Brainrush 05 - Everlast 02: Ephemeral (18 page)

L
ACEY
BIT HER LIP
as Pete sneaked toward the two soldiers. She was tucked in
the trees opposite the landing strip, watching through her night-vision scope.
Pete was fifty yards ahead of her.

Since the position of their trucks on the other side of the
ridge had been compromised, they’d figured the only way out was going to be with
Jake on the plane. In the original plan, the C-130 was going to be used as
nothing more than a feint, buying the time necessary for everyone else to get
over the ridge and into the trucks. Jake had pinpointed the airport as the
first place Jiaolong’s people would cover if an alarm sounded, and he’d argued
that even if they made it off the ground, the likelihood of being shot down or
tracked was too high.

He’d said,
So I’ll give ’em exactly what they’re
expecting while the rest of you sneak off in the trucks.
Then I’ll find
a way to hook up with you at the secondary rally point.
No one could come
up with a better plan so that was that.

But at this point the aircraft was their only way out of
this damn valley. She’d thought all was lost until they’d heard the klaxon
signal. Pete had guessed—and she’d prayed—that Jake had somehow freed the
others, and that he needed the power and the lights shut down so he could lead everyone
to the plane unnoticed. Of course, that meant Pete needed to deactivate his
diversionary devices. If they went off as originally intended, they’d draw the
entire army toward the airfield. Pete had stopped the timers with his remote,
and he and Lacey had huddled in the trees, searching for signs of Jake and the
rest of them.

Including my husband.

Then the Humvee had driven up and three soldiers had piled
out. One of them stayed with the vehicle but the other two had started walking
into the brush. One held an instrument out in front of him, and the way he swept
it back and forth indicated it was a sensor of some type. The two men were
tracking something, and it was leading them directly to the first of Pete’s
gadgets.

If the wankers tamper with it,
Pete had said,
it’s
going to go off. And so will the rest of ’em.
He’d taken her MP5 and set
off to do damage control. The weapon had a suppressor on the end of the barrel,
but he wanted to get close enough to be certain he could drop all three of the
soldiers. She watched through the scope as he pulled up next to a tree thirty
meters behind them.

Close enough.

The soldier with the instrument pointed at the ground. The
second one crouched down and separated the brush. Pete raised the submachine
gun.

She held her breath.

Something shimmered over Pete’s head and she realized the
swarm had found him. Pete must have noticed, too, because he dropped the weapon
and held up his hands.

It happened so fast that the two crouched soldiers hadn’t
even noticed. They kept fussing in the brush. But the third soldier by the
vehicle was another matter. He seemed to be staring straight at her, and that’s
when she noticed he was wearing a headset. At the same moment she heard a flurry
of buzzes over her head. She remembered Marshall’s warning about the drones so
she froze, her eyes locked on the distant soldier.

Then Skylar’s voice whispered from the shadows, “Don’t move
a muscle.”

Already doing that!
Lacey thought, not willing to even
twitch her lips to say it aloud. She imagined tiny robotic eyes focused on her
neck, waiting anxiously for the order to attack. She focused on the soldier
controlling the swarm and willed him to accept her surrender. Then three
muffled spits from Skylar’s weapon blew the man off his feet. The other two
soldiers flattened themselves in the brush, and a dozen metallic hummingbirds rained
to the ground around Lacey. One landed on her shoulder. She turned her head
slowly and saw a single drop of amber liquid drip from its needle-tipped beak.

“Time to move, deary,” Skylar whispered, swatting it away
and yanking Lacey behind the stand of trees.

 “What about Pete?” Lacey asked.

“No worries. He’s got an angel looking after him, too.”

And what about the hair trigger on the diversionary
devices?

***

Jake turned his back on the Center
complex and peered over the wall. The airport in front of him was steeped in
darkness but he could still make out the silhouettes of the small Cessnas, the helicopter,
and, beyond those, the C-130. He checked his watch. Phase two of Pete’s
diversion would commence in three minutes. By then he needed to be sitting in
the cockpit of that aircraft with the engines winding up. He gauged the
distance to the plane at five hundred meters. He needed to hurry.

