It falls apart series bo.., p.1
It Falls Apart Series | Book 4 | Warpath, page 1
part #4 of It Falls Apart Series Series
WARPATH
It Falls Apart Series
Book 4
By
Barry Napier
Mike Kraus
© 2021 Muonic Press Inc
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
It Falls Apart Book 5
Available Here
Chapter 1
The streets were empty, and the stagnant silence made it feel like a funeral service. Driving his car down 4th Avenue, Tommy Rhodes still found it hard to believe that this was the same city that had been teeming with life just two weeks ago. The only clear indicator that this was indeed still Seattle was the Space Needle towering over everything. But even that seemed out of place without people on the streets.
The call and subsequent orders had come from the FBI a few days ago. How many days ago, Tommy wasn’t sure. There hadn’t been much sleep in the last few days, and they were all starting to blur together. Had it been five? Maybe six? He didn’t know. All he knew was that just about every field office of the FBI all across the country was now taking part in something called Operation Sparrow, an attempt to locate any bombs that might currently be scattered across the country.
Having been a field agent for more than eight years, Tommy had been assigned to work with a small team to follow-up on all bomb threats that had been reported in the city over the last five years, even if those reports had come to nothing. With seven other similar teams, they’d covered Seattle and the surrounding areas in less than three days with little sleep, little food, and no success. They’d stayed motivated through the news and reports that had come in from elsewhere in the country—from the discovery and successful neutralization of bombs in places like Atlanta, Reno, and Charlotte. The Reno bomb had not been nuclear in nature; they knew that for sure. But those higher up the ladder were staying quiet on the nature of the ones in Atlanta and Charlotte.
Tommy thought of those calls as he turned off 4th Avenue and onto Pine. He was headed for the Paramount Theater, where his team was scheduled to meet and compare notes and theories. He was going to be about half an hour early, but that was fine. Maybe he’d catch a quick nap in the parking lot. It wasn’t like there was much else going on in the city. His superiors had more or less cut Tommy and his team loose, giving them full control of how they handled their assignment. There was just too much to keep up with and because so much national effort was going into Operation Sparrow and vague intelligence tasks to try to find who was behind the attacks, most police forces were running on a strange sort of cruise control.
Supplies were stretched so thin, Tommy and most other Seattle agents were having to drive their personal vehicles. Supervisors and section leaders were scattered all over the place, some even being flown out to other field offices due to a lack of manpower. So far, there had not been a single trace of the Blood Fire Virus in Seattle. The West Coast seemed to have been spared until yesterday when a few reports had come in that the virus had started popping up in southern California. But ever since the bomb had released the virus in Destiny Ridge, Texas (God, that seemed like so long ago!), Seattle had been under lockdown.
Residents had been ordered not to leave their homes unless it was absolutely necessary. And if they did need to leave, they were to wear masks. The city had even made the rounds of most neighborhoods, distributing surgical masks in the event people might need them. Police and a few non-profit organizations had worked tirelessly to deliver food and medical supplies, doing everything they could to ensure no one left their homes until whatever was taking place around the country was brought to a stop.
Tommy drove through a red light, as traffic lights no longer held any real control or influence. And sometimes, it was those sorts of smaller things that really made him feel disconnected and lost. It made him think of his wife and two kids—an eleven-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. He wondered how much longer his team would be required to be out hunting bombs, how much longer until he could shelter-in-place with his family and—
His cellphone rang in the center console. Tommy’s heart sank right away. Every time he received a call following what had happened in New York, he assumed it was bad news. So when he reached for it as he continued up Pine Street, his hand was already trembling nervously. He answered it as professionally as he could, keeping his voice level and firm.
“This is Rhodes.”
“Tommy, it’s Oscar.” Oscar, one of the members of his Operation Sparrow team, sounded tired. He sounded deflated, worried. And the fact that Oscar—typically very much by the book and professional—was using first names had just about every internal alarm within Tommy blaring at full volume. “Where are you right now?” Oscar asked after a pregnant pause.
“Heading up Pine to the Paramount. You?”
There was another hesitation from Oscar’s end before he answered. Tommy again thought of his wife and kids. He wondered what sort of trouble he’d get into if he ditched this detail and went to join them at home.
“I’m over at the Park Place Garage. I think you need to get over here.”
“What is it?” Tommy asked.
“You’re the closest,” Oscar said. “Head on over. You just…you need to see this.”
