by James Hunt
Grimes nodded, reaching into the inside of his suit jacket. The motion triggered both twins to jump, though when Grimes only removed a stack of photographs, they ended their sudden recoil. He flipped through the pictures, neither smiling nor frowning, maintaining the stoic expression he’d learned to master after twenty years with the CIA. He set the stack of photographs down on the desk and, keeping his front toward both of them, took a step back.
The twins exchanged a look, and then both crept toward the pictures. It was the male that was the first to collapse to his knees and cry. “You fucking bastard!”
The female managed to sift through all of the pictures, stopping on the photograph in which her mother’s brains were spread out on her living room carpet. But when she saw their younger sister, her cheeks pale and her shirt stained red around the stomach where she had been stabbed, that was when her own tears fell.
The male charged, dragging the chair and desk his arm was tethered to, and Grimes reached inside his jacket and removed his standard-issue 9mm pistol. He fired and the twin dropped to the floor, the hole in his chest bubbling up with blood that stained his shirt, the excess dripping to the carpet. Two gasping breaths, and the man’s life ended.
Grimes aimed the pistol at the second twin, who remained shell-shocked, tears streaming down her face. She sniffled then wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up. Her eyes were red and glassy, her face still distorted in grief. “This is what you always planned, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Grimes tilted his head to the side, examining her. He stepped closer until the end of his gun pressed against the side of the woman’s head. “And you thought you were smart enough to get past the four walls of this basement that I put you in. But you want to know the truth?” Grimes knelt so he could look her in the eye. “You’ve been living in a box your whole life. Four walls is all you’ve ever had. Your freedom, the choices you’ve made, it’s all been an illusion.” Grimes glanced around to the rest of the room, then back to his captive. “This room was the realest moment of your life.” He stood, keeping the gun pressed against the woman’s head. “I gave that to you. And now I’m going to take it away.” Grimes squeezed the trigger, and the bullet sliced through the twin’s skull, spraying bone, brain, and blood across the floor.
With both of them dead, Grimes grabbed the device the twins had made, stepped out the door, and then sealed it shut. He scanned his thumb over the door lock one last time then entered a three-digit code. He ascended the basement steps to the first floor, and halfway up, he felt the slight tremor from the detonation, which scorched everything inside to bits and pieces.
Grimes kept the small black device tucked under his arm, and when he got into his car, leaving the shell of the building in his rearview mirror, for the first time in two years, he felt free.
Mack crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. He’d stared at Sarah for the past three minutes without a single word. Both Sarah and Bryce remained still in their chair. It wasn’t until Sarah leaned over the armrest and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Do you think he had a stroke?” that Mack finally spoke up.
“You realize that you lost both the computer chip and a highly important intelligence target?”
Sarah tossed her hands up in the air. “Hey, I didn’t kill him!”
“Do we know the shooter?” Mack asked.
“Not yet,” Bryce answered. “I’m working on some different angles from the satellite, but whoever it was concealed themselves well.”
The leather from the chair squeaked as Sarah inched forward. “And for the record I just want everyone to know that I showed some pretty amazing restraint.”
“You beat Vince within an inch of his life,” Bryce said.
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“Both of you,” Mack said. “Shut. Up.” The boss rose from his chair and planted both of his meaty hands on his desk as he leaned over. “Where are we at with tracking the chip.”
Bryce opened his laptop. “I searched through the video of the mission feed and found that Vince handed the chip off to another associate on his way through the crowds in Cairo. That associate happens to work for the Islamic State, and I’ve been tracking his movements.”
“Where is he headed?” Mack asked, the familiar grimace etched on his face.
Bryce turned the computer around and pointed to the blinking dot on the screen. “Hong Kong.”
“That’s as good a place as any to detonate a nuclear weapon,” Mack said. “Priority one right now is the bomb. Sarah, gear up for Hong Kong. Bryce, you let me know if you get any hits on the shooter that took out Vince. Let’s go.” Bryce snapped his laptop shut and left, but when Sarah got up Mack stopped her. “Hill, you stay.”
