by Sean McFate
“No,” he gulped for air. “But the FSB has safe houses in suburban Virginia.”
“Where?” she asked in a matter-of-fact tone while putting the lipstick away.
“McLean, near the CIA. That’s all I heard. Rumors. You have to believe me!” he pleaded.
She shook out her ponytail, combing her hair with her fingers. “I do, for now. Anything else I should know?”
Dmitri shook his head. Satisfied, Lin grabbed her purse, unbolted the door, stepped over the other man’s squirming body, and turned back to Dmitri.
“And one more thing. Don’t leave town. We might need to talk again,” she said, and proceeded upstairs.
Dmitri looked horrified.
Chapter 16
Hell’s bells! I screamed in my head. I was in a flat spin thirty-four thousand feet above Manhattan and out of control. The city lights, the plane, and the moon spun ever faster around me, and I was getting dizzy. Soon I would black out.
The whole team was out of control. We bounced off the tailgate like tokens spilling from a slot machine, falling everywhere, rather than a coordinated group exit. Now we were in trouble, hurtling to the earth at 120 mph.
“Locke, control your descent!” I heard Lava shout over my earpiece. “It will get worse unless you correct now.”
The spin accelerated, and soon the moon and Manhattan were one. My altimeter read thirty-two thousand feet on my HUD, giving me two minutes to rectify the situation. I arched my back and stuck out my leg wing to regain control, but little happened. If this were a training exercise, I would pull my rip cord now and deploy the parachute. But it was a combat jump and I had to assume there were hostile drones in the air. Also, I wasn’t sure if Lava sabotaged my parachute.
“Ball up!” said an Aussie accent. The lateral Gs were pushing blood to my brain, and I felt the blackout coming.
Focus! I commanded, and breathed deeply to calm my pulse.
“Dive out of it!” shouted Tye.
Diving won’t work, I knew. I was spinning too fast. Instead, I dug my right knee into my elbow, catching air against the direction of the spin with my arm wing. The spin began to slow, and Manhattan and the moon were once more recognizable.
“Keep it up,” said Lava.
The spin stopped and I spread my arms and legs, deploying my wingsuit like a flying squirrel. Wingsuits gave jumpers range and control, for those who could master them. The dizziness lingered and I felt I might throw up in my oxygen mask.
“Super-duper paratrooper,” said Lava. “Your vitals were spiking. You’re rusty.”
“I blame the equipment,” I joked, and scanned for the team, but all I saw were moonlight clouds below.
“AI, find the team,” I commanded my onboard artificial intelligence, embedded in the tactical cuff.
“Team located 1,200 feet below tracking 245 degrees. Shall I plot a course?” said my AI in a tranquil woman’s voice.
“Affirmative,” I replied. A pale blue trajectory line lit up in my HUD, pointing me toward the team, far below. Zooming in my optics, I could see they were traveling in a V formation westward, toward Manhattan. The pilot green-lighted us well past the city to match the flight profile of a commercial airliner, and now we had to “fly” back via wingsuit several miles to downtown. The Atlantic was directly below us.
Gotta catch up or get left behind, I thought. I assumed a flat track position, tucking my arms tight to my sides, palms down, legs together, and toes out. My body became an arrow, descending rapidly until I caught up with the V and changed into a delta position.
“Good of you to join the flock,” said Tye.
“Silence,” said Lava. In the distance, I could see the grid lights of the city and the dark rectangle in the middle—Central Park.
“Switching to tactical,” said Lava, and my HUD transformed into a polychromatic dazzle of friends, foes, and obstacles. Beneath us, a 747 was on approach to JFK airport, illuminated in yellow, as was an Airbus taking off. The new trajectory line led to a red blinking dot on the west side of midtown, off the Hudson.
“That’s our objective,” said Lava.
“Where’s our DZ?” I asked, seeing only a concrete rain forest of skyscrapers.
“You’re looking at it.”
I saw nothing. Just tall buildings. Maybe there was something wrong with my system. Or it was sabotaged. “I’m not seeing it. The flight path leads downtown, and there’s no place to land.”
