“Clear for ten more yards,” Eugene murmured. He glanced over the plastic five-gallon jug at the burly man next to him. “Now is probably a good time to slip out and make your way to the OP.”
Jarrod nodded and opened the door. He didn’t wait for the SUV to stop before rendering himself invisible and stepping outside. Eugene stole a glance out the window, expecting to see grass parting or leaves being crushed beneath Jarrod’s invisible feet, but he saw no sign of movement. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tiny radio headset floating from tree to tree like a flying squirrel.
“What do you think the odds are that he’ll listen this time?” Eugene grumbled.
“Five-to-one,” Yuri said.
Eli shook his head. “Fifty-to-one, minimum.”
“I hope you’re both wrong.” Eugene squinted at the screen as a circular object came into view. “Hold up, Yuri.”
The SUV came to an abrupt stop, giving Eugene time to adjust the sensor and scrutinize the buried object. “There’s something in the road ahead—not big enough to be a mine, but definitely some sort of tech.”
“May I?” Eli asked, shifting in his seat.
Eugene nodded and placed the tablet in the operative’s open palm. Eli studied the screen for several seconds then handed it back.
“It’s a pressure-sensitive perimeter alert system. DARPA tech—or at least it used to be. It’s safe to say they know we’re here, and they probably have known since we first left the hardball road.”
Eugene grimaced. “Fantastic. Well, there’s not much we can do about it now. Keep rolling, Yuri, and stay sharp. Be ready to whip this thing around so we can get the minigun up. If they’re using next-gen perimeter sensors, then I doubt they’ll hesitate to use experimental weapons.”
Yuri nodded and gripped the steering wheel tighter. The SUV rolled onward, easing through switchbacks and pausing when buried trash appeared on the sensor display. After the team rounded a tight curve, a long, single-story building came into view. The structure was unremarkable with straight walls and a single apex at the center of the gently sloping roof. There were no windows and one set of double doors that looked wide enough to drive a truck through. Only one security camera was visible, though others were undoubtedly concealed nearby. The area surrounding the building was flat and covered with golf ball-sized rocks, and the guards were conspicuously absent.
Eugene keyed up his radio. “Boogeyman, this is Jaeger. See anything?”
“Negative. But I can hear movement inside the building. A tracked vehicle is approaching the front door.”
Eugene’s imagination conjured a tank, complete with a 120mm smoothbore gun. “Everyone out of the truck. Now.”
Yuri swerved, bringing the SUV to a stop with the side windows facing the building. The team jumped out and took cover behind the axles, aiming their rifles through the gap beneath the vehicle.
The twin doors opened, and a squat, box-shaped vehicle passed into the afternoon sunlight. Eugene leveled his rifle, centering his reticle on the unmanned ground vehicle. With his left hand, he gripped the computer tablet and tossed it to Eli. “Fire up the minigun. I don’t know what that thing is, but I want it gone.”
“Roger, just give me a second to…” There was a tapping noise, and Eli said, “Crap. It’s jamming our signal. I can’t establish a connection.” Eugene glanced back through his optic and noticed that the electronically illuminated reticle had begun to flicker. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Yuri, you have a thermite grenade on you?”
“I sure do,” he replied.
“Good. When Eli and I start shooting, I want you to light that thing up like the Fourth of July.”
“Got it.”
Eugene took a deep breath, steadied his aim, and began pulling the trigger. The concussion of his rifle rebounded off the vehicle’s undercarriage, making his teeth chatter. He set his jaw and kept firing until his magazine was empty. As he dropped the empty mag and slammed a fresh one into place, Yuri jumped to his feet and pulled the pin on a thermite grenade. But as his arm swung forward, he cried out in pain. The grenade landed ten feet short of the unmanned vehicle, bursting into a ball of white flames. Yuri dropped to his knees, gripping his face in his hands.
“What happened?” Eugene shouted.
“I—I don’t know.” The medic took a deep breath and shook his head. “As soon as I stood up, my face felt like it was on fire.”
