BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (46 page)

The ready light didn’t come on. Even the low-battery light was out. He flipped the button several times and pounded the unit into the palm of his other hand.

No!

The battery was dead.

Jake collapsed to his knees, his face tilted up to the sky. He wailed at the top of his lungs, “God, don’t take this from me, too!”

Jake’s thoughts filled with his friends, with Sarafina, with Francesca. He tried to throw his thoughts toward them, but the drug still held him firmly in its grip. He ripped at the wounds on his arm, demanding the pain, pleading for the sweep of adrenaline that might clear his head and focus his thoughts into a telepathic warning. There was a small surge, but it faded instantly. He needed more, much more. 

Jake searched the floor around him, looking for a weapon, a rock, anything that could deliver the adrenaline he so desperately needed.

His breath caught in his throat as the answer dawned on him. 

He turned his eyes to the void that spread out before him like an inviting lake.

He stood, the toes of his boots hanging over the edge. He felt the tension leave his face and he allowed a smile to find his lips. He took one final deep breath of clean mountain air and stepped into the blackness.

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

T
he V-22 lifted vertically off the ground. Francesca twisted in her seat and stared out the small porthole window. A cloud of sand and dust swirled outward and disappeared into the desert night. The nose dipped and the big bird began to move forward. The steady thrum of the twin engines changed pitch, and she saw the shadow of the immense port-side nacelle rotate downward as the Osprey shifted to airplane mode. 

They were on their way home. Without Jake.

The mountain that was now his tomb was silhouetted on a backdrop of stars that were moved past the wing as they picked up speed. She wiped her eyes with the tissue that Jake’s friend Lacey had given her. 

Jake’s friends.
 

The amazing people around her were a testament to the man. They had traveled halfway around the world and risked their lives to rescue him in Venice, and then followed him into this godforsaken place to save her and Sarafina. Their loyalty spoke volumes about Jake’s character. 

She couldn’t bear to turn around and face them. It hurt too much. The warmth that they each had shown her couldn’t hide the creases of sadness in their eyes. And it was all her fault, wasn’t it? She had been so easily taken in by Battista’s silky words and fatherly demeanor. Her extraordinary empathic senses had failed to alert her to the deceit behind the man’s smooth façade. It should have been her that died in these mountains, not Jake. Her life was over anyway.

She risked a glance over her shoulder at Sarafina. The child was still huddled under Tony’s bulging arm, unmoving, staring at nothing. A few days ago—when she’d opened herself to Jake—the girl had finally taken the first crucial steps toward putting her tragic past behind her. And for her efforts she was rewarded with more anguish and loss. Now she had once again burrowed deep within herself and blocked out the world, perhaps this time forever. 

Francesca looked toward the front of the plane and saw Ahmed fiddling with the contents of his backpack. He was so different than Sarafina, so confident and extraverted. He had changed dramatically since receiving the implant. He now seemed well on his way to becoming an active participant in the world around him. Maybe, just maybe, some little good had come out of Battista’s horrible experiments.

Francesca turned back to the darkness outside. The V-22 made a slow banking turn to the left. The crown of the mountain would soon slip out of sight. And Jake would become a memory.

Francesca, stop Ahmed. He has a bomb! Stop Ah—

Jake’s thoughts filled her head and drove everything else away. Francesca spun around and Sarafina’s eyes locked onto hers with an intensity that left no doubt that she heard it too. 

Jake!

Francesca’s hands shot to the buckle on her seatbelt. She screamed with all of her soul, “Ahmed has a bomb!”

It was Becker who reacted first. He jumped out of his seat and rushed toward Ahmed. 

Both of the boy’s hands were scrambling in his backpack. He let out a piercing wail,
“Allahu Akbar!”

Becker shoved his hands into the backpack, grabbed the boy’s wrists, and lifted him straight into the air. Ahmed’s feet kicked wildly in space. The backpack fell to the floor, trailing a twisted string of electrical wire that stretched to a black detonator in Ahmed’s small fist.

His eyes went wild and his little thumb pressed down on the red plunger. 

The click of the switch nearly stopped Francesca’s heart.

But the explosion that was meant to accompany it never happened. Tony reached over Becker’s shoulder and pried the switch from Ahmed’s grip. Becker pulled Ahmed into his chest and moved out of Tony’s way. Tony crouched down and carefully opened the flap on the backpack. His fingers slid down the twisted wires into its folds, his eyes narrowed on the contents within. Everyone was on their feet watching. Francesca held her breath.

Tony sighed. The tension melted from his face. He pulled his hand out of the pack, and with it came the copper lead that had snapped free when Becker jerked the boy into the air.

“It’s okay,” Tony said. He stood up and looked at Francesca. “There’s gotta be two pounds of C4 in there. More than enough to turn us into a fireball. How did you know?”

Francesca’s face lit up. “It’s Jake.” She rushed to one of the windows and stared at the dark mountain. “He’s alive!”

The mountain exploded. 

Like a huge volcanic eruption, the cap of the mountain literally burst up to the heavens in thousands of pieces, encased in a fireball of flames. Tongues of fire snapped out of the main cavern entrance as well as the hole in the cliff face. The glow cast an orange reflection on the faces of the team. 

