Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) (10 page)

The instant the doors closed, Cole took hold of the bag he had been carrying over his shoulder and opened it. He pulled out the case for his camera and popped open the locks. As fast as he could, Cole assembled his GR-99. Built like a pistol on steroids, the weapon in Cole’s hand was as deadly as any military machine gun. He jammed home a full magazine and charged the pistol. As he approached the sixtieth floor, Cole knew that he was going up against at least two men. He grabbed hold of three more magazines and placed them in a pocket on his jacket in case he needed them.
 

The elevator slowed and then came to a stop.
 

Cole expecting trouble, stepped back, and brought up his pistol as the doors slid open.

Sheridan came to a sliding halt outside of a small café. There was a man on the ground holding a bloody tablecloth to his head.
 

Shots fired inside the coffee shop made Sheridan charge his weapon. Within seconds, like a dam bursting, panicked patrons rushed to get out of the establishment. With his pistol tight in his right hand, he pushed his way in. He had just gotten past the last fleeing customer when the imposter fired off a burst in Sheridan’s direction. The bullets went wide, shattering the glass at the front of the café.
 

Sheridan brought his pistol down, held it in both hands, and returned fire. His burst hit the wall next to the fake officer’s head showering him with dust and plaster. The man ducked down and dove behind the bar. With instincts honed in battle, Sheridan dropped to one knee to make less of a target for his adversary. He took a guess where the man could be hiding behind the wooden bar and let off another burst.

“Stop shooting or you’ll kill me,” yelled out a terrified man.

“Show yourself,” ordered Sheridan.

Instead of his adversary, a fat man in a waiter’s uniform stood up from behind the bar with his hands held high.

“Where’s the policeman?”

The man pointed at the back entrance.

Sheridan stood and ran to the bar. Thinking that it could be a trap, he swung his pistol over as he took a quick look behind the counter. He swore. His quarry was nowhere to be seen. The man was more slippery than an eel. Sheridan turned on his heel and ran to the back door. With his weapon held out in front of him, he quickly looked both ways before stepping out into the alleyway. Sheridan cursed his bad luck when he couldn’t see the man.

Down the alley, a woman screamed in fear.

Like a sprinter hearing the starter pistol fire, Sheridan took off running. When he turned a sharp bend, his eyes lit up when he spotted the imposter barely fifty meters away. He dug deep inside of himself and picked up the pace. He wanted to catch the man alive. There were dozens of questions whirling around in Sheridan’s mind that needed answering. In seconds, he was closing the gap when he was struck in the side by a man who had walked out into the narrow street without looking. He saw the ground come up to meet him as he fell. Sheridan tried to go with the fall and hit the paved road with his shoulder. He rolled over twice before coming up on his feet right into the side of a brick wall. The sudden stop stunned Sheridan. He staggered back and struggled to catch his breath.

“You okay?” asked the man who had run into Sheridan.

He nodded and moved the man aside so he could continue his pursuit. With his body aching from the impact, Sheridan jogged the last few meters until the alley opened up into a plaza. In the distance, he could see the imposter running for the tall castle he had noticed earlier. He ground his teeth when he saw a cable car suspended in the air moving away from the castle walls. If the Chosen agent managed to get to the car before he could stop him, he would get away.

Sheridan ignored the pain in his chest telling him to slow down and hurried after the man before he could make his escape.

Chapter 13

It was all coming apart. The plan to eliminate the two troublesome humans had failed. Alarms sounded throughout the base. Soldiers rushed to secure the headquarters from any further attacks.

Solari gnashed her teeth as she watched the live feed on her computer coming from a UAV flying above the ADF complex. She saw Cole disappear inside the Fiametta Tower chasing after one of her men. A second later, the drone’s cameras focused in on Sheridan as he closed in on the other imposter. The two Marines were unlike the men she had worked with for the past couple of years as a member of General Wagner’s personal staff. Very few of the people at the headquarters had yet to see any real combat. Most talked a good story but would probably run at the first sight of a Kurgan warrior, she thought to herself. These two other men seemed to have no fear. They were like a pair of pissed off rhinoceroses charging through a crowd. They weren’t going to be stopped or dissuaded from catching their man.

