A Subtle Agency

by Graeme Rodaughan

  There is a dangerous undercurrent here.

  James put the car into gear, rolling forward into the Sunday afternoon traffic and proceeded down Bedford Street toward the warehouse.

  ‘Time to nail this mission,’ he said as he spotted a shady tree just near the entrance to the car park and decided that would be a perfect spot to park and wait for the Shadowstone forces to arrive and deploy.

  And pin their Order of Thoth hides to the wall.

  * * *

  Stepping away from the steel door, Anton entered the cool of the warehouse.

  Gang drove a thick steel bolt home to lock the door, smiling broadly, he clapped him on the shoulder. Li threw her arms around his neck, crushing herself against him.

  Li suddenly released him, stepping back, she hit him hard on the shoulder.

  ‘Ow!’ Anton exclaimed.

  ‘What took you so long?’

  Anton grinned ruefully, ‘Li, you really know how to make a guy feel welcomed.’

  Li’s eyes narrowed.

  Anton rubbed his shoulder, ‘I had a run in with the BPD and had to make sure that they weren’t following me. I’m pretty sure that I gave them the slip.’

  Li tilted her head, unimpressed with his excuse.

  Anton noticed that Gang and Li, were both dressed in army surplus combat fatigues, with webbing that supported modern weapons and a scabbard for their swords slung over their shoulders.

  ‘Looks like you’re expecting company?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gang replied, ‘we have been preparing since we arrived here. When you were delayed, we suspected that Shadowstone must have found you. You may have evaded the Boston police today, but it is highly unlikely that you have evaded Shadowstone, they almost certainly know that we are here by now.’

  Anton pursed his lips with disappointment.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, there was only a slim chance that we would get away cleanly once we were discovered at the Noodle House.’

  ‘If Shadowstone and the vampires arrive in force, isn’t this place a death trap, why don’t we move out while we can? We could keep moving, and escape the city.’

  ‘We already have an agreement with Francis Mirovar to meet here tonight, moving in the open light of day exposes us in multiple ways to detection by Shadowstone. If we get caught out in the open, and there is a pitched battle, a lot of innocent people will get hurt or killed, and you know the principles of the Order.’

  ‘Don’t kill the innocent.’

  ‘We are the aware ones; we have the ability to make a free choice to put ourselves in harms way. They do not.’

  Anton nodded, looking around, they were hemmed in by stacked shipping containers. Hanging from the ceiling thirty yards above his head was a heavy framework of steel girders that supported a crane, dangling steel cables, giant hooks - and a fully loaded container. He followed the line of the rails that the crane ran on and they went to the very ends of the warehouse, outside the front and back walls.

  Along the long wall and above the side door that he had just come through were a set of mezzanine levels, with offices, utility rooms, and bathrooms. Half way along the wall was a diesel-electric power backup plant. Sets of steel stairwells rose up to the mezzanine floors, and from the top level, maintenance walkways spanned across the roof and gave access to the cranes and their rails.

  I might have to fight here.

  ‘Okay Gang, so how does this place work?’ Anton asked, pointing to the mezzanines, ‘what’s the view like from up there?’

  ‘Excellent questions,’ Gang said, ‘follow me. Li and I have been busy.’

  Gang led Anton and Li up the stairs to the first Mezzanine level, pointing out the various equipment and utility rooms, and the backup diesel power generator on the ground floor beneath them.

  ‘This warehouse was built in the Cold War era, it has backup supplies for power and water, and the walls and roof are steel reinforced stone masonry.’

  From the first mezzanine level, Anton could just see over the top of the stacked containers, he could see that there was a second crane running on identical rails parallel with the first crane, but able to cover the far side of the warehouse. It too supported a large container. He also saw that at the front end of the warehouse were a pair of large sliding steel doors aligned with the cranes, which if open, could easily allow two semi-trailers to sit side by side and be loaded with shipping containers by the cranes.