When the door shut and locked them inside, Sarah didn’t like where this was going. “I don’t suppose this is about a surprise promotion or raise?”
Mack clasped his hands together and leaned forward on his desk. “I know the past two years haven’t been easy for you. The loss of someone close never leaves you.”
It wasn’t like Mack to turn all mushy, and that only made Sarah’s stomach twist harder. “What’s going on, Mack?”
“I just don’t want you to forget about the impact you have here, and around the world. As painful as it is for me to say out loud, you’re a valuable asset.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “You mean it?” She clutched her hands together and scooted to the edge of her seat. “Do I get a prize or anything?”
“No.” And just like that, the old boss was back. “Now, get out of my office. You have a plane to catch.”
Sarah turned to leave, a coy smile across her face. “Yes, sir.”
9
Sarah watched the lights of Hong Kong pass below her as the plane descended to an airfield on the mainland. The moment she stepped off, Bryce directed her toward the nearest safe house. It was an unassuming shack in what most people would call a neighborhood that was a work in progress. Sarah had a more poignant phrase. “This place is a dump.”
“Then it should feel just like home for you,” Bryce said.
“Hey, I’ll have you know I’ve recently redecorated my place.” Sarah ran a finger against the rotting wood of the front wall near the door and stepped inside. No furniture, and a few crates stacked in sporadic piles around the floor made the place look more like a homeless squat than a GSF safe house. She ran her hands along the rear wall, her palm catching on a few splinters. “I finally put up that Def Leppard poster I got for my birthday.”
“The one from three years ago?” Bryce asked.
“Better late than never.” A small bump rose over one of the panels of wood, and Sarah flattened her palm against it. A beam of white light scanned her hand from fingertip to the base of her palm, and the floor rumbled as the back wall slid away like a sliding screen door, revealing an armory stacked with assault rifles, grenades, and any and every gadget Sarah could have hoped for. “Merry Christmas to me.”
“You’ll need to grab a few things to dismantle the bomb. From the schematics we have from the Toronto job, it looks pretty straightforward.”
Sarah grabbed a black backpack and loaded it up with an M-16 and extra magazines of ammo, climbing gloves, a blanket that blocked plutonium radiation, and a high-powered iodine liquid to help fight any radiation she might be exposed to.
“You’ll need a tool kit to dismantle the bomb,” Bryce added. “It should be wrapped in a black cloth the size of a roll of toilet paper.”
With one strap from the pack over her right shoulder, Sarah spied the kit and added it to her supplies. She started to exit but then stopped abruptly, a small silver box catching her eye in the bottom corner of the armory. “Ooo, shiny.”
She dropped the pack and reached for the container. When she lifted the lid of the box and saw the chromed pistol inside, a chorus of angels broke out in song in her head. “Oh. My. God.” The pistol was roughly the same size as her Colt but rounded over all of the edges like
something out of a science fiction movie. It was light for a pistol of its size, and when she placed the handle in her palm she felt it hum. “I want it.”
“Looks like a new prototype from R&D,” Bryce said. “It’s a type of miniaturized rail gun that uses a high-powered laser. Completely rechargeable and never runs out of ammunition so long as you’re in an oxygen-rich environment. I’ll send the manual to your display.”
Pages of text scrolled down Sarah’s forearm, which she promptly ignored while she practiced her aim. “It doesn’t have any sight.” She curled her finger around the trigger, aimed for one of the crates, and squeezed. The recoil of the blast knocked her flat on her back as a solid beam of white light connected with the wooden crate and turned it into nothing more than a pile of toothpicks.
Sarah lifted her head, and her gaze shifted from the crater in the floor that was at least a foot in diameter to the pistol still in her hand. “Cool.”
“Just try not to kill yourself with that,” Bryce said. “Or any civilians for that matter.”
“Hey,” Sarah said, tossing the weapon into the bag and then zipping it up. “I’m the epitome of caution.” She flung the pack over her shoulder and headed for the door. “Let’s go stop a nuclear bomb from killing millions, shall we?”
