Mike Maden - River of Gods

The Long Swords locked onto their respective targets just one kilometer away, their 500 kg warheads set to ignite with devastating precision.

Sergeant Wolfit slammed the cargo door shut as the plane lurched forward.

Cella hovered over Pearce’s unconscious body, medical bag open, cutting away at the tagelmust still wrapped around his head. Myers straddled his legs to steady him against the shuddering fuselage streaking down the runway.

The tagelmust finally gave way. Myers gasped. Pearce’s face was slathered in a mask of indigo and surging blood.

“It’s just a scalp wound,” Cella shouted. She smiled at Myers. “He’s alive.”

“Thank God,” Myers whispered.

Judy slammed the Aviocar’s throttles as far forward as they could go, but the boxy little plane still wasn’t hitting maximum speed, thanks to the deflating starboard tire. The smoldering ruins of the Hummingbird loomed large in the windscreen. They weren’t going to make it—

“Now!” she barked.

She and Kavanagh yanked back on the yokes together, pulling them hard into their guts. The Aviocar leaped into the air like a thrashing marlin.

The plane shuddered as metal screamed against metal, the belly of the fuselage scraping hard against the twisted remains of the A-160. Judy felt the Aviocar twist—and for a fleeting second she was sure they were going to crash. But the rugged transport plane corrected under Judy’s deft rudder and yoke work, and seconds later they were in a steep-banked climb with nothing but hazy blue sky filling her windscreen.

“Yee-haw, baby!” Kavanagh shouted. He flashed a huge grin at Judy. “You wanna fly A-10s sometime, you look me up, you hear?” His voice boomed in Judy’s headset. She was glad for the distraction and grateful nobody else in the cargo area was online. Early was back there, dead, and Pearce shot in the head. Kavanagh’s caterwauling was all she could handle for now.

The three cruise missiles each struck within half a meter of their designated targets, guided by the COMPASS locators on the DPVs. The fuel-air explosions produced a massive concussive blast followed by a boiling cloud of searing fire hot enough to melt the desert floor. Anything not vaporized by the initial pressure wave was consumed by the engulfing flames. One square kilometer of the Earth’s surface had just been wiped clean of organic life and any evidence that it ever existed.

The force of the blast waves rocked the Aviocar as it clawed its way past two thousand feet, shaking everything inside that wasn’t strapped down.

“Jimminy Christmas!” Judy shouted as she white-knuckled the yoke for a second time, wrestling the plane back into line. How the Aviocar managed to keep flying was beyond her.

“You must be living a clean life, Hopper. That was damn near miraculous.”

“I’d say it was good engineering.”

“I was talking about the flying, not the plane.”

Judy allowed herself a smile. “Thanks.”

“I can’t wait to see how you handle an Algerian fighter.”

“Why do you say that?”

Kavanagh pointed high in the windscreen. “Take a look.”

A MiG-25 jet fighter streaked across the sky. She guessed fifteen thousand feet. Its flight path perpendicular to their own. She glanced at her warning switches. No antiaircraft missile lock.

“He must be texting his girlfriend. He doesn’t see us.” Judy nudged the Aviocar lower to the ground. At least make it harder for the MiG pilot to see them if he changed his mind after all.

“And if he does see us?”

“Hope you’re a praying man, Colonel. This Aviocar has the speed and firepower of a postal truck.”

Fiero residence

Washington, D.C.

The small manila envelope arrived at the Fieros’ home late in the evening by private courier. She glanced at the return address. Part of a prearranged code. She tried not to panic. Fiero thanked the mysterious young man in golden dreadlocks, tossing him a fifty-dollar bill to get him quickly off the porch and on his way. Her husband was at their home in California. She would have preferred to open this in his presence. He liked to face bad news head-on. She hated it, but avoided the temptation to Skype him as she tore the envelope open.

Inside, a three-by-five index card. A wafer-thin 32-gig flash memory card was taped to it, along with the phrase “1 of 2” constructed from multiple magazine cutouts, like an old-school kidnapper’s ransom demand.

This was bad. The double entendre clear, as per their arrangement. Previous arrangement , Fiero corrected herself. This card meant that her relationship with Jasmine Bath was over. She had worked with Bath for years, using her husband, Anthony—The Angel—as an intermediary.

The intel on this flash card was a double-edged knife. On the one hand, it would contain information Fiero could use to protect herself against her enemies. The republic was founded on the principle of checks and balances. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” Madison said. But Madison was only half right. Greed and ambition were the two sides of the scale that kept things in balance, but fear was the fulcrum. Bath’s data was like a thumb Fiero could press on either side of the scale to tip things her way. Greed and ambition were her best protections with Bath on her side.

But the other flash card, still in Bath’s hands, contained intel that could also ruin Fiero and her husband if Bath was feeling threatened by her. Bath was saying that the memory card was one of two, but also that Fiero was one of two—both of them held weapons that could destroy their enemies, as well as each other. Bath was allowing Fiero to protect herself but was smart enough to protect herself against Fiero.

It was a smart play. Bath had been inaccessible for the last forty-eight hours. Fiero’s first assumption was that she had bailed out, and her first impulse was to find the bitch and kill her. Bath was the only person in Washington with the kind of inside information that could put her in a steel cage to die of old age. That made Bath a threat, and Bath knew it. But Bath also knew that keeping those secrets secret were her last, best defense in the event Fiero ever found her. Keeping Fiero safe was Bath’s best guarantee of remaining safe. So it was a stalemate.

The only problem was, Fiero hated stalemates. She only wanted to win. But this time she’d have to live with her frustration. She could imagine a life behind bars far more frustrating than this turn of events. At least she still had her power, her money, and her freedom. She could still even win the White House. And who knows? She may yet get the better of Jasmine Bath, whether in this life or the next.

Karem Air Force Base

Niamey, Niger

Pearce awoke two days later. His body had needed the rest as much as his brain needed the time to heal itself.

Myers hadn’t left his bedside. His eyes fluttered open. Saw her smiling face. She wore camouflaged Air Force ABUs.

“Welcome back.”

“How long?”

“Two days. You had us worried there for a while.”

Pearce smiled. “Sorry about that.”

“Did you go toward the light?”

“Yeah. And it was a train.” He winced with pain. “A damn big one. Where are we?”

“Back at Karem.”

“Arrested?”

“Anything but. Colonel Kavanagh is taking good care of us. No one in D.C. knows we’re here and the base is on full alert. We’re safe, for now.”

She raised his bed. He saw himself in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. Lightly touched the white gauze bandage wrapped around his head.