“We’re not landing in downtown. We’re landing above it,” said Lava, and my heart jumped with alarm. I zoomed in my optics for a closer look at the DZ. It was one of the tallest and newest skyscrapers in the city, rivaling the Empire State Building. And it shimmered. It looked like it was made of mirrored glass that reflected the darkness around it, making it hard to see. Then I spotted the DZ, marked in pale blue by my HUD.
Holy shit, I thought. The DZ was a narrow sixty-five-foot triangular observation deck 101 stories up, almost at the very top of the building. Successfully landing there would be like hitting a hole in one, if the hole were on top of a flagpole and you were teeing off a flying Lear Jet.
“That’s impossible,” I muttered, and heard Tye snickering over the comms.
“Don’t blow my mission, Locke,” said Lava. “We don’t want your body splattered in the middle of Thirtieth Street. It might tip off security.”
I zoomed in more, although it was difficult given the bumpy ride. The observation deck faced us, and above it was several stories of superstructure. But it was no roof; it was a huge pinnacle in the sky with enormous triangular holes that artfully concealed machinery and water tanks. If we touched down there, we would either slip through one of the holes and crush our bodies on the machinery below, or bounce off the forty-five-degree incline and fall to the asphalt 120 stories down. There would be no recovery time, just certain death.
“Lava, that’s no DZ!”
“Ten thousand feet,” said Lava, ignoring me. We were zooming over Brooklyn and would be at the DZ in seconds. Quickly, I glanced around for alternative DZs. Better to piss off Lava and walk away than risk gory death, but there were no good DZs because it was New York City.
“Nine thousand.”
Hell, I didn’t even know if my chute would open.
“Eight thousand.”
We all banked slightly right to line up the approach to the skyscraper’s small observation deck.
“Seven thousand.”
This is insane! I thought.
“Valhalla, this is Omega. Building is hacked. DZ is secure,” said Apollo command.
“Six thousand. Copy, Omega.”
I could see the small balcony clearly now. It looked like a shelf at the top of a Saturn rocket.
“Five thousand. Pull at two.”
EEEEEEEE! An alarm screeched in my earpiece. “Tango,” shouted Lava. My HUD illuminated a rotary wing drone in red, flying random patterns around the building in stealth mode, although I could not see it with my naked eye. My AI listed it as potentially heavily armed, an extreme measure for Manhattan. Whatever was inside the building was important enough to risk an aerial firefight above New York City.
Who would take such a risk, and what’s in that building? I thought, realizing I might soon find out.
“Four thousand. Watch the crosswind.”
We whooshed by the Empire State Building’s antenna tower.
“Three thousand.”
My AI had me pulling my rip cord high and right of the building, compensating for the crosswinds. Would the parachute deploy when I pulled the rip cord? Almost reading my mind, Tye asked: “Locke, do you trust us?”
“Do you trust me?” I retorted. He did not respond.
“Three, two, one, deploy!” shouted Lava, and I pulled the rip cord. The opening G shock tore through my body, knocking my breath out, as the canopy deployed. My boots kicked up in the air, and the crosswind caught my wingsuit, sending me away from the observation deck, three hundred feet away. Lava and three other
team members touched down. Four more were on approach. However, I was off azimuth and would miss the DZ.
“Locke, you’re wide,” yelled Lava. I yanked on my right riser, which steered the parachute, and I swung hard right toward the sixty-five-foot isosceles triangle in the sky. Under my boots was 1,500 feet of air then traffic then asphalt.
Three others touched down on the roof deck, and Lava was already at the glass doors, working the security system. Meanwhile, I was still flapping in the wind.
EEEEEEEEEEE! The alarm sounded off. “Warning. Enemy drone detected seven hundred thirty feet below and rising,” said my AI in her unnervingly calm voice. I looked down through my boots and could see the armed drone’s blades slice the air. It looked like a quarter-size black helicopter with no lights, probably used only at night to avoid day gawkers.
