The Ghost Ships of Arizona

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Hayden winced as one of the twenty surviving mercenaries struck Kinimaka across the back of the neck, sending the large Hawaiian to his knees. Whilst he was down there two more mercs strapped his hands behind his back with plastic ties. Dahl was shoved into a corner and similarly secured. The majority of enemy weapons, she noticed, were the MP5SDs, a variant of the venerable MP5 Heckler and Koch MP series. It featured an aluminum suppressor integrated into the muzzle. Hayden refocused when the leader of the ragtag group approached her.

“Your cop friends have arrived outside and are preparing an assault. It won’t work. We need about five minutes to get what we came for. You killed six of my men but I’ll still let you live if you promise to cause us no more trouble.”

Hayden stared and said sarcastically, “Oh, I promise.”

“Can’t even lie without mockery.” The leader kicked out at her. “Must be a fuckin’ fed.”

“And you can’t lie at all,” Hayden spat. “No way are you lazy fucks going to let us live.”

The leader grunted at her fearless obstinacy and tried again. “First your gun, then your badge. Then we secure you. It’s my way or their way.” He pointed to his men. “And believe me now, my way’s easier for you.”

Hayden didn’t take her eyes off the leader. He was a bearded individual with long sideburns and straggly hair all the way down to his shoulders. He was talking nice to avoid more aggro and save time, of course, not for her benefit, but he did have a point.

Hayden dropped her gun to the floor along with her badge, then got to her knees. A man tied her hands behind her back and shepherded the three together so that they knelt under the long row of windows that looked into the office.

“Get in there,” the leader told two of his men. “Secure the transmission lines with the grid links. Then we’re done. And check these badges.” He kicked the pile over to another minion.

Hayden listened intently, and eyed the badges dubiously. One merc might not recognize the SPEAR logo, nor even the leader, but if he reported it back to the Pythians… tied hands would be the least of their problems. But hey, she thought, if it draws Tyler Webb out from his filthy burrow…

Two men started toward the office with laptop bags tucked under their arms. Hayden eyed the leader. “Transmission lines?” she asked. “Grid links?”

He looked surprised. “You don’t know? All this, and you’re just swimming blindly uphill against the current.” He seemed to weigh his next words, then said, “You ever hear of Path 26?”

Hayden shook her head. At that moment another man approached, this one with a ghastly snarl to his bearing and bright red scars up and down his bulging arms. “We should be torturing these fuckers, not shooting the shit with ‘em.”

The leader shrugged. “You think you can get anything worthwhile out of them, Hunt?”

“Who gives a fuck? Be good to practice on at least.”

“They look pretty tough.”

Hunt puffed his chest out. “Even better.”

“You have five minutes, max.”

The leader stalked away, casting an eye toward his dead men. Hayden wondered how a man who showed remorse for dead colleagues might then exhibit such a lack of consideration for captives. This was war, after all, not terrorism. The rules should be different.

But Hunt couldn’t keep the spiteful grin from twisting his face. With a leap he was upon her, forcing her over backwards so that her ankles bent and her tied wrists ground on the floor — both their combined weight pushing them down. The pain made her grimace.

“You’re going to die for that.” Dahl’s voice drifted across, and the tone was unquestionable.

Hunt met the Swede’s eyes, then pressed some more. Hayden bit her lip hard to stop from crying out as her bones grated together. Blood ran from the wound. Hunt snarled at the sight. “Don’t ya worry, Englisher. I’ll be at you next.”

“You should have been ‘at me’ first. Any real man would.”

Hunt stared at Hayden’s lips, seemingly transfixed at the trickle of blood. “So you’d rather bleed than scream,” he noted. “But you will soon do both,” he promised. “First I gotta teach this foreigner some manners.”

Hayden stared up at him, waiting for an opportunity. As his head lifted she saw it — and smashed her forehead against the bridge of his nose. “You bleed first,” she said. Her legs weren’t tied, so she twisted hard to wrap her thighs about his neck. Hunt saw her and rotated out of reach.

Several mercs laughed at him. “Run away and hide,” one of them muttered. “Hunt’s goddamn motto.”

Hunt was furious. Jumping up, he stalked back to Hayden’s feet, blowing strings of blood from his nose.

“Untie me,” Hayden snapped. “Then we’ll see how you do.”

“Yeah, untie her!” a merc shouted. “See if you can take her down, ya fuckin’ psychopath.”

The mercs were all becoming unruly as they waited for the others to finish. The leader came back, looking angry, but Hunt pushed him aside.

