by Sawyer, JT
“What now, if central command is off-grid or disabled?” said Phillip.
“I’ll try a few more times throughout the night. The juice in the sat phone is half gone, the way those things work, so I have to be picky with our attempts until tomorrow, when I can pull out the solar charger. Cent-com is hopefully only down for a short time until POTUS and his cabinet regroups.
“For now, we should all get some rest,” Carlie said. “There are two couches and some chairs in the employee lounge around the rear. Phillip and I will take three-hour shifts on guard and keep trying to get a message out.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” said Nadine as she and David began walking towards the other room. She turned before entering, looking at Carlie. “Thank you for coming to get us, ma’am. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t showed up.”
Carlie nodded while raising an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”
“Yes—thanks to both of you,” said the professor. “We are indebted to you.”
Eliza unfolded her arms. “Rescuing others is programmed into their cell structure.”
“We are not programmed for suicide, Eliza, and I certainly didn’t take an oath to die for you or your father but rather for the office of the presidency. There’s a big difference.”
“I just can’t take sitting still here any longer when there are others besides me that can use help,” Eliza muttered before heading into the back room.
“Ah, she is brash at times, but I’m quite sure she is grateful,” said the professor, leaning forward in a low whisper to Carlie.
“Sometimes Eliza’s insulation from the real world prevents her from seeing the bigger picture,” Carlie said, then looked at the professor. “Why don’t you join the others, sir, and we’ll wake you when we have any news.”
After everyone had left, Carlie leaned against the wall next to Phillip, who bore a faint grin. “What’s up with you?” Carlie said.
“I just find the irony of your situation intriguing. It hadn’t dawned on me until I saw you interact with Eliza just now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, Eliza despises anything to do with D.C. and its politics and has tried to remove herself from that setting as much as possible while you—you desperately want to be assigned there and be immersed in that world at any cost. Funny thing is—your wish will come true when you finally get her back to her father.”
“You mean much to your disappointment at not being able to hamstring my career with your tawdry investigation?”
“Well, my probing will probably be a moot point after all this, now, won’t it? Though I do worry about you—did Gerald and the others try and help you through your PTSD over shooting that young attacker or were you just trying to bury your head in your work as the psych evals have indicated?”
Carlie got up and moved towards him until he backed into the wall. “Piss off,” she said, standing a foot away from his face with her fists balled up. “Did my psych eval also mention anything about my temper?”
As she stood across from him, the overhead lights began flickering in the room as well as in the adjoining buildings. Then the room went dark and she heard the flow of cold air stop pouring forth from the ventilation system above. The campus was black and only the occasional lightning from the approaching thunderstorm, shining through the panes of glass above, outlined their surroundings.
Phillip stared at the ceiling and A/C vents. “Great—that’s just fucking great. We are so screwed. Now those things are going to come in here and they’re going to…”
“Shut it, Phillip, and take a deep breath. I don’t need you panicking the others and you’re the only reasonably capable shooter I have so pull it together,” she said, grabbing his chin. “Phillip, are you with me?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Got it,” he replied in a wobbly voice.
“Now listen, it’s going to heat up in here pretty quick. We’ve got plenty of water so we can use that for getting through the night and then we’ll have to retreat down below into the service tunnel during the day.”
Carlie walked across the room and into the employee lounge, where the others were splayed out across the furniture. “The power just went out across campus so that means no air-conditioning. I’d advise soaking some towels, sheets, or your clothes in water and wrapping that around you to stay cool throughout the night. You can also lie on the ground if it gets too hot. This is what the early residents did here until the advent of A/C so it looks like we’re going to be sleeping like pioneers for tonight. I also want everyone to fill up any bowls, containers, and water bottles in case the water mains shut down.”
As everyone was quietly at work gathering supplies and then settling back down to rest, Carlie’s thoughts raced back to her oldest brother and his family in San Diego. It would be a violation of protocol to call him on the sat phone—God, I hope they are alright. She pulled out a picture in her wallet, stowed behind her ID, of her three brothers and her father. All of them were lazily reclining around the woodsmoke of a fall deer camp in the Sierra Mountains. How she longed for such peaceful times again. Her eyes floated over the faces of her two youngest brothers. One had died in Afghanistan three years earlier and the other had retreated from the family, finding solace in his work in Africa with the Peace Corps.
She considered going in the back room to make the call to her oldest brother but then glanced over at Eliza in the other room and refocused her mind on the mission ahead.
Chapter 19
As the night wore on and the rain storm intensified, Carlie sat up on one elbow from her makeshift bed on the concrete floor. Phillip was standing nearby on guard duty and came over to her side.
