Chapter Twenty-Eight
MAC’S GLOVES HEATED on the descent down the rope. He tried to control his speed with his boots, but the quarterdeck came up fast. He hit the ground hard, felt the impact in his ankles and knees, but his MP7 was already up and sweeping. The chopper hovered for a few seconds longer and then the rest of the fast ropes came down, hitting the deck with a slight bounce.
Mac settled into position, his weapon scanning. Half the men from his chopper had already gone down to clear decks three and four. Wolf’s chopper, which had deployed its team at the bow—assuming it had found enough clear space to toss the ropes between the swimming pool and hot tub—would clear from the lower decks up. The Eagles would loiter above them, dropping again to hover for evac. Which meant ascending the fucking caving ladder to get back aboard the bird.
Something not to look forward to.
“Eagle One. Breaching.”
The news came over his radio. The voice was unfamiliar, but Eagle One was his crew. The guy must be one of Wolf’s men from the breaching crew.
They hadn’t been certain whether the door to the bridge would remain locked following the EMP hit. A couple of old-fashioned dead bolts could foil an EMP blast. A breaching team had been assigned to each chopper. Since this was a blast-proof door, the breaching would be trickier, but he didn’t doubt that among all their techy toys, Shadow Mountain had something that would get the job done.
His intuition proved correct. A small localized explosion shook the outside entrance to the bridge. The bulletproof glass in the door shattered, as did the window that stretched across the helm. A cloud of dust and debris rolled outward.
With the debris cloud still tumbling through the air, impacting visibility and giving him some cover, Mac headed up the stairs to the helm with Zane and Cosky right on his ass. The door was just hanging there, swinging from side to side, barely attached to its frame.
“Moving,” Mac said into his radio.
He hit the door hard and fast, going through low, his MP7 up and sweeping. Three walls. A huge freestanding wheel. Dead instrument panels. A gaping hole where the window had been. A warm, ocean-salted breeze.
POP . . . POP.
Shots rang out to his right. One of the bullets grazed his bicep with a fiery burn. He locked down the pain and swung the MP7 to the right, spraying the corner. A pistol poked out from behind the far right-hand side of the console. Another shot rang out. A portion of wall next to his ear exploded, peppering the side of his head with chunks of debris.
Son of a bitch.
The bastard was tucked nice and tightly in the corner behind the instrument panel, which gave Mac no target to sight on. At least not until he moved deeper into the bridge—which gave the asshole plenty of time to fill him full of holes.
“Shooter,” he said into his mic as he ducked back behind the mostly detached door.
Detached. Bullet resistant.
The pistol this fucktard was using looked like a 9 mm Glock, so the rounds didn’t have enough force to punch through the bullet-resistant door. Probably wouldn’t penetrate the ballistic plates in his vest either. But then the asshole didn’t need to aim for Mac’s chest to do major damage. His face, neck, arms, and legs were vulnerable. The door in front of him, however, would cover his entire body.
The damn thing would probably be too fucking heavy to serve as a mobile shield, but he wouldn’t know until he tried. He grabbed the tilted door and tore it from its frame. Shock registered. Hell, the damn thing didn’t weigh nearly as much as he’d expected. Not much more than a regular door.
Crouching, shoving the door in front of him, he crab-walked his way toward that occupied corner.
Ping . . . ping . . . ping.
Round after round ricocheted off the door and bounced around the bridge or burrowed into the walls. Another round grazed the top of his ballistics helmet, almost shoving it off his head.
Fuck!
He ducked lower, yanking his helmet back into place.
Once the last quarter of the instrument console came into view, he chanced a quick peek around the corner. The move was greeted by wild, terrified eyes, but no return fire.
What was this? Amateur hour?
He sprayed the corner above the asshole’s head with the MP7. The moron shrieked and curled into a ball, protecting his head with his arms.
SAS? My ass.
Mac shoved the door aside and was on the guy before the echo of gunfire died. Dragging him onto his belly, he yanked the asshole’s scrawny arms behind his back and flex-cuffed them together.