Eugene glanced at the boxy vehicle. A rectangular antenna had sprung up from the top of the vehicle and was aimed in Yuri’s direction.
“It’s an ADS!” Eli yelled.
Eugene squeezed the trigger three times, sending his rounds straight into the antenna, then shouted, “A what?”
“Active Denial System.” Eli squeezed off four shots of his own. “It’s a directed energy weapon meant for crowd dispersal. It’s supposed to be non-lethal, but I get the feeling this thing isn’t a standard model.”
Eugene emptied the rest of his magazine, watching in horror as the antenna turned toward him. In an instant, his vision blurred, and he felt like his eyes were boiling in his skull. Swearing loudly, he ducked behind the axle and covered his face with his hands. Despite his armor, his right leg began to heat up until it felt like someone was holding a blowtorch against his shin. He tucked his knees under his chest, using the SUV’s rear wheel as a shield.
Eli and Yuri began to scream. They huddled together behind the front wheel, but there wasn’t enough cover for both of them.
Eugene felt a scorching sensation at his elbow, and he tucked his arms against his sides. In the brief moments of silence between the screams of his teammates, he heard the crunch of gravel beneath rubber treads. The ADS was moving toward them. Soon, it would have a clear line of sight, and they would all be burned alive.
He mashed the button on his radio. “Jarrod! Where the hell are you?”
Jarrod was already moving when the call came through the radio. He sprinted across the gravel lot and launched himself into the air. He landed on top of the unmanned vehicle, gripped the antenna with both hands, and pulled. Sparks flashed as steel bolts tore free and cables began to snap, then Eli and Yuri suddenly stopped screaming.
The boxy vehicle rolled back and forth on its treads—blinded and impotent. Jarrod tossed the antenna aside, dismounted, and strode toward the double doors. There was a scraping sound, and the doors began to close. Behind him, Eugene was calling for the team to regroup. But Jarrod ignored the command. The Katharos agents inside the building had deployed the barbaric weapon against his teammates. And he would make them pay.
“Jarrod, fall back. You hear me?”
Jarrod pulled off his headset and tossed it aside. It clicked against the gravel as he stepped through the doorway. Then the heavy doors snapped shut.
The wide corridor stretched nearly fifty feet ahead of him. It was deserted, and a trio of multi-spectral cameras hummed as they focused in on him. A moment later, two panels dropped away from the wall, each bearing a .50 caliber machine gun mounted to a rotating turret. The muzzles flashed and a deafening roar shook the hallway. But the armor-piercing projectiles passed through empty air before impacting the doors beyond.
Jarrod bounced from floor to wall and back again, gaining ground on the machine guns with every leap. He drew the metamaterial on his left hand into a twelve-inch spike and spiraled through the air, slashing the gun on the left as he passed by. When he hit the floor, he dug his right hand into the concrete floor, arresting his momentum. Pushing off with his toes, he slid toward the remaining gun, flipping onto his back as he went. When he was directly beneath the turret, he drove the spike on his left hand into the base of the platform. The metamaterial pierced the machine gun’s underside, tearing apart the bolt assembly.
The black spike dissolved, returning to its semi-liquid state, and Jarrod stood. He marched slowly toward the center of the building, and as he went, he manipulated the armor on his face to create a hideous mask. Horn
s appeared where his eyes had been, and his jaw dropped away from his skull—the mandible lined with triangular teeth. With a thought, he released blooms of red pigment into his armor, making the horns and teeth appear slick with blood.
“I am coming for you,” he said in a bestial voice. “I can taste your fear. Your regret. But I will show you no mercy.”
He reached another set of doors and launched a powerful kick at their center. The steel deadbolts shredded on impact and clattered across the floor as the doors flew open. Jarrod took a deep breath and turned right, following a secondary hallway into a large storage room. The walls were lined with racks of experimental rifles, shotguns, grenades, and rocket launchers. Suits of exoskeleton armor and more unmanned vehicles stood dormant in rows around the edges of the room. There were more machine guns mounted to the ceiling at the center of the room, and a titanium desk beneath them. The blue light of a holographic display glowed a few inches above the desk.
