Jack Archer (Book 3): Year Zero

by Taylor, Keith

  “Ted, what’s happening?” Karen demanded, looking down at the straps tied across her body.

  Krasinski ignored her. With a grunt of effort he shifted the truck into reverse gear, and he reached blindly into the footwell and pressed his hand against the gas pedal.

  Another shot showered them in glass shards as the windshield gave out, and Krasinski released the gas as he flinched with shock, reaching up to protect his head from the glass that rained down over them. The truck slowed, but it didn’t stop. It kept creeping backwards even as their attacker emptied his magazine into the engine.

  Krasinski moved on instinct. If he took the time to think he knew he’d freeze, so instead he lunged across Karen’s body, pulled the door handle and pushed it open as the truck reached the edge of the descending ramp. They were moving at a crawl now, slower than walking pace, but it was enough. With a loud thunk the rear wheels dropped off the edge of the ramp, and as it continued to descend Krasinski reached down and pressed hard on the gas, launching the truck back with a jolt before it ground to a halt, teetering on the ramp’s edge. For a moment it hung there, ignored by gravity, perfectly balanced on the sliver of steel.

  And then it fell.

  Krasinski grabbed hold of the wheel as his stomach flipped over. The back of the truck tipped out over clear air, so slowly that he feared it might tilt back to the other way, but after a moment of indecision gravity finally set its course. The truck fell backwards, its underside grinding along the ramp, and with a final bump the front tires bounced off the edge and out into space.

  “Ted!” Karen’s eyes were wide now. She was fully awake, and Emily’s muffled, terrified screams rang through the cab.

  “I’m sorry!” he yelled, dragging himself back into his seat. “It’s the only way!” He pressed his back against the driver’s door, eyes bulging with fear, and with all his strength he braced his feet against Karen’s side and pushed, straightening his legs.

  Karen screamed. She tried to fight back, to grab hold of something, anything to hold her steady, but Ted was determined. He kicked out at her hands as she tried to clutch the dash, and with a final violent kick he sent her and Emily tumbling out the passenger door and into open air.

  He could still hear her scream as the cord pulled taut against the steering wheel. With a sharp tug it broke free from the pack, and as the truck continued to fall he looked up through the shattered windshield and saw the canopy billow open, Karen and Emily suspended beneath it.

  The roar of the wind seemed to fade, and the fear seemed to drift away. It was over now, he knew. There was nothing more to be done. Just a few more seconds.

  Karen’s chute drifted gracefully through the air above him, green silk against a clear blue sky. Far above the canopy the Hercules lumbered on, the hulking, bulbous cargo plane forging towards a target Krasinski knew was now safe.

  Bailey couldn’t hurt anyone else. He’d failed, and soon enough everyone would know what he’d done.

  Krasinski closed his eyes, waiting for the final moment to come, but a moment later they snapped open at the sound of a roar so loud it beat the wind passing by the truck.

  Above him a missile screamed through the sky, impossibly fast, trailing behind it a white contrail that looked like a kite string against the blue. A moment later it met its target, and Krasinski watched open mouthed as the Hercules vanished in a billow of golden fire.

  He closed his eyes once more, and a grin flickered across his lips as he whispered his final words.

  “Ted Krasinski Day.”

  He was still smiling as the truck hit the ground.

  ΅

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  LIKE A PIG ON A SPIT

  EVERYONE IN THE Chinook held their breath as they watched the black dot fall away from the Hercules.

  Everyone but Jack. Jack didn’t care if a nuke was plummeting towards the ground. He wouldn’t care if the mushroom cloud engulfed him, if the fireball vaporized him, or the entire world. None of it mattered any more. If it was a world without Karen and his little girl, what was the point in it?

  He closed his eyes, waiting for the voice on the radio to confirm that the missile had reached its target.

  “T minus five seconds… four… three… two… one… intercept.”

