“Well, it led us to their base of operations. I don’t think we would have found this place any other way.”
“Listen, I know we had our differences before and said a few choice words to each other, but …” Blake faltered. Was he about to apologize? It wasn’t something he did often, and dammit, he hated to say he was sorry to this turd, but the man and his team had saved their lives. So perhaps Blake owed it to him.
Jackman spoke before Blake could finish. “Never happened.”
“What?” Blake frowned at the other man, thrown off guard by the abrupt response.
“The conversation you had — or think you had — with me never happened. It was from a different timestream. Obviously, you changed something along the way, but in this here and now I only met you five minutes ago.”
This was an outcome Blake hadn’t expected, and with that, he was off the hook. There was no apology needed for something that, in Jackman’s experience, never happened. A sudden grin crossed Blake’s face, but it disappeared the instant Jackman looked at him with those green-hued sockets that seemed to burn right through a person.
“What?” the commando asked.
“Nothing.” A lie, of course. A daydream that he could go back and punch the living shit out of Jackman when he’d had the chance had been playing in his imagination. Damn — I could have gotten away with it.
“Take Hex’s body armor,” Tinman said to Blake. “It’s damaged but still better than nothing.”
“Give it to him.” Blake pointed at Ethan. “It’ll do more good on him.”
Tinman shrugged as if to say, Your funeral.
Jackman spoke into his microphone. “Zodiac. Where are you at?”
“We’re headed down a stairway,” came the static reply. “Should be plot point Echo on the map.”
Reaper held his arm up and pressed some buttons on the strange gauntlet-like object wrapped around his forearm. Then a magic show happened, the likes of which Blake had only seen once before, in Wallace’s office. A single blue light beamed up about ten inches above the apparatus, then folded open and spread out. A transparent, three dimensional map of a building was displayed in mid-air.
Blake saw the astonishment on his twin’s face as he stood watching in awed silence.
Jackman twisted a dial and the floating building rotated on an invisible axis. Then the field of view zoomed in and around. On the futuristic construct three red dots blipped and flickered, all moving in unison down a flight of steps. Jackman touched the floating image with his fingers, flicking them back and forth, and the screen panned left, then right, then backward in response. Now they saw another set of dots — stationary, but blinking as well. Then the diagram scanned back from Jackman’s hand motions and in a flash the view retreated to the exterior of the structure. More quick taps and the image folded up like the closing of a book, and shot back down into the wrist gadget like a car antennae retracting.
“They’re headed to the reactor room,” Jackman said. “We’ll take Sierra stairwell and flank them. We need to stop the jump.”
“What if we don’t?” Ethan asked.
“I’m not sure. I guess it depends on where they go. If they’re foolish enough to repeat things, we could just try again if we fail, now that we know their base of operations.”
“Try again?” Blake and Ethan said in unison.
“Sure. We can send troops back to this location — I don’t know, perhaps a month before this.”
Blake’s head began to ache again. He was growing to hate this habit of considering possible outcomes and adjusted retakes in the timeline. “So what do we do?”
Jackman went to the door. “We make it simple. Stop them now.”
65
The Expendables Knew
They rounded the corner of the hallway just outside the torture room. There were no Russians in sight. This singular detail puzzled Blake enough to ask, “Where the hell are they?”
“Probably setting up an ambush along the way,” Tinman said, and Ethan nodded in agreement.
Then the real answer to his question came. It wasn’t a spoken response, but a dull humming that rose and seemed to emanate from the floor beneath them. It intensified slowly but at a steady pace.
Jackman stopped, listening to the sound, his head cocked at an angle. There was a short lull of silence, and he said, “They’re firing up the generators. We don’t have much time.” He punched something on the armband and brought up the holograph of the building again for a moment before shutting it down.
At Jackman’s signal, the makeshift squad sprinted for the south side stairwell. Blake could only follow at a hobbled run, bringing up the rear as the others paved the way. Having a wounded leg and missing an arm weren’t complete game changers, though; the weapon he held was the equalizer in the equation. Still, it would have been nice to have the full use of all limbs.
Down the winding stairwell they went. A few foolish Russians standing guard were shot down; having the high ground gave Jackman and his group the advantage.
They reached the bottom and were proceeding through a door into another long corridor when a hail of bullets peppered them in a sudden, loud burst.
Jackman was hit four times, three along his protective body armor in the chest and the forth nicking his left shoulder. He fell back and rolled to safety behind a large pipe. Tinman took multiple bullets too, all shots landing in his armor. Ethan lucked out, having come in from behind the others.
Still pulling up the rear, Blake hadn’t yet crossed the threshold of the doorway. When the shots came he used the door for cover as he returned fire. He pulled the trigger and almost lost control of the weapon as rounds exiting the chamber faster than any handgun he’d ever used. Jackman had said it was automatic, but this was ridiculous. He was already empty, after pulling the trigger for only two seconds. Two seconds. It reminded him of his first experience at sex. Had he even hit anything?
He pulled the gun back and stared at its smoking barrel. Heat emanated from the slide like a hot poker and the scent of gunpowder rose into his nostrils.
However brief his gunfire was, it gave a window for Jackman, Tinman, and Ethan. The three of them sprinted forward, stopped, found targets and began plugging off rounds.
Jackman, with his face of Death, channeled his inner Reaper and claimed life after life. Blake lost count after a few seconds.
Tinman was just as deadly. Blake saw the commando’s bullets catch one of the Russians in a tight pattern around the heart, followed by a single shot to the head. The high velocity round ripped through the man’s cheek and exploded out of the back of his skull. The trained soldier moved to the next targets with ease, felling at least three more men.
Ethan was armed with a rapid fire pistol similar to Blake’s. His accuracy was not up to par with Wallace’s men, but he was lethal all the same, picking off the soldiers Jackman and Tinman ignored.
Within ten seconds, the hallway was cleared of hostiles, but now littered with the dead. They had to step over the unmoving figures like football players at slow-motion practice jumping through tires.
“How are they going down with shots to the chest?” Blake asked, remembering how Ethan’s gunshots in the hospital did little damage to the Russians.
“Explosive rounds,” Jackman said, turning to face Blake. “Now reload; we have to keep moving.”
Blake ejected his magazine, put the now cooled gun under his arm to hold it tight, and inserted a fresh clip. Fire in bursts next time.
One of the Russians on the floor stirred. Tinman put him down for good with a single round, his emotions detached; just a menial, everyday task.