Alex heard the excitement and good humor in their voices. Perhaps at the thought of hundreds of thousands dead, untold billions in clean-up costs, and the only casualties for the terrorists would be this one boatload of fanatics. It would be a massive strategic and propaganda win.
He counted down, feeling his heart rate rise as everything around him seemed to slow. He visualized what he needed to do. Bottom line, it all boiled down to one thing — keep them away from the detonation switch.
He sucked in a breath, gripped his blades, and charged the door, exploding it open. There was that split second of frozen shock, like a flashbulb going off but it broke quickly.
The men were professionals, and weren’t stunned to inaction by the sudden appearance of the near naked intruder. Instead, they all leaped into action. Some dove for cover, most reached for weapons. For Alex, the scenario confirmed what he had sensed — six men, five big and hard-looking, and one down kneeling beside a device that looked like a huge misshapen gas cylinder.
They came fast, two trusting their bare hands and the others waiting their turn with guns or perhaps hesitant to fire near the device. One screamed for Khaled, obviously the technician, to continue his work. The smaller man turned back to his bomb, his hands working furiously as he tried to shut everything else out.
The first man swung a big, looping right cross, and Alex allowed the arm to pass over his shoulder so he could swing back with his fist to embed the short Ka-Bar into his temple with a wet crunch. He let the fast-moving body continue past him to crumple against the wall.
Alex had already decided there would be no prisoners, no surrender, there would only be death — the ghosts of the senator and his wife demanded it. Those who made fear will know real fear this day, he thought as he increased his speed.
Like an engine moving to higher revolutions, Alex’s mind and body worked many times faster than his opponent’s. A hand came down on one shoulder, trying to turn him around, he shrugged it off, ducked under a knife and then came back up with an uppercut to his attacker’s jaw, not pulling his punch, driving the man’s mandible bone back and up into his skull. The dead body flew up to strike the low ceiling.
Then the gunfire began. Bullets flew, striking metal and wood, ricocheting or punching holes through the walls, floor, and ceiling. The overhead light exploded, and only beams of sunlight remained from the porthole-sized windows. The smell of cordite and dust, woodchip and gunsmoke filled the crowded room with a blue haze.
For Alex, the darkness moved the odds even more in his favor, and he dove, rolled, and came up in front of one of the shooters to immediately bury his longer blade into the man’s forehead.
Bullets flew indiscriminately and there came a sting of pain across his cheekbone, and then the meat of his shoulder felt like a horse had just kicked it. He twisted away, scooping up the fallen terrorist’s body with his blade still extruding from the face, and flung it back to where tiny gouts of flame indicated the shots were coming from.
There was a grunt and the shooter was knocked down. Alex dove at him, just as he was pushing his comrade’s dead body from himself. Alex’s weapons were gone, but like most in the Special Forces, his body was a weapon, and he could use what he had — in this instance, the top of his head.
Alex used his momentum to ram his forehead into the front of the man’s face, flattening it between him and the wall. The terrorist’s arms dropped, and Alex snatched a long and heavy hunting knife from the man’s belt.
The remaining terrorist had given up on a direct attack on Alex and instead lurched for the bomb. The device initiators were simple on homemade tactical weapons — you just needed to fire a pellet into a larger ball of high-grade fissionable material, like plutonium. The high-speed collision generated a reaction that would continue until detonation. The effect was inevitable and devastating. A homemade high-velocity mechanism — similar to a gun — would do it. It only needed one thing — a trigger.
Alex saw the red, thumb-sized button on top, and the huge man closing in on it while the technician kneeled back, his work done, and his eyes wide.
“Stop!”
The force of Alex’s voice made the man pause. His eyes locked with Alex’s; his hand outstretched and only feet from the trigger.
Alex, just a yard away, pointed with his blade, and spoke slowly and clearly. “First I’ll take the hand.” He dropped his arm, keeping the knife down at his side but blade side pointed up.
The man stared for another moment before his lips begin to curl up at the corners.
“Allah Akhbar!” he screamed and then lunged at the button.
Alex swept the blade upwards faster than the eye could follow. The hand and forearm separated just below the elbow, with the hand spinning in the air like a wet glove. Blood spurted, covering the cowering technician who still kneeled before the bomb.
The terrorist’s eyes went wide as he looked at the spurting stump for a moment, before he gripped it and stared to yell. Insanely, his eyes went back to the trigger.
“And then I’ll take the rest.” The next sweep of Alex’s blade and the man’s yell was also cut off as his head fell back on the remaining skin flap of his near-severed neck.
Alex dropped the now sticky blade to the side. The room was now silent save for the occasional drip of blood, the settling of last breaths in collapsing bodies, and the groan of splintered decking wood.
Alex looked down at the technician who had his hands up, eyes round as silver dollars.
Kill him too.
Alex frowned. “No.”
“Say again, boss?” Casey’s query came back immediately into his ear comm.
“Where are you?”
“Top deck, doing some housekeeping,” she said casually.
“Good; device secured, coming up in a second or two.” Alex looked back down at the technician.
“I surrender,” the man said softly.
Kill him — remember the senator.
Alex recognized who it was, or what it was. It was from his Id, the one he called The Other, the creature that lurked there and fed on violence. He had carried it ever since his cure — the Arcadian treatment, the experimental formulae administered to him had given him back his mind and body following a catastrophic battlefield injury. But it had released something from his deep subconscious. Something near primordial in its lust for brutality and blood.
He stared down at the small man as the thing in his mind exerted pressure on his will. He’d mostly learned how to cage and control The Other. But violence freed it and once escaped, all it wanted was blood and more blood.
The technician lowered his hands slowly, and let them rest on the edge of the device.
Alex touched the communication pellet at his ear again. “Franks, call in immediate evac.”
He looked back at the man, who smiled up nervously. His eyes shifted, and Alex could see the bloom of heat on his cheeks as his blood pressure rose.
The technician licked his lips. “I will tell you everything.”
“I know you will,” Alex said.
The man’s eyes dilated. His hands were mere inches from the trigger. He licked his lips again.
“Please.” The man shook his head, but his hands seemed to move a fraction closer to the trigger.
Or did they move? Alex couldn’t tell if they really moved, or he only wished they had.