Asteroid Destruction Read online

  He could no longer hear the voices of the interrogator and the American who had witnessed the torture. As he gathered himself, he contemplated his next move. He wanted to inflict the kind of pain he’d endured on them. On everyone.

  However, his need to escape took precedence. Gunner slowly made his way through the concrete hallways of the building where he was being held. He searched frantically for an exit. Any door that led to the outside.

  Finally, a steel door with a single window that was eight inches square appeared at the end of another darkened hallway. There were other cell doors on both sides. His mind raced.

  Are there other prisoners? Are they being tortured like I was? Should I take the time to save them?

  Gunner took the skeleton key and began to unlock the doors one by one. Each cell was empty, spotlessly clean, with the fresh smell of Lysol.

  Puzzled, Gunner shook his head and made his way to the door. He slowly glanced through the window and saw a stand of trees. A faint streetlight illuminated a portion of the woods. After surveilling the surroundings for a moment, gauging the activity of any perimeter security, Gunner took a chance and opened the door.

  A rush of cold air enveloped his body, an environment that stood in stark contrast to the hot, humid cell he’d become accustomed to. It was refreshing and odd at the same time.

  Reinvigorated by the prospect of freedom, he glanced around the outside of the building and dashed into the woods. Minutes later, he was walking alone down a dark road under a canopy of trees, wondering where the hell he was and how in the world he would make his way home.

  PART ONE

  Friday, April 27

  The Best Day Ever …

  Chapter 1

  Present Day

  April 27

  Unknown Location

  Gunner Fox tried to fight his way back to consciousness. He was alive, or at least he thought he was. He looked for a sign that he wasn’t dreaming. A sound. Movement. Anything familiar that would bring him into the present.

  For a while, his surroundings were deathly silent, as if some large control knob had turned down the volume of life on Earth. Then, gradually, a concert of humming, buzzing, and chirping sounds filled the air. An orchestra consisting of frogs, cicadas, howler monkeys, and tropical birds performed their songs over one another, completely ignoring the conductor, if there was one.

  His eyes opened a narrow slit, allowing just enough sunlight in to let him see his surroundings. The sudden light stung his irises, forcing him to blink several times, trying to open them fully yet squinting in a futile attempt to shield the brightness.

  He rolled his head back and forth, as if to confirm that it was still attached. His brain was pounding from the trauma it had suffered during the crash. The movement of his neck sent a sharp, stabbing pain through his body. Gunner became alarmed as he instantly thought of partial paralysis. He checked his extremities—fingers, wrists, toes, and ankles. All intact, all moving on command.

  A sense of relief washed over him. Nothing appeared to be broken, yet he felt beat all to hell. He dared reach up to his forehead, using the flat of his hand to feel for a fever. His temperature was normal, but the thick, sticky liquid that covered his scalp was not.

  Finally, his eyes adjusted, allowing in the initial glimpses of his surroundings. The first thing he saw was a tree branch—twisting and slicing through the air. Gunner tilted his head to study it. Ordinarily, something as commonplace wouldn’t garner a second glance, but as his eyes continued to shift from side to side, allowing the light to illuminate this foreign environment, he noticed how odd it was.

  The bark was smooth, gray-green in color, almost as if it belonged to a large hairless creature. Gunner closed his eyes and visualized a green hippopotamus with smooth, tentacle-like features. He shook his head, trying to remove the absurd notion from his consciousness.

  The sun was rising, beginning to reveal itself through the black palm trees that surrounded him. He muttered the words, “Chunga palm.” He’d seen them before, in Southeast Asia, on a mission with Cam and Bear.

  Or was it in Venezuela? His mind raced, trying to make sense of it all. Where am I?

  Gunner forced himself to focus. His head was throbbing and his body felt like it had been pummeled by a herd of buffalo. Nonetheless, he was pleased that he had remembered Cam and Bear. His memory loss was only temporary. Their words filled his head.

  Day by day. Minute by minute. Ride or die. We stick together.

