Doom Prophecy

CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE

The bridge was quiet and dark, in sharp contrast to the glittering San Francisco skyline to the south, reflecting off the Pacific Ocean like an orgy of fireflies. Cara Duong wasn’t afraid of the dark, or what lurked in it, not with the reassuring weight of the Colt 1911 in the waistband of her skirt. Her trench coat was drawn tightly around her as the chill breeze cut over the railroad trestle.

The smell of the ocean was strong, but another scent dominated her memories. It was the scent of fresh blood, still vivid after decades. The unmistakable image of her mother’s bare white ribs sticking through her blood-spattered chest stabbed into Cara Duong’s gut and twisted like a murderer’s knife. She had been only nine years old, but already she’d known pain and loss.

When she was only five, her father and teenage brother were slain during the 1968 Tet Offensive, killed in pitched battle against the American forces who sought to crush the Vietnamese dreams of independence and freedom from western oppression. Her mother told her constantly about the wretched whites and blacks who violated their country, who raped women and children and burned villages, deforesting jungles, turning paddies to poisoned muck with the corpses of their slain countrymen.

Cara Duong hated Americans as a child, but that was because she had a good teacher. Her mother was as much a warrior as her father was. Mama Duong was ageless, able to look as old or young as she wanted to with only a little change of clothing and makeup. She snuck into the cities when she could, slaying American soldiers on leave who looked for a little “brown nookie.”

Even today, the term filled her mouth with the acid taste of hateful bile. Duong trembled with rage, more than from the coolness of the northern California night.

Her mother had taught her well, how to hate, how to despise. At age eight, Duong learned to shoot her first gun, a captured Colt 1911 just like the one she stuffed down into her skirt. It was locked and cocked, meaning that the hammer was all the way back, ready to fire, but the safety was on, keeping it from going off accidentally. Her mother was good with guns, but even better with knives.

But all the skill in the world didn’t make a difference. Not with a dozen armed soldiers stalking through their village at night, hunting for insurgents. Mama Duong roused her fellow fighters to make a defense, laying a trap for the hunters.

Cara Duong didn’t know if it was an itchy trigger finger, a frightened reflex, or plain impatience that fired the first shot, spoiling the ambush. All she knew was that when the first bullet exploded, the Americans returned fire.

No. They returned more than fire. They returned the full unleashed wrath of hell. Grenades detonated and ripped huts asunder. Antitank rockets plowed through homes and reduced them to fluttering pieces of burning paper, everyone inside slaughtered and vaporized by the unholy fury of their blasts. Heavy machine guns ripped through the night, grunting like a herd of giant pigs, except these war pigs stampeded and churned human beings asunder.

Mama Duong brought up her AK-47 and blasted three of the Americans before they could react. She kept her head and raced with her daughter around the back of the unit of soldiers. A single man spun and fired back, blazing away with a grenade launcher that threw Cara’s limp form to the ground, her flesh charred by the heat of the explosion. Her mother avoided most of the blast, and she opened fire on the man with the grenade launcher.

Her shots had no effect. The man spun under the impact of a bullet through his upper arm, but he still held up his Colt Commando and blasted with his other hand.

Cara, her back and shoulders burning, saw the face of the soldier who killed her mother, his features illuminated by the blazing fireball of the muzzle of his short-barreled assault rifle.

That face was burned into her memory, the searing image forever tied to the state of her mother’s body, ripped apart and ruined by a hose of 5.56 mm slugs chopping into defenseless flesh. Unconsciousness claimed Cara moments after her mother flopped to the ground, her last thought being of a vow to kill the American who took away the last of her family.

Headlights flashed at the other end of the trestle. Cara tensed, her eyes narrowing with concentration.

He was coming.

Cara Duong never thought she’d ever see the man again, but to have not known Lieutenant Governor Riddley Mott, the crusading politician who took California by storm, she’d need to have had her head buried in the ground like an ostrich. Riddley Mott, Vietnam veteran, war hero, Purple Heart recipient.

