At least he's brave, she thought. And then, as she closed to within twenty feet she reached up and pulled back her white hood and goggles, letting her wavy blond hair flail in the wind like the tentacles of an enraged squid. She wanted him to know she was a woman.
When a smile crept onto the man's face, she knew her free hair had had the desired effect. He was underestimating her.
Queen leaped into the air and flew toward the man, arms outstretched and wearing a smile of her own. The man reached out to catch her, no doubt intending to squeeze the life out of her, but he'd never get the chance. As she collided with the man, she wrapped one of her thick arms around his neck, squeezed, and then used the impact of their bodies striking the ice to suddenly increase the pressure.
The result was a loud crack as the man's spine snapped. His brief encounter with Queen was akin to being hit by a bus. She stood, waltzed back to the snowmobile, and headed back toward the others. She glanced down at the man she'd run over as she past. His neck was bent back at an extreme angle.
"Piece of cake," Queen said as she rejoined the team after a quick drive past the burning Sno-Cat wreckage.
Knight held out her weapon. "Show-off."
She took it with a smile that, combined with her bright blue eyes and blond hair, could disarm most men — and terrorists — with a glance. She looked past Knight to the silent member of the team. He'd said nothing and moved little since the combat had begun. "Hey, Bishop, not in the mood today?"
Erik Somers, call sign "Bishop," shrugged. "Didn't see the need." He hoisted his belt-fed M240E6 machine gun onto his shoulder, while holding a chain of white bullets. The rapid-fire stopping force of his weapon alone would have been enough to stop the Sno-Cat and take out the men who'd fled, but he was a man of few words and reserved action.
Queen shook her head. She loved to see Bishop in action, and was always disappointed when he held back. He was a one-man wrecking crew. Still, she did enjoy taunting him when a mission finished without him firing a shot. "For such a big man you must have a pair of raisins between your legs, Bish," she said as she turned back toward the others, unaware that a speeding projectile was headed straight for her head.
When the snowball hit, Queen dove, rolled, and made ready with her submachine gun. But there was no enemy, just Bishop, whose chest shook with laughter.
Queen stifled a smile, dropped her weapon, and pounded toward the unmoving Bishop. "You lily shit bird…"
"Save it for later," Deep Blue's voice said over the headset. "That blast lit up the infrareds like the Fourth of July. If anyone had a bird over the area, they'll come looking. Hump it back to LZ Alpha double-time and come home."
Queen pointed a finger at Bishop. "You're lucky." She did her best to sound pissed, but the smirk on her lips revealed otherwise. Bishop remained still and silent.
Deep Blue spoke again. "And Queen, put your damn hood back up."
"You heard the man," King said. "Let's go home."
"King, I just got word that your two-week jaunt has been approved," Deep Blue said. "That means you're all getting some R and R. Enjoy it while it lasts."
"Where you off to?" Queen asked.
"Peru," King said. "An old friend needs my help."
"You going to see action?" Rook asked. "Should we come with?"
The four of them looked at King at once. He couldn't see their eyes through the small slits in their goggles, but he could tell they all wanted in… if there was action to be had.
"Thanks, but no," King said. "Should be a walk in the park."
"Bogies twenty miles out and closing," Deep Blue said. "ETA, five minutes."
"But now it's time to run," King said.
The group broke into a sprint toward the forested coastline where a still-classified UH-100S stealth Blackhawk transport heticopter, piloted by some boys from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the "Nightstalkers," stood ready to speed them away.
King took one last look over his shoulder. He'd counted seventy-five men and women in the camp. The explosives he'd planted had killed the majority of them. Two more had fallen to his knife. And yet the number of dead on his hands this day was a drop in the bloody bucket he'd filled during his ten years with Delta. For the briefest of moments he grew weary of the death and violence.
Then he remembered who these people were, what they had done, and what they would do if they weren't stopped. He had witnessed the horrors of war, the blood and havoc. Fellow soldiers had died in his arms on several occasions, some riddled with shrapnel, others missing limbs or simply sprayed down by bullets. War and its tragedy were familiar to him. But they paled in comparison to the horrors wreaked by terrorists. To kill a soldier in battle was something he could justify, something he could live with, but to slaughter innocents, to willfully infect the world's population with fear, was madness that served the needs of a few radicals.
In his line of work, civilian casualties were sometimes unavoidable, but he abhorred the news of innocents caught in the crossfire. It stood against everything he fought for. That the organizations he fought against served to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, that they cheered and celebrated the deaths of innocents, infuriated him. He'd seen the remains of men, women, and children blown to pieces by suicide bombers who targeted cafes, markets, and schools. He could identify the glazed look in the eyes of a man willing to take his own life in order to spread fear and spark wars. He recognized the heart of his enemy as evil.
So he waged his war against terrorism as a member of Delta, never hesitating to pull the trigger if it meant saving innocents. It was gruesome work, but necessary. Noble even. As King forged across the ice he looked back one last time at the ruined island. Another terror network brought to its knees. With seventy-four potential suicide bombers inside the complex and the average number of deaths caused by each suicide attack placed at ninety-five, he'd just saved roughly seven thousand innocent lives.
"Checkmate," he whispered.
FOUR
Sitting in the office in which he'd interviewed three years previous, Todd Maddox reviewed the latest batch of test results. He scoured through the nearly fifty pages, searching for a clue as to what was going wrong with his test subjects. With the Hydra's burial place eluding Manifold's best efforts, Maddox had focused on his nAG protein theory. He'd made remarkable progress in the field of regeneration, no one denied that, but with each regeneration his subjects, animal or human volunteer, went stark raving mad. What good was a regenerated limb when all the subject used it for was mayhem?
Despite his early enthusiasm, Ridley was beginning to doubt. He didn't come right out and say it, but with every failure, he increased the pressure. The man had made most of his dreams come true, but he was a controlling task master with little tolerance for delays or setbacks. Even in the wake of his amazing strides forward, this last step back from the goal of perfected human regeneration had brought the man's wrath down like a digital maelstrom. E-mails, phone messages, and faxes from Ridley bombarded his office. The message was simple every time—"work harder," "think faster," "I'm not getting younger" — and the increased pressure had kept him awake for days. Even more stressful was that he had to apply that same pressure on the people working under him. He'd been well liked at his previous jobs. Here he lived and worked constantly feeling that a mutiny could break out at any moment. Ridley had never once mentioned firing him. Not even a hint. But the thought was always in the back of his head, urging him to make progress. He didn't want to risk losing all he'd worked for.