“Fuck off.”

Then he attacked Hayden for all that he was worth. Arms bulging, he punched at the side of her head, rammed another into her gut. Hayden rolled with it, but the punches still hurt. She caught a third blow on her arm, saw an ounce of leeway, and flung her body backward whilst kicking upward.

The kick smashed Hunt across the cheek, snapping his head sideways and eliciting a cheer from the other mercs. Hayden rolled with the momentum, three hundred and sixty degrees, and then kicked again. This time Hunt was ready, catching her ankle in mid-air. Dahl and Kinimaka moved toward her, but the sudden appearance of handguns stopped them in their tracks. The mercs were okay for a tied woman to fight back, it seemed, but unhappy with her tied male colleagues trying to help her. Hunt jerked Hayden’s ankle, dragging her body toward him, then twisted it so that she flipped onto her stomach. Helpless now, she could only stare into Kinimaka’s eyes.

Hunt sat heavily on the backs of her knees. The leader told him to hurry up. The seconds were ticking by. Hayden faced the office wall with the wider facility behind her, listening to the jeers of men. Hunt ignored it all and punched into the back of her right thigh.

“Tell me what you know. Tell me about SPEAR. Tell me who you answer to.”

The pain was excruciating but if that was the worse Hunt could do in the next minute or two then Hayden could easily take it. Concentrating on Mano and Dahl, she shut the pain away and concentrated on the best of what was to come.

It was a truly surreal moment that caused her more disquiet than Hunt’s continual punching. A voice floated out of nowhere. A voice she knew couldn’t possibly be here. A voice she would now love forever.

“You’d get a lot more out of her if you tanned that ass real slow, not punched so frantically below it.”

Instantly Hunt drew away and Hayden rolled, just in time to see a blond blur, dressed in black, leap from a gantry above to land among the hooting, dissatisfied mercs. Two chops and two were disarmed. An arm around a throat and she had a shield. Her left hand held a compact machine pistol which she fired without mercy or pause into the group to her left. They screamed and pinwheeled, and bled and died. Once her shield was thoroughly ventilated she spun and grabbed another, still shooting. Those mercs who were close found their knees broken, their ankles twisted, and their groins jabbed. Some barely blinked before they hit the floor, gut-shot.

Seconds had passed and Alicia Myles had decimated half the mercenary force.

Hayden shuffled closer, as did Kinimaka and Dahl. The merc leader was roaring orders.

“Protect the package and get her!”

Alicia hurled her second shield straight at two more opponents, shouting “Strike!” as might anyone playing human ten-pin bowling. Her pistol took out two more. The leader ran past his dwindling men, wrenched open the office door, and screamed at both laptop carriers.

“Are you done? Then get the fuck outta there!”

Spinning, he fired, hitting his own man as Alicia employed a third shield. Then he sent a boot smashing across Dahl’s face as the Swede tried to entangle him. The two men carrying laptops charged through. Alicia ignored them, intent only on saving her friends. Four more mercs now faced her.

Only four.

Alicia ran hard at them, propelling her four-limbed shield at breakneck pace. Two of the mercs peeled off and chased their leader, clearly having had enough. Alicia poked her pistol under the arm of her shield and fired, taking one remaining merc down. The other bounded aside, but Alicia dropped the shield and dived right into him, striking him hard on the breastbone with her shoulder. As they landed she punched and thrust and dug hard. The man was unconscious before he could even move.

She whirled to face Hunt, who had just watched the decimation.

“I know, I know,” she said. “You wanna date me. You wanna love me. Kiss me all over. Let’s both check our diaries first, huh?”

Faster than a turbocharged viper she struck with stiffened fingers. Blows to the sternum, cheekbone and pit of the stomach brought an even more abhorrent smile to Hunt’s face. He moved in whilst grunting in pain, landing a blow on Alicia’s ribcage. A knife then appeared in his left hand. Alicia, visibly tired after taking out so many men, backed off.

“So now you respect me?” Hunt sneered. “Wait till I jab you with this.”

“Dude, that’s not even six inches. Don’t make me laugh.”

Hunt looked enraged and then lunged, Alicia’s words having had their effect on his pumped-up machismo. It was an easy task to sidestep and then break Hunt’s wrist. The blade rattled to the floor.

“What the—”

Alicia incapacitated him with a crunching kick to the knee. The sound of the bone breaking made even Hayden wince and the man’s scream brought both laptop men to a halt.

