Task Force

by Brian Falkner

  The equipment pod lay open on the deck, and the team was helping themselves to weapons and ammunition. They were dressed in the uniforms of the Bzadian ship’s crew. That crew—some conscious, some naked, all resentful—were secured inside and out of sight.

  Wilton snorted as he took an ammunition pack for his coil-gun. “We might as well throw rocks at them,” he said.

  The others grunted in agreement.

  The success of the first Angel mission at Uluru had not been kept quiet for long. Nor had the second, a rescue mission on the island of Hokkaido in Japan.

  Rumors had started spreading through the military, and within weeks it was common knowledge in the Free Territories that teams of teenage soldiers were engaged in missions behind enemy lines. What the human public didn’t know was the extent to which the Angels and Demons had gone to disguise themselves as Bzadians. Nor the extensive training they had received in Bzadian languages and customs.

  But the knowledge of the Angel Team caused an uproar in the free media. Child Soldiers! roared one conservative newspaper. Babes in Arms! declared another.

  The outcry from left-wing groups had been so great that ACOG had been forced to issue only nonlethal weapons to the Angel and Demon teams.

  “The human race is on the verge of extinction and they won’t let us fight with real guns?” Wilton said.

  “Clearly it is better to be dead than risk being politically incorrect,” Barnard said.

  “I agree, but we’re going to have to live with it,” Chisnall said.

  Their coil-guns were real, but their ammunition was not. Instead of metal-jacketed bullets, the Angels had “puffer” pellets. Made of a compacted powder, they disintegrated on impact with body armor, instantly vaporizing into a cloud of particles. The thump of the bullet on chest armor was powerful enough to knock the wind out of the target’s lungs. As they gasped air back in, they breathed in the particles. They were unconscious before they realized they’d been shot.

  The Angels’ sidearms also were loaded with puffers. They were M9 pistols, human weapons, because the Bzadian needle-guns could not take a puffer pellet.

  Both types of weapon were silenced. The M9s had a long dimpled tube screwed onto the end of the barrel, while the coil-guns had lowered the speed of the projectiles so they didn’t break the sound barrier on the way out of the barrel. They could be dialed back up later if need be, but for this part of the mission, stealth and silence were all-important.

  The only other weapon the Angels were officially allowed (other than smoke and stun grenades) was K-122 spray. A simple aerosol spray in a pressurized can, it contained a chemical that had little effect on humans but caused a crippling paralysis to Bzadians. It lasted for hours, leaving them conscious but unable to move a muscle. It smelled of peppermint and had been nicknamed Puke spray.

  Wilton loaded a clip of puffer bullets into his coil-gun and checked the action, sliding it back and forth a few times. It was more of a habit than a necessity. Bzadian guns never jammed.

  “I heard one of the Demons say they were going to exchange the puffers for real ammunition as soon as they hit dry land,” he said.

  “They can do what they like. We’re not,” Chisnall said.

  “Puffers aren’t that bad,” Barnard said. “You can hit Bzadian body armor two or three times with metal bullets and they still keep on shooting at you. Hit them once in the right spot with a puffer, and they’re down. Not permanently, but long enough.”

  “Yeah, but you gotta hit them in exactly the right spot,” Wilton said.

  “Since when has this been a problem for you?” Barnard asked.

  “Since, I dunno, never,” Wilton admitted.

  Chisnall smiled. Wilton’s reputation as a sharpshooter was widespread. It was said that he could shoot the eye out of a fast-moving eagle at five hundred meters and then shoot out the other eye.

  “In any case, orders are orders,” Chisnall said.

  About a hundred feet into the mangrove swamp, Price hit firm ground—a track that led into the heart of the island.

  After a quick debate with herself, she decided to take it. There might be alarms or booby traps along the track, but her progress through the swamp was so slow that she wasn’t going to make it to the complex before the ship reached the wharf if she didn’t find a faster way. The track was dead straight and seemed clear. It headed due east, toward the northernmost of the two geodesic radar spheres.

  A six-foot-high razor-wire fence marked the point where the swamp met solid ground. It was marked with Bzadian high-voltage symbols. Behind the fence was a line of trees. The ground was damp from the previous day’s rain, and one of the fence posts was fizzing and sparking as the water reacted with the surging electric current.

  With time slipping away, Price skirted along the fence until she found a branch that grew out over the fence. She tossed her equipment bag up and over the branch, keeping a hold on its long cord and catching it lightly on the other side. She twisted the two ends of the cord together, then hauled herself up until she could stretch out and lock her fingers on to the branch. A few seconds later, she was shimmying down the trunk of the tree, on the other side of the fence. She was right below the radar dome and could hear the swishing of the antenna inside the brightly lit sphere on top of the hill. She moved up to it, a short, easy climb, staying in the tree line lest the glow from the sphere reveal her to any observers.

  From the peak of the hill she could see the lights of the ship, already halfway to the wharf on the western side of the island.

  “I’m inside the perimeter,” she murmured on her comm.

  “Quick … can,” Chisnall said. “We’ve … and rounded the … approaching …”

  The comm cut in and out, and Price realized the powerful radar antenna above her was interfering with the signal from the low-powered comm radio.

