Any Means Necessary (a Luke Stone Thriller-Book #1)

Chapter Thirty Seven

9:02 p.m.

Washington, DC

"And now..." a quiet voice said. "The President of the United States."

Luke was just merging onto the highway as the President's speech was about to start. Luke's thought was that if the President spoke for an hour, by the time the speech was over, he would be entering the gates at MountWeather.

He heard the President's first words—and then the radio went silent.

A woman's voice came on.

"Uh...we seem to be having technical difficulties. We've lost communication with the President's bunker at MountWeather. We're working to correct the problem. In the meantime, a few words from our sponsors."

Luke punched in another station. The story was the same.

He tried another station. They had put on a rock song.

Finally, a man's voice came on the radio.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are getting word that an explosion of some kind seems to have struck the MountWeather government facility. We do not have any details at this moment. There is no contact with the facility, but first responders are converging on the scene. We caution you that this doesn't mean—"

Luke switched off the radio.

For a moment, Luke felt nothing. He was numb. He remembered the morning on that long-ago hill in Afghanistan. It was cold. The sun rose, but there was no warmth to it. The ground was rugged, and hard. There were dead bodies everywhere. Skinny, bearded men lay all over the ground, with eyes wide and staring.

At some point in the night, Luke had ripped off his shirt. His chest was painted red. He was soaked in their blood. He had chopped them up. Stabbed them. Sliced them. And the more he killed them, the more they kept coming.

Martinez was sprawled on his back nearby, low in a trench. He was crying. He couldn't move his legs. He'd had enough. He wanted out. "Stone," he said. "Hey, Stone. Hey! Kill me, man. Just kill me. Hey, Stone! Listen to me, man!"

Murphy was sitting on an outcropping of rock, staring into space. He wasn't even trying to take cover.

If more enemies came, Stone didn't know what he was going to do. Neither one of these guys looked like they had much fight left in them, and the only usable weapon Stone still had was the bent bayonet in his hand.

As he watched, a line of black insects appeared in the sky far away. He knew what they were in an instant. Helicopters. And then he knew he was still alive. He didn't feel good about that, or bad. He felt nothing at all.

Like now.

He snapped out of it as, to his left, an ambulance roared by at a hundred miles per hour, headed west, lights flashing, siren blaring. Luke got off the highway at the next exit. At the bottom of the ramp was a commuter parking lot. Luke pulled in and slowed the car to a stop.

He put the car in park and turned off his headlights. He thought that maybe if he screamed, he would feel something, so he tried it.

He screamed. He did it for a long time.

It didn't work.