Callsign: Deep Blue - Book 1 (A Tom Duncan - Chess Team Novella)

by Robinson, Jeremy

  He stood and turned back to face the other direction and fired another blast down this direction of the corridor, singing a few salamanders as they retreated toward the hangar at the end of the hallway. The first salamander he had blasted was on the floor and curled as if in a fetal position. It was no longer shiny and slick looking and it was clearly dead. The smell of the cooked meat reminded him of the smell of grilled hot dogs, and he made a mental note to chastise himself later for how hungry the stench made him.

  “I don’t want to know how you knew there was hair spay in the women’s bathroom, do I?” Beck said, as she replaced her knife in its sheath.

  Duncan climbed onto the bike beside her, preparing to fire more blasts from his makeshift flamethrower as they went. “Just drive, smartass.” Beck chuckled and gunned the engine. Duncan glanced back and saw that the pursuing salamanders had already regained their courage and were coming back after the dirt bike again. He hoped the fleeing creatures ahead of them would run for longer, but if they didn’t, he had enough of the lacquer to roast a few dozen of the things.

  As it turned out, he only had to fire one more blast and the remaining creatures fled at top speed, wiggling side to side ahead of them as the dirt bike raced toward the hangar. Duncan heard a rumble ahead that sounded to him like an explosion, followed by small arms fire. Beck heard it too.

  “Faster or slower, Boss?”

  “Faster!” Before Duncan had gotten the second syllable out of his mouth, Beck had gunned the throttle and the bike was racing close to top speed for the hanger. Duncan raised the torch and the can of spray to let a few blasts off at the ceiling and the swarm of wriggling beasts ahead of them raced away down the corridor.

  Then the dirt bike was launching out of the corridor into the open space of the hangar. Before they had cleared the opening by more than a meter, a salamander came springing off the right wall of the hangar and knocked Beck completely off the bike to their left. Duncan watched in horror as she and the salamander blasted left and the runaway dirt bike popped a wheelie and went launching out from under his knees. As he fell backward and looked up, he saw at least a hundred of the things fleeing across the hangar walls. Then he saw one of the black and yellow creatures was falling on top of him. He let a burst of fire loose and the thing crisped up before he hit the deck on his back. The fall blasted all the air out of his lungs and then the charred body of his attacker fell on top of him, doubling the insult to his chest.

  Duncan rolled sideways, shoving the cooked carcass off him in time to see Beck rolling over backward with a frantic salamander attacking her from the front. It went into the roll with her. As they came up out of the roll, Beck twisted and stabbed upward with her bayonet, driving the blade through the amphibian’s lower jaw, up through the top of its head and into the linoleum of the floor outside the door to the glassed in office Duncan had used earlier with Lori. Beck rolled away and the salamander was pinned to the floor by the top of its head. It twisted its body and managed to get its legs on the floor properly. Its neck twisted at an almost impossible angle as it struggled to pull itself free from the blade.

  Duncan stood and launched another fire blast at some of the salamanders that had followed him out of the corridor. Then he swung back to Beck as he heard her exasperated voice.

  “Shit!”

  The salamander had tugged its head away from the pinned knife blade, allowing it to cut through the front of its face so it could escape. With a final tug, the persistent creature pulled free from the knife and scrambled toward Duncan, opening its mouth wide, the four segments of its head now moving independently. Duncan lurched forward, stumbling on the carcass of his first attacker, the burst of fire from his improvised weapon ending up firing directly into the split-headed salamander’s mouth instead of on its back, where Duncan had intended to target. The creature stopped moving before Duncan landed on the floor.

  As he glanced up at Beck, he saw yet another of the wiggling assailants flying through the air at Beck from behind. Before he could recover from hitting the floor again, he saw a blur of woodland camouflage—Matt Carrack was flying through the air toward the salamander’s back.

  Duncan’s wind came back just in time. “Duck!” he shouted.