  “I can go faster,” she said. “But not if you don’t want me to be seen.”

  “Don’t … seen,” Chisnall said.

  It was 23:43. She had less than seven minutes. She made her way through an olive grove, the branches leafy and full of fruit at this time of year. Old stone buildings rose out of the ground in front of her, roofless and crumbled, the ruins of a prison. Price moved like a ghost, flitting from shadow to shadow, with slow movements that would not catch the eye.

  Below, in a small dip in the center of the island, she could see the complex of buildings that was the SONRAD station. They had all studied the satellite images. It was a modular Bzadian design. A cluster of domes, connected by plastic tubes in a shape that ACOG had nicknamed the “turtle.” The turtle’s body—the largest dome—was in the center and probably housed the administration offices, according to the satellite analysis experts. The turtle’s legs—the four smaller domes—were supplies storage, power plant, equipment, and a vehicle garage. The turtle’s head housed the sonar equipment and operators. The entrance to the complex was via the tail, a small security pod to the south.

  The island’s personnel was a mixture of security staff, operators who manned the radar and sonar scopes, and technicians who kept the place running smoothly.

  Price cut silently through the decayed prison toward the lights of the shiny round alien buildings beyond, staying in shadows, moving to a slow beat.

  The first sign she had of the security patrol was a light swaying through the olive grove behind her, flickering on the stones. She froze, pressing herself into a corner of a crumbled cell block. Phantom soldiers appeared through the olive grove, invisible behind their flashlights. Price made no movement, praying they would skirt around the old prison.

  Her prayers were not answered.

  Chisnall looked over at the island. Success or failure at this stage of the operation depended on his Angel Team. And his leadership. If the mission failed, it would be on his head. It wasn’t a matter of pride or ego. It was the future of the human race that rode on his shoulders.

  When he’d returned from Uluru, they had called
him a hero.

  He hadn’t felt like one.

  They said he had discovered, and then destroyed, the secret of Uluru.

  But all he could see were the faces of the young mothers he had killed. The breeding “machines” producing crops of babies to grow up to be Bzadian spies. That they were just shells, brain-dead “vegetables,” made it worse somehow, not better. They were innocents, like newborn children, not knowing or understanding the fate Chisnall had condemned them to.

  “Price, hurry the hell up,” he murmured, but only to himself.

  Price held her breath as the security patrol passed in front of her. Two of them. The first a female, equipped with night-vision goggles, a coil-gun holstered on her back. Another soldier followed, a male.

  The guards seemed alert, but not on alert. A routine patrol.

  Price slipped the can of Puke spray out of her belt. As they passed, she followed them, using their sounds to disguise her own.

  They passed the corner of a large building. The second patrol member turned, perhaps hearing a tiny sound or just somehow sensing a presence behind him. Price saw the movement in his neck and ducked back around the corner, behind a pile of stones, sinking into a pool of darkness.

  The soldier paused, waiting, listening. He took a step toward Price and played his flashlight around the broken stone blocks. Another step. Now he was right alongside Price, but his light was aimed at a few bushes by the chimney behind them.

  Just when Price thought he was going to move on, the beam dropped right in her eyes. The soldier jumped, startled, and opened his mouth to shout. He never got the chance. The air he inhaled was loaded with Puke spray and his tongue and vocal cords froze. His hand was reaching for his coil-gun but got only halfway there before he slumped on legs that were no longer his own.

  Price caught him and lowered him to the ground. It would have been completely silent had his coil-gun not clattered on a fragment of broken stone.

  “Quazig?” A voice sounded from around the corner of the building.

  Price vaulted over the low wall of the ruin, into the old building, and out through the remains of a window on the other side, emerging behind the second guard as she returned to look for her colleague.

  “Quazig?” Dust and small insects made vivid bright spots in the air as the soldier’s flashlight rounded the corner, illuminating her comrade, motionless on the ground. Her gun jumped over her shoulder into her arms. She rushed over and kneeled beside him, checking his vital signs.

  Price sensed her confusion. There were no physical marks on the soldier, and he was clearly conscious, but unmoving. She slipped behind the female soldier, as still and silent as the night. She blew softly onto the soldier’s ear. The Bzadian shook her head and brushed at her ear as if annoyed by an insect.

  The male’s eyes flicked to Price’s face, then back to his comrade’s. His mouth quivered as he tried to warn her.

  Price blew again, a little harder, and the Bzadian turned her head. Her eyes opened in shock and Price caught her as she dropped with a face full of spray.

  With a quick glance around, Price dragged the motionless figures into the interior of the old stone ruin.

  She hovered for a moment over the female soldier. Her eyes remained open, and she was breathing steadily. Her mouth moved a little—her forked tongue extending and quivering as if she wanted to say something—but she made no sound.

  Price took her own Bzadian uniform out of her pack. She stripped off her wet suit, standing naked over the paralyzed guards, and reflected that if anyone came out of the buildings at that moment, it would seem a very odd scene. The guards glared at her but could do nothing else as Price quickly dressed. Her face was streaked with mud, and she wiped it off as best as she could.

