by Steven James
If Natasha and Jake stayed at the Moonbeam while Lien-hua and I went to Sean’s place, it would give us a strategic, two-pronged approach for searching the region both for the Eco-Tech people that Alexei had told me about and for Kayla Tatum and Donnie Pickron, who, as far as we knew, might both still be alive somewhere.
“That might not be a bad idea,” I said. “We should all be able to cram inside the cruiser.”
“Amber’s car is here too.”
“Okay.”
Lien-hua went to tell the desk clerk that two rooms had just become available—mine and Amber’s—and I went to touch base with Jake and then grab my things.
67
Solstice peered into the sedan. She envisioned something from a Get Smart or a James Bond movie, with a seat that would flip backward and then shoot the driver through a chute that led to a secret high-tech military base.
It wasn’t quite like that.
Not quite.
“All right,” Solstice said to Donnie. “You’re on.”
“I don’t have my keycard,” he said. “I’ve been telling you that—”
“There’s an override. Right before the retinal scan.” She told him the access code she’d gotten from Chekov, that he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg. “Type it in.”
“How did you . . . ?”
“We have your wife and daughter,” she said irritably, “and we will not hesitate to kill them if we need to. Now get us into the base.”
Still in handcuffs, Donnie climbed into the driver’s seat and flipped down the windshield sun shade. A key dropped into his lap, and, though the car was on cement blocks, he slipped it into the ignition. When he turned the key, rather than the engine starting, the radio flipped around in the console, revealing a numbered keypad. He typed in the code, and the car’s trunk clicked open.
Solstice studied the concrete. “Where is it?”
Donnie pointed to one of the uniform rectangles formed by the cracks near the front of the car.
“We go in two groups,” she called. “Eclipse, Tempest, Cyclone, you’re with me. Squall too. Tempest, bring Donnie over when he’s done.”
The crack that outlined the rectangle was nearly a centimeter wide. Solstice had been a little worried about the width, but it looked big enough to allow the web router’s relay line to pass through. She was prepared to deal with things either way, but it would make everything a lot simpler, of course, if her team could remain online the whole time while they were in the base. She tested her weight on the section of concrete. It felt as solid and ungiving as the rest of the floor.
While she waited for the people she’d just called to gather, Donnie, guarded by Tempest, went to the car’s trunk, rooted around beneath the carpet until he came out with another key, then returned to the driver’s seat. When he inserted this one into the ignition, a small light came on in the lower corner of the dashboard, and he stared into it while a small laser scanner swept across his retinas.
Cyclone connected the comm line to one of the legs of the workbench, then unreeled it and brought the remaining coil of wire to the concrete slab beside the car.
When the retinal scan was down, Solstice heard the deep grinding sound of giant gears crunching against each other.
Slowly, the slab began to lower.
The initial incursion team packed in around her on the platform.
Tempest grabbed the keys and manhandled Donnie onto the platform, which was beginning its methodical, controlled descent through the maintenance building’s floor.
As the slab lowered, rough cement walls appeared on each side of them, with one wall showing the reticulated steel track that supported whatever beam or cantilever rested beneath their concrete platform.
When Solstice tipped her light down the narrow slit between the edge of the slab and the shaft walls, she saw only uninterrupted darkness stretching into the earth.
The communication relay line trailed above them, snaking up through the opening. Squall, the slim man who’d counted the money that Chekov had brought to the meeting yesterday, watched it nervously. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get cut when the opening closes.”
“It won’t get cut,” Cyclone assured him.
Solstice wasn’t quite so sure.
After they’d descended about fifteen feet, she shone her light up and saw another concrete puncheon, identical in size to the one on which they stood, and supported on long, sturdy hydraulic arms, unfold from the side of the shaft and rise to cover the opening. The comm relay line was pressed to the side, but threaded comfortably through the crack between the second concrete barrier and the rest of the maintenance building’s floor.
It appeared to be fine.
Cyclone checked her equipment. “Good to go.”
“All right,” Solstice said. “There’ll be at least one Master-at-Arms waiting for us in the entry bay.” She spoke rapidly, restating what she’d briefed them about earlier in the day. “The others should be down on the command level. But be ready. There’s a small arms locker in the crew quarters, and it’s possible the warfare information officers will be armed as well. And don’t forget about the MA who’s off-duty.”
As they descended, Eclipse and Tempest readied their AR-15s. Everyone else pulled out Tasers or sidearms. Solstice unholstered her FN Five-SeveN single-action autoloading pistol—fifty-meter range, twenty-round magazine firing a 5.7x28 mm cartridge. A nice little package.
“Remember, I want them alive, if at all possible.”
Cyclone recalibrated the portable tactical radio frequency jammer so that whoever they might encounter on the top level of the base would not be able to communicate with the other sentries throughout the facility.
They were now about fifty feet down, just over halfway.
A few moments later, a sliver of light emerged in the narrow space between one side of the slab and the wall. Solstice already knew that the other three walls would remain closed off, just like in a real elevator.
The thin strip of light grew brighter as they neared the bottom of the shaft.
“Donnie, you don’t say a word,” she warned. “We’ll do the talking.”