“Locke, evade!” said Tye. I yanked the toggles on both risers and swung up. The drone remained motionless, but didn’t spot me. Drones often have a blind spot: they cannot see above them, which might have been a reason Lava chose this crazy ingress route.
“Locke, you’re about to be blown off DZ!” said Tye, meaning I would soon cross a line of no return and have to land somewhere on the street below. Although, I doubted I would get that far. The drones would spot me and shoot up my canopy, if it was armed. I would fall to my death.
“Warning. Enemy drone rising,” said the AI. I had only seconds. Far down, I could see the Thirty-Fourth Street subway yard. I could try to make it.
“Locke, the drone!” said Tye, strain in his voice. Lava and the rest of the team already disappeared inside the building. Apparently, Tye was my assigned battle buddy after all.
Just get back over the balcony, I thought as I strained on the risers and did a sharp 180-degree turn, catching an updraft. Fifty feet beneath me was the tip of the triangle, and two hundred feet below that was the ascending drone.
“Locke!” cried Tye as I drifted away from the balcony and over the street. In one second, I would be below the DZ.
Now or never, I thought, I pulled hard on the left riser, and violently swung toward the balcony, twenty-five feet away. At the same time, I yanked the quick-release on both risers and hurtled weightless through the air, with 1,100 feet of space between me and the ground. Glancing down, I saw the drone’s blades rising as I bicycle-kicked to maximize my forward momentum. But I came up short. I bounced off the outside of the observation deck’s glass wall, just managing to grab the top with my left hand.
“Locke, hang on!” said Tye, rushing over to help me, but the glass walls surrounding the observation deck were fifteen feet high. I was dangling in space.
“Locke, the drone!” said Tye, as the chop chop chop got louder. With a grunt, I did a pull up in full combat gear and threw a leg over the glass wall. I rolled over the rim and slid down the safe side, hitting hard. Meaty hands pulled me to my feet.
“Move! Move!” cried Tye, and we sprinted for the observation deck’s door. Apollo command had already hacked the building’s security as we HALOed in, but it could not control the armed drone.
“Inside!” he said as we dove behind large planters. We could hear the thing hover above the observation deck, scanning, but the planters concealed our body heat from the drone’s thermal cameras. Off a side-window reflection, I could see the machine’s silhouette. It had weapons pods on its flanks. No guns or missiles protruded, but their purpose was unmistakable. After a moment, it buzzed away.
“Gutsy move, Locke, jumping like that. I thought you were a goner.”
“Victory to the bold,” I said, still catching my breath. “Is that thing actually armed?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. Apollo shut down the internal defenses, so we should be good to go now.”
I paused, digesting what he just said. “Defenses? Like, armed defenses?”
“Roger.”
“What kind of skyscraper is this?” I whispered.
“A fortress. The first ninety floors are normal. The top ten are the enemy’s North American headquarters. They own the whole block too, through a front company, of course.”
“Who is the enemy? Who flies armed drones in New York?”
“I’ll let Lava fill you in. But they’re like us. Dangerous. Watch your six.”
“Tye, sitrep?” said Lava in his command voice.
“Operative recovered, area secure. Moving to your location now,” said Tye, standing up. He looked like a black cyborg in his head-to-toe armor but moved like a gymnast. “Stay quick, Locke. Follow me close. Trust nothing in here. Nothing.”
I nodded as I removed my wingsuit and oxygen bottle, but was alarmed by Tye’s cryptic warning. I had no idea what we were walking into, other than it was lethal. Tye ran into the darkness and I followed, weapon at the ready.
Chapter 17
Rock Creek Parkway is a secret highway that runs through Washington that only locals know. There are few, if any, signs that note the entrances in order to keep the tourists out. Trucks are illegal, and those who sneak on get their tops chopped off by the low stone bridges.
The winding road snakes up the center of the city, but it looks like a bucolic valley in Connecticut rather than the urban hubbub surrounding it. During rush hour, parts of Rock Creek convert to one-way, terrifying lost tourists who mistakenly wander into its corridor.
