Page 60 of Jacking Jill

“OK, if Jill and Fay are staying, then I am too.” Paige piped in now. “Besides, I don’t have children either.” She glanced at Jill admiringly, then did her best to meet Benson’s glare without flinching.

“There you have it, John.” Nancy was the last to speak up, but somehow Jack sensed she’d already decided to stay and just didn’t want to argue with Benson. “To hell with your heroics. You don’t want to call in the cavalry, fine. But then we’re all going to fight to our last breath.”

Benson groaned, rubbed his eyes, then coughed and glanced at the ventilator shaft, which was now barely visible as the smoke seeped through thicker. “Look, we don’t have time for this. And now it’s too late to call anyone to save our asses even if Paige turns the phones back on. We’ll die of smoke inhalation before anyone gets to us way out here in the boonies.” He glared at Ice, then Hogan. “Look, take the women and get moving, you two. That’s an order. Darkwater is not a fucking democracy. We don’t take a vote to decide the best course of action. That’s not how the game is played.”

The smoke was pouring in heavier now. Jill was coughing, so was Fay. The room was big and airy, so they weren’t about to pass out just yet. But the clock was ticking. It was time to pull the trigger, Jack knew.

“Go,” said Jack to Ice, glancing into his brother’s eyes. “Benson’s right. It’s too late to call anyone. And even with Keller, Benson, and me drawing most of Romeo’s attention, you might still have to fight your way past a couple of thugs to get the women safe.” Jack leaned close to his brother, lowered his voice, his mind swirling with the strange thought that perhaps Jill was already carrying a reminder of their love in her womb. “Get Jill out for me, brother. No matter what she says, no matter what she does. Get her out. Get her safe.”

Ice stared silently into Jack’s eyes. Then he nodded curtly, glanced over at Hogan, who huffed out a breath, nodding in reluctant agreement.

But as Hogan and Ice moved to round up the women and escort them out the door, Nancy pushed her chair back from the desk, stormed to the open doorway, stood dead center with her hands on her hips, her fiery red hair brighter than the flames licking at the windows.

“John, wait, stop, listen,” she said, looking pleadingly at Benson, her eyes wide with an uncharacteristic desperation. She looked around wildly, and for a moment Jack thought she might be losing it, coming unhinged. “Isn’t this how you said the game is played? With emotion and feeling? With the heart and not the head?”

Benson was on his feet now, had drawn his Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun and was busy checking the magazine. “What’s your point, Nancy?”

“My point is that for the first time you’re making a choice with your head and not your heart, John. But the rest of us just did the opposite. We all chose with our hearts, not our heads. Don’t you see, John? We’re all understanding how the game is played! Even I’m starting to accept that choices have power, that decisions can change the flow of events if they’re powered by real emotions, by selfless love.” Nancy’s voice was thin and peaked, her wide-eyed gaze darting around the room like she was looking for something, hoping for something, praying for something.

Benson finished checking his weapon, slammed the magazine into place, chambered a bullet, then glanced up impatiently. “Well, it’s great that after seven years you’re finally coming around to my view of the world, Nancy.” He flashed a distracted smile, gestured with his head for Ice and Hogan to get a move on. “But if you’ve got a point to make, hurry the fuck up and make it, Nancy.”

“Yes, hurry the fuck up!” Nancy’s voice was almost a shriek. Still casting those wide-eyed looks all over the place like she was losing her mind, Nancy screamed out the words again and again. “Hurry the fuck up! Hurry the fuck up, Universe,” she sobbed, tears streaming down her face. “That’s what you said is supposed to happen, John!”

“What did I say is supposed to happen?” Benson looked bewildered.

“Something! Anything!” Nancy was almost hysterical now, her eyes almost as red as her hair. “Your damn universe is supposed to respond to the sorts of choices we all just made, right? Something is supposed to happen right now. Some event that’s coincidence or circumstance, fate or destiny, providence or probability! The universe responds, doesn’t it? That’s what you said, John. That’s what you promised, John!”