 The V-22 yawed violently from the pressure wave, the port wing dipping as Cal and Kenny fought at the controls. They recovered by using the momentum to turn the V-22 and put the conflagration on their tail to get out from under the debris that would be dropping from the sky like hail in a thunderstorm.

Everyone in the back was banged up, with more than a few bruises from the jolt. But it was Francesca who took the deepest wound, cut to her core by the knowledge that no one could have possibly lived through that blast, not even Jake.

Venice, Italy

Three Days Later

T
hey gathered in the living area of Mario’s home in Venice. Marshall sat next to Lacey on the couch, one of his bandaged arms cradled in her lap. She held a wadded tissue in one hand. Several half-full coffee cups rested in saucers on the wooden table in front them. Tony stood nearby in front of the fireplace, his left shoulder bulky from the bandage that was hidden beneath the sling. His other arm rested on the mantle next to an eight-by-ten photograph of Francesca’s uncle, Vincenzo, a black ribbon stretched diagonally across its corner. The last inch of a flickering votive candle nestled beside it. Mario stood next to Tony, the two men sharing a silent moment.

Sarafina sat alone on a stool at an upright piano on the far wall, her back to the group, her little hands sliding across the black and white keys, tapping a melancholy tune that floated out the open window and drifted across the water.

Francesca rested her hands on the sill, looking down at the canal that had been her lifelong companion. Her father’s gondola was tied to the wall beneath her, rocking gently in the cool morning breeze. Her face was hollow. The joy that normally filled her features had long since abandoned her. 

**

From a small bougainvillea-covered gazebo on a roof deck across the water, Jake lowered his binoculars.

Besides his mother and sister back home, everyone he cared about in the world was in that little room across the canal. They were his family, his lifeline. And it was for that very reason that he feared joining them, afraid of drawing them into the whirlwind of danger that would soon surround him. They thought it was all over. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Three days ago he’d jumped off that cliff expecting it all to come crashing to an end. The air had rushed past him as he fell, the darkness hiding the ground that he knew was speeding toward him. Adrenaline charged every nerve in his body and his mind screamed his warning to Francesca. A second later, with a lurch that twisted his limbs into a violent tangle, all the air was knocked out of his lungs and darkness invaded his mind.

He regained consciousness hours later to find himself cradled in the folds of Tark’s thirty-six-foot-wide canopy that still clung to an outcrop of rock partway down the cliff, the same one that had cocooned itself around Tony on the way up. It was a one-in-a-million shot, the kind of thing that only happened in movies. He hung precariously eight hundred feet above the ground in the middle of nowhere, with no possible means of escape. 

But he was alive.

He lay there for thirty-six hours before the end of a long rope whistled by him, dropped from the cliff seven hundred feet above. Jake couldn’t believe his eyes when one of Azim’s cousins had snaked down the rope. With the help of several men from his tribe, Azim pulled Jake out of the hammock that had come so close to becoming his death shroud. 

Azim explained that he’d been unable to follow the rest of the team using the BASE jumping gear because the chute pack he was supposed to wear was riddled with holes from the firefight. He survived the onslaught of Battista’s men by pretending to be one of them and escaping into the village below before the massive explosion. Only a small number of Battista’s followers survived the cataclysm. They packed what they could and abandoned the mountain and the village. Azim returned the next day with men from his tribe to pick over the pieces. By Allah’s will, they uncovered a small radio receiver that identified Jake’s blinking position by the tiny locator he had taken from Sarafina’s collar.

A day and a half later Jake was back in Venice, watching his friends from this roof deck, wondering what to do.

  He’d gone over and over it in his mind while he hung helpless on the cold cliff face. Battista had bragged to him about the three successful implant subjects who had left the facility and were headed to America. What would they do when they learned what Jake and his friends had done to their tribe? They knew about Francesca and Sarafina, and likely Tony, Marshall, and Lacey, too. Would they leave them alone and continue on their
jihad
against faceless infidels in the USA, or would they seek a more personal revenge? Were they on their way here to Venice even now? If so, who would protect Jake’s friends, if not him?

He fingered the small pyramid in his pocket. It warmed to his touch, now a familiar companion waiting to guide him. Its makers were a zillion miles away. Or so he hoped. How long until they returned? A year? A decade? And then what? It wouldn’t be good; that much was certain. To survive, the human race would have to pull together in a way that could not even be imagined in today’s world. 

Impossible.

There was a flutter of feathers and a small group of doves landed on the edge of the tiled roof beside him, their tiny heads making small, sharp movements as they sidled into comfortable positions on their perch. From the extensive dropping stains on the tile beneath them, this was a regular haven for the little family, maybe even a home. He envied the little birds, oblivious to the concerns of the world around them. And hadn’t he heard once that doves mated for life?

Jake pulled the binoculars back up to his eyes. Francesca stood there, hands on the sill, all alone.

He lowered the glasses and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he filled his mind with her image.

Francesca, I’m coming.

**

I hope you enjoyed reading BRAINRUSH as much as I did writing it. If so, it would be a big help to this new author if you left a comment on the
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Are you ready to find out what happens next to Jake and his friends? “BRAINRUSH II, The Enemy of My Enemy” is now available. Click
HERE
to to go to the book’s detail page on Amazon.

Happy reading,

Richard Bard