Forces of Destiny

by Robert Maxwell

  He sprinted for the edge of the roof and dove down on his stomach, scanning the open ground with his night vision scope, hunting. The seconds ticked by but he knew they were coming, right into his kill zone.

  A six foot five inch Russian with an AK-9 rifle and night vision goggles was walking with his rifle aimed towards the copter as he came around the corner.

  David knew he caught the assaulting force by surprise because they should have inched around the corner. The Russian soldier moved too fast around the corner, a mistake that would cost him his life as David hit the man in the mouth with a bullet from his rifle. The Russian jerked back and crumpled to the ground.

  David sprinted to the copter that had now landed as he programmed it to after a minute of hovering. He got back on the copter and moved three hundred yards out to the west and then rotated his copter at the window to the entrance to the nuclear power plant. David thought, that window is where my defensive force was going to be positioned to cover the perfect kill zone for anyone coming towards the building from the air.

  As he aimed his rifle adjusting for the bounce of the copter, a Russian soldier with a light PKP Pecheneg machine gun and night vision goggles came into view of the window. David instantly squeezed the trigger, aiming at the Russian’s chest. The glass shatters as David pulled the trigger ten more times, each time taking less than two-tenths of a second. He was able to keep a tight grouping of shots through the window as it hit the Russian four times in the throat area above his rifle plate body armor. The Russian in David’s scope had fallen to the ground. He could only see his foot, so David took two slow shots. The first shot missed and the second one hit the Russian in his foot blowing his heel off.

  David had the copter take a direct route to the back of the nuclear fusion power plant. David thought, four Russians and Tom left. Only one would be allowed on the outer perimeter, the rest are guarding their critical mission object to keep the power off and shut down the base defenses. Time to gamble and assume the last Russian on outer defense will get to a covered position to snipe at an aircraft in the area David just fired from. I am taking the open ground into that nuclear facility, if they take their eyes off the air and see me on the ground then I am dead.

  The copter landed and David sprinted over a hundred yards of open ground to the back entrance of the nuclear facility. After each step of his legs, David was expecting to be shot. His lungs were on fire as he brought out a grenade and threw it onto the roof. He came up to the door and it detected his RFID chip and opened. His aggressiveness paid off, they did not have time to barricade all the doors to the building. The grenade went off the roof forty meters to his right. He wanted them to think an assault force was breaching from the roof which was the best way to breach a building if you could get in safely from the air.

  David thought, if I am going up against Spetsnaz then I have to think like them and throw them off by taking risks only someone with a death wish would attempt, that they wouldn’t expect.

  David ran towards the command and communication facility in the building guessing Tom would be there trying to find out where his former teammates were. As he ran down the hall with his rifle at high ready, he could hear gunfire from the reactor area one hundred meters deeper into the building. David thought, that would most likely be Ben still alive, he always stayed stealthy waiting for his target to enter his ambush zone versus him going after them.

  David ran up to the second story. He pulled out a retracting six-foot snake camera the size of a computer cable attached to a smartphone on his wrist. He snaked it under the stairwell door to see into the hallway. A Russian dressed in a Spetsnaz camouflage uniform twenty five meters away was guarding the hallway leading to the command and communication room. The Russian turned his back to look towards the gunfire coming from the nuclear reactor room. David did not hesitate as he opened the door with his left hand, leaned, braced the rifle against the corner of the wall to stabilize it and shot the Russian in the head. Before the Russian with a two inch hole in the top of his forehead could fall completely to the ground, David sprinted down the hallway which was a dangerous risk because that Russian’s backup any second would be sticking his rifle out of the doorway to shoot down the hallway.

  As David got five meters from the command and communication door he slowed to a fast walk with his rifle aiming at the door. Tom leaned a part of his body out of the corner of the door and shot at David. David was ready for someone in response to the dead guard and fired the instant he saw Tom.

  Tom’s bullet hit David in the lower right of his rifle plate and another bullet hit his rib cage that was not protected by the rifle plate. David’s bullet hit Tom in his left thumb and left cheek, the only real target Tom had exposed. Tom dropped his rifle and fell back grabbing his face that felt like a hot poker had been driven into his cheek.

