“What does Lauren have to do with it?”
“Ask her yourself. Your husband is on his way here with them. Soon this will all be over, and we will be gone into the night.”
“I just want my kids out of here.”
Susie stood upright, wincing in agonizing pain, but didn’t want to give Amina the satisfaction of seeing her stay down. She grimaced a smile and shook her head when Amina again offered the couch. Ellarose pulled at her arm and insisted she needed to tell her something.
Amina said, “You Americans are using your worldwide garrisons to assassinate anyone you like. Death by committee. Drone strike from the sky.” She held up a finger. “This person is against American interests? No problem. Gone.” She retracted the finger. “How is this possible?” The finger extended again and pointed to the ceiling. “Eyes in the sky.”
A man carrying a knapsack appeared through the door. Susie assumed it was the medic. She shook her head, I’m fine. But she wasn’t. She felt lightheaded, the room wavering in her vision. She gripped her two children to make sure she stayed upright. Ellarose tugged at her again.
“Now,” Amina said, “we poke the bully in the eye. Both eyes. Blind him. Take away all the satellites. Take away the GPS.”
“Isn’t that done? Why are you still here?”
“You think we are able to do this all on our own? Infiltrate your country like this? We have brothers and sisters all over the planet who have been under your thumb for years, under your robot eyes and killing fingers. What do you think I am still doing here? How do you still think I am here?”
The two women stared at each other for a moment, Amina smiling, Susie scowling.
Ellarose tugged and tugged on Susie’s blood-soaked yoga pants. Susie relented and leaned down. Her daughter whispered in her ear. Susie nodded and told her, okay, okay.
“You will be pleased to hear that our mission is almost complete. In one or two days, we do need to disappear,” Amina said. “The last thing we need to take from the bully is your money. Might makes right, but might comes from money in this world. We are waiting for your friends to arrive, which should be soon. As I said, this has become”—she paused to find the right word—“personal.”
“Can we go to the bathroom?” Susie said. “The kids have to go, and I do too. Ellarose is desperate. I know, I know, no funny business. Send two or three guys in with us, have them sweep it. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
Amina’s mouth opened and then closed. She said nothing.
“You want us to go right here on the floor? It’s your choice. Aren’t you making this your command post?” Susie said. “They’re scared. You know what that does to a kid’s stomach?”
Amina said something in a foreign language to the two men nearest her. They nodded, walked toward Susie and the kids, and began leading them to the upstairs bathroom.
Susie shuffled along behind her children, doing her best to look beaten and frail, which wasn’t far from the truth. But Ellarose didn’t need to go to the bathroom. What she’d whispered into Susie’s ear was that daddy was already here. He was outside, right behind her, when she was brought in. That he was invisible somehow, the men didn’t know he was here.
Was her daughter making it up? Susie made sure not to let her facial expression change as Ellarose repeated it again in a low whisper, right into her ear.
Invisible?
The barn owl, Ellarose said. When she and Chuck played Call of Duty missions and they wanted to exchange signals over headphones that only they would understand—that not even other teammates would get—they had a system of bird calls they would use to coordinate. Sparrow trilling meant to attack. The barn owl was a signal to hide. Whatever Chuck was about to do, they had to hide. The only place she could think of was the bathroom.
But how much had Chuck told Amina about this place?
And how could he have gotten here this fast? She had talked to him barely even an hour ago. These attackers had been here for less than that. How was it possible? Did she really trust Ellarose? Her daughter had a way of playing make-believe sometimes. A pattering noise came from the rooftop, but it was only the rain. Fat drops began falling on the deck outside.
In the distance, the call of a barn owl.
Amina began speaking in excited, hushed tones in a foreign language. Something was happening. They had found something. Or someone.
Susie hustled forward into the bathroom.
Chapter 23
I WATCHED AMINA, flanked by four large men in black armor and face masks, force-march Ellarose to the patio doors of the house. To our right, Archer had slipped a steel wire around the neck of the man who had pressed a hand against the invisible window and discovered us. He’d dragged the man off into the blackness of the tall grass and bushes behind the workshop.
Archer returned a moment later, just as Amina walked past the truck, which provided him cover. Instead of coming back to us, Archer took up position exactly where the man he just took out had been. Archer had on the man’s vest and armor and helmet. He nodded at Amina as she walked by with the other men.
With mounting, desperate fear, I was afraid Chuck was about to single-handedly try to take out the four men who were with Amina. As tough as he might be, he only had one good arm, and these were professionals. After the bullet he’d taken a few days before, he could barely use his left arm with the prosthetic. Chuck appeared in the underbrush to our left, the glow of his face just visible in the light of the crescent moon.
He didn’t shoot his submachine gun, though.
He cupped his hand around his mouth and mimicked a bird call.
“Is that an owl?” I whispered.
One of the men with Amina turned in Chuck’s direction. The man clicked on a flashlight and played it along the bushes. Amina said something to him and he turned the light off and rejoined the group.
“I’m going out there to help him,” Lauren whispered to me.
I held her in place. “You are not. I’ll go.”