  Beck dropped to all fours and rolled out of the way, as Matt Carrack wrapped a wire garrote around the flying salamander’s head. When it hit the ground, Carrack held on and rode the creature as it raced toward the wall. Carrack leaned back and started to pull on the wooden handles of the garrote, as the salamander reached the wall and started up it. Carrack held on tightly, choking the life out of the amphibian as it raced up the wall. Carrack was pulled up the wall, and he looked to Duncan like some absurd vertical rodeo rider. As they reached a height of about four meters off the floor, Carrack successfully pulled the choking wire clean through the salamander’s body, and fell, the head of the creature following him down, while the body stayed attached to the wall with surreal obstinacy. Carrack’s feet hit the floor and he dropped into a crouch and rolled, but the plummeting head hit him anyway, bouncing off his shoulder.

  Beck was tugging her knife from the floor and Duncan climbed to his feet. Most of the flood of salamanders was retreating now down the corridor leading to the train platform for the Dock. Duncan was about to thank Carrack for his timely intervention, but the man was sprinting across the hangar floor toward one of the pallets. Duncan’s keen mind sussed out the man’s plan seconds before he reached his targeted stack of boxes. From atop them, the man pulled down the backpack portion of an M2A1-7 portable flamethrower. They only had two of the antique items that Deep Blue had been able to secure. The devices were not used in modern warfare anymore, but Duncan had felt that they might be a useful item in Chess Team’s arsenal. He’d wanted the Vietnam era M9A1-7s but hadn’t been able to find any, so he’d had to settle for the devices used as far back as World War II. Duncan had forgotten he’d ordered them and they were sitting on the hangar floor along with tons of other unwrapped Chess Team weaponry. With the fuel tanks securely on his back, Carrack pulled the business end around in front of him and started for the wall where the last of the salamanders were retreating to the far corridor.

  “Matt,” Duncan called. Carrack stopped and faced Duncan and Beck. “Let them go for now. Let’s trade intel and get the other one of those out of the wrapping.

  “Yes sir,” Carrack answered, and he began to scan the walls and the ceiling all around them for any salamanders that might not have decided to flee. Beck raced over to the cartons on the pallet behind Carrack. “Oh yeah, you know I want one of those suckers.”

  “There’s a hostile Gen Y presence on site that was probably about twenty strong before the salamanders attacked. Doors are all security locked and the bio door down the end of the Labs tunnel is sealed. We have no computer control.” Duncan told Carrack. “Where’s the rest of your team?”

  “Just me sir. White Zero is down too. Booby traps in the ceiling vents. White Four went to Dock but hasn’t reported in. Five went to Labs but same story there. Six of the Gen Y men are down. Their objective is a sample of some kind in the Dock section. They’ve got at least one man planting a bomb in the cavern under Labs. At least five hostiles left—possibly more. The salamanders can be killed by beheading and fire. Small arms fire is ineffective. There’s a ton of scientific info on the creatures on screen in the main computer room—Zero was apparently on to them when one of them got her.” Carrack took a breath as Beck slung her own flamethrower on her back. “Oh, and General Keasling is sending support.”

  “Let’s see the intel on the animal menace first, then we’ll need to spilt up. I don’t want Gen Y getting a sample of anything, and we need to stop them from destroying this place.” Duncan raced across the floor to the corridor and headed into the abattoir that used to be his main computer room. Lori’s headless corpse sat in the custom ergonomic computer station, with parts of a salamander body lying on the floor. The sight and smell assaulted him and his previously
hungry stomach did a small flip.

  Beck glanced into the room, hearing Duncan’s “Ugh,” then quickly excused herself to the hallway. “I think I’ll wait out here.”

  Carrack strode into the room and pointed to the computer monitor for Duncan to see. “Wnt pathways stuff and blastema cells. It sounds like Maddox had a pet project. It also sounds like these things have been exposed to radiation, gases, and the chemical fallout from the Hydra battle in addition to Maddox’s genetic tinkering.”

  Duncan read though the information as quickly as possible. He turned to Carrack. “Fire and dehydration are our weapons. Bright light holds them at bay a little. Thankfully, the information here indicates that they can’t breed.”

  “You must have missed that part.” Carrack pointed out.

  “What do you mean?” Duncan asked.

