The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (48 page)

“Shut up!” Jamie said. “Both of you, quiet. Eagle Eye, do you copy? This is Jamie Rowe in Sovereign One, over.”

The car’s speakers crackled to life.

“Eagle Eye, what’s your status?”

“Jacob is on the run in England and I’m getting information that he might have agents deployed in DC.”

“What?” Lukas said, leaning forward. “How many?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie replied, glancing out the window. “Where are we?”

“Constitution and Fourteenth,” the driver replied over the intercom. “We can—shit!”

The sound of something passing overhead was quickly followed by a rumble from behind them. It wasn’t a thunder Lukas could feel in his bones, but he heard it and knew immediately what was happening.

They were under attack.

“Go!” Lukas shouted as the car lurched forward. He glanced out the window, searching for the threat.

“All cars, be advised,” Jamie began. “We have an unknown number of Agents attacking Sovereign One. Request immediate—”

“Car Five,” the voice of an agent cried out, “what the hell are you—”

Another explosion filled Lukas’ ears and he ducked instinctively. He glanced through the bulletproof rear window and watched as one of the cars tumbled through the air. Car Five sat motionless behind the burning wreckage of Car Four—an unnerving scene of death and battle that looked surreal. Car Five’s windows opened and flashes of gunfire brightened against the dark interior. Gunfire, Lukas realized, that wasn’t aiming at the attackers running on the side of the road.

It was aiming for Lukas’ car.

“Get us out of here!” Lukas shouted. The car lurched forward just as another hail of gunfire whizzed through the air outside. Lukas pressed his thumb against his watch before raising it to his mouth, shouting orders.

“I want all Yellow Jackets deployed immediately and on my position. We can—”

“No!” Jamie said, focusing on her live feeds. “Eagle Eye could be compromised. They could be using the security drones outside to track you. We have to disable them.”

“I can override them,” Lukas said, pulling up a display of commands and holding his thumbprint against the face of his watch for authentication a second time. When it lit up green, he raised his wrist to his mouth again. “Lukas Chambers, override three-one-one-five-eight-four-Charlie.”

“Authorization approved,” his earpiece replied. “Speak command.”

“Return Sovereign Hawks to the White House and override cars eight through two. Disable all vehicles but Sovereign One.”

“Command accepted.”

Lukas glanced outside as the six drones above him quickly darted off west, heading back to the White House.

“Okay, that bought us some time,” Jamie said, pressing the intercom device to speak with the driver. “Cut through the National Mall and get us to the Capitol Building.”

“How the hell did he get the jump on us?” Lukas bellowed as they bounced around in the rear of the car. “I mean, the Sovereign Guard? Most of those men were with me when they were the Secret Service.”

“We might only have scratched the surface,” Jamie replied. “Jacob could have—”

“Jacob wouldn’t do this!” Maria shouted. “He would never have done this.”

“Look around us!” Lukas yelled, motioning outside. “Who else could have done this?”

“It has to be Sigmund,” Maria said as the car veered right onto the grass of the National Mall. The car swerved back and forth as it dodged craters from the battle two and a half months ago that had not yet fully been restored.

“It’s not Sigmund alone,” Lukas said as the car sped across Twelfth Street and back onto the grass. “We captured his men in Savannah. He couldn’t—”

Bullets pinged off the steel armor of the vehicle as the distant roar of a hundred blood thirsty men filled the air. Maria shouted, her eyes growing wide with terror as the car drove into a hail of gunfire. A loud pop filled the driver’s compartment and blood sprayed against the glass divider, obstructing their view out the front of the car. The limo briefly lurched forward before it began to slow. Lukas glanced to his right and watched as hundreds of flashes lined the horizon. The sounds of more gunfire dancing across the limo’s thick armor filled his ears. Without a driver to get them to safety, Lukas knew it would be a matter of minutes before the thick windows shattered underneath the volley of so much gunfire.