  Anton craned his head, looking up at the second mezzanine level.

  ‘Let’s go up to the next level,’ Gang continued. ‘You will be able to see precisely what we have done while you were playing with the BPD.’

  ‘Yeah, Okay,’ Anton said, following Gang and Li up to the next level. They walked along for about twenty yards before they came to a series of offices. One had lights on and an open door. Gang led them to it, turned and waved broadly toward the warehouse floor.

  ‘Look at the floor and tell me what you see?’

  Anton looked out and down across the warehouse. There were hundreds of the big steel shipping containers. He could see that the containers had all been stacked in pairs, one on top of the other to create a massive maze of nineteen-foot-high steel walls. The longest straight lines were about forty yards.

  ‘It’s a giant maze.’

  Anton pointed at the two containers that were suspended high in the air by cranes near the main entrance, ‘looks like they would fit neatly into holes in the maze.’

  Gang grinned, ‘well spotted. If dropped at the right time, we can box some people into some very tight corners.’

  ‘It won’t stop vampires.’

  ‘Yes - it won’t stop them or slow them down. They will simply run along the top of the maze. Which brings us to the gantry cranes and the maintenance walkways.’

  Pointing out several key intersections in the maintenance walkways that tracked the gantry crane rails, Gang said, ‘there at the front, half way along, and just before the exits at the dock are excellent locations to place a variety of tricks to distract our foes.’

  ‘What sort of tricks?’

  ‘Pyrotechnics mostly - good for hazing the battlefield.’

  Anton was amazed.

  ‘This whole site is a honey trap for vampires,’ Gang continued. ‘This is an Order site, designed by your grandfather and developed and maintained since the mid-1990s for the purpose of collecting a large group of vampires into one location and then destroying them.’

  ‘Can we do the same with just the three of us?’

  ‘That’s not the aim today. We only have to survive long enough for the Order to arrive so we can exfiltrate with them.’

  Turning, Gang led Anton into the office. Li sat at a desk, her fingers flashing skillfully over a keyboard. In front of her was a wide rack of eight separate monitors showing camera feeds from the outside of the warehouse and a pair of monitors displaying command line computer screens.

  ‘Is this where you control the cranes? Isn’t that going to lock you into one spot?’

  Li turned, smiling, she lifted up her smartphone and pressed some icons on its surface. Anton heard the nearest crane rumble and he spun around - it was already moving.

  ‘They’re on an internal network with a secured WIFI router, that we can ping with the phones. I rewrote the SCADA code controlling the cranes, they will drop their loads based on a WIFI connect request. I select this command on my mobile, and a tenth of a second later the container on the right will drop; if I select another command, the one on the left will drop. Father’s mobile is set up the same.’

  Gang smiled wickedly, waving his smartphone.

  ‘You can write SCADA code?’ Anton said.

  ‘I’ve just graduated from MIT, Maths and Computer Science, I started an accelerated study program at sixteen.’

  ‘That’s awesome,’ Anton said, impressed by her achievement.

  I’ve been wasting my time. Li and I are almost the same age, and she’s finished her first degree.

&nb
sp; ‘I spent my time playing sports, collecting varsity letters and getting an Icy Hockey scholarship, I think that what you have done is amazing.’

  Li smiled, blushed and laughed, ‘thanks, Anton. Let me show you what all this does.’

  Taking a seat next to her, Anton listened carefully as Li explained the details of how the warehouse operated and the locations of the various traps that seemed to litter the building.

  * * *

  Louise Wesson pushed up from her prone position after the call from James Haley ended, quickly packing away her scopes into her combat surveillance kit bag.

