An Armageddon Duology (23 page)

T
heir target accelerated
. Houston gunned the jet ski and pushed it to the breaking point. The boat took no evasive action and even angled toward them to narrow the distance somewhat of their approach.

“They haven’t spotted us,” screamed Lopez behind her. “Running from the crash site!”

Houston nodded vigorously and continued to push the ski full out. The high waves gut-punched them as they sliced through the water, but they gained on the yacht. Lopez began to see just how fortified it was.
Anti-pirate, indeed
. While it possessed a superficial resemblance to the luxury powerboats decorating many docks, the fiberglass was replaced with thick aluminum, the windows black and refracting light unnaturally, the bullet-resistant composition altering the optical properties. And of course the guards and their weapons, in addition to the churning motors kicking a spray like a comet’s tail behind the craft.

They were within ten yards and still gaining on the starboard side. Now came the true insanity: The boat had accelerated beyond fifty miles per hour and the jet ski was barely holding together. The angle had decreased, reducing their relative velocity, but also affording the only way to try to board. Lopez shouldered the automatic rifle and removed two stun grenades.

“Flash bangs ready!” he called to Houston. They were nearly alongside the yacht.

She nodded and he flung the bombs one at a time toward the bow of the ship. Both landed and rattled across the surface, ricocheting off the gunwale, then exploding. Even from the side of the ship, the sound and light were startling.

Lopez heaved a grappling ladder against the side and it caught, the roped steps unfurling against the hull. Just then the boat lurched starboard slamming into the jet ski. Instinctively, both of them leapt off the doomed craft and grabbed the sides of the ladder, one on each side, their legs half-submerged in the sea. The friction of the water threatened to pull the grapple from the boat and deposit them into the propeller blades.

Lopez placed a foot on the roped ladder and violently swung himself toward the gunwale, grasping the side of the boat with his hands. He tucked his legs underneath his torso like a gymnast and planted his boots on the uppermost portion of the hull, a powerful thrust of his legs propelling him over the side to land in the stern on top of the engine box.

Two men were positioned near the cabin looking ahead at the commotion caused by the still smoking flash grenades. At the sound of his awkward landing, they turned too slowly, the shock of the unexpected attack leaving them off guard.

The distance was only a few feet, and Lopez placed his hands on the engine box and swept his leg through the air like a switchblade. His boot connected with the head of the leftmost guard, the neck snapping to the side, teeth raining sideways against the metal. The man fell with a crash and didn’t move.

But it left Lopez open for a strike from the second guard. He prepared for the worst, hoping Houston would be there in time to engage.

And she was. As he spun away from the guard and onto his feet, he crouched and pulled a handgun from his belt. In front of him there was a blur of hands and feet as Houston’s lithe form pummeled the thick hulk of the other guard. The results were devastating. Blows to the neck and groin incapacitated him while she drew a knife. Using the momentum of his failing retreat, she toppled him onto the prone form of the other guard and plunged the blade into his neck, wrenching it several inches, sidestepping a jet of blood that bathed the floor of the boat.

It was over in seconds. In the cacophony surrounding the boat, the melee had barely risen above the chaos.

“I’ll take the cabin,” she said, twitching her head toward the interior. “There are two guards at the bow. I doubt the flash bangs did much more than knock them sideways.”

“Be careful, Sara,” said Lopez. “I don’t want to lose you now.”

“Move, priest,” she said and darted toward the door.

Their actions played in counterpoint. Lopez sprang forward, his weapon raised, back sliding along the wall of the cabin. The acrid smell of smoke from the lingering grenades burned in his nose as he approached the front of the ship. He turned the corner of the cabin and crouched to one knee, steadying the pistol with his left hand as he scanned the deck.

One of the guards remained positioned on the gun turret, checking the skies as if awaiting another attack. The other had tossed one of the smoking remains of the grenades over the side of the boat, aiming his weapon downward, anticipating an assault from the water.

The assault came from behind. Lopez fired two shots before the man could turn. Both connected. The guard slipped over the railing and disappeared into darkness.

The other guard heard the shots. Lopez walked casually toward the turret, his weapon aimed at the man, the guard releasing the controls of the large machine gun, realizing it couldn’t be used at close range. He desperately tried to draw a pistol.

Lopez blasted his right shoulder, the man’s obvious gun arm. The guard screamed and clutched the wound, terror in his eyes as the masked assailant approached.

Lopez grabbed the wrist of his uninjured arm and twisted. Again the man screamed, his body paralyzed in pain, eyes shut harshly.

“How many guards?” yelled Lopez. “Don’t think! Tell me! How many guards?”

Like a programmed machine, the man stuttered his answers: “Two here. Two in the back. Two in the cabin with Fawkes.” Tears streamed down his face.

Fawkes?
It wasn’t to be believed. The architect of Anonymous was
on the boat
. “Sara’s in the cabin with him,” he whispered, the frightened man looking on in distress.

Lopez brought the handle of the pistol down on the man’s temple, the body collapsing into the turret. He sprinted back to the stern of the boat.

A
t the same time
, Houston stood over the bodies of two men.

She had entered the cabin forcefully, kicking in the flimsy door to find three men looking through the front window at the aftermath of the flash bangs. Two were obviously hired protection—broad in the back, towering over the middle figure who could otherwise have been mistaken for a scrawny teen. They turned at the sound of her entrance.

Fawkes
. It was the glasses that sealed the identification. The female hacker’s words—her
lover
—the lanky body, the darting motions, the smart glasses: it was Fawkes. But she had no time to consider the implications.

