Escape: Omega Book 1 (Omega: Earth's Hero) (5 page)

Chapter 5

“How much more? How much more of this do you plan to put these people through?”

“Mrs. Scott,” the man that had identified himself only as Muhammad Furroh started. “You and these people will remain here at gunpoint until either your husband agrees to my terms, or I tire of waiting and kill you all.”

Miranda wanted to respond with words of scorn and disgust, but she’d already become wary of Muhammad’s wrath. He’d dispatched both Fleming and Bart with impunity, and it was evident by the look of fear in his underlings’ eyes that even they were cautious of the man. So, she rebelled in the only way that she could: with her eyes. The stare that sliced from her pupils to his face was hate-filled and contemptuous.

“By my count,” Muhammad said after a glance at his gold wristwatch, “President Scott has forty-five minutes to release the esteemed leaders of the Cause. If, by that time, independent agents cannot confirm their freedom, I will greatly enjoy plucking your eyes from your skull.”

Muhammad took a step toward her. She’d sat on the sofa after calling Bob, and as he approached, she willed her body to sink further and further down into the fabric.

The gunfire erupted when Muhammad was less than a meter away. Instinctively, all five pairs of eyes flew toward Bart’s office door. Miranda, however, looked around for a way out. It had been the first time since the mercenaries had entered that she hadn’t been keenly observed at all times. She was not about to waste the opportunity.

One of Muhammad’s men--a tall, portly man that smelled like old bologna--pulled her roughly to her feet before she could take in much of the room’s scant detail. Miranda was lifted off her feet as she was dragged across the office to an exterior wall.

The door burst open inwards. A bright phosphorous light, blinding in its white intensity, enveloped the room. Miranda heard what sounded like wet whistles. She’d seen enough tough-guy movies to understand that the strange noise was the sound of silenced weapons. She heard feet scuffling and the report of machine guns.

She fell to the floor. When Bob had first won office, she’d had to undergo several weeks of defense classes. It had been Bob’s idea, and at the time, it had seemed an unnecessary precaution. Now she was glad for her husband’s almost uncanny foresight. 

She rolled over and over, trying to make herself a hard-to-hit moving target.

When the smoke cleared, and her vision returned, there was only Muhammad, one of his men, and a soldier dressed in grey and white camouflage left standing.

Bodies littered the floor like scattered refuse.

“This is the end of the line for you. Lay down your weapons and place your hands behind your head.”

“I think not, American.” Muhammad stressed the last word, giving it the same spiteful bash he would if he was referring to nothing more than human bodily waste. “I have no time for your pitiful heroics. The time to die is now. Are you prepared to meet Allah?”

Miranda watched as Muhammad, with his free hand, pulled a small device from his pocket, then switched it on. A wire from the device trailed up his shirt. He then ripped open his bulky button-up shirt to reveal several sticks of dynamite. “You, my friend, have just condemned your First Lady to death.”

“A bomb!” Miranda was transfixed by the sight. The deadly device that Muhammad had strapped to himself looked more along the lines of something from a particularly violent cartoon than something that existed in the real world. Large, thick sticks of TNT were strapped to a nylon harness that surrounded him from his chest to lower abdomen. Tiny, hair-like wires of various colors ran from the tip of each stick to the next and so on and so forth. In the immediate front of the harness was a small LED screen device. A timer.

Miranda watched as the soldier spoke into the miniscule boom mike attached to his headset. “Omega, this would be a really good time for you to get your six in here, ASAP.”

“You see, soldier, your very Commander-in-Chief has doomed you, your men, the private citizens of this building, and even his wife. Is that the type of man you wish to serve?”

The soldier held his machine gun in front of him. Miranda noticed that he’d stayed cool and calm even as his brothers-in-arms had fallen. The tip of the gun barrel never wavered. She was proud of him. Without even knowing him, she was proud. She didn’t want to die; doing so had definitely not been on her agenda for today when she woke beside her husband in a very comfortable bed with her entire life still ahead of her. But the courage of the soldier could not be ignored. She had pride in her country and faith in this soldier.

The three of them formed a triangle. The soldier stood near the door, the muzzle of his weapon pointed at Muhammad. Muhammad stood about ten feet away, his gun trained on Miranda. Miranda was less than five feet from the terrorist and fifteen from the soldier. 

“You can keep that gun on me as long as you wish. You may even pull the trigger, but I feel I must inform you that this explosive harness is wired to this pressure switch. If you kill me, I release the button, the clock speeds up. If you try to remove it after I fall, it will speed up, it will explode, decimating this entire floor--and, I fear, several more for good measure.”

Miranda could tell that the soldier was having a difficult time deciding his course of action. She couldn’t blame him at all. They seemed to be stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place.

“I see you have a team member still alive.”

The First Lady saw the soldier subtly relax as the second soldier stepped into the room. He was taller than the first and a bit wider in the shoulders, but beyond that the two could have passed for brothers. Both of the men’s hair was a very, very light brown and cut in the same military fade. Both had looks on their face that they weren’t accustomed to playing around.

She saw the second soldier, who the first had referred to as Omega via radio, notice the device strapped to Muhammad, as well as the handheld that he’d dropped to the floor, what she’d taken to be some kind of remote.

“‘Bout time,” the first soldier said to his newly arrived comrade.

“Sorry, sir. Got held up.”

“Glad you could join the festivities. My apologies, however, that the show is about to come to an end.”

Omega was not nearly as interested in Muhammad as the first. Instead of paying him the strictest attention as he spoke, the new arrival scanned the area. Just then, a man groaned. Years had gone by since Bart had injured his knee playing soccer in a high school championship, but Miranda had been at that game and been one of the first to her brother’s side. She would know the groan of his pain anywhere. It was he, groaning in anguish on the floor. A relief flooded her that was as cool and as refreshing as a mountain stream. The thought that neither her brother nor she would probably be alive in ten minutes did not dilute that feeling.

