Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (88 page)

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It didn’t take long after the events at the capitol building ended for both Mary and Sean to pass out. Despite the sensitive stitches that ran along his chest where Perry had shot him and the sheer exhaustion that still plagued him from his healing ribs, Dylan insisted that he carry both his children to bed by himself. Both of them were still small enough that he could manage.

Dylan put Sean down first then went to tuck Mary in. Once she was under the covers, she rolled to her left side, and her thumb popped right into her mouth. It was a habit he, Evelyn, and Peter had been trying to break her of, but the events of the day had probably left her exhausted. He gently kissed her forehead and flicked the light off on his way out, shutting the door behind him.

When Dylan passed Sean’s room again to tuck him in properly, the boy was still sprawled out in the same position as when he’d left him, lying diagonally across the bed with his arms and legs out like a starfish. Dylan rotated his son and stuffed him under the covers in a more suitable sleeping position. He brushed the dirty blonde hair off his forehead, gently. “I love you, son.” The words left his mouth in a whisper as he kissed the top of his boy’s head.

With both children sound asleep, Dylan descended the steps of the townhouse the government had lent him until they could figure out a good place for relocation. The president’s pardon had mingled well with the media efforts to help clear up his name that was dragged through the mud over the past two weeks, and the man whom people had called to hang was now cheered during parades and rallies.

But after everything that had happened, all the loss, the pain, Dylan just wanted something different for his family. Someplace quiet, safe. There were a few locations the CIA had tossed around, some of them in Europe, others in Canada, even a couple in Alaska, as well as the midwest United States. Regardless of where they landed, all that mattered was that they were together.

Dylan eased onto the couch, his muscles and bones still sore from the past few weeks. He rubbed his hands together, feeling the calluses he’d worked hard for over his life, a life he had lived mostly at sea. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get to captain a boat again, and after what had happened, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

The medal the president had given him at today’s ceremonies rested on the table in front of him. Dylan picked it up by the thick ribbon and dangled it from his fingertips. It felt heavier than he thought it would.

He knew it was all just a show. The administration needed a bad guy to blame, and Perry fit the bill just fine. And they needed a hero, an average Joe who had gotten caught up in the middle of a war on terror through no fault of his own. “I never asked for this.” But you got it.

The voice that uttered those words in the back of Dylan’s mind was familiar, yet it was one he hadn’t heard for a very long time. It was his own father’s. Something Perry had said just before Dylan passed out had been plaguing his mind ever since he had woken up. “The sins of the father.”

Dylan knew it was biblical, but the fact that Perry had said it to him just before he died made him edgy. All the things that Dylan had done, all the terrible experiences of his life—had they been passed on to Sean? Had the boy seen too much to grow into a normal life, to become a good man?

No. Dylan knew his son. He knew how much better Sean was than him. He had his mother’s brain and Dylan’s will, but without the burdensome storm cloud that had plagued Dylan all his life. Sean would not share the same fate as him. He could see it in his son’s eyes. There was a brightness there that refused to diminish. Sean was stronger than he was.

Dylan leaned back on the couch, resting his head on the cushion, and closed his eyes. He felt the weight of sleep press down upon him, but for the first time in a very long time, he no longer felt the burden of doubt and fear. His family was safe. His friends were safe. He was safe. He knew it would still be a long time before everything was truly back to any type of normal, but for now, the simple fact that he was under the same roof as his children worked just fine.

Nothing but wilted shrubs sprouted up from the desert earth around the warehouse. Sarah loaded a magazine into the Colt 1911 and checked her ammo count from behind an old, rusted sewer pipe. The lightweight black Kevlar jacket she wore concealed the two holsters underneath, as well as the grey cloth tank top, as she holstered the 1911. Her ensemble was meant for function, not style, all the way from the hair tie to the modified steel-toed boots on her feet.

