by Drew Avera
“Hell, it’s a Coast Guard base,” Jenny Armstrong drawled lazily, stretched out across a battered sofa, half in her ex-husband’s lap. “They probably had a fucking Starbucks.”
James Fuller didn’t seem to mind the casual intimacy from the woman…or perhaps Nate just didn’t know the older man well enough to be able to tell when something bothered him. Either way, the former mech pilot simply stared into a point between him and Roach and stroked his wire-brush mustache with a sort of Zen equanimity.
If the Norfolk Coast Guard station had ever had a Starbucks, Nate thought, it certainly didn’t have one anymore, or much of anything but a roof and four walls. The only power came from Broken Arrow Mercenary Force’s own generators, and those were quiet now, letting the natural light of the Virginia morning provide illumination for the garage where they’d stored the mechs. The Hellfires stared down at them with a sort of expectant glare, as if demanding to know why they weren’t being used.
“Okay, everyone’s had some sleep and some food,” Roach said, calling the meeting to order.
“And a shower, and a change of clothes, thank God,” Nate agreed, sighing in gratitude. There’d been a while there he hadn’t been able to live with himself.
“Yes, thank God,” Roach agreed. “But now that we’ve all had some time to think, we need to decide on a plan of action. Miss Grigoryeva…” She stumbled over the words. “Agent Grigoryeva?” She shot the blond woman a questioning glance. “What do you prefer I call you?”
“Svetlana is fine,” the Russian FSB agent told her.
She looked, Nate thought, obscenely fashionable in the spare fatigues Roach had hunted up for her. The rolled-up pant legs and shirt sleeves, rather than seeming awkward and goofy, appeared to be some sort of style choice when she wore them. And her curves did wonderful things to the uniform, causing a stirring in Nate he was becoming all too used to since he’d begun spending time with the woman.
The handcuffs securing her to the arm of the office chair had an interesting effect as well. Roach had insisted on those. She still didn’t trust the Russian, and Nate couldn’t blame her. He wondered if Roach even completely trusted him since his return. The way she looked at him seemed different than before, as if she was somehow disappointed in him.
Hector Ramirez, “Mule” as he’d been known since he was the team’s new guy, seemed more chill about the situation, as if this was all somehow the new normal and he was just happy to still have a job. He hadn’t said much since they’d returned from the rescue mission and he wasn’t saying anything this morning, just sitting backwards on an old chair and watching everyone.
“Svetlana,” Roach tried again, “do you think this Bob Franklin has already begun to create duplicates of Nathan?”
“At least one,” the Russian woman confirmed, trying to lounge in the ratty office chair and coming up short against the cuffs. “I heard him speaking to the techs about a proof of concept, I think he called it. I never saw it, but I am fairly sure he would have had one made before he left for Colorado.”
“I’m still not clear what he hopes to accomplish in Colorado,” James Fuller said. The man didn’t speak much, so when he did, Nate listened. “There’s a summit going between the US and Russian governments, right?”
Svetlana nodded.
“The first real attempts at a peace agreement in ten years. The Prime Minister has been pushing the idea and he finally got your president to listen.” She shrugged. “From what I’ve heard of Mikhail Popov, he has grown disillusioned with the war, but I fear he lacks the real power to stop it.”
“He’s the Prime Minister, ain’t he?” Fuller asked. “If he doesn’t have the power, who the hell does?”
“Things are just as complicated in my home as they are here. Popov is in charge, nominally, but the Defense Minister, Sergei Antonov, has more say over war policy than some think is healthy.” Her mouth twisted in an expression of distaste. “He has the complete trust and loyalty of the Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces, as well as the GRU, military intelligence. Popov is in control of most of the FSB, but not all of it. The FSB is riddled with influence peddlers selling themselves out to organized crime and defense contractors.”
“Well, this shit sounds very familiar,” Jenny murmured. “Sounds about why the two of us got out of the military, James.”
