Dawn of the Epoch

Chapter LXII - The Missing Member of the Quartet

As soon as the door had closed and he knew that he had missed his shot, Hongo leapt into action. He climbed down the tree and ran to the Khan. When he arrived, he flung the front door open, popped the trunk, and grabbed a black backpack. He moved with such a sense of urgency that he did not even shut the back door. The backpack contained four primer assemblies, ten feet of detonating cord, and eight blocks of C4 plastic explosive weighing about ten pounds. Hongo began running back toward the main hall. After running about twenty feet, he had an idea, stopped, and ran back to the Khan. He strapped the rifle and the backpack to his back and pulled the RPG-29 Vampir out of the back end of the Khan. Weighed down by the heavy rifle and backpack and carrying the rocket launcher on his shoulder, he could not sprint, so he jogged slowly back to the main hall.

While Ghaelvord regaled Hunter, Tiyana, and Virgil with his fascinating and perplexing conversation, Hongo went to work. He slowly and cautiously molded the plastic explosive into the crooks and crevices of the large front door to the main hall. The door had been built by stringing small tree trunks together and bolted into place with some of the first metal produced by Ghaelvord’s forge. Hongo wanted to not only decimate the door, but also to cause a commotion that would bamboozle those inside.

When Hongo finished, he ran across the courtyard to the textiles building. Some of the ghouls glanced at him, but otherwise ignored him. He ran around back of the building and found a ladder. He climbed up to the roof and lay on his belly facing the front door. He set the Vampir and the rifle beside him, not sure which one he would want to use. Hongo gasped for breath because the run and the climb had winded him. His heart beat fast and adrenaline coursed through his veins as he raised the wireless detonator into the air. He pressed the button and a deafening roar assaulted his eardrums. His hair whipped backwards and he shut his eyes as the shockwave sent a blast of wind speeding through the compound.

Hongo opened his eyes and, for a few moments, all that he could see was dust. The dust clouds settled quickly, however, and he could see inside the main hall. The doors were gone along with a large chunk of the front wall. The only entryway now consisted of a ten-foot wide crater in the ground and a big, open hole in the wall. Hongo pulled out his binoculars and looked through the settling dust. He could make out five figures in the building. At the far end of the hall, he saw the macabre throne raised high up off of the ground. He saw Ghaelvord sitting in it, looking surprised. He saw Malacoda standing next to Virgil and Hunter, with Tiyana off to the side. He saw that his companions’ hands were bound behind their backs. He knew that he would not have much time, and so he acted quickly. He reached for the Vampir. Hongo had affixed an Opticon scope with an integrated laser rangefinder to the large barrel of the rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He quickly lined up the scope’s reticle with the center of the massive blackwood throne. He waited for the laser rangefinder to give him the green light, and then he pulled the trigger. The recoilless weapon sent a sixty-five millimeter warhead flying in a perfect ballistic trajectory ending squarely in the center of Ghaelvord’s ornate throne. The throne exploded. The room erupted into chaos.