A shout from the Center drew his attention back around. A large
group of soldiers had formed outside the entrance of the main building. A gray-haired
man, who Jake assumed was Wong, stood on the steps before them. Two of the
sisters stood beside him and Jake wondered where the third had gone. The old
man shouted questions, and his enraged tone told Jake he’d discovered that
Alex, Ahmed, and Sarafina weren’t in the Center. When another soldier came
running from the barracks area shouting and waving his arms, Jake knew their
escape had been discovered.

Wong shouted an order and it was like shooting a bullet into
a hornet’s nest. Wong and one of the sisters jumped into a black SUV and turned
toward the airport. The other sister disappeared into the shadows in the
opposite direction. Two squads of soldiers followed her, and even more began
searching the nearby buildings.

The swarm had vanished.

A sound resembling a backup generator turning over came from
near the hangars behind him, and he knew the lights could flash on any moment.

He leaped the wall and started running.

Twenty paces later, the blast of a flash-bang grenade punched
through the darkness along the airstrip. He slid to a crouch. In the brief flare
of light he spotted two soldiers diving backward from the blast. There was an
eruption of gunfire, then two more explosions, each one closer to the airfield,
and more gunshots echoed from the distance. The diversionary noisemakers had
been unleashed way too early. He heard a muffled cry and saw the two soldiers
rushing toward a Humvee. They were nearly there when a shorter man popped up
from the scrub, raised a weapon, and mowed them down. Then the killer dashed
and skipped through the brush like he’d been doing it all his life.

Becker!

Jake’s friend was a long ways off, but Jake had run alongside
the sinewy Aussie enough times to know it was him. And when Becker caught up
with four other figures who were converging on the Humvee, Jake’s brain matched
their movements and shapes to their names—Lacey, Skylar, Pete, and Jonesy. They
jumped into the vehicle and it spun around and raced toward the tunnel exit Jake
had just used.

All hell was breaking loose but the escape plan still had a
chance to succeed.

As long as I do my part.

He ran for all he was worth.

***

I was the smallest of all of us, but
my heart pounded so fast I didn’t have trouble keeping up as we raced through
the tunnel.

I was grateful for the darkness because I couldn’t keep the
tears from sliding down my cheeks. Dad had taken the mini, and the fact that
he’d tried to keep it hidden from me made me fear the worst. He’d put up walls
around his mind and that meant he was keeping something from Mom, too—something
more than his taking the pyramid. In all the confusion, I didn’t think she’d
felt it. But I had, and it’d frightened me. I had the awful feeling I’d never
see my dad again.

When we reached the end of the tunnel, Little Star clambered
up the ladder and cracked open the door. I heard the pops of gunshots right
away, echoing from the distance.

“Holy crap,” Uncle Marshall said, looking at his watch. “It’s
the diversion devices. But they’ve gone off too soon.”

“Let’s get up there,” Uncle Tony said.

Little Star pushed the door open the rest of the way and
slipped outside. Ahmed was next and I was right behind him. As soon as the
others were up, we hurried toward the truck. Little Star got behind the wheel.
Uncle Tony jumped in next to him and held his pistol out the window. The rest
of us climbed in the back. My sister and I sat on either side of Mom; she
draped her arms around us and pulled us close. “It’s going to be okay,” she
said, but the quiver in her voice told me she wasn’t convinced.

Dolphin and Shamer sat across from us. They seemed worried
about me. Shamer leaned forward and whispered, “You’re a rock star.”

I wanted to smile, but couldn’t.

Ahmed sat next to me, and his lips moved in silent prayer.
Uncle Marshall paced behind the truck. He kept checking his watch.

We were safely out of the action up here, but it obviously wasn’t
making any of us feel much better. Because now we had to sit here. And wait. Hoping
the rest of them would arrive soon.

The distant pops and bangs of the diversionary devices
stopped. That meant my dad should be in the cockpit and rolling down the runway
to lead the soldiers away from us. I closed my eyes and thought of him, praying
that he was okay.

***

Jake raced across the tarmac faster
than a bee-stung horse, blurring past the hangars, the helicopter, and the two
small Cessnas. The C-130 Airlifter was a hundred meters ahead, and for a moment
he thought he might actually make it.