“Is Franklin going to use his army of clones to attack the US delegation or the Russian one?” Roach demanded, her tone short on patience, either with the situation or with Svetlana.
“I was not told all the details,” Svetlana insisted, “but I would not be surprised if he killed them all. The US government is running on a thin edge out west. It wouldn’t take very much to topple it, and after that, any strong enough force would be seen as better than nothing. As for the Russians…” She motioned expansively with her free hand. “I know Robert has allies within the government and the bratva, the Russian mafia. If he were to take down Popov, only General Antonov would be left standing in his way.”
“This shit,” James Fuller declared flatly, looking between Roach and Nate, “is too fucking big for just us. There is no way we can stop any of this ourselves.”
“Well, we obviously can’t go running to the Department of Defense,” Jenny protested, “not if Franklin has people on the inside who’d tell him.”
“Well, who the hell else is going to help us?” Ramirez asked, finally speaking up. “Who else has troops?”
“Other mercenary units,” Nate said, snapping his fingers in realization. “We can pull in other contractors.”
James Fuller nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I can see that. Gonna have to promise ‘em some sort of payday in the end, but you might could bring in three or four teams with the idea the DoD would cover it, if we can pull this off.”
“Who, though?” Roach asked, her arms crossed, head cocked to the side in the very image of skepticism. “Aren’t you the one who’s always told me how sleazy a lot of the other merc units were? How we can’t trust them?”
“In general, sure,” Nate admitted, squirming a bit in the wheelchair. It creaked its ancient protests at the treatment and he wondered what the odds were of the thing collapsing with him in it. My legs are just about healed up now, anyway. Just aches where Bob’s medics drilled into the bone to get the sample. “But there are a few we might be able to count on, if we can talk them into going. Westbridge PMC has a good reputation. And LV-426…” He shrugged. “I mean, they’re a bit snooty and holier-than-thou and Conrad Barron can be a stuck-up prick sometimes, but they’re honest.”
“Those new guys,” Fuller said, waving his fingers in a “God, what was that name,” gesture. “They just popped up like two years ago. What the hell do they call themselves? You know, the ones who blast heavy metal out of speakers they rigged up on their mechs?”
“You mean Die Valkyrie?” Jenny asked him, staring at him sidelong. “You really wanna work with those weirdos?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to hang out with them over drinks,” Fuller protested. “I just heard they get the job done. And they’re definitely crazy enough to consider something like this.”
“We can put out some feelers,” Nate suggested, “maybe arrange a meeting in the Fry to set it up.”
“Whoa there, Nate,” Roach said, raising a hand to slow him down. “Even if you get some other mercs to go along with this, how in the hell do you think we’re going to get two dozen or more mechs from here to fucking Colorado? We’re not gonna be walking that distance, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“And even if we had the time to walk it,” Jenny added, “we’d get our asses blown off before we ever got there. There are military checkpoints at every crossing of the Mississippi River, from Canada to the Gulf. It’s a major part of what ties down the active Army. Walk, swim or fly, we’d get detected and blown to shit.”
“Anyone have any ideas how we can smuggle a couple dozen mechs from the eastern seaboard to Colorado?” Ramirez asked,
hands spread wide.
Nate almost laughed at the way the kid just accepted this was going to get done and the only question remaining was the method.
“There’s an intact railroad line that goes all the way from North Carolina to Colorado Springs,” Nate said. Then he frowned, rubbing at his temples. “At least I think it’s still intact. I have a memory of escorting a military shipment from Colorado into Charlotte, but I don’t think it’s my memory, if you know what I mean.”
Roach’s face reminded Nate of a pot ready to boil over, and finally the lid wouldn’t hold anymore.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” she demanded, the sudden explosion of anger taking Nate by surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. She wasn’t getting worked up because he hadn’t mentioned railroad tracks before.
“It’s not something you talk about,” he admitted, shrugging. “To be frank, it feels very unnatural talking openly about it with all of you right now. It’s something that was drummed into me by the DoD. Maybe even programmed into me, for all I know.”
