The Rift

by Bob Mayer

  Doc knelt in front of Moms, holding out his iPad. He tapped the screen. “Here. See this?”

  “Power lines,” Moms said. “The ones Roland jumped into. And? You think Burns is using them?”

  Doc shrugged. “He might be. But this whole area is built on power. The TVA.” He pointed to the deck of the Snake. “The river is dammed in multiple places, all of which generate power. There’s also three nuclear power plants that are run by the TVA along the river.”

  Nada had leaned over to listen in. “Not another fucking Chernobyl. Ms. Jones would shit.”

  “How close is the nearest nuke plant?” Moms asked.

  “Watts Bar,” Doc said. “About sixty miles downriver. And they’re getting ready to put their second unit online. The first reactor to be started up in the U.S. in over twenty years. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Plus they ship tritium to the Savannah River Site.”

  “But Burns is around here as far as we know,” Nada said. “And—” He paused as Moms cocked her head to the side, indicating a message from Ms. Jones.

  “We’ve got a target,” Moms announced. “Lock and load. Eagle, take us in.”

  The Fireflies flashed through, darting about almost joyfully.

  As if they knew what joy was, Burns mused as he watched them go by, lighting up the darkness. Despite the fact that he was no longer a Nightstalker, his training held and he counted them as they came out.

  Fourteen.

  They went off in different directions on their various missions of mayhem.

  “Too late, Nada,” Burns whispered. Then he brought the automatic rifle up and scanned the sky overhead for the parachute he was sure would soon appear.

  Most likely Roland.

  Which meant it would be a big target.

  Roland had always been a pain in the ass, Burns thought as he flipped off the safety.

  Eagle flew along the river, one hundred feet above the dark water. The plan was to use the river to reach the power lines and then loop underneath them, avoiding the towers and coming in right on top of the Rift and fast roping down. It would require some fancy flying on Eagle’s part, but that’s why he had the big brain.

  Literally.

  “Thirty seconds from the lines,” Eagle announced. “Opening ramp.”

  The team was locked and loaded. Scout was all the way forward in the cargo bay, under dire and strict orders from Nada to remain exactly where she was. He’d buckled a harness around her and snapped the leash into a deck bolt, ignoring the dirty look she gave him.

  It was just in case.

  And to keep her from following the team out.

  The back ramp opened wide and the roar of the engines and the air swirling about added to the decibels.

  Roland had the M240 in one hand, loaded and ready. He had a flamethrower on his back, the barrel of the weapon resting in an asbestos sheath strapped to one thigh.

  Mac had the M203 grenade launcher, a 40-mm grenade ready in the lower barrel.

  Moms and Nada had MK-17 CQC SCAR automatic rifles, reluctantly having traded in their venerable 9-mm MP5s over the past year in favor of the heavier cartridge and greater range. They were old dogs but willing to learn new assault rifles when the advantages were obvious.

  Doc had his medical kit in one hand and his laptop in the other. This was Protocol when they were approaching a Rift, because it was his job to shut the thing while the rest of the team took care of the Fireflies.

  Moms glanced down at her iPad, checking on the status of their support units. She had a lot of firepower on hand and ready.

  Nada glanced over his shoulder and gave Scout an encouraging grin, lost in the blackout red lights of the cargo bay. Then he focused at the yawning mouth of the ramp, ready to charge off into whatever new hell awaited them.

  What wasn’t lost was the fourteen-foot-long wooden pole that abruptly ripped through the floor of the Snake, passing inches in front of Scout and lodging into the roof.

  “Fuck!” Eagle shouted over the net as the aircraft rocked sideways and lost altitude, diving toward the river.

  It was a sign that he was more than a tad agitated that he used a profanity.

  Eagle was flying on instinct, having no idea what had caused the problem, not being able to look over his shoulder into the cargo bay. He just knew they’d been hit by something and he had to keep them airborne.

  He slammed throttles forward, drawing every ounce of power he could from the engines, while he fought the dive with both flaps and rotation.

  The Snake settled out to a hover less than three feet from the water, stuttering, engines straining.

  “What happened?” Eagle demanded as he kept them level.

  “We got hit by a telephone pole,” Nada said as he got to his feet and observed the cargo bay, his heart racing until he saw that Scout was all right.

  “A what?” Eagle asked.

  “We got a fraking pole through the cargo bay,” Mac clarified unhelpfully. The team was sorting itself out after everyone had become a pile of people, weapons, and gear on one side of the bay. Scout had been dangling in her harness, just above all of them, and she had settled back down on the upright deck with a thump.

  “Where—” Eagle began to ask, but then another pole flashed by the cockpit, glanced off the armored side of the Snake with a clang, and disappeared into the darkness. Through his night vision goggles, Eagle could see the barge tied off beneath the cliff ahead. The crane was lifting another pole into place in the pile driver, which was oriented toward them.

  “We got Fireflies already through,” Eagle announced. “Pile driver on the river has one in it.”

  “Head for the Rift,” Moms ordered. She switched frequency. “Spooky, I’ve got a target for you.”