  David pushed through the searing pain in his lungs from being punched by what felt like a sledgehammer and a searing burning pain in his ribs. David was having problems breathing but he didn’t know if it was from the sprint down the hallway or the bullet wound in his ribs.

  David got to the doorway and kicked Tom in the face as David brought his rifle up and cleared the room for other Russians. The room was clear and there was nothing stopping David from focusing on killing Tom.

  David spun around to Tom withering on the ground in pain at being kicked in his face where the bullet had blown off his cheekbone and the tip of his left ear. David thought, Tom was too predictable at where he would be at. It was like he wanted to be found. Is this an ambush?

  David had no illusion he would shoot Tom. That would be too quick, too good. David jumped onto Tom’s chest with his knees to break Tom’s neck. David grabbed Tom’s bloody left ear from behind his head and his chin. David want to send the nerve impulse to his arms to snap Tom’s neck but their years of serving together as brothers in arms made his mind pause the execution of Tom. David wanted a confession, an explanation.

  David slammed Tom’s head against the floor and said, “WHY!”

  Tom barely able to speak with blood in his mouth from his check wound said, “You betrayed our country…”

  David said, “Of all the people to not trust to do the right thing, you didn’t trust me! We were brothers in arms that trusted our lives to each other. I saved your Goddamn life. I carried your bleeding body for a mile in our last mission together back in the unit and you betrayed me!”

  Tom bleeding from his mouth looked David in the eye with a contempt and said, “TRUST YOU? The man that gave the order to kill a terrorist leader surrounded by women and children. You became a terrorist to hunt and kill the most wanted terrorist leader by our unit. You got lost in the hunt and went too far, YOU CROSSED THE LINE. I don’t trust anyone in the Arc Light program. We don’t even know who is truly behind the Arc Light program. YOU NUKED AN AMERICAN CITY, I SAW BEN PLACE THE BACKPACK NUKE! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU ABUSED THE ABSOLUTE POWER THE ARC LIGHT PROGRAM GAVE YOU ALL! BEN GAVE THE ORDER TO KILL TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND CIVILIANS IN COLBY KANSAS TO CONTAIN THE INFECTION!”

  David stopped in shock at how deep Tom cut into his emotions. David thought, he is right about me going too far hunting the terrorist leader, getting my team killed, and innocent children being killed by accident during my last mission of my military career. If he is not lying about Los Angeles and Kansas then this means Ben is a war criminal that committed mass murder.

  David beat Tom’s head against the ground until he was barely conscious.

  Tears streamed down David’s eyes as he screamed, “GODDAMMIT WHAT HAPPEN TO YOU? YOUR ABILITY TO DISCERN. You should have told me about Ben illegally ordering the killing of civilians. If Ben went rogue and nuked L.A., he does not represent the Arc Light program. You should have trusted me and we could have made this right together brother…. but now you committed treason against us all and you stupid bastard ….. now I have to kill you. I RISKED MY LIFE FOR YOU DURING THAT LAST MISSION TO GET YOU HOME! THEY ORDERED ME TO
LEAVE ALL THE WOUNDED BEHIND TO ENSURE I MADE IT OUT WITH THAT CLASSIFIED BOX WE RETRIEVED. I ALMOST GODDAMN LISTENED TO THEM! YOU WERE A BROTHER TO ME, I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING I COULD TO PROTECT YOU.”

  David pulled out a six inch fixed blade knife and held it to Tom’s neck. David wondered why Tom was not fighting back, even nearly unconscious Tom was a better warrior than this with more fight left in him.

