The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (35 page)

The control center held a semicircular desk with four computers on one end and six on the other. Grace had pulled out one of the wheeled metal chairs and stood over a computer. She seemed to know what she was doing. Sophia and DC had given Damien and Jay uncomfortably vague instructions on how to operate the transmitter, so any additional knowledge from Grace couldn’t be a bad thing.

‘What station do you want to hit first?’ she said.

‘Alaska,’ Damien said, handing her the paper with the GPS coordinates.

He watched her punch them in. His satphone rang. It was Sophia.

‘Yeah,’ he answered.

‘We’re inside,’ Sophia said. ‘Are you ready?’

‘It’s now or never,’ he said. ‘We have the coordinates punched in. I’ll hand you over.’

He passed the satphone to Grace. She listened intently for a moment, the satphone wedged between her ear and shoulder. Her hands ran across the keyboard. He watched as she set the frequency, the power of the transmission and then the focus. Either Sophia was giving her instructions or Grace was already well versed in how to operate the control center of a Seraphim transmitter installation. Damien was pretty sure this hadn’t been covered in his Project GATE training, but maybe they did some optional courses he didn’t know about.

Jay was checking his Nokia. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘We have company outside. Army’s here.’

‘National Guard?’ Damien asked. ‘Rangers, Blue Berets?’

Jay shook his head. ‘Not sure. I asked the knights to keep an eye out. They’re holding the front now but I don’t think they’ll last long.’

Damien didn’t like this situation at all. There was one way into the transmitter building and one way out. If the reinforcements secured that, they were screwed.

‘Have the knights rig petrol bombs at the front with tripwires and withdraw deeper,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to pulse the compound and move on that. We’ll have eyes and they won’t.’

‘I like it,’ Jay said and typed the order into his Nokia.

Grace was half-listening to their conversation as she did some typing of her own. ‘There’s a microwave in the room opposite that tripwire we hit,’ she said. ‘Get them to put all their torches and cells inside and unplug the microwave from the power socket.’

It was a good idea, Damien thought. If they wanted their electronics to survive, they needed to shield them inside something. A microwave was essentially a Faraday cage.

Gunfire roared from above. It sounded like it was coming from just outside the front of the building, or possibly even inside. It was hard to pinpoint from inside the control center.

‘Shit.’ Jay quickly swapped his Nokia for his carbine. ‘Grace, how’s it clocking?’

‘Alaska in three, two, one …’ she said.

They stood in silence.

Damien waited a few seconds before opening his mouth. ‘Did it work?’

Grace was staring at her screen. ‘Transmission sent. Looks successful from this end. Hard to tell without a visual confirmation if the signal bounced back to Alaska.’

‘What I’d give for satellite optics right now,’ Damien said. ‘OK, what’s next? Our own?’

Grace nodded. ‘Thirteen minutes until the capacitors charge.’

‘What the fuck?’ Jay said. ‘We won’t last that long!’

‘This transmitter isn’t designed for electromagnetic pulses,’ she said. ‘It needs to charge up.’

‘This joint has its own freaking power plant,’ Jay said.

‘EMPs don’t require a high-wattage power supply,’ she said. ‘They require a large bank of capacitors. And I just drained them to hit Alaska.’

‘Let’s hope it worked then,’ Jay said. He moved around the semicircular desk and aimed his carbine at the top of the staircases.

Grace passed the satphone back to Damien.

‘Damien?’ Sophia said into his ear.

‘We hit Alaska, but we’re pinned down by reinforcements. Thirteen min—’

‘I know,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘We have about six.’

‘Have you hit Nevada yet?’ he asked.

The naval base in Nevada was Sophia’s target. If they took out Nevada and Damien’s team took out Alaska, they only had their own stations to worry about. Mission accomplished.

‘We just have,’ she said. ‘No reinforcements here yet but I’m certain we tripped an alarm coming in. Can you hold out for thirteen minutes?’

Damien didn’t reply immediately. ‘They’re already here,’ he said. ‘We’ll damn well try.’

‘OK,’ Sophia said. ‘Hold out for six and we’ll hit you.’

‘What about you?’ he said.

‘We’ll have to hit our own station after. Let’s hope our party isn’t crashed before then.’

Damien pulled a boot off and removed his sock. He switched the satphone and Nokia off and dropped them inside the sock, then placed the sock inside a small metal ammunition container—a makeshift Faraday cage to shield it from the forthcoming EMP.

Something exploded upstairs.

‘Well, there goes one of our petrol bombs,’ Jay said.

