The Edge of Armageddon

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Hayden barged through the people around her and burst out of the room. Almost growling with anger she descended the stairs, fists compressed into hard lumps of flesh and bone. Kinimaka shouted a warning but Hayden ignored it. She would do this and the world would be a better, safer place.

Surging down the corridor that stretched under the precinct she finally came to Ramses’ cell. The bastard was still laughing, the noise nothing short of a monster’s terrible snarl. Somehow he knew what was happening. The pre-planning was obvious, but the utter contempt for human welfare was not something she could deal with lightly.

Hayden flung open the door to his room. The guard jumped and then shot outside in response to her order. Hayden stalked right up to the iron bars.

“Tell me what is happening. Tell me now and I’ll go easy on you.”

Ramses guffawed. “What is happening?” He faked an American accent. “Is that you people are being brought to your knees. And you will stay there,” The large man bent low so that he could stare right into Hayden’s eyes from a few millimeters distant. “With your tongue hanging out. Doing everything I tell you to do.”

Hayden unlocked the cell door. Ramses didn’t waste a moment, rushing her and trying to knock her to the floor. The man’s hands were cuffed but that didn’t stop him from using his enormous bulk. Hayden sidestepped smartly and rolled him into one of the vertical iron bars, head first, the impact snapping his neck backward. Then she punched hard to the kidneys and the spine, making him flinch and groan.

No more insane laughter.

Hayden used him as a punch bag, moving around his frame and battering different areas. When Ramses roared and spun, she made the first three punches count — bleeding nose, bruised jaw and throat. Ramses began to choke. Hayden didn’t let up, even as Kinimaka reached her side and urged a little caution.

“Stop fucking bleating, Mano,” Hayden snapped at him. “There’re people dying out there.”

Ramses tried to laugh, but the pain in his larynx stopped him. Hayden added to it with a swift rabbit punch. “Laugh now.”

Kinimaka dragged her away. Hayden turned on him, but then the seemingly damaged Ramses charged them both. He was a big man, even taller than Kinimaka, their muscle mass evenly matched, but the Hawaiian outmatched the terrorist in one crucial area.

Battle experience.

Ramses collided with Kinimaka and then rebounded badly, staggering away and back into his cell. “What the hell are you made of?” he muttered.

“Harder stuff than you,” Kinimaka said, rubbing the impact area.

“We want to know what’s next,” Hayden pressed, following Ramses back into his cell. “We want to know about the nuke. Where is it? Who has control? What are their orders? And for God’s sake, what are your true intentions?”

Ramses fought hard to remain upright, clearly not wanting to fall to his knees. The strain stood out in every sinew. When he did raise himself up though, his head hung. Hayden remained as wary as she would be of an injured snake.

“There is nothing you can do. Ask your man, Price. He already knows this. He knows everything. New York will burn, lady, and my people will dance our victory jig amidst the smoldering ashes.”

Price? Hayden saw treachery at every turn. Someone was lying and that made her anger seethe even more. Not falling for the poison that dripped from this man’s lips she held a hand out to Mano.

“Go get me a Taser.”

“Hayden—”

“Just do it!” She turned, fury radiating from every pore. “Fetch me a Taser and man the fuck up.”

In her past, Hayden destroyed those relationships where she considered her partner too weak. Most notably the one she shared with Ben Blake, who died at the hands of the Blood King’s men only months later. Ben, she had thought, was too young, inexperienced, somewhat immature, but even with Kinimaka she now started to adjust her perspective. She saw him as weak, lacking and certainly in need of readjustment.

“Do not fight me, Mano. Just do it.”

A whisper but it reached the Hawaiian’s ears just fine. The big man trotted off, hiding his face and his emotions from her. Hayden swung her gaze back to Ramses.

“You are like me now,” he said. “I have made one more disciple.”

“Ya think?” Hayden buried her knee into the other’s abdomen, her elbow then slamming down without mercy into the back of his neck. “Would a disciple beat the crap out of you?”

