There was a short pause as he considered her request.
‘I’ll give you Denton,’ he said. ‘Nasira will stay with my soldiers. I need to be confident that you won’t try anything untoward. I need my leverage, I hope you understand.’
Sophia swallowed. ‘Send him into the terminal. I’ll meet him there.’
‘He will be accompanied by two of my men,’ Abraham said. ‘That’s not negotiable.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘I look forward to meeting them again.’
She checked her watch and switched channels again. ‘Boys, hold tight. I have a plan.’
She picked up her duffel bag and abandoned her place in the queue, catching Denton downstairs at the east entrance to Jeppesen terminal. He was already in police uniform and ready to join the advance team; at least, he was before Abraham fucked things up. She walked with him, acting naturally. A pair of resistance men walked awkwardly close behind them. Whatever their training was, it clearly didn’t extend to the fields of intelligence or surveillance.
She steered Denton into the thickest part of the crowd, forcing the resistance men back a step. She leaned in and shoved a radio into his pocket and told him the frequency of the closed channel. When the resistance men caught up, she returned to the end of the security checkpoint queue.
She held her cell to her ear and spoke into the radio. ‘Denton.’
‘Yeah,’ he said casually.
She watched him move through the crowd with his resistance men in tow. ‘Listen to me. I need …’
She paused as four police officers rushed past her, pushing past Denton too. She watched them move through to the east entrance, heading out to Garage West.
‘That doesn’t look good.’ She switched back to the open channel. ‘There’s a whole lot of cops heading out to Garage West, do you know what’s going on?’ she asked.
That should give the resistance a heads-up. As much as she wanted them off her back, letting the police surround them wasn’t going to help her operation. She listened to the operation’s open channel as it quickly filled with activity: Abraham’s men scrambling to relocate. When she switched back to the private channel, she caught the end of Jay’s words.
‘—moving south,’ he said.
Sophia pulled her cell to her ear as cover. ‘Say again?’
‘Abraham’s men are moving the van out of Garage West,’ Jay said.
‘Denton,’ she said, ‘I need your help stopping that van.’
She made eye contact with Denton in the crowd. He gave her a curt nod, then pivoted suddenly to face his resistance escorts. She watched as, amidst the turmoil of the compressed crowd, they crumpled to the floor. Denton strode away. She tore through the crowd, catching him as he exited the terminal through the south entrance. It was still dark outside.
‘Um, Sophia,’ Jay said over the radio. ‘Things just got … kind of fucked up.’
She couldn’t imagine how this could fuck up any further.
‘What’s happening?’ she yelled as she ran.
‘Abraham’s men just opened fire on the cops,’ Jay said. ‘They’re shooting it out on the north end of Garage West.’
She could hear the tinny pop of pistol fire in the background of his radio transmission.
‘Get back to the terminal!’ she shouted. ‘Jay, Damien, back to the terminal! Line up at security checkpoint. I’ll be there soon!’
Denton drew his pistol on a passing driver and ordered him out of his car. He climbed in, glaring at Sophia impatiently as she slid over the hood and climbed in the other side. He was already accelerating as she jumped in. The door closed of its own accord and Sophia decided it might be a good idea to draw her pistol and buckle her seatbelt.
DC’s voice filled her ear. ‘What else would they be?’ he shouted.
She’d almost forgotten about his situation in the FAA control tower.
‘They’re sending in troops to take us down!’ someone else in the tower said.
It took a moment for Sophia to realize DC was secretly transmitting the control tower conversation over the private channel. Whether he was cuffed or standing at gunpoint, he’d somehow found a way to communicate with her.
‘In finger-four formation? At 20,000 feet and only 150 miles per hour?’ DC said. ‘I don’t think so, buddy.’
‘Hey, did anyone ask you?’ the jaguar knight said. ‘They’re coming in to land. One of you controllers, get in contact with them. We need to know who they are.’
‘Found the van!’ Denton shouted next to her.