  He wished they were with him.

  Gunner was still strapped in his seat. Something tickled his hand. It was small, but it was clearly walking up his fingers and toward the underside of his wrist, where it hovered for a moment at his ulnar artery, the main blood vessel providing oxygenated blood to his hand.

  He flexed his fingers in an attempt to remove the creature, whatever it was, from his body. It was too large to be an ant. It was cold, bug-like, not like a mammal.

  It moved again. In Gunner’s semiconscious state, his mental acuity was somewhat stifled, but he knew the feeling of a bug on his skin. His mind processed the sensation, and he recalled being stung by a jungle scorpion while on a mission. Most were extremely painful and some could be deadly.

  He was in enough pain without a scorpion bite. He flailed his arm about, shaking the creature off his wrist until it was flung off his body. The interaction revealed to Gunner that he was in a dangerous place.

  He felt around and found part of the Starhopper’s controls. He reached above his head and grasped for the ceiling of the cockpit. He stretched his fingers, wiggling them in an effort to find the top, but it was gone. The command center had been ripped in half, the top torn to shreds as it had rolled over and over during the crash back to Earth.

  “I’m still in the spaceship,” he muttered aloud, though no one could hear him.

  He glanced to his left and saw Chief Rawlings’s lifeless body slumped over, held in place by the commander’s seat restraints. A feeling of remorse washed over him as he remembered what had happened to the man who’d mentored him throughout the mission. It was starting to come back to him now.

  Gunner tried to get his bearings, and then he was distracted by warmth dripping onto his face. More blood?

  He touched the moisture as it rolled down his cheeks. He blinked several times, willing his eyes to work, pushing back the pain of his head that wanted to force him back into a deep sleep.

  Mesmerized, Gunner studied the blood on his fingertips. Like a gardener checking the dipstick on his push mower, he wiped it off on his clothing and began to feel his head, desperately searching for the wound that was causing him to bleed.

  He became puzzled. Now using both hands, he ran his fingers all over his face and scalp in search of the source of his bleeding.

  Nothing. A pounding headache, to be sure. But no cut wounds that caused bleeding.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Again the blood began to smack him on the cheek. He looked upward, and several drops fell onto his forehead, threatening to drip into his eyes. Tiny rivulets of dark moisture that tortured him, not because of the volume of blood, but because he couldn’t discern its source.

  He feverishly wiped the blood off his face and searched for the source. He focused his attention on the branch. It was still above him, yet somehow, impossibly, it was much closer.

  And it was swelling. Pulsating as if it were an artery of a gigantic heart. Only, it was green.

  “Come on, Gunner. Get your shit together.” He bemoaned his inability to fully regain consciousness. His mind was in some kind of drug-induced stupor not unlike what LSD did to the hippies of the sixties. Everything was real, yet nothing was as it seemed.

  More blood dripped onto him, awakening him somewhat. The sun was brighter, so his vision improved. At first, he looked down to the pair of khakis and the white, long-sleeve NASA shirt he’d changed into before he initiated the attack on the asteroid. There was blood splatter, and the sleeves on his shirt wer
e torn slightly, but no gaping wounds. Where is this blood coming from?

  He looked skyward, through a luminous jungle canopy that shimmered in hues of yellow, green and, beyond the tropical foliage, the light blue sky.

  And at the branch.

  Except it wasn’t a branch. It was a thing. It was alive.

  And it was eating the corpse of the Russian commander, Sokolov.

  Chapter 2

  Unknown Tropical Jungle

  Suddenly, Gunner became keenly aware of his surroundings. His survival instincts forced his mind to function and his senses to awaken. He no longer had the luxury of observing the wonders of his unknown location through the prism of a semiconscious state. He was in mortal danger.

  He’d spent countless days in the jungles of the world. From the Amazon in South America to the Congo of Africa to the rainforests of the Malay peninsula. Each were unique in their geologic makeup, but they all shared a common characteristic—they were a vast expanse of vegetation inhabited by tens of thousands of forms of wildlife.

