The smile vanished from Stone’s face.
“Speaking of stupid, where’s your boss, Jansen? I assume he is your boss, right? Waxman wouldn’t let someone as dumb as you run a job like this.”
Stone started to hyperventilate, his pride hurt and his anger building. I could see his eyes dart rapidly side-to-side, as if contemplating his next move. He stepped closer to me as if the bullet he intended for me would be more forceful if delivered up close when he pulled the trigger. At least it would feel better to him.
“I’m here to make sure that asshole Jansen did what he was hired to do. Though by the looks of things, I’m not so sure he did. He wasn’t in the parking lot where he was supposed to be. Now, I come in here and find my boys here dead, and you’re not. That’s something I intend to remedy right now.”
I slowed my breathing and relaxed my muscles. As Stone extended his arm, pointing the gun at my head, I thrust my left arm straight up, just underneath Stone’s arm that was holding the gun. I quickly rose to my feet, turning my body as I did so, which deflected Stone’s aim as he pulled the trigger. The bullet sailed past me harmlessly. Again with my left hand, I grabbed Stone’s wrist and pulled him forward and off balance, bringing my right knee up into Stone’s groin with as much force as I could.
Stone let out an agonizing cry as a wave of pain coursed through his stomach area, causing him to drop his gun and fall to one knee. An attack to the groin is almost always immediately disabling, but he was a big guy and I knew it’d take more than that to stop him. He struggled back to his feet, and as he did so, his left arm backhanded me to the side of the face, knocking me down and once again making Stone think he had the upper hand. He was furious now, but instead of being smart and looking for a weapon, he looked like he wanted to finish me off by hand, which he no doubt thought he was capable of doing.
He didn’t see me cock my left leg back, until I thrust it out, connecting with his right knee. There was a sickening crack and Stone howled in pain as he looked down and saw it bend backward.
I did my best to stand up before anything else could happen. Stone was now a wounded animal and becoming desperate. He had the drop on me a minute ago and now he was fighting for his life, with rage giving him an adrenaline surge. I knew that if Stone got hold of me, I might lose the encounter. Stone was bigger and stronger, and he didn’t have a bullet hole in his shoulder.
Where before I had wanted to draw him in, it was now to my benefit to keep some distance between us. But the room was small and cluttered and there was no safe place for me to get to. Stone reached into a pocket and pulled out a knife, opening it with a flick of his thumb to reveal a three-inch serrated blade. I could see Stone readying for a lunge at me, when the glass window shattered. There was a spurt of blood that erupted from Stone’s upper body as he fell to the floor in a heap, and stopped moving. A split second later, I heard the report of a sniper rifle off in the distance.
I stood there a minute, looking for his gun, found it and shuffled over to pick it up. I looked down at Stone and the blood that was pooling around him. I waited a few seconds to see if there were any other threats I needed to address. Not seeing any of the three men moving, I relaxed a bit.
My rest was short lived when I heard someone walking into the office behind me. I turned and, in the same motion, brought my gun up to bear on what I perceived was a new threat. Unfortunately, I was getting weak now and I didn’t have a lot left. I recognized the man standing in front of me. Jansen was holding a gun and pointed it directly at me as he moved carefully into the room. He looked down at Stone and the other men, none of which were moving. When he saw Stone, he got a surprised look on his face, as if not expecting to see Stone there. Jansen looked up, stepped over Stone, and approached me.
“How the hell did you get in here?” he asked me, incredulous.
Just then four armed security responders rushed the office with rifles brought to bear on Jansen and me. My previous gunshots must have drawn their attention. These guys looked serious and prepared to do harm to anyone they didn’t know — and they didn’t know me. The thought crossed my mind that they may be Jansen’s men, in which case I was screwed.
“Put down your weapon! Do it now!” one of them commanded me, his rifle aimed at my chest.
I slowed my breathing and prepared to attack the nearest guy when Hector came running up. When he saw me, he shouted, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! He’s a friendly. Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
The security personnel froze in their positions but didn’t appear to be convinced and did not drop their weapons. To my relief it appeared they were the good guys, though they still had weapons on me. I lowered my arm to my side and smiled at Hector.
“Hi, Hector. About time you got here.”
Jansen was just standing there, not moving, still holding his weapon. He looked at me and then at Hector. He was clearly outnumbered but looked threatening nonetheless. He was very big and intimidating to Hector and the guys on Hector’s staff, despite the fact that Hector’s men had semi-automatic weapons. Hector recognized Jansen from his picture as the guy they were looking for.
Keeping one eye on Jansen, Hector circled around and sidled up to me, surveying the carnage all around me. He just shook his head. “Man, you’re making a hell of a mess out of my power plant. There’re dead guys all over the place. There’s gonna be hell to pay for this. I hope you’re prepared to explain all this, ‘cause I can’t.”
He looked back at Jansen, and said, “You’d better drop that weapon or I’ll blow you to hell and gone!”
Just then, there was a loud scream from behind me. We all turned and saw Stone pushing himself up off the floor. He looked up at me with murderous fury in his eyes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jansen bringing his weapon up and I sensed that everyone was looking at Stone and nobody saw that Jansen was preparing to shoot. I heard two quick shots and felt the pressure wave as the bullets passed me, and watched as Stone fell to the floor again, truly dead this time.
The security responders whirled around, on alert, weapons hot. “Drop the fucking weapon! Do it NOW!” screamed one of them. Jansen immediately dropped his 9mm Sig Sauer to the floor and raised his hands over his head, surrendering. Hector’s men were agitated, twitchy, and unclear if they should shoot me, or Jansen, or both of us. They looked back and forth at us apprehensively, weapons aimed at our faces. I knew I needed to get everyone to back down a bit.
“Calm down fellas,” I told them, knowing that they needed someone to tell them what to do, and time to process all of this. I raised my left hand and gingerly set my weapon down on the desk next to me to help defuse the situation. “Hector?” I said, trying to get Hector to take charge of his men.
Hector broke out of his stunned silence. “Everyone stay where you are! Don’t move and don’t shoot anyone!” Hector commanded. He was still trying to figure out what just happened himself.
I moved slowly over to Jansen, put one hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. We each reached out a hand and gripped one another tightly. Jansen and I exchanged a look.
Then Jansen broke out into a grin and said, “Hey, boss. Good to see you in one piece.”
I smiled back at him. “Back at ya!”
Then to Hector, who was standing there with his mouth open, I said, “Hector, I’d like you to meet Eric Jansen… a member of NeXus.”
CHAPTER 65
The Old Man opened the airlock to containment and stepped inside for the second time that night. He knew there were four reactor coolant pumps and that the terrorist had brought two bombs in with him. Where would he put them? He put one on the 1–2 reactor coolant pump seal package. Found and removed. It was reasonable to assume the second bomb would also be placed on a seal package, but which one? He didn’t have a lot of time to search for it. Then it occurred to him that before he died, the terrorist tried to escape up the back stairwell. It might be reasonable to assume that he knew about that stairwell because he’d been down it already. It was near the 1–4 reactor coolant pump room. Opposite sides of containment. It made sense.