by Brandt Legg
This time it wasn’t below that she had to worry about. As the corridor curved, it opened into a vast hanger-like room, that was a maze of catwalks, pipes, conduit, and machinery and high above on reinforced platform four agents, and five security forces were waiting, ready, aiming. In a split second she knew the only choice was to throw the containment grenade. The risk was that it would damage some piece of equipment or rupture a vital conduit that would make shutting down the lasers impossible. If they kill us, we can’t stop it either. “Get down!” she yelled to Chase, as she tossed the ECG.
The flash cleared and she confirmed nine down.
“Are they dead?” Chase asked, getting up.
“If they aren’t, they are wishing they were.”
The noise brought two more rushing in, but they were careless and died quickly.
“There’s the door!” Chase yelled. Having enough tactical experience now, he opened it slowly allowing Wen to lead with her MP7.
“Clear,” she announced.
She escorted him to the top where the vehicle was, kissed him, fearing she might never see him again, then made her way back down the steps. They both knew his attempts to insert the override module would be futile if they lost the control room.
Seventy-Six
Mechanicsville, Virginia - April 3rd - 4:19 pm
Chase looked down what was now seventy-feet to the depths of the silo. The heat threatened to overpower him. In a sudden flash, he imagined cooking to death in the seemingly bottomless shaft. What an awful way to die.
He pulled on the harness, since the vehicle would not move until it was locked around him. Engaging the tiny motor that he was depending on, the cage jolted, crawling lower. He felt like a hot dog being broiled. Chase studied the shaft, there would be no way to climb up or down if the vehicle stopped, the walls were just too hot.
“Hey, come on, come on,” he muttered impatiently, not because the unbearable heat penetrated to his core, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Tu and that each second was precious.
Finally, the vehicle jerked as it hit the programmed stop. Sweat dripping down his face, Chase pushed the button to release his harness.
He wanted to yell to Wen, wondering if she’d made it back yet, but didn’t dare risk it. If someone else was in the control room, they could kill him easily. However, it would require great effort to see him if they didn’t know he was there. I’ll find her after.
The insertion would be simple now with full access from the silo. The ALESSEN almost slipped from his sweaty hands. Deep breath. Relax. Relax.
He carefully pressed the ALESSEN in place, heard the click and then rotated it clockwise forty-five degrees. A tone rang out indicating a successful process. Chase exhaled. Time to go back up.
He pressed the keys on the control and waited for the vehicle to engage. I’m not sure I can survive the sixty seconds or so it’s going to take to reach the platform.
Then he thought about navigating his way back down to the control room without Wen. “I’d like to talk to the idiot engineer who designed this system,” he muttered. “But then they probably weren’t expecting to have to do this process.”
Every inch seemed like a strain for the vehicle. His mind returned to the idea of cooking to death. Finally, as the vehicle got within a few feet of the top he felt momentarily safe, since he thought he could climb to the platform if he had to, but that turned out not to be necessary as the machine did what it was designed to do, and he silently thanked the engineers he had cursed moments earlier.
Getting to the room, he was relieved to find it still empty. Back out in the corridor, he quickly retraced the route they had taken and saw several extra bodies on the floor. Evidence Wen had come this way.
A few minutes later he found her waiting behind the vault door with a Chinese man wearing a white coat. The flash of elation on Wen’s face upon seeing Chase, told him that she’d been extra worried this time. He figured she had returned to the control room slower than she should have, to make sure the way would be clear for him.
“Who is this?” Chase asked, as the three of them rushed into the control room and locked the vault door.
“He was being escorted by three MSS agents, so I knew he was important and took him.”
Chase didn’t need to ask what happened to the three agents. “Where were they taking him.”
“Detainment,” Wen replied. “Apparently, he’s one of the top engineers here. He told me that his superiors are crazy, that they are trying to destroy Washington, but he thinks they will end up destroying the world. He believes Beijing doesn’t understand the forces they are unleashing.”
“I can’t argue with him there.” Chase looked at the time. “Does he know the protocols and sequence?”
She asked him in Mandarin.
The man answered in Mandarin.
“He says he does.”
“Tell him that we’ve inserted a new ALESSEN.”
She told him. The man looked confused.
Chase led him over to the instrument column, then described how he inserted the ALESSEN, pointing to the various parts of the column, even demonstrating with his arms how he rode the cage down.
“You cannot do that,” he said in broken English. His face contorted from confusion to terror.
“Why not?”
“No good.”
Wen asked him in Mandarin what the problem was.
She translated his answer. “He says, that within thirty minutes of a full initiation, any attempt to override . . . you cannot do.”
The man’s eyes teared.
“Why?” Chase asked again. “What’s going to happen?”
“This stops energy,” he said. “It is pyramid.”
“Yes, pyramid.”
“Now all force, the power . . . ” he said, then switched back to speaking Mandarin.
“He says all the energy stays here,” Wen said.
“Good that’s what we want to save Washington,” Chase said. “Save all the people.”
“Yes, but . . . make full-load meltdown.”