“I’m the better shot,” my wife said.
“Exactly. You stay here in the truck. Three of these are full.” I dropped one of my submachine gun’s magazines on the seat. I had a new one loaded in my weapon. Two half-empty ones on the seat on the other side of her. “You keep the children safe. Anything happens, you take off. Stay with the senator, he’s your only family now.”
Lauren squeezed my hand. “You’re my family, Mike.”
I kissed her, lingered for an instant, then leaned over and gave Olivia a little peck.
“I’m coming too,” Luke declared.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Damon said from the front, “do it now. Amina has gone inside. Chuck looks like he might be about to dive right into the house.”
“You stay here, protect mom,” I said to Luke. “And if those drones get too close, you push the button on this.” I gave him the EMP device, now almost fully charged. “You got that?”
He nodded.
“Damon, Tyrell, are you guys really inside their network?”
I readied myself by the left side door, gripped the submachine gun, and made sure the safety was off. Out the back window of the truck, faint glows came from the men back by the Baylor driveway, still searching for whatever had made the brief commotion there a few minutes ago.
We were surrounded. And about to attack.
“We’re working on it,” Damon replied.
“You can jam their drones?”
“Might be able to do more than that.”
I gripped my weapon and closed my eyes. Opened them and looked at my family. I had to go. Susie and her kids were our family too.
“Oh, no,” Tyrell said quietly from the front.
“What?”
A faint drumming began on the rooftop of the truck.
“It’s raining.”
“Is that bad?”
“You’ll understand in a moment.”
“Mike, go,” Lauren whispered urgently.
&nb
sp; I took a deep breath, hit the door button, and slid down and out into the cool night air. The door only opened a foot. I used an elbow to quietly close it behind me. Took two crouch steps backward away from it into the bushes by the side of the gravel road. I looked at the spot I had just emerged from.
Nothing.
The light was dim, almost dark, yet I saw trees and bushes on the other side of the road, exactly where the truck was. Knowing it was there, that I was seeing an optical illusion, I could see the bending of light, as if I was looking into a carnival mirror. The trees and bushes wobbled and warped. A black line focused and quivered in the middle, where nothing should be.
“Amazing, huh?” Chuck whispered from behind me.
A wet splotch hit my face. And then another. The treetops chattered with a squall of rain. Right in front of us, the illusion was shattered. The outline of the truck’s roof became clearly visible as the rain hammered down on it, the sides now black with rivulets of water.
“Fun while it lasted,” Chuck said.
The truck reversed past us and to the side in the cover of trees. So much for invisibility.
“We better hurry.” Bent over, Chuck hustled across the gravel to Archer, who was still pretending to be the man he’d just killed. I followed.
“What was with the bird calls?” Archer asked.
Chuck explained how he used them in Call of Duty with his daughter. He told her to hide when she got inside, Chuck said. Through the rain, the red dots hovered in the distance.
“They’ve already seen us,” Archer said. “Your heat signatures. Whatever overflight capability they have, they’ve detected us by now. Maybe they’re trying to figure it out, but we have seconds till we have someone—or more likely, something—here.”
“What’s a bawbag?” Chuck asked.
“Excuse me?”
“In the car, you said bawbag. Where does that come from?”
“I spent time with a Scottish SAS unit in North Africa. A bawbag is slang for scrotum. A stupid person. What’s the plan, Chuck? I’m giving you this one. I’ll help you get your kids out, but after this, you owe me. You understand? You. Owe. Me.”
Rain dripped down Chuck’s face. “I understand.”
“You have a plan?” Archer looked back at the house and then at the sky.
“Chuck always has a plan,” I said.
Rain battered against the wooden roof. It was more of a barn. I knew Susie used it as a glassblowing workshop; that and pottery. There was a kiln in the opposite corner. The main area was open, forty feet long by thirty wide with a cement floor and cathedral ceiling twenty feet overhead. A collection of junk by the wall toward the house—old toys, rakes, a rusted antique tractor. It smelled of manure, but not from animals living here. Chuck had piled it along the south wall. For planting, he had explained when we came a few days before. A single emergency light shone near the exit door toward the main house.
“Just get in there with your hands,” Chuck said. “Pretend you’re diving in.”
I hated manure in the best of circumstances. A lifelong urban dweller, my nose crinkled and throat gagged every time we swept by a farm on the highway and I smelled the stuff. Now he wanted me to dive into it headfirst?
“I only got one good hand,” Chuck said. He was on his knees, submachine gun slung across his back, and wiping away as much manure he could with the forearm of his right hand. “Mike, stop being such a city pansy. Get in there, boy.”
Taking a deep breath, I waded into the middle of the pile of manure, dropped into it up to my chest, and began a front stroke through it.
“That’s it, Mike. Get some.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“It’s basically just mulched-up hay.”
“And the dump I took this morning used to be a ham sandwich.” I gagged.
“Mike, we gotta—”
“I got it.”
My fingers felt a handle. With every bit of strength I could muster, I pushed back the cow dung. I took hold of the handle with both hands, bent down with my legs, and hauled up.
