Flash Fiction Challenge: Nukes for Breakfast

flash fiction writing prompt cape canaveral 1998
Photo copyright K. S. Brooks. Do not use without attribution.

After trudging all night through dense forest behind enemy lines, we made it – at dawn – to the weapons depot.

Agent 98.6 and I had gone without sleep in hopes of reaching this rumored place before daylight. We were just supposed to confirm its existence – but that’s not good enough, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going in to render these rockets useless. It’s my duty.

There’s just one minor problem with this plan; I don’t know anything about bombs…

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13 thoughts on “Flash Fiction Challenge: Nukes for Breakfast”

  1. ***FINALIST***

    “Where are you going?” Agent 98.6 whispered.
    “Under the wire,” I replied.
    “Are you nuts?”
    I moved forward; the answer was probably yes. No chance to change my mind.
    Confirm the existence of the rockets and return to base…that was the mission.
    The dawn revealed scurrying crews prepping the rockets. They would be launched before we made it back to warn the others.
    A radio signal would have tripped the security net surrounding this secret weapons depot, so we had none.
    These nuclear-tipped rockets would incinerate thousands if I didn’t do something now.
    But what? I didn’t know anything about bombs or rockets.
    My partner stayed back. I felt a tug on my shirt as a barb dug into the fabric and scratched along my skin.
    A deafening siren shrieked in honor of my arrival. I ignored it and charged forward, rifle in hand, with one purpose…destroy the rockets.
    I ran to the nearest truck as shots rang out. I yanked the door and ducked in. I twisted the ignition wires together. Glass rained down on me as the engine roared to life.
    I jammed my rifle between the seat and the accelerator. I shifted into Drive and dove out.
    I wondered if the nukes would explode as I watched the runaway truck crash into the base of one rocket.

    “A brilliant flash is all I remember.”
    “Luckily, the nukes didn’t go off when all the rockets exploded,” said 98.6. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been around to carry you home.”

  2. ***FINALIST***

    …but I do speak Baltovakian. I turn to 98.6 and ask what must seem a peculiar question.

    “Do you have a Sharpie?”

    She gives me a quizzical look, but reaches into her pack. Sure enough, a black Sharpie appears in her resourceful hand and she keeps fixing me with that look. The one I call “the eyebrow.”

    “I’ve no idea what you’re scheming here, but it better be good. Neither of us knows bomb disposal, which is a bit of an oversight at the planning stage, when you think about it.”

    “Well, to be fair, we were only supposed to establish their existence, but watch this.”

    We move silently into the launch compound. It’s astounding the warheads are in such plain sight, and apparently unguarded, but maybe that was their double-bluff strategy. Or maybe this tiny, aggressive nation is more playful kitten than the ferocious tiger it appears to be.

    I reach the largest warhead, and begin to write in large Cyrillic capitals, translating under my breath for 98.6’s benefit, who has some difficulty suppressing her hilarity.

    DEAR BALTOVAKIA. GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS TO THE NORTH. PLEASE KNOW WE HAVE PHOTOS. OF YOUR FEARLESS LEADER. WEARING PINK LEDERHOSEN. IN COMPROMISING POSITIONS INVOLVING ZOO RESIDENTS (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SQUIRRELS). PLEASE CONSIDER DISMANTLING WMDs. ONCE SATELLITE EVIDENCE CONFIRMS DISARMAMENT PHOTOS WILL NOT BE HANDED TO WORLD’S MEDIA. IF TEMPTED TO THINK PHOTOS DON’T EXIST CONSIDER WE HAD CAPABILITY TO MAKE IT HERE IN PERSON UNDETECTED. HAVE GREAT DAY.

  3. ***FINALIST***

    Agent 98.6 is exhausted and functionally irrelevant. My systems are fully operational.

    “Let me rest and we’ll get out of here,” he says. “They won’t launch before we report back to base.”

    I calculate the probabilities. He is wrong.

    I carry him over my shoulder, despite his objections. We approach the missile site and I rip the security fence with my fingers. Inside, a guard challenges us. I disassemble him.

    “Go back,” Agent 98.6 says, “Command code six-alpha.”

    Logic overrides his command. I identify the main computer routing system in a locked building. I am not programmed to defuse explosive devices, but I access the launch control software, and the targeting software. I recalibrate the target information.