Then the airfield lights kicked on and he slowed to a stop,
his eyes narrowed.

Min stood between him and the aircraft, with a dozen
soldiers backing her up. Worse yet, one of them wore a headset and a score of
drones hovered above him.

Min smiled and sauntered forward. The soldiers moved with
her. They held their weapons in relaxed grips.

A lone man on the tarmac poses no risk.

The drones moved forward as well. Then, as if to add one
final insult to the impossible situation, there was a squeal of tires and Jake
glanced over to see Wong’s SUV racing toward him.

The vehicle pulled up and the two rear passenger doors swung
open. Zhin and her grandfather stepped out to face Jake, the sister holding a
pistol aimed at his gut.

Wong fixed him with a smug stare.

Jake looked from them to Min, the soldiers, and up to the
swarm overhead.

So is this where it all ends? Am I really going to allow
them to win this easily?

No. Way.

Fueled by the energy of the mini, his mind carved the scene
into manageable bites, tracing dozens of alternative lines of attack in the
blink of an eye, imagining the moves he’d make before his opponents realized
what they were up against.

The biggest variable is the robotic swarm.

The soldier wearing the Spider turned his head and the swarm
shifted as one.

The head of the snake
, Jake thought, and the
succession of tactics in his mind began to fall like dominos.

“We meet at last,” Wong said, with a hint of disgust.

Jake remained silent. His mind was busy absorbing and recalculating
every detail of the changing situation before him—Min stepping closer, soldiers
shifting behind her, the swarm adjusting its position.

“You have been quite a problem, Mr. Bronson,” Wong
continued. “Not only did you disrupt my plans when you brought death and
destruction to the island two years ago, murdering my only daughter in the
process...” He paused, Zhin and Min’s expressions tightened, and Jake realized
Wong was speaking of the sisters’ mother. “But your actions in the past couple
of days nearly resulted in the loss of many years of hard work.” He nodded
toward Zhin. “Had it not been for my granddaughter’s foresight in backing up
the software and its data, your antics might have actually created a problem.”
Zhin’s arm tightened against the bag strapped across her chest, and Jake
adjusted his priorities.

“Stay tuned,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”

“Yes, about that. Only a fool would underestimate you after
everything you’ve done. And trust me, I am many things but a fool is not one—”

His satellite phone chimed. Frowning, he unclipped it from
his belt. “Speak,” Wong said into the phone. His eyes widened as he listened.
“How soon?” he asked, keeping the phone pressed to his ear as he turned and ran
toward the SUV. He motioned toward Zhin and she dashed around the back of the
vehicle to climb in the other side.

Min shifted her grip on her bobbles, the soldiers clustered
forward, and the buzz of the drones seemed to accelerate. Each of the
dart-shaped birds hovered with its beak aimed at Jake.

As Wong slid into the car, he tossed the phone onto the seat
and cast a wild-eyed glance at the distant horizon. Jake realized the caller
must have warned that the PLA’s Airborne Corps was on the way. Wong barked an
order in Chinese to his driver and the engine revved to life. Reaching out to
pull the door closed, Wong took one final look at Jake. His eyes spat fire.

Jake winked.

“Kill him!” Wong yelled as he slammed the door. The SUV
screeched toward the parked helicopter.

Jake’s muscles coiled and adrenaline tightened his skin. The
mini’s energy responded to his call, and he jerked into action so fast that his
movements would have appeared as a blur to Min and the soldiers.

He snapped his arm around his back, grasped the protruding
edge of the computer tablet tucked in his pocket, and whipped his hand upward,
catapulting the tablet at the swarm.

All eyes followed its flight...

Except Jake’s.

He kept moving, and to him it was as if he’d switched a DVD
to slow motion. In a single, fluid movement, he crossed his forearms in front
of him, grabbed Skylar’s knives from their wrist sheaths, and hurled them simultaneously
at the soldier controlling the swarm. They flew end over end, glimmering as
they whipped past Min’s ear, then between two other soldiers, then finally
impaled themselves deep in the chest of the man wearing the Spider. The blades plunged
into the man’s heart, less than an inch apart, and the impact knocked him from
his feet.