Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (108 page)

Sarah stepped off the cargo jet and made her way around the crates of medicine that were being exchanged for food and water in Berlin and would be exported to whatever country the UN decided needed them the most.

Of all the global systems that had been hit the hardest, communications and transportation fared the worst. A journey that would normally have put her in the country in one day took two. Everywhere she went, things were a mess—people running around, scrambling to do whatever they could to eke out the rest of their lives a little longer.

Years of traveling and seeing the nasty underbelly that was the human race had jaded her—she’d accepted that—but in all her years, she’d never seen anything like this. People were killing each other—not for gold, or diamonds, or oil, but for food and water. Two of the most basic necessities so many, including herself, had taken for granted.

But despite all the bad, she’d still seen some good. The workers running past her, unloading and loading shipments for people in trouble, hadn’t given up, and neither would she. Sarah shifted the duffel bag’s strap on her shoulder and made her way over to the car waiting for her.

The hills and sheer amount of green that she drove past were incredible. Bryce had hacked into the GPS tracker of the car and guided her where she needed to be. “You know, Bryce, I have to say, it’s good to have you back.”

“All right, let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“I know you have something smart you want to say, so go ahead, just get it out of your system.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything else.”

“No? Nothing about the shrill, girl-like shrieks of my voice? Nothing about my dress attire or some personal piece of information in my life that you managed to slap in my face?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.” Bryce paused, the airwaves between them silent. “Well, thank you.”

“But now that you mention it, I would say that your voice could drop a few octaves.”

“There it is.”

“At least we know you could never have a phone sex job. I mean, not unless you were the woman. In that case, you might actually do well for yourself.”

“This is going to be a long drive to Moscow.”

***

Vince’s tracking signal brought Sarah to a compound just outside Moscow’s city limits. A barbed-wire fence lined the perimeter, and Sarah pulled off the road three miles from the compound’s entrance. She parked the Land Rover in a cluster of bushes and covered it with as many branches as she could. From the road, you couldn’t even tell it was there. She sifted through the duffel bag and started loading up. She pulled on her Kevlar, placed the magazines for her .45s on her belt along with the standard grenades, C-4 explosives, flash grenades, knife, and a pair of glasses she’d been waiting to try out.

Bryce had kept complaining that the glasses were still in a testing phase, but the truth was, GSF just hadn’t approved them for field use yet. Even spy agencies get tangled up in the bureaucracy of paperwork, but with the current climate and situation, she had managed to sneak the glasses without anyone knowing.

“What are those?” Bryce asked.

“What are what?” Sarah answered, placing the glasses on top of her head.

“Dammit, Sarah! You know those aren’t ready.”

“Oh, come on, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you have any idea how many times you’ve said that, and every time, the worst thing imaginable has happened?”

“Give me three examples.”

“One: St. Augustine mission to recover intel from the drug cartel using the port as a hub for the eastern seaboard drug trade. I told you not to set more than three charges on that boat in fear of us not leaving enough evidence—”

“Wow. Okay, I get it. But they’re just glasses, Bryce. I’m not going to blow anything up with them. Unless that’s something that they do. I should really start reading the manuals on things before I take them.”

“Just be careful with them, will you? They’re the only prototype I have.”

Sarah placed her hand over her heart. “Scout’s honor.” She kept a steady pace until she made it to the fence. She cut through the wire mesh with a pair of pliers while the glasses alerted her to any nearby sensors, which were then quickly disabled before any alarms were triggered. “Man, Bryce, these things are amazing.” The displays also targeted any nearby sentries and identified their weapon classifications along with any other guns hidden on their person. “You know, machines are going to make us obsolete one day. I mean, they’ll have a robot that’s the size of a fly buzz in and kill or collect whatever intel people need.”

“You mean like our wasp project?”

“We have something like that? Time to update the old resume. Do you think I’d be a good greeter at Walmart?”

“The satellite feed’s giving me a total of twelve guards just on the perimeter. All armed, all of them… actually doing their job.”

“That’s a first. Entrance points?”

“You’ve got three options. I’ll upload them to the glasses’ display.”

“Better update your resume too.”

“Who do think is designing this stuff?”

“It’s like you’re trying to put me out of a job.”

Three-dimensional models of the building appeared and rotated. Yellow lines radiated from her position, giving her alternative routes to take that took into account the paths of the sentries guarding the perimeter, the timing of each, and a percentage of risk that was involved with the route, along with the likelihood of success.