“Keep going!” the leader wailed. “Out!”

Alicia made sure Hunt was relieved of all weapons before bouncing over to Hayden. With a sassy smile she eyed the American’s bonds. “Ah, a dream come true.”

“Stop showboating and cut me the hell free.”

“Bitch, at least give me a kiss. I just saved your ass.”

Alicia drew a superfluous knife and quickly sawed through all three of her comrades’ bonds. After much credit was accrued to the blonde, Dahl ventured the question all of them were dying to ask.

“How on earth did you get here?”

“Drake called and suggested I use your GPS. Whilst en route I caught up on events, and then heard about the third and last facility being hit and your dilemma seemed to be worse than his. Once I arrived I saw the standard assault team being formed outside and decided to handle it myself.”

“Guys,” Kinimaka cut in and gestured to the rear exit door. “Shall we?”

“They’re long gone,” Hayden said. “Beat us here. Arranged the exit before we even showed up, I’ll warrant. But be my guest.”

The team jogged to the door, wary of booby traps, and opened it. Outside, dark was falling and nothing stirred, not even the branches or leaves on the stunted trees.

“Y’see?” Hayden drawled. “Long gone. Question is — what the hell comes next? And I mean hell in a literal sense.”

“They have everything they need,” Dahl said quietly. “To do as they promised and take America back to the dark ages.”

“The leader spoke about Path 26,” Kinimaka remembered.

“Their plan was laid long ago,” Dahl went on. “So… if they have everything they need, what are they waiting for?”

Alicia squinted through the descending dark. “Actually, I do see something beyond the fence there. A… a van? See the shape? It’s—”

And then it happened. Something terrible, something ruinous. The low hum that accompanied all the equipment around them and the facility itself suddenly died away. Lights flickered. Hayden was in a position to see downhill to where the lights of a distant town glowed softly.

And then the night went totally pitch black.

“Oh no,” Hayden whispered. “They’ve done it.”

“Blackout.” Dahl’s voice was intensely soft. “Those mad tyrannical bastards.”

“They’ve taken out California,” Hayden guessed as she began to receive and flick through her cellphone’s messages. “As a statement. Remember? To prove to the government what they could do. At the expense of all those people. The risk of all those lives.”

“Riots,” Kinimaka said. “Robberies. Murder. Kidnapping. The list is terrifying.”

Hayden knew only the innocent would truly suffer. She tapped at her Android, seeking any new leaked information and quieter sources of her own as Alicia brought Dahl’s attention back full circle to the van.

“Shall we?”

“Do you think they’re in that van?”

“I think there’s a very good chance, my fine Swedish hunk of manliness. The only question is — do you wanna crush them as much as I do? Do you wanna teach them that it is really, really wrong to mess with good people’s lives?”

“Too bloody right I do.”

Hayden squinted at the far-off shadow, noting where it was parked in deepest darkness. How it almost seemed planned. “All right. There’s a good chance they’re working out of there, but be careful. The Pythians won’t be silly enough to leave that truck without a heavy guard even if the mercs are. I’ll coordinate our forces from here, call Drake, and get an update for California and its surrounds. Contact me before you act, okay?”

Alicia clasped her hands behind her back and pouted. “Okay, Mommmmy.”

“Shit, just go.” Hayden waved them away and then regarded the absolute darkness that had almost certainly befallen the state.

Kinimaka, always at her side, spoke the words. “God help the people.”

Hayden could only imagine the terror as homes were plunged into total night all over Los Angeles and San Diego; mothers rushing upstairs to their crying babies; fathers digging out flashlights and candles and double-checking all the locks. The drapes and blinds twitched aside as people assessed the neighborhood, the folks next door, and prayed. Those who reached automatically to check their TVs and then found out the truth on the Internet. But would they? What misinformation would the government feed the masses, if any?

Then there would be cars and buses driving down cavern-dark streets, lingering overlong at inoperative stop lights, caught in fender-benders not of their own making. The disruption, the chaos; it would live in memories forever. She thought of the cops fielding hysterical call after call, the bedlam they would be forced to attend. Madness would affect even those who normally kept a low profile, and they would pay for their mistakes for years to come. Darkness was a chilling race memory, the intimidating equalizer, the haunt of all that is evil. A candle could not save you. The good people were even now sat in their mortgaged homes, willing the light to return, keeping their children calm and putting their trust in the authorities.

Indirectly, in Hayden. In Drake and Alicia and Torsten Dahl.

And, for the people they cared about, they would deliver at any cost.