  The gunner was chewing gum, reading her Kindle when the call for fire came in. She lifted her gaze from the latest Bella Andre romance novel and scanned the display. “I’ve got a barge. No heat signatures.”

  “That’s it,” Moms’s voice echoed in her ear.

  The gunner didn’t question the order, the lack of personnel on the target, or the mission. While the Spectre gunship was part of the Air Force Special Operations Wing and had conducted more than its share of hush-hush missions, she’d been able to tell from the attitude of the pilot and copilot just before takeoff that whatever they were doing here over Tennessee was so far in the dark they didn’t even dare to start a rumor.

  Theirs was but to shoot and scoot.

  “Acquired. Request final authorization.”

  “Authorized,” Moms said.

  A line of 25-mm bullets shot out of the spinning barrels of the Gatling gun poking out of the side of the aircraft, firing so quickly that the slugs appeared to be a solid line of red even though only every fourth round was a tracer. The 40-mm cannon chugged out rounds, not quite as quickly. And the 105-mm howitzer fired as fast as the crewmen could load it.

  As the Snake cleared the shoreline underneath the power line, those in the cargo bay could see the gunship firing downward.

  “Minds on the mission,” Moms snapped, trying to ignore the pole through the cargo bay and wrapping her arms around the fast rope.

  “Ten seconds,” Eagle warned.

  “Roland, guard Doc once we hit the ground,” Moms ordered.

  Nada leaned close to Roland and whispered something in his ear, and Roland nodded.

  The barge never got a third pole off.

  The incoming fire from Spectre chewed it up, ripping the wood decking apart, punching holes in the metal hull. As pieces flew in all different directions, a small golden sparkle lifted out of the sinking hulk and dissipated.

  One Firefly down.

  The gunner flipped the off switch, and the guns lined up behind her along the left side of the plane stopped firing. The barge slowly settled underneath the dark
water of the Tennessee River. The gunner glanced up at the metal plating between two of her screens. As World War II fighter pilots had chalked up kills on the side of their plane, there were little images of various targets taken out by the gunship over the years: technicals (armed pickup trucks), roadside bombers, buildings where terrorists were meeting, and so forth.

  She’d have to get the image of a barge.

  Burns swung the rifle down as the Snake came roaring in. He fired a sustained burst at the cockpit.

  Futile, because the cockpit was armored and he knew that, but Burns let loose more out of irritation that Nada was breaking Protocol and he was missing the chance to shoot Roland.

  The Snake came to a hover and thick ropes came tumbling down. Burns aimed at them, but then he was blinded as the halogen searchlight in the nose of the Snake came on.

  He fired anyway under the theory that sometimes the big sky little bullet theory worked in favor of the bullet.

  Moms was first to touch boots to the ground, Nada a split second behind her. They both let go of the fast rope and began firing toward the Rift as they moved forward, “breaking” the ambush. All they could see was the Rift, its light overloading their night vision goggles. And tracers flashing by from someone firing at them.

  Mac and Roland touched down next, followed by Doc.

  That’s when six deer came charging in from the side. One buck hit Moms, sending her tumbling. Nada avoided getting tagged and fired a burst into the side of the doe that went by him, slowing it slightly.

  “Deer!” Nada yelled over the net.

  “No shit,” Mac said as he fired a 40-mm grenade at a Firefly-possessed deer charging at him. Fortuitously, and unfortunately as it turned out, Roland had modified the grenades so that they armed upon leaving the barrel, rather than the normal safe distance of around fifteen meters. The round hit the deer in the chest about four meters from Mac and exploded on contact.

  Pieces of venison flew everywhere and Mac was blown backward by the blast.

  Roland was standing in front of Doc, unable to fire in the confusion and the blackout of his night vision goggles.

  A cluster fuck.

  Burns knew when it was time to make an exit. He tossed a couple of flash-bangs to add to the confusion, averting his eyes and cupping his hands over his ears as they went off. Then he ran to the trees and cut to the right, heading for the car.

  The flash-bangs didn’t help the situation for the Nightstalkers.

  Moms and Nada were back-to-back, having ripped off their night vision goggles. But the grenades wiped out what little vision they had left with their bright flash, and the thunderous explosion stunned them. Mac was on his back, half conscious.

  Doc had been protected somewhat by Roland’s bulk. He grabbed Roland’s shoulder. “Come on!”

  He led Roland forward toward the Rift, but Roland paused, switching out the machine gun for the flamer, and torched the remains of the deer that Mac had blasted. A golden sparkle rose up and dissipated.

  Two Fireflies down.

  “You okay?” Roland yelled to Mac.

  Mac lifted a hand and gave an unenthusiastic thumbs-up.

  Roland moved forward to stick with Doc, who was setting up his laptop short of the Rift, next to the laptop Burns had left behind.

  “Eagle, what do you have?” Moms asked over the net.

  “Someone is escaping through the forest to your south. Got lots of heat signatures. Yours, deer, others. It’s a mess.”

  “Doc?” Moms asked, trying to get some vision back.