“Clear,” he said, rising to his feet.
“Moving,” Zane said through the radio.
By the time Mac dragged his captive to his feet, Zane was already through the interior door with Cosky on his six.
Mac handed off his prisoner to one of Shadow Mountain’s mop-up crew and took position behind Rawls. His corpsman turned slightly. An intense blue gaze raked him from head to toe, lingering on his arm. Which—Mac glanced down—was oozing blood but not too heavily.
“Graze?” Rawls asked, turning back to the door.
Mac didn’t bother answering. Rawls was already easing through the door. Besides, his arm didn’t hurt much. His head, on the other hand, was apparently protesting the bullet to his helmet, which was fucking ridiculous. He’d taken much harder hits without feeling any pain. He scowled, pushing the nagging ache aside.
“Deck one clear.”
“Deck four clear.”
The notifications came through the radio within seconds of each other. He’d heard sporadic gunfire echoing through the yacht, but there’d been no reports of “Eagle down,” so the assault was proceeding better than they’d expected. Which didn’t engender any sense of relief. Easy access was usually a good indication that shit would hit the fan at some point down the road.
Mac followed Rawls through the door and down a plush, carpeted flight of stairs. Zane and Cosky had taken position at the bottom and were controlling the hallway below. According to the schematics, the fifth deck contained several bedrooms with en suite baths and a separate dining room. Hell, this deck even included a spa, complete with a masseuse.
“Deck two clear.”
The report came as they cleared the last of the bedrooms—this one decorated with creamy wallpaper and gleaming, dark-wood floors. The furniture was some kind of white wood that contrasted starkly with the dark floors. The blinds, which were the same color as the furniture, only in fabric, were cinched high, letting the California sun blaze through.
Like the three bedrooms and spa they’d cleared before it, the room was plush, smelled expensive, and stood empty. So far the entire fifth deck had been empty. They eased into the dining room, which was vacant too. The light-wood furniture and trim gleamed beneath crystal clear windows.
His head started pounding like a motherfucker.
What the fuck?
Why the hell was his head acting up now?
All that dazzling light streaming through the windows wasn’t helping the damn headache. Too bad the blinds weren’t down. Squinting, he spoke into his mic. “Deck five clear.”
As he turned toward the door, a whirring followed by a muted thud sounded behind him. He spun, his gun up, eyes sweeping the suddenly dim room, muscles locked and loaded. The abrupt switch from bright sun to muted shadows was disorientating. It took him a moment to realize the sound he’d heard was all the window blinds rolling down. At once. Every damn one of them.
Fucking weird, but appreciated.
Except the headache hadn’t lessened; in fact it accelerated. Apparently it wasn’t fed by the sunlight. More’s the pity.
“Targets acquired.” Wolf’s voice came through the radio.
“Where?” Mac asked, trying to listen over the pounding in his head. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give for some Excedrin.
“Deck three. Midpoint.”
Which put them two levels down and a hundred feet away—give or take. According to the ship’s blueprints, there was another flight of stairs just past the dining room on the bow. They headed in that direction and descended two flights of luxuriously carpeted stairs.
“Moving. Deck three, on the bow,” Mac said before they entered the hallway. No sense in letting some trigger-happy Shadow Mountain warrior plug them when they stepped into the open.
The room Wolf had mentioned was easy to spot, even with the headache, which was quickly escalating into excruciating, fucking with his vision. Several huge men were stationed along the hall beside an open door.
As they headed for them, Mac tried to blink the black dots from his eyes. With each step the pressure in his head seemed to expand until his brain felt like it was banging against his skull and beating itself to mush. What the fuck was going on? Had the hit to his helmet been worse than he’d thought?
Except he’d had concussions before, and this didn’t feel like any concussion he’d ever experienced.
He stepped through the door to find half a dozen dead men sprawled around the room and two bound men in business suits shoved against the wall. One of the men had a bloody lip and some ugly bruises, as though someone had coldcocked him. According to James Link, there were eight men and one woman on the council.