  Jack felt numb. The steady thump of the rotors faded into the background, and around him the chatter of the pilot turned to white noise. MacAuliffe ordered the Chinook to turn north, to clear the area in case the bomb detonated on impact, but Jack didn’t give a damn.

  “Target destroyed. Repeat, target destroyed. Do you have visual confirmation?”

  MacAuliffe spoke into his headset. “Confirmed, major. Good job.”

  Good job.

  His family was gone, snatched away when they were almost in arm’s reach, and it was a good job. Jack felt rage and disgust swell in his chest. At MacAuliffe. At General Bailey. At the people at Nellis who’d pushed the launch button.

  But most of all he felt disgusted at himself. It seemed like a thousand years ago now, but it had only been this morning that he’d awoken in a comfortable motel bed. It had only been half a day since he’d taken a hot shower, padded across to the sheriff’s house and loaded down his plate with pancakes and bacon, relaxing over breakfast, convincing himself that an extra hour or two couldn’t possibly matter.

  I could have saved them.

  He could have kept driving through the night. He could have forced the sheriff to open the gas station, at gunpoint if necessary. He could have done a hundred things differently that might have shaved a little time off his journey, but instead he'd taken his sweet God damn time over breakfast and told himself that he could make it up on the road. And now his wife and daughter were—

  “Open chute! Sir, I have an open chute in the air!”

  “What?” Jack's eyes snapped open and he leaned into the cockpit, staring out the front window. “Where?”

  “Two o’clock.” The co-pilot pointed to a spot a couple thousand feet beneath the smudge of black on the sky that was all that remained of the Hercules. “Green canopy, just above the horizon.”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” MacAuliffe demanded. The large object that had fallen from the Hercules was still a few thousand feet in the air, still plummeting to the ground, but the parachute seemed to be slowly descending directly above it. “Hold this position,” MacAuliffe ordered, “and keep your eye on that damned chute. If that’s Bailey I’ll be damned if we're letting him get away.”

  “Yes, sir,” the co-pilot confirmed. “The… ummm… the bomb is at two thousand feet, sir.”

  Jack craned over the pilot’s seat to watch as the object neared the ground. If that really was Bailey hanging beneath the chute he wanted to see the fireball engulf him. He wanted to watch that bastard die like a pig on a spit, suspended above the fire he'd created.

  “Twelve hundred… eight hundred… four hundred… brace for turbulence.”

  Jack squinted his eyes, ready to turn away when the flash came, but there was nothing. At this distance the impact was barely even visible. The falling object simply vanished, kicking up a cloud of dust as it hit the barren ground.

  “Negative detonation, sir.”

  MacAuliffe frowned, staring at the distant puff drifting away on the breeze. It was obvious he'd been expecting an explosion, and now he didn't seem to know what to do. “OK, hold position for five minutes before approaching. I don’t want to get caught in the blast if it’s in laydown mode.” He turned to Jack, patting him on the shoulder. “We’re gonna get that bastard, don’t you worry. If that’s Bailey in the air you can look him in the eye before we take him in.”

  Jack nodded, staring at the chute as it drifted slowly across the clear blue sky. If that was Bailey he wanted to do more than look him in the eye. That wouldn't be nearly enough. He couldn't just watch the man who'd killed his wife and daughter get a set of handcuffs slapped on his wrists.

  He had to kill him.

  �
�

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  KAREN LET OUT a piercing scream as Krasinski kicked at her, pushing her inch by inch from the truck and into the clear air. She was still only half awake, confused and terrified, and she had no idea what was going on. No idea why he was doing this, or why Emily was bound and gagged, strapped to her chest. None of it made sense to her. All she knew – all she thought she knew – was that for some reason Krasinski was trying to kill her, and her only option was to fight back.

  But it was no use. She clawed at his legs and tried to grab hold of anything within reach, but he was too determined. He kicked out at her without mercy, crushing her fingers with the heel of his shoe when she managed to get purchase on part of the truck. She fought desperately to keep herself inside the truck, but it wasn’t long before the fight was lost. Her crushed fingers reached out and found nothing more to grab.