With the help of the GSF satellite, Bryce managed to track the radiation signals from the weapon to one of Hong Kong Island’s busiest streets. “The device is hidden somewhere between Central and Sheung Wan.”
Lights, smells, sounds, people—the metropolis that was Hong Kong was a clash of East meets West. Street peddlers intercepted tourists and locals that passed by. A grill sizzled with skewers of meat, and Sarah fished out a few dollars and snagged one on the run, devouring it in three bites. “Why do terrorists always want to blow up cool places?” A street performer juggled six bowling pins while sitting on a unicycle as the crowd cheered its approval. “I mean, just look at that guy!”
“They just don’t share your affinity for juggling and meat on sticks,” Bryce said.
Sarah belched. “What a shame.”
Halfway down Central, Bryce received a stronger signal heading west. Sarah took her next right, and when she saw the monstrous building, she didn’t need Bryce to tell her where the bomb was planted. “If I were a bunch of assholes that wanted to ruin people’s lives, that’s where I would be.”
The outside of the convention center was packed. Huge banners ran across the top of the building, letting everyone know of the comic convention running that weekend. Thousands of visitors funneled in and out of the large glass doors.
A woman dressed in nothing more than a red bikini complete with devil horns, tail, and pitchfork walked by, with the rest of her body covered in green paint. Sarah arched an eyebrow. “Kinky.”
“Yeah, the signal’s the strongest coming from the convention,” Bryce said. “And if the bomb is already there, you can bet there are people still hanging around to make sure it goes off.”
Sarah shouldered her way to the entrance, snatching a lanyard off an unsuspecting convention goer, and flashed it to what passed as the convention security. “Didn’t even check my bag. Looks like the bastards will be armed.” She felt the presence of her Colts inside the zipped-up Kevlar jacket and slid her arm into the backpack’s second loophole, securing it tightly to her back. When the fireworks started, she wanted to make sure she didn’t lose it.
“There are too many heat signatures in the building for me to single out any bad guys,” Bryce said, his voice slightly exasperated. “You’ll have to do some groundwork.”
“Way ahead of you.” Sarah glanced upward to the overhanging rafters in the warehouse-like floor of the convention center’s main hall. The beams were narrow but just wide enough for someone to lie flat atop one without being seen. In total, there were at least half a dozen snipers. She followed their line of sight and noticed it was centralized toward the middle of the floor.
Sarah wiggled her fingertips, the adrenaline building through her veins the closer she moved to the intersection where, in a matter of minutes, bullets would be flying. “We need to clear the convention hall.” She glanced around to the thousands of visitors. “They’ll be able to bring down at least a hundred before the place clears the moment they realize I’m here to ruin the party.”
“Fire alarm?” Bryce asked. “I might be able to hack the emergency system.”
“No, that’ll take too long.” Sarah stopped, pulling off to the side of one of the aisles at the end of a section of booths, letting traffic pass. “I just need to keep their focus on me.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Bryce said dryly.
Sarah reached into her jacket just as a young woman stopped and grabbed Sarah’s arm. The girl was dressed in a convention T-shirt, wearing a pair of thick glasses over her face, and sporting pigtails. She let out a low “ohhhh” and then smiled. “Who are you supposed to be?”
Sarah unzipped her jacket, exposing the pair of Colts in their holsters. “Agent Sarah Hill.”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve heard of her before.”
“That’s because I’m pretty good at my job.” Sarah removed both pistols, gazing up at the ceiling.
The girl’s eyes widened. “Wow, they look so real!”
Sarah leaned in close. “You might want to cover your ears for this next part.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna shoot some bad guys.” Sarah raised both pistols to the rafters, bringing the first two snipers within shooting distance, and squeezed the triggers. The shells ejected, and before the pieces of brass clanged against the floor, the young woman, along with nearly everyone else in the convention center, burst into a frenzy that sent everyone toward the doors.
