From hell, p.4
From Hell, page 4
part #8 of Alex Hunter Series
He yelled a single word: “Grenade.” But knew she was moving too fast to stop. In two more paces, she’d be right over it – so he dived.
His body landed hard on top of Casey’s, crashing down on her, and he covered her head and upper body, just as she broke the first beam. He almost carried them through it, but the explosion was instantaneous, near deafening, and the walls and ground shook beneath them.
Alex felt the bullet-like projectiles batter his armored suit, and the percussive blast smashed at his eardrums. Many of the projectiles penetrated right through the super-tough material of his armor to embed in his flesh. Concrete rained down for several more seconds.
Eventually he rolled off the female HAWC, groaning. He sat back against the wall and held his head. The siren scream of perforated eardrums was agonizing but was nothing compared to the body-wide sensation of raggedness and pulverization from the explosive force and ripping fragments. Smoke rose from his body, and his hyper-strong suit was shredded in places. He opened his eyes as Casey sat up and also held her head.
“Fuuuck.”
The scream in Alex’s ears subsided as his unique metabolism rushed to repair the damage. “Claymore; laser mesh,” he said between clenched teeth, but doubted she could hear him yet. He looked at his hands and arms – the armor was abraded, smoking, and in some places cracked and punctured. Blood leaked from the holes. He grabbed her with one hand and dragged her toward him. “How you doing? HAWC, are you operational?”
Casey nodded. “Bitch of a headache, but I’m fully operational, sir.” Then, “Thanks, boss.” Her eyes ran over his body. “How the hell are you doing?”
He felt at his shoulder. There was a two-inch rent in the Kevlar wrapping, and damage deep in the meat of the trapezius muscle. The armor plating only covered the larger flesh areas, like chest, thighs, biceps and skull, but over the high movement areas were armadillo plates with an additional Kevlar weave.
He reached a finger into the wound, and ground his teeth. Beside him, Casey watched. Alex dug around, pulled free a jagged shard of steel and dropped it to the floor with a clink. He rolled his shoulder. “I’ll get the rest later.” He quickly sent a message to Hondo, then stood and pulled Casey to her feet. “Payback time.”
She nodded. “I heard that.”
“This time you stay in behind, there could be more.”
Alex headed into the smoke. As he ran the fragments of metal embedded in his skin were pushed out and fell to the ground. The wounds sizzled for a second or two, then began to close.
* * *
Hondo Henderson heard, then felt, the explosion and hunkered down with Zegarelli. A few minutes later, there came a small vibration on his wrist and held up a hand.
“Zeg; hold up.” He read the two words on the tiny comm. screen on his forearm they used for silent messaging. “Damn.” He snorted. “Laser claymores.”
“Knew it,” Zegarelli said. “Sounded like RDX packed in behind steel.”
“So we expected booby traps and now we know which type.” Hondo looked along their corridor.
“And boss just ran into one,” Zeg added, and grimaced. “Fuckers are hard to see, even tougher to navigate. And we ain’t the Arcadian.”
“Shit, if only we brought a demolition expert.” Hondo clicked his fingers. “Wait, yes we did.”
“Then it’s your lucky day.” Zegarelli chuckled. “Get moving, ya big moose. You can be my shield.”
Together they sped along the corridors, finding numerous puddles of blood – obviously places where some of the security personnel had tried to hold back the inevitable.
In a few minutes they came to the reactor room, and could both feel and hear the hum of the machinery working behind the thick door that carried a nuclear warning symbol on it. There was a security pad, and Hondo keyed in the access code.
He eased the door open a fraction of an inch, and then stuck a small cord in through the gap, turning it in his fingers. The snake camera’s image was displayed on his wrist screen.
“Clear.” He retracted the camera.
They lifted their weapons and Hondo pulled the door open. Then the big men went in fast, Hondo taking the left and Zegarelli the right, scanning for the slightest movement, human shape, or any potential trap.