“Miss Solari, what are you watching?” asked Wagner as he walked out of his office.

Solari looked up from her screen. “Sir, as the base is on lockdown after the missile attacks on the drone and the gunship, I’m watching the feed from a UAV as it follows the perpetrators.”

Wagner shook his head. “They’re just a bunch of amateur fools running around with loaded weapons. It’s a wonder that they haven’t shot themselves in the foot yet. Turn that damned thing off and go see if the travel arrangements for tomorrow are in order.”

Solari closed her laptop, stood, and nodded at the general. It was the third time in as many days that Wagner had sent her to check on a very straightforward flight itinerary. She mused that if she weren’t a Chosen operative that she would be insulted by Wagner’s lack of faith in her abilities. As it was, she didn’t care, it got her out of the office and away from her abusive boss for a short while.
 

In the hallway, a woman called out her name.

She turned and smiled when she saw her friend, Lieutenant Sally Goran, walking toward her. A military police officer, Goran was one of Solari’s few friends that she hung out with after work.

“I can’t believe that the base is under attack again. Did you see that gunship explode?” asked Goran. A nervous tension filled her voice.

Solari nodded. “It was awful. I hope they catch whoever was behind it.”

“So do I.”

All of a sudden the alarms stopped, allowing the two women to lower their voices.

Goran forced a smile. “Thank God for that. Where are you heading, Monica?”
 

“To the ops center to triple-check on General Wagner’s shuttle flight tomorrow. And you?”

Goran held up a tablet. “I’m on my way to deliver a report to the Provost Marshal on the unauthorized use of an experimental Home Guard stealth craft a few days ago.”

The blood in Solari’s veins turned to ice water. She was positive that they had covered their tracks so well that there couldn’t possibly be anything to report. Solari pretended to be curious. “You never told me someone took a stealth ship for a joyride. Aren’t they supposed to be out of bounds? Authorized personnel only and all that kind of stuff. Did they catch the people behind the theft?”

Goran shook her head. “The computer database was erased. Whoever was behind this really knew how to hide their tracks.”

Solari felt the tension ebb from her body.

“The IT techs are trying their best to see how the information was erased, but it doesn’t look good for them. I doubt they’ll ever be able to find anything of value in the hard drives on Tranquility Station. That, however, isn’t the most disturbing part of this report.”

“What is?”

“The maintenance crew on duty the day the stealth ship was stolen have all gone missing. Not a single one of them has been seen in over three days. If the shuttle hadn’t been returned to the station, I would have thought they were the ones responsible, but it doesn’t appear to be that way.”

Solari placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “No one stays hidden forever. Perhaps a new set of eyes needs to look at the station’s database. Perhaps they’ll get lucky and find something that’ll help you solve who is behind all of this.”

“I can always hope.” Goran glanced at her watch. “Sorry, Monica, but I’ve got to run. See you in the cafeteria for lunch?”

“Sounds good.” Solari watched as Goran hurried off down the hall. Inside, she smiled to herself. Another part of their plan had worked. The ten people on duty that day had been forced at gunpoint into the stealth ship. They had been ejected out the airlock near Jupiter after Williams had boarded and taken possession of the freighter they had used to land on Eris. She doubted their bodies would ever be found.

Solari began to walk to the ops center. The image of Sheridan running after one of her assassins flooded back into her mind. If they couldn’t get away, she hoped they had the courage to kill themselves rather than be captured alive.

Chapter 14

Cole stepped out of the elevator and dropped to one knee as he brought his pistol up to fire. He looked over his weapon’s sights and saw that aside from a couple of automated cleaning machines he was alone. A disc-shaped vacuum cleaner came out of nowhere, bumped into his leg, moved back, and continued cleaning the carpet behind him.