As they finally edged past the end of the shaft, light spread around them, and the cavernous room on the top level of the base came into view.
Solstice called out, “Set down your weapons, we have Lieutenant Commander Pickron!”
“Run!” Donnie yelled suddenly. “Get the—”
Solstice swung her sidearm violently at him, a harsh pistol-whip to the side of the head. He dropped to the concrete like a spent cartridge.
A sole Master-at-Arms stood twenty feet away with his sidearm drawn, a look of shock on his face. “Put down your weapons!” he yelled unconvincingly.
The slab settled onto the ground.
Whatever the MA might have been expecting, it was undoubtably not a team of people holding his friend at gunpoint. And it was almost certainly not having two assault rifles with laser sights aimed at his chest.
He looked at Donnie. “Commander.” His voice cracked. “You all right?”
“He’s fine,” Solstice answered.
The MA turned his gaze to the semiautomatic in Tempest’s hands. “Let him go,” he managed to say, but his voice was faltering, uncertain. Solstice wondered how someone this easily rattled had ever gotten this assignment.
“Set down your weapon,” she told him firmly. Donnie had pushed himself to his knees, and now she pressed the barrel of her FN Five-SeveN to his forehead. “Or I’ll make you watch him die. I’ll give you five seconds.”
Donnie squeezed his eyes shut. Trembled in fear.
While Solstice waited for the MA to comply, she took in the cavernous room.
It was an octagonal Spartan chamber twelve feet high, sixty feet across. Lit by fluorescent lights and supported by a dozen thick concrete columns, the space reminded her of the lower level of a parking garage. The eight tunnels containing the electromagnetic transmission nodes merged with the
entry bay, fingering out in all directions, one from each wall. Thick cables snaked down each of the tunnels.
Solstice noted narrow gauge railroad tracks in two of the tunnels, and based on the orientation to the elevator shaft, she calculated that the one on the left would be her escape route. In addition to the tunnels, a stairwell to her right led to the second level of the base. A nearby utility closet housed the hydraulic lines and machinery override for the concrete freight elevator and power supply relay station for the transmission nodes.
Bypassing a countdown and not really wanting to let on that she was bluffing about killing Donnie right now, she nodded toward the MA and told Tempest, “Take him.”
The former Marine slipped his AR-15 around his back on its shoulder sling and moved unflinchingly toward the MA. “Set down your weapon and you won’t get hurt.”
The man wore a radio on his belt, but it had an attachment with the speaker mic clipped to the front of his shirt collar beside his chin. As Tempest approached him, the guy went for his radio. Tempest kicked the gun from his hand, then spun and smashed his face with the heel of his other foot. The MA went down hard. Only then did Tempest tase him.
He let it go on for a while.
At last he cuffed the dazed man.
“Why didn’t you tase him first?” Squall asked.
“What’s the fun in that?”
Solstice was really beginning to like this guy and realized she should have used him against Chekov rather than that useless thug Clifton White.
Well. Live and learn.
She turned to Donnie Pickron, who was still on the ground, a deep gash seeping blood down his forehead.
“Pick him up,” she told Eclipse, who brusquely yanked Donnie to his feet, held him in front of her in an iron grip.
“I told you not to cry out,” Solstice said to Donnie. “Not to try to alert them.” She raised her sidearm, held it to his head for a long satisfying moment, then lowered it and pulled out her phone. “You just killed your wife.”
“No!” Donnie struggled to get free, but Eclipse held him fast. “Don’t!”
“Gag him.” Squall stepped forward and obeyed. Solstice gestured toward the MA. “Him as well.”
Squall pulled out another gag.
“Cover the passageways,” Solstice ordered. “Tempest, get the stairwell. Cyclone, set up the comm relay so we can call out on our cell phones.” Cyclone looked at her curiously, but after a wink from Solstice, she bent over the dials and a moment later nodded toward her.
Donnie was staring desperately at the phone, shaking his head, trying in vain to pull free from Eclipse.
While everyone took their positions, Solstice tapped at the cell’s screen. Of course she wasn’t really calling out, but Donnie either didn’t realize that or wasn’t thinking clearly.
“I told you earlier that I am not a woman of idle threats.”
He was trying to cry out beneath his gag.
She spoke into her phone, to the empty air, “Do it. Yes. The wife.” She held the phone to Donnie’s ear so he could hear the recorded gunshot, and when he did, his eyes went wide with terror. Then she turned the screen so he could see the video she’d taken on Thursday of Ardis’s body lying dead on the steps. Donnie’s strength failed him and his legs gave way. He would’ve dropped to the ground if Eclipse hadn’t been supporting him.
“Lizzie will also die unless you do what we brought you here to do. Now, do you understand?”
Distraught, grief-stricken, broken, he nodded. He closed his eyes.
She glanced toward the MA, who now lay gagged with his hands bound behind him with plastic ties. She relieved him of his radio, then had Cyclone go to the override panel and release the cover platform above the shaft and send the elevator back up for the rest of the team.