Another explosion. Damien could hear debris blasting down the corridor above.

‘And another,’ Jay said. ‘They’ll be on us in no time.’

Damien straightened up, checked his carbine. ‘We have,’ he checked his watch, ‘five minutes. Sophia’s hitting us first.’

‘EMP?’ Jay yelled.

‘Yeah,’ Damien said.

He heard gunfire in the corridor above, some shouting. More explosions, smaller. Grenades, flashbangs, he couldn’t be sure.

‘We’re done here,’ Grace said.

She pulled another container of Aviary’s special blend from Jay’s daypack and placed it under the desk where all the computers were stacked.

‘What’s that for?’ Jay asked.

‘In case the EMP doesn’t happen,’ she said.

A high-pitched whine drilled through Damien. His balance shifted and the tiled floor hit his face. Grace was above him, talking. Then the room went dark. He heard computers under the desk sizzle and bang. Above ground, he heard other explosions. They didn’t sound like petrol bombs or grenades. Sophia’s electromagnetic pulse, he thought.

It hit the station right on target, taking out everything electronic: burning semiconductor devices, melting wires, frying batteries and even exploding transformers. The power lines, phone lines and even the metal pipes became unintentional antennas, passing the spike to anything down the line—computers hooked up to power, neighborhoods further out. Damien realized with a sliver of guilt that they’d probably cut the power and fried the electronics in half of Long Island. He also realized that he was in pitch darkness and couldn’t see a thing. It would take some time for his night-vision to adjust, but at least Grace and Jay were able to cope.

‘Damien?’ Aviary called out. ‘Jay?’

‘We’re here,’ Damien said before Grace could stifle him.

‘Are they coming to kill us?’ She sounded terrified.

‘Yes,’ Grace whispered. ‘How far inside are they?’ she called out to Aviary.

‘I … I don’t know. Pretty far I think.’

‘Shhh,’ Grace said. ‘Get down.’

Damien ran his fingers across his carbine to find the trigger guard and the vertical grip. Upstairs was eerily silent. That wasn’t good. He heard Aviary scuffle as she moved for better cover. He didn’t know who else was around or how many soldiers were upstairs. He didn’t even know what sort of soldiers they were. Their level of training played a large factor in their odds of getting out alive.

‘We need to move now,’ Jay hissed. ‘While they’re blind.’

Damien didn’t want to go anywhere but he knew Jay was right.

‘I can’t see, you’ll need to guide me out,’ he said. ‘And Aviary too.’

Grace found his hand and placed it on her backpack. He followed her around the desk, relying mostly on his memory of the room. He could hear Jay helping Aviary.

Grace took Damien to the stairs on the right. He could hear Jay’s movements as he approached the stairs on the left, Aviary scuffling behind him. Damien let Grace climb the stairs first. Judging by her feather-light footsteps, he knew when to start climbing without bumping into her legs. He moved as carefully as he could, making a concerted effort not to bump or rub against anything that would create noise.

He reached the top and wasn’t impressed to find zero ambient light. His night-vision was improving but it still wasn’t giving him enough to judge the layout and distance of the passageway. Reaching out, he found Grace’s backpack again. Her hand touched his arm and tapped it twice. He understood what she meant and let her move forward without him. She was probably scouting ahead, cloaked. Jay would be holding back with Aviary, ready to assist if Grace needed it.

Damien listened keenly. Even with his enhanced hearing, he was only just able to pick up on Grace’s footsteps. He stopped hearing them and figured she had stopped moving. Then he heard her move back to him, less silently.

She spoke softly into his ear. ‘Clear. We’ll move up.’

She turned and let him touch her backpack again. He didn’t grab onto it and risk impeding her movement; just kept enough contact to follow her. They reached the T-intersection and started for the stairs, heading up to the surface. His night-vision had improved and his hearing was even sharper than usual. He could hear the footsteps approaching from above. He tugged on Grace’s backpack. She paused.

He felt her arm move. She was signaling Jay, probably telling him the number of soldiers that were approaching—maybe she could see them with her X-ray vision. He wished he could see, but at least if he couldn’t then neither could the soldiers.

Grace spoke into his ear. ‘Six soldiers, retreating.’

Why were they retreating? Then it occurred to him that with no vision and no tools to assist in vision, it would be too dangerous to enter the lower levels. The soldiers would need to retrieve night-vision goggles and torches from outside the pulse radius before they could re-enter the transmitter building. Until then, they’d keep the place locked down. At least outside they’d be able to see in the moonlight.