They took cover and then switched to using technology – first magnifying every corner and cranny in the large, laboratory-clean room, and sliding their scopes to thermal to check for body heat. However, with so much background heat from the generators it was hard to get a clear reading.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Zegarelli whispered.
Hondo joined him. “Yeah, I see it.”
What their scanners did highlight were the laser beams crisscrossing the generator room. Shaped charges were packed all along the control-rod housing, the generators, and the cooling water pipes inflow – dozens of them.
“The bastards must have brought it all in a freaking wheelbarrow,” Zeg said through clamped teeth.
“What are our chances?’ Hondo asked.
Zegarelli let his eyes move over the charges, all of them behind a laser mesh. “If I can get to them, I can disarm them … but.” He began to grin. “The beauty of dealing with amateurs is they assume just because they’ve only got one way in or out, we do too.”
“Okay, whatta you need?”
Zegarelli pointed up. Above them, the reactor room’s ceiling was filled with pipes, vents, and hoists for moving heavy machinery around. “I’m betting they’ll have secured the floor from access to their explosives, but they won’t have had time to secure the entire room.”
Hondo followed his gaze. The ceiling was high, fifty feet, but about twelve feet up from them there was a large elbow of piping. It ran to the ceiling, and then there were more pipes and railings that led over the floor area and close to the shaped charges.
‘Doable,” Zegarelli said. “All I need is a big buddy to give me a boost.”
Hondo didn’t hesitate and bent a knee. He meshed his fingers together. “Going up.”
Zegarelli backed up and then ran at him, placed a boot into Hondo’s hands, and leaped as the big HAWC lifted his arms, catapulting the smaller man to the first handhold twelve feet above them.
Zegarelli was short but powerfully muscled like a circus performer. In no time, he was at the roof and swinging from pipe to pipe, railing, and chain, and then using anything he could find as a handhold. Soon he was over his objective target area, and he hooked one arm over a pipe so he could remove a length of rope from his pack.
“Piece of cake,” he said as he secured it to an overhead pipe, did a quick loop under his arms, and began to lower himself.
Hondo watched as his colleague dropped, going from fifty feet above the floor to twenty in a few seconds. From the corner of his eye he spotted the almost invisible glow of tiny red lights coming on from various points up high in the room. He spun.
“Activity!” he yelled.
Zegarelli stopped his descent, froze, and turned to his partner. “Ah, shit.” His eyes were knowing … and accepting.
The pencil-thick red beams crisscrossed in the air, passed across the hanging man, then shut off.
Zegarelli’s eyes went wide as the lower half of his body fell away like a wet sack, thumping heavily to the ground. There was little blood or gore as the laser beam had cauterized each half. Still, things glistening pink, gray and purple hung from the upper torso.
Hondo’s mouth dropped open as he continued to stare into his partner’s eyes. Zegarelli seemed more confused than agonized. But as Hondo watched, the eyes dulled, the arms dropped, and then the top half of his friend just hung on the rope like some grisly Christmas decoration.
Hondo shut his eyes for a second, and then slowly lifted his hand to the tiny mic bead at his ear.
“Man down,” he whispered.
The large HAWC opened his eyes, anger burning within them. “Task execution failure.”
* * *
Alex paused to listen to Hondo’s brief message, and then turned to Casey Franks. “Execution failure; Zegarelli down.”
Casey bared her teeth. “Ah shit, those sons of bitches. I’ll –”
“Grieve later. Focus,” Alex said, but he couldn’t stop the wave of rage washing over him either. Something inside him rattled its chains, wanting to be free to revel in the coming violence. “Focus,” he said again, but this time more to himself.
They set off and continued until they came to the heavy, sealed door to the control room. Casey immediately lifted her gun and blew out the camera as Alex placed his fingertips lightly against the steel – it was thick and had a foot-long, D-shaped bar handle.