While the crowds dispersed, Sarah quickly aligned her shots with the rest of the snipers above, rotating her aim between the shooters, keeping their attention until the convention hall was emptied.
The snipers opened fire on Sarah, and she darted between the narrow aisles of the main hall. Merchandise, comics, displays, and all of the other nerd paraphernalia that she’d had no idea even existed acted as cover while she sprinted to evade the gunfire.
With space in the center of the convention floor spreading as the inhabitants fled toward the exits, Sarah kept both pistols aimed to the rafters above at all times. The snipers were forced to either stay behind the narrow slivers of cover or take the barrage of bullets that Sarah unleashed.
“See the nuke anywhere?” Bryce asked.
The recoil from both Colts kept Sarah’s arms constantly vibrating as she dodged the hail of bullets from the rafters. “Little busy!” She leapt over a table, her boots knocking over a cluster of plastic dolls that Bryce probably had in his own apartment if Grace hadn’t made him get rid of them, and then skidded into a hallway that provided a piece of concrete cover near the bathrooms. She discarded the empty magazines and reloaded.
“The inside of the building looks clear aside from your pest problems in the ceiling,” Bryce said. “I should be able to narrow down the radiation signal now that all of that body heat is out of the building. Oh, and cops are on the way.”
Sarah groaned. “When was the last time you gave me any good news?” The slides on her Colts pushed forward, and she reloaded.
“So now would be a bad time to ask for a souvenir?” Bryce asked, his tone childishly sheepish.
The heavy sniper rounds thumped into the wall and floor near Sarah’s boots, and she tucked her legs farther under cover. “Yeah. Now’s a bad time.” She rolled left, aiming into the rafters and this time connecting with one of the snipers. The bullet entered his hip, and in the blinding moment of pain, he rolled, falling the hundred-plus feet from the ceiling to the floor, the screaming ending with a noticeable splat.
“Cleanup on aisle three!” Sarah peered out from under the cover once more, her breath still labored from the prior run, but the ring of a gunshot and the subsequent thump in the wall near
her head pulled her back. Sarah unzipped the pack, noticing a wet patch at the bottom. When she peered inside, the iodine vial had ruptured. “Ah, crap.” She removed a cluster of smoke canisters, pulled the tops on at least a dozen, and then tossed them out onto the convention floor, the hazy grey smoke drifting outward and upward.
Sarah removed the mini rail gun from her bag and smiled. “Let’s see how these bastards handle this bad boy.” Under the cover of smoke, Sarah sprinted from the hallway and immediately aimed the laser pistol to the first steel beam on which she spotted a sniper.
The hot burst of white light jettisoned from the end of the pistol and connected to the thick steel beam above, scorching the metal to a liquid, crumbling the tress that it was attached to—and the sniper—to the floor.
The other snipers fired blindly into the smoke, their shots thick with desperation, as Sarah easily maneuvered through the low clouds of cover, picking off the enemy one by one. But by the time Sarah had rid herself of all of them save two, the smoke canisters had run their course.
Both snipers retreated to the sides of the roof, chasing Sarah on the floor as she fought to take aim while evading their shots among the wreckage of what remained on the convention floor. She skidded around the corner of an aisle and took shelter behind one of the few concrete walls on the open convention floor. She waved her hand to disperse some of the lingering smoke and glanced to her right.
A large cardboard display had been erected awkwardly near a comic book stand, and between the cracks of whatever manga monster it was supposed to resemble, Sarah saw the distinct edges of metal and the glowing light of what had to be a timer. “I think I’ve found the bomb.”
“Let me know when you can get close enough to defuse it and I’ll upload the instructions to your display,” Bryce said.
Sarah craned her neck around the corner of the wall and was immediately met with a barrage of bullets that forced her back behind cover. “I’ll get right on that.” With her back still flush against the wall, she glided to the opposite side and, mapping out the remaining two snipers on the rafters in her mind, planted her foot, spun, and fired into the ceiling. Two quick bursts of light morphed the snipers and subsequent structures into nothing more than a red mist of blood, bone, steel, and flesh.