“Looks like the southwest corner is your best option,” Bryce said.

Sarah selected the route, and the yellow line expanded onto the ground beneath so she could follow it all the way to her destination. On her run, the corner of the screen alerted her to any guards who were either facing her direction or heading her way, giving her enough time to seek cover. Just before she made it to the corner, her glasses flashed red, signaling that one of the guards had spotted her, but the gunshots came almost as quickly as the alert.

Sarah fired two shots in the direction of the glasses’ warning, killing the main shooter and hitting his partner, who was still jogging behind him, in the shoulder. The glasses didn’t seem to pick up that one. “I think your tech needs a little software update, Bryce.”

“Yeah, I think there’s something wrong with the coding there. It’s weird—I’m getting some sort of interference. You know, I bet it has something to do with the security scripting. I bet if I bypassed the—”

“Don’t care!” Bullets whizzed past her and into the bulletproof door Sarah was trying to crack. She reached for the C-4 on her belt when the glasses lit up with the entrance code for the door. She entered the six-digit number, and the door popped open. “I could get used to this.”

The alarms inside blared, and Sarah dashed down the hallway, the route in her glasses recalculating and momentarily blinding her vision. “Bryce, what the hell is going on?” Coding sequences flashed in front of her eyes. “I feel like I’m gonna have a seizure.”

“The software’s running an automatic update. I don’t think I can shut it off. It’ll just have to run its course.”

Sarah pushed the glasses up from her face and onto her head. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then. Where’s Vince’s signal coming from?”

“Down the hall, left, then two rights, and one more left, second door on your right. And be careful. He might have company.”

“I’m always careful.” Sarah skidded around the first corner, guards firing bullets that sent bits of concrete crumbling from the wall. She sprinted, looking for the next turn. Nothing but solid stone around her, with a few doors spread out sporadically to her left.

Sarah pulled her right pistol and extended her arm completely behind her, lining up her shots and keeping a full sprint. The sight along the pistol bounced up and down until she forced her arm rigid and the first face came into view. The gang behind her was running in a clustered formation—six men spread out like an awkward V. She squeezed the trigger, and the lead man went down. She shifted her arm an inch and a half to the right, squeezed the trigger, and another fell to the floor in a bloody mess. The crew sent a barrage of rage-infused bullets her way while slowing their pace, giving her distance. “Pussies!” she yelled back.

“Turn right!” Bryce said.

Sarah’s boots squeaked against the concrete as she dug her heels into the floor to stop herself then, with another burst of speed, sprinted down the hallway. “I swear these guys just keep getting worse and worse the longer this thing goes on.”

“Uh, Sarah.”

“I mean, it’s one thing to be overwhelmed by a large force, but I’m just one person, for crying out loud.”

“Sarah.”

“Although I will be the first to admit that I do have the skill, tenacity, and energy of a dozen spies, so maybe I’m just being too hard on them.”

“Sarah!”

“What?”

“Twenty bad guys closing in on you from the east side, heading straight for you.”

“Perfect. Those glasses done updating yet?”

“Yeah, looks like they just finished.”

Sarah pulled them down, and the security footage of both herself and the guards heading her way popped into the field of vision. All of them were armed with AK-47s, which in her humble opinion seemed to be the weapon of choice for any thugs, cartels, mobs, insurgents, and terrorists looking to wreak havoc, elongating the continuation of the fine Russian heritage from which it had evolved.

Doors sporadically lined the sides of the walls beside her, and each one she passed was scanned, giving her a quick rundown of the contents inside, along with any other exits that it may contain. When the graphics in front of her blinked for a staircase, she skidded to a stop and burst through the door just before the henchmen made contact.

“What are you doing?” Bryce asked.

“Improvising.” Sarah reinforced the door with two steel filing cabinets and a quickly rigged C-4 explosive, activating the motion sensor. The moment that door jerked open—boom. The staircase behind her led to a second-floor hallway that would get her to the side of the building where Vince was located. The glasses recalculated the path based on her current trajectory, and again the yellow line appeared on the floor beneath her.

Once Sarah made it to the second floor, the rumble of the explosion below rattled the walls, ceiling, and floor. An intersection in the hallway was fifty feet in front of her when the glasses flashed an alert.

