Chapter Three
Seacon Towers Apartments, London, January 12
Master Chief Ryan O’Leary kicked in the door of the East End apartment and was greeted by a hail of bullets that hit him in the chest, despite his invisibility. “Damn it!” he grunted, as the impact of 12 bullets drove him back into the opposite wall. While the terrorists focused on O’Leary, other members of the platoon crashed through the back windows of the 4th floor apartment, taking the terrorists by surprise. The fight was over in less than a minute, leaving the terrorists dead and Ryan with an expanding bruise on his chest. Although the suit stopped the bullets, as advertised, it did nothing to absorb the impact. Someone else gets to kick in the door next time, he vowed.
Ryan surveyed the dead. No prisoners were taken, but then again, the terrorists hadn’t given them the chance...and the soldiers hadn’t really wanted to take any in the first place. The terrorists had nothing they needed, and to have to go through the motions of a trial was...inconvenient. Besides, the terrorists shot first, and to come back to London when they were already wanted there was just stupid. Ryan shrugged. They were another example of Darwin’s rule of natural selection; they were obviously too stupid to live.
Scattered among the remains of the bomb making materials, he found the jihadi bomb maker Samantha Lewthwaite, the notorious ‘White Widow’ that terror agencies in the U.S., U.K. and Kenya had been looking for since the Nairobi shopping mall terror attack in 2013 that killed more than 70 people. A key member of Somalia’s al-Shabaab militants, her career as a terrorist was over, courtesy of three laser blasts to her chest. Good riddance, he thought.
Sirens wailed as the local police made their appearance. Ryan looked at his watch. If the shuttle wasn’t late coming down, they could still make it back to Moon Base Alpha in time for happy hour at the new bar that just opened.
Life was good.
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