Jackman called up the digital map again for reference, then closed it. “Our target is just beyond those doors. On the other side will be the rest of their group, all of them loaded for bear. I feel confident in saying we may not all make it out alive.”
He paused then, piercing each of them with the green eyes of his mask, gauging their reaction to this pessimistic outlook. “But also on the other side is everything we’ve fought for up until this point. We hold in our hands a moment to change history and the future.”
As if to reiterate the importance of those words, the roaring of the machine inside the room ahead changed to a lower, but faster, octave.
“Zodiac, Priest, Worm,” Jackman said into his headset, “Provide a distraction. We’ll be entering from the south side on your mark.”
Blake, Ethan, Tinman, and Reaper waited, each passing moment feeling like eons. Jackman and Tinman must have heard a countdown in their headsets because they both braced a moment before the blessed sound rang out. Concussive blasts vibrated the walls and sporadic gunfire joined in the wild cacophony. A symphony of destruction.
They entered the room then, Ethan and Jackman taking cover in one direction, Blake and Tinman in another.
The sudden breach earlier must have taken many of the facility’s troops by surprise because the ones inside this room were not wearing full protective suits like the previous men. Or they were reserve soldiers stationed here with only firearms on the assumption that the interlopers would never make it this far. A fatal mistake.
Blake continued to absorb the scene and noise around him — the computer terminals, the cables coursing across the floor like thick black anacondas, the blinking lights on the walls beyond, the whining of the reactor and its steady pulsing beat. His eyes rested on the round platform in the center of the room. It was raised off the ground with three steps leading to the top. Gernot stood in its center, his mad eyes darting about.
Seconds were ticking down on the machine’s display overhead. The moment Gernot jumped back, all might be lost. In fact, Blake knew that it would. Things had changed in this timestream. He couldn’t let Gernot fuck it all up now.
It seemed they would never make it across the expanse of the room before the Russian left. Despite the opposition’s lack of protective armor, there were so many troops positioned between here and the target that even with the enemy’s force flanked, their numbers were too great.
Tinman spun away from the cover of his safety, firing off at least nine rounds. Then his body gave a strange lurch and came crashing back down beside Blake. Dead. His armor had been no protection against a well-placed bullet, and Tinman had received several. His helmet was scarred with deflections that must have hurt like hell. The fatal injury was to his neck, where — to allow for mobility — the armor was not as thick as the rest. The wound squirted arterial blood in an arc above him. His head lolled to the side, and his legs twitched uncontrollably.
Blake pulled off the dead commando’s head gear, pushed the button he’d seen Jackman do many times before, and yelled as loud as he could into the mic, “Smoke screen.”
Reaper was still picking off strays in the Russian crowd when he ducked down, snapped to cover, and saw Tinman’s body. Then he nodded in response to Blake’s words and grabbed an orb-like device from his belt, unclipped it, and tossed it into the air. There was a pop then a fizz, as the room began to fill with an almost solid smoke. “Go Thermal!” Jackman barked into his headset.
Blake donned Tinman’s helmet. Everything became green and bright white, and he couldn’t see anything. He fumbled with a knob on the side. Nothing. “I need some help here,” he bellowed.
He felt a presence close to him, prayed it was Jackman, and just like that, he could see. The outline of objects in the room came into focus, hued in ocular blue. Pipes that lined the walls shone with orange and red, their super-heated gases providing the illuminating display.
He charged toward the group of Russians, not seeing the smoke that should be in front of him, but taking it on faith that the curtain of cover was there. Humanoid-like figures ran around and in front of him like people covered in flames, their images a similar orange and red hue as the pipes lining the walls. This was business made easy; he was standing right in front of the Russian soldiers — perhaps two or three feet — yet he remained unseen.
He readied the gun, fired calmly and easily, and one of the Sons of Stalin dropped. When the man fell, a psychedelic looking red splotch showed up on the ground in Blake’s field of vision. The splotch began to change color almost immediately, morphing into a light blue, then purple, on the freezing floor.
Blake continued on, dropping more Russians as he went. When he shot off his last round, he ditched the weapon and used his knife. This was just as easy — running through the blanket of white smoke, slitting jugular veins, or thrusting the blade between ribs, aiming for the heart. He hooked one man around the neck with his stumped arm and dug the blade deep into the man’s kidney, then slashed outward, spilling him open.
Every step carried him closer to Gernot. In moments he was at the base of the stairs. The lone, reddish-orange figure stood on the platform, waiting to be sent back to 1948 or who knew where.
Blake clutched the knife in his palm, psycho-style, and charged up the steps in Gernot’s direction. The man seemed to sense he was there and caught Blake’s arm before the knife could land in his neck. The two of them fell, twisting, rolling, and tangling in a nest of wires that were hooked into the time traveling watch around Gernot’s wrist.
Blake managed to get his knife hand free and aimed for Gernot’s chest. The Russian again seemed to read his mind, and Blake’s weapon clanged in a useless strike against the platform.
Gernot was a formidable foe, and Blake wondered if he had the use of both hands whether he could still best this man one on one.
The Russian pinned Blake’s arm, so he aimed for a head butt. Gernot’s other arm came up, catching Blake’s head before it could connect.
Gernot’s not just a master assassin — he’s a motherfucking mind reader! This guy was predicting his every move. It was eerie.
He felt Gernot’s hand behind his head, yanking on the mask. His neck was twisted back and he heard Gernot growl in his ear. Blake rotated his head, turned sharply back in the other direction and the helmet ripped clean off.
Only then did he realize he was no longer within the cloud of protection, and he never had been since he ran up the steps. The smoke screen was indeed a wall of cloud, but it ended just beyond the stairs leading to the platform. Gernot was no clairvoyant after all. The Russian had been able to see every attack coming. What a waste of time!
Gernot seized advantage of Blake’s moment of reflection and knocked the knife away. It skittered over the edge of the platform.
One-armed and outclassed, Blake needed the knife to even the playing field. He scrambled for it, but Gernot leapt on his back. Something — a length of cable — looped around his neck and tightened. He brought his hand up to relieve the pressure and managed nothing but getting his fingers caught.
Gernot pulled the cable hard. Blake gagged as his own knuckles ground into his Adam’s apple. He strained to get the knife that had fallen over the edge of the platform, the cord around his neck tearing into the skin of his fingers.
He could feel his face turning red. He wanted to throw up, but had sense enough to know the vomit would bottleneck in his throat. He gagged again, unable to breathe now.