by Shawn Keys
He finished his sprint, settling in behind a tree, then waved the team forward. It had been a long hike in from the nearest road. He had snowmobiles waiting up the trail they had found, but Dirk had left them well back from being inside audible range. They could be on the chalet in just a few minutes, but he didn’t want their engines alerting anyone inside. The rest of the team had marched in through the forest. Then, about a mile back, they had started to stagger their movements. At the half-mile mark, they had started to move quickly from concealment to concealment in short bounds, pausing to make sure they hadn’t spooked anyone.
Now, Dirk was in visual range of the chalet. He glanced out at the structure. It was somewhere around noon, which made it hard to decide if there was any life inside. He swore he saw light coming through one window. The interior of the wood chalet seemed like it might be dark. Not a lot of windows. Might make sense to have the lights on even in the middle of the day. There was wispy smoke coming from the chimney, but that didn’t mean much. The chalet was built to look old, but he knew from the plans that it had been heavily retro-fitted inside; the wood fireplace now a gas fireplace and the original oil-based heating system now run on natural gas piped in from the nearest town’s supply. That meant the chimney was a showpiece, concealing the vent from the furnace and gas fireplace. It would never belch thicker smoke than that. And unless the system was shut off completely, it would always give off a little trace, whether people were there or not.
He scanned along the exterior. Tracks were everywhere. Clearly, the people living here were outdoors often enough. A snowmobile was out in front, which seemed like a good sign for a second. Then, he recognized a trio of other tracks right nearby. It was distant, but he swore the three other tracks looked a little fresher, as if some other machines had recently peeled away and headed into the forest beyond.
He whispered into his microphone, “Close in. Up to six people just left, but that is still not the full number of those in Hutchings’ crew. Could still be some inside. Teams 3 and 8, take lead. Team 2, see where those other tracks went. Rest hold.”
Almost immediately, two of his operators circled around the forest edge, heading off to see where the snowmobile tracks eventually led, making sure they had actually left the area and weren’t just hiding beyond the tree line or circled around back of the shed.
Four more stood and began aggressively striding down the slope toward the main buildings.
Dirk spoke into his mic, “Is that other machine warm? Recently used?”
One of the pairs split off, stopping near the last remaining snowmobile. Their microphones sounded like they had just clicked on to report something when a small fireball detonated, engulfing them both in flames and flying shrapnel. It was an impossible explosion for that machine. Someone must have added something far more volatile than even the gasoline in its tank to get that sort of reaction. Both of the operatives were sent flying a few feet back by the blast wave, and the thunder of the explosion echoed over the mountain valley. Neither of them moved again.
The other team went into combat crouches, shocked by the sudden attack, scanning left and right, exposed in the middle of the yard.
The front window of the chalet smashed open as a sudden barrage of bullets slashed into the open air with a repeating chang chang chang chang chang of mingled gunshots and the heavy mechanical cycling of a heavy machinegun. Puffs of snow kicked up as the unseen weapon formed a beating area around the destroyed snowmobile, then slewed left across the open terrain in front of the house. The onslaught ripped into the other two operators who were caught in the open. Heavy caliber bullets punched right through their armor. The gunfire kept slewing further, reached as far as it could, then started to wander back across the yard.
Something about that motion tugged at Dirk’s mind. He suddenly understood what he was seeing. “It’s not manned! It’s on a track! Teams 4 and 7, move in now! Hard from the left! Get to the door before the gun comes back around again! Teams 5 and 6, head for the back and look for another point of entry. Watch for more of these booby traps. Team 1, stay near me.”
The two he sent at the front made it to the door before the machine gun could chug back toward them. They kicked open the door, and the sounds of ‘Clear!’ were soon heard echoing from inside. The firing gun was abruptly halted. A second later, the call came over the circuit, “You were right, Sir. It was on a track. Looks like it was timed to fire as soon as the snowmobile went up.”