  “Twenty total test subjects. But there’re hundreds of the sals. Maybe even a thousand. Either they figured out how to breed or we’re seeing creatures that received a secondary mutation—maybe from the chemical spill.”

  “Great,” Duncan said. “Matt, I want you to get to Labs with Black Zero and find that bomb. I’m going to go after the Gen Y team.”

  “Sir, it doesn’t take two people to defuse a bomb. I already let you out of my sight once today and look what happened.”

  “I appreciate that son, but we don’t know how many Gen Y men are in Labs. We do know that the few remaining Gen Y men here went to Dock. I can handle that while you two take care of whatever’s waiting in Labs. Let me have your flamethrower.”

  Beck ducked her head around the door. “Shit, and we can’t use mine in the cavern, either.” Carrack looked confused. “The natural gas is flammable.” Understanding dawned on his face. “You’re right. But I know what we can use. We’ve got some experimental, reusable, electronic LED Flash Bang grenades.” He took his backpack off and helped Duncan into the straps.

  “Good idea. Go get them. All of them. I’ll take a few as well. You two get the bomb situation under wraps. Even if you can’t get the device defused, get it out of the cavern and into the Labs section. If we have to lose that portion of the base, we’ll live with it, but a blast setting off the gasses in the cavern would take out Pinckney too. And possibly a good chunk of central New Hampshire. Then try to get to me in Dock. When is Keasling arriving?”

  Carrack checked his watch as they ran for the hangar again to retrieve the LED light grenades. “Forty minutes.”

  “Too long,” Beck said as she started slicing plastic wrap from the side of the appropriate pallet. She had helped them pack all the supplies with another member of the Black Team a few days ago for transport here. She knew the contents of all the boxes better than the men did, but each box was also clearly labeled with its contents. A sign of Duncan’s ordered mind.

  “We’ll do what we can til they get here. Just remember. Fire and light are your friends.”

  Just then, the cavernous hangar, the glassed in computer room on its edge and both corridors leading out of the hangar were plunged into darkness. All the electricity in the base was out.

  “If we could only keep our friends from deserting us.” Beck quipped in the low pale blue light from the tongue of flame at the tip of Duncan’s flamethrower.

  ENDGAME

  18.

  En Route to Section Dock, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  Tom Duncan, former president of the United States, now the leader of Chess Team under the callsign: Deep Blue, raced into darkness and certain danger. He rode the same HDT dirt bike he and Beck had used earlier. It was a little scratched and scraped from its fall in the hangar, but it was a sturdy machine and still more than serviceable.

  Duncan had attached one of the reusable LED Flash Bang grenades to the handlebars and used a zip tie to permanently depress the igniter trigger to the flamethrower. He leaned the barrel of the device across the handlebars and could reach the firing trigger at a second’s notice. On his way down to the train platform leading to the Dock section of the base near Lake Winnipesaukee, the light of his dirt bike illuminating his way through the corridors, he hadn’t seen a single salamander. They seemed to have retreated down the tunnel’s ten-mile journey to the submarine station. Still, his left hand gripped the bike’s handlebar loosely, ready to spring to the flamethrower.

  As he raced along the tunnel in the darkness, he remained alert, but he used the few minutes of the ten-mile drive to let all the loose fragments of knowledge in his head about the past hours roll around and bounce off each other in his brain. He liked the analogy. Some people liked to draw flowcharts and mind maps, but Duncan let all the pieces of complex problems collide in his mind’s eye like billiard balls until connections fit into place. That was how he had come up with a fairly successful peace plan for the Middle East—well, at least the Palestinians and the Israelis were speaking again, when he left office. It remained to be seen if the plan would stay in place or, more likely, if one lone soldier on either side would fire an RPG across the border and start things anew.

  The first question was the lights. He had seen from the computer station that Lori had killed the wireless before her death, and the there were no hard-wired computers in Labs or Dock that could have allowed the Gen Y men additional access to the system after he had destroyed their laptop. That meant they must have left a man behind somewhere in Central to access the system and kill the lights. Damn it. He and Beck and Carrack must have missed the man. He had to have been just a room or two away from them the whole time.