“Attaboy,” Chuck said and joined to help me.
A yawning black hole opened in the cement floor. Chuck flopped onto his stomach in the manure and dangled his legs over the edge, then slid back and disappeared.
I checked the counter on my phone. Sixty-two seconds elapsed. Fifty-eight to go. My heart in my throat, I slipped on the manure to my rear, then dropped through the black hole. Chuck caught me.
A string of lights blinked on.
Small LEDs lined the two rough concrete walls of the seven-foot-high concrete tunnel.
“Nothing.” Chuck froze and listened. “If they knew about this, they would be shooting at us by now.”
He grabbed an aluminum ladder from the wall, extended it, and propped it up to the opening overhead. Checked it once and then twice, looked at the counter on his own phone, then hustled ahead of me.
Fifty feet farther on, the tunnel ended in another door.
Chuck unlocked it with keys he took from his pocket, then gently, gently opened the door inward. I kept my gun up and pointed over his shoulder. Voices echoed from inside, but the safe room was dark and empty.
He motioned for me to come forward. I strained to lift the metal shelves, loaded with bags of rice, away from the door. Just needed enough for us to squeeze through. Chuck stepped through first, tiptoeing into the middle of the room. The light grew brighter as we neared the entrance to the safe room, the door wide open.
Chuck stopped and looked down.
I followed his eyes.
Blood covered the floor by the entrance. Bloody footsteps led away down the hallway.
The voice became louder. I recognized the accent. That was Irena—or Amina, I corrected myself—the Chechen terrorist. Susie was explaining to her that the kids had to pee.
I checked my phone.
Eight seconds.
We padded soundlessly down the hallway, Chuck ahead of me, his weapon up. We were quiet, but somebody had to smell our stench. So much for stealth. I caught sight of Bonham and Ellarose’s little legs as the first explosion lit up the room above us.
Archer had begun his bombardment.
He had a dozen grenades and two slabs of C-4 in his backpack, he had explained outside. He could light up the front of the house, mount an assault that would get their attention, and then hightail it back into the woods. We had to pick him up a hundred yards past the Baylor turnoff, he said, and he made Chuck promise. On the lives of his children. I would never leave any man behind, Chuck had replied.
Another explosion rocked the cabin. The voices upstairs went from talking to yelling. Chuck made a hand motion. I assumed he wanted me to go up the stairs first. Great. I got onto the first step.
A bloodcurdling screech.
Susie’s scream.
Chuck bounded up the stairs past me. I cursed and jumped up after him. Susie appeared from the upstairs bathroom; her legs locked around a man’s waist. She stabbed him in the neck with something, over and over and over. I reached the edge of the floor, leveled my weapon through the gap in the guard rail, took a split second to look, and then pulled the trigger.
The recoil knocked me back.
But my guess had been correct.
Everybody up there had their attention on the explosive light show Archer had started at the back-patio doors. I sprayed the room with a stuttering hail of fire. Chuck roared and darted into the bathroom. Gunshots behind me. Susie was on the floor on top of the man she had been attacking. Figures darted in my field of vision to my left. I pulled the trigger again and showered rounds back and forth across the cabin’s interior.
Someone clapped me on the back.
“Go, go, go,” Chuck said.
A small body was gripped to his chest with his right hand. A blond head bobbed lifelessly in his arms. Susie passed by me, hobbling and dragging herself as fast as she could, with Bonham in tow behind her. I pulled the trigger and scattered
another ten rounds. Incoming fire blasted the wood and walls around me into a furious cloud of splinters and chips.
I turned and hopped down the stairs, landed and sprinted down the hallway. Grabbed the door of the safe room as I heard footsteps behind me. I slammed the door shut.
Looked at the control panel.
Pulled the switch.
Chapter 24
A THUDDING DETONATION almost blew the door off its hinges.
Even protected behind the door, the concussion’s shockwave popped my ears. A loud whining blocked out everything else. My brain lost coherence. I blinked. Dust billowed from the air gaps around the door. What was I doing here again? I had a vicious-looking weapon with a curved magazine in my right hand. The buzzing whine edged away.
Looked down.
I stood in a pool of blood.
Probably Susie’s.
Susie.
I turned to the metal rack by the back wall. A gaping opening behind it, dimly lit with a string of LEDs along the tunnel wall. Screaming. Was that Chuck? Susie? A man’s voice cursing and howling, but not in English. The screaming came from the outside of the door, half caved in beside me.
A voice in my head. In Chuck’s southern twang it said, “Get in the game, Mike.”
I blinked again. Wiped my face with the back of my left hand. Slipped in the blood. Checked the submachine gun in my right hand and stumbled toward the metal shelves.
A hollow thud on the half-wrecked entrance door. Someone was throwing their shoulder into it from the other side. I squeezed past the metal shelves loaded with rice and into the tunnel. I stopped, my entire body shaking, and took the time to concentrate and close the tunnel door behind me. Locked it. That would take them at least a few seconds to figure out.
CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3 Page 16