“Oh my god!” Chase looked at the engineer, and could see he was now crying. “You mean?”
“We all die.”
“How can we stop it?”
“No stop.”
Chase looked at the clock, and thought of the helicopter. “We have thirteen minutes. We can still escape.”
“Not enough time.”
Seventy-Seven
Washington, DC – April 3rd – 4:20 pm
Tu looked at the research again. It confirmed what he already thought. “The Russians don’t have the technology to build the Death Star,” he muttered, while pulling up another screen. “Only one country could make a weapon such as this. China.”
He called The Astronaut. There was no answer. He tried Chase and Wen. Nothing.
He sent an urgent message to one of his colleagues in the think tank asking them to find out if the Russian and Chinese ambassadors were in Washington. Then he went on to research the Mechanicsville facility.
Ever since he’d been copied in on Wen’s text to The Astronaut he had been scouring the internet, government data bases and the dark net for any information on the mysterious industrial park. All the waivers for construction, component histories, material deliveries, recorded manifests, and personnel records pointed to the Chinese not the Russians.
“Come on Astronaut,” he said, as the phone went to voicemail again. “We need satellite imaging. We need to know what’s going on there right now.”
He kept digging, hoping to find what kind of deliveries were made, any incriminating images, official records . . . a smoking gun. “I need more time!”
He received a text back from his colleague. “Both the Russian ambassador and the Chinese ambassador are out of the country. And oddly, many key personnel from both nation’s diplomatic corps are also absent.”
That information didn’t necessarily point to China exclusively, however it made him more convinced t
hat this was a Chinese operation. It made sense China would want their key people out of the country when they destroyed a city.
Desperate, Tu circumvented the think tank’s firewall, and routed to an outside server through a series of global hops. He was risking detection by using the techniques The Astronaut had taught him. He recalled his mentor’s warning, “Never access Ghost Dragon or Heaven from where you live.”
The ultra-classified intelligence networks run by the Chinese and US, respectively, were dangerous and convoluted. “A world where one can enter and never come out,” The Astronaut had cautioned, attempting to impress on Tu that the ramifications of treading in those realms could be brutal and far reaching. “World ending.”
Getting in and navigating Ghost Dragon was much more complicated and time consuming than he thought, but eventually he found his way deep into the forbidden secret network. Using the facility’s address and entering key components related to the laser weapon, he was able to gather additional circumstantial evidence and inconclusive proof connecting Chinese firms. Now I am positive.
He tried The Astronaut again. Still no answer. Both Chase and Wen’s phones came up out-of-range. Trying not to worry about the three of them, he called the only other person he could think of. Tess Federgreen.
It took him a while to get through to her and while waiting, he calmed himself and rehearsed his delivery. Grown-ups don’t normally believe children, on things like this, especially when they are hysterical.”
Tess finally came on the line.
“My name is Tu. I belong with Chase and Wen and . . . ”
“I know who you are, Tu,” Tess said, trying to sound pleasant. “It’s a very busy time, do you have some information about Chase and Wen?”
“Operation Blackout, is not from the Russians. It is China, they are framing Russia. It is China behind destroying the city, I am certain of it.”
Tess knew of Tu’s genetically modified super-intelligence, and that he was a star participant at the leading think tank on Asian affairs. She also understood Chase, Wen, and The Astronaut kept him involved in their activities. Still, with everything on the line, a million lives, the future . . . she couldn’t just take his word for it. “What proof do you have?”
He rattled off a list of reasons and ended with a plea. “It is China, it is always China. They have gone too far this time. I know it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, then ended the call. Tess knew the President was minutes away from launching a preemptive strike against Russia. Tess closed her eyes. She believed Tu. All along it hadn’t felt right to her that Russia would make this kind of move.
Tess called the president and told him she had new intelligence that it was actually China behind Blackout. She didn’t dare tell him it was from a “kid.”
The president was relieved to pause. “A preemptive strike against Russia is about the most dangerous thing a president can do.”
“You can always launch,” Tess said. “We may still find a way to stop this thing.
“But I can’t un-launch,” he said.
Tess knew the extra breathing room from the president didn’t stop the clock, but Tu had given her an address and now there was at least some hope.
Washington, DC - April 3rd - 4:28 pm
The Astronaut muttered a continuous loop of everyone he knew who was involved in the unfolding catastrophe. “Wen, Chase, Tu, Zu mu . . . every few minutes or so . . . he repeated the names in a hypnotic mantra. After almost forty minutes of that repetition, he added the name Tess Federgreen and ten minutes later he came out of it. “I need to call Tess Federgreen!”
Fortunately for him, he was being held by DARPA. The agency’s secret black ops division had traced Skyenor’s phone and taken The Astronaut as an accessory to the director’s murder, among other pending charges.
The woman behind the glass was Coco’s deputy and knew her boss was with Tess at that very moment inside PEOC.
