few seconds. “Don’t get soft on me now, Mr. President. I asked a question.”
“Yes.”
Armand frowned and glared at the two angels, and his men who died from their flashy swords. “I need a big favor from you,” he said and laid out to David Brown what he wanted. He then thumbed off the cell and dialed another number.
“Johnny Chang,” a musical voice said on the other end.
“Johnny, start killing off the angel’s families, if they’re still alive,” he said and ended the connection.
Armand zoomed in on the video with the two angels. “Ok my feathered friends. If you don’t get the hint, you will after this,” he said to the screen.
17
President David Brown groaned in silence as Armand laid out in detail what he wanted. He understood he needed to exercise a deep evil, however he never expected this. A fresh fear swept over his soul and his fingers lighted on the three sixes burned into his forehead.
“Can you get that done, buddy,” Armand said in an even voice.
“Yes,” David said. He fought to control the sudden dizziness in his head. His bedroom desk started spinning until he swallowed three deep breaths. The desk evened. The dizziness vanished.
Once David ended the call he slipped from his bedroom and called up his security team. He dressed himself in a black Devicorp sweat suit and went to the Oval Office and sat down behind the desk. His eight-man security team entered the office.
“We have them, sir.”
“Well, Larry, bring those guys in here,” he said.
Four security team members left the office and returned with two older men shackled in leg irons and belly chains. The security team stopped them before David’s desk.
David clapped his hands and leaned forward in his chair. “I need a nuclear bomb,” he said. The two men exchanged glances with each other, their faces paled.
“Ok,” David said and pointed a finger at the two men. “I’ll make it easier on you two. How can I get one?”
The man with the more wrinkled face shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t.”
David chuckled. “You guys forget that I was the vice president?” He stood from his chair and came around the desk and sat on it. “Where’s the football?”
Wrinkled face spat at David, the phlegmy spittle splashed on David’s forehead and oozed down the middle six. “Go to hell you black bastard.”
David used his sleeve to pat away the yellow spittle from his fresh mark. “That might get infected you, asshole. Guys, get him on his knees.” He waited as two security men forced the man to his old knees.
David approached the man and placed a hand on his bald head covered in age spots. “I asked you a question, Charlie. Once again, where’s the football?”
Charlie gazed up at David. “I…don’t…know.”
David pulled a Devicorp ink pen from his pocket and jammed it into Charlie’s right eye. The man howled in pain, the chains rattled as he jerked away. Blood oozed from the wound. “Where’s the football, Charlie?”
“She has the football,” a voice said. “But there’s a backup.”
Charlie moaned. “You coward, how could you tell him.”
David stared at the other man. “There’s a second one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“In your desk.”
David turned and looked back at his desk, heat poured through his face. “All those presidential secrets.” He moved to the desk and ignored General Charles Luis moans. “Where in the desk, Tim? I’ve been around this desk for the past three years.”
“I can unlock the door,” Tim said.
“Unshackle one hand,” David said. He waited for the security to unshackle the unwounded general. “Come on over, Tim.”
Tim shuffled over to the big desk, the chains around his ankles clinking. He moved behind the desk and bent over, fiddled with a drawer and pulled out a metallic suitcase and laid it on the desk.
David laughed and placed his hands on his hips and neared the suitcase. “I have one code, Tim, and you have the other.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Damn air force generals. You guys are way too smart,” David said and patted the man’s shoulder. He flipped up a small lid on the closed case to reveal a digital keypad. He punched in his code and stepped aside.
General Tim Knicks punched in his code. A metallic click erupted inside the case. With a fast hand he opened the case, dipped his hand inside and pulled out a .380 automatic.
“Shit,” David said and dove towards Charles who remained on his knees deep in pain. The first bullet cracked over David’s right ear, caught Charles in the forehead and snapped it back. A tiny red hole appeared over the general’s left eye. Charles’s body bent back horizontal to the floor like a gymnast, a gurgle rose from his throat.
More shots rang out in the office. Tim hitched up and jerked, he fired off an errant shot. The bullet lodged itself in the presidential desk before he collapsed to the floor.
David swallowed. His hands and arms trembled from the gunfire. The fast experience angered him as two security staff helped him to his feet. “I didn’t know a gun was in there.”
“You okay, sir?”
David nodded. He thought he would shake out of his own skin. “I’m fine, Jacobs.”
