Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (261 page)

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The intelligence had paid off, and Alex, Luis, and the rest of the soldiers on the mission watched Gordon head out onto the dock, where they were joined by another smaller group of men on a boat. “That’s one of Sheng’s advisors,” Luis said.

They were positioned on a small hill that overlooked the marina. Every single soldier was dressed in camouflage and wetsuit gear. Alex could feel his muscles tighten at the sight of Gordon. “We need to get down there. They could take off any minute.”

“And go where? The only airstrip is inland,” Luis said.

“Let’s go ask.”

Alex, followed by Luis and the rest of the soldiers, maneuvered down the side of the hill until they crawled into the water and submerged themselves into the murky Pacific Ocean. Even with the wetsuit on, Alex could still feel the frigid waters freeze his extremities. He did his best to keep up with the Special Forces swimming past him, but the breaststroke wasn’t his strongest suit.

The dock where Gordon and the rest of his henchmen were located was two piers down. Alex pawed the hulls he passed, feeling the bumpy, grainy barnacles under his glove, and each time his ears broke the surface of the water he could hear the voices of Gordon and his men grow louder. With the thump of the boots on the deck overhead, Alex knew they had finally made it to Gordon’s dock.

“We’ll put ten men to a boat. Everyone load up!”

Luis and his team used hand signals to communicate, and on cue, they split into three separate groups, each to handle one of the boats. Luis gave Alex a rundown before the mission so he could have some understanding of how to communicate using the navy’s signals.

Alex stuck with Luis’s squad, and they made their way down to the third boat. In the darkness, and with the amount of people, it was hard to tell who was who in the shadowy figures above them.

Alex hung back, looking into the darkness to see if Gordon was on the boat they’d targeted, but the cold combined with the fact that he had to tread water made it difficult to see. Then, as Luis gave the signal to open fire, Alex saw the profile of Gordon’s face light up by the cabin light of the center boat.

Quick, percussive shots echoed across the water’s surface as the Class 3 sentries who were aboard the vessels collapsed. The coordinated strike killed over half the sentries before they even realized what was happening.

Both Gordon and Lu Feng’s men rushed to untie the rope tethering them to the dock as their fingers fumbled with the cleats, gunfire bursting all around them. A group of Luis’s men had already made their way onto the dock. The radio in Alex’s ear, combined with the gunfire both above and around him, put him in the middle of chaos.

Before the team commandeering the center boat could board, the engines roared to life, and the wake sent a mouthful of seawater and foam into Alex’s face. “That was Gordon’s boat!”

“You sure?” Luis asked.

“Yes!”

With the two other boats still scrambling to take off, Alex followed Luis up the side of the dock and onto the splintered wooden boards. Steam rose off his wetsuit from his body heat meeting the cool night air around him.

Alex’s wetsuit dripped onto the sentries’ bodies and blood that littered the dock and the two boats that were still tied to the dock. Luis cranked the boat’s engines to life, and his men untied the ropes from the cleats. Alex held onto the boat’s railings as they made their way out of the marina and into the bay.

Gordon’s boat was still visible in the distance. Alex gripped the boat’s railing as the bow bounced over the ocean waves, sending salty sprays into his face. The wind whipped viciously against his body, triggering involuntary spasms.

“Where is he going?” Alex asked, screaming over the whine of the boat’s engines.

“I don’t know. The only thing north of here is a nature preserve. Other than that, it’s nothing but ocean until you hit the southern Alaskan coastline,” Luis answered.

With both Gordon’s boat and their boat maxed in speed to the point of capsizing, neither party was gaining ground or losing it. The distance between both vessels remained equal until Gordon’s boat took a sharp turn into the coastline toward the nature preserve.

“There!” Alex said.

“I see him,” Luis answered.

The boat disappeared around the tip of an island, and by the time Luis and Alex made their way around the tip as well, Gordon’s boat was already pushed firmly up against the shoreline, with him and his men running into the woods.