“Quick!” Jamie said, glancing over to the digital pad to Lukas’ right. “You can remote override the car. Pass the access controls to me and I can use my nVision to guide us out of here.”

Lukas nodded back quickly as he activated the digital screen and held his hand against it.

“Type in these codes,” Jamie said, “Alpha-Zero-One….”

Lukas punched the thirty-digit code into the panel, glancing out the window nervously as more bullets flew their way. He had done this before; part of the job as president had been learning as much about his own safety as he could. He knew the code would grant Jamie access to control the car and guide them to safety. He also knew it would reveal a locked compartment that contained a loaded handgun if he typed in another code. It wouldn’t do him much good if they were surrounded by a mob, but it could stall a group of attackers long enough for help to arrive.

“Okay,” Lukas said just as the car lurched forward, throwing him back in his seat as Jamie took command of the car.

“We can’t go to the Capitol Building,” Jamie said, guiding the limo southwest with invisible controls.

“Why not?” Lukas asked as he tried to sit up.

“It’s been overrun,” she said. “It looks like there were at least three thousand agents that had managed to infiltrate DC and they were all just activated by Jacob.”

“Then where the hell do we go?”

“Reagan International,” she replied, glancing over at him. “We have a helicopter from Camp David touching down now. It’s the only thing we have left to trust.”

“Just get us there!” Lukas glanced out the window as they sped west across the inner city. The car raced by the ruins of a metropolis that had been engulfed in battle once that year already. He stared out the window, watching with dismay as Imperium citizens—pausing from their daily routines and work—simply gazed back at the speeding limousine as though nothing were happening. Everywhere they stood, they were still, as though they couldn’t care less about the approaching gunfire.

Move!
Lukas growled silently inside his head, furious that the people he fought for were unwilling to even run from danger.
Are you that despondent? Do you not care to live anymore? Run!

“ETA: four minutes,” Jamie said as the vehicle broke free of the crowded city, driving through a row of plastic barrels that had blocked off the Fourteenth Street Bridge from all traffic while it was repaired. “The transport is on standby awaiting our arrival. We can—”

A loud bang echoed in Lukas’ left ear and the car lurched to the left—cutting through a hole in a concrete barrier that separated the bridge from railroad tracks adjacent to it. The limousine rumbled across the tracks briefly before coming to a sudden stop. The engine cut off, leaving the vehicle motionless and half buried in a dense copse of bushes.

“Get us going!” Lukas bellowed as he righted himself, sitting back against the leather seat as he peered about outside nervously.

“The car won’t start,” she said, swiping through the air frantically. “Sir, we need to—”

Gunfire whizzed through the air—the sound of metal scattering across the armor filling the car. Maria screamed as the shadow of a man moved through the bushes twenty feet away, followed by more gunfire.

“Can we get into the driver’s compartment?” Jamie asked, “If I can reach his sidearm I can lay down cover.”

“It’s sealed off and impenetrable,” Lukas said before turning to the digital pad, punching a lengthy code again.

“What are you doing?” Maria asked nervously.

“I have a pistol in the safe.” The screen turned green and a compartment opened up, revealing his weapon. He grabbed it, pulling the slide back and loading the gun.

“Give it to me,” Jamie said.

“No!” Lukas shouted, glancing outside as more shadows moved through the bushes. “You two get away. I can—”

“I’m was trained as an Agent, Lukas,” Jamie said, tears filling her eyes. “You’re the Sovereign. I’m expendable; you’re not. If by my life I can help save the world, I’ll do it.”

Lukas hesitated, glancing over at Maria who sat nervously behind Jamie on the far side of the limo. He handed the gun over, glancing back out the window.

“I count four,” he said, watching the outlines of armed men moving in for a better position. “If we can—”

“Shit!” Jamie shouted, swiping through the air like a mad cat clawing at a rabid dog. “Sir, you have to give the order. We’re going to lose him.”

“Who?”