But Grace wasn’t waiting that long. She broke from Damien’s grasp and moved up the stairs. Once she reached halfway, she opened fire. One short burst, and another immediately after. And another. Damien hit the ground and counted four bursts in total. He hoped that meant four soldiers down.

He heard Jay approach the stairs, then Grace’s footsteps as she advanced further. Return fire echoed down the corridor. He hoped Grace wasn’t hit. More return fire: short, controlled bursts. Damien could distinguish her Vector from the M4 carbines the soldiers were using. She returned fire, then Jay opened with a burst of his own. And then silence.

Damien heard Aviary, as blind as he was, bump into a wall on his left. He held his carbine in both hands, frustrated that his penlight was useless and he had to contend with pitch-black darkness. Finally, he heard Jay move back to them. He took Damien first, leading him carefully up the stairs. Damien was operating mostly by memory now, but the sounds bouncing off the walls helped him figure out where the walls where. While Jay returned to collect Aviary, he was able to move ahead unhindered. He heard Grace enter a room on his left and collect items from inside the microwave and dump them into her backpack.

If they were going to get out of here, they needed a distraction. And that would mean contacting the getaway vehicles and having someone provide a distraction with petrol bombs. Now he was thankful Aviary had gone to the trouble of making more than they needed.

Grace moved him into the room. A moment later, Jay had directed Aviary inside. Damien heard his knees crack as he crouched near the doorway and kept watch. Grace left the room, scouting ahead again. He figured she’d be cloaked.

Damien remained standing, tuning to the sounds around him. He could hear movement outside, some faint talking. The soldiers were in the compound. They would have the building surrounded. There was only one entrance, so they’d have that well and truly covered.

The talking turned into coughing. Violent coughing, hacking, spluttering. People screamed. It seemed to come from every direction. What the hell was going on out there?

Suddenly Jay was at his side. ‘Now! Let’s go!’

He whisked Damien from the room and blindly down the passageway, reuniting with two jaguar knights at the front of the building. Damien almost tripped over their dead friend, the third jaguar knight. Under the moonlight that shone through the windows, they exchanged a grim nod. Clouds of white mist drifted outside. Damien saw clusters of soldiers at the east and west sides of the compound. They had collapsed onto their hands and knees, trying to breathe, trying to see. None of them wore masks.

‘He came,’ Aviary whispered.

‘Who?’ Grace said.

‘Abraham. It’s their CS gas.’

Damien caught a sliver of moonlight on Grace’s face. She was pulling a mask from her backpack. ‘Masks on,’ she said. ‘Go!’

She was on her feet in an instant and disappearing into the night ahead.

Damien dropped his backpack and plucked the gas mask from it, grateful they’d packed them. Jay already had his mask on and was up and moving swiftly in front. Damien checked that Aviary had her mask on properly before fastening his on. He let Aviary go first, then took up his carbine and followed her as she tracked Jay. Along the edges of his vision he saw movement: soldiers staggering, trying to regain control of their senses. No rounds their way, yet.

Aviary adjusted her path to the right, moving around what Damien assumed to be the adjacent building. He increased his speed, crossing the open space between the building and the manhole. For a moment, he saw a ripple of movement at the manhole cover. Grace. She’d be checking for soldiers or booby traps.

Damien slowed as they approached the manhole cover, waiting for Grace to clamber inside. Jay got Aviary inside and motioned for Damien to go through next. Damien slung his carbine over his backpack and, in the darkness, used his hands to locate the manhole cover. He found the first rung on the ladder and guessed the rest. He climbed to the bottom and felt Grace’s hand close over his.

‘Chickenhead said there’s no movement outside,’ DC told Sophia. ‘That’s the good news. You want the bad news?’

Sophia didn’t take her eyes off the readouts in front of her. ‘Hit me.’

‘Blue Berets are the least of our concerns right now. The hurricane’s hit. Chickenhead can barely hold himself to the ground, let alone keep an eye on the installation.’

‘Great,’ Sophia said.

Nasira appeared in the control room, pistol in hand. ‘I’ve opened the door.’

‘Everything wrapped up?’ Sophia asked.

DC was holding a metal box that contained their satphone, smartphone, Sophia’s receiver and night-vision goggles wrapped in a towel to insulate them. He gave Sophia a nod.

Sophia turned back to the computer and entered the command to generate her determined pulse of electrical current. She watched as the voltage needle flickered. Next to it, the electrical field spiked for a fraction of a second, then dropped. And with it, darkness.