“If my hands were free…”

“Really?” Hayden was blind with rage. “Let’s see what you can do shall we?”

As she reached around for Ramses’ cuffs, Kinimaka returned, a Taser looking like a cigar in his clasped fist. He saw her intentions and stood back.

“What?” she cried.

“You do what you have to do.”

Hayden cursed the man, and then cursed even more loudly into Ramses’ face, the feeling of frustration high at not being able to break him.

A low, calm voice broke through her rage: Still, maybe he did give you a clue.

Maybe.

Hayden pushed Ramses until he fell onto his bunk, a new idea springing to mind. Yes, there might be a way. Glaring at Kinimaka she exited the cell, locked it, and then walked toward the outer door.

“Anything new happening up top?”

“More trashcan bombs, but fewer now. One more motorcyclist but they grabbed him.”

Hayden’s thought process grew clearer. She stepped out into the corridor and then approached the other door. Without stopping she pushed through, confident Robert Price would have heard the commotion coming from Ramses’ cell. The look in his eyes told her that he had.

“I don’t know anything,” he blustered. “Please, believe me. If he told you I knew something, anything, about the nuke then he is lying.”

Hayden reached for the Taser. “Who to believe? The terrorist madman or the treasonous politician. Actually, let’s see what the Taser tells us.”

“No!” Price threw up both hands.

Hayden aimed. “You may not know what’s happening in New York, Robert, so I’ll lay it all out for you. Just once. Terror cells are in control of a nuclear weapon which we believe they have the capability to detonate at any moment. Now, also, a bonkers Pythian thinks he is actually in control. Small explosions are occurring across Manhattan. Bombs were planted at Grand Central. And, Robert, it isn’t over yet.”

The ex-Secretary gawped, quite unable to form words. In her newfound clarity Hayden was almost convinced he was telling the truth. But that one shred of doubt remained, nagging at her repeatedly like a small child.

The man was a successful politician.

She fired the Taser. It shot off and away, missing the man by an inch. Price shook in his boots.

“The next one will go below the belt,” Hayden promised.

Then, as Price teared up, as Mano grunted and she remembered Ramses’ demonic laughter, as she thought about all the terror coursing through Manhattan right now and her colleagues out there in the thick of it, at the very heart of jeopardy, it was Hayden Jaye who broke.

No more. I will not take this for one more minute.

Grabbing Price, she threw him against a wall, the force of the impact sending him to his knees. Kinimaka hauled him up, throwing her a questioning glance.

“Just get out of my way.”

Again, she threw Price, this time at the outer door. He bounced off, whimpering, falling, and then she had hold of him again, steering him out into the corridor and towards Ramses’ cell. When Price saw the terrorist locked in his cell he started to whine, to grovel. Hayden forced him forward.

“Please, please you can’t do this.”

“Actually,” Kinimaka said. “This is something we can do.”

“Nooo!”

Hayden threw Price against the bars and unlocked the cell. Ramses didn’t move, still seated on his bunk and reviewing proceedings under hooded eyes. Kinimaka took out his Glock and covered both men as Hayden unlocked their bonds.

“One chance,” she said. “One prison cell. Two men. The first to call me for a chat gets it easy. Do you understand?”

Price bleated like a poorly calf. Ramses still hadn’t moved. To Hayden the sight of him was unnerving. The sudden change in him was ludicrous. She walked away and locked the cell, leaving both men together as her phone squawked and Agent Moore’s voice came over the line.

“Come up here, Jaye. You have to see this.”

“What is it?” She ran with Kinimaka, chasing their shadows out of the cellblocks and back up the stairs.

“More bombs,” he said despondently. “I’ve sent everyone to deal with the mess. And this latest demand ain’t what we expected it to be. Oh, and your man Dahl has a lead on the fourth cell. He’s chasing it down right now.”

“On our way!” Hayden sped toward the precinct floor.