Six dead men and two alive. The men’s numbers match up, but the woman’s missing. We need to take pictures of the dead, show them to Link, make sure everyone on the council is accounted for.
He turned to ask Wolf if they’d located the woman when nausea crashed through him, surging up his throat. He bent, tensed his belly, and locked his throat, trying to hold back the vomit.
Jesus . . . Christ.
His vision blurred, refused to focus.
He straightened and carefully turned to Rawls to ask if he had anything in that magical first-aid kit of his that would knock back the headache and nausea.
“We have a problem.” It was Wolf’s voice, grimness lacing the words.
Wolf’s tone distracted Mac. He couldn’t make out the Arapaho warrior’s expression; the black dots floating across his eyes were affecting his vision. But he’d never heard the bastard sound so ominous before.
Wolf waved a hand at the spherical object sitting on the huge table that dominated the room. Mac squinted, trying to concentrate past the splinters of agony shooting from his head into his eyes.
“This looks like the design Faith sketched of her clean energy prototype. The device these bastards rewired to make a clean bomb. And judging by that red light pulsing around its base, I’d say it’s been activated. I can’t find a way to turn it off.”
The news rolled through Mac on another surge of nausea.
Clean bomb . . . activated.
Vomit burned its way up his throat. He froze, trying to force it back down, but the burning acid refused to recede.
“How the fuck can it be active? The EMP blast should have fried its circuits,” Cosky said.
Good question. One Mac would have asked himself if opening his mouth had been an option.
“Not sure that matters at this point, dude,” Rawls said. “The damn thing’s lit up like a Christmas tree. Obviously it’s active. Question is whether it’s armed.”
“There’s no timer.” Zane spoke this time, and he didn’t sound relieved by his observation.
Mac swallowed carefully, forcing down the bile. He didn’t have time for this shit, damn it. He needed to focus. If that motherfucker went off . . .
“Doesn’t really need a timer, now does it?” Rawls’s voice sounded even more urgent than before.
Gingerly Mac turned, zeroing in on the hazy image of the men huddled against the wall. These were the bastards with the answers. Hopefully there was enough time to force the information out of them.
He made a grab for the asshole closest to him and missed by a mile. Vomit surged. Agony exploded in his head.
Jesus fucking Christ.
This time he couldn’t hold the groan or the vomit back. He hurled what little contents his stomach held all over their closest captive’s chest. The guy made a gagging sound and cringed against the wall.
Well, that was a new interview technique for the books.
“Shit! Mac?”
He recognized his name but couldn’t identify the voice through the ringing in his ears. As he started to sag, someone grabbed him and hauled him back up again.
They didn’t have time to worry about him, damn it.
“Cut the wires.” His order came out garbled but apparently clear.
“No access to the wires,” Wolf said. “The device is smooth. Uniform. No screws, bolts, latches. The wires must be inside.”
There was a fatalistic tone to Wolf’s words. As though he were facing his death, which he was. They all were. It didn’t even matter how much time was on the clock. If that thing went off, it would kill every living creature for hundreds of klicks. They wouldn’t be able to avoid the blast radius.
“Turn it off,” Mac said, gently turning his head toward the men against the wall.
“I can’t,” the council member he’d vomited all over said in a clipped British accent. “I crushed the remote and threw the pieces in the ocean. The remote was the only way to access the timer and the on/off mechanism. There is no way to stop the countdown now.”
Fuck. The device cannot go off. I have to shut it down.
The fresh surge of agony that rolled through his head almost knocked him out. His vision darkened.
“Did you see that?” Rawls’s voice was a dim echo in his ears.
“What?”
“The red light. It blinked a few times.”
Something niggled at Mac’s memory. Something important. The recollection of the blinds all rolling down replayed through his mind, but the grayness taking over his concentration couldn’t quite grasp the connection.
“Long on . . . clock?”