    “So, you’ve targeted the missiles to our current location,” he says. “They’ll airburst one thousand feet above us after launch.”

    I acknowledge his conclusion.

    “Then we’re going to die. Is that what you want?” he asks. “Trixie, honey, we’re a team. I’ve been your handler for two years now.”

    I access “handler” in my language database. I initiate the launch sequence.

  4. ***FINALIST***

    “We have to destroy those rockets. It’s the only thing holding us back from liberating this sh*t hole of a country,” I yell out over my comms to Agent 98.6.

    “That’s not our mission,” responds Agent 98.6.

    “Listen. Do you want to be your own chapter in the history books, or do you want no mention at all,” I say with the bravado of some immortal. “It’s our time for glory. We chose this mission. We can now choose our destiny. We can be the heroes we all read about as children – those legends of war.”

    Excitement flows through me like flash flood of adrenaline. I am ready to take this weapons facility and turn it into a parking lot to be used for our tanks. Riding perched on the last celebratory tank will be myself and Agent 98.6. I can hear the cheers as if the home team just scored a game winning touchdown.

    “OK. I’m in,” responds Agent 98.6.

    “Hell yeah. Let’s charge on three. One……Two……”

    “Wait. Wait,” Agent 98.6 shouts over the comms. “How do we destroy the rockets?” Agent 98.6 inquires.

    “I don’t know. Give me one second,” I answer.

    I return to the comms, “OK, I just Googled it. It says once we’re next to the rockets, hold in the right front button and press A and X in succession.”

    “OK,” responds Agent 98.6. “Let’s become legends.”

  5. “Interesting,” the Colonel broke the silence. With one finger he pushed his glasses up his nose and held up the tattered, worn notebook, “this does belong to you, correct?”

    That notebook had been everything to Jim Fisher. His thoughts, his sanity, his only link to a life he never thought he’d see again. It had been routine, until his pride had compelled him beyond his orders. And for what? To spend three years in a dank prison penning his thoughts wondering when the end would come, and how. When it did, the flooding elation over being liberated poured over him in waves. Yet, it was not long before he was corralled and paraded in front of this board with such bureaucratic apathy that he felt as much a prisoner now as he had been in that awful place.

    “Captain?”

    “Yes Sir.” Jim answered, feeling defeated, “Like I said, I determined the threat was imminent, and I acted.”

    “Yes, yes. I can read that, but you see our position Captain. It’s hard for us to believe the threat level justified your actions, and you clearly admit to violating your orders. Do you realize the political fiasco you caused? After all, no launches were made. It’s a shame that 98.6 isn’t here to corroborate your story.”

    “His name was Nick.” Jim numbly replied. He didn’t hear the rest. His mind was gone, unable to comprehend what was happening to him, simply longing to be left alone, longing for that cold, dark cell.

  6. And this is where the problem lies. We shouldn’t have gone in. I regretted the decision when they captured us. And there we were, Agent 98.6 strung up by his thumbs as they held me a gunpoint, the dismantled bomb in front of me. There are only so many things that the gadgets you get at HQ can do for you, building a bomb isn’t one of them.

    Didn’t help that they kept screaming in my ear in their native tongue. Heck, I didn’t know it, I barely passed my English classes as it is. But they persisted and I did the best I could.

    I fiddled and twisted knobs and replaced gears in the main body of the thing. In the end it fit together in a semi neat package, I neglected to tell them about the parts I had stuffed in my pants pocket after I closed the thing up.

    Funny thing is, they were happy with the work. They let us go without a fight and trundled off with the bomb. Me and Agent 98.6 took off again and didn’t hear the explosion till we were a mile or so away from the compound.

    “When did you learn to deal with explosives?” he asked.

    The mushroom cloud billowed up into the twilit sky. “Never did,” I said. “But I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express recently.”