He flattened his hand, closed his eyes and concentrated. He could hear muffled voices and could feel the tension in the room right through the steel. There were many bodies inside, and he already knew how many staff should have been on duty that day and how many potential intruders there were. But he had no idea of the number gathered in the room right now, or how many were dispersed to other areas. However, the sensation he felt right through the steel told him the large room was crowded.
The intruders inside the room would know Alex was here now, and would be waiting. Hondo had told him they took out Zegarelli with laser security, plus they’d used new Russian claymores, and Alex would bet his last dollar they had other tricks up their sleeves. The bottom line was the explosives they’d placed around the nuclear core hadn’t detonated when Zegarelli breached the security. That meant that it was probably a remote detonation from within the control room.
These guys were well financed and well armed. It added up to one thing: bad news for the hostages. The HAWCs were going in hot and there was no way to save everyone. Unfortunately for the civs, saving the state was their mission priority, and any mission deviation caused hesitation and valuable seconds to be lost. It was simple mathematics: a few lost, or many thousands.
Alex moved his hand over the steel door – he could feel the tension rising. Also the waves of aggression, hate, fear, and eagerness for what was to come. Fanatics then. It meant they were more than likely to be prepared, or excited, to die for their cause.
The HAWCs had to stop the attack from here. And the odds of entering the room and taking out the initiation device quickly and cleanly were too astronomical to count. They were probably all as good as dead – the hostages, the intruders, and the HAWCs.
It was a sacrifice they were trained to accept. But Alex couldn’t help his mind straying to his wife, Aimee, and his son, Joshua. He shook the images away. This was why HAWCs were supposed to have zero attachments; you had to be prepared to sacrifice yourself, and worrying about others caused hesitation.
He knew that every time he acted, it was to save countless other Aimees and Joshuas out there. He felt the prickling sensation that was like someone in the dark watching him, and he quickly shut down the thoughts, not wanting the boy to pick up on his agitation. Joshua was special; Joshua saw everything.
Alex blinked and turned to Casey.
“New plan.”
What Alex didn’t know was that the boy was already in his head.
CHAPTER 04
Buchanan Road, Boston, Massachusetts
Ten-year-old Joshua Hunter sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor. Sitting beside him was his dog, Torben – Tor for short. The German shepherd towered over the boy and must have weighed in at 150 pounds if it was an ounce. When they took the dog out walking, some people remarked that he looked more like a bear. Except there was no lumbering gait, just the lightness of foot, deep chest, and muscled flanks that told of immense speed and strength held in check. Plus, unlike the dark eyes of a bear, Tor’s eyes were an ice blue and radiated intelligence. The dog was a special type of animal from the Guardian breeding program. Unbeknown to the family, he was a military experiment. A little like Alex, Joshua’s father.
The pair sat stone still, staring at a blank wall. Joshua’s eyes were pupilless and completely white, just like the dog’s now. They didn’t see the wall, or the room, or anything in the house. Together they watched what was happening many miles away – in the Robert Emmett Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, in Ontario, New York.
CHAPTER 05
“This is so gonna be fun.”
Harper and Charlotte stood on the small landing looking down onto the control room floor. The fourteen remaining hostages were cuffed to railings, door handles, and, in some cases, each other. Harper felt nothing when he looked at their pale, tear-streaked, terrified faces. To him they were little more than human shields – or maybe excess baggage.
He would have executed all of them except for the waste of ammunition, and for the fact that whoever was on the other side of the door right now wouldn’t dare use explosives with all the human sheep tied up inside. He smiled as he wondered whether they might knock, as the door was sealed from the inside and the corridor was a little narrow for a battering ram.
Before the corridor camera had gone dark, he’d seen just two Spec Forces operatives arrive. He chuckled softly; he’d pit himself, Charlotte, or any one of his Praetorian team of death dealers against any soldiers the American military could throw at them. They’d trained hard, and trained to kill.