  The tropical jungles and rainforests of the world feature few large animals. There were no herds of plodding elephants, stampeding zebras, or foraging wildebeests. In the rainforests, in particular, one didn’t have to fear roaming prides of lions or cackles of hyenas.

  Rather, the underbelly of the tropical foliage was teeming with Jurassic-like creatures rarely seen by man, including large predators that were lying in wait—patiently waiting to ambush their next meal. These predators were seldom seen until it was too late.

  There was nowhere on Earth that so aptly demonstrates survival of the fittest—the grim reality of the great horror of life that in order to live, all things must devour each other. It was a monstrous, unrelenting killing spree from which there was no means of escape. For the animal kingdom, there was no refuge in a higher being. There was no justice. There was only survival.

  Behind the dense screens of vegetation or below the surface of ponds and rivers lay millions of species of insects, birds, spiders, rodents, frogs, tortoises, lizards, and bats. They all fed on one another, in the hierarchy of supremacy established over the millennia. At the top end of the food chain, of course, was man. Man reigned supreme in his ability to kill other animals for sustenance.

  Unless, of course, man wandered off the beaten path. When man stepped out of his comfort zone, all bets were off. Because in the jungle, there existed threats large and small. From the toxin of the poison dart frog to the sting of the fat-tailed Androctonus scorpion, small reptiles were ready to inflict death upon even the top of the food chain when the opportunity presented itself.

  As were the larger reptiles like crocodiles and snakes.

  Snakes, like the green anaconda.

  Gunner’s eyes grew wide in wonder. The twenty-foot anaconda that he’d mistaken for a tree branch easily weighed five hundred pounds, plus the body weight of Commander Sokolov, who was now halfway consumed by the snake.

  He was gripped with fear at first, and then he became enthralled at the sight. The female anaconda, much larger than her male counterparts, was slowly swallowing parts of the Russian’s body. The activity defied all logic as the much smaller reptile gulped first Sokolov’s head and then slowly took in his torso.

  Gunner had seen larger snakes during his exploits, most notably a thirty-foot python he’d come across in Myanmar during a mission to rescue some Baptist missionaries in the country formerly known as Burma. He steered clear of the massive creature then, and now wished he could run as fast as he could from the anaconda.

  He struggled with his harnesses, which had been pulled and tugged during his crash back to Earth. He subconsciously reached down for his knife that was always strapped to his leg during one of his special operations. But he wasn’t on a mission. Not that kind, anyway.

  There were no weapons on the Starhopper other than the four nuclear missiles that he’d used to destroy 2029 IM86. Most of it, anyway. He glanced upward at the light show. Meteors were burning up in the atmosphere. They were the smaller remnants of the blasted asteroid that had led the way on the trip back to Earth.

  Gunner, however, knew there was more to come. As he’d raced the debris field toward the planet, he’d passed the larger chunks, the remains of the asteroid that would likely cause the most damage. These meteorites would be undeterred by Earth’s atmosphere. Their progress wouldn’t even be slowed by the thousands of man-made satellites orbiting the planet in low-Earth orbit.

  Soon, within hours, Earth’s surface would be pummeled by the debris, wreaking havoc all across the Northern Hemisphere.

  But he had bigger fish to fry at the moment, as they say. If he didn’t free himself from these harnesses, he was likely to join his Russian adversary in the belly of the anaconda.

  Gunner lifted his legs so he could push off the control panel in an effort to change the dynamic of the multipoint harness that strapped him to the seat. The device that kept him alive during the tumble through the jungle now acted as a spiderweb that captured the five-hundred-pound snake’s next meal.

  He twisted and pulled the straps. The harness buckles had been pulled so hard during the crash that they refused to release. He searched for something to cut through the webbing of the straps. He felt beneath his seat, grasping for anything that might help free him.

