Midnight Zone: a Cade Rearden Thriller

by JK Franks

  “God, no, hope I never see that thing again,” Trondo said, lifting his sunglasses up and rubbing at his tired eyes. “I’m going to get some lunch and a little shuteye.”

  Coffee nodded and had Dee start his favorite playlist, a mix of hip-hop and blues standards. He sat back on the small pilot chair to enjoy the ride.

  The music, warm sunshine, rhythmic rise and fall of the boat, and steady drumming of the powerful diesel inboards might have lulled most people into a dreamlike state. Staff Sergeant Willy Coffee was not most people. He saw the disturbance on the water even before Dee gave a warning. He throttled back sharply, arousing the others. “We have something, people.” In a much softer voice, he whispered, “Please don’t be that monster.”

  He checked the nav screen. They were in the middle of nowhere. Currently, they were passing over one of the deepest parts of the Caribbean Sea, an area known as the Cayman Trench. Jamaica was a few hundred miles to the northeast. Otherwise, not much of interest as far as the map was concerned. Coffee lifted the specially designed binoculars to his eyes and focused in on what he and the computer had noticed. An irregularity along the horizon, almost directly ahead of them. A bump on the blue horizontal line of the sea.

  Not like a boat, much larger, almost like a giant hill of water growing up and out of the deep ocean. He knew the video feed from the binoculars was streaming to Doris and all the others in the boat. He heard the questions coming from the people below. Nance had walked up while he was looking and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Slow ahead, Sergeant. Let’s go and see what Dee has found.”

  Coffee notched the throttle down slightly.

  “Dee, how far away is that thing?” Nance asked.

  “Approximately four miles, Captain.”

  Damn, Nance thought. That meant it was far larger than she’d been thinking.

  As if anticipating the next question, Dee continued, “Preliminary estimates would put the portion we are seeing at almost 1000 meters wide. Since we are only seeing the top portion, it is likely much larger.”

  “What the fuck is it?” Kissa said, standing up and leaning out the bridge.

  They all shook their heads. As they cut the distance by half, they could already see the object was submerging again. Only about a hundred meters of it rose above the waterline. On the level, just dipping below the waves, massive curved windows seem to bubble out like blisters. The remaining portion of the craft was a dark, bluish green that closely matched that of the water. The exposed portion was a graceful arching curve with a subtle pattern that seemed reminiscent of sunlight refracted by water, like you might see reflected from the bottom of a pool.

  “It’s going down fast!” Micah called up. He’d kept watching via the camera feed and, almost as an afterthought, he’d launched a few drones to get an aerial view. Now, he was prepping a couple of his increasingly scarce stock of aqua drones to get a view from below.

  The craft was descending quickly, faster than a ship could sink even. But there were no geysers of water like a ballast release of air might cause. In fact, it barely disturbed the water surface. The boat closed to within about one hundred feet. Coffee checked the sonar; absolutely nothing showed up below, but the water depth had changed from 10,000 meters to less than a thousand. Whatever this was, it was below them now, and sensors were picking it up as seafloor. He knew this was nothing natural.

  Only a small rounded portion of the dome remained above the surface. “Micah, please deploy a tracker tag to the anomaly before it goes under,” Nance ordered.

  “On it,” he said, guiding multiple drones to the portion still exposed. With the radius of exposed craft shrinking by the second, they all just marveled at the technology. It blended so well with the ocean—even knowing it was there, it was hard to make out. It literally looked like a swelling of the ocean surface. Then it was gone.

  “One tag attached,” Micah said before adding a startled, “Holy shit!”

  The false bottom was receding quickly. “Bottom depth returning to normal,” Coffee said as he watched the instrument cluster intently.

  “What is it, kid?” Kissa asked, heading down the few steps to where Micah was.

  A sleepy Trondo who had joined them for the past few minutes was looking at a group of seabirds off to the port side. He grabbed the binoculars and glassed the scene. “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “Our friend is back, Captain.”