  Duncan slowed the bike and briefly considered going back for that man, but then he dismissed the idea. If the lights were out, that meant the computers were down too. You couldn’t selectively kill power to the whole base except for one computer station. Just wasn’t possible. That meant that other than as a gun at his back—or maybe at Beck and Carrack’s backs—the man wasn’t as large a threat as the remaining Gen Y team at the Dock. Still, he’d be wary of an attack from his rear. Duncan sped the bike up again and continued toward the Dock.

  He could feel the pressure of the mountain range above the tunnel on his ears. He swallowed and his ears cleared. The Dock was at a lower altitude than the other two sections of the base. Its train platform was higher up than the rest of it, unlike the platforms in the other two parts of the base, which were the lowest points in their respective sections—well, except for the damned cavern under Labs. Just what he needed: another doomsday device to have to prevent. His negativity wasn’t helping. He took a deep breath and let it out. Then he let his mind wander again as the breeze from the sterilized air in the tunnel rushed past his face as he sped along on the bike.

  The next two problems connected in his head: what are Gen Y after and why are there no more salamanders in this tunnel?

  Eggs.

  It all fell into place for Duncan. Maddox had experimented on the salamanders but didn’t see the results he wanted. Then Chess Team had invaded the base a few years ago, resulting in the mix of chemicals with the Hydra’s blood being spilled all over the floors in the Labs section. Some of Maddox’s subjects or all of them had been affected by the chemical sludge. Add that to the ambient radiation from the granite all around the facility and in the underground cavern, and the genetic tinkering Maddox had done initially, and you ended up with overgrown mutant monsters. Monsters that could now breed as well. But the hazmat team hadn’t seen them and Eli Jacobs and his research crew hadn’t encountered the beasts. No one in or out of the base in all their trips to and from it and into different portions of it had seen them. Because they were growing underground, in the cavern. And Beck confirmed that the cavern ran further afield than the Labs section of the base.

  Tom Duncan didn’t know much about salamanders as a species, but he knew they were amphibians, and they laid eggs in the hundreds. Usually near a water source, which they had available in the form of the Dock. The long underwater cavern leading from the submarine dock to the ocean under 60 miles of New Ham
pshire had been a geological surprise to Duncan, but now it informed his assumption that the cavern under Labs must somehow connect to the Dock as well. And that explained why the salamanders weren’t around in the tunnel now. They had migrated from the depths of the cavern over the last few months to the Dock. Their home was now being invaded by Gen Y men searching for a viable sample egg. The creatures had gone back to the nest to protect it.

  Then the last piece of the puzzle fell into position for Duncan. How would the Gen Y men escape with their prize? They’ll take the submarine. If they can get to it. Opening the underwater door to the Dock, allowing violent mutant monsters egress to the outside world, where they would be free to hunt and kill innocent New Hampshirites.

  Duncan pushed the throttle as fast as it would go, racing into the train platform after the last mile of tunnel. The platform was above the rest of the dock itself, and had only a concrete platform with a few offices and a metal staircase that led down to the water, a freight elevator and what Duncan planned to use—metal catwalks that stretched across the entirety of the wide open area above the massive Russian submarine. He turned the dirt bike and drove it straight out onto the catwalk and straight out into hell.

  19.

  Section Labs, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  Matt Carrack liked Anna Beck. She was pretty, she was fast and she was great with ideas. Explosive violent ideas. If he wasn’t already seeing someone, he would have asked her out. She had led him to a couple of extra crates and boxes in the darkened hangar to grab couple of extra “toys” as she put it, before they had each taken a fresh HDT dirt bike for the journey back to the Labs section.

  They had not come across any more salamanders on their journey, but Beck had still wanted to pause on the journey a few time to blast forward down the pitch black tunnel with the flamethrower—just to be on the safe side. But after the first five miles of no amphibian resistance, she had stopped requesting the flamethrower breaks. At last, they came to the thick plastic and Plexiglas bio door. Beck dismounted from her bike a hundred meters from the door—just as the door was barely in the outermost reaches of the headlights from their bikes. Carrack dismounted from his own bike as Beck turned to him and said “Your turn.”