She heard DC open the metal box and start unwrapping their night-vision goggles. She worked her way carefully toward him, her vision completely shot. She felt his hand in hers, his skin warm and smooth. The goggles slipped into her grasp. She turned them on, relieved to see they worked.

DC had the satphone in his other hand, using its screen as a torch to guide Nasira to the front door. Sophia kept the goggles to her eyes and followed. Nasira had her Sig trained on the front door. Sophia could hear the wind thrumming into the concrete building outside and wondered just how bad it had gotten out there.

Stepping past the decapitated body, Nasira opened the exterior door. Rain thrashed the ground outside at a steep angle. Wind howled around them. Sophia peered through her goggles. Debris smeared the air. The searchlights flared in her goggles but she was able to tell the position of the lights hadn’t shifted. The guards who’d once stood in the towers were no longer there. The weather had seen to it that the installation’s security presence was at an all-time low.

Goggles slung around her neck, she reached for her pistol and moved out, bracing herself against the wall to stop the wind from knocking her over. Squinting against the debris, she made it to the wall they’d scaled earlier. She kneeled on the wet concrete and cupped her hands.

DC was first. She hoisted him up. Wind roared around her. If he said something to her she couldn’t hear it. He remained on top of the wall for a moment before giving her the thumbs up. She lifted Nasira to the wall and waited for her to clamber over. Nasira did her same trick as before, reaching down to grab Sophia. Sophia was almost blinded by the wind and debris. She missed Nasira by a foot on her first run-up, her boots slipping on the wet concrete and slamming her knee into the wall. She dropped to her feet, clenching her teeth to fight through the pain. Her leg felt numb and didn’t want to function. She limped back for another run-up, putting her weight on her good foot. She had to get over this wall. There was no other option.

Gunfire erupted nearby. She heard it reverberate across the rain-slicked installation. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, but it seemed to be from outside the inner concrete compound. Nasira, still perched on the wall, was soaked to the bone. She had her hand outstretched, eyes clenched shut against the debris.

Sophia took another run-up. Her banged knee sent stabs of pain through her with every step but she ignored it. She stepped up the wall with her good leg, her fingers just meeting Nasira’s. Their hands were slippery and she couldn’t clamp around Nasira’s wrist. But Nasira held tight, mashing Sophia’s fingers together as she pulled her up. It felt to Sophia like her fingers were being dislocated but she didn’t care. She reached her other arm up and gripped Nasira’s belt, hoping DC had anchored Nasira from the other side of the wall. She got her other hand onto the belt too, then transferred her better hand to the edge of the concrete wall. Pulling herself onto her stomach, she looked down to see a soldier aim his carbine at DC.

The soldier shuddered and dropped where he stood. A flicker of muzzle flash from the fence line. Chickenhead. The situation was hot now; they had to get out as quickly as possible.

She pulled herself over the wall and landed on the ground a second after Nasira. Her landing wasn’t in darkness this time but it wasn’t as neat as the first one. She stumbled to her knees and struggled to get back up. With Chickenhead lying down covering fire, she didn’t bother with rear security and ran with Nasira and DC to the hurricane fence. Chickenhead wriggled from his camouflage, his position already compromised by his muzzle flash, and wrenched open their triangle of severed fence. DC crawled through, Nasira after him. Sophia threw herself on her stomach and slid underneath, the wet ground carrying her all the way. Chickenhead let off another burst that made her ears ring, and then they were on their way out.

It took them almost ten minutes to leg it back to the Honda. By the time they reached it, she was almost out of breath and her banged knee was annoying the hell out of her.

The wind howled past them. She was covered in mud and drenched by rain. She turned to inspect the beachfront. The water was fiercely dark, lashing up past the sand, foam spraying across her. The salt stung her eyes. The clouds above them were as black as obsidian and looked about to swallow the entire island.

She’d marked the correct auto tryout key with duct tape so it was an easy find in the rain and wind. She shoved it in the door, unlocked the car for everyone and threw herself inside. All four doors shut in symphony. She quickly ran through the emergency brake and key routine. Branches crashed and scraped across the dashboard as trees around them tore apart.

‘Hurry up,’ Chickenhead said from the back seat.

Sophia could barely hear the engine over the chaos outside. She dragged the car out of its spot and blasted it down the road. The wind rattled the windows. She ignored it and focused. Everyone had their weapons ready, just in case.

‘That was almost a little too easy,’ Nasira said.

