The Edge of Armageddon

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Kenzie felt the impact like a missile strike. It knocked her off her feet, hammered her lungs, and momentarily tore all consciousness from her mind. Drake saw the bullet strike and dropped to his knees, breaking the inevitable fall. She had never seen it coming, but then neither had anyone else. Smyth had taken a hit too. Luckily, both bullets struck vests.

Reacting fastest, still with the words “fifteen minutes” bombarding his brain, was Torsten Dahl. As the two legionnaires rose from the ground, bullets rapidly fired and now taking better aim, he charged them, arms out, roaring like a train carrying lost souls from the blood-coated depths of Hell. They hesitated in surprise, and then the Swede battered them, one with each arm, and propelled them both backwards into the side of a wooden hut.

The structure shattered apart around the men, planks of wood breaking, splintering and tumbling through the air. The men fell on their backs among its contents, which proved to be most useful to the mad Swede.

It had been a workman’s shed, a place full of tools. As the legionnaires struggled to pick up their guns, one groaning and the other spitting teeth, Dahl lifted a well-used sledgehammer. The fallen men saw him coming out of the corner of their eyes and froze, disbelief unmanning them.

Beau came alongside him, saw their reaction. “End them. Remember what they are.”

Kinimaka paused too, chaffing at the bit as if he wanted to stomp them into dust. “They shot Kenzie. And Smyth.”

“I know,” Dahl said, dropping the sledgehammer and leaning on its handle. “I know that.”

Both men saw the pause as a sign of weakness and went for their guns. Dahl launched himself through the air, raising the sledgehammer at the same time, and brought it down as his body descended. One blow smashed a legionnaire in the center of the forehead, and he still had strength and skill enough to turn, lift the shaft and pulverize the temple of the other man. When he was done he rose to his knees, gritting his teeth, and threw the sledgehammer over his shoulder.

Another legionnaire then sat up, groaning, head canted to the side as if in agony, and raised a pistol held between shaking hands. In that split second it was Kenzie who was fastest to react and put herself at great personal risk. Without pause she shrugged off the previous bruises, blocked the man’s sights and rushed at him. The gun she held in her hand launched like a brick, end over end so that it impacted with the center of his face. He fired as he fell backwards, the shot passing overhead. When she reached him Kenzie retrieved her own weapon, but not before emptying his into his chest.

“How long?” Dahl breathed as he stormed toward the door that led to the Tropical Zone.

Drake raced past.

“Seven minutes.”

That’s not long enough to disarm an unfamiliar nuke.