Captain Jennings tossed the black army backpack and stormed into the house, reported his findings to the generals, and came back outside, master controller in hand. He presented the master controller to Winston, who took in as many of the controls as he could while Captain Jennings ranted, “we are all willing to die for our cause. When I arm this, you will have two minutes to decide your fate.”
The captain motioned to his two assistants to load the last remaining Tabari into a drone. They held it up and the captain sent it high above their heads where it hovered silently. He armed the Tabaris — all twenty of them, including those whose whereabouts were unknown, the counter ticking down from 120. Winston had no idea that the Russian Tigr with the American “Russians” and sixteen Tabaris had been ambushed and was currently taking heavy friendly fire from a local American militant group intent on destroying the Russian-made troop transport, damned be the white flag of truce that was raised. The Russian Tigr was only ten miles away, well in range of the master controller.
“You can stop this now. Tell me where they are,” Major Chaek implored.
“I gotta apologize, Sir. I didn’ have time to clean the upstairs toilet for your stay—”
Major Chaek punched Winston in the kidney. Winston reeled with pain.
“I will make you suffer for the last thirty seconds of your life,” Major Chaek said, and held his Kizlyar blade to Winston’s groin.
“Jeezus, you gon’ cut my balls off?” he said.
Captain Jennings displayed the master controller. Sixty seconds left.
“I will do more than that, Mr. Sparrow.”
Captain Jennings pleaded, “come on, now. Do you really want millions of lives to be on your head? We’re not talking just Johnsonville gone, we’re talking the entire state gone. All because of one stubborn nigger. Tell me and I’ll disarm them.”
Winston could see that Captain Jennings didn’t want to die, but that n-word really got his goat, “nobody wants ta speak ‘bout the air around them ‘til a niggah got their hands wrapped ‘round their throat.”
“Thirty seconds,” Major Chaek said, and pressed his knife firmly into Winston’s groin.
“Okay, okay,” Winston said, “I’ll tell you everything.”
He watched Captain Jennings disarm the nukes with a code on the keypad; he didn’t quite get the number sequence, but he saw the pattern and counted the number of digits the officer pressed — nine. He recalled that the Mayor often espoused that life was nothing more than patterns, and that while people could fall into good patterns or bad patterns, they always had the power within them to change their patterns. Winston smiled widely.
“You have nothing to smile about, Mr. Sparrow. You are about to die,” the Major said, “unless you become forthright this very moment.”
“May I sit?” Winston asked, “my old bones…”
The Major motioned for one of the Russians to bring a chair from around Medusa’s stump, and he happened to return with Winston’s favorite chair. He set it down in the middle of the driveway and shoved Winston into the chair, whose mission now was to stall as long as he could. He looked up at the drone that interrupted the predawn sky’s tranquility.
Major Chaek held the black backpack up and asked, “are you working with the United States Army?”
“Yes,” Winston said.
“Go on.”
“They come ta me yesterday, told me what I hadda do. I done it, and now I’m sittin’ here on my own property, in my own chair, talkin’ to you.”
“Where are the bombs?”
Major Chaek punched Winston in the face when he didn’t immediately answer. Again. And again.
“Sir!” Captain Jennings said through gritted teeth.
Winston coughed and spit blood, his mouth and left eye instantly swollen.
“Now now… you gotta play nice.”
“Just kill him,” Major Chaek said to one of the Russian soldiers, who cocked and aimed his rifle at Winston’s head.
“Might as well,” coughed Winston, “them nukes are long gone by now. Member that Russian Tigr from ‘bout an hour or so ago? They took ‘em. Headed east. What was it? Twenny miles ta get outta range a that thing?” He pointed at the master controller and laughed, but while the American “Russians” in the Tigr pleaded with their fellow American aggressors, some dumbass in a Don’t Tread on Me t-shirt got spooked and opened fire on them, which resulted in several of the militants dying. Unfortunately, all of the army rangers were killed and the Russian Tigr was torched, a false victory for the United States.
“Sir, I called the Palmetto Group to ask about that Tigr, but they did not answer. I assumed the radioman fell asleep. I was going to alert you, but… this happened.”
“Do it,” Major Chaek said, “we must find those Tabaris.”
Unexpectedly, a tiny shot rang out and the Russian soldier with the gun to Winston’s head put a finger to his forehead, surprised to see blood, and slowly collapsed, dead. Heads turned to where the shot originated, and there was May standing in the doorway, Winston’s tiny .22 rifle in her hands, the IV bag hanging from the trigger guard. She fired again, this time harmlessly wounding her own home.
“You leave my husband alone!” she commanded.
Major Chaek slowly unholstered his sidearm and raised it toward May. She lowered the rifle, the strength she had found to protect her husband suddenly failing her, and she fell on her knees to the barn’s floor. Major Chaek took aim. Winston, still unrestrained, bounded out of his chair and shoved the gun away. As Major Chaek retrained the gun on Winston, a hailstorm of bullets erupted from the field across the street. PLA soldiers fell one by one. Major Chaek half-ran with his leg cast, taking cover inside the Sparrow residence and firing haphazardly toward the field, striking one of his own men in the back of the neck. Winston dove for cover behind the barn. Captain Jennings, clutching the master controller, was hit once, twice, three times… but still managed to arm the Tabaris. His dying eyes caught Winston’s incredulous gaze as he heaved the master controller onto the roof of the barn. One final blow to Jennings’ abdomen served to help the momentum of the master controller find a spot high on the barn’s steep roof.
Winston rolled to the barn door and leapt inside, falling next to May. He quickly checked on her — her eyes were open, but she was delirious.
“Thank you, my love,” he said, and barged into the apartment. He grabbed the Mayor’s aluminum ladder off the wall. It was tricky getting it through the slim door, but he managed, only losing a few precious seconds. He stepped up onto the Tabaris’ wooden crate and rested the ladder’s tip on a rafter that framed the cupola. He jumped down, grabbed the .22 rifle from May’s hands, hopped back up onto the crate, and climbed the ladder to the very top. There was a reason he had installed the cupola on hinges — and that was for easy egress to the roof’s peak. He unfastened the latch that held the cupola firmly against its waterproof seal, and threw it open. It crashed hard against the rooftop, its glass shattering (oddly enough, at that moment, he pondered that he’d find replacement glass down at Calef’s after the war), set the rifle into the open cupola, and hauled himself out onto the gabled roof. He estimated that there were just seconds left before his world would end, and he reached down and grabbed the master controller by the very tippy-top of its antenna and pulled it toward him. Several PLA soldiers saw him and trained their weapons at him, but the army rangers had stormed the gates and were now on the Sparrow property. When Winston finally had the master controller in his hands, the timer read three seconds. He keyed the numbers 3-1-4-1-5-9-2-6-5 into the keypad and the countdown stopped at zero.