  “Yes!” he shouted, causing some nearby howler monkeys to let loose their cacophonous cries.

  Gunner ignored the blood gushing out of the palm of his hand, rejoicing in the fact that he’d found a sharp piece of metal that could be used to cut the harnesses. Cut wounds could heal. Having one’s head swallowed by a giant anaconda was another story.

  He ignored the pain and began to saw away at the strap around his waist. Soon, his waist was free, allowing him more wiggle room in his seat. Then he went to work on the shoulder straps. He glanced up to the snake and saw that Sokolov was almost gone. His lower legs had already been severed during the crash, likely by the same sharp metal Gunner was using to free himself of the harnesses.

  Gunner didn’t know anything about the feeding habits of the anaconda. In a brief moment of lightheartedness, he wondered if anacondas got full, or did they move on to their next option for second helpings?

  He didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. He subtly glanced over at Chief Rawlings, instantly feeling guilty that the famed astronaut would most likely be seconds.

  Gunner continued to saw at the straps and finally freed himself. He quickly glanced around his surroundings in search of his blue duffle bag, but it wasn’t there.

  He gathered what was left of his strength, shifted his weight, then stood up to make his way behind the pilot’s seat, putting a little distance and an obstacle between him and the anaconda. She’d finished her first course and was likely to make a move toward her next option if she was still hungry.

  Fully coherent and assessing his options, Gunner took in his surroundings. Green and greenery obliterated all other colors. The tropical foliage was all unique, yet the same. Colors of ferns, moss, jade, asparagus, lettuce, and iridescent green velvet consumed his vision. Not that he was surprised. He’d thought a snake was a tree branch.

  The first thing he did was unstrap the body of Chief Rawlings. He was a great man who hadn’t deserved to die. He most certainly didn’t deserve to suffer the same fate as Sokolov.

  Gunner hoisted his mentor’s body on his shoulder and looked around. He turned to look toward the rear of the Starhopper, which was no longer there. What was once a hundred-foot-plus example of man’s greatest technological achievement was now a half-mile-long debris field that had cut a two-hundred-foot-wide swath through a jungle.

  A remote jungle that could be anywhere on Earth.

  Chapter 3

  Unknown Tropical Jungle

  Gunner stepped onto the jungle floor, his boots sinking into the moist undergrowth, which immediately gave him visions of the creatures that might be observing his ankles. He had to put that out of his mind as he con
sidered what to do.

  The crash didn’t produce spontaneous fires as was typical in a debris field such as this one. Jet fuel burned and was subject to combustion. Rocket fuel was much different.

  Jet engines were air breathers. Jets take in air needed for combustion, mix it with fuel, burn it to increase pressure, and exhaust the spent gases out the back of the aircraft at a high rate of speed.

  Spacecraft contain separate tanks of hydrogen and oxygen that are mixed in the liquid-fuel rocket engines, burned, and expelled out the nozzles. This enables a rocket to fly in the vacuum of space where jets cannot.

  It also makes for a cleaner crash site. Gunner knew what a combat jet crash site looked like. He’d seen them firsthand, on multiple occasions.

  He was surrounded by twisted palm fronds and fallen trees. Over a slight rise, amidst the tree canopy, lay the remains of the Starhopper chaotically scattered about, various parts of its magnificent technology strewn in all directions.

  Off in the distance, there was a flattened stretch of jungle, an overgrown tangled thicket shrouded in a light fog. Occasionally, a tall palm tree still stood, emerging from the jungle floor with its fronds shredded. Other palms were bizarrely bent, gnarled husks of their former self, crushed to the ground by the impact of the spacecraft.

  Gunner studied the carnage, and then, in a moment of extreme clarity, he took in the beauty that surrounded him. Amidst the twisted wreckage, the debris of metal and electronics and body parts, was a garden of Eden complete with ferns, mosses, and gorgeous orchids and bromeliads that looked like they were in a hanging garden. Patches of vibrant colors stood out against the dark-green, misty background of the jungle.