Authors: Shawn Hopkins
Scott snorted in disbelief, mocking the idea. “Like getting killed?”
“At least your life would have been worth living, if you were to die well.”
The comment hit him in a place he hadn’t thought to guard. He needed no reminder that his life had done little good for anyone, including himself.
And then Daniel began walking toward the back door. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
Once the door shut behind him, Mayhew stepped close to Scott and whispered in his ear, “Talk to the priest.”
But before he could respond, Mayhew too had left the room.
Scott watched him walk away, turn his head, and look out the screen door to wherever Daniel had gone. The look on Mayhew’s face as he peered after the Mossad agent was not one of ease, and Scott suddenly felt as if he were the only one not hiding a secret hand of cards.
He left the kitchen and climbed the stairs, not at all wanting to talk to the priest or knowing why Mayhew wanted him to. But maybe doing so would help create a better picture of what was going on.
Scott slowly eased the door open and stepped into the room.
The priest was sitting up. Staring at him.
“Where is the ring?” the priest asked in a strong voice that startled Scott.
“Daniel has it.” He closed the door.
“Where is he?”
“He went outside to secure the perimeter.”
“You need to get it back.”
Scott shook his head. “The only thing I need to do is get the hell out of here.”
“Then why did you come up here?” After a moment of silence, the priest continued. “I’ll tell you why you came up here. Because it intrigues you. Because God is calling you to it.”
Laughing under his breath, Scott turned to leave. “Sure He is.”
But the priest called after him. “We’re all going to die, Matthew. Every single one of us. The only question is, what awaits us when that happens? What awaits
you
.”
Scott turned and faced him once more. “I know exactly what awaits me,” he seethed, “and there ain’t nothing you can do about it,
priest
.” He turned away.
“Stop.”
He had no idea why his feet obeyed the priest’s voice, but they did. With a resentment that didn’t even make sense to him, he glared at the man through the corner of his eye.
“Over there. Under the table.” He pointed to a table across the room.
Without protest, but with enough body language to demonstrate his pride, Scott walked over to the table.
“Go ahead. It’s underneath,” the priest urged.
Scott bent over, slid his hand beneath a small space, and pulled out a worn messenger bag. “What is this?” he asked as he stood up.
“A piece of the puzzle.” His face twitched with pain. Taking a moment to recover, he nodded his head toward the door. “They’re just hired guns with half the story. They don’t know anything.”
“And why are you telling
me
this?”
“Because
you
have no idea what is going on. And that makes you the only person I trust.”
He looked down into the bag, noticing two leather-bound books tied together with twine. “This is about the ring?”
“It’s all about the ring. Everything. That is why you have to protect it.”
“From who?”
The priest closed his eyes, exhaustion suddenly sweeping over him. “Everyone. You can’t trust anybody.”
Scott took a step forward. “And why is the Vatican interested in it?”
Still with his eyes closed, he answered, “The Holy See is very much involved with what is going on in the world.” He sighed heavily. “I can only pray that I have exposed that in time.” He opened his eyes. “Get the ring back.”
“But Daniel—”
“Do not let him have it!” The sudden outburst took most of the energy he had, and the priest’s eyes closed once more.
Scott took another step closer and looked back at the closed door leading to the steps. He lowered his voice. “What
is
it?”
The priest took a deep breath. “It is the key to—”
Suddenly the door burst open, and Mayhew was in the room, screaming.
“We need to go! Now!” he yelled, grabbing Scott’s shoulder and pulling him away from the priest.
Scott tried resisting, but Mayhew was using all of his strength to drag him out of the room. “What the—”
“It’s gonna blow!”
Scott looked back to the priest. “What about him?”
“There’s no time!”
The priest looked at Scott, his face accepting this fate… though not before he tried communicating one last thing.
“Rose—”
But Scott was already out of the room, the entirety of the priest’s words left to fall unheard.
16
B
ounding down the stairs, Mayhew led Scott straight out the front door.
“What’s happening?” Scott yelled.