He steered toward the spiral off ramp at the end of Garage West. In the middle of the spiral Sophia saw the black van that contained the EMP, carefully making its way down the ramp and out of the parking lot. Denton steered toward the exit at the bottom of the ramp.
Sophia spoke into her mic, hoping DC could hear her. ‘Where are the planes, DC?’
‘Twenty miles south,’ he said. ‘And they’re not responding.’
Sophia could hear in his voice that he was slightly on edge.
‘I told you, it’s troops, man,’ the jaguar knight said.
‘Maybe they’re not responding because there’s no pilot,’ DC said. ‘Ever think of that?’
‘Listen, wise ass,’ the knight said, ‘if I want your opinion I’ll fucking ask for it. Until then, shut the fuck up.’
The van was almost at the bottom of the off ramp. Denton accelerated, taking the corner hard and barreling up the ramp, cutting the van off before it could escape. He pulled the car up sidelong in front of the van, leaped out and climbed onto the sunroof, aiming his pistol at the driver. Sophia drew her pistol, but she could only aim through a tiny gap and it was unlikely she could take a shot at the driver or the passenger.
‘End of the line, gentlemen,’ Denton said.
‘DC,’ Sophia said, ‘I need you to tell me the moment the bombs launch—’
The van accelerated, smashing into their car. Denton got a quick shot off with his pistol and then jumped over the van’s windshield and onto the van’s roof. Sophia was still in the car as the van pushed it faster and faster down the winding off ramp. She stood up through the sunroof and aimed her pistol at the driver.
‘My opinion won’t be of much use you when they deploy Hellfire missiles,’ DC said to the jaguar. ‘Or worse, 1000-pound bombs.’
Sophia hoped it wasn’t the latter. If these were, as DC was suggesting, UCAS—unmanned combat air systems—flying on target for Denver International, that meant the Fifth Column were already aware of their location. It also meant they were likely to manufacture another terrorist attack and blame the carnage on Sophia and her team.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Damien said over the radio. ‘Or we’re toast.’
‘You and me both,’ Sophia said.
Denton was huggin the van roof as she aimed her pistol at the van’s driver. He ducked. She aimed lower, but his pistol popped into view and sprayed rounds at her. She dropped back down into the car.
‘I’m not leaving the airport until we destroy the Seraphim super-array!’ she yelled, acutely aware of the gearstick digging into her spine. ‘I’m not calling this off!’
‘You may not have a choice,’ Grace said in her ear.
She could barely hear the radio chatter over the screeching of metal against concrete. She looked through her window, not impressed to discover a fat concrete pillar at the end. Her car was being shoved right for it at an increasing speed.
‘And leave everyone here?’ she said. ‘Not now.’
She needed to get out through the sunroof. Before she could move, the car flipped onto its side, the sunroof pressing firmly against the van’s headlights.
‘Sophia, you are a stubborn bitch,’ Grace said over the radio. ‘Fortunately, so am I. And I’m in uniform. Which means I can trigger an airport-wide evacuation.’
‘Do it!’ Sophia yelled.
She wound down her window and stuck her head out, pistol aimed at the driver. He was a
lready aiming at her. Before she could fire, his head slumped against the steering wheel, hitting the horn. Blood decorated the windshield.
Sophia looked up to see Denton standing atop the van, pistol cast downward. He’d shot the driver through the cabin roof. Sophia gave him a small nod.
Denton’s eyes widened. ‘Get down!’
She saw him flatten himself against the roof of the van. Without thinking, she pulled herself back into the sideways car and crawled into a ball, pistol and elbows out. She couldn’t see anything except through the narrow windshield, which offered a nice view of the concrete off-ramp wall beside her. Suddenly, a dog-like creature leaped down from the overturned car. In an instant she knew what it was. A Pariah. A mechanized support weapon remotely controlled by military operators; the ground equivalent of an unmanned aerial vehicle. And, like a UAV, it was equipped with an M16 assault rifle on top, which could be precisely aimed, fired and reloaded from a reservoir of drum magazines.