“They could do that?” Ramirez asked, his eyes going wide. “They could program you like a robot?”
“Not quite. But think about it. They chose what memories to include in my scan. I was designed to be loyal, patriotic, optimistic, so they just included the parts of my Prime’s memory that encouraged that. I know he was married, and I have a vague memory that it ended, that we…” He stopped, closing his eyes with a wince of old pain. “That they wound up divorced, but they didn’t think it would encourage me to fight hard if they included the tawdry details, the fights and the custody battle and…” He trailed off, eyeing Svetlana, remembering the file she’d shown him. “…and their daughter’s death. It wasn’t something I needed to know. Our memories shape who we are, and I’m not my Prime, the old Nathan Stout. I’m the version of him they wanted fighting the Russians in the cockpit of a Hellfire. The version they didn’t want blabbing about the dupe project to everyone.”
“You’re the only Nate I know,” Roach told him, leaning forward in the couch. “The only one who’s been my friend. This other guy, the Prime…he sounds like a real asshole. I don’t give a shit about him. I just need to know I can still count on you.”
“I promise,” he assured her, “I won’t hold anything back anymore. Some of it was because I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. Because of the lifespan thing.”
“You really only have another six or seven years?” Ramirez asked, sounding stricken with the knowledge.
“Maybe.” Another look toward Svetlana. “According to our new friend, here, Bob Franklin might have a way around that. But I won’t be counting on it. I mean, how many of us figure we’re going to be around in another six or seven years anyway, in this business?”
“Well, I had hopes of retirement in luxury,” Jenny cracked, “but then you assholes showed up. But back to the whole thing where we’re actually thinking we can pull off any of this…,” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Or are we just accepting we’re going to die so what’s the point? I gotta admit, I’m lost.”
“The railroad line is probably still there,” Fuller declared, steering the conversation back to the subject at hand. “The DoD gets mechs out here somehow to issue to merc units. They ain’t flying or walking them, either. And the Russians wouldn’t be letting any ships through unless they were heavily guarded, which would kind of defeat the purpose of saving money and personnel. So it’s gotta be a railroad.”
“Great,” Roach said voice dripping with skepticism, looking between Jenny, Fuller, Nate and Svetlana. “Do any of you happen to know where we can borrow a train?”
“Borrow?” Jenny said. “No. Rent? Maybe.” She shot a look at Fuller. “You still know how to get in contact with Wild Bill?”
“Sheee-itt,” Fuller drawled, drawing the word out into four syllables. “That lunatic? I don’t even know. It’s been years! Hell, I think we were still married. Why the hell would I want to contact Wild Bill?”
“Because old Bill found himself a new side gig,” she told him. “Smuggling shit past inspection stations…on the old railroad lines.”
“Oh, man,” Fuller leaned back on the sofa, covering his eyes with his fingers. “I hate that fucking guy.”
“If this Wild Bill has a train,” Nate said, “then we need to talk to him, no matter how much you hate him. James, why don’t you handle Wild Bill, and Jenny and Roach and me will start putting out feelers to other private military companies and see who might be up for this.”
“What about me?” Ramirez asked, obviously feeling left out.
“You need to stay here,” Nate said, “and keep an eye on Agent Grigoryeva. We can’t parade her around out there in front of God and radar. Franklin might have people looking for her. She has to lay low.” He grinned lopsidedly. “And while I trust Svetlana with my life, I don’t necessarily trust her to roam alone around the place where I keep all my stuff.”
“What do you think I’ll do, Nathan?” Svetlana asked him, cocking an eyebrow. “Steal one of your mechs and head back to Russia?”
“I don’t know what you’d do,” he admitted. “And that’s what scares me.”
Chapter Four
It had been an embarrassingly long time since Anton Varlamov had jumped out of an airplane. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten how, or forgotten what it felt like when the slipstream slapped him in the face and the bitter cold pierced him even through his insulated coveralls, but the memory had lost some of the bite, some of the immediacy. And maybe the twisting, weightless feel in his stomach had slipped his mind after so many years driving old trucks on broken roads and sneaking through ruined cities on foot.