  The wind caught her as her body edged out through the door, and she found herself staring down at the ground thousands of feet below, a disorienting sight seen through tear filled eyes. With a final violent shove her legs slipped from the truck and she tumbled into the sky. She tried to twist in mid air. She frantically screamed as she turned and reached out, making one last grab at the door frame, but her fingertips only brushed against it as she fell away.

  And then… then she felt a sharp tug at her back. She tried to get a look at what was happening, but all she could see was a white rope spooling out behind her, an umbilical cord connecting her to the truck as it drifted further away with every second. She reached out to grab it, hoping to pull herself back in, but the moment her first wrapped around the cord it pulled taut with a snap, and she jerked forward so violently it felt as if she'd been kicked in the neck.

  With a billowing whumph the parachute whipped out above her, and before she knew what was happening she felt her fall suddenly arrested. Her head sunk to her chest, and Emily hung like a rag doll in front of her as the chute yanked them from gravity’s embrace.

  ‘Ngh!”

  The air was squeezed from her lungs as the straps of the chute cut into her chest, and in the thin air she struggled to find her breath. She was in agony as she gasped for air, but finally she understood what was happening. Finally she understood that Ted was trying to save her, not hurt her.

  With numb fingers she pried at the knot he'd tied in Emily’s gag, and when it came away she shied away from the piercing scream.

  “It’s alright, pumpkin,” she gasped, trying and failing to keep her voice calm. “We’re safe now. We'll be on the ground soon.”

  Emily squirmed in her straps, screaming and struggling as if she might somehow be able to escape, and for a moment Karen was filled with dread. What if Ted hadn’t clipped them in right? What if Emily’s wriggling sent her slipping out of the pack, tumbling to the ground far below?

  She grabbed her daughter around the waist and held tight, so tight that she couldn’t scream any longer, and with her free hand she ran her fingers across the thick black straps until she found the heavy duty steel clips. With a relieved sigh she pulled on the clips and found they were securely fastened.

  Emily gasped for air when Karen finally released her vice-like grip, crying with pain, her ribs squeezed almost to breaking point.

  “I’m so sorry, pumpkin,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you but—”

  Her voice was drowned out by a roar above them. Her head snapped up, but the green silk obscured half the sky. All she could see was an orange glow through the canopy, almost as bright as a second sun, and for a moment she was confused.

  We took the nuke off the plane. How is it exploding above us?

  The answer came a moment later. Trailing thick black smoke the nose of the Hercules broke past the edge of the chute. It arced down towards the ground, tumbling end on end as a fragment of wing followed it, its twin rotors still spinning uselessly.

  Karen braced herself, shielding Emily with her arms as the debris showered down from the sky above. She was certain they’d be hit. The sky seemed to be so filled with steel rain that it was only a matter of time before some of it would tear through the canopy. She gripped hold of the straps at her shoulders and clenched her teeth, waiting for the telltale flapping sound that would tell her the canopy had been holed, but it didn't come. All around them the debris fell, but somehow the chute remained intact.

  Emily tried to turn around in her harness, panicked. “Mommy, what’s happening?”

  “I’m right here pumpkin,” Karen soothed, wrapping her arms around her daughter. “I’m right here, and we’re safe.” She looked down at the ground just as the truck reached it, and from above she saw nothing but a puff of dust. “Ted saved us.”

  She looked up at the suspension lines above her, and with a stretch she reached for the control lines and sent the chute into a swoop to the left. She didn’t know if the nuke could survive an impact like that without damage, but the last thing she wanted to do was come down anywhere near the truck. With another gentle tug of a line she straightened up, sending them in a glide with the wind toward the south.

  Something was poking Karen’s chest, somewhere beneath the straps of the chute. Emily’s wriggling seemed to have dislodged it, and now it shifted further up until a sharp edge pricked at her throat. She reached beneath the straps and carefully plucked it out.