The new soldier apparently completed his scan of the carnage of the inner office and looked to Muhammad. He had easily positioned himself just past the first soldier. 

“Stay where you are, brave soldier.”

Omega did not utter a response, but raised a sidearm and fired one shot at Muhammad. The round punctured a hole the size of a dime in the man’s forehead. He turned to the other soldier. “Get her to safety.”

Nodding, the first man was at Miranda in the flash of an eye. “The timer’s been sped up.”

“Thirty-four seconds and counting.” Omega responded after peering down at the device. “Not a moment to lose.”

Both men grabbed the First Lady, one at either arm, and was ushering her towards the door. “Please!” she screamed. “My brother! He’s still alive!”

Neither soldier responded.

“He’s alive! Please, God, he’s alive!”

“Ma’am, he’s dying. You’re not. We’ve got to move.” This from the first soldier. She noticed that he wore black captain insignia on his BDUs.

“Captain, please. He’s my brother!” The man merely shook his head.

She turned to Omega. “Please, soldier, please.” This man wore no insignia of any kind, but he reacted slightly different to Miranda’s plea. He hesitated as they neared the service stairwell. He had a powerful build and his face chiseled out of pure stone. But his eyes exuded a humanity that Miranda had rarely seen before.

“Please.” This time the word was little more than a whimper.

Omega released her, turned, and began sprinting back toward the office.

“Omega! What are you doing? Get your butt back here now! The entire building’s about to blow!”

Chapter 6

Omega heard his commander’s voice. Less than fifteen seconds before detonation. That many explosives in such a confined area was sure to be an unpleasant experience at best.

Against his training, Omega dropped the M4 to the floor and unholstered his sidearm. A machine gun wasn’t much use against an explosive mechanism. He shouted an order into his comm.

Omega came into the room half expecting the bomb to have already detonated, though he knew full well that nine seconds still remained until the timer hit zero.

He scanned the outer office on the way ensuring that no one survived. No one did. Dead, lifeless forms lay everywhere. Finding a clear trail through them, in itself, was no small feat. Inside, Omega completed the same survey, finding only one man stirring in the least. The First Lady’s brother.

Omega bent low over the injured man. His vitals were weak. The man grunted but did not scream. From Omega’s initial battlefield diagnosis, the man was in bad shape. Two bullets, one slicing through his left femur, the other knocking a good chunk off his kneecap. Thankfully, no major arteries had been damaged, and though the man was still in shock, there was no immediate danger of major blood loss. A whole lot of pain, however, awaited the man when he regained his senses.

Seven seconds to detonation.

He only hoped his last minute instructions had been understood.

Five seconds.

Omega began running toward the plate glass window, firing his Glock 9mm as he went. The glass shattered with the first impact, a second round tore it from the frame.

Bart O’Riley gained consciousness just as Omega launched from the open window into the breezy air of Manhattan, twenty stories above the ground. The fallen terrorist was in his grasp.

O’Riley saw the man release the terrorist.

The explosion rushed superheated air from all directions, like the scorching kiss of a mythical dragon. Omega felt the fabric of his uniform crisp, but his back shielded most of blast. The hot fire, glass, concrete and other flaming debris shot past them, some of the fiery trash striking a neighboring building almost two hundred feet away.

Before he lost as much as five feet of altitude, Omega’s arm caught on the landing skid of the chopper hovering just outside the window and Omega was away. Though rocked by the eruption the helicopter escaped serious damage.

Below, a crowd of pedestrians, law enforcement, and even the mayor of New York City herself watched in unchecked astonishment.

Mission accomplished.

Very far away, in a place more hidden than Phantom Base, something sits in wait. Miles beneath the surface, in a cavernous lair, where perpetual darkness is its only companion, age and time is of no consequence. From within the earth’s crust, its eye, more advanced than anything the human mind can fathom, watches.

For many Terran years, it has thought itself alone on this rock, so very far from home. Now, it knows different. While the subject of its unblinking gaze is not completely pure, there is enough for the presence to recognize and to appreciate.

Beyond this planetary system, beyond this quadrant of the galaxy, past hundreds of similar systems in the maw of the great expanse, lays its home. Lost now, possibly forever, for there is not power enough within it to carry it through the thick sediment skyward. To reach the speeds necessary to make the jump from here to there, an exponential amount of energy would be needed.

Here for eons, part of the first scouting mission to this sector, the presence has recounted the precious bits of its memory of home trillions of times, but they are only that: memories. 

When the cruiser crash landed a half century ago, the presence had thought salvation was en route. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The sentients dead, or so very close to it, before stepping beyond the ship. Perhaps the cruiser’s occupants hadn’t even been aware of the presence, imprisoned here, its beacon forever beaming toward home for help.

Was its fate to stay in this tomb, to eventually rot as all things, even of such vast sophistication, always do? There is no escaping the ending of life, no matter how long the wait is to be.

Imprisonment with only itself was a harsh hell in its own right. A hell of repetition, or repetitive hoping.

Something new is what it yearns for, something it desperately needs to remain coherent and sane.

That something new lingers on the horizon.

The being born of both human and something much more has presented himself a viable opportunity for the presence. Is there enough not human to do what needs to be done. Even the great eye cannot see that…yet.

The attempts at communication have so far been futile. But the presence was nothing if not persistent. It had no choice. Survival was a certain conclusion, but escape was craved. And to escape, it would need assistance from the diluted specimen of its home world.

Communication would not only continue, but increase in veracity. A link had to be established.
Had to be
.