A light twinge triggered in her knee, and her palm quickly found the outline of the scar over the light cloth of her pants. She grimaced in annoyance and peeked over the rusted pipe to get a good look at the shambled warehouse in front of her. She’d checked the perimeter and knew that the group of Mercedes and BMWs at the entrance didn’t mesh with the sagging, abandoned structure.

“How’s the knee?” Bryce asked.

The same grimace from her knee twinge spread across her face as she pawed her left ear, where a small black dot was situated on the upper inside of her ear. “What are you, my mother?” Sarah asked. “It’s fine. Now be quiet. I’m trying to get in the zone out here.”

“It’s all right if you’re nervous. It’s your first day back.”

“I’m not nervous,” Sarah reiterated, her firm tone matching the expression on her face. “I’m doing recon.”

“From behind a sewer pipe?”

Sarah thrust her hand into the sky and forced her middle finger up in the most powerful, indignant salute she could muster. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, I copy.”

The radio went silent, and Sarah took a deep breath. Then she sprinted from the side of the sewer pipe to the dumpster nestled below a window on the side of the warehouse. Her knee popped lightly from the sudden motion. She limped the first few steps, pissed off at the fact her body was whining about the exercise. Without breaking stride, she jumped onto the dumpster’s lid and pushed the already-broken window open, lifting herself inside.

Sarah landed soundlessly on the dusty concrete floor. Faint murmurs of voices from the owners of the foreign cars out front came from the same direction. She kept her feet light, weaving in and out of the massive stacks of crates and goods that lined the warehouse floor.

“Looks like the rehab’s been working,” Bryce said.

“Are you going to be doing this the entire time?”

“What? I’m trying to ease your nerves.”

“Well, I’m going to ease my foot in your ass when I get back to HQ.”

“Just remember Mack said no casualties. You need to leave them alive for the local police to take over.”

“Keep the meth heads above ground. I remember.”

Sarah frowned and crouched behind a stack of pallets twenty feet behind the four assailants gathered around a table that was stacked with lab equipment and enough meth to keep the entire state of New Mexico supplied for the next six months.

“WOO!” one of the drug dealers said, taking a hit from the supplier’s goods. “That’s some Grade-A shit!”

“And it’s all yours for the low, low price of one thousand an ounce,” the supplier said.

“That’s steep, Holmes.” The dealer’s muscles twitched from the rush of narcotics eroding what was left of his brain cells.

“Yeah, but you’ll be able to charge double what you normally do once you give your clients a taste,” the supplier said. “You’ll make your money back within the first two weeks.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about getting into the business myself.” Sarah stood with her hands on her hips, head cocked to the side, taking in the four men drawing their pistols from the waists of their sagging jeans.

The drug dealer, still rubbing his nose and tweaking his neck in a nervous spasm, looked to the supplier with the confusion of a gorilla who’d just been frightened. “Yo, did you bring your girl here?”

Sarah snorted. “Oh, god, no. No, no, no. I’m nobody’s girl. I mean, no offense, but I could stuff my head in that bag of meth, inhale as deep as I possibly could, and I still wouldn’t do anyone in this room. Except for me, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I’d do me.”

“Listen, bitch! You need to get the fuck out of here before we waste your ass,” the drug dealer said.

“OH! Right. Drug deal,” Sarah replied.

Before the four men around her could squeeze the triggers on the guns aimed right at her, Sarah drew both pistols from the cover of her jacket and shot one of the drug dealer’s friends in the shins. The man collapsed, firing blindly into the air as his colleagues opened fire, and Sarah ducked behind a giant pillar of crates for cover. Wooden splinters rained down over her head as she closed her eyes and did a quick recap of the guns in their hands.

9mm Ruger with an eleven-count magazine, Glock 37 loaded with .45 caliber bullets in a ten-count magazine, two Beretta 92 Vertec Innox with fifteen-round magazine capacity, and one sweet-ass Colt .44 revolver six-shooter.

“Are you doing a bullet count?” Bryce radioed.

“Shut up, Bryce.”