The memory of the total, cloud-locked darkness and the feeling of having jumped out of the back ramp of the plane and into another dimension, into the depths of Hell itself, that had certainly faded with time. It came back with a rush of adrenaline and a surge of fear he could barely control, and it was all he could do just to force himself to concentrate enough to shape his body into the arch position to stabilize his fall. He settled into the position, letting the feeling of stability calm the fear and turmoil, letting the sound of his own breath inside his helmet hypnotize him.
The fugue was broken by the dead-reckoning mapping program in the Heads-Up Display of his jump goggles flashing red at him, warning him he was drifting too far from his targeted landing zone. He sighed inside his oxygen mask and pulled in his arms and legs, cutting down on his wind resistance and knifing forward from one pocket of black nothingness to another, guided only by arrows projected in his vision. Back on course, he obediently spread into the arch position again and waited for the altimeter to reach three hundred meters.
High-Altitude, Low-Opening insertions weren’t his favorite thing, though he did prefer them to HAHOs, High-Altitude, High-Opening. Floating slowly under a canopy for twenty or thirty minutes left him feeling like a huge, dangling target. At least with a HALO jump, you got it over with fast. Though there was the whole business of not opening your chute until you were only three hundred meters up, probably much too close to successfully deploy the auxiliary chute if anything went wrong with the main.
How long do you have to employ your auxiliary if your main chute doesn’t open, the old joke went. The rest of your life.
The altimeter beeped a warning in his ear and he yanked the ripcord through long-ingrained instinct. Would it open? Would this be the mission when his luck finally ran out and he slammed into the ground at terminal velocity? Would anyone even find his body? How long would it be before anyone back in Russia even knew he was dead? The thought of death had long since ceased to frighten him, but he did harbor a certain melancholy at the thought he might not even be missed.
The chute opened and yanked him upwards, shaking free thoughts of premature mortality and bringing his mind back to the mission. He was below the last layer of clouds now, and the night-vision filters bui
lt into his goggles were showing him the infrared beacon flashing in regular intervals just to the north. He grabbed at the steering handles for the chute and pulled a slip, bringing himself around facing the wind.
At least there were no trees here. Sachs Harbor was on the southwest edge of Banks Island, nominally in Canada’s Northwest Territories, but in practice inhabited only by Inuit tribesmen and musk oxen. The rolling hills near the old, abandoned airport were bare of trees, bare of anything but lichen and whatever low, hardy brush grew in the tundra during the late summer. Had he been here a month later, the whole place might have been buried under half a meter of snow.
And if it were, then we wouldn’t be staging out of here and maybe I wouldn’t have had as long a flight.
He could see the hover-barges from a hundred meters up on infrared and thermal. Their isotope reactors outshone the smaller power plants in the Tagans lashed down to their decks, keeping the cargo craft floating a meter off the flat, calm water of the bay on a cushion of air from the fans. They were toys, he thought with a sneer. The Americans had begun using them ten years ago and mother Russia had to copy them despite the fact they weren’t superior to simple, cheap, water-born transportation. They’d likely been delivered here by cargo ships and what the hell was the point of dumping them here instead of simply riding the cargo ships across to mainland Canada?
Nobody asked your opinion, Varlamov. Shut up and soldier.
He’d aimed for a flat table of high ground about a kilometer from the beach, and out of practice or not, he touched down directly in the center of it. The ground was soft beneath his boots and he dug in his heels to stop his slide, pulling at one side of the chute to deflate it, then reeling it back to him with arms looped through the risers.
He’d barely had it collected and was stuffing it into his canvas parachute bag when half a dozen armed men crested the rise, sand spraying backwards from their boots, their breath coming in winded chuffs as they brought their rifles to their shoulders to cover him. Weapons-mounted lights speared through the night and Anton winced, pulling off his goggles and helmet and shielding his face with a hand.