The guns on the ceiling tracked Jarrod’s movement as he crossed the room, but they didn’t fire. He circled the desk and glanced at the hologram. The words Engage Target? were displayed in the center. Jarrod shifted his gaze to the floor, where two men lay in a pool of blood. They had matching exit wounds in the backs of their skulls, and one still had the barrel of a pistol in his mouth.
Jarrod held his hands an inch above the desk. A virtual keyboard appeared—its keys large enough for the operator to type in commands while wearing gloves. He typed in “no,” then brought up a list of security measures. Several, including poison gas, weaponized drones, and bullet-proof barricades, had not been activated. Jarrod made sure all defenses were switched to “off” and typed in a command to open the front doors. Satisfied, he turned off the display and sat on the edge of the desk with his palms resting on his thighs.
Two minutes passed before Yuri, Eli, and Eugene entered the room. The barrels of their weapons swept back and forth, and they took cautious steps.
Eugene poked the barrel of his rifle past the desk, and his shoulders slumped. He shook his head and glared at Jarrod. “Our primary objective was to take prisoners. You can’t interrogate dead people, Jarrod.”
“I didn’t touch them.”
The team leader wrinkled his nose. “Semantics. The point is, you should have followed my orders. If Yuri and Eli had taken the lead, these goons probably wouldn’t have felt the need to suck-start their pistols.”
“If Yuri and Eli took the lead, they would both be dead.”
Eugene studied him for a long moment. “We’ll discuss this later.” He turned around and made eye-contact with Eli. “Take a look at this computer. Yuri, I want you to stand watch at the front door. Jarrod…” Eugene closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Just…don’t move. I don’t know if I want to hug you or strangle you.”
As Yuri made his way to his post and Eli settled in at the desk, Eugene surveyed the room and said, “I’m going to see if I can find a blanket or something to cover up the bodies. Eli, gather as much Intel as you can, but make it quick. The CIA can handle the rest. The sooner we get home, the better.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I need a beer and a long, hot shower.” Favoring his injured ankle, he limped around the room in a half-circle. It didn’t take long to find a tarp that he could use to cover the corpses. He dragged it toward the desk and draped it over the dead Katharos agents, then he withdrew his secure phone from a pouch on his tactical vest.
As he dialed San’s number and held the phone to his ear, he glanced at Jarrod and frowned. Jarrod was still sitting on the end of the desk, as motionless as a paperweight. “I’ve told you before—act normal when you’re around me,” Eugene said. “Normal people move around.”
Jarrod’s shoulders relaxed, and his knees shifted in and out as if following the rhythm of a song in his head. He crossed his arms and let his gaze wander absently around the room.
“That’s better.”
The call connected with a soft click, and San’s voice came through. “Hello?”
Eugene held the phone tighter, reacting to the concern in the director’s tone. “Hey, it’s me. I’m just checking in. The building is secure and no one is hurt. None of our people, anyway.”
San exhaled slowly. “That’s a relief. Did you secure any prisoners?”
Eugene cast a sideways glance at Jarrod. “Unfortunately, no.”
“That’s alright. As long as you and your team are safe, I count it as a win.”
Eugene paused long enough to make it clear he was changing the subject. “Are you okay, boss? You sound worried.”
“I’m fine. Everyone here is fine.” There was a long moment of silence. “But…Janson is gone. Wagner helped her escape.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, and his mind raced as he tried to sort out the ramifications. It was bad news; Janson wouldn’t receive the help she needed on the outside. But the unfortunate turn of events was largely inconsequential to his current mission. “We’ll deal with them later. Right now, our focus needs to be on tracking Katharos bio-weapons. And we’ve secured a computer terminal that might point us in the right direction. Can you get in touch with the director of the CIA? We need a team to lock this place down and search for Intel.”