DARPA had had a day. In addition to picking up the Astronaut, the agency’s operatives had been scrubbing data from the dead scientists’ secure network positions, tracking satellites capable of Blackout participation, and upon orders from Coco, they staged the prison suicide of a former DARPA employee, Rod Irwin. “We can’t have that snake slithering around out in the world,” Coco had said upon learning of the deal to spring him.
However Coco’s deputy believed the Astronaut was different, and she got in touch with her boss at PEOC, who in turn informed Tess that they had Nash in custody.
Tess took the call.
“It’s Norfolk,” The Astronaut yelled. “The facility is outside Richmond.”
“Are you sure it’s Norfolk?” Tess asked.
Analysts listening in on the call checked their calculations.
“Yes, yes. Chase and Wen are there now. They need you to send IT-Squads, the army, air force, everyone!”
“They’ve been on stand-by. I’m sending them now.”
“There is still time.”
“Yes.” Tess simultaneously gave the orders to take the facility and then told DARPA to release Nash. “Wait, I’m being told it’s more likely Washington,” she said.
“It could be . . . ” The Astronaut said, thinking through the coordinates and radius overlays. Then he remembered Tu. “I have to save Tu!”
Seventy-Eight
Mechanicsville, Virginia - April 3rd - 4:30 pm
“I cannot stop the energy, it is too far into process,” the engineer said, as if ashamed. “This safety feature. It cannot shut down. Energy must go somewhere. It will go here.”
“I understand,” Chase said. “But—”
“We will be dead in twelve minutes twenty-two seconds.” He looked at Chase and Wen, his frightened expressions that of a condemned man.
“But we saved the city,” Wen said. “The laser pyramid . . . it will not launch against Washington?”
“City safe.”
“We have a helicopter on the roof.”
The engineer shook his head. “Look.” He pointed to a bank of monitors showing security zones. Chase quickly found the one displaying the still smoldering tangled black carcass of their helicopter.
“Cars?” Wen asked.
“Too far, take us fifteen minutes just to get to them. Another ten to drive far enough away from the blast.”
“There must be a way,” Wen said.
Chase fiddled with his multi-tool, wondering what wiring he could cut, what screw he could turn, to stop the fury about to consume them.
“Not worry,” the engineer said. “It is instant death. We will not feel. It happens so fast, so powerful.”
“Screw that,” Chase said. “Let’s go!”
Washington, DC – April 3rd – 4:33 pm
Tu looked at his calculations again, and held back tears. “Zu mu,” he called out. “Zu mu!”
“What’s wrong?”
“The Death Star . . . Washington is Alderaan,” he said, referring the mystical Star Wars planet destroyed by Darth Vader.
“What?”
“The laser pyramid, that Chase and Wen and The Astronaut have been looking for . . . It’s going to destroy Washington, tonight! We’re going to die!”
“No, sweet boy, do not worry. Chase and Wen will save us.”
Mechanicsville, Virginia – April 3rd – 4:34 pm
A loud warning buzzer wailed as Wen, Chase and the engineer ran toward the closest exit. “It’s futile!” the engineer yelled above the insentient electronic caterwaul.
Neither Chase nor Wen responded. They’d had the debate, there was nothing left to do but try. Every fifty feet a red flashing light warned of the impending end of the world. They had encountered two other groups of civilian employees fleeing, but otherwise they were rushing through an industrial ghost town. They navigated the endless catwalks, conduits, pipes, and multiple-layers across levels of machinery that only the engineer understood.
“It’s a damned maze,” Chase said following the
engineer, but looking at the facility’s plans on his tablet.
“Wen Sung! Chase Malone!”
Hearing their names shouted, and echoing amongst the laser factory, like an avant-garde fusion forge seemed suddenly even more eerie, a scientific tomb. It also stopped them cold.
“IT-Squad?” Chase said. “They made it!”
Wen wanted to believe that but the use of their last names and the fact she could not see who had called them, made her think otherwise. “Identify yourselves!” she yelled, while moving to cover. “Get down!” she hissed to Chase and the engineer.
“There’s no time to get down,” the engineer said, an instant before the bullet penetrated his skull.
“They call me Spinx,” Anatoly yelled. “And I’m tired of chasing you all over the damned city, and now I had to come all the way down to this god-forsaken part of the Confederacy just to kill you.”
Chase looked at Wen as if to say, they were going to die anyway.
“Why do you want to kill us?” She asked, still not sure where he was.
He laughed. “It’s my job.”
“You’re Russian.”
“Yes, sorry about my accent.”
“But this is a Chinese facility.”
“So they own everything, but they pay well.”
“This guy obviously doesn’t know the place is about to blow up,” Chase whispered.
Then Wen got a visual. “You killed Skyenor.”
“Yes, you admire my work? Or are you just upset you couldn’t stop me?”
“Behind us,” Wen whispered to Chase. “He’s stalling so his guys can get behind us.”
Chase turned to cover the rear.
“You’re just a hired gun,” Wen yelled, inching forward. “You’re nothing special. “Did you hunt down an unarmed, defenseless man in the dark two nights ago?”
“Maybe. I might have been taking in the sights. The Lincoln Memorial is pretty at night.”