  “The Fireflies are through,” Doc said. “I’m going to shut the Rift.”

  “Spooky, do you have a human moving in the forest to our south?”

  On board Spectre, the gunner trained her infrared and thermal sights on Moms’s location. “Roger. I’ve got your team and one more, south of your location, moving toward the road. Also what looks like some deer.”

  Burns paused and looked up. Of course, with the thick trees all around him, he couldn’t see anything, but he felt the electronic fingers from above, coursing over his body, like an enemy’s caress, seeking him, finding him, fixing him.

  Burns closed his eyes and stood still for a moment. His entire body took on a golden sheen. Then he continued on his way.

  “Target gone,” the gunner announced. “It just disappeared.”

  “Fire up the deer,” Moms said. “Can you take them out without hitting us?”

  “Danger close,” the gunner said, “but roger. Smoking the deer.”

  The young woman leaned forward, hand light on the joystick, and began the delicate surgery of blasting the deer scattered among the team members, selectively using incredibly short bursts of 25 mm, a couple chugs of 40 mm, and an occasional 105-mm shell when there was a sufficient safety margin.

  It took her twenty-two seconds to blast the remaining five deer.

  When she was done, she was sure she could find a deer image pretty easily online. But whether to put them up was the question. Bambi? Really?

  Moms had some vision back. She could make out Doc by the Rift and the laptop that had opened it. Roland was flaming what remained of the deer Spectre had blown to bits, destroying the Fireflies.

  A small success in a lost battle.

  “Keep a count on Fireflies you’ve gotten, Roland.”

  “Always.”

  She went to the Support net. “All elements, back off, back off. Return to FOB.”

  The last thing she wanted was for a Firefly to get into Spooky or one of the Apaches or any of the firepower she had on hand. She headed toward Doc to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

  The Rift snapped out of existence as Doc shut it.

  But it was too late.

  Burns was loose; the rest of the Fireflies were free.

  How many, they had no idea.

  Moms switched frequencies once more. “Ms. Jones, we’ve lost containment.”

  Neeley walked in the door to the interrogation room, which doubled as Dr. Golden’s “counseling” room in the Cellar, expecting to see the good doctor sitting on the other side of the table.

  Instead, she was surprised to see Hannah waiting, two cups of coffee on the desk. Hannah stood as Neeley came in, offering one cup across the table.

  “No hug?” Neeley asked as she reached out and accepted the coffee.

  Hannah grinned. “We’re not the hugging type.” She sat down and Neeley followed suit.

  “We’re not, aren’t we? Or should that be ‘are we’?” Neeley shrugged. “Grammar was never my strength.”

  “You have plenty of other skills to make up for it,” Hannah said.

  “Practical ones,” Neeley said. “In a certain world.”

  “You had me worried,” Hannah said.

  “By dying?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Where’s Dr. Golden?” Neeley nodded toward the window. “Observing?”

  “Yes.”

  Neeley sighed. “Charting my childhood trauma?”

  Hannah laughed. “We all lived it.” She put down her coffee and leaned forward, palms flat on the table. “Are you done? Do you want to stop?”

  It was Neeley’s turn to laugh. “Blunt, aren’t we? I never should have started. Gant wouldn’t have wanted me to. But I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

  “Neither of us did. Nero saw to that.”

  “Nero’s dead,” Neeley said. “Is his hand reaching out from the grave?”

  “It always has been.”

  “I didn’t think one got to retire from the Cellar,” Neeley said.

  “Retire from field work at least,” Hannah said.

  “Do you remember when we were in France?” Neeley asked.

  Hannah arched an eyebrow at the abrupt shift in topic. “Of c
ourse.”

  “You told me about your parents.”

  The eyebrow dropped and Hannah couldn’t help but shift her eyes ever so briefly toward the mirror. “I did.”

  “Do you still believe betrayal is the only love?”

  “So you do remember,” Hannah said. “But don’t misquote me. I said sometimes betrayal is the only love left, not the only love.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Neeley said. “I thought I did back then. But it makes no sense now.”

  Hannah sighed. “I should have been more clear. Sometimes betrayal is the only thing some people are capable of. Your young lover who gave you that bomb. My husband keeping his secrets. My mother. By keeping us ignorant of the terrible things they were doing, perhaps they were showing us all they knew of love.”

  “Bullshit,” Neeley said. “They were self-centered assholes using us for their own goals.”

  “Is that what I am?”

  “If you betray me, it is.”

  A long silence played out in the room, the two women staring at each other.

  Hannah broke the silence. “I will not betray you, Neeley.”

  Neeley nodded. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted it on the table.”

  Hannah got up and walked around the table. Neeley stood also. Awkwardly, Hannah put her arms around her taller operative.

  “I love you,” she whispered in a voice that couldn’t be picked up by the microphones hidden all about the room.

  Neeley’s mouth opened, as if to say something, but no words came. The two stood like that for a moment, Neeley’s arm limp at her side.

  Hannah let go and went back to her seat. She sat down and composed herself.

  Neeley sat down and picked up her coffee. “Something strange happened in Tennessee.”