  Tom’s face was in shock from David’s words, realizing he had gotten so many things wrong. Everything David said brought a clarity of how bad he destroyed things in his emotional confusion. Tom felt himself starting to withdraw from the reality around him, to shield himself from the overwhelming emotional pain he had been carrying for years. He was in shock at the realization he betrayed his country and followed Ben’s orders to kill so many innocent people to contain the infection. Tom thought, I should have figured it out and stood up to Ben’s orders as illegal. I’m so burnt out, I let others think for me. I let my worst fears get out of hand about a rogue classified program with no oversight. Maybe it wasn’t the whole Arc Light program but just Ben? I got lost in my confusion of pain and fear. I got addicted to combat and got back in instead of staying away. I didn’t ask for help.

  Tom with blood slurring his speech said, “All the tragedy blurred together. It’s blinding. I should have.. reached out.. come to you. Listen to me. If you find my wife, the KGB kidnapped her, please take care of her, she doesn’t deserve to suffer for my crimes.”

  David thought of his wife and that memory of her gave David pause in his rage. He knew Tom was suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like himself. David’s time with his wife let him start to remember a life beyond killing. His wife helped him remember that killing wasn’t his only tool in a crisis, he had other options not as safe as destroying the threat, but the risk was worth not losing his humanity. The monster of killing that he let live inside his survival instincts his whole life to decimate bad men was not going to control his actions at this moment but his rage was just on the edge of no return.

  David struggled with the raging drive to kill Tom and said, “Put your hands behind your back, you are under arrest for treason.”

  Tom instantly brought his hands up to grab David’s knife hand. Tom shoved the slender knife into his own throat up into his brain. Tom tried to twist the knife but his body would no longer respond because of the damage to his brain.

  David’s bloody knife hand was shaking. David looked at Tom with time frozen. Every detail on Tom’s bloody face was locking itself deeply into David's memory. David slowly had begun to realize that Tom chose suicide versus facing the guilt and consequences of his betrayal. Tom’s right eye was quivering as the blood was leaking into the knife wound cavity in his brain which was building pressure against his cranial facial nerves in his frontal lobe.

  David felt a deep guilt shoot through his being at being stuck in his own personal hell of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that he never reached out to Tom who should have never got back into covert killing operations. They were the only two survivors of their military unit. No one else understood their private emotional pain better than each other. They should have stayed civilians, away from the killing, helping each other heal the scars on their souls. Tom should have never betrayed his country but David thought, I should have been there to help Tom before he stumbled off an abyss of anger at the horrors the world made him participate in. Tom was responsible for his actions but in his broken emotional state the KGB probably recruited him, deepened his PTSD to weaken his reasoning until he made desperate decisions and horrible mistakes. If Tom didn’t kill himself, I don’t know if I could have stopped the monster inside myself from killing him. That unknown troubled David at the core of his being.

  ***

  Jason ran into the medical containment ward, opened the morgue door and got ten-feet down the hallway towards the door labeled “Containment Bay 1” full of bullet holes. The ringing in his ears intensified with each step closer he took down the hallway. As Jason walked up to the door, his hand went to open it but his survival instincts made him hesitate as the instincts screamed for him to run. He could feel a pulsating energy in the air that he instinctively knew was coming from the ancient artifact on the other side of the door.

  He could hear Ashley catching up to him so he made a leap of faith and opened the containment bay door. Jason shined the light into the dark room to see a two foot tall, three foot wide crystal laying on its side like it was thrown into the room. The floor of the room was covered in blood but Jason could see where the crystal slid over the floor and stopped against the dead ripped apart body of a doctor in a white blood-soaked lab coat with no head. The stench in the room almost made Jason throw up.

  Jason froze as his flashlight showed the movement of a zombie that looked like the fast mover zombie type they saw in the crater that almost killed them all. Now Jason was fifteen feet away from this deadly threat with no one to defend him but himself. The fast mover zombie was covered in blood and hundreds of bullet holes. It looked like it was in a weakened state and was waking up from a sleep caused by the flashlight of Jason.

  Jason started stepping backwards as the fast mover walked towards him screaming a deep death howl from its throat. Jason leaped back in terror and started shooting from his hip by instinct with his M4 rifle on full automatic fire. In two seconds thirty rounds sprayed from the rifle. Half of the rounds struck the fast mover zombie and half sprayed up to the right from the recoil and hit the wall. Jason’s rifle was out of ammunition and the fast mover zombie was still moving forward unphased by the bullet wounds.