  She had mounted the industrial fuel storage tower to attain her current observation point overlooking the abandoned warehouse and had sweltered in the summer sun for the last three hours. She had changed into urban camouflage patterned combat fatigues before mounting the tower, her infiltration of the site hadn’t involved killing anyone, but there was one security guard who would probably lose his job for drinking alcohol on duty and falling asleep at his post. The drugged dart that she had fired into his neck was completely biodegradable and would disappear with the only remaining trace of its existence a blood alcohol reading that was similar to drinking a bottle of whiskey in an hour. When he woke his memory of the twenty-four hours before the dart would be very hazy and confused at best, and non-existent at worst. The darts were just another trick that Shadowstone had up their sleeve to maintain operational security.

  She voice activated her smartphone. The phone dialed a voice conference number for the troop leaders within the three Nightfalcon helicopters waiting at Logan Airport. Once the call connected, the men identified themselves.

  ‘The mission is on. Get yourselves in the air now. Red-1 and Blue-5 bring your teams into the carpark on the city side of the warehouse, Green-4 take the end of the dock on the Mystic River and hold it. Gentleman, this is a cordon operation. We take and hold a position, and enforce a line that no one crosses, is that understood.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ The men replied.

  The Green-4 troop leader asked a question, ‘Ma’am, what are the rules of engagement on this operation?’

  ‘Standard engagement model for a cordon, don’t shoot unless the targets fire first.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Any other questions?’

  ‘No, Ma’am,’ they all answered.

  ‘You have your orders.’ Louise said, disconnecting the call.

  With her kit bag packed, Louise carried an FN P90 submachine gun slung over her right shoulder, and a Glock 9mm holstered at her hip. Wiping away the perspiration from her forehead, she adjusted her cap over her straight brown hair, put on mirrored sunglasses and descended the long metal staircase that spiraled down and around the tower. In ninety seconds she had reached the ground. Hefting the kit bag over her shoulder, she lifted her speed, making for the car park half a mile away. She anticipated that she would be at the entrance in less than five minutes.

  Loping easily through the industrial estate, Louise reflected on the last twenty-four hours.

  Events are coming to a head. I’m still alive, I haven’t been purged by James Haley, which is a good sign. The Order of Thoth operatives are in the warehouse, which with three heavily armed Nightfalcon gunships and nearly fifty fully armed Shadowstone operatives inbound looks like nothing less than a death trap for them.

  A trace of doubt lurked at the back of her mind.

  These Order of Thoth operatives are exceptional, we know so little about them, or their combat techniques.

  A quote from Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War, came to mind on the topic of knowing your enemy.

  “If you know others and know yourself, you will win every battle; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will lose every single battle.”

  She felt confident that she understood the capabilities of the Shadowstone operatives that were coming to the warehouse, but of the Order of Thoth, she knew next to nothing.

  We are about to flip a coin, and the outcome will be uncertain.

  Louise hated uncertainty.

  She ran on, reaching the edge of the car park. She saw James Haley’s car parked under the shade of a large tree near the entrance to the carpark. He was standing next to his car, still wearing his suit, smoking a cigarette and carrying a full military spec assault rifle with a red dot laser sight and an under barrel grenade launcher.

  Louise slowed to a walk to cover the final few yards. She scanned the horizon, in moments three black specks resolved into view and rapidly expanded into the oncoming Nightfalcons. Each helicopter was armed with eight laser-guided Hellfire III, and eight Stinger II missiles, an M134 Minigun at the waist, and a pair of triple-barreled GAU-19B .50 Caliber machine guns on fixed mounts beneath the cockpit. Each one carried a full troop of sixteen fully armed Shadowstone operatives, all highly skilled ex-members of various Special Forces, the CIA, and the NSA. A heavily armed, superbly equipped, tough, skilled and disciplined para-military force.

  Louise frowned, how many are going to survive tonight?

  The heavy roar of the helicopters’ jet turbines shattered the afternoon air as they split formation to come into land. Two came to a halt in the car park and the third came to rest at the end of the dock.

  Louise shielded her face from the backwash of the rotor blades as she watched armored Shadowstone operatives stream from the helicopters in four man squads, deploying to form a perimeter around the warehouse. In less than three minutes there was a ring of armed men ready to kill anyone who might attempt to cross their line.