Jacobs lifted his hand and held a gun out to David, butt first. He glanced back at Charles who remained in a backbend with the gurgle stuck in his throat.
“Sir,” Jacobs said.
David took the gun. He never shot anyone before. He pointed the gun at Charles’s chest with a shaky hand. He slipped his finger around the trigger and pulled. A crisp pop came from the gun. A brief red flash and the single bullet punctured the man’s heart and silenced him.
The president wrinkled his nose at the funky cordite smell and handed the gun back to Jacobs. He walked to the suitcase and slid it toward him. He peeked at Tim’s dead body stretched out on the floor. The man stared back at David with glassy fish eyes. “You guys get them out of here please. And close the door behind you. I need to be alone.”
The security team carried the two bodies from the office and shut the heavy doors. He flipped open the suitcase to reveal a keyboard with a tiny screen built above the black keys.
David huffed and cracked his knuckles. He stared into the open suitcase and pressed the green power button near the keyboard. The screen turned on with a blue glow. With shaky fingers he picked up a tiny cardboard book tucked underneath the keyboard. He flipped through the cardboard pages for the state locator codes where the nukes sat in their silos.
Armand wanted Houston blown into dust for Daisy and Juggernaut’s interference. And just when David thought Satan killed them all, the resilient little bastards popped out the cracks like cockroaches. He found the code he hunted for and typed them. The numbers slid across the screen in red.
“Inactive,” he said.
David stuck out his tongue and bit, the sharp pain woke him and motivated him to do acts he hated to do. He went through three more locations and came up with dead silos until he found an active nuclear silo in Ohio. Next he typed in Houston, Texas. The grid coordinates for the target transferred to the nuclear bomb onboard computer. He licked his lips and struck the enter key.
“Now, let’s put these feathered freaks to the test.”
18
Patricia Jones humped in the sewers for two miles. In her first mile she slogged through polluted waist high water thick with human offal. On her second mile, the water receded, leaving her on solid ground clumped in filth. A few feet ahead weak light poured from a manhole cover above. She stopped below the off white rays and dropped her bags.
Patricia climbed the metal ladder slicked with sweaty rungs and pushed aside the heavy metal cover.
She poked her head out and found herself on the Virginia border. Washington, D.C. sat to her north and to her south the Virginia woods loomed across I-95. The freeway stretched before her, jammed with a jumble of dead cars and trucks. The Capitol building rose above the wilted oaks and spruces, its once white dome a round shadow she now considered a treacherous symbol.
Patricia climbed down into the sewer, retrieved her bags and hauled herself out the manhole and into the cold air with heavy gray clouds above her. She shivered from the wet pants she wore. The clouds resembled smoke from a heavy fire, an ash gray created by a perpetual furnace located in a darker dimension. The Virginia air lost its sweet aroma and now smelled like burnt almonds.
The former presidential advisor gathered her bags, headed towards I-95, weaving her way through the abandoned vehicles. She stepped over a guardrail when an object caught her eyes. A blue cloth with half a star sewn against it lay limp next to a deflated car tire. She bent and with a thumb and forefinger seized the material at its corner and pulled. Up from the muddy pool came an American flag, wet and bullet riddled. Its edges frayed but not enough to disturb the stars and stripes.
Patricia spread the flag on a car hood. She stared at it for a moment before folding the flag into a neat triangle and sliding it into her backpack. Soon, she figured, the flag would come in handy.
She didn’t want to get caught out in the open loaded down with gear. She broke from the freeway, bounded up a small hill and headed straight for the Virginia wood line at a full run until she vanished within the dark pines.
Patricia sought to put distance between her and D.C. Her lungs burned with air tainted in smoke and what she thought to be a coppery tang, akin to dried blood. She shook off the thought and ran on until her legs cramped and her back ached from the heavy load she carried.
From her bag an alarm erupted with a high wail, a piercing shriek she feared would call Satan himself. The alarm grew, bouncing off the pines and oaks within the woods. With two shoulder shrugs she dropped her bag to the ground and unzipped it, yanking out a silver case from where the racket emitted. Her quick fingers flipped up a small panel on the case, she punched in a few numbers on the keypad.
A gentle click came from within the case and she opened it.
Patricia’s brown eyes widened as fear sent tingles down her body. “Who launched a nuke?” She hit a switch to kill the alarm.