“I’ll get right on it. Oh, and one more thing. Our…house guest claims she’s ready to cooperate. She’s been begging to talk to you for the past three hours.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Eugene glanced past Eli at the holographic screen. “But the fact that she’s desperate is a good sign. I’ll start the interrogation when we get back.”
San bid him farewell, and Eugene ended the call. He took a step closer to Jarrod and draped an arm over his rock-like shoulders. “I’m going to need your help with something when we get back. Something special.”
28
Hillcrest Trauma and Rehabilitation Center
Baltimore, Maryland
Audrey Stokes paced circles around the tiny room—if it could be called a room. It was no more than ten feet long and roughly half that distance across. There was no furniture, no television, no stimulation of any kind. There wasn’t even a toilet—just a janitorial sink at the far end. Urinating in the sink was humiliating, but washing down her own feces with the attached rubber hose was almost more than she could bear. She could tolerate unimaginable pain and was all but immune to psychological manipulation, but she had a weakness. Boredom.
She could cope with torture and interrogation because it offered a challenge for her to overcome and people for her to manipulate. Sitting alone, on the hard floor, in the dark, was worse than anything she could have imagined. And they hadn’t even given her food!
She had lost track of time within hours of her arrival. Her best estimate, based on when she became tired or thirsty, was that she had been in the windowless closet for a week, though it easily could have been half or twice that duration. The first night—or whatever night it was when she fell asleep—she had stripped off her clothes to use them as a pillow. When she awoke, she had dressed herself and spent at least three hours screaming at whatever cameras were close enough to hear her. The second day, her routine was about the same, but she only screamed half as long. The third day, she didn’t bother to get dressed and didn’t scream at all. By the end of what she guessed to be a week, she spent every waking minute weeping into the crack beneath the sliding door, begging to talk to Eugene.
She had told herself the sobs were all a ruse—a ploy cooked up by her unstimulated mind to convince someone to visit her. But deep down, she wasn’t sure. Was it possible that she was losing her mind, that they had broken her simply by denying her the attention she desperately craved?
The thought that she had let them get under her skin disgusted her. Clenching her right hand into a fist, she lashed out, punching the concrete wall. A lightning bolt of pain shot up her arm, and she savored the sensation. She rubbed her knuckles with her other hand, and her fingers came away sticky. She stuck the bloodied digits in her m
outh, and her eyes rolled back in her head. The coppery liquid was more delicious than anything she had ever tasted. Gripping her hand, she squeezed the skin into a lump and sucked on the wound. Any stimulation of her senses—even the taste of her own blood—was better than the mind-numbing sameness.
She punched the wall again then scraped her knuckles hard against the rough surface. She was rewarded with a trickle of warm liquid, and she gulped it down. After repeating the process twice more, she felt a rolling sensation in her stomach. She dropped onto her hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the sink, then retched loudly. Waves of pain washed over her, and she held on to them as long as possible. The taste of blood and acidic bile lingered in her mouth, and she licked her lips slowly.
Settling onto the cold floor, she blinked her eyes, feeling the flutter of her eyelashes. Then suddenly, she stopped and stared at the wall. Was this what it felt like to go insane? To be driven mad by isolation?
She closed her eyes and held them shut for several seconds. When she opened them, the gray walls seemed to jump out at her. Hallucinations, she told herself. It was simply the next step on the road to madness.
Still, she was glad for the change of scenery, whether imagined or not. She got to her feet and put her face against the wall, savoring the gray after enduring an endless black void.
Her gaze followed the wall to the door, then to the crack at the bottom. She blinked—the small gap was so bright that it stung her retinas. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the light, an acute sense of clarity flooded her mind.
Someone had activated the automated hallway lights. Soon, the isolation would be over, and she would have a chance to exercise her lethargic brain.
Using the dim light seeping in beneath the door, she positioned herself in the center of the room and propped one elbow against the wall. She caressed her hair with one hand and her naked breasts with the other, hoping to shock and confuse whoever opened the door.
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