A New War

The train arrived at East Harlem station. Among the huge crowd of departing commuters and travelers, Exodus Luke picked up the two briefcases that contained the swag. One was full of $1000000 worth of cash; the other contained his stash of nukes. 3 nukes: Altanor, Betaphyl, and Deltalol. Each had been stolen from the Russian mastermind named Dimitri Makovski, codenamed 'Ghost Walker'. The nukes had been shipped over to NY, by expert smugglers from the M.I.W. agency.

Exos Luke had been quite busy managing his casino at Vundoppler St. and didn't have enough time to join Cooper Black, in defeating the Kor Ondrone. But he was also working with another spy, in the meantime, who'd brought him all the intel that he needed. This time, he'd been given a very important, and dangerous mission. He didn't think the nukes would survive.

He hailed a taxi cab, and threw the briefcases in.

"Where to, man?" the taxi driver munched some ganja leaves while he talked. "You seem to be in a great hurry. Need any help, back there?"

"No, thank you," Exos shut the door after sitting at the back, and handed him a stash of dollars, from the cash swag. "Here, take this $15000; drive me to Bellevue Hospital, ASAP!"

"You got it, bro!" the driver was excited to get his hands on so much money for such a simple task. He stepped on the gas, and accelerated like a dog without a leash. They dodged traffic, by taking hidden, secret bypass routes. Exodus could now breathe a little. He held out a RLC (Radiation Level Checker) remote, to check whether he got a fatal dose of the stuff, or not. The Geiger-Muller tube activated and produced a reading on a small LCD screen.

[Detecting...85%☢]

Oh, no! He had more than 80% of radiation! He's lucky that his brain cells didn't get affected by it...much.

The cab jerked to the left, and turned round a corner. They entered an alleyway, turned right, and were halfway to Bellevue.

"Phew!" Exos rubbed the sweat drops perspiring on his forehead, with the back of his hand. "That was so damn close!"

"What was close, man?" the taxi driver interrupted. Something in his tone made Exos Luke suspicious. "No, please tell me. What was close? Those nukes, or your life?"

Luke faced a hammer crack on his head. How come he knew about the nukes? Can he make it back to Cooper Black, alive?

"Wha-what do you mean by -- holy shit!"

The taxi driver stopped the car in a wide, dark alleyway. The tires screeched due to the friction caused by the brakes. The alleyway was far from the roads. Too lonely. Any gun fire or shouts for help, will hardly be heard, outside. Without warning, the driver took out an USAS-12 SMG shotgun, from the glove compartment.

"Now, either you give me those warheads, or I'll put a bullet through your bloody brain!" the driver aimed at Exos Luke, but he wasn't sure to do this. By the looks of the driver's lips quivering, it seemed he never had any working experience with killing people. Exos took this as an advantage, and charged forward.

He punched the t.d. in the face, grabbed his gun, and shot three rounds at him. The blood didn't matter much; Exos had seen worse. He thought that was the last of them. But how wrong he was!

From behind the covers of crates scattered all around the taxi cab, thugs crouched with MP7s in their hands. They all waited for Luke to come out.

Exos Luke didn't have much time left. He had to find a way out, somehow. He ducked his head down and counted the number of heads peeping around the car.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5…. Hmm, 8, There are eight thugs, huh?" he looked at the nuke case. "And only 3 nukes. Well, let's make the thug number, 9. So each nuke is for three thugs. Hmm… not such a lucky shot. If I do shoot them, half of them would be dead and he other half of them would fire at the fuel tank, so the nukes will go up in flames. Oh, this is so hard, so hard!" he had no option left but to flee. "Heads up, I'm goiiiiiin'!"

He grabbed the cash swag and shot at the windshield. He punched it and kicked it and barraged away at the thugs outside.

"Die, you rascal sewer rats!" he carried the cash case and sprinted away, out of their range. He could see the evening sun almost setting as he emerged from total darkness into the light of dusk.

But a speeding car crashed into Luke's body, thrusting him to the ground sideways, with a force of 2000 N. Ouch.

Exodus landed on the ground but his right-hand-side ribs were all broken.

"Aaargh! Man, that was NOT cool! Not cool, at all!" he had survived, astonishingly. And astonishingly, there were four more thugs in that car! "Ho shit! Die, lazy *****!"

He suppressed his attacks on those goons as he got back to his feet and grabbed the cash suitcase.

"He's escapin'! Geddim!" one of the thugs yelled out. They were using silenced weapons.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. B-B-B-BEEP.

Exos ran and dived, ducked and rolled. He didn't need to look at the RLC; he could feel the high levels of radiation.

"For the mercy from God!" Exos's feet suddenly stopped. He couldn't move forwards. His ears rang like bronze bells, his head was cracking apart. He couldn't bear the radiation anymore. He dropped to the ground.

His body was being forced downwards. He couldn't see properly. His brain was being cooked! He could feel his body cells being affected by the cancerous rays. And then, he stopped movement. His body had swollen up like he'd been stung by a whole hive of bees. All the other thugs dropped to the ground as well.

Inside Luke's grasp, the RLC remote was still functioning.

[Detecting...90%☢]

[Detecting...95%☢]

[Detecting...100%☢]

[WARNING---%☢]

[∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎]

All three nukes deployed at once. The entire area was consumed by the gigantic mushroom cloud – a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb drops.

The nuke wars had begun.