She reached over for a water bottle and downed half a liter, then reslung her pistol in her belt holster. It had been a restless two hours of sleep due to the unfamiliar noises, the sweltering heat, and the uncomfortable floor arrangements. The conditions reminded her of most of her other assignments when she was abroad—the four-hour nights of sleep, skipping meals, catching another red-eye flight to a different time zone, and standing in the cold or heat for days on end, doing the advance work before a protectee arrived. Despite the globetrotting, she could barely recall the sights she had seen in the cities she visited. Her job was an endless blur of memorizing escape routes and potential target vectors.
As she stood up, she could see the delicate ornamental flowers in the lobby were already beginning to wilt and die. “What’s the temp in here?” she said, rubbing her eyes.
Phillip walked over to a large wall monitor with a thermometer and craned his neck to read the gauge. “Looks like eighty-four degrees. This place is going to be an oven soon. Temps this week were supposed to be around 110, I heard.”
“I’m going to try the sat phone one more time and then it’ll have to be recharged. While I’m doing that, have everyone organize all the water, food, and sheets, and get them down in the tunnels before sunrise. That’ll have to be our new hideout for the day.”
Phillip nodded and then walked into the employee lounge while Carlie retrieved the sat phone from her pack and headed to a rear window.
After powering up the unit, she dialed the familiar number for central command in Washington. After the third ring, a man’s voice came over the line. “Cent-com, Vectra One, authenticate.”
She took a deep breath and blew a strand of hair off her face. “This is Carlene Simmons, AZT9662-Agent 3088 SW, over.”
She could hear typing on a computer keyboard and then the voice returned. “Confirmed, Agent Simmons; what is your location and status?”
“I have secured Gemini and we are at the University of Arizona. Our local command center has been compromised and primary evac routes are cut off, over.”
“Please hold,” the monotone voice replied, and then returned a few seconds later to indicate he was placing the call on speaker.
“Ms. Simmons, this is President Huntington along with General Adams. Is my daug
hter OK?”
“Yes, she is unharmed, sir. Her security detail hid her away until we got to her.”
“Thank God. I am forever indebted to you and your colleagues.”
Carlie then heard a deeper voice come on the line. “This is General Adams; can you give us your exact location? We will coordinate with any remaining Homeland Security and law-enforcement agencies in the region to expedite your extraction. We have lost contact with most of our teams but we will get to you.”
“Current position is in the pharma…” The phone emitted a beep. Carlie pulled it back from her ear, staring at the LED screen as the battery expended itself and the unit powered down.
“Dammit,” she said, while rotating the antenna closed. She unrolled the flexible solar power charger and laid it out on the windowsill before her and connected the phone. Now we’ll have to wait until sunrise to juice this baby back to life. I guess it’s time to locate a deck of cards and settle in as the dorm babysitter.
Chapter 20
After the power outage had crippled city buildings, Shane and his men retreated during the night to the cooler confines of the subterranean parking garage below their tactical ops center.
As sunrise came, he stood poring over a map on the hood of a black Humvee, looking at possible routes to each family member’s home in the region. Given their tightness as a group on the job, it was typical for agents to live in close proximity to each other. This provided a support network for the wives and children when their husbands were deployed on missions.
Now, his thoughts were solely on assisting his men in getting their families back to the tac-ops center, which would be their safest location for riding out whatever hell had just been unleashed.
While he and Matias went over approach routes and exfil options, Rory came over and handed the inter-agency radio to Shane. “We got a call that just came from cent-com in D.C.”
Shane placed down the GPS unit and grabbed the radio. “Yes, this is Agent Shane Colter with the DEA.”
The voice on the other end was General Adams. Upon hearing this, Shane set the phone down on speaker and snapped his fingers above his head, motioning for his men to gather around.
“Go ahead, sir.”
“We just received word from one of our Secret Service agents that the president’s daughter is alive and being safeguarded at the University of Arizona. How far is that from your location, Agent Colter?”
Shane folded his arms across his chest and looked up at Matias and the others. “That’s about fifteen minutes’ drive or three minutes via helo, sir.”
“I’m sure you and your unit have been through a lot in the past sixteen hours but I have to ask—are you mission capable to extract them? You are the only federal response team left in the region.”
Shane sighed and took a deep breath, looking down at the map on the hood with the highlighted streets and back up at his men’s inquiring eyes. “Yes, sir, I am good to go. I can have boots on the ground shortly.”
“Understood. We don’t know how long they can hold out,” said the General. “We have lost contact with their security detail. I have their sat phone number, which I will relay to you. Thermal imaging indicates that they are located in the Skaggs Pharmaceutical Building. We have pinpointed that as being on the north-central perimeter of the main campus, near the medical center.”
“Can you provide us with a satellite linkup so we can have real-time intel on the hostiles on the ground and thermal imaging of the survivors' location?”
“Yes, I am going to hand you over to my second-in-command, who