  42

  Antarctica

  Cade's eyes scanned the surrounding hills. Never far from his mind was the fact that they’d been attacked. Someone meant to do them harm. The other part of his brain couldn't accept the fact that anyone would want to stop them. What was out here in this bleak wilderness? He trusted his instincts. Years of being a hunter…a warrior on various battlefields around the planet had honed those skills to a knife's edge. He wasn't sure which of his personalities drove this instinctual part of his brain, or as Doris had suggested more than once, perhaps it was just his subconscious. Whoever it was, he trusted it with this life. And now, with the lives of the rest of his team.

  McTee picked up on it first. “Hey, Boss, you got something?”

  “I dunno.” Cade shrugged. “Maybe just my ghost acting up, but yeah. Stay on point—I feel eyes on our back.” He caught up with Alan to ask about launching some dove drones.

  “No can-do, Cap. Hard to control in these valleys, and the wind is still too strong up over the peaks. I’m pretty sure I’d lose them within just a few seconds.” Alan pulled himself up the rocks the same way Judah had just gone. “What would I be looking for, anyway?”

  Cade didn’t know, and he was growing more frustrated. All this tech, and yet, none of it seemed that practical out here. “If someone was up in these rocks, do you have anything that would detect them?”

  “If they show themselves, yeah.” Alan stopped on a ledge, reached in his pack and took out what looked like a clear plastic ball with an assortment of gizmos inside.

  “What the fuck is that?” Cade asked.

  “BallCam, something Jimmy and I came up with when we were trying to…well, let’s skip that part. Basically, it’s like a mini-go-pro type camera in a self-leveling, gyro controlled, 360-degree mount,” Alan said, almost gleefully. “Really similar to what the aerial drones use. It can scan in multiple wavelengths, of course. It’s field of view is its only limit, but the software Jimmy put together allows us to do some pretty cool stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  Well,” Alan said, rearing an arm back, “like this.” He threw the ball as high up as he could and waited for it to come back down. Cade saw that the little ball had deployed a small winglet to slow the descent, and it curved as it descended right back to them. The winglet retracted as soon as Alan caught it midair. “The scans will be in your goggles. It will be a 3D file, so just pull it up and cycle through the IR range looking for heat signatures. The perspective will be based on how high the camera went.”

  Cade quickly saw the new file and clicked play. Even though the toss only lasted a few seconds, the super-fast camera recorded several minutes' worth of video. Cade could zoom in or out on any spot, including looking straight down on himself from above. “So cool.” Turning on the IR overlay, he saw nothing. Even when he dialed up the sensitivity, nothing showed up. Apparently, they were the only thing down here with a heartbeat, all other life being intelligent enough to avoid this particular bit of high-value real estate.

  “How much farther, Judah?” Alan asked.

  The man just shrugged and kept trudging along. Deeper they went into the maze of narrow, but impressive, peaks and valleys. Had the massive ice sheet been removed, they would be climbing up and down full-sized mountains that could rival some of the best the Alps had to offer. As it was, the terrain was challenging but not overly rigorous. The cold and the sameness of the scenery is what was lulling them into complacency. Out of the corner of his eye, Judah saw Cade behind him tossing the BallCam high
into the air again. Something clearly had the man spooked.

  Finally reaching a relatively even section of trail, Alan activated the coordinates on his heads-up display map. They were still on course and closing in, probably within a half mile. Curiously, when he zoomed in, the target coordinates seem to swim around in a lazy circle, as if they were not precisely a fixed point. He had his Dee trigger a fix from one of the commercial satellites. The problem got worse instead of better. He thought he knew the problem but asked Dee for confirmation.

  “You are correct, Alan. The continent’s large gravitational anomaly partially extends under this region. Strong variations in the magnetic field can affect the correlation between ground stations and the NAVSTAR GPS satellite network, as well as our own commercial ones. The problem is not the position moving, but rather the inability to fix your own position precisely from orbit.”