  Louise glanced at James Haley, he grinned confidently at her, his face lit with a fierce desire.

  She turned and studied the forbidding massiveness of the warehouse.

  This place reeks of secrets - we will be lucky to survive tonight.

  She checked her P90 submachine gun, ejected the standard clip and loaded a fifty round strip of high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds from her kit bag. She added three spare clips of the same premium ammunition, and four anti-personal fragmentation grenades to pouches on her combat webbing. She checked the communications links with the four spectrum teams on site and the red, blue, green and indigo squad leaders all reported in.

  A sardonic smile curled her lips, her eyes becoming flint like.

  If tonight is going to be my last, let’s make sure it’s a memorable one.

  * * *

  Li was the first to hear it.

  ‘Helicopters,’ Li said, swiveling in her chair to face the direction that the sound was coming from.

  ‘... Yes,’ Gang replied. ‘Nightfalcons.’

  ‘Shadowstone?’ Anton asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Gang said, ‘they’re here.’

  The monitors linked to the external CCTV cameras provided a clear view of the warehouse surrounds. They watched the helicopters land and the Shadowstone troops begin to deploy to form a perimeter.

  ‘Why haven’t they taken out our cameras?’ Anton asked.

  ‘A good question,’ Gang paused for a moment, studying the displays. ‘Looks like a cordon. They’re here to stop us leaving. They probably are forbidden from attacking us - for now.’

  Li turned away from the monitors and said, ‘three helicopter gunships and nearly fifty troops, all in combat armor and carrying assault rifles with grenade launchers. There are at least three snipers with .50 caliber rifles. From what I can see, the helicopters have two fixed, heavy caliber miniguns in the hull, a waist mount M134 minigun, and Hellfire and Stinger missiles.’

  ‘I have not heard of Shadowstone doing this before,’ Gang said. ‘They are armed for war.’

  Anton shook his head with disappointment, ‘they followed me here.’

  ‘Spilled milk,’ Li said.

  ‘Don’t worry Anton, we are prepared for this possibility. Li stay here and keep watch, I will show Anton what I showed you earlier,’ Gang said. ‘Follow me, Anton now is the time for you t
o pick up arms.’

  Gang led Anton back down to the warehouse floor and over to an open shipping container. Nearby were thick chains and a heavy padlock that was half a foot across.

  ‘Anton, this was prepared by your grandfather, he gave me the key to this container when I last saw him and he told me about its contents.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Gang said as he entered the container.

  Anton heard him rummaging about for a moment, he emerged with a large military grade lock box which he sat down on the floor in front of Anton.

  ‘Look here,’ Gang said, flipping open the lid.

  Inside the box were five multi-barreled grenade launchers, each had been daubed with paint, two were blue, two were red, and the last one was white.

  ‘These are modified Milkor MGLs, they carry six 40x46mm caliber grenades and have an auto-fire mode that will shoot at a rate of three grenades per second. The blue ones are loaded with grenades that have a hundred and ten pure silver flechettes. They are an excellent weapon against vampires, a lot like firing a giant shotgun round without the recoil. The red ones carry a standard high-explosive round with a shaped charge that is best against a vehicle, and can also be used as an anti-personal weapon versus humans or vampires. The white is a thermobaric round - big explosion, lots of heat, and absolutely lethal within the blast radius.’

  ‘So which one should I use?’ Anton asked excitedly.

  ‘OMG! None of them,’ Gang said. ‘You don’t have enough training for these.’

  Gang walked back into the container and came out carrying a long thick barreled gun with a large magazine in one hand, in the other he had a much smaller submachine gun. He gave both weapons to Anton.

  Gang pointed to the large gun and said, ‘this is an AA-12 automatic shotgun with a thirty-two round magazine. It’s good up to about a hundred yards, and excellent in this sort of environment.’