Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (19 page)

“What about Air Force?”

“You want an airstrike on U.S. soil?” Coop asks, sounding a little surprised.

“Might save a few thousand people,” I say.
“So, yeah.
I do.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“No, Coop,” I say, nearly shouting.
“You will God damn do it and right this fucking minute.”

Silence.

I continue. “Pick out a strategic location where we can defend the Northern area of the city; the nearest forested area and as far away from the population as possible. Have everyone available rendezvous there. Ted, once this location has been chosen, forward the satellite feed to Collins’s phone and mark the
LZ
. By the time I get there I better see an army waiting for me and A-10 Thunderbolts circling the city, understood?”

More silence. I’ve been working with both for years, and they’ve gotten accustomed to my lax temperament, so my spitfire is probably throwing them for a loop. The loudest they’ve ever heard me shout before was when I lost a game of ping pong and fifty bucks, against Watson. I make an effort to lower my voice. “Guys,” I say. “I can’t do this without you. You can hate me later.”

“Done,” Cooper says, and I hear her heels clacking away.

“Yeah,” Ted says. “And boss, next time I’ll just take the satellite.”

“You can do that?” I ask, surprised and a little confused.

“I can do a lot,” he says, and the way he says it makes me wonder if there is another reason Watson got posted to the ass-end of the DHS.

The helicopter thunders overhead and descends toward the street.

“Thanks, Ted,” I say and hang up.

Collins heads for her car while I rush toward the helicopter as it sets down. I take my seat in the front of the chopper and put on the headset. Woodstock looks to me, his face grim.
“Where we heading?”

The side door slides open. Collins climbs in with weapons, ammo and a spare tactical vest for Woodstock. She slams the door closed and shouts, “Let’s go!”

As the helicopter lifts into the air, I answer Woodstock’s question. “Take us south to Portland. Exact coordinates are incoming.”

“We going to kill that
sonuvabitch
?” he asks.

Despite my advice to Watson, and Yoda’s advice to Luke, I say, “We’re going to try.”

27

General Lance Gordon had rarely, if ever, felt so good in his life. The new heart had returned him to the energy of his youth and beyond. He felt sharper, more focused and had a sense of purpose that went far beyond anything he had done for the U.S. military and his covert employment with
Zoomb
since. The enemies destroyed, the lives saved and the technology developed, all of it seemed trivial now.

His mind was awake for the first time in his life. He wondered if his heart had just been shitty from the get-go and this is what other people felt like. But when he looked around and saw the sluggish look in the day-to-
dayers
passing by the car, he knew that wasn’t true. If anything, he’d already lived a fuller life than most.

“How much longer?” he asked.

Endo looked back from the front seat of the black BMW. “We’re five minutes out.”

They’d been driving for most of the day, taking a maze of Maine back roads until they reached Route 95 and sped south through Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where they connected with Route 1 to finish the journey to Boston. They’d just crossed the utilitarian looking, pale green Tobin Memorial Bridge, and were headed downtown to the Prudential Tower where
Zoomb
had offices and the resources Gordon needed—computers, Internet connection, a secure location and a private locker to which only Gordon had access.

He didn’t exactly know why he needed those things
yet,
it was just a gut feeling, a burning desire to find out...something...and then what? He wasn’t sure. He just knew he had to look.

In Boston.

He could feel her still.
Maigo
.
But distant, like an old memory.
At first he thought it might have something to do with the girl. She was from Boston and he felt drawn here, but he suspected it had more to do with her other half—the portion of her unearthed from the Alaskan mountainside after his “retirement.” They’d given him everything he wanted—a staggering finder’s fee and control of
BioLance
—after verifying the find, purchasing the land and extracting the body, in pieces, to a location that even he didn’t know.

Finding out where that was and what
Zoomb
knew about the creature were his next steps. After that—his gut would guide him. And Endo, ever faithful, would follow. Or drive.

Despite the lack of mid-day traffic, Endo slowed the car far short of the Prudential Tower parking garage. Gordon knew the man well enough to intuit something was amiss. “What is it?”

“Black suburban,” Endo said. “One o’clock.”

Gordon easily spotted the big black SUV parked a block ahead, just across the street from the parking garage.

“Looks like FBI,” Endo added.

Gordon nodded. “You think they’d switch to pink hybrids eventually. Might as well have a bright yellow FBI stenciled on the sides.”

“Think they’re here for us?” Endo asked.

“Only one way to find out,” the general replied.

Endo gave a nod and pulled back out into the street. Gordon rolled down his tinted window and looked out, pretending to gaze at the tall buildings. They rolled past the Suburban slowly, long enough for everyone inside to get a good long look at his face. After they passed, he sat back and rolled up the window.

“Here they come,” Endo said, looking in the rearview mirror. “What’s our engagement protocol?”

The engagement protocol was typically put in place by
Zoomb’s
head of covert security. Every site operated under different protocols, numbered one through ten. Level one was cheery and friendly—wide open to the public. The
BioLance
facility was rated an eight, which meant they could engage with deadly force if the facility was in danger of being revealed to the public. Had the facility been rated a seven, the Sheriff and the DHS agent would have simply been monitored until a solid threat was confirmed. Had it been set to nine, they would have been shot long before ever reaching the perimeter fence.

“Ten,” Gordon answered.

Endo nodded and pulled into the garage, slowing to take a ticket and then driving casually inside and taking the ramp up. They rounded the corner and drove up again, reaching a section of the garage with numbered, reserved spaces. Gordon’s space was number 576. It was a normal parking space, half way up the long ramp, no different than all the rest with one exception—it was dead center in a thirty-foot-long security camera blind spot.