“There in five,” Tommy said.
He ended the call and for a moment he did strongly consider heading back to his house. He’d stay there with his wife, his two amazing children, and they’d either live through this difficult time or die together if the Blood Fire Virus came to Seattle. Ah, it was tempting…
Muttering a whimpered curse under his breath, Tommy Rhodes cut a U-turn in the middle of Pine Street and headed back to 6th. Almost right away he could sense that he was heading toward something he was going to regret—something that he may never even return from.
***
He found Oscar on the top level of the Park Place Garage on the corner of Sixth and Seneca. Oscar’s old, beat-up pick-up truck sat a few spots over from an older model Chrysler Town and Country van. There was another vehicle parked on the row behind Oscar and the van—a small, black van. The back doors were open and a man was digging around in a bag of some kind. At his heel sat a black Labrador Retriever.
It was a pretty easy puzzle to put together and it made Tommy’s stomach roll into knots. He parked next to Oscar’s truck and did his best to seem cool and collected when he stepped out of the car.
“When was it found?” Tommy asked.
“About twenty minutes ago,” the man at the back of the black van said.
Tommy stepped carefully toward the Town and Country. He could see where the back hatch had been pried open, likely picked by the man with the black van. Black vans and trained dogs had meant bomb squad for the last several days. They had taken on an almost mythical quality.
A large grey box sat in the back of the Town and Country. It looked sleek, but sort of muted, the grey of its body looking silver in places but nearly rusted brown in others. It oddly looked very much like the secondary freezer Tommy’s grandparents used to have in their basement—the freezer his Gramps had always kept extra meat and his secret stash of ice cream in. In terms of height and width, it almost filled the rear of the van. The back row of seats had been pushed down and the bomb filled the space almost completely. There was just enough space on the right side for Tommy to see a single row of thin wires and some sort of slightly elevate
“So what can we do?” Tommy asked.
“He’s being quiet about it,” Oscar said, nodding over to the guy from the bomb squad.
“I’m standing right here,” the bomb squad guy said.
Tommy looked at the guy. He looked to be in his fifties. He was sweating profusely and looked absolutely terrified. As he pulled a small handheld kit from the back of the van, his hands trembled. Tommy could hear tools clattering around inside from the shaking of the man’s hands.
“Seriously,” Tommy said, stepping in the way. “What can we do?”
The man seemed almost relieved that Tommy had stopped him. But he was already looking past Tommy’s shoulder and to what was waiting in the van. He took a few seconds to think and then said, “In a few moments, I’ll need both of you to very gently slide it out of the back of the van. I need to get to those wires on the side.”
Oscar was peering into the back now and Tommy noted that he was also sweating. He looked at the bomb with awe and fear—like he might very well be staring Death right in the face. “Should we call someone?” he asked.
“I already called my supervisor,” the squad guy said. “And they’ve likely gotten in touch with your supervisors. For now, there’s no one else to call. If it goes bad, one of us needs to call the emergency number and order an immediate evacuation.”
“So, let’s just make sure it doesn’t go bad, huh?” Tommy said nervously. “This might be an ignorant question…but which kind of bomb is it?”
“I won’t know until I see the panel,” the squad guy said. “But based on everything I know from other Project Sparrow finds, I doubt it’s a nuke.”
All three of them had reached the very back of the van. The squad guy placed his little kit on the ground. He opened it up and removed a pair of thin gloves and a small packet of powder. He put the gloves on and applied the powder to them. He then reached back into the kit and grabbed a small screwdriver and what looked like a very compact Leatherman’s tool.
“Okay,” the squad guy said. “I need you both to slide it out. No need to strain yourselves and completely free it from the van. Let it out to where the back end of the bomb is hanging on the rim of the hatch. I just need to get to that panel and those wires on the right side.”
Tommy and Oscar looked at one another, the tension between them immense. Tommy felt as if his body were being pulled in two directions; his heart was slamming and he could pretty much taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, but he also felt cold. When he reached for the bomb and placed his hand on the underside of it, he was fully expecting an explosion. He did not realize he’d been holding his breath until it came out in a huge sigh.
“On three, we lift,” Oscar said. “Then slide it out a bit until we can get both hands under it. But that’s it. Let me know when you have both hands on it and we slide again.”
Tommy nodded. The squad guy had come over to his side, as it was the side of the bomb where the panel and wires were located. “And I’ll let you both know when you can stop sliding. The last thing we want is for one of you to slip it out too far, get off balance, and it goes slamming to the ground.”