Dirk scowled, a dark frustration penetrating even his normal, detached nature. This isn’t the work of only a few civilians doing their best. Someone showed them how to chain together a response to us. Someone coached them on advanced tactics. Gave them timings. Normal practices. Patterns of behavior.
Over the radio, more voices continued to come to him as the other two teams found the side doors and began to clear rooms. “Sitting room, clear. Library, clear. Bedroom 1, clear. Bedroom 2, clear. Kitchen, clear. Found what looks like a laboratory. Not part of the original construction. Must have been set up by them.” Then, with some urgency, “Get out! Get out! Smells like ga –!”
The end of the operatives warning vanished into static. A second later, every remaining window in the chalet blew out as another explosion rocked it on its foundation. The bomb and the sparked gas in combination with a few other carefully chosen chemicals throughout the house released violently, scouring the whole interior. Walls were blasted down, fire erupted down the corridors, and the chalet visibly shook.
Dirk growled into his radio circuit, “Scouting teams, report!”
A few groans came back. Mostly nothing. Then, one reported, “This is 5A. 5B down. No sign of Team 6.”
“4 and 7!” Dirk demanded.
“7B reporting. No sign of A. See Team 4. They’re sheltered but I think they’re fine. Radio might be scrambled.”
“Pull back,” Dirk ordered. “They’re not there. Wouldn’t have set off anything like that if anyone was still inside. Ready for pursuit.” He didn’t address the idea of caring for the fallen. That was for later, if time allowed. They had control of the scene. Police wouldn’t be allowed in until they had a chance to sanitize it. He went to another circuit, “Teams 9 through 12, bring the snowmobiles up the trail. We’ll board and continue pursuit with Team 2. Team 1, stay here with 4 and the remains of 5 and 7. Secure the scene.” He clicked over to his last circuit. “Bring the helicopter in.”
The pilot on the other end said, “Not sure what I’ll be able to see through those trees, and you know my flight time at these altitudes.”
Dirk nodded, not getting angry at the simple facts. “Sweep all the open trails. There are enough visible patches that they’ll have to cross. Even catching an occasional glimpse of them will stop them from doubling back on us.” He was grateful it wasn’t snowing. At least there will be trails to follow.
Only a dozen minutes later, the distant buzzing of their own snowmobiles had deepened into a throaty roar. A dozen of the tracked machines appeared from down the trail. The team member handled them well, despite the unfamiliar terrain. It wasn’t something they practiced often, but they all had above-average reflexes, lots of strength to muscle the machines around when needed, and the stamina to go near maximum speed and suffer through the pounding instead of slowing down.
They came to a halt nearby. Dirk and the designated teams jumped on behind the drivers. Seconds later, they powered off in pursuit of the tracks that led into the forest.
Overhead, the distant sound of a helicopter’s rotors beat the air as it began to comb the area for anyone on the run.
Chapter 12
Kyle lowered the phone down to the table in the living room of the ranch house, then said, “You’re on speaker now, Megan. Go ahead. We can all hear you now.”
“I’d ask how the mission went for all of you, but we don’t have the time. We stopped at a high point to get connectivity, but there is a helicopter out here somewhere looking for us. We need to stay under cove
r.”
Stress was clear on every face in the room. Jackie asked, her voice tight with concern, “They’ve found you?”
“Yes. At least, I hope it was. We set the traps before we left, then heard explosions and gunfire only about a half-hour later. This helicopter can’t be a coincidence, either.”
Kyle asked Jackie, “Any chance you can find out if someone more official tracked us down?”
Jackie nodded, but said, “The more I ask through official channels, the more they’re going to want a say in what we do.”
He could see the war going on inside the DOJ agent. Part of her wanted to use those official channels. The other side of her was worried, having no idea how much those channels were compromised. “I hear you. The more we give them, the more they might be feeding to the Dawn without even knowing it.” He grumbled, then shifted back to Megan, “Can you stay ahead of them?”