  He checked again and realized there were only three signals showing up in his display. Judah was now carrying one of three beacons, so he was not the missing person. Muting the HUD from his goggles, he turned around. McTee was about a hundred yards back. Rearden was gone.

  Alan waited for the other man. “Where did Cade go?”

  “Dunno, man, he was there one second tossing that ball, and the next thing, he’s gone.”

  “Should we call him?” Alan asked.

  McTee shook his head. “Already tried, he’s operating in his own zone right now. Just stay on course. We can always find his beacon….again.” They both smiled. The last time they’d lost him, they’d wound up digging his nearly dead body out of a beach in New Jersey. Hopefully, this one would be less dramatic.

  They caught up to the Australian and topped the next, and hopefully final, ridge about thirty minutes later. The old man pulled his thermal hood back, revealing a patchwork of hair, scalp, and assorted sores.

  “What happened dude?” McTee asked pointing up.

  Judah ran his hand across the landscape atop his skull and grinned. “You damn Yanks keep depleting the ozone layer. Damn UV rays get through down here like a river after a flood. Docs always wanting to check us for skin cancers and stuff. Hazard of the job.” He took a pull from his water bottle. “This should be it. Never been here myself, so I can’t offer much more that that.” He looked around curiously. “Where’s your boss?”

  Something kicked up snow and rock chips from the ledge behind them, then the distinct sound of a gunshot. The disconnect between the two confused Alan, but the other men were already diving for cover.

  “What the fuck, man,” McTee said. Then, keying his CommDot, “Nomad, come in. You got eyes on? We have hostiles to our north.” He risked a quick glance over the rock and another round pinged off near his chin. “Well, shit, bastard is just going to keep us pinned down until we freeze to death, I guess.”

  Judah looked over, shaking his head. “You boys have some damned determined enemies for them to keep trying to try kill you way out here. What happened, did one of your satellites discover gold in these mountains or something?”

  Alan and McTee just shrugged, it didn’t make sense to them either.

  “Where are you, Cade?” Alan whispered.

  43

  Cade Rearden had learned long ago to listen to his inner voices and his instincts. More than once, they had saved his life. He heard McTee’s call over the comms, followed soon after by Alan’s. Then the shooting started. His senses had detected the threat behind them, and he’d veered off the narrow ledge and up higher before circling back to the north. Now he needed to know precisely where the shooter was. The sounds of gunfire echoed through the mountainous valley. Did I see something on the BallCam? He couldn’t be sure but didn’t think so. Another shot rang out. Cade’s CommDot was usually pretty accurate at pinpointing origination points, but this time it was giving wildly varied results. The shooter could be within a hundred yards or a kilometer away.

  He moved through the rocky terrain silently, not daring to speak, watching every footfall as to not disturb the loose rocks or worse, slip on an icy patch. An assortment of large rocky crags and boulders shielded him somewhat, but he was less than fifty yards from the ridgeline. Up there, he would standout to anyone looking from below, something Rangers called ‘sky-lining’ in his advanced combat course. Soldiers always avoided that at all costs.

  A hundred questions were running through his mind. Who is this guy? How did he get here, and why does he want us dead? All of those had to wait. Right now, Cade just had to do his job and pray to God McTee kept the others out of harm’s way. He eased down behind a dark, gray boulder the size of a truck and slowly removed the rifle from where it was slung on his shoulder. Up to this point, it had been more important to keep both hands empty for balance. The rifle had been designed to look like a more futuristic version of an H&K 416 assault rifle. That particular weapon would not have been ideal for this environment, but Cade was still comfortable with it, thankful that Riley had equipped it with an armament payload nearly identical to the NATO 5.56 mm round. He trusted that ammo and knew its deadly, efficient stopping power. Right now, though, he just needed it for one thing.