“Jacob,” she said, “I’m getting chatter that he’s on the move and trying to cut off your communications. We’ve got an open window right now and you’re patched into your men in England, but I don’t know if I can hold a signal much longer. By your order, your agents and drones can storm Buckingham Palace and kill Jacob before he flees.”

Lukas glanced over at Maria, both terror and sorrow filling her eyes. He had wanted to bring Jacob back. He had never wanted to execute him without questioning first. Kane had been one thing, but killing Jacob for treason without knowing why he had betrayed them was something else entirely. But war was no fairytale, and hardly a man agrees to die quietly when the world is up for grabs. He nodded back to Jamie.

“Do it.”

“It has to come from you,” Jamie said. “Only your voice authentication can issue the kill order.”

He nodded back and took a deep breath as he raised his watch to his lips. “This is Lukas Chambers. All units, green light to kill Jacob Brekor.”

Jamie glanced at the air in front of her as she awaited confirmation.

“Is it sent?” he asked. Suddenly, her eyes went wide and she looked over.

“Command sent,” she said, smiling at him as he peered out the window.

“Good,” Lukas began, shifting his attention to the bushes outside. “Maria, if we can make it to the—”

Lukas Chambers, the Sovereign of the great and mighty Imperium, was vaguely aware of Jamie Rowe, a woman he had welcomed into his life, as she pulled one of the three silver pens in her hair and jabbed the sharp end of it into his right leg. He glanced over at her with horror just as a wave of paralysis swept over him. Just as soon as he fell back, Jamie smiled and turned, aiming the gun at Maria Brekor—the woman Lukas had forsaken—and pulled the trigger.

Maria gasped and Lukas shouted—a weak and breathless cry that was half the volume it should have been. Maria’s gaudy necklace flung about wildly as she was thrown backward into her seat. It hung precariously from her neck, damaged from the round that had struck her in the chest. She gasped for air with wide eyes as a trickle of blood ran down her chest and soaked her silk dress.

“Oh, Maria,” Jamie said. “You have no idea how I have longed for this moment.”

Jamie grinned as she pulled the trigger again, shooting Maria in the face.

“No!” Lukas roared, his voice lost to the weakness that overwhelmed him. Maria’s head flung to the side and her body slumped down in her seat—her dark hair falling over her pale face. In that terrible moment, as clarity and a horrible comprehension swept over his helpless body, Lukas realized he would never again gaze upon the beauty of the wife he had betrayed to her death. He turned to Jamie, tears beading in his eyes.

“How?” he asked, his eyes searching her as she turned back to him. “Why?”

“Lukas, our old friend, did you really think a woman like me actually desired a worm like you when I could have a legend like Sigmund?”

“You’re…you’re the traitor?”

“I prefer to think of myself as the flame of a single candle,” she replied, climbing on top of him, straddling him as he sat there helplessly. “You? You were simply an ocean of oil. I barely had to do anything but arrive and smile as you alone set fire to the world you tried to take from us.”

“But you…you said—”

“I said a lot of things,” Jamie cut in with a beam on her face. “I said Eli Kane was a traitor. I said Jacob Brekor was working with Sigmund. I said I wanted you. All lies, easily passed off with an innocent smile and the means to fake the evidence I gave you.” She hesitated before leaning in close, her lips nearly touching his. “Do you still want me? Does your heart still desire what you can never have?” She paused before shaking her head and chuckling as she sat back up.

“Jacob,” Lukas began, “he wasn’t—”

“Working against you? Oh, God no. I was Sigmund’s back up plan from the beginning, waiting and training for five years should something like this happen. When you three decided to abandon the Patriarchs and seize what we had built, the time had come for my deployment. I am but one of many flames that have burned in your presence. We were never interested in becoming part of your little empire. We only desired to watch division and decay bud in your wake. And I must say, you didn’t disappoint.”

“The soldiers outside,” Lukas began, struggling to sit up. “How did they—”