Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

Miller sat in a brown leather executive chair at the head of a long oak conference table. He’d changed into a dark gray T-shirt and black cargo pants that could hold a good number of supplies and concealed weapons. He would have preferred a jacket, too, to hide more weapons, but it was summer and a jacket would make him stand out and sweat like a bastard. With his shaved head and dark garb he would look “military” but hoped the bright green John Deere cap would offset the look.

Brodeur sat kitty-corner to Miller, still dressed in his black suit and red tie. An array of weapons rested on the table. Miller looked the weapons over with satisfaction.

Two MP5 submachine guns and six spare clips.

Three Sig Sauer P226 handguns. Two spare clips for each.

A single SEAL team knife, delivered at Miller’s request, rounded out the armament. The SEAL knife underwent the most rigorous evaluation program for a blade in military history and beat out even the fabled KA-BAR blade favored by certain Delta operators he knew. Its seven-inch blade could chop, slice, penetrate, and saw almost anything it encountered.

Miller would have preferred a couple of M4s added to the mix, but they’d be impossible to conceal. And since there were only three of them, there were plenty of weapons to go around. He took the two MP5s and slid them to Brodeur. “Keep them under your jacket.”

Brodeur grinned. “Yehaw.”

“I’ll keep two of the Sigs for myself,” Miller said, pulling the weapons and four clips.

Brodeur motioned to the open double doors with his head. “Can she handle the third?”

“Yes,” Adler said, appearing in the doorway. “ She can.” She took the gun, two clips, and sat down across from Brodeur. She wore black pants and a dark short-sleeve blouse that matched her now-black hair and made her blue eyes stand out like LED beacons. But for all the color in her eyes, they looked heavy.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Miller asked.

“You could?”

Miller had slept for four solid hours, but didn’t bother mentioning it.

“There’s some instant coffee in the kitchen,” Brodeur said.

“That would be great,” Adler said. “Thank you.”

Brodeur sat in the chair for a moment while Adler stared at him. “You want me to make it?”

“Sounded like you were offering,” she said without a hint of humor.

Brodeur pushed up from the chair. “Fine. Fine. But be warned, I make my Joe with some kick.”

“Make it two,” Miller said as Brodeur left.

They sat in silence as Brodeur’s footsteps faded.

“How did you do it?” Adler asked.

“Do what?”

“Survive.”

Miller frowned. The topic of his survival grated on him, but he knew the question would be asked from now until the day he died. Even after they wrote books, and made movies, people would still want to hear the story from his lips. The air. How it tasted. The whale. The shark. The bodies. The close calls and the battles with Nazis. He’d prefer to forget it all.

But then Adler clarified the question. “I don’t mean physically. Breathing and all that. Most people would have given up. I have no idea what you saw. I don’t really want to know. The little I do know is enough to convince me I wouldn’t have pushed on. I wouldn’t have survived.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re a survivor, too.”

“Not without you.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “I need to know. In case it happens again. In case I need to survive.”

He looked at the table, reliving the emotions of survival. “At first, my reactions were guided by instincts and training. SEALs are conditioned to survive the harshest conditions on Earth. It’s what we do. I saw a news report saved on Scuba Dave’s laptop—”

“Scuba Dave?”

“The guy I took the shoes from. I saw a report about a group claiming responsibility for the attack. I guess revenge became my motivation. I wanted to survive long enough to take a shot at whoever was responsible. Had I met the SecondWorld assholes before Arwen I might have stayed in Miami until each and every one of them lay dead.”

“But you met Arwen first.”

He nodded. “She probably saved my life, too, though. As much as I’d like to think I’m invincible, it’s likely I would have been killed in Miami. Lack of air or neo-Nazis; one of them would have done me in eventually. Saving her became my motivation.”

“And it still is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Oprah, it is. Her and everyone else. But vengeance is still a close second.”

They smiled together, but Miller’s smile disappeared a moment later. He cocked his head to the side, listening.

Brodeur returned with a tray holding three steaming coffee cups and a box of biscotti. “Java is serv—”

Miller shot an open palm in Brodeur’s direction and shushed him loudly.

The room fell silent.

The noise that had been at the edge of his hearing grew louder—the rumble of a second, very large, plane.

“What the hell is that?” Brodeur asked.

Miller jumped from his seat and headed for the cockpit. Adler and Brodeur followed.

As he pounded toward the cockpit, Miller glanced out the hallway windows. The deep blue sky of a new day greeted him. The sun was rising. Four days left. He quickened his pace and after reaching the cockpit door, gave it a firm knock. “It’s Miller.”

The cockpit door opened a moment later. Colonel Keith Wallman, who they’d met upon boarding, smiled at them. He had a friendly manner and a kind smile.

“I hear a second aircraft,” Miller said.

“What?” Wallman replied. “Oh! That’s the KC-10.”

The McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender was an air-to-air refueling plane that serviced all branches of the U.S. Air Force. It explained the noise, but not why it was here. “We’re on a 747,” Miller said. “We could probably make the round-trip from New Hampshire to Poland without refueling.”

Wallman offered a nod. “And then some. This is the president’s plane, after all. The KC isn’t here for us.” He stepped to the side, revealing the rest of the expansive cockpit, which held more gauges, buttons, and lights than seemed reasonable.

The copilot, Lieutenant Colonel Matherson, gave a wave and turned back to his job.

“Take a peek,” Wallman said.

Miller stepped forward and looked out the cockpit window. The ass end of the massive KC-10 hovered above and to the right of them. One of the two F-22 Raptors was attached to the long boom that sent fuel from the larger plane to the fighter jet. It made sense now. The Raptor’s range was far shorter than the 747’s.

A moment later, the Raptor disengaged from the KC-10 and fell back. A second Raptor skillfully dropped into view and approached the boom. The boom found its target and linked the two planes in midflight.

That’s when the Raptor exploded and all hell broke loose.

The last thing Miller heard before being flung to the floor was Matherson’s voice shouting, “Missile lock! Missile lock! Missile lock!”

“Deploying chaff!” Wallman shouted as he lunged into his chair and toggled a switch. A distant choom, choom, choom sounded out from behind the plane.

Miller gripped the cockpit door and hoisted himself to his feet. Matherson had banked hard as soon as the missile-lock warning sounded. The sudden movement had thrown him to the floor, but he was uninjured.

For now.

He glanced back at Brodeur and Adler. “Get to a chair and strap in! Now!” He thought for a moment that both of them would object. But they turned and ran for the chairs lining the hallway just beyond the cockpit doors. Miller sat in the cockpit’s third chair, just behind the copilot.