“This is Commander Luis Claire requesting air support.” The radio crackled until the commanding voice on the other end broke through. “Negative, Commander. The Canadians have not authorized the use of any birds in the sky.”

“Shit,” Luis said.

Alex’s body leaned forward from the momentum of the boat as they made landfall. He jumped over the side, splashing back into the frigid water, and trudged up the shore until his feet were firmly planted in the sand below him.

The tree line was filled with lush vegetation, intermixed with bare trees affected by the winds bringing GMO-24 to the Canadian coasts. Still, even with the sparse patches of death, this was the first time Alex had seen anything resembling an actual forest in years. Memories of hunts from his youth flashed in his mind. Despite the cold gripping him, and the soggy suit he wore, this was the first time in a very long time where he felt like he was home.

“All right, boys,” Luis said. “Let’s go hunting.”

Alex lowered the pair of night vision goggles that he was allocated for the mission, and the forest morphed into a fluorescent green. In the distance, one hundred yards away, he could see the flicker of bushes and leaves. With no breeze in the area, the violent movement could only be from Gordon and the fleeing sentries.

“I have movement,” Alex radioed. “One hundred yards north. They’re moving fast.”

Alex double-timed it, weaving through the trees and bushes soundlessly, finally in his element. The NVDs allowed him an advantage he’d never had in his hunts before. Whenever he hunted at night, he relied mostly on his ears and his nose, but with the added sense of sight, his agility and precision doubled.

The rustle of leaves and branches grew wilder as Alex continued his pursuit, with Luis and his men flanking him on either side. Through the trees, Alex could see flashes of limbs. An arm there, a leg here, all sprinting toward whatever safety they thought they could find.

Alex scanned the trees in front of him, searching for Gordon, whom he knew was out there among them, when a bullet exploded a piece of tree bark in the trunk next to his head. Alex dropped to one knee and shifted his view left in the direction of the shot. The crosshairs of his scope nestled right over the left eye of the sentry who fired the shot, and with one quick squeeze of his trigger finger, the sentry fell backwards into a lifeless heap.

Alex pushed himself off the ground and continued his pursuit forward as gunfire erupted into the quiet night. The flashes from the tips of the rifles exploded in brilliant white lights through the lenses of the goggles. The radio grew loud with chatter, and Alex pulled the voices from his ear to focus on the hunt.

The brush and leaves around him scraped against his thighs as he pushed forward as he brought another sentry, who stuck his neck out a little too far from behind the tree, into his crosshairs and ended what fight he had left in him.

The farther Alex pushed, the denser the sentries, and the firing grew. But he could feel them on the run. He could sense the retreat.

A bullet smacked into Alex’s chest, slamming him backwards onto the ground, where his left elbow smacked into a rock with a resounding crack. The pain sent vibrations of tingles through the rest of his arm. When he tried to bend it, the pain only worsened. “Shit.” He picked up the rifle with his right arm and one-handed it as he forced himself forward. The bullet that connected with the Kevlar on his chest made it feel like the breastbone had cracked. He focused on his breathing, trying to keep it steady until the pain subsided.

The farther Alex’s pursuit led him, the thinner the trees and forest grew, until he saw exactly what the sentries and Gordon were running toward. There was a clearing in the woods where the lights of a jet blinked anxiously to take the convicts away from their persecutors.

The jet engines roared to life in preparation for takeoff, and Alex broke out into a sprint, each step forward sending a pain up the side of his left arm, radiating from his elbow. Luis’s men kept pace with him, together in their relentless pursuit. The steps of the plane lowered as Alex watched a few men climb inside. They were running out of time.

The sentries made a stand just outside the jet. The wall of bullets forced Alex and the rest of the soldiers to seek the cover of the trees just before the clearing where the jet stood waiting to take off.

Bits of wood and bark splintered from the tree trunk that protected Alex from the deadly fire. The moment he felt a lull in shots, he dashed to his left, dodging the concentrated fire from the sentries. The farther left he went, the scarcer the trees became, allowing the sentries to take their time as they waited for his perilous sprints.

