“So you think sacrificing yourself is going to wash away all the blood on your reputation? You want to go the Lincoln route? Die a beloved martyr rather than pay for your crimes?”
The president looked away. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for some atonement, sure. Let’s face the real issue though: someone will take me out eventually. It’s only a matter of time. How many more people will throw their lives away either trying to end or protect mine? No, Donaldson was right. This will never end as long as I’m a lightning rod for extremists to rally against.”
He leaned in close to Brown. “Don’t you think it’s better if you finish me rather than some rebel? No reprisals, no more vengeance killings. So, will you help me out?”
Brown sat down too, wiping the blood off his hands. He rubbed his palms against his pants until they were raw, but the red stains wouldn’t go away.
“No. I’m tired of doing God’s dirty work. You said it yourself: the war’s over. I won’t give you the easy way out—”
The president’s fist took Brown by surprise. He jerked his bleeding nose back, dropping the grenade. The president scooped it up and spun around.
The spoon flew over his shoulder.
Brown roared and double clapped the president across both temples. As he crumbled, Sergeant Major John Brown caught the grenade in midair. With his other hand, he ripped the door open. Jessica and several other reporters spun around. Jessica screamed over a Secret Service agent’s outstretched arms.
“John! There you are!”
Brown gave her a wink. Hugging the metal baseball close to his chest, he threw himself on the floor.
He twisted his head at the president on the far side of the room.
“Make it all count!”
Jessica and the president never took their eyes off John Brown, even as he dematerialized right in front of them.
Sophie dived out of her Humvee before it even stopped. She ran the last few feet to the main gate’s checkpoint, her rage boiling over. The guards withered under her glare. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Who let this convoy through the outer perimeter? We’re on lockdown!”
“I’m sorry, Storm Leader. This is a high priority shipment. Authorized by the group leader himself.”
Sophie yanked the clipboard from his hands. “I don’t see any records. Where did they come from?”
“No idea. Look, you know how it is, boss. Some deliveries need to be kept off the books. No paper trail. They do have all the proper identification and passwords.”
Sophie turned her back on the militiaman and focused on the convoy leader, leering from the passenger seat of his five-ton truck. “Why don’t you get out and show me what’s so hush hush?”
The mercenary commander dismounted, but leaned against his truck and pulled out a pack of smokes. “Storm Leader, you aren’t cleared to see our cargo. This stuff is above even your pay grade.” He tapped a sat phone in his vest pocket. “I’ve got Group Leader Dietrich on speed dial. So why don’t you get your pretty little ass out of the way and let us get back to—”
Sophie didn’t say a word. She just jammed her rifle into his smirking mouth. Her guards followed suit, terrified about letting their brutal boss down. Without a command from her, they secured the convoy personnel in seconds and herded them to the side.
She shouted into the convoy leader’s face, but everyone heard her. “Do you dipshits get how serious this situation is? The president is going to nuke us in minutes if we don’t get our own bomb airborne first. The countryside is crawling with US Special Forces and I don’t know you. So you think I’m going to let strangers roam around the base?”
Sophie kept one eye on the militiaman with his hands up and walked around to the rear. She tossed up the truck’s flap, studying the detainee’s face. He seemed more nervous than pissed off. Strange.
Sophie shined her muzzle-mounted Maglite inside the cargo hold. Just a couple pallets of artillery shells. The fuses were detached and stored in smaller boxes on top of each pallet. Not common practice, but hardly dangerous. Excessively safe, as a matter of fact.
“Hey you, get over here.” The convoy leader hustled over, sans weapons.
“What’s the big deal? Why aren’t you offloading this at the ammo collection point on the other side of…”
Sophie’s eye fixed on the Cyrillic lettering stenciled onto the rounds. That alone wasn’t surprising. Her militia sourced their equipment from around the world. On the other hand, none of the boom boom gear she’d ever seen had that particular international marking.
A skull grinned back at her, crossed bones underneath. All atop a yellow warning triangle.
She craned her neck, scanning the stacked rounds more closely. Only one word was written in English:
Sarin.
Her spine tingled, but she played it cool. “Sorry about the fuss. Not all my soldiers have been briefed. So are these the leftovers from the Baton Rouge operation?”
The convoy boss grinned. “Man, you’re even sneakier than the group leader. No, this is a new shipment from our sponsor. We used up everything we had in that attack. URA inspectors are crawling all over our surviving units. Could you imagine the shitstorm if they found these things? Dietrich made the right call evacuating everything here. Where should I take the goods?”
Sophie spent all of five seconds adjusting to her collapsing world. She had no broad plan yet, but knew how to fix this one issue.
She whipped up her assault rifle and blew the convoy leader’s head inside out.
“They’re Fed saboteurs! Waste ‘em all!”
Sophie ignored her troops massacring the unarmed detainees and turned back to the truck’s cargo bed. She snarled at the end of her faith. For the first time in this war, she didn’t have a clue what to do.
Dietrich’s shrill voice came over the radio. “Kampbell! What’s with all the shooting?”
She clicked her mike on and off three times before finding her voice. “Just a couple of deserters, but we dealt with them.”
“Good job. Now get back to the main admin building. We’re launching in three minutes. Salazar has been… persuaded to make her public apology in 10 minutes. The camera crew is already setup. We’re having formation with every available Freedom fighter in the parking lot as a backdrop to the show. I need you at my side.”
Sophie snapped out of her funk. “Thank you for the idea.”
A mile away, Dietrich was too busy to puzzle out what she meant. Sophie turned to her confused troopers. She didn’t have the time to explain. How many would believe her anyway? How many would care even if they believed the truth?
They deserved to know what was going on and have the chance to make their own decision.
Unfortunately, there just wasn’t time to be fair.
“Enemy airstrike inbound! Let’s go! Into the bunker. Assholes and elbows!”
Sophie counted her troops as they all wedged into the tiny, above ground concrete bunker next to their checkpoint. The twelfth and last man stopped at the entrance.
“We need a sentry to stay in the open. I volunteer, ma’am.”
Sophie fought back a tear and kicked him into the bunker. Before he could sit upright, she chucked two frag grenades behind him. One landed right in his lap. It took all of Sophie’s willpower to spin around the side of the bunker.
Ba-Bam
She spun around the entrance with her eyes closed, emptying her magazine through the cloud of bloody sand. With her legs full of concrete, she marched back towards one of their now-empty Humvees. She scrambled up into the gunner’s hatch, but paused.