“Look!” And Mayhew pointed up into the sky.
An Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle.
Scott swore loudly, now leaping forward of his own volition and sprinting to get as far away from the house as possible. He didn’t even look back to try and spot the tiny tubes falling from the sky.
The explosion turned their world into a dizzying blast of blinding heat, the house erupting behind them with a deafening roar, its flaming remains rocketing deep into the woods. The shockwave picked Scott and Mayhew up off the ground and tossed them like rag dolls through the air.
****
When Scott opened his eyes, he was on his back and staring into a gray, ashen sky, pieces of fire streaming through it like tiny meteors introducing the end of the world. And then one of those distant cosmic rocks landed on him, smoldering on his soot-stained shirt until it burned a hole through and seared his flesh. He sat up and brushed the ember away. Looking around, he tried to ignore the high pitch whine screaming in his head. The house was gone, only half its burning frame left standing. Pieces of it were strewn all over the ground, and ash was falling like snow.
Struggling to his feet, he discovered the 9mm still tucked into the back of his pants where he’d put it earlier. He stumbled down the scorched path looking for Mayhew.
A Micro Air Vehicle came floating out of the science fiction movie it belonged in, hovering between the charred trees in front of him and blocking his path. Though MAVs had been in use since the Iraq War to detect IEDs, and Scott had seen them evolve over the years since, this model was new to him. There was a big high-definition optical lens focused right on his face, no doubt scanning it against countless others within the central database. When no results came back, his facial print would be uploaded into the NAU’s intelligence data bank with red flags tagging him as an unknown, which translated more accurately to “suspected enemy of the state.”
Before he could raise the pistol, however, a shot rang out from somewhere beside him, and the vehicle fell to the ground in a shower of sparks. Scott could only hope that the MAV’s feed was interrupted before the search for his face was complete. He wasn’t betting on it though.
Mayhew jogged over to him, throwing the AK-47 over his shoulder. “Daniel took off on a quad,” he gasped.
Scott looked around for any sign of the Mossad agent, not really caring at the moment where he’d gone.
Mayhew continued, “I saw him talking on a satphone. I asked him who he was talking to, and he pointed up to the sky. That’s when I saw the Hawk. Before I know it, he’s mounting a quad and heading off into the woods. I came back in to get you.”
Scott didn’t have the necessary background information to properly process the news, what it meant. All he knew was that these guys had been playing cloak and dagger long before he showed up.
Mayhew pointed, still gasping for air. “That path hits a road three miles northeast from here. But it’s only half a mile if we go straight east.” He was trying to talk fast. “If he’s headed north, then he’s long gone. But if he’s going south, we can cut him off.”
Scott nodded, realizing there were a few questions he wanted to ask Daniel about a certain Global Hawk. Trying to summon the strength to begin running through the woods again, the priest’s warning swirled through his head. “Okay.”
****
It took them five minutes running east before they reached an old highway barrier. It stood about ten feet in the air and seemed to stretch from northeast to southwest. Scott could tell that the overgrown area around them was once an on/off ramp that connected whatever town this was to the major road. He figured it was part of the UN’s Rewilding Project at work, isolating small towns in order to force their populations into the cities where they could be more carefully monitored and controlled.
Scott climbed up a tree growing against the wall so that he could see over it and into the southbound lanes. The road went up north for about three hundred yards before bending out of sight. South, the road simply stretched to the horizon. There were thick evergreens on the other side, blocking from view the northbound lanes and whatever barriers had been erected against them. “Is this 87?” Scott asked.
Mayhew nodded and then handed Scott the AK-47. “And what was once Blue Ridge Road.” He sat down on the ledge and hopped down onto the other side, landing in the grass. Looking back up, he motioned for Scott to toss the old assault rifle down to him. But Scott wasn’t looking at him. He was staring off to the left, north up 87. And then Mayhew heard it too.
The sound of a vehicle ricocheting off of the barrier walls around them.
“Come on!” Mayhew yelled, urging Scott down off the wall.