The words were so distorted Mac couldn’t tell who’d asked the question.
“Not long. Maybe a minute?” The same crisp British accent.
That he heard clearly, and it managed to knock some of the haziness aside.
They had to figure out how to turn the damn thing off. If they didn’t, the blast wouldn’t just kill his team and most of Shadow Mountain’s warriors, it would take most of humanity with them. There were warehouses full of these devices, and sure as hell these eight men had scores of people tapped to distribute them.
With his team and most of Shadow Mountain’s warriors dead, there would be no one to stop the mass extermination of humanity. They wouldn’t just fail themselves and the people they loved; they’d fail the entire human race if they didn’t turn the thing off.
Something pushed in his mind, followed by buzzing static and then searing pain. The agony brought him to his knees and loosed another bout of vomit.
Dimly he heard Zane say, “What the fuck. The lights have gone out.”
Faith’s voice suddenly echoed in his head. In one experiment, the subject turned on a microwave just by thinking about it.
The blinds had gone down.
Someone rolled him over, distracting him.
“Mac? Mac? Can you hear me?” Hands removed his helmet, straightened out his body.
“The device appears to be dead,” Wolf said, relieved.
“What the hell’s wrong with him?” Cosky asked, his voice so close he had to be bent over him.
“An aneurysm? Hell, I don’t know. He’s got blood coming from his nose. Where are the healers?”
An aneurysm?
Ah hell, apparently the universe wasn’t done fucking with him.
As Eldon, Eagle Two’s medic, prepared the truth serum for injection into their NRO captives, Wolf studied the metal object on the table. The pulsing light had vanished. Was the sonic bomb inactive? Or had it entered the final stage of countdown?
It was strange. It was flashing one moment, dead the next, as though someone had flipped its switch to off even though nobody had been near the device.
But maybe you didn’t need to touch it to deactivate it.
He stared down at Mackenzie, who was stretched out on the carpet with Rawlings hovering over him. Faith had said certain people’s brain waves could connect with her clean energy distributor, that it enhanced their minds and allowed them to mentally manipulate objects. The NRO’s sonic distributor had been reverse engineered from Faith’s prototype. Was this machine capable of supercharging certain brains too?
Had Mackenzie turned the sonic bomb off with his mind?
How would they even know?
He stepped forward, invading the space of the English nih’oo3oo—Manheim, judging by pictures he’d seen of the man. “The device has gone dark. Why? Is it still counting down?”
Manheim exchanged puzzled glances with the nih’oo3oo they’d captured on the lower deck.
Wolf turned away. He suspected they didn’t know themselves, but even if one of the men answered, he couldn’t afford to believe them. He couldn’t afford to assume the device was dead. They needed to proceed as though it were fully operational and about to blow.
Which meant they had mere minutes to interrogate their captives and obtain the locations of the warehouses where the NRO was housing these things. Once they had the coordinates, he’d send the information via radio to Shadow Command. Neniiseti’ could move on the locations before Wolf and his warriors even left the Princess.
Of course, Manheim and the other man would not volunteer such information easily. Which was where the truth serum came in.
He pivoted, zeroing in on Eldon. “How much longer?”
“The doses are ready now, Commander.” The medic set the second of two syringes full of clear liquid on the table.
“Do it,” Wolf said.
It would be two minutes before the serum would take effect. If the device was armed and counting down, as Eric Manheim claimed, they might not have those two minutes to spare, but they had to at least try to force the information they needed from their captives.
While the SEALs played nursemaid to Mackenzie, and his warriors held the struggling NRO operatives so Eldon could inject the serum, Wolf collected the Glock sitting on the table and waited for the world to end—or at least his world, his life.
If the device was going to blow, it would be any moment now. Which meant the death of him, his men, Mackenzie, and his SEALs, and also the unfortunate masses who made their homes along the coast of California. Assuming Link had been truthful about the bomb’s range, it would take out Coronado naval base too—along with all of San Diego.
