Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Mai was standing right next to the communications console when the call came in. She was tending to Hibiki’s wounds whilst Smyth secured the Korean soldiers with twine and rope and anything else he could find. The marine had even started to eye the soldiers’ feet in consideration of using their socks as gags if they didn’t shut up jabbering about freedom and victory and the Goddamn People’s Republic.

Then, the console started flashing in front of her. Balancing on her knees beside Hibiki, she looked up. The console was made up of various toggles, big colored buttons and what looked like a sat-nav system. Around it were arrayed various sized monitors. A vivid blue light began to flash, a claxon-like ring tone sounded, and then some kind of automation program answered the call.

A hasty voice filled the room, “Engage final protocol. I repeat — engage final protocol. Blow up the island.”

Mai turned swiftly. The Korean army at last went silent. Smyth met her eyes. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

With that, another ominous noise came over the brash loudspeakers, a noise that filled the room. The alarm — the intermittent clang of a horn of doom, and then a robotic voice. “Warning. Warning. Final protocol engaged. Final protocol will occur in four minutes.”

And repeat.

Mai leapt into life. “Which one’s the most senior?”

Hibiki pointed someone out. “Him.”

“Final protocol?” Mai bounded over to him. “Does it really blow up the whole island?”

The man swallowed nervously. Mai had no time to waste so she threatened him where it would make the most impact but still give him focus. “Your balls.” She said and twisted hard. “You can have them back for an answer.” Alicia would have been proud of her.

“Ye.” He gasped in Korean. “Haeng un eul bile o yo.”

“What did he say?” Mai shouted.

Hibiki translated. “He said ‘good luck.’”

More Korean rhetoric spewed forth.

“What did he say?”

“Umm. My hovercraft is full of eels. As near as I can tell.”

Mai took it to the next level. A wrench and a three-quarter twist sent the man to his knees, squealing like a terrified warthog. The clang of the alarm deepened. The disembodied voice announced “Three and a half minutes to destruction.”

“Why’s it speaking in American?” Smyth wondered.

“It’s speaking in English because the call transmitted in English.” One of the Koreans stepped forward. “It’s adaptive. Like North Korea itself, it bends to better understand its enemies and then bends again into the shape of the hammer that destroys them.”

Smyth stared.

“You think we are all ignorant fools? Conscripts. Brainwashed by a tyrannical leader. Well — not all of us. Not even half of us. Have a good death, Americans.”

Mai sent Hibiki a hopeless look. “You know nothing about this protocol?”

The Japanese undercover agent shook his head.

Mai felt her death approaching. It was do or die time. She raised her gun and started shooting. The English speaker was the first to go, shot through the forehead and sent tumbling back into an array of instruments.

The mechanical announcement droned on, “…three minutes…”

“I’ll kill you all!” Mai promised. “One by one.” She pulled her trigger each time she spoke a word. Korean soldiers jerked and spasmed. Blood spattered each man’s neighbor and the walls behind.

“Tell me!”

“It’s not unstoppable!” One man screamed in Korean, instantly translated by Hibiki just as loud. The man held his hand up as if to ward off Mai’s bullet, putting his head down. He was not a soldier. This man was one of the island doctors.

“Your life for information.” Mai shot another Korean as she spoke.

“There is a missile in a silo beneath the island. It is programmed to launch, return, and explode on impact with the compound. But it’s not a one-man protocol. Not even a madman would allow that. The failsafe is that two men have the authority to launch and abort.”

Hibiki suddenly stopped short and stared at the doctor. “No,” he said in English. “That’s so unfair.”

Mai chewed her lip. “What?”

“General Kwang Yong and the base commander both have the authority to abort the launch,” Hibiki said. “By the fingerprint scanner on that console.”

“…final protocol will occur in two minutes…”

Mai ran like never before. She hurdled a body, hit the door at a dead run, shouldered it aside so that it almost crashed off its hinges. She jumped down the steps, felt her feet touch the grass and accelerated to full sprint. She vaulted a drainage ditch, leaned her body down without losing pace and scooped up the first discarded rifle she passed.

All the time counting the seconds off in her head.

“Ninety…eighty-nine…eighty-eight…”

She found the clearing where the overweight island boss lay. His dead eyes and chubby face stared up at her with the mocking appearance of a smile — a last laugh. Mai stepped in and didn’t give her next action any more thought. She set the rifle to auto and pulled the trigger.

Bullets slammed through the boss’ arm at the elbow, churning up dirt, blasting apart bone and flesh until the appendage separated from the rest of the body.

Mai scooped it up, dropped the weapon with a crunch, and hurled her body back the way it had just come. Forty-three…forty-two…forty-one…

Pounding across the uneven grass, springing from one rise to the next, a full-flight hurdle across a fallen tree, now seeing the distant comms building, seeing the door standing wide open.

…nineteen…eighteen…

She wasn’t going to make it.