Scott tossed the rifle down and jumped, landing on the ground just as Mayhew was stepping out onto the asphalt, the assault rifle raised and pointed at an approaching white van.
Scott started toward Mayhew, not fully understanding what the Resistance member was intending to do. Did he think Daniel hitched a ride with whoever was driving the van, or was he intent on hijacking the vehicle himself?
The van was seventy-five yards away and going about 70mph when Mayhew squeezed off two rounds, blowing apart the front right tire. The van slowed, its driver struggling to keep from flipping as Mayhew fired again, taking out the front left tire. As the van got closer, still slowing, he put a few more rounds into the engine block. The van finally rolled to a stop with fifteen yards to spare.
Mayhew signaled for Scott to check the van as he crossed in front of him, moving to cover the driver’s door. Scott complied and circled around to the left, covering the side door in case anyone came out shooting. As Scott passed the front passenger-side door, he noticed that the windows were tinted, the large pines behind him reflected in the glass.
“Get out of the van!” Mayhew yelled.
No response.
“What’ve you got over there?” Mayhew yelled over to Scott.
“Nothing!” Then he kicked the side door. “Anyone in there?”
When nothing happened, Mayhew leaned into the driver’s side door and smashed the rifle’s butt through its window. Stepping back, he flipped the AK-47 back around and aimed it into the van.
There was no one in either of the two front seats.
Scott ran around to the back of the van, anticipating the driver making a run for it out the back. But when he got there, he found the backdoors already open. Turning to look back up the road, he saw two men running for the row of trees that separated the north and southbound lanes.
“Stop!” Mayhew yelled, coming up beside Scott. He raised his rifle into the air and was about to squeeze off a few shots to get their attention when another noise suddenly erupted all around them.
Machine gun fire — blasting down I-87 and bouncing off the barrier behind them and through the woods in front of them.
Scott and Mayhew hit the ground, covering their heads. When Scott looked up through his arms, he saw the two fleeing men lying still at the road’s edge.
And then came the rumble of engines.
Both Scott and Mayhew turned their attention north up to the bend.
“Sounds like a convoy,” Scott said, quickly getting to his feet.
“The ring…” Mayhew got up and started moving urgently toward the two unmoving bodies.
“What?” Scott yelled. He looked back down the road just as the huge muzzle of a sophisticated rail gun cannon began rounding the turn. “We gotta go, now!” He turned and started running back toward the van.
But Mayhew ignored him, instead breaking into a sprint and running full tilt to where the men had fallen. He was almost there when the sound of a machine gun once again came blasting down the highway, chunks of asphalt jumping up around him, pelting him. He covered his face and kept going.
Scott reached the van just in time to see the Stryker open fire at Mayhew. He couldn’t understand what in the world Mayhew was thinking. He had no cover and nowhere to go with an entire line of NAU military vehicles heading straight toward him. Scott could already make out three APC Strykers and two MGS Strykers being followed by a line of Humvees that was still wrapping around the bend. The High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles alone were equipped with .50 cal. machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. The Armored Personnel Carriers were fitted with an upgraded PROTECTOR Remote Weapons System that housed an M151 with an MK-19 automatic grenade launcher, while the two Mobile Gun Supports needed only their heavy rail guns to intimidate whoever might be unfortunate enough to be looking at them from the wrong direction — which in this case was about to be Mayhew and his AK-47. He was surely about to be in pieces all over the highway.
With only a hint of remorse, Scott turned away from the pointless endeavor and instead began thinking of his own escape. But before a plan could unfold itself, a new sound arose, transcending even that of the M151 that was firing at Mayhew.
Shouting. Screaming. Explosions. Small arms fire.
It all careened down the wooded slopes west of I-87, spilling out onto the north lanes before crossing the wooded median and cutting off the southbound convoy.
Turning to take in this new development, Scott was more than shocked to witness men pouring out of the woods and attacking the convoy with guns, grenades, and even shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. At least a hundred of them came storming onto the road, screaming like warrior barbarians from some distant century.