“We’re going to try. No snow in sight, which means we’re leaving big, huge tracks that are easy to follow. All we can do is move as fast as we can.” She sounded a little bitter at her own part in slowing them down. None of the pregnant women could right as hard or as fast as the others. They would be dictating the pace.
Kyle scrubbed at his hair, wanting to be there with them. He couldn’t protect them here! But he couldn’t get to them either! He leaned into the phone, “You hold on as long as you can. We’ll do what we can to pull them off you. I don’t know what that is, but we’ll think of something. Just keep running!”
From the background, they heard Laura call out, “They aren’t going to catch these snow bunnies!”
Kyle found a smile despite everything else. Whatever else happened, he knew they would give the people pursuing them all kinds of hell. “Stay safe. Call when you can!”
The line clicked off.
Kyle immediately looked to Jackie. “We need something to happen right now. Not a week from now. Not in February. Not next summer. What can we do in the next hour?”
Jackie was at a loss. “Even if my boss bought in completely, anyone he sent is going to be more interested in arresting the women who are all running around without implants and evading authorities.”
Chloe said, “I don’t see them getting mobilized fast enough to help, anyway. Whatever we do, it needs doing in the next two to three hours! That’s about as long as they’re going to be able to play hide-and-seek up there.”
Dazz was sitting up, trying to keep the agony from leaking into her voice as she held her arm gingerly inside its sling, isolating her shoulder from moving. “Can we go right to Lark? Threaten him? Tell him if he doesn’t back off, we’ll hit him where it hurts. We have his number from when Claire talked to him.”
Kyle gave a grim shake of his head. “You know that’ll lead to one thing, Dazz. At best, he’ll demand I turn myself in to be executed. But they won’t stop there. No way. Not after we just smashed up their camp. They know we have information that could hurt them. No matter what they promise, we can’t trust them. We’re all security risks now.”
Chloe agreed with absolute certainty, “We don’t have that right anyway.”
Catching on, Dazz’s hacker persona flared up, “Fuck, you’re right. This stuff is kryptonite against these so-called supermen. We don’t have the right to trade it away to save our necks. A lot more people would die if we let them crawl away from this and get back in the shadows.”
Jackie tried to calm them down a little. “We’ll get them. But we need to give time for the system to work. We can’t do anything too rash!”
Kyle glared at her. “Rash? They’re about to kill six people I love, Jackie! I know you have this vision of bringing them all to justice. I know you want to help. I really do! I was going to give you a shot at trying. I owed you that. But this changes everything. What if your Director is one of them? Or his boss? Or his boss? Even if one person can’t shut the whole investigation down, it wouldn’t take much to make you all run around in circles for a decade, chasing legal loopholes and arguing over who has the right to arrest who. And all that could end up being useless when some politician decides to forgive them because they are the FDPC, doing what it takes to save all of us from Persterim.”
He held up his phone. “But Yvette’s translations are clear. We know they made Persterim now! They planned this. They have the CDC in their pocket. We’re already dying while they are already reproducing. The stupid jock Fred was right after all. I’m the fucking anomaly.”
Jackie insisted, “It will still take time for them to grow! Not every ‘baseline’ will be a murderer. Not every ‘superior’ will be born as killers!”
“I’m not going to let this rot grow any further. What we need right now is a way to save Megan and the others. They need to know it’s useless to chase after them. Not in a week. Now. Right now. The only way that works is to remove the reason for chasing them.”
“Which is?” Jackie demanded.
“The fact that they know. They know the truth. If everyone knows the truth, then we aren’t any more special than everyone else.”
“You are.” Jackie pointed out. She gestured at the others around the room. “We are. They owe us blood.”
