Oath of Office

No answer.

“Anybody see where that came from?”

“You’re the eyes, Yank,” came a voice.

They had trouble.

A few seconds later, a rocket hit the front of the house. The shockwave knocked Brown off his feet. The walls were collapsing. The kitchen ceiling suddenly caved in. Brown lay on the floor among falling junk. This had gone the opposite of what he expected. Cops rammed down doors – they didn’t fire rockets through walls.

Another rocket hit, this one deep inside the house. Brown covered his head. Everything shook. The whole house could come down.

A moment passed. Someone was screaming now. Otherwise, it was quiet. Brown jumped up and ran for the stairs. On the way out of the room, he grabbed his handgun and one grenade.

He passed through the main room. It was carnage, a slaughterhouse. The room was on fire. One of the Beards was dead. More than dead – blown to shredded pieces all over the place. The Australian had panicked and taken his mask off. His face was covered in dark blood, but Brown couldn’t tell where he was hit.

“I can’t see!” the man screamed. “I can’t see!”

His eyes were wide open.

A man in body armor and helmet stepped calmly through the shattered wall. He quieted the Australian with an ugly blat of automatic gunfire. The Australian’s head popped apart like a cherry tomato. He stood without a head for a second or two, and then dropped bonelessly to the floor.

The second Beard lay on the ground near the back door, the double-steel reinforced door which Brown had been so delighted about just a few moments ago. The cops were never going to get through that door. Beard #2 was cut up from the explosion, but still in the fight. He dragged himself to the wall, propped himself upright, and reached for the gun strapped at his shoulder.

The intruder shot Beard #2 in the face at point-blank range. Blood and bone and gray matter splattered against the wall.

Brown turned and stormed up the stairs.

*

The air was thick with smoke, but Luke saw the man bolt for the stairs. He glanced around the room. Everyone else was dead.

Satisfied, he took the stairs at a run. His own breathing sounded loud in his ears.

He was vulnerable here. The stairs were so narrow it would be the perfect time for someone to spray gunfire down on him. No one did.

At the top, the air was clearer than below. To his left was the shattered window and wall where the sniper had taken position. The sniper’s legs were on the floor. His tan work boots pointed in opposite directions. The rest of him was gone.

Luke went right. Instinctively, he ran to the room at the far end of the hall. He dropped his Uzi in the hallway. He took the pump shotgun off his shoulder and dropped that, too. He slid his Glock from its holster.

He turned left and into the room.

Becca and Gunner sat tied to two folding chairs. Their arms were pulled behind their backs. Their hair was wild, as if some funny person had just mussed it with his hand. Indeed, a man stood behind them. He dropped two black hoods to the floor and placed the muzzle of his gun to the back of Becca’s head. He crouched very low, putting Becca in front of him as a human shield.

Becca’s eyes were very wide. Gunner’s were tightly closed. He was weeping uncontrollably. His entire body shook with silent sobs. He had wet his pants.

Was it worth it?

To see them like this, helpless, in terror, had it been worth it? Luke had helped stop a coup d’état the night before. He had saved the new President from almost certain death, but was it worth this?

“Luke?” Becca said, as if she didn’t recognize him.

Of course she didn’t. He pulled his helmet off.

“Luke,” she said. She gasped, maybe in relief. He didn’t know. People made sounds in extreme moments. They didn’t always mean anything.

Luke raised his gun, sighting it directly between Becca’s and Gunner’s heads. The man was good. He wasn’t giving Luke anything to hit. But Luke left the gun pointed there anyway. He watched patiently. The man wouldn’t always be good. No one was good forever.

Luke felt nothing right now, nothing but… dead… calm.

He did not feel relief flooding his system. This wasn’t over yet.

“Luke Stone?” the man said. He grunted. “Amazing. You’re everywhere at once these past couple of days. Is it really you?”

Luke could picture the man’s face from the moment before he ducked behind Becca. He had a thick scar across his left cheek. He had a flat-top haircut. He had the sharp features of someone who had spent his life in the military.

“Who wants to know?” Luke said.

“They call me Brown.”

Luke nodded. A name that wasn’t a name. The name of a ghost. “Well, Brown, how do you want to do this?”

Below them, Luke could hear the police storming the house.

“What options do you see?” Brown said.

Luke stood without moving, his gun waiting for that shot to appear. “I see two options. You can either die right this minute or, if you’re lucky, in prison a long time from now.”

“Or I could blow your lovely wife’s brains all over you.”

Luke didn’t answer. He just pointed that gun. His arm wasn’t tired. It would never get tired. But the cops were coming upstairs in a minute, and that was going to change the equation.

“And you’ll be dead one second later.”

“True,” Brown said. “Or I could do this.”

His free hand dropped a grenade into Becca’s lap.

As Brown dashed away, Luke dropped the gun and dove for it. In one series of motions, he picked up the grenade, flipped it toward the back wall of the room, collapsed the two chairs, and pushed both Becca and Gunner to the ground.

Becca screamed.

Luke gathered them together, rough with it, no time for gentleness. He pushed them closer and closer, mounted them, blanketed them with his body, and with his armor. He tried to make them disappear.

For a split second, nothing happened. Maybe it was a ruse. The grenade was a fake, and now the man called Brown would have the drop on him. He would kill them all.

BOOOOOM!

The explosion came, deafening in the close confines of the room. Luke gathered them closer. The floor shook. Shards of metal sprayed him. He ducked his head low. Bare flesh on his neck was torn away. He covered them and held them.