Although the base itself wasn’t large, she knew that the tunnels surrounding her stretched for miles to accommodate the 1,100 four-foot long, graphene-based ultra-capacitors driven into the bedrock to produce the electromagnetic signal that the twenty-eight-miles’ worth of aboveground lines had delivered until they were removed back in 2004.
A few moments later the other team members arrived in the entry bay.
Stepped out of the shaft.
“Squall, Cane,” said Solstice, “get the two prisoners. Most likely, the other MAs will reconvene in the control room when they don’t hear from their buddy. I don’t want to have to wander around looking for them. We wait until they try to radio him, then we move. Cyclone, readjust the RF jammer so we can hear when they try to contact him.” She indicated toward the stairwell. “Tempest, Eclipse, you’re on lead.”
The team members posted themselves where they could cover all the entrances to the tunnels and waited for the green light from their leader. She didn’t realize it, but part of the reason for their unswerving loyalty was the news Squall had secretly shared with them earlier that afternoon: that in truth Dana Murkowski was not just their leader, she was the one who had planned everything from the beginning.
Valkyrie.
A person who would not put up with things being mishandled.
We pulled into the driveway and parked beside Sean’s pickup truck.
I reviewed—Amber’s snowmobile was still at the hospital, Lien-hua’s rental was out of the picture, Tessa’s rental was at Lindberg’s Bar near Hayward.
Well, at least we still had the cruiser, Sean’s pickup, and Amber’s Subaru here at the house in case we needed them.
We trekked through the snow to the door.
Sean and Amber had two spare bedrooms, one of which Sean’s son Andy used when he visited in the summers. I chose that room, and Tessa and Lien-hua agreed to share the other one, which was also the room where Tessa had slept last night.
They trooped down the hall, and I went to put my things away.
68
Not a shot fired.
And although Solstice didn’t mind violence when it served a necessary purpose, she was glad for the lack of fatalities, because keeping all the hostages alive for the time being gave her more options as things moved toward the 9:00 deadline when the sub would finally be in position.
Tempest and Eclipse found the other two on-duty MAs waiting for them in the control room, almost as if the men had attended Solstice’s meeting earlier in the day and positioned themselves precisely where she needed them to be in order to make it easiest for her team to subdue them.
After a brief standoff, her people disarmed and restrained them, located the off-duty MA waiting to ambush them in the crew quarters, and took him down as well.
The four Navy information warfare officers who were manning the base had raided their small arms locker but hadn’t had the opportunity to use their weapons once.
And now they weren’t going to get the chance.
All eight naval personnel had been herded into the recreation room, where they now lay, gagged and securely bound.
Solstice posted Eclipse with a semiautomatic rifle to keep an eye on them, just as she’d planned, and then, to slow down any potential law enforcement or Bureau response, she sent Cirrus and Squall to disable the rudimentary freight elevator they’d ridden down. She made it clear she wanted the slab covering the top, barring entry to the shaft.
“How will we get out when we’re done?” Squall asked her.
“I’ve got that covered,” she assured him. “There’s a room beside the elevator, all the machinery is in there. Do what you have to do.”
As a testament to their belief in her, the two men obeyed without any further questions or need for explanation.
Now on the lower level, she gazed around the control room at the display boards, computers, HDTV and plasma monitors, stylish glass desks, and holographic cryptogram decoding stations. Yes, this was more like it—a stark contrast to the austere Cold War appearance of the upper level. That place had reminded her of a concrete crypt; this room looked a lot more like a twenty-first-century military communication center.
&nb
sp; She sat Donnie down at one of the keyboards, flipped open her laptop, connected it to their system. He looked like he was in shock at the death of his wife, still completely unaware that she’d already been dead more than forty-eight hours.
When Solstice removed his gag, he didn’t resist, pull away, respond. She bent and spoke softly into his ear. “All right. Let’s get started.”
Tessa, Lien-hua, and I finished getting situated in our respective rooms while Sean removed his two deer heads and mounted muskie from the living room wall and put them in the garage so Tessa wouldn’t be freaked out. Amber threw together some leftovers, and we all gathered in the kitchen and ate in a somewhat subdued silence.
When we were done, Tessa migrated downstairs to the TV room, carrying a book that at first appeared to be a Gideon Bible from the motel, but I realized I had to be mistaken; I couldn’t imagine her reading a Holy Bible, let alone taking one from the Moonbeam. Amber and Sean went to work on the dishes, Lien-hua disappeared into her room to work on her profiles and follow up on Natasha and Jake’s progress, and I set up a workstation in Andy’s room.
Outside my window, in the light migrating around the corner of the house from the porch, I could see that the falling snow was coming down in a frenzy again. As the wind writhed over the roof, some snow ascended in updrafts, while other flakes rushed sideways in the storm, not so much falling as skirting parallel to the ground. It was as if the storm had caught its breath and was panting forward into the night with a renewed sense of purpose and urgency.
As I flipped open my computer, Amber showed up at my door, holding two bottles of medication and a roll of athletic tape. I’d learned my lesson last night, and this time, rather than end up alone with her in the room, I met her in the hall.
She handed me the tape and one of the bottles, which I now saw was Advil. “For your ankle,” she said.