He fought back the burgeoning regret. The worry. The concern for Jillian, for his mother, for Shadow Command. How would Neniiseti’ rebuild with the most experienced warriors gone?
No time for such fears.
Focus.
He ejected the magazine from the Glock and passed it, along with the gun, to one of his men. At least a minute had passed. The strobe on the device remained still. The bomb had not detonated. One more minute, and they could begin the interrogation.
If one were to believe the Englishman, the device should have gone off by now. They were well past the minute he’d claimed was on the timer. Which should have reassured him but didn’t. Perhaps the council member who’d set the timer had miscalculated. Perhaps he’d transposed the numbers or added an extra zero. There were too many variables, and without access to the control clock, they had no clue whether the damn thing was counting down to detonation.
At the two-minute mark, Wolf turned to his warriors. “Samuel, John, write down everything they say. Jessup, David—you’re on recording detail. Mikael, you broadcast the interrogation live to Command central.”
Even though the entire interrogation would be broadcast live to Shadow Command—he’d still send notes and recordings with each helicopter after evac. In the unlikely event the live broadcast didn’t patch through or one of the Eagles went down, there would be a backup copy. The information they were about to extract was too crucial not to take second and third precautions.
If the circumstances had been different, he would simply drag both men aboard the birds and haul them back to base—interrogate them there. It was too dangerous to loiter around in the open like this. While the Eagles’ pilots were monitoring the local law enforcement and military channels, there was always a chance a team from one or both of those entities had gone off the com and was ghosting in on them.
However, they wouldn’t be able to interrogate their captives aboard the Eagles. The noise of the rotors made that option impossible. Nor could they leave the bomb on the boat when they evacuated. If it went off, it would kill millions. It had to be removed.
The NRO council members had flown in on helicopters, two of which were perched aboard right now. He would pull one of the copilots from the Eagle and fly the bomb far away via the most unpopulated route he could find. If the device went off before he got it to safety, it would kill a lot fewer people that way. Most of his warriors would survive.
But first he needed to acquire the warehouse locations and send them to Shadow Command. If the device blew before he flew it to safety, those locations had to be in safe hands.
If it didn’t blow . . .
Wolf glanced at Mackenzie and frowned thoughtfully.
William had his fingers pressed to the commander’s head, and the silver glow of healing was climbing his arms.
Maybe Mackenzie had connected with the device and mentally turned it off.
Maybe the cerebral exertion had caused the pain in his head, along with the vomiting and the bleeding from his nose and eyes. Faith hadn’t mentioned any side effects from mentally connecting to her prototype, but this was not the same device. Perhaps the rewiring had resulted in Mackenzie’s symptoms.
Neniiseti’ had insisted the commander be fully healed in time to join this mission. Was this why? Had the beesnenitee known that without Mackenzie the mission was doomed to fail, and millions of people would die?
Rawls looked up, caught his eye, and arched a sandy eyebrow. “We’re not dead yet. I’m taking that as a good sign.” He nodded to his CO, who was sprawled out next to his knees. “How much you want to bet he’s the reason we’re still breathing?”
“You think the machine synced with his brain? That he’s the reason the damn thing went dark?” Cosky asked.
He didn’t sound like he disagreed, more like he was asking to confirm his own suspicions.
“It makes sense.” Rawls shrugged. “Something was sure as hell affecting him, and it got worse the closer we got to this room.”
Black Cloud and his beniiinenno will fight beside you. The spirits have spoken. It will be so.
Neniiseti’s cryptic comment blazed through Wolf’s mind.
If what they suspected was true, and Mackenzie had synced with the NRO’s bomb and turned it off before it could detonate, then he’d saved all their lives.
Wolf grimaced. It didn’t sit well to owe this particular nih’oo3oo anything. Let alone his life or the lives of his men. Hell, the lives of the entire world.
However, it was impossible to ignore the fact that according to Eric Manheim, who should know, everyone on this boat should be dead by now.
Perhaps the spirits had had good cause for their demand after all.