  The fast mover zombie suddenly stopped and shrieked back when it got anywhere near the crystal artifact. Jason could see the fast mover zombie was stuck in the corner because it could not get past the effects of the artifact.

  Ashley ran into the room and started instantly shooting the fast mover in the head. The faster mover ducked and weaved at incredible speed. Ashley pulled back Jason and went to close the door.

  Jason yelled out, “No! It is being held back by that artifact. That is how they trapped it in this room. I need to get that artifact.”

  Ashley looked at the room and saw from the bloody floor that the fast mover zombie was not getting around a radius of the artifact crystal but she realized if they moved it, this thing would get loose.

  Ashley said slowly, “You move that artifact and we are going to die.”

  Jason said, “Look at what it doing to that zombie, this is unprecedented power for us. It could be the key to finding out what caused the infection. It could lead to the cure.”

  Ashley grabbed Jason by the throat and started pulling him out of the room but Jason violently fell to his knees in the hallway to stop their movement.

  Ashley had no time left, the Russian Spetsnaz were already in the building. Ashley said, “Listen closely, let it go to achieve a more important goal. It’s critical we survive. Humanity is on the brink of extinction so it important that you follow me now!”

  Being in the presence of this artifact was causing Jason to be overcome with emotional memories of loss for everyone in his town he grew up with his whole life and they were now gone.

  Jason said, “I don’t want to just survive in a world like this… this thing is the key to our recovery, to preventing it from happening again.”

  Ashley said, “Staying alive is the key Jason. Look how many people died around this artifact. Look at their blood.”

  Ashley had no time left to argue but she couldn’t drag Jason away to the copter and fight at the same time. Ashley took Jason’s face in her hands, looked into his eyes and said, “If I lose you, it’ll break me. I have no innocence left in me but you have enough for both of us. If you don’t leave, I’m going to die in a hopeless last stand right here protecting you from the Russians or that zombie.”

  Jason could barely think as the intense ringing in his ears from the Artifact drew him to take it but in all the intensity, the power of Ashley’s words
made him trust her. Looking in her eyes he realized he loved her and she was right. He didn’t want to be responsible for getting her killed.

  Jason nodded in agreement to her plea. Ashley pulled him up and got them out of the room. She slammed the door closed, leaving behind the world’s best hope for survival so the two of them could survive the next few minutes.

  ***

  David was having trouble breathing. Cutting off his bloody shirt around the bullet wound, he realized the bullet from Tom had either pierced his lung or he was bleeding internally with blood pushing against his lung. David tore open a chest seal and placed it over the bloody wound. The adhesive was thick enough to work through the blood and keep the bandage on his bloody skin.

  David thought, if blood is pooling into my lung cavity, I better kill the other three Russians before I pass out from oxygen deprivation. David looked down and took the radio off of Tom’s dead body. David stood up and walked towards the nuclear reactor.

  David said over the team radio, “Tom betrayed us and is dead. He let the Russian’s into the base. This radio channel may secure but it is only to be used for critical communications, out.”

  Ben said over the team radio, “I killed three Russian Spetsnaz in the nuclear reactor room, over.”

  David said over the team radio, “Ben, meet me in the command and communication center in this building. Everyone else gets to the final defense location I gave you in the briefing, out.”

  ***

  Ashley peaked low around the corner and saw sixteen Spetsnaz walking in three inverted V tactical formations down the hallway. The scout in the lead formation saw her and brought his AK-9 rifle to his eye, aiming at her head. She jerked her head back around the corner as dozens of bullets hit the corner and walls around her. Ashley grabbed Jason by the collar and pulled him towards the medical containment ward that they had just came from.

  Ashley seeing Jason running in the direction she wanted, took a grenade out and threw it down the hallway at her attackers that would be coming around the corner in seconds. Walking backwards, she fired off five rounds at the corner to make them slow down their approach towards her. Ashley turned to catch up with Jason as the grenade exploded twenty meters down the hallway.