Sophia held her breath, watching in disbelief as the Pariah stalked past the windshield, its front and hind legs bending unnaturally inward. It disappeared from view, walking past the van. A moment later, a second Pariah pounced beside her, its exoskeleton glistening in the moonlight. She watched as it followed the first Pariah. She remained perfectly still, breathing slowly and as quietly as possible, as a third Pariah landed beside her and followed the others. They must be heading for Abraham’s men inside Garage West, which didn’t bode well. Outside of testing and experiments, the only military or intelligence service that used Pariahs was the Fifth Column. If they were out here in the open, even at night, the Fifth Column must have an extremely itchy trigger finger so close to the full demonstration of the Seraphim super-array’s capabilities.
‘We have the EMP,’ she whispered into her mic. ‘But we also have Pariahs.’
‘We’re in the queue,’ Damien said. ‘Please tell me you didn’t say Pariahs.’
‘They’re moving into Garage West,’ Sophia said quietly. ‘If you can hear me, Nasira, get the hell out of there.’
‘Is the EMP ready?’ Grace asked.
‘Not yet,’ Denton whispered. ‘I’m looking inside the van and the transmitter’s not here. The driver didn’t have it either.’
‘Shit,’ Sophia said. ‘Abraham must have it.’
‘His men have it!’ Nasira yelled, gunfire chattering in the background.
Sophia exhaled in relief. Nasira was alive and kicking—and she had her radio.
‘What’s their location?’ she asked.
‘South end, near the off ramp,’ Nasira said.
‘Right where the Pariahs are about to pop up,’ Sophia said.
‘I see ’em,’ Nasira said. ‘Ugly fuckers.’
‘I need a minute to prime the EMP,’ Denton said from inside the van.
Sophia climbed out of the overturned car, careful to make sure no additional Pariahs appeared behind her. ‘Nasira, can you get the transmitter?’
‘On it,’ Nasira said.
‘DC, you said there were bombs incoming,’ Sophia said. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The planes are ten miles out,’ DC said, still pretending to talk to the jaguar knights.
Whatever their response, Sophia didn’t hear it because DC had released his pressel. Maybe they’d discovered he was secretly transmitting.
‘Stay in the van, Denton,’ she said, and sprinted down the off ramp, heading back to Jeppesen terminal.
Think, she told herself. DC was a hostage himself now and they likely had 1000-pound bombs en route to level the entire airport. These things tended to happen when you took on the Fifth Column. DC would have to wait; she needed to deal with the bombs. If the aircraft were dropping the good news, they’d be using laser-guided. If she was able to somehow detonate the EMP while the bombs were in mid-fall and in range of the pulse, the EMP would fry their onboard computers along with their impact, target-proximity or GPS guided sensors, depending on which was being used.
Ten miles away.
Altitude of 20,000 feet.
She reached the walkway that led to the south entrance of Jeppesen terminal and slowed from a sprint to a fast walk, not wanting to attract too much attention.
Think. There had to be a way.
Twenty thousand feet. That was four miles high.
‘Denton, your EMP has a range of six miles, right?’ she said.
‘At a stretch,’ he said into her earpiece. ‘Five to be safe.’
With no propulsion of their own, the bombs would be relying on the forward velocity of the delivery aircraft and gravity to reach their target, which meant they would be ripple-dropped not too long before the aircraft passed overhead. The bombs had control fins that could steer it in mid-flight, but this still restricted the angle of drop to zero degrees with a tolerance of twenty degrees. Almost directly overhead.
Sophia imagined a twenty-degree angle overhead. If the bombs were launched from that angle, four miles high, that would still fall into the range of the EMP, but only barely.
‘DC, I need you to tell me when they’re less than four miles away from the control tower,’ she said.
DC didn’t confirm, so she hoped he could hear her.
‘Nasira, we have inside of five minutes until those bombs drop,’ she said. ‘Do whatever it takes.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
Sophia walked back into Jeppesen terminal, her P99 concealed down the back of her waistband. She showed her fake passport and boarding pass to the security personnel at the door. Damien and Jay were almost at the front of the queue when she reached them. Despite the almost hysterical level of airport security in the US, check-ins and security were not integrated; it would cost billions to retro-fit every airport in the country to achieve that. Sophia’s plan involved exploiting this weakness to get her, Damien and Jay through to the concourses with their false boarding passes and passports.
