Nuclear Winter First Strike by Bobby Akart (top ten books of all time .TXT) 📕

Peter sprang to his feet and raced along the back of the sofa in a low crouch. He’d made it several paces without being shot when he crashed hard into one of the gunmen. They rolled over and over in a tangle of arms and legs.

The man was as surprised to be knocked down as Peter was to have engaged the killer. Peter’s will to live gave him the edge he needed to grab the man’s weapon and shoot several rounds into his legs.

Then three things happened all at once.

The killer screamed in agony and shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” God is most great! He reached inside his vest and retrieved a grenade. Just as he reached for the safety pin to reveal the striker, Peter shot him in the face. He’d killed someone for the first time.

Well, actually four things. Peter cursed repeatedly. The kind of profanity that someone hurled when both angry and scared.

He gripped the Uzi and pushed himself against the back of the sofa with the heels of his feet. His head and eyes darted in all directions, the barrel of the small rifle following his movements.

To his left, a man tried to run for the same hallway Peter intended to escape through. It didn’t end well. A burst of staccato gunfire erupted and struck him several times in the back. His body was slammed to the marble floor, falling like a glass brushed off the edge of a table. Only, instead of shattering, it just hit the floor with a thud, twitching as it fought for its last breath.

The man’s eyes were open, staring at Peter. They were behaving like any human would when the realization came that they no longer had a functioning circulatory system. Peter had just seen three people die, three more than he’d seen in his lifetime. He physically shook himself to force his mind to focus.

He couldn’t run. The dead man twelve feet away from him proved that. He wasn’t prepared to cower behind the sofa. Another detonation would kill him. Gunfire and the subsequent bullets would rip through the cushions, and he’d suffer the same fate as so many others. He needed a distraction.

Peter had an idea. When he and his best friend growing up, Jimmy Free, used to play hide-and-seek on the grounds of Driftwood Key, Peter would often use coconuts to throw Jimmy off his trail when he was getting too close. He wondered what kind of confusion could be garnered from tossing the terrorist’s grenade.

Gripping the rifle in one hand, he scrambled over to the dead man and carefully pulled the grenade from his left hand. It was shaped like a large Meyer’s lemon not unlike those grown on the key. Even the color was similar.

He held his breath to listen as sporadic gunfire continued. Then he heard the roar of a truck approaching. Was it the police or military? Was it another bomb? He dared not stick his head above the sofa.

Bullets whizzed over his head and pelted the reception table where attendees had been standing moments ago. A woman screamed. And then she was silenced. The gunmen began shouting in Arabic. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their tone was clear. Orders were given and then acknowledged. The terrorists were sweeping the enormous lobby in search of targets.

It was now or never. Peter glanced to his right and then to his left. The path to the hallway was unobstructed. To his right, a piano together with the mangled instruments of a string quartet—two violins, a viola, and a cello—lay beside their deceased musical ensemble.

Peter studied the grenade. He didn’t know if it exploded after a certain amount of time or upon impact. He was sure he could work it. Or at least, he hoped he could. If it didn’t explode, he knew he’d be dead seconds after his plan was discovered.

He held the striker lever firmly against the serrated, cast-iron body of the grenade. He set his jaw, pulled the safety pin out with his teeth like he’d seen in the movies, and slung the grenade halfway to where the piano rested on three legs.

The cast iron hit the marble surface with a clank and then rolled against the body of the once beautiful pianist.

“Qunbula—!” The man was shouting grenade in Arabic, but the second word in the phrase never left his mouth. The explosion rocked the interior of the lobby. The blast eviscerated the already dead young woman’s body and sent the piano flying several feet into the air before it exploded, sending keys and strings in all directions.

Peter didn’t watch the result. Like the North Vietnamese tossing a grenade into a Quonset hut without regard to the outcome, Peter bolted across the lobby, zigzagging toward the double doors. Bullets skipped along the marble floor on both sides of him and stitched the doors as he approached. Still gripping the Uzi, he crashed hard through the doors.

He never looked back to see if he was being pursued. With gun in hand, he ran as far away as he could, dashed down another hallway until he found a rear entrance to the building, and emerged in a parking lot at the precise moment the UAE Presidential Guard prepared to enter the building.

Peter dropped the weapon. He raised his arms high over his head and shouted the only words he thought might save him.

“I’m an American!”

Chapter Four

Friday, October 18

Driftwood Key

“Our compliments to the chef!” exclaimed one of the women who’d arrived late that afternoon with her three sisters in tow. She was the oldest of the group and clearly the leader of the pack.

Hank beamed. Phoebe had never served a bad meal, but a resounding compliment always swelled him with pride. Earlier, his project with Sonny had run into a snag, causing him to work on the roof a little longer than he’d hoped to. While he was in the shower cleaning up