A cold breeze flew in from a smashed window farther down the hall. He could see a larger cleaning droid busily sucking up the shattered glass. One floor below the expensive penthouse suites on the top floor, the observation deck was also a botanical garden. Immaculately pruned trees and ferns flourished in the oval-shaped garden.
 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” mumbled Cole to himself. He had no doubt that if the imposter and his accomplice were still here, they would be hiding in the garden.

Behind him the elevator doors chimed. Cole couldn’t believe it when the doors slid open and a woman and her young child stepped out. He turned his head and waved at them to get back into the elevator. When the woman saw the gun in his hands, she stopped in her tracks, grabbed her child, and pulled him back into the lift. He could hear her frantically pressing the down button.
 

Cole backed up slightly. He looked behind him and decided to try to make his way around the trees. There was only one problem: the nearest cover was a good ten meters away. He counted down from three in his head before sprinting toward a long stone sculpture of an ancient Chinese dragon. He had gone less than a couple of meters before he heard the sharp crack of rounds flying millimeters above his head. Cole ducked lower and dove behind the dragon. Another volley of bullets fired by his hidden opponents hit the sculpture chewing off pieces of stone.

He rolled over and came up firing. Bullets tore into the woods directly in front of him. Leaves and branches hit in the fusillade fell to the ground. Cole dropped back down, ejected his empty magazine, and jammed home a new one.
 

Outside of the tower, a police helicopter and a military gunship circled overhead. Cole knew the Wasp gunship could carry four men in the back of it. He had no doubt that the craft would soon drop an assault team on the roof of the tower. What he didn’t want was for them to get here before he had a chance to capture one of the Chosen operatives alive.

His adversaries must have realized that the odds were turning against them and decided to try to escape before it was too late. With a long burst of automatic gunfire, they came out of the trees firing as they advanced toward Cole.

The stone dragon took most of the hits. Some, however, went high and shattered the glass behind Cole. Right away, a cleaner droid rushed over to suck up the mess.

The unnerving sound of the weapons firing grew louder by the second. Cole had to do something fast or die where he was. He gritted his teeth, rolled to one side, and came up behind the sculpture. Without hesitating, he dove out firing his pistol as he flew through the air. The two attackers hadn’t expected such a rash move and were caught out in the open and cut down. Cole emptied the entire fifty-round magazine into the imposters.

When the slide of his weapon stayed back, Cole released his death-like grip on its trigger. He hurried to change out his empty magazine before standing up. The men were dead, but it always paid to be careful. With his weapon aimed at the bloodied bodies, Cole edged over to the prostrate men. He nudged the bodies with his right boot to see if they were alive. As expected, the men lay still. He dropped to one knee, placed his pistol down, and began to rummage through the imposter’s clothes. Cole was looking for anything that might give him a clue as to who they really were and who they were working for.

He had just pocketed the men’s wallets and a couple of hotel room cards when he heard the sound of feet running on the broken glass behind him. Cole slowly raised his hands, stood up and turned about.

“Don’t move so much as a millimeter, you Chosen bastard, or I’ll splatter your brains all over the carpet,” warned a soldier in full-body armor. The man took a step forward, brought his assault rifle up, and thrust it in Cole’s face.

Cole smiled at the soldier. He couldn’t see the man’s face hidden behind his helmet’s darkened faceplate, but he didn’t doubt that anger over the death of the gunship crew burnt like a fire in the soldier’s eyes.

“Wipe that smirk off your face or I’ll take it off for you,” threatened the soldier.

Cole’s face turned expressionless. He’d had enough of sneaking around. He locked his eyes on the man before him and said, “Soldier, my name is Mater Sergeant Cole. I suggest that you and your people go and help out my friend Captain Sheridan chasing down the other police imposter, or you’re going to run the risk of incurring Admiral Oshiro’s wrath.”