“No pressure or anything,” Tommy said, trying his best to lighten the mood.
His kept his right hand under the bomb and looked back over to Oscar. “One,” Tommy said, starting the count. “Two…three, slide.”
They worked seamlessly together and slid about sixteen inches of the bomb out. Tommy then placed his left hand under it as well, getting much better support. The bomb was heavy, but not as heavy as he had expected. Probably not as heavy as that freezer in his Gramps’s basement.
You’re handling a bomb and thinking of your past, he thought. Are you trying to convince yourself this is it? That this is the end?
“Okay, stop,” Oscar said. “You good?”
“Yeah. You?”
Oscar nodded but Tommy thought it looked like the man might be on the verge of tears. Tommy understood it; he could not recall a time when he’d ever been under this much pressure, and he had been shot at three different times in his career.
“I need about another two feet,” the squad guy said from beside Tommy. “Keep it slow. You guys are doing great.”
Oscar eyed Tommy over the top of the bomb and said, “One, two…three. Slide.”
They did. It came easier now that they had two hands under it. They moved slowly, the bomb making the slightest little hissing noise as it was slid along the rim of the van’s rear hatch. Tommy watched as the panel was revealed. Yellow, white, and black wires looped in and out of the panel, drawn rather tight to the bottom of the bomb. Seeing the wires made Tommy freeze a bit. He stopped sliding the bomb forward and did not realize this until Oscar complained about it.
“Rhodes! Slide!”
“Sorry,” Tommy said, shaking the stupor off. He picked up the pace.
“Rhodes…”
He’d slid it out a bit too fast. Oscar tried to keep up but as he did, his left hand briefly tangled with his right. Tommy could not see this due to the bomb blocking his view, but he could see the slight jolt and tangle of Oscar’s arms. Even worse, he could feel the bomb tilting away from him. On Oscar’s side, it was tilted forward and dropping.
Oscar fumbled for control, but it was no good; Tommy could tell what was going to happen and did everything he could to prevent it. As the bomb leaned away from him, he lost his grip. His hands, slick with sweat now, were unable to do much of anything.
Tommy heard the squad guy let out a curse; it came out like a small gust of wind as he lurched forward to try to help. Tommy had already thrown his legs beneath the bomb, trying to keep it from hitting the ground. If he’d had just a slightly better grip on the underside, it might have worked. Instead, it continued tottering to the right as Oscar continued to try to regain his grip and pick it back up to something resembling level.
The final mistake was the squad guy trying to help out. He placed his hands under the bomb close back by the van. He managed to help them lift it up but in doing so, he exerted too much strength. It was stable for about a second and a half and then it pitched forward, as if shoved from the side. The bomb fell on Oscar and he was helpless to do anything more than hold his hands up defensively.
The only thing that saved the bomb from slamming hard against the floor was Oscar’s right leg. The bomb pinned it between its side and the concrete of the parking garage floor. But even with that unfortunate cushioning, the bomb was jolted significantly.
Oscar screamed from the pain in his leg while Tommy and the bomb squad guy stared in horror at the bomb. Again, Tommy was holding his breath. When the bomb had struck the ground, he was sure that was it—for a second or two, he thought the damned thing had detonated but he was so close to the explosion that he simply had not felt it. But no…he was still alive, his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest.
“Are we okay?” Tommy asked the squad guy.
“I think so. We’re very lucky, but I think so. Let’s get this thing off of his leg for now and then I can—”
The bomb started to hiss. It was a thin sound that came from deep within it. After the hissing began, there was also a very faint mechanical whir coming from the inside.
The squad guy cursed again, and this time it came in a shriek. Trembling he worked open his Leatherman’s tool and approached the wires, now easily facing him. As he approached, he turned to Tommy with absolute terror in his eyes. “Get out of here. Call it in. A very likely detonation. I don’t know when, but it’s very likely. Immediate evacuation.”
“What about you? What about Osc—”
“Now!” he yelled, basically weeping now as he approached the wires and the panel. “Every second counts! Go!”
Tommy needed no further motivation. He dashed for his car while fumbling his phone out of his pocket. He pulled up the number he’d saved into his phone when he’d been brought into Operation Sparrow—a number he had saved and placed at the top of his contacts list. It was a number they were only to call if there was a dire emergency.
