“You killed him,” Jack Jericho says, “but you missed me. I’m behind you.”
Adam turns the other way and fires on full automatic, letting a burst go until, click, he’s out of ammo. He fumbles with another clip.
Jericho hits the switch again, and the yellow lights flicker on. Another switch, and stronger spotlights fill the sump with a white glare. Blinded, Adam tears off his night goggles and through squinting eyes sees a figure six feet in front of him. A man holding something. An Uzi! The three-shot burst to the chest is mercifully on target. Adam is dead before he splashes to the floor.
Jericho turns to head the other way, wanting to duck back into cover, still not knowing if there is a fourth commando in the sump. He never sees the rifle butt swinging at his head, and it catches him squarely on the chin.
Jericho’s world explodes into a galaxy of shooting stars.
He hears himself grunt, feels a jolt that rockets from his spine down through his fingertips and his toes.
The pain lasts just a second, because a moment later, he is tumbling backward, unconscious, never feeling the cold, dark water that envelops him.
BOOK SIX
Fire and Water
-47-
Overkill
Green sodium vapor lights cast an eerie glow over Base Camp Alpha as the Army prepares for battle. The base is a symphony of competing sounds, the crunch of M60A3 tanks with bulldozer blades and the diesel roar of M1A2 Abrams battle tanks moving to front-line positions. On the flanks, M2/3 Bradley fighting vehicles with cannons and missile launchers pound over the rough terrain. HUMVEES grind their gears, and Armored Personnel Carriers rev their engines. Orders are shouted over loudspeakers. The tracked equipment kicks up clouds of dust that float in the breeze. On the horizon, the half-moon provides a sliver of light on the cloudless night.
Delta Force soldiers darken their faces with camouflage grease. Army Night Stalkers and Navy Seal Team-6 clean their weapons and load their rucksacks with flash-bang grenades, bolt cutters, harnesses, nylon ropes and rappelling gear. The FBI’s Hostage Response unit studies maps and the latest satellite photos. In a compromise that satisfies no one, virtually all the Special Ops Forces will play some role in the assault.
In front of the command tent, Kimberly Crawford, the media’s pool reporter, tags along after Colonel Henry Zwick, whose cold pipe is clamped in his teeth. A short, husky cameraman walks backward in front of them, keeping the colonel in focus. Nearby, a CNN truck festooned with antennae and dishes, up-links the signal to a satellite. “Colonel, colonel,” Kimberly Crawford implores him, jamming a microphone into his face. “Can you verify reports that the missile base has been overrun by Palestinian terrorists?”
“I’m not at liberty to comment on the identity of the enemy,” he says.
“Can you tell us where the missile is targeted?”
“No comment.”
“Has the Army been in contact with the terrorists?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What about the report that the terrorists have the ability to launch the missile?”
Zwick has held her off as long as he can. Looking straight into the camera, he says, “Absolutely untrue. The launch system is fail-safe.”
“Then what’s all this?” she asks, sweeping an arm over toward a pair of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, with their 25 mm cannon and TOW missile launchers pointed toward the missile base. “Isn’t this overkill?”
Colonel Zwick studies her a moment. Not a day over thirty, a blonde with gold-green eyes, she’s wearing a khaki jumpsuit with epaulets and a sky-blue silk scarf. Some sort of journalists’ war couture, he supposes. The colonel would like to tell her that ‘overkill’ is the best kind of kill there is, that he’d like to outnumber, out-weigh, and out-caliber every enemy he’s supposed to destroy. He wants better training, better food, and warmer boots than the opposition. He wants more iron, more ammo, and a bigger dick than the guy on the other side. But he doesn’t say these things because the media types would probably make him sound like a cross between Ivan the Terrible and General Jack Ripper. Nothing on television ever comes out right. “Precautions. Just precautions,” he says, after a moment.
At that moment, in the launch control capsule, David watches a television set where an attractive young woman chases after a colonel whose jaw muscles are working overtime on a cold pipe. In the corner of the screen is the logo, “CNN LIVE.”
“So, Colonel Zwick,” the woman says, “are you denying that an assault on the missile silo is imminent?”
“That’s correct. It’s unnecessary. There is no risk of the missile being launched, and our primary concern is the safety of the foreign ambassadors as well as the American airmen who are being held hostage. As I said before, these are just precautions. We expect reason to prevail and the incident to end without further violence.”
The message, David knows, is for him. “They must think I’m an idiot,” he says aloud. He punches a button on the console and speaks into a microphone. “Full alert! No one sleeps! And find that maintenance man!”
The world is dark and shadowy.
And spinning. Jack Jericho is the center of a universe that revolves out of control around him.
There is no color except black, which dissolves into an ashen gray. Then, in the corner of his eye, there comes a sick, pale yellowy light. Somewhere in his head, there is a roar. A freight train rumbles over the tracks, toots its horn, and keeps going. Around and around in his skull.
Jack Jericho rubs his aching jaw. Which tells him he is conscious. Then the throbbing pain comes, and he would prefer to be unconscious. He rotates his neck. His head is a bucket of sand, but nothing seems to be broken. He opens his eyes one at a time. It would be easier with tire jacks. A figure stands above him, saying something, but what?
“You have… ” and then the words are swallowed into the black hole.
“What? Who are you?” Jericho hears himself say, the words echoing from a tunnel.
“Don’t you remember me?”
Jericho squints into the yellowy light. The universe slows. The young man is familiar. So is the M-16 pointed at Jericho’s head. “Yeah. Your name is Daniel. Daniel Boone, for all I know. About a million years ago, you tried to shoot me in the L.E.R., but your rifle jammed.”
“The safety was on,” Daniel says. Towheaded, a peach-fuzzy round face, he cannot be more than twenty.
“Then you were poking around in the silo. You figured I was hanging on the struts in the rocket burners, and you were right, so I jumped you.”
“You could have killed me,” Daniel says, “but you did not.”
A jungle animal roars inside Jericho’s skull. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
Jericho thinks about it, at least he tries to think above the metallic clanging in his brain. In the silo, he could have killed this man but did not. Until that moment in his life, he had never intentionally hurt anyone. But in the day and endless night that followed, the world had changed. “I didn’t know what you maniacs were up to, and you looked so young that… ” He just leaves it hanging there.
“No, that is not it. God’s psalms sang in your heart, filling you with compassion and mercy. God protected you and then me. He sent us a message. ‘The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.’”
“I haven’t heard too much about compassion and mercy from your pals, Daniel.”
“I am sorry about that. I thought David had seen the light. But—” A splashing sound down the channel interrupts them. “You have very little time.”