“Yeah, and we owe them some, too.” He looked more and more certain. “But all the women up there have is knowledge. Time to spread the wealth. I mean, who are we anyway to decide what to do with it? We’ve been tiptoeing around, trying to do this right. We needed more information. Well, now we have it. We need people to know there are unelected, evil, superior, eugenic assholes taking advantage of everyone. We give people all the information and let them decide how they want to deal with the fact that half their government has been fucking invaded. They aren’t propping us up and making our lives better. They’re tearing us down. They sterilized a good bunch of us! My women up in those mountains are about to pay the price for that! I’ve seen how people get tried in the court of public opinion. This time? It’s their turn.”
Dazz smirked. “Your women?”
Kyle gave her a firm, uncompromising glare. “I promised them. Every single one of them. I’d do what I could to protect them after bringing them into this.”
Her smile grew strangely soft, a look he’d never seen on her before. “I believe you.”
Jackie ignored all that, asking directly, “So, what, you want to broadcast somehow? You can’t just post it on the internet somewhere. They’d block you and rip it down before you hit ‘enter’. They’re going to be waiting for this. You need an official TV channel! A reporter with a reputation that might let them win over the editors and producers who will want to play it safe. That’ll take… well, days. Maybe longer than the DOJ!”
“We’re not going to wait. I have an idea.” Kyle was starting to smile, knowing what he was thinking was crazy. “Dazz, didn’t you say that Musk_Ox friend of yours was tech support at a broadcast company? TV?”
“Uhh, I think so. It was a guess.”
“Time to call in another favor. Let’s see if he’s willing to take this to the next level.”
Dazz snorted. “You want to take over a TV station in Olympia?”
“Not directly. If we were in a building like that, it’d be suicide. As soon as we started broadcasting, the police would be on us. Just to shut down an illegal broadcast, they’d break down the doors. Not to mention, we’d definitely be under arrest after that, and I don’t trust the cops ability to keep me alive from the FDPC. Not even if they’re in shit, they’ll find a way to kill off ‘star witnesses’ like us. I don’t feel like getting murdered in my cell.”
“So, what?”
Kyle smiled. “I have a whole new idea. Get him on the phone.” He looked to Doug. “Sorry, Sergeant. I think I might be looking to fuck up Bill’s house a bit. We’re going to do our best to keep this low-profile, but bad stuff might happen.”
Doug was watching from his place in his chair. He gave a rough laugh. “When you first told me your story, I thought you were nuttier than a squirrel before winter. Still
think you might have a screw loose or two. But whoever that was on the phone, I heard the fear in her voice. If she’s being hunted by the government without a fucking trial? Then I can’t let that stand. You can’t let your own people get hurt. Not like this. I get that. And I reckon I’m gonna help you.”
Kyle’s smile widened even further. “Glad to hear it, Sergeant. Because as it happens, I have a favor to ask you, too. If these bastards aren’t real and we’re lying… well, all it’ll cost you is a few chilly hours and the right to punch me in the jaw later at your convenience. If we’re telling the truth… well, then, it’ll be a whole other mess, and I’m going to need your help staying alive. I want you to help me set up a bit of a surprise for them.”
Doug gave a gruff laugh. “Go on, then. Tell me what ya need.”
* * *
Dirk held up a hand, signaling a halt to the small wave of snowmobiles churning through the forest. He backed that up with a call over his microphone. Standing up on the back of his sled, he peered into the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. Up in the mountains, the light died early.
But the light was still strong enough to see the tracks they were following cut sharply to the right, heading back down the slope and into the cover of the forest. That dark frustration welled up once more inside. He glared over his shoulder at the next machine, and the operative clinging to the back of the sled’s driver. “Thought you said they were making for that pass? I’ve had the helicopter hunting along the tree line up there!”
The operative was the closest they had to a wilderness expert. It wasn’t a common skill among the Dawn. Most of them were trained to be agents inside the confines of a city. “Made sense. Once they’re through that valley, they’d be able to take any number of paths into some really broken country. Or they could have stood their ground. There’s a couple spots they could have defended with some good rocky cover.”
Dirk scowled. “Except we have the helicopter, which would take that away.”