  The KillPoint scope had activated as soon as it sensed his hands on the pistol grip of the stock. He cautiously edged the rifle over the lip of the boulder and let the gun’s optics begin to surveil the terrain for targets or shooters. What the gun saw, he saw as an overlay in his goggles. Like the other weapons in the TCP arsenal, he could activate autofire mode on this one. So, when the target was spotted by the scope, an appropriate ammo package would be selected, calculations made for the shot based on distance, wind, drop, and a host of other factors, and the firing sequence handled all within milliseconds. Cade chose not to do that, he wanted to stop the shooter, but he also needed answers. Who in the fuck would go to this much trouble to stop them, and what were they protecting?

  The impressive KillPoint tracking scope came back clear, no targets. Shit. So much for the easy way. The shooter hadn’t fired in the last couple of minutes. That could mean he was relocating to a better position or simply waiting for his prey to make a mistake. Cade hated to do it, but he needed the shooter to make a mistake, albeit just a small one. Still watching the image through the gunsight, he eye-blinked to get McTee on a private channel. As quietly as he could, he told him what he needed.

  “You want me to do what?” the former SEAL said with an air of disbelief.

  “Just give the shooter a target. Better you than one of the others. Use a glove or a boot, just don’t leave your foot in it,” Cade whispered.

  The other man’s voice responded reluctantly, “Roger that, Cap, in three, two…one.”

  The shot rang out, the sniper had taken the bait. Simultaneously, he heard McTee yelp over the open mic. He couldn’t worry about his man right now, though. The KillPoint system had flashed red when it detected the shot; now its various visual and audio spectrums sensor were pinpointing the most likely position. Cade felt the internal servos in the gun, the ones used for the auto targeting, pulling the weapon in a different direction. He allowed the motion to track the rifle farther to the east, nearly parallel with his own position of concealment. It stopped on what appeared to be a barren patch of mountainside, numerous shards of flaked stone cascading down the rock face. The screen shifted multiple times truing to pinpoint the target, but all either he or the gun saw was the mountainside.

  Cade had worked with some of the best snipers in the world during his time as a Ranger, and later, as part of various SpecOps missions. Men whose shots were legends. Guys who could lie still and concealed for hours, or even days. In one of those instances, he watched as a Royal Marine sniper from Great Britain shot a terrorist from over a half-mile away who was behind a stone wall. There was no part of the man visible except an occasional glimpse of his shadow against the rear wall. After the successful kill shot, the sniper had recorded all the relevant data, as they all were meticulous record keepers. Cade had read the notes in amazement. To make the actual shot, t
he Marine aimed 56 feet to the left and 38 feet high of the place the shadow would be at the time the round arrived. No one ever made fun of the Brits after that.

  This guy’s aim wasn’t that good, obviously, but his concealment game was on point. Even the sophisticated software in Cade’s rifle scope couldn’t pinpoint him. McTee whispered in his earpiece,

  “Hope you got him because that was too fucking close for comfort…sir.”

  Cade ignored the complaint. His entire focus was on a patch of dirt and rock roughly three meters square. He had to trust the KillPoint sensors, but he could see nothing. The area didn’t even have anything for concealment. Suddenly another shot was fired, and this time both Cade and the rifle saw the origin point. A slight whiff of white smoke drifted up. Cade locked the optics onto a spot just a bit farther back. About as far as a man lying prone would be sighting down a sniper rifle. He still saw nothing. Not a ripple along the ground, not even a difference in the coloration. He remembered a warning that these guys may have tech as good as their own. That meant some sort of active camouflage system or something. The weapon shuddered violently, and the optical overlay flashed red. Then Cade knew why. He glimpsed the end of the man’s rifle barrel just before the KillPoint scope exploded away from the assault rifle. He’d been spotted, and now he was the hunted.

  “Tee, shooter has eyes on me, may be a good time to get over that next ridge. Move on five.”

  Cade’s subconscious registered the acknowledgement but was already formulating an attack plan. “Dee, what are my options for targeting? KillPoint is down.”

  “Nomad, shooter is approximately ninety meters out. I have the location marked, but positioning systems are not accurate enough due to magnetic anomalies to be of much use. Recommend fragmentation rounds.”