Last Man Standing

CHAPTER THIRTY

Karin heard the door open for the hundredth time that night. She heard the faint rustle as Komodo turned around. She heard the voice of Sergeant Pearson.

But this time it was different.

Low. Harsh. Crawling with concern. Quickly, she tore her gaze away from the computer screen and the point of SaBo’s latest attack to listen.

“Now?” Komodo cried out. “Here?”

Pearson’s answer was rushed. “As I said. We have no time. Arm yourself, man.”

Karin felt her mouth go dry. It sounded like… like…

At that moment, Pearson’s head blew apart. Red sprayed the wall beside him, dripping like melting hieroglyphics. The sergeant’s body toppled through the door. Komodo caught it in time to whip the man’s gun from his holster, taking his tally to two, and pulled out his extra clips. Before he could try anything else or even utter a word of warning, the door itself blasted open, slamming back against its hinges and the other wall.

The first protagonist barged in, getting tangled with Pearson’s body and falling to one knee. Komodo stood calmly over him, firing one bullet into the back of his neck. The second was just behind. Komodo timed it to perfection, waiting for the exact moment in which to push-kick the open door closed on the man’s onrushing face.

A scream signified success.

Komodo back off a little. He didn’t want to fire through the gap, and give his enemy reason to shy away from their attack and start lobbing in some form of incendiary device. Karin kept silent as his training kicked in. She trusted him completely, and almost turned back to her computer work.

Then she wondered how these goons had found them.

Has to be… oh no! She scanned the screens, following each minute line of code and all the representative grid lines. And then she saw it. The faintest of pulsing lights, signifying a low signal. But something SaBo could use.

The bastard had beaten her.

Used her. Here, in her own back garden. Literally, the place she grew up. Where her parents had died. Where Ben had died.

She coughed hard, choked. She would never give in. she killed the signal and ignored SaBo’s instant request for a chat. The hacker would want to gloat. Of course he would. Well, she could give him something to take his mind off cheap victory.

The virus was ready. It was in place, just awaiting the command.

Behind her, Komodo grunted heavily as a man landed on his back. This was in addition to the man already grappling him around the waist. The only reason they hadn’t fired was their unwillingness to hit each other. A third waded in.

Karin quit her post and ran to her boyfriend’s aid. Yes, as she knew from before, civilian martial arts training was tame compared to military training, but it was all she had to offer. And it held the element of surprise.

She struck hard and fast, jabbing the kidneys of the man holding Komodo’s waist and the ribs of the one clinging to his back. Her side-kick connected beautifully with the face of the third, unbalancing him and turning his hard sprint into a drunken lumber. This coolness under assault, this bravery gave Komodo all the time he needed to get back on top, heaving one opponent over his shoulders and then stamping on his face. Another received a crushing double-handed blow to the top of his skull. The third caught a bullet.

Karin hopped back to the computer screen unperturbed. She finally unleashed her beast, watching it prowl, stalk and charge. The strands that led to SaBo’s field system started to unravel, fraying by the second. She imagined the panic on the other side, the computer genius struggling to take it all in.

Another minute and she would take him down.

Komodo flung a hard drive at the next man that came through the door. Then, assuming his brief honeymoon period was over — all the mercs couldn’t be that stupid surely — he took the fight to them, stepping over the threshold and outside the cyberwar room. The scene could be much worse. Only three more enemies faced him, all caught by surprise; two actually in the process of arguing with their leader.

Komodo raised his weapon and fired. Both rebels were knocked back hard by head shots, clattering over desks. The boss gained precious seconds in which to get off a shot. Komodo didn’t have chance to dodge out of the way, and felt it whizz past his cheek. Interesting; if he’d darted to that side the bullet would have taken his face off. He rapidly closed the gap and grabbed hold of the last man’s gun arm, twisting it roughly.

“Hate fuckers like you,” he grunted and broke the arm. “You killed Pearson for nothing. And how many others?” He squeezed the broken joint until the man screamed himself into unconsciousness, and then bound the wrists with tape he found in a drawer.

“Let the British deal with you.”

Karin saw her virus sidetracked at the last moment and felt her heart drop through the floor. It couldn’t be. No! Sunnyvale was depending on her. As were the town’s civilians and the huge attack team. Not to mention Drake. The CCTV and signal-jamming SaBo was employing simply had to be taken down.

Would SaBo purge his system?

No. The old hacker was too wily for that, plus he probably didn’t want to be executed by Coyote’s men for his failure. Karin saw his setup as the eyes and ears and defense mechanism for Coyote’s army of mercs and its total destruction as a major lifesaver for all the British forces.

And Sunnyvale’s SPEAR team’s last desperate hope. It was all they had left.

Could she do it? The odds were certainly against her, racked high in SaBo’s favor. She had to get inside.

Komodo returned. “Thanks for the help back there.”

Karin held up a hand, barely daring to breathe.

One last chance, she thought. One… last… chance…

Something clicked in front of her. Confused, she leaned in closer, hardly able to believe what she was seeing.

“Oh my God,” she breathed as all her screens lit up. “Look at the bloody hotel. We may be too late!”