Her eyes swept over the controls tucked inside the small case. Raymond passed Little Betty to her after they discovered Brown’s treachery. She turned on the screen flashing with the letters VPOTUS in red.
“David fucking Brown must have activated a warhead.” She lifted the small screen, pulled out the package book tucked underneath and flipped through cardboard pages until she found the deactivation codes.
Patricia wiped sweat from her forehead and read through the instructions. Once she found the code she typed it in on the keyboard and hit the enter button. “How can this be an MX missile, I thought they were dismantled. Why would he do this?”
The MX missile President David Brown launched from its Ohio station shot up into the air after receiving its Houston, Texas orders. The device raced over once golden wheat fields with a three hundred kiloton payload. Within minutes the rocket propulsion system flared out. The nuclear bomb faltered and plowed to earth and landed in another large wheat field fifty miles away from its launch site.
David Brown frowned once an alarm wailed from the box. He turned off the alarm and studied the screen. “Deactivated. Who did that?”
He picked up the thick booklet and fingered through the pages and found what he looked for. Once again he typed on the keyboard. The word POTUS appeared on the screen. He stuck out his tongue and bit down hard, pain and anger woke up inside him, blue and orange spots danced before his eyes.
“Raymond is dead. How the hell can he be eating tri-tip sandwiches with Jesus and killing my nukes at the same time.” David knew for sure two MX missiles remained active from the deactivated twenty-nine decommissioned in 2005. He just burned the first one off. He activated four nukes and sent them off. One went to Los Angeles, one to New York and the other to Soledad, California. He followed the three training nukes up with a live warhead to Houston.
Once again David waited. It took several minutes to deactivate a nuke in mid-flight. If the Houston bomb didn’t hit, he considered himself a dead man.
19
Patricia sat back on the ground after she deactivated the weapon and wondered why David fired off a nuke to Houston, Texas. His act made no sense to her. How evil could they get? Too many already died due to the war. Did he want to destroy the entire world?
She tapped a finger on Little Betty’s black plastic inner liner. If David launched the first nuke he might activate another. As the thought cleared her mind, another alarm blared.
Patricia killed the alarm and proceeded to deactivate the nuclear missile until three more alarms sprang up. She silenced all three alarms and looked at the missile cue on the screen. Sweat beaded her forehead. She ran her fingers over the keys and flipped through pages in the booklet. She deactivated the next two nukes with two others still in the sky.
A low beep dragged out from the box like a heart monitor flatlining. Her mouth dried. The bomb information came up on screen along with its target.
The first missile headed for L.A. fell shor
t and plowed into the Grand Canyon, striking a canyon wall, breaking into pieces. The second device Patricia Jones deactivated landed on a New York City harbor, bounced off and splashed into the Hudson River’s dark waters.
The last two struck home. The Soledad missile detonated one hundred feet above ground with a small explosion strong enough to blast a hole through a local bank’s roof. The training missile gave one person a non-lethal heart attack.
Houston suffered. A silent white light flashed over the city followed by an incredible heat and noise. Buildings powdered, people disintegrated and cars, trucks and other objects lifted up into the bright glare. A thirty thousand foot mushroom cloud punched up into the sky like a bloodied and bruised fist. Every small town outside Houston disappeared in a hot nuclear cloud.
Superheated winds swept out in thick rings from the MX impact and every object animated or inanimate burned to black cinders. The ground rocked. The cloud rolled heavy and thick into the air. Its color transforming from orange, then to red and black. A rumble lifted up as if a million thunderclouds converged upon the city, blue electricity streaked down from the mushroom in broken fingers.
“Targets destroyed,” said a female computerized voice from Little Betty. “Targets destroyed. Target destroyed. Target destroyed…”
Patricia pounded a fist against the ground until it became sore and bloody. She wanted to scream and tear David Brown apart. How could someone who swore to defend the United States destroy the country with such callousness?
She swiped tears away from her eyes and fought to clear her head. Other nuclear bombs sat ready for launch, not as powerful as the MX but strong enough to kill more people. Her eyes narrowed, she realized the Pentagon housed the central control for all United States nuclear weapons.
Patricia set her jaw. Another beep drew out from Little Betty. Its battery died. No way to track nukes now, her thoughts railed. She shook her head. A humorless chuckle escaped her lips.
Angels of War Battle of Archangels (Book 3) (Angels of War Trilogy) Page 7