And Harper had one more advantage. He slowly opened his shirt and then took it off, displaying a body covered in the carvings. There were strange runes and eyes, so many staring eyes covering his torso. Some of the wounds were fresh and still weeping.
Yeah, he had one more big advantage: he had a god on his side. He raised a fist. “She is coming!” he yelled over the heads of the people in the room.
The hostages flinched even more, and the eyes of his acolytes brimmed with zeal.
“She is coming,” they repeated like an evangelical choir.
He grinned, knowing that they didn’t really know what that meant, and he didn’t care as long as they followed him. He held up the weapon in his arms and lifted its muzzle toward the heavy metal door before lounging back against the concrete wall. He looked forward to the coming negotiations.
“This is so gonna be fun.”
* * *
Hondo joined Alex and Casey, his shoulders still sagging.
“Zeg’s gone,” Alex said. “This is where we are at. So get your head back in the game, soldier.”
The massive HAWC shook himself down like a big dog. “Yeah, yeah.” He nodded. “Got it, boss.”
Alex explained his strategy, and both Casey and Hondo fell back a few steps to crouch behind him on either side, guns drawn.
Alex felt around the doorframe. He pushed, exerting pressure – there was very little give in what was basically a seven-foot-tall riveted steel plate. He pushed a little more, and heard the telltale groan of the metal hinges, noting where they were: two on one side, and only the bolting mechanism on the right.
He backed up several dozen paces, and began to suck in deep breaths as he mentally ran through his action. He could still feel the tension coming through the door, and also the aggression and confidence of the intruders. But there was also the cold fear of the hostages like waves of static, and their pain, as well as the agony of the dead – their screaming wraiths swirled in the room, demanding vengeance.
He let it all wash over him, and allowed the demand for retribution to soak into his bones. Make them pay, something whispered deep inside him. Make them bleed, make them hurt, and make them know fear. Make them fear … me.
Alex absorbed it all, letting it fuel him.
He took a last look at the door handle, then the center of the door. He balled his fists, and exploded forward.
In a few paces, he was traveling at thirty miles per hour, and at three feet out he threw a hand to the door handle and lowered his shoulder.
He hit the metal door with an explosive force that combined all of his mass, speed, and great strength. The door blew off its hinges and dragged with it the locking mechanism. He held the huge plate in front of him like a shield.
As Alex’s super-charged metabolism took over, time slowed, but only for him.
A split second of shock for the intruders, and then the gunfire started. Heavy rounds peppered the steel door, making it clang like a cymbal against his shoulder. He counted off the rounds, and knew the gun types by their distinctive discharge signatures. There were a helluva lot of weapons.
Casey and Hondo reached around the doorframe to pick their targets with deadly accuracy, bringing them down with centered headshots every time.
Alex lowered his door shield, his own gun drawn, looking for the detonator unit and who was in control of it. He saw two people above him behind a balcony railing. One of them pointed a strange weapon at him, and fired.
Alex quickly snapped the door shield up. The impact, if that’s what it was, was noiseless, but he felt the steel shudder in his hands. However, where he expected to see some sort of dent in the door, a cannonball-sized section began to dissolve like the iron was made of gossamer.
Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing, as he watched the steel continue to melt away. He flung the dissolving door to the side.
He stood his ground, unshielded, staring back into the manic eyes of the young man holding the weird weapon. Beside him was a woman, equally as thrilled, aiming what looked like a German H&K FP6 combat shotgun.
Alex began to move, fast. But it was at the same time she pulled her trigger.
Alex was faster than any human being on Earth, but his speed was always going to come off second against a discharging shotgun.
The 12-gauge blast took him in the center of his chest, shattering the already blast-damaged armor panels and slamming him into a concrete wall.
Fool, of course they’d have armor-piercing rounds, a voice sneered at him with disgust. Now get the fuck up!
Unbelievably, Alex started to rise. But the shotgun barked again. His face – it burned, and then everything went dark.
