Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,119
parking garage that exited four blocks away inside what appeared to be a personal garage. An array of black SUVs and stretch limos filled the space, all heavily armored and ready to speed the president away in the event of an emergency that Marine One, the president’s personal helicopter, couldn’t handle (should Washington’s airspace become compromised).
But Duncan didn’t approach the black vehicles. Instead he walked up to an unassuming Hyundai Entourage. It was as heavily armored as the rest of the vehicles in the garage, but when he drove it with a baseball cap on his head and dummy children strapped into the backseat, no one would recognize him for who he was.
Boucher handed him the keys. “Never pictured you as a family man.”
The van’s lights blinked twice as Duncan unlocked the doors. “Never too late to start, right?” He climbed onto the driver’s seat.
“Superdad.”
“Dom, listen,” Duncan said, his voice low so the Secret Service men guarding the garage entrance couldn’t hear. “If things get worse, lock down the cities. Keep people from moving. If people are smart, we can keep this thing contained.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, ask the FBI to send some guys with guns to Fox and let them know what it’s like to have fear shoved down their throats.”
Boucher smiled. “My pleasure, sir.”
Duncan started the van, rolled down the window, and steered for the exit. He leaned out the window as he passed Boucher. “Up, up, and away.”
FIFTY-SIX
Mount Meru—Vietnam
MAJOR GENERAL TRUNG could sense the enemy surrounding him and thirty of his best—all that remained of his original strike force. They had launched a successful sneak attack on a small group of the hairy beasts, but the noise had attracted more. Many more. And they found themselves suddenly outnumbered and encircled.
The jungle had gone silent, save for the wind shaking the tree branches above and warning of an approaching storm. But on occasion, the branches would sway and creak without a breeze present, and sometimes the tall trees would bend against the wind.
They’re coming. He recognized the signs he had missed prior to his first encounter with the creatures in 2009.
And, he thought with anger, the most recent ambush. They had lost the American prisoners. More important, they had lost the scientist they had gone to so much trouble to acquire.
But what had started out as a slaughter had turned into a victory when his men—the men who now shared the jungle floor with him—pushed the enemy back.
Their prize had been lost, but she would no doubt be found.
He only hoped she would still be alive at that point.
A shift in the breeze bent the jungle toward his position, surely hiding the approaching force above their heads. But it also carried their foul scent.
They were close.
But Trung was ready. He signaled to his men. Half of them raised their weapons to their shoulders and aimed. Up. The rest crouched to one knee and swept their weapons back and forth, forming an impenetrable, three-hundred-sixty-degree perimeter.
Trung squinted into the humid haze lit by the few streams of light filtering down from above. As the wind picked up, the light moved and danced on the forest floor. In the space between light and shadow, he detected movement of another sort, but couldn’t trace it. His index finger tightened on his AK-47’s trigger.
The enemy had arrived.
But they were waiting.
His thoughts turned to Queen. He wondered for a moment if it was she who was now stalking him. His breath caught in his throat as he pictured her face, ripe with ferocity and bearing the bloodred insignia of his Death Volunteers. Trung flinched back as a loud voice filled the forest.
“You shouldn’t have come back!”
Trung recognized the voice as the same he’d heard in 2009, and again during the ambush on the VPLA camp. It was the voice of his enemy, and his enemy was American.
“Give me the woman, and we will leave,” Trung said. It was the truth. He had no desire to fight this man, and his . . . brood, again. Having the location carpet bombed would be a much easier solution.
Movement dead ahead caught his attention. He focused on it.
The man emerged.
“Don’t shoot,” he said with raised arms.
Trung held his fire and his men followed his lead. The man was tall, rising a foot above Trung’s tallest soldier. He was also nearly naked, clothed only in some kind of loincloth, and had a fresh bite wound on his shoulder, like some kind of primitive.