It was a bizarre and crazy battle. Blow upon blow and defense after defense, endless pivoting for position. Blood wiped from the eyes, elbow and knuckle collisions shaken off in mid-skirmish and even one dislocated shoulder slammed back into place using Smyth’s own bulk. It was raw, as real as anything ever got.
And then Kinimaka ranged around it all, slamming, barging, destroying where he could. At least three of the downed, broken, legionnaires were his doing. Beau took care of two more and then Mai and Alicia finished the last together. As he fell they came face to face, fists raised, battle rage and blood lust flashing between them, catching fire like lasers from their eyes, but it was Beau who split them apart.
“The bomb,” he said.
And then, suddenly, every single face turned to Drake.
“How long do we have left?” Dahl asked.
Drake didn’t even know. The battle had taken every scrap of concentration. He looked down now, dreading what he would see, pulling back his sleeve and checking his watch.
“We haven’t even seen the bomb yet,” Kenzie said.
“Fifteen minutes,” Drake said.
And then the shots rang out.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Kenzie felt the impact like a missile strike. It knocked her off her feet, hammered her lungs, and momentarily tore all consciousness from her mind. Drake saw the bullet strike and dropped to his knees, breaking the inevitable fall. She had never seen it coming, but then neither had anyone else. Smyth had taken a hit too. Luckily, both bullets struck vests.
Reacting fastest, still with the words “fifteen minutes” bombarding his brain, was Torsten Dahl. As the two legionnaires rose from the ground, bullets rapidly fired and now taking better aim, he charged them, arms out, roaring like a train carrying lost souls from the blood-coated depths of Hell. They hesitated in surprise, and then the Swede battered them, one with each arm, and propelled them both backwards into the side of a wooden hut.
The structure shattered apart around the men, planks of wood breaking, splintering and tumbling through the air. The men fell on their backs among its contents, which proved to be most useful to the mad Swede.
It had been a workman’s shed, a place full of tools. As the legionnaires struggled to pick up their guns, one groaning and the other spitting teeth, Dahl lifted a well-used sledgehammer. The fallen men saw him coming out of the corner of their eyes and froze, disbelief unmanning them.
Beau came alongside him, saw their reaction. “End them. Remember what they are.”
Kinimaka paused too, chaffing at the bit as if he wanted to stomp them into dust. “They shot Kenzie. And Smyth.”
“I know,” Dahl said, dropping the sledgehammer and leaning on its handle. “I know that.”
Both men saw the pause as a sign of weakness and went for their guns. Dahl launched himself through the air, raising the sledgehammer at the same time, and brought it down as his body descended. One blow smashed a legionnaire in the center of the forehead, and he still had strength and skill enough to turn, lift the shaft and pulverize the temple of the other man. When he was done he rose to his knees, gritting his teeth, and threw the sledgehammer over his shoulder.
Another legionnaire then sat up, groaning, head canted to the side as if in agony, and raised a pistol held between shaking hands. In that split second it was Kenzie who was fastest to react and put herself at great personal risk. Without pause she shrugged off the previous bruises, blocked the man’s sights and rushed at him. The gun she held in her hand launched like a brick, end over end so that it impacted with the center of his face. He fired as he fell backwards, the shot passing overhead. When she reached him Kenzie retrieved her own weapon, but not before emptying his into his chest.
“How long?” Dahl breathed as he stormed toward the door that led to the Tropical Zone.
Drake raced past.
“Seven minutes.”
That’s not long enough to disarm an unfamiliar nuke.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Six minutes.
Drake rushed into the Tropical Zone, shouting until his throat hurt, desperate to get a fix on the bomb. The low cry that answered did not come from Hayden, but he followed it as best he could. Veins pounded all along his forehead. Tension curled his hands into fists. As the entire team entered the building, faced with winding wooden walkways and a tree-lined habitat, they spread out to take advantage of their numbers.
“Fuck!” Kinimaka cried, stress almost destroying him now. “Hayden!”
Another muffled cry. Drake spread his arms in utter frustration, unable to pinpoint the exact location. Seconds ticked by. A brightly colored parrot bombarded them, making Alicia take a step back. Drake couldn’t help but check his watch again.
Five minutes.
The White House would now be exuding such a flood of anxiety it would wash right up Capitol Hill. The approaching NEST team, the bomb squad, the cops and agents and firefighters who were aware, would be either sprinting until their legs gave out or falling to their knees, searching the skies and praying for their lives. If any world leaders had been briefed they too would be on their feet, watching the clock, and preparing a few sentences.
The world held sway.
Drake shuddered in relief on hearing a shout from Mai, then took more seconds finding its source. The team met as one, but what they found confounded all their expectations. Yorgi was standing back alongside Lauren; Beau and Kenzie tried to work it out from afar, and the rest of the team either fell to their knees or crawled alongside the mass.
Drake stared. The first thing he saw was the body of a naked woman, wrapped around with duct tape and blue wire, laying spread-eagled about two meters off the ground. Still baffled he saw that below the soles of her feet stuck another pair of feet, these belonging to a man judging by the hairy legs that were attached to them.
Hayden is the bomb, Ramses had told him.
But… what the hell…
Below the naked man he now saw boots that he recognized. Hayden, it seemed, lay at the bottom of this pile.
Then where the hell is the nuke?
Alicia raised her head from her position next to the unknown female. “Listen up. Zoe says the bomb is strapped underneath Hayden, at the bottom of this peculiarity. It is armed, has a pretty robust motion sensor and is protected by a backpack. The wires wrapped all around their bodies are attached to the bloody trigger.” She shook her head. “I can’t see a way through. This is the time for bright ideas, guys.”
Drake stared at the bodies, the endless trail of wires, all the same blue color. His first reaction was to agree.
“Does it have a collapsing circuit?” Kinimaka asked.
“My best guess is ‘no’,” Dahl said. “That would be too risky, since the people attached to it might shift. The collapsing circuit — an anti-handling device — would detect Hayden’s movement, assume someone would be touching the bomb, and boom.”
“Don’t say that.” Alicia cringed.
Drake fell to his knees close to where he assumed Hayden’s head was. “By the same principal then, the motion detector would be fairly loose. Again, to allow some movement from the captives.”
“Yes.”
His head hurt from tension overload. “We have the deactivation codes,” he said.
“Which could still be fake. And worse, we have to input them on the pad attached to the trigger underneath Hayden.”
“You guys had better hurry,” Kenzie said softly. “We have three minutes left.”
Drake rubbed his scalp furiously. This was no time to entertain doubts. He shared a look with Dahl.