She explained word for word what she wanted them to do. It was essential they followed each step closely so they could get past security with minimal fuss. Not an easy thing to do when they were carrying backpacks full of weapons and radios.
‘Why can’t we just wait … five minutes for the pulse?’ Damien said.
‘We need to be there in five minutes,’ Sophia said.
‘Can’t we change into uniforms?’ Jay said.
She knew what he was implying. Police uniforms would allow them access around the security checkpoint. But they didn’t have any uniforms on hand.
‘We don’t have them with us,’ she said. ‘Can’t be done.’
‘OK. Well, you’re going first then,’ Jay said with a smile.
Sophia didn’t return it. She stepped up to the body scanner and requested a pat-down from a nearby TSA officer. The officer raised an eyebrow, then took her aside. Sophia counted eight officers, all unarmed. Two were on her as she was palmed off to a female officer for the pat-down.
‘Are you OK with having your pat-down in front of everyone?’ the woman asked her.
Sophia could have asked to be taken into a private room with an accompanying officer. There were tactical advantages to that: she could remove two officers from the eight who could otherwise call for police assistance. She could detain them without harming them too much and return to aid Damien and Jay. But if she was in the room, she wouldn’t be there to provide support to the boys. And if that happened, the timing would be completely off.
‘Here’s fine,’ she said.
The officer glared at her as though she recognized her face. Sophia hoped her photo hadn’t done the rounds through law enforcement and TSA yet.
From the edge of her vision, she noticed Damien resting his hands on the body scanner. That was Jay’s cue. He placed his hands on the luggage scanner, acting frustrated. One little burst from his fingertips and the luggage scanner would suffer a brutal power surge. She knew when it happened because the conveyor belt immediately stopped moving just as Damien’s bag full of shielded radios slipped insid
e. Jay’s bag of firearms didn’t make it through, which Sophia was relieved about. At the same time, Damien’s thermogenesis was busy radiating intense levels of heat through the scanner. If his thermic ability had enough kick, it would damage the tubes and melt the anodes. End result: the scanner would no longer scan.
The officer called Damien through the scanner, unaware that he’d fried it with his hands. Sophia braced herself. The officer manning the scanner display started to look confused. She hoped it was because the scanner wasn’t functioning rather than because she’d noticed a pistol shoved down the back of Damien’s jeans. It wasn’t as concealed as Sophia would’ve liked.
Sophia’s pat-down officer snapped on her gloves and explained that she would use the front of her hands everywhere except in sensitive areas. Sophia widened her legs and raised her arms out from her hips. She smiled at the accompanying officer while the pat-down officer checked her arms and then her legs.
Damien walked into her field of vision. The officer stopped him and asked him to walk through again. Sophia hoped the officer wouldn’t redirect Damien to the other scanner in the adjacent queue. He could just as easily blow that one too, but it would complicate their plan.
Damien moved to re-enter the scanner.
‘This is Grace,’ said a voice in Sophia’s earpiece. ‘Airport evacuation should be underway.’
A teeth-jarring alarm sparked up throughout the terminal, strident and constant.
A brisk female voice came over the airport PA speakers. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are requesting all travelers and personnel to please evacuate the terminal. Attention, ladies and gentlemen, we are requesting all travelers and personnel to please evacuate the terminal.’
Damien drew his pistol and aimed it at the scanner officer.
Sophia looked at the pat-down officer. ‘Sorry,’ she said and kneed her in the face, then extended her leg to one side and kicked the other officer’s kneecap. She reached into the back of her jeans and removed her stun gun—fashioned from a disposable camera in the airport toilets—and planted the electrodes firmly into the pat-down officer’s neck, then the other officer’s midsection. The electrodes crackled fiercely. Both slumped to the ground at amusingly awkward angles.
The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 Page 45