Before the SUV made it around the first turn, Endo exited the car and dashed to the far side of the garage. While he did, Gordon stood and got into the driver’s seat. As he closed the door, the Suburban roared up the ramp and screeched to a halt behind the BMW, blocking it in.

Four agents poured out of the big vehicle. Two took up defensive positions behind the hood of the SUV, aiming their handguns at random spots on the car. Two others quickly approached the BMW, weapons drawn. One man aimed at Gordon’s head, the other at the empty back seat.

Gordon knew the drill and kept his hands on the steering wheel.

“General Lance Gordon!” the nearest man shouted.
“FBI!
Keep your hands where I can see them!”

Gordon turned slowly, facing the man with a smirk.

“I thought you said he was in the rear passenger’s seat?” the man said to no one in particular.

“He was,” one of the men back by the SUV shouted back.

When the nearest FBI man saw Gordon’s grin widen, he realized the truth. He started to shout a warning, but Gordon pulled the handle on his door and kicked it open. The heavy door struck the man’s leg with a crack. The man dropped to the concrete floor, screaming and clutching his shattered knee.

As the second, very surprised man jumped back and adjusted his aim toward
Gordon,
the old general lunged out with shocking speed and clutched the weapon, and the man’s hand, crushing both. The man started to scream, but Gordon yanked him in close and delivered a punch to the man’s chest. Beneath his knuckles, he felt ribs bend, separate and then break. He felt muscle and sinew tearing away. He felt the man’s raw heart, flex inward, and burst.

When he drew his fist back, the man was dead, his chest caved in like he’d been on the receiving end of a cannon ball.

Gordon looked up and saw Endo grappling with the fourth FBI agent, a dead man already at their feet. When he looked away, he heard a crack and knew the agent was dead. He closed the door to his car and stood over the FBI agent whose knee he’d turned to powder.

The man watched as Gordon picked up the dropped handgun.

“
Glock
23,” Gordon said.
“Standard issue.
Not really a man’s gun, is it, though?”

The agent didn’t reply.

“Still, I suppose it will kill a man just as good as anything.”

“Don’t—don’t shoot me,” the agent said. “I have kids.”

“Then you’re in the wrong line of work,” Gordon replied. “But don’t worry. Answer my question and I won’t shoot you.”

The man nodded.

“Who requested I be brought in?”

The agent looked uncomfortable answering, but when Gordon gently tapped the man’s knee with the gun barrel, he blurted out, “DHS!”

“Which office?”

“I—I don’t know,” the man cried. “It was a Fusion Center, but it didn’t have a city designation.
Just a P. Fusion Center – P!”

Gordon stared into the man’s eyes. He’d seen the look before.
The utter desperation.
Plus, giving away the identity of the arresting agency wasn’t exactly a breach in security. He believed the man. It meant that agent Hudson had survived the
BioLance
building’s destruction. He would have to be dealt with, but not yet.

Gordon put the gun down on the concrete and smiled at the man, who looked relieved. Then he placed his thick hand over the man’s neck and slowly increased the pressure. The agent
fought,
despite the severe pain it must have caused his leg. He
punched,
jabbed pressure points and kicked his good leg into Gordon’s groin.

None of it fazed the general. He felt very little pain.

The agent’s face turned deep red, and just before the man lost consciousness, something in the neck cracked. The flesh compressed quickly after that, and the man’s body laid still.

A shifting sound took the general’s attention away from the man. He looked back and found Endo dragging the man with the cratered chest to the open back hatch of the SUV where two bodies already waited.

“You are a marvel of efficiency, Endo,” Gordon said as the man tossed the dead agent into the vehicle. Gordon picked up the agent with the crushed neck, lifting him with one hand. He carried the man to the SUV and put him in with the rest.

Endo closed the SUV’s rear door and turned to the general. “You seem...well, sir.”

Gordon grinned.
“Better than that.”

Endo nodded.
“The heart?”

“There is no doubt about that,” Gordon answered. “It would seem a little bit of our large Alaskan friend hitched a ride with my new organ.”

“Is it safe?” Endo asked.

The question annoyed the general, but Endo had watched out for his safety for the past five years. It was his job to ask those kinds of questions. Gordon nodded. “I will let you know the second I feel anything but stellar.”

Endo gave a nod, before turning away, climbing into the SUV and pulling away. He’d park it in a visitor spot where it wouldn’t be discovered for days. Gordon looked around the garage.

Not a drop of blood or a sign of a struggle.

He bent down and picked up the lone discarded handgun and slid it beneath the driver’s seat of his BMW before locking the doors and strutting away. If security was even watching the garage feeds, they would simply see Gordon’s vehicle enter the dead zone and the SUV follow. Since both vehicles had tinted windows, they would never know Endo hadn’t been driving the SUV all along.

Gordon opened the trunk, which contained his discarded hospital clothes, and opened a briefcase. Inside was a custom made, sound suppressed .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun. It could punch a hole in a man’s chest big enough to leap through without making much more sound than a cough. He chambered a round, tucked the weapon behind his back and headed for the elevator.

As the doors
pinged
open, Endo slid up next to the general and stepped inside. They both turned around to face the garage.

“Do you think security has been told to watch for us?” Endo asked.

Gordon looked at Endo.
“Only one way to find out.”

Both men smiled.

The doors slid closed and the elevator shot up toward the fiftieth floor of Boston’s second tallest building.