Exactly what Sophia was thinking, but she didn’t want to say it. ‘The weather might’ve slowed them down some.’

‘Something working in our favor,’ DC said. ‘Now wouldn’t that be a nice change.’

Sophia took a corner hard. The Honda lost traction briefly, then gripped again. She lined up on the causeway and accelerated. She wanted off this island as soon as possible. At the same time, she kept her focus on any vehicles that might seem out of place. Any surveillance or pursuit teams; any reinforcements rattling in to lock down the installation. Or the island itself.

The causeway stretched out over the once blue water, now jagged and dark, foaming beneath them. She had to adjust her steering to keep the Honda on a straight line. Up ahead, she could make out two parked cars, black. She tossed her goggles to DC so he could have a look.

‘That’s not good,’ he said, peering through them.

‘What’s the go?’ Chickenhead said.

Sophia planted her foot to the floor. The Honda surged ahead, aiming directly between the cars.

‘Sophia,’ DC said.

‘What?’

‘You need to stop.’

‘That’s not an option,’ she said.

As they approached, she could make out figures in black modular vests and boots, carbines in hands.

‘Everyone down,’ she said.

As she drove between the two cars, she braced herself for gunfire. But none came.

Before the Honda, a row of spikes flipped upright, pointing at her wheels.

‘Shit.’

She’d seen it too late. Her first mistake was not checking the local weather; her second, not factoring in the possibility of spikes. If she hit the brakes she’d lose control of the car. She punched the car through the spikes and heard the pop as they tore into the rubber. The Honda began to wobble, the hurricane winds buffeting hard. She kept her corrections as fine as she could, the tires beneath her thrumming the causeway as they deflated. She kept her foot off the gas and tried to straighten up, but a gale of wind roared across the causeway, stripping road signs from poles and knocking the Honda to the right. Sophia fought to adjust the sharp turn. It was a losing battle. She knew she’d lost control the moment she’d hit the spikes and everything afterward was just prolonging the inevitable.

The Honda tipped over in mid-swerve. Through her side window, the road came rushing to meet her. She closed her eyes and loosened her arms, bracing for the impact. The Honda crunched onto one side and rolled upside down. The world smeared around her. Rain smashed through, stinging her face. The windshield shattered into tiny pieces but held in place with safety film. The Honda scraped across the causeway on its roof before coming to a standstill against a concrete barrier with a perfunctory crunch.

Through her smashed open window, she could see the road block in its entirety. She counted five soldiers, or a tactical police unit, she wasn’t quite sure. They could even be Blue Berets, it was hard to tell from this far. She fumbled inside her jeans, searching for her pistol. Three rounds weren’t going to help her now.

The soldiers started moving toward the Honda, carbines ready.

Behind them, one of their vehicles erupted into a ball of flame. Sophia turned her head to protect herself from shrapnel. It clanged and pinged across the Honda’s underside. When she looked again, two soldiers were on fire and another three were clambering back to their feet. She saw a small tongue of flame across the concrete barrier. It flickered curiously, coughing in the screaming wind. Muzzle flash.

The burning soldiers collapsed. Then another soldier went down. No one turned to face the threat—they couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the hurricane. They were being picked off and they didn’t even know it. The surviving two soldiers rushed toward Sophia, carbines aimed at her. They shouted something, but their words fell silent on her ringing ears.

Her neck was sore, but she was able to turn her head without too much pain. Either that or the fresh pain in her ankle was intense enough that it overrode everything else. Next to her, DC was dazed but conscious. He didn’t have any blood on him; a promising sign. He didn’t have a weapon in his hand either though.

‘Blue Berets,’ he whispered.

She checked her rear-vision mirror but it had snapped off. Both side mirrors had disintegrated somewhere back along the causeway so she couldn’t see Nasira and Chickenhead.

A man leaped down to the asphalt beside the blazing vehicle, dark overcoat whipping in the gale. He fired at another soldier Sophia hadn’t spotted, then turned to face the Honda. His pistol coughed two more rounds and the soldiers heading for her dropped.

The man strode toward the Honda, pausing only briefly to shoot the fallen soldiers in their necks, just under the helmet. Sophia recognized his bald head glistening in the rain.

‘Why are you here?’ she whispered, barely able to speak, as he came to a stop beside her.

‘Saving your skin,’ he said. ‘Not quite what you were expecting.’

‘What do you want from me?’ She reached slowly for her pistol.

‘What I want is the same thing you want.’ Denton reached in, his hand closing over hers. ‘There’s no need for that. At least, not yet.’