  7. I turn to Agent 98.6.
    `Do you know anything about bombs son?`
    `Fraid not Sarg. I was a cook with the platoon before they sent me on this exercise.
    I sighed. A bacon sandwich wasn`t going to be much good out here.
    `Ok son, follow me, and don`t make a bloody sound.`
    We crept on our hands and knees till we reached the barbed wire.
    `Ok son, give me the cutters.`
    `What cutters sarg?`
    `The wire cutters you ignoramus.`
    `I haven`t got any wire cutters sarg.`
    `The ones the stores gave you last night.`
    `The only thing they gave me was a little pill. Said I had to swallow it If we were caught.`
    I could hear their smirking laughter.
    `Ok. Rethink. I`l have to go over the top.`
    `How we gonna do that sarg?`
    `I`ll climb on your shoulders.`
    `How you gonna get back sarg.`
    `I`ll ask the Sentry to let me out through the gate.`
    `Will he do that sarg?`
    I stifled a scream.
    `Just get up by the wire so I can climb on your shoulder.`
    He stood up and moved next to the wire fence.
    `If I`m not back in an hour get back to base.`
    `Good luck sarg.`
    I muttered my thanks, climbed on his shoulder and dropped over the top.
    As my eyes accustomed to the dark I began to make out what looked like a large, flat clay covered area, and stretched across it was what looked suspiciously like a tennis net…

  8. I looked Agent 98.6 up and down. She was curvy – and hot – more like 105 than 98.6. In any case, I knew what I had to do. “Cover me, I’m going in,” I announced.

    “Agent Case, I’ve told you 1000 times, I will NOT have sex with you.”

    It’s sad how much she wants me. “Look, babe, I’ve got bombs to defuse and lives to save. Your needs will just have to wait.”

    She rolled her eyes in disappointment. “You’re such a misogynist,” she said.

    “Yes, I give excellent massages, but for crying out loud, could you keep your mind out of my pants and on the task at hand?” I glanced at her chest and hoped that this wouldn’t be the last time I’d ever see her. Then, I slipped through the barbed wire and into the compound.

    I moved with ninja-like silence and dexterity towards the control room. Then, my phone vibrated. I scanned the area and pulled out my phone to see that Suzie Hotpants had posted a bikini selfie on Instagram. Wow. I suppose I should have been looking where I was walking because my toe caught on this big power line lying across the tarmac. Who does that? OSHA will be hearing about this. It’s a good thing that rocket was there to break my fall. I steadied myself, slipped Suzie back into my pocket, and watched as the rocket teetered then fell over in slow motion, starting a giant game of rocket dominoes. Problem solved.

  9. A Quiet Night by the Fire
    249 words (not including title)

    I looked up woozily and watched the firelight dwindle down to embers. I smiled lazily at my companion and stretched. I froze as I felt an odd twinge in my side and saw her wince.

    “Morning…” I called tentatively. “What’d I miss?”

    She looked at me, her expression one of incredulity. “What do you remember?

    I blinked. I remembered a long moonlit walk. I remembered watching the sun come up… I remembered… fire.

    She watched as I put things together in order and then slowly assessed the pain in my side. I’d been shot.

    “Why do moonlit strolls with you always end in me getting shot?”

    She snorted and shook her head. “Only you could confuse slipping behind enemy lines with a romantic evening.”

    “It wasn’t?”

    She shook her head. “No, dear. It was not romantic.”

    I licked my lips and tasted blood then looked around, realizing that the fire was much further away than I first thought… farther and much, much bigger.

    “Uhm…”

    She tilted her head as I racked my brain and finally gave up.

    “Weapons depot… rockets… “ she said slowly her head moving side to side as she spoke trying to trigger some memory.

    I blinked. “We had to destroy them… I…”

    My eyes widened as I realized exactly what I’d done. “It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

    She shook her head. “Only you would think to use a truck as a Molotov Cocktail.”

    I smiled. From the looks of things it worked.

  10. I’d thought all night as we hiked to the terrorist camp. If the missiles were there, I was going to destroy them, although I wasn’t trained for that. I knew I was right when I saw them standing launch ready outlined in the dawn’s early rays. But first, I had to convince Agent 98.6.

    “Let’s scramble their eggs before we head to the extraction point.”

    “Negative. Not our orders.”

    “Think of the lives we’ll save.”

    “What do you have in mind?”

    “I’m going to show them how I earned my agent name, Number 2.”

    “Go for it,” Agent 98.6 said laughing aloud, nearly revealing our location to the nearby guard.

    We’d eaten MREs the night before and again this morning. But MRE’s disagree with me in the most juvenile of ways.

    “Quick, stand behind me and aim our flame thrower at the missiles,” I whispered. “Light it. Light it, now!”