Fifty-seven shots.

Sarah glanced at her watch. Six seconds to get the count. A little rusty. The bullets stopped, and she heard the distinct thump of magazines and empty shells smack the ground. She pivoted on her left foot and swung around the edge of the crate.

All three assailants were in mid-motion of reloading, and Sarah brought the three steel sights of her 1911 to the shoulder connected to the Ruger. She squeezed the trigger once, and the bullet jettisoned from her barrel. In less time than it took for the brain to blink, the .45 piece of lead penetrated the drug dealer’s flesh, dropping both him and the gun to the floor.

Sarah worked her way left. Another round of bullets splintered the new stack of crates she ducked behind as the two men already bleeding out on the ground moaned between the gunshots cracking like thunder. One more stack of crates stood to her left, and she waited for the deadheads to reload. When the smack of more magazines hit the concrete, she spun, aimed, and fired, and the other dealer’s friend was down with his hand clutching a bloody foot.

The light patter of retreating feet echoed, and Sarah dashed from her cover to the sight of the three druggies rolling on the ground, clutching their wounds, and cursing her name with every combination of words they could think of.

“FUCK!”

“Well, aren’t you creative,” Sarah said, quickly holstering her own gun and picking up the Glock 37 and Colt revolver on the ground. “Make sure you keep pressure on that,” she said, patting the dealer on the top of his head.

“Fuck you, lady!” he answered.

With her back still to the moaning criminals, Sarah aimed the Glock 37 behind her and fired a bullet into the man’s other shin. “Keep pressure on that one, too.”

Sarah wove around the piles of crates with quick, soundless steps, listening for the panicked scurry of the supplier that had fled to the back of the warehouse. She winced as her knee suddenly tightened from her increased speed.

Finally, making it all the way to the end of the warehouse, she slowed her pace. The massive stacks of pallets and crates almost reached the ceiling. She knew he had to be back here; there weren’t any other exits except for the front. “I love a good hide-and-seek game as much as the next person, but I think playtime’s over.” She tilted her head left, then right, listening for any hint of where her target hid. “I’ll tell you what. You come out right now, and I won’t shoot you. I promise.”

“Not if I shoot you first, bitch!”

The echo sent the words reverberating off the walls, throwing the supplier’s voice in all different directions, making it difficult to pinpoint his location. She had to keep him talking. “I don’t think your marksmanship is something you should be boasting about right now. I mean, for Christ’s sake, you emptied two entire clips into wooden crates. I haven’t even needed to reload yet. In fact, I actually have more bullets than what I started with, so rea—”

The quick, successive thump of shoes echoed behind her, and Sarah spun around, dropped to her knee, and brought the supplier’s hand into her sight. The bullet ricocheted off the supplier’s pistol, and it dropped to the floor, accompanied by crimson raindrops from the bleeding wound on his hand.

The supplier collapsed, clutching his bloody right hand with his left. “Wait, wait, wait,” the supplier said, driving his heels into the concrete floor and pushing himself backward. “You said you wouldn’t shoot me.”

“Yeah, if you had come out when I first asked you to. And technically I didn’t shoot you, I shot your gun, and then the ricochet hit you. That bullet was negligent.” She aimed the gun at his shoulder then squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet straight through the flesh between his neck and his collarbone. The man screamed, unsure whether to keep pressure on his hand or his trapezius. “There. Now I actually shot you.”

Sarah grabbed the supplier’s ankle and dragged him back to the front of the warehouse, where the dealers had made a pathetic attempt to crawl to the door. She tied them all up and radioed Bryce. “Call the boys in blue. I’ve got a present for them.” She turned one last time to the drug dealers behind her and flashed their guns at them. “Thanks for the fun, boys. Next time, see if you can get your hands on a Smith and Wesson. The Glock felt a little jerky on the pull.” The wail of sirens echoed in the distance as she jumped in the dune buggy outside and tore off through the desert.