“Two hostiles, coming around the corner,” Bryce said.

The alerts came from both sides of the hallway. Sarah kicked it down into another gear and aimed for the left corner of the intersection. The flashing continued, beeping faster the closer she moved to the point of contact. She reached the corner the moment the hostiles arrived, and she jumped, landed the bottom of her foot against the cornered edge with her leg angled at ninety degrees, then pushed hard, jettisoning herself into the three guards caught by surprise at the flying woman barreling toward them.

Sarah landed her right foot against the chest of the first guard, knocking him backward and into the other two. She landed on her side, pulling the right pistol out of its holster and shooting the two across from her. The guard she’d knocked to the ground during her spot-on recreation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon rose to his feet, and she swung her right leg into his ankles, sweeping him back to the floor.

The two guards behind the one she had just put on his ass each received a bullet to the neck. Sarah brought the sights of the pistol down a few inches to kill the guard in front of her, but the sole of a boot knocked the gun out of her hand. She reached her left hand for the other pistol, and the man lunged at her before the tip of the barrel left the holster.

Sarah’s head jerked hard right after a nasty hook to the left side of her chin. Another vicious blow hit her left side, but she brought her arm down just before he managed to pull away, trapping it in a vise. Sarah wrapped her right hand around his throat and squeezed, her fingers crushing the Adam’s apple, until the man went limp.

Three more guards appeared down the hall, and Sarah quickly jumped to her feet, the guard’s body sliding from under her arm, and she sprinted back down the hallway, continuing her trek to the back of the building.

Sarah found two grenades on her belt and fisted one in each hand on the run. She pulled the pins with her teeth and kept pressure on both the levers. The gunshots from the rifles behind her rippled lead down the hallway, some giving her a few grazes that were a little too close for comfort. She let the guards fill the hallway, and before any of them had a chance to turn back, she spun around, released the pressure from the levers in both hands, and chucked them down the hallway. The cluster of guards scattered, but it was too late.

The grenades clunked against the concrete for a few skips, knocking into the toes of the guards’ boots before the detonations. The casings around the grenades erupted, and the force of the blast emitted hundreds of pounds of pressure faster than the blink of an eye. The combination of the explosions cut into the flesh of their victims, severing limbs, ripping stomachs, filling the hallway with the combined stench of blood, smoke, and fire.

The narrow hallway compounded the effects of the blast, sending a wave of shock that almost knocked Sarah onto her face, but she managed to keep her feet under her and made it to the end of the hallway with nothing more than a slight ringing in her ears.

The glasses continued to adjust to Sarah’s route, and the yellow path below her kept its long, winding trail to Vince’s location.

“The stairs to the left will take you down,” Bryce said. “He’ll be at the first door to your left. Heat signature shows four guards.”

Sarah leapt down the steps five at a time, the soles of her boots catching on the edges of the staircase on her way down. Her knees buckled slightly with each landing to absorb the blows. Shoulder-checking the door at the bottom of the stairs, she gripped a pistol in each hand and made her way into the hallway.

The four guards waiting for her barely had time to lift their weapons before she squeezed off twelve rounds, firing two into each of their chests and one in the head for good measure. The marionettes fell to the floor, their strings severed from the hands controlling them.

Sarah slapped one of the C-4 devices onto the door handle, changed the explosive setting to minimal, and flipped the switch, which set the timer into motion. Two seconds after she ducked around the corner, the solid, six-inch steel lock was cut in half like a stick of butter, and the door swung open. Sarah stepped through the smoke, the alarms still blazing around her, and saw Vince huddled in the corner, looking unconscious and beaten.

“How are we on that transport?” Sarah asked. “I’m gonna need a quick way out.”

“Inbound in sixty seconds,” Bryce answered.

Sarah knelt down by Vince’s face and patted his cheek. “Hey, time to wake up, Vinny.” His only response was a moan and a slight shudder through the rest of his body. Bruises and blood covered most of his arms and face, but she noticed a light padding over his ribs where a fresh bandage had just been placed. She gave his shoulder another shake. “Vinny! Now’s not the time to hit the snooze button.” But still there was nothing. “Okay, you made me do this.” She pulled a square piece of adhesive that almost looked like a bandage from her belt. There was a clear piece of film that covered one side, which she peeled off slowly and then applied to Vince’s neck.