Benson’s shoulders slumped as he stared at his precious Nancy come undone. He limped towards her, one hand on his cane, the other reaching for her. “Oh, Nancy,” he whispered. “Yes, that’s how fate works. Choices driven by true emotion do evoke a response from the universe.” He took her trembling hand in his, squeezed gently, smiled with warm sadness. “But sometimes that response from the universe is . . . nothing. Because even nothing is a response, Nancy. Just like zero is a number. Just like darkness is the absence of light.”

Nancy stared at Benson with zero expression on her face, darkness in her blue eyes. “So that’s the answer? Those are your final words of wisdom for me, John?” She narrowed those blue eyes, her lips tightening to a colorless line. “Nothing is the answer? Zero is the number? We ask for light and get only darkness?”

Benson grinned one last coyote grin, shrugged one last devil-may-care shrug, was about to pull Nancy in for one last hug.

But then suddenly a streak of light burst through the darkness beyond the flickering flames outside the window.

And one of Romeo Carmine’s SUVs exploded in a cascade of sparks and a crash of flame, sending burning ripped-up bodies tumbling through the air like acrobats in a gruesome flying trapeze!

“What the hell?!” Benson dropped his cane in the mad scramble to the window, where Ice and the rest of the guys were already staring at the mangled mess of black steel and what appeared to be silver aluminum, the lightweight kind used in aviation. “Is that a . . . drone? Did an unmanned surveillance drone just crash out of the fucking sky and smash into one of Romeo’s vehicles?” He turned halfway towards Nancy with a mixture of shock, amusement, and pure disbelief. “Nice work, Nancy,” he managed to quip in the chaos.

Nancy was stunned into silence, her lips moving soundlessly as she joined the rest of the Darkwater crew at the window, all of them staring as Romeo’s surviving men ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, some trying to pull their burning buddies out of the wreckage, others taking cover behind the remaining three SUVs, all of them looking up in bewilderment, perhaps wondering if God was shooting thunderbolts at them from the heavens.

But then a voice cut through the jubilant chaos in the Darkwater war-room.

“Ask and ye shall receive.”

It wasn’t a booming voice that might be the thundering bellow of Zeus.

Instead it was a robot-like female AI-voice that sounded tinny and strange coming from the speakers of Paige’s laptop computer open on the conference room table.

“Here is your diversion, John Benson.” The AI-voice sounded vaguely taunting, hauntingly delicate, a strange cadence to the metallic feminine tone. “Three more incoming.”

22

“She’s right. Three more unmanned drones coming in.” Paige pointed at the moving graphical image on her laptop screen as Benson stood behind her and squinted at the screen. “They’re just surveillance drones, equipped for data-gathering, geographical surveys, things like that. No weapons systems on drones flying in U.S. airspace, but they’re big enough to use as weapons themselves.” She glanced up at Benson, her eyes wide and excited, a mix of wonder and fear all over her acne-scarred face. “Whoever’s behind this has got access to advanced AI-enabled decryption and hacking software, John. Stuff that’s cutting edge even for the CIA and NSA.”

“IMG,” muttered Benson, his mind reeling from the shock that felt like divine intervention but was in reality cold calculation. “This IMG person has been listening in. She—if it’s indeed a she—crashed that drone with perfect timing. She’s toying with us. Playing with us.” He swallowed thickly, a chill rising up his spine. “Playing the game as if she’s played it before,” he muttered under his breath, stepping away from Paige, feverishly rubbing his jaw as he spun through his options, recalculated his routes, re-evaluated his choices.

Looking up, Benson saw that the four Special Forces men already knew it was time to do what they did best. Their guns were drawn and ready, and they were standing behind Paige now, watching those three drones being directed to their targets like missiles. The IMG person was projecting the trajectory on Paige’s screen, and a timer ticked at the bottom, showing impact in less than three minutes.

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