The men held guns in their hands. They turned to engage, but she held the advantage. She fired twice, each shot aimed quickly at the moving targets across from her. The first shot hit true to rip through the forehead of the bodyguard on her left, his blood splattering the window and ceiling. The second shot drifted right from her momentum. The bullet hit the man in the chest, too high for the heart, but he cried out, dropped his weapon, and careened toward the window.

But he wasn’t down. As Fawkes screamed and darted left, the guard faced her and rushed, the crazed look of a wounded animal on his face.

She pivoted, side-stepping, and grasped his outstretched arm, using his momentum against him. He missed, and she thrust him toward the window in the back of the cabin. His face smashed the glass, a spiderweb of fractures erupting from the bullet-resistant material. Leaving nothing to chance, Houston fired once into the back of his head. She turned quickly to subdue Fawkes.

But he was gone. Wind and a salty mist poured in from an opening in the roof. A short ladder led from the cabin upward. Fawkes had gone up.

She ejected the magazine and pulled another from her belt. Slamming it in place, she darted to the stairway, weapon raised to the ceiling. She could see no one. At the same time, the whirring of an engine could be heard, changing in pitch from low to high.

“No!” she whispered under her breath and sprinted up the ladder.

A
loud voice
exploded throughout the cabin as Lopez charged inside.

“Sara!”

She was climbing a ladder across the room and didn’t hear him. Her feet lifted from the steps and out of sight. Ignoring the bodies around him, he dashed to the ladder and ascended. Houston was there, firing her gun madly as she aimed out over the open water.

He followed the barrel of her gun. In the distance, a form was suspended over the ocean, legs dangling and kicking, arms grasping desperately above him. Overhead, a shadow hummed, a black object the size of a bed, the pitch dropping as the man accelerated away and faded into the blackness.

“
Fuck!
” cried Houston as the object disappeared, her mag emptied.

They both stood there in silence, spindrift coating the dead bodies scattered below them, the boat hurled back and forth in the wind.

All for nothing!

Fawkes had escaped by drone into the night.

M
S. COHEN
: We almost had him. It could all have ended right there. But we had the boat. And a lot of bodies to examine. Also one survivor to question.

C
BD
: They killed the others?

MS. COHEN: Yes.

C
BD
: You don’t look okay with that.

MS. COHEN: [INAUDIBLE] Not really. Violence isn’t really my thing, you know? But sometimes there isn’t another choice. Those were hired guns that would have killed them—tried to kill them—without a second thought. God! Why am I explaining this?

C
BD
: I’m interested in understanding the motivations behind each member of your team.

MS. COHEN: The motivation was the same: to stop what Fawkes was doing!

C
BD
: Did the survivor provide any useful intel?

MS. COHEN: Not much, but some. Once isolated, it was clear to him that the money he had received wasn’t worth what he was going to get. We didn’t even have to lean on him.

C
BD
: And?

MS. COHEN: Unfortunately, most of it was what we had guessed, but confirmation was nice. Hired mercenaries. Paid ridiculously well. Never privy to anything important—Fawkes kept them completely in the dark. They were there to follow his direct orders and serve as protection. He was one paranoid monster. Anyway, we learned that Fawkes was spending more and more time at sea.

C
BD
: Why was that?

MS. COHEN: The bodyguard thought it was to avoid law enforcement. I think it was more than that. I think Fawkes was planning to ride out offshore the societal chaos he was inducing. With everything Angel began to put together, it was clear that he was planning some big event, and it would go down soon.

C
BD
: What else?

MS. COHEN: Print and DNA samples linked two of the men onboard to the public assassinations. And we matched Fawkes’ DNA as well—same as in the mask in the Bridgeport scene.

C
BD
: Where the shootings occurred?

MS. COHEN: Right.

C
BD
: But you still hadn’t found him in any database?

MS. COHEN: No. Might be he was off the radar. He was young, maybe never caught in criminal activity. Another possibility we considered is that he scrubbed his files.

C
BD
: Scrubbed them?

MS. COHEN: Fawkes was a master hacker. Databases are often too easily accessible online. Really—do you know of a single major private or governmental organization that
hasn’t
been hacked in the last ten years? If he knew he was in certain systems, he might have found his way into them and deleted all information about himself. He could do it, I don’t doubt that. Either way, we had nothing. And now we had stirred the hornet’s nest.

C
BD
: Meaning?

MS. COHEN: Until that point, we had been only a blip on his radar. Someone probing too much in the wrong places. Even that was enough to try and kill us. But now—we’d entered his space, killed his bodyguards, nearly grabbed him off that damn boat. If he didn’t have that escape drone on the roof, we would have. Now he was pissed, and he came after us.

C
BD
: First with Angel?

MS. COHEN: Well, she was the thorn in his side that kept getting worse. But everything just began to escalate at that point. Within the next few days we’d be hit, and absolutely devastating attacks happened across the world. And if it hadn’t been for the information Angel obtained from the worm dissection, we would have lost even more.

C
BD
: So she was key.

MS. COHEN: [INAUDIBLE] Here we go again. Yes, she was key. So were John, and Frank, and JP. And certainly Gabriel and Mary.

C
BD
: The aliases—

MS. COHEN: Just stop. I’m not going there. Look, we worked as a team. A damn good team. What happened next just motivated us more. That’s when John’s idea took root, when we agreed to try it. Fawkes was hitting the world where it hurt. This time, we were going to hit
him
where it hurt.