Her mother’s murderer.

The living symbol of the American forces who slaughtered her father and older brother.

The man who destroyed the huts of the village of Troui, laying waste to her home, the home of her childhood friends.

The medical men who treated her upon awakening said that she was one of eight survivors from the battle of Troui. It was a complete slaughter, with the Vietnamese fighters being killed to a man, the cross fire laying waste to entire families. Tears came to Cara’s eyes, but something darker came into her life, wrapping around the base of her heart, coiling black bloodlust, a desire for vengeance that roosted in her breast like a cancer.

Now she had her chance. She was in spitting distance. Riddley Mott, the crusading politician, war hero, golden son of the California senatorial race, was no saint. With her computer skills, she’d managed to trace his bank account records, and found interesting sources of contributions, both public and private. Very few of them were a matter of record, and more than one of his contributors was listed under FBI surveillance.

But the FBI didn’t know that these corruptors had their fingers in Mott’s pocket. They knew that money was being laundered somewhere, but only Duong had been able to track the cash through the loops of offshore bank accounts until they finally found their way into the lieutenant governor’s pocket. The information would have made Duong rich enough in its own right, but the Vietnamese woman didn’t need cash. She could skim millions with a press of the button, not even breaking a sweat writing the code necessary for such a heist.

No. She wanted blood.

She imagined Mott, clutching his bloody guts, his stomach sporting one to five big fat .45-inch holes, coughing up gouts of syrupy red, eyes wide with horror and agony. The thought brought a warmth to her that dissipated the cold in her bones.

Mott walked toward her from the other side of the trestle. The headlights of his car backlit him and his shadow stretched crazily forward. Cara’s moon-shaped face glistened lightly in the reflection when Mott’s shadow didn’t block the light, but she doubted he’d remember her.

Not the way she remembered him, even with gray starting to replace the black in his hair, wrinkles deepening his craggy, handsome face.

Come get your payback, you son of a bitch, Duong thought. Through the vent pocket in her trench coat, she felt the wooden grips of her Colt .45. They were rough, the checkering clinging to her hand. She enjoyed the feel of the big handgun. Its handle was just small enough for her to get a good trigger reach, and yet the weapon was as powerful as anything on the market.

Mott stopped, twenty feet away from her.

“Good evening, Lieutenant Governor,” she said.

“Some gook,” Mott muttered. “So you’re the one threatening to tell the FBI about my friends?”

“Not just some gook, Riddley.”

“I survived four years in Vietnam taking on all comers. You’re supposed to impress me?” Mott asked.

“I’m not here to impress you, Riddley.”

“My friends call me Riddley, bitch.”

“Then, by all means, Lieutenant Governor, don’t count me among your friends, you murdering bastard.”

“Murder?” Mott asked. He was clearly surprised.

“Remember the village of Troui?” Duong asked. The muzzle of the .45 slipped out of her waistband.

Mott frowned.

“Remember a woman, a woman with a nine-year-old child, attacking you?” she asked.

“That wasn’t murder. It was self-defense. She tried to kill me first,” Mott said. He didn’t sound in the least bit guilty.

Too bad, Duong thought. Your punishment is coming.

“Listen, just turn around and go back home before you end up regretting this,” Mott suggested.

Duong pulled out the Colt, flicking off the safety in a single fluid motion. “I actually think you’re going to regret this, asshole.”

Mott looked at the gun, but his face didn’t show anything more than momentary surprise. He took a half step away from her, holding up his hands.

“Now come on. Don’t you think that’s a little too big for you?” Mott taunted.

The muzzle didn’t waver a single degree. She aimed at his stomach, anticipating the gut shots that would fold Mott like bloody laundry, making him vomit his life as his internal organs were reduced to soup by the fat .45-caliber hollowpoint rounds she loaded especially for the purpose of prolonging his agony.

“It’s too big for a rat bastard like you. But hey, you’ll die faster this way,” Duong said.