Worlds War One

xxii [Badia]

Princess Saanvi must wield some impressive influence. They landed at Yokota Air Base without incident, security allowing them free passage without even checking identification or verifying credentials. The squad simply landed, appropriated a Cougar 6x6 MRAP vehicle, and exited the base without pause, the gate opening as easily as Moses had parted the Red Sea. Bad had never seen such disregard for protocol. Not even for the Commander in Chief. And the princess was just a civvie.

But the princess must not be "just" anything . . .

Drill drove, and Bad watched him as he took to task. Distraction diluted his dissociative demeanor. He reminded her of the old Drill as he concentrated on transportation, maneuvering the large vehicle along the crowded streets of Tokyo. Bad wanted to believe he was getting better. She had to think he could hold it together. Badia couldn't do this without him.

He'd saved her back in Raqqa. It was a nightmare, one she wouldn't have survived without Sergeant Camilo Cabello. When it was over, Bad had been able to come back to her husband and her girls. She had one reason that reunion had been at all possible. Drill had carried her through hell on Earth. Without him, she would have been dead on the kitchen floor of some Iraqi stranger's home.

She replayed it over and over in her mind. The battle in Raqqa was an ambush. The enemy had overwhelming force. Intelligence on the threat assessment had been all wrong. Bad's unit ended up outnumbered five-to-one. Air support would never arrive in time. Badia and her soldiers were about to be slaughtered. Most of them ended up that way. Bad made it out against impossible odds. Drill was the only reason.

Everyone else fought bravely and died ultimately. It came down to Bad and Drill in a matter of minutes. Cornered in an abandoned warehouse facing twenty enemy combatants, Drill became Bad's hammer. He physically busted through the wall behind them, making his exit into an alleyway.

Through.

A.

Wall.

"Retreat," she said.

"I'll cover you," he answered.

Bad led the escape. Down the alley. Across a street. Turn. Turn. The enemy followed, Drill slowing the chase with suppressing fire. But the enemy was gaining, and the two soldiers were running out of place to escape. Bad turned a corner and stopped at the back door of someone's home. She busted in the paneled barrier and entered. Drill covered the corner as she entered the house.

There was someone home.

In the kitchen, a woman attacked Bad, wielding a butcher knife big enough to amputate an arm. Bad grabbed the weapon before the blade split her face in two. The woman was fierce and furious, spittle flying as she cursed in Arabic. Bad has invaded her home, and the resident would defend it to her death.

The struggle smashed through a small kitchen, scattering pans and spilling pots. A wooden storage cupboard broke as Bad threw the woman against it. Still, the housewife wouldn't give up. She wouldn't surrender the butcher blade—the woman meant to cut Bad open. The American had entered her home.

Badia could have reached her sidearm, but she didn't want it to end with a gun. At first, she thought she could easily wrestle the knife from the housewife. Bad was a skilled soldier peerless at hand-to-hand combat. Yet she was exhausted from the firefight with the enemy and shellshocked by the loss of nearly all her troops. And this woman fiercely protected home and hearth. The Syrian housewife proved a formidable foe.

Bad might end up losing.

Yet still, she didn't draw her sidearm.

Bad stumbled. Fell into a pile of metal pots, her right arm somehow twisted in a handle and cuffed like she'd been arrested for breaking and entering. Effectively trussed, Bad couldn't reach her weapon. The Syrian woman stood over her and raised the butcher knife, about to chop Badia Robinson into bits.

The woman took two to the chest, red bursts appearing below each collar bone, blush sprays of blood coloring the bland wall behind her. She was dead before she started to topple. Drill stood in the doorway leading out the back of the house, gun smoking. There had been no other way, and Drill knew it. He'd saved Bad. He had done what she could not.

He was the hammer.

They exited through the house. Bad saw eyes peering from the shadows as they hustled past the living space. Had Drill seen them, too? Did he know that woman was a mother defending her children? Bad hoped he didn't. She believed that if there was a God and He was on their side, He would grant Camilo Cabello the small mercy of not knowing.

Now, in Japan, not knowing was no longer an option. Drill had learned too much these last few days. His mind was overloaded. He couldn't accept the Way Things Really Were. He had seen the truth, and it had shorted out his brain. It proved to Bad he hadn't seen those children of the housewife back in Raqqa. He'd saved Bad. That was all he knew. They'd escaped the front of the house, had managed to survive a little longer, long enough for the evac team to arrive finally. Bad and Drill were the only two survivors.

She owed him everything.

Now she couldn't leave him behind. If she wanted to reward Drill for saving her, she would ditch him here in Tokyo. But if going forward without him now was an option, she would have never requested him in the first place. Bad needed him. The mission needed him. Those greenies needed him. Because Drill could do what Bad couldn't and what the greenies wouldn't. He was the hammer. He could save them. His reward for his dedication and efficiency was a slow descent into insanity.

"We're getting close," Saanvi said as Drill followed her directions through Tokyo.

"The Lost City," Bad said. "Are we talking Atlantis or something?"

"Or something," Saanvi answered. "Although Atlantis is an option if we can't find what we need in the Lost City."

"And what is it we're searching for?"

"I thought it was obvious, Badia. We went to great lengths to appropriate a Key. A Key fits into a lock. We need to find the doorway that will lead us on the path to She'ol."

"And the doorway to She'ol is in the Lost City?"

"No one knows for sure," Saanvi said. "The door has been closed since the very beginning of the Wider World. The ones who were there at the start of everything are either gone for good or forgotten forever. Only the Almighty knows the answers to some questions, and the Creator is not currently available for asking. The Lost City is as good a place to start as any."

"Why is the Lost City the first place we try?"

"Because it's the oldest city on Earth, a place built when the oceans were dry, and the continents were still molten. It's the original settlement of Earth. If we're looking for an ancient door, this is the place that's been around longer than anywhere else."

Bad nodded. Saanvi smirked. Drill drove. Autumn flickered. Greenies prepared.