  Price walked casually toward the complex of buildings, as if she had every right to be there. She skirted around the first dome—the head of the turtle—then past the two smaller domes on the left side of the facility, to the tail, the entranceway to the complex. Through the open main doorway, she could see a security desk. Two guards sat there while another stood by the door.

  Price frowned. Her target was the plant room, the left front leg of the turtle-shaped complex. But to get there she would have to get through the security pod. That wasn’t going to be easy.

  Out on the water, the lights of the ship were approaching the wharf.

  A circular door slid open in the smaller dome to her right and a Land Rover roared out, followed by another, both with top-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns. Price slipped through a line of trees and saw them emerge onto a road that led down the hill, heading for the wharf.

  “Angel Two to Angel One,” she hissed urgently, but got only static for a reply.

  “Angel Two to Angel One,” she repeated. “Heavy Bzadian presence heading your way. How copy?”

  Chisnall’s voice came back in bite-sized chunks.

  “No copy … Pr … peat.”

  As she watched, the vehicles reached the end of the spit and proceeded out along the wharf.

  “LT, something has spooked the Pukes,” she said. “Be prepared for a hostile reception!”

  There was no reply but static, and she glanced up in frustration at the geodesic sphere above her. Through the trees she saw the semicircular door to the vehicle dome begin to close.

  She swore under her breath and began to run toward the dome. There was nothing more she could do, except get on with her own job. Whatever happened at the wharf was up to Chisnall.

  She reached the door with seconds to spare, dropped to the ground, and rolled underneath, her silenced pistol ready in her hand as the door slammed shut behind her.

  A Bzadian standing behind a control desk glanced at her in confusion.

  “What did you shut the door for?” Price asked.

  “But …”

  “And what are you still doing here?” Price asked, taking a few steps closer to the guard. “You’re supposed to be at the front entrance.”

  “No, my orders are to …” He stopped, seeming to sense that something, somehow, was very wrong. He reached for a button on the wall.

  A puff of smoke exploded from his chest and his voice gagged in his throat. He slumped forward onto the desk and then slid unconscious to the floor.

  Price holstered her pistol and trotted through the vehicle garage. The open garage door had been a stroke of luck. She opened the door to the large tube that led to the central building. It was lit by long strips of fluorescent lights. A door at the far end led into the main dome. She stepped inside.

  “Looks like we’ve got company,” the Tsar said. He was on the small deck at the rear of the bridge, watching the island through binoculars. “Two vehicles approaching the wharf.”

  The wharf was a long strip that ran out from the end of the island. It was a basic wooden construction, empty except for a speedboat about halfway along—the boat that brought the change of shift to the island. That meant both the previous security detail and the new shift were still on the island. But Chisnall could not wait for them to leave. There simply was no time. He switched his attention to the vehicles, two Land Rovers that were hurrying down the winding road from the top of the island.

  “We’re not going to take any chances,” he said. “What’s your status, Wilton?”

  “Angel Four in position,” Wilton reported in. He was lying on the roof of the bridge, in a shadow by the radar mast. His coil-gun might have been loaded with only puffers, but at that range Wilton would be able to put one on the breastbone of any enemy soldier he wanted.

  “Tsar, Barnard, keep your weapons out of sight but within easy reach,” Chisnall said. “I’ll play captain and talk to the Pukes when we dock.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” the Tsar said. “I kind of have a knack for this stuff. Then if it starts getting hairy, I can say I have to check with my captain.”

  Chisnall hesitated. He wasn’t sure he trusted the Tsar. But he also didn’t want the Tsar to know that.

/>   “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Too easy,” the Tsar said. “I once …”

  He launched into a story about a past mission. A perilous trek through the Chukchi Peninsula, evaluating the military buildup there, right under the noses of the Bzadians. Chisnall smiled in all the right places, but he wasn’t really listening. He was watching the Tsar. Evaluating him.

  He seems confident—too confident, Chisnall thought.

  Monster noticed it, too, and caught Chisnall’s eye. Not for the first time, Chisnall wondered about Hokkaido. The details of the mission were sealed. But they were about to find out what the Tsar was really like when bullets started flying.

  “Okay, do it,” Chisnall said.

  Barnard stood on the rear deck, pretending to inspect some equipment. She seemed calm and collected. If one of them was a traitor, they would have to show their stripes soon.

  Chisnall went inside and sat at the controls of the Bushmaster. He used a joystick to position a target indicator on the first Land Rover and locked it in as “Target A.” The second Land Rover became “Target B.” The weapon station would hold those targets even if they moved.

  Monster, true to his word, brought the ship close up alongside the jetty. He ran the engines in reverse until the ship came to a complete halt a few yards away.

  “A little closer might be better,” Chisnall murmured.

  “Not finished yet,” Monster said, and pressed a few buttons on the controls.

  A mild humming sound came from somewhere belowdecks and the ship began to drift closer to the wharf.

  Chisnall raised an eyebrow.

  “Magnetic mooring,” Monster said. The ship came to a halt with a small thud that vibrated through the deck.

  “Smooth as baby’s bottom,” Monster said with a grin.

  Chisnall nodded. “Okay, what happens when you want to leave?”