Picnic tables with stone grills line Rock Creek for Washingtonians to have family outings. Some even have weddings there. More than a few picnic areas are set back from the road, and a few are hidden. After midnight, it was a place for teens to hook up or conspirators to meet.
The two black convoys arrived almost simultaneously. Three armored Chevy Suburbans from the south and three more from the north pulled into a parking lot side by side but facing opposite directions.
After a moment, armed men from the middle vehicles stepped out and opened the passenger doors. A tall man with a cane stepped from one backseat to the other, the door shutting behind him.
“Thank you for meeting me at this hour.”
“We are allies, if not friends,” said the man with the cane in a raspy voice.
“We have a new problem.”
“Oh?”
“More of a complication than a problem. But left to fester, it will become a problem.”
“What is it?” said the hobbled man with displeasure.
“The president. He’s not following along with the script.”
Silence. Finally, the man with the cane broke it. “But isn’t that your job?”
More silence. “It’s our job.”
The man with the cane squeezed the ivory handle in rage but his weathered face revealed no emotion. “And what do you want me to do about it?”
“The CIA. They’re the source of the problem. You can reach them in ways I cannot. Can I count on your—” the man paused, choosing his words carefully “—oblique approach to steer their analysis?”
The man with the cane could not help but chuckle. “It’s the oldest joke in Washington: research agenda. You want me to provide the agenda and they perform the research? Seems like something you could easily manage yourself.”
“Not this time. It has to come from outside government. It has to come from your organization. Understand that I’m not asking you to alter the plan; just throw them off the scent.”
The man with the cane pondered the task with displeasure, but finally acquiesced. “Fine. I will see what we can do, but I make no promises.” He looked the other man in the eyes. “We go back a long way, you and I. But do not take our friendship for granted. If you continue to modify our original agreement, there will be consequences.”
The other man stiffened, not expecting such a riposte, then nodded. The man with the cane rapped on the window, and a stocky bodyguard opened the bulletproof door.
Two minutes later, the convoys sped off into the darkness, going in opposite directions.
Chapter 18
Tye ran like a heavily armed gazelle, bounding over desks, co
uches, and whatever else stood in his way. My parkour skills were respectable, but Tye leapt before he looked. It was suicide.
“Tye, hold up!” I panted.
“Keep pace,” he commanded, speeding around a corner. I rounded it and saw the open elevator shaft.
“Tye!!” I shouted, skidding to a stop at the edge of the 1,100-foot drop. Peering over, I glimpsed only darkness, and listened for the crash of his body, 101 stories down. I would need to find a different route down.
“You think I’m that easy to kill?” said Tye over the headset.
“Where are you?”
“Floor ninety-seven. Beat feet!”
This is going to be sparky, I thought, as I backed up and then ran for the shaft. I timed it so my left foot pushed off the edge of the open elevator shaft while I spread my arms wide. My inner right arm caught the high-tension cables midflight, spinning me hard clockwise. I locked my legs around the cables, but I was not prepared for the speedy descent. My body zipped down the slick cables, and my stomach rose to my throat. Floor 97’s door was propped open and I had only one chance, so I leapt. My body was weightless once more as I plunged through the darkness. My left hand caught the elevator’s threshold while the rest of me dangled down the shaft. With a grunt, I heaved myself up and faced Tye, who was waiting for me.
“You have a thing for hurtling through space?” he asked. I could almost see the smirk through his black visor.
“Yeah, it makes me feel all tingly inside,” I joked, but he simply turned and kept moving. So did I. The place looked like a high-end hedge fund office: ultramodern glass and steel design, exotic wood flooring, and whacko modern art. It smelled of cappuccino and rug cleaner, even though there were no rugs.
The hallway emptied into a two-story atrium, with a glass balcony and near-360-degree view of the city, as seen through the floor’s glass walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. It was magnificent. Overlooking us from the balcony was artistic stupidity: an eight-foot marble statue of a man that looked like Michelangelo’s David except his head was a gigantic chrome cloud. No doubt it was “priceless.”