The pain radiated from Alex’s arm and intensified the longer he continued his cat-and-mouse game until he finally made it parallel to the door of the jet, where there was only one sentry focusing his efforts on him. Once Alex took him out, he would have a clear shot straight into the cabin of the jet, whose engines were whining more furiously now.

With the Class 3’s aim moving dangerously close to Alex’s head, and the thin tree he managed to find cover behind slowly disappearing one bullet at a time, he had to make his move now. Just one shot. That was all he needed. Just one shot. 

Alex spun around from the protective barrier of the tree and jumped forward, where he landed on his stomach. Another blinding shot of pain pulsated from his elbow upon impact, but he clenched his jaw and brought the chest of the sentry between his crosshairs. He squeezed the trigger, sending the sentry onto his back. Alex jumped from his position, keeping his rifle aimed at the lifeless sentry on the ground. When he popped his head up, Alex sent one through his forehead then focused his attention on the ladder. Shadows from the inside hurried back and forth, and before any of them could close the door, Alex rushed up the steps.

The moment the front of his rifle entered the cabin, he felt it yank forward from a forceful grab and was met with a quick punch to the face. Disoriented, Alex managed to keep a good hold of the rifle as Jake reached for the pistol under his jacket while trying to subdue Alex.

Alex released his grip on the rifle and brought the full force of his body into Jake, which blocked him from removing the pistol and sent the two of them crashing to the ground. With his left elbow still in excruciating pain, Alex only had the use of his right arm to keep Jake’s pistol from aiming at his head. The two men exchanged blows, each slamming their elbows, knees, and feet into whatever piece of flesh they could find.

Jake’s finger slipped from the barrel onto the trigger, sending three rounds into the jet’s ceiling. Both men recoiled from the repetitive shots of thunder, which gave Alex just enough time to reach for the blade at his side and bring it to Jake’s neck. Jake froze, still with his hand on the gun. Alex kept a firm tension on Jake’s neck with the edge of the blade. “Drop the gun, and get up.”

Jake set the gun down, and Alex picked it up, removing the blade from Jake’s throat and replacing it with the tip of the barrel into Jake’s temple and stepped behind him, using Jake’s body as a shield. “Gordon!”

Alex looked over the rows of seats until three heads popped up, two of which were Asian, and the third was Sydney. Alex motioned for them to step into the aisle and keep their hands in the air, with which they complied. “It’s over, Gordon. Come out. Now!”

Finally, in the very back of the plane, Gordon revealed himself, flashing both palms in Alex’s direction to make sure Alex knew he was unarmed. The gunshots outside started to fade, becoming more sporadic.

“Out of the jet, now,” Alex said.

“And go where?” Gordon asked. “I don’t think you realize what we have here, Alex.”

Sydney was the first to come down the aisle. He picked up Alex’s rifle and pointed it at the two Asian men.

“It’s over, Gordon,” Alex said.

“You walked away from a golden opportunity once before, Alex. Don’t make the same mistake again. Think about it! We have the most valuable resource at our fingertips right now, and we have a buyer that’s willing to pay us whatever we want!”

Jake’s body tensed up as Alex kept the gun aimed at his head.

“Don’t be as stupid as you were three years ago, Alex,” Gordon said, his voice lowering to the tone of a threat. “It didn’t work out for you then, and it’s not going to work out for you now.”

“I think it will,” Alex said.

“Pity.”

Gordon pulled a pistol from his back and emptied the magazine into Jake’s chest and the backs of the two Asian men before Alex could even get off a shot. Sydney fired the AR-15 but didn’t hit anything other than a few seats before the recoil of the gun caused it to slip from his weak grip. 

Alex ducked behind the first row of seats on the jet as Sydney took one in the shoulder and dropped to the ground. Alex pushed Jake’s body off him as he heard the click of a firing pin, signaling that Gordon was empty. Before he could jump to take him out, a Class 3 made his way up the stairs, and Alex sent three rounds into his chest, which tumbled him backwards. Alex was to his knees when Gordon came flying over the top of the seats and crashed into him, knocking him back to the floor.