    Just as Agent 98.6 lit the flame thrower, I passed a super-sized gas bomb. My spinach and baked beans explosion was bigger than Popeye’s biceps and worse smelling than the sweat of all the Olympic athletes to ever grace a Wheaties box put together. The kickback of the flame combining with the MRE gas knocked us both to the ground, but not before the fire bomb found its target. The compound and the missiles burned like crispy bacon.

    “We’re going to Disney World!” I said as we headed east ten clicks to the extraction point.

  11. Luckily my spy partner was a nuclear physicist as well as a former Special Forces guy who I lovingly call Armando. We had partnered many times before, always flawlessly accomplishing our missions. This time we both agreed, we would go above and beyond just “observing” these mothers.

    The place was deserted with just one small camera eyeballing the area. Without speaking, Armando drew his weapon while extending his well-muscled arm and fired, shattering the camera. Now our time was short, if anyone was actually observing the feed from this camera, we would have company within the next ten minutes.

    We raced out of the woods to the building where Armando disintegrated the door with one extreme kick of his oh so powerful leg and we scurried inside. The dusty store room contained eight rockets. Without speaking he handed me a small screw driver motioning at the control panel cover. As soon as I removed each lid, he aimed his special battery powered bomb diffuser down into them, totally frying all the controllers.

    With just two minutes to go, all the bombs were rendered useless and we were back under the cover of the forest breathing hard. Armando embraced me, his sparkling dark eyes took me in as a bead of sweat slowly slid down his chin, I felt an electrifying tingle … it was his phone vibrating. The incoming text said “How do bombs look? Recovery team on the way, need all eight for next mission.”

  12. ***FINALIST***

    Agent 98.6 was checking the coordinates on his phone when his eyes became wide and animated.

    “This is nuts,” he whispered, shaking his head. “They have Wi-Fi without a password!”

    I was about to dismiss his irrelevant, yet intriguing statement when I noticed two men walking into a large bunker, carrying towels and squash rackets. Must be a training facility. Squash was an excellent way to improve hand-to-eye coordination. Then two women exited the building carrying yoga mats, looking strong and centered. Obviously, this was a sophisticated military operation.

    “Um, Agent 94.7, we have a problem.” I turned my attention back to my new partner, fresh out of school. “I checked the coordinates and rechecked them. Facebook has tracked my location to a Google office.”

    “Don’t you have an app to block that locater?” I questioned him angrily. “Never mind that now. We’re up against a multi-billion dollar, global company that has diversified into weapons hording. We’ll all be forced to use Chrome if we don’t do something!” I let the impact of my statement sink in.

    “What if they aren’t actual rockets?” my introspective colleague mused. “What if the real mission is to disable google-bombing? Change the algorithm.”

    I then had a flashback to our briefing. Captain described the enemy as “possessing bombs that disrupt the natural order and could wipe out entire sites.” Finally, it made sense.

    “So what do we do?”

    I pulled out my phone. “We’re applying online. Then, we’re going in.”

  13. “Over there, agent 98.6, by the ridge, it’s the secret weapons depot.”

    “You’re right, 3.14. We should report to control right away.”

    “No, 98.6. We need to stop those missiles before they launch.”

    “We’re surveillance agents, 3.14, not IM operatives. Besides, you don’t know anything about nuclear missiles.”

    “I know it’s our duty to stop them. Besides, if we excavate one side of the base, the missiles will topple.”

    “But we could be killed.”

    “Then we die heroes, 98.6.”

    Crouching low, we moved closer to the seven missiles, fighting fatigue from our all night trek. Clods of dirt rained behind us as we dug. The first missile began to wobble just as the enemy approached.

    “Hey! Leave those model rockets alone. How’d you get here? We’re miles from home.”

    I spun around, and growled at the man. His six foot bulk towered over me but I stood my ground. The safety of the free world depended on me.

    “Quick, 98.6, dig faster. I’ll hold them off.”

    Teeth bared I charged. My teeth clamped on empty air as the man sidestepped. A hand grasped my neck and held me in midair. Another enemy approached.

    “Run, 98.6. It’s a trap!”

    Before 98.6 could flee they pulled out their secret weapon. An intoxicating scent wafted around us. Resistance was futile. In seconds we were both locked up but happily gobbling the addictive treat, powerless to stop our fluffy tails from wagging.

    Foiled by the old, peanut butter sandwich trick.

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