  It was Krasinski’s envelope. She tightened her grip on it, terrified of letting it float away, and she flipped it over to find a passage scrawled on the back.

  Karen, get this to Maj. Gen. Holden, Nellis AFB. Tell him to forward it to the Joint Chiefs right away. On page four you’ll find the accounts for Parris Island. They’ll find the link to Gen. Bailey if they dig deep enough.

  Good luck. Try to make sure the news runs an old picture of me with a full head of hair.

  Karen smiled, tucking the envelope tight between her chest and the harness, where there was no danger of the wind snatching it away.

  The ground was coming up fast now, rocky and rough in burnt orange and gray. She grabbed hold of the brake lines and pulled, tugging the rear of the chute down and sending them into a slow glide to the ground.

  She'd never made a tandem jump before. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep to her feet with Emily’s weight pulling her forward, and she knew it would be especially difficult now that her daughter had noticed the ground approaching. She wriggled in her harness, shrieking with fear as the ground rushed past beneath them, and Karen realized she had no choice but to take the hit.

  She lifted her legs, and with a final sharp tug on the brake lines she felt her butt hit the ground, bouncing on the hard earth and taking the speed out of their glide. Emily’s legs rested in Karen’s lap as she hit the ground again, this time scraping along a rocky patch, but this time she didn’t bounce back into the air. The chute collapsed around them as they rolled over and over, binding them up in the lines and shrouding them in darkness.

  Finally they came to rest, battered and bruised but alive. Karen lay on her side, her arms wrapped protectively around her daughter, and for a moment she held her breath, waiting for the pain to announce itself.

  “Are we… are we on the ground?” Emily’s disembodied voice meekly called out through the canopy.

  Karen took a hesitant breath. She couldn’t feel any broken bones. A few inches of road rash on her ass, maybe, but nothing that would stop her walking out of there.

  “Yes, pumpkin,” she replied, breaking into a laugh as she unclipped Emily from the harness. “We’re on the ground.”

  Emily sniffed.

  “Can... can we stay on the ground?”

  ΅

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CAN WE GO HOME NOW?

  JACK WAS THE first out of the Chinook, running ahead of MacAuliffe as soon as the door opened. He heard the colonel yelling behind him, warning him to stop, but he ignored the order. He didn’t owe the man anything.

  The green silk caught in the bree
ze, billowing out loosely from a body bound up beneath it, and as he approached he could see that whoever was in there was struggling to fight their way free. Jack felt his fists bunch, preparing himself for what came next. He guessed that even a Marine close to retirement would be able to beat him in a fair fight, and he knew he'd have to take the general by surprise if he hoped to take him down.

  He slowed as he approached the canopy, ready to launch himself at whatever came out, and he was so focused on it that he was taken completely by surprise when MacAuliffe appeared out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground.

  “No!” yelled the colonel. “We do this by the book, damn it!”

  Jack swore at him, his face caked in dust where his cheek pressed against the ground. MacAuliffe drew his pistol and held it aloft in his free hand, pinning Jack with the other, and they both watched and waited as the struggling figure reached the edge of the silk.

  The wind caught it, and with a sudden gust the figure was revealed.

  “Karen?” He felt MacAuliffe’s weight vanish from above him, and he pulled himself to his knees. He couldn't believe what he was seeing “Karen!”

  She looked dazed, limping out from beneath the canopy, her eyes casting about, but her attention snapped to the sound of her name.

  “Jack?” she mumbled, disbelieving the evidence of her eyes. “How… how are you…?”

  Jack didn’t wait to answer. He bolted from the ground like a sprinter, covering the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and he took Karen in his arms with the desperation and gratitude of a man rescued after years trapped on a desert island. He held her tight even as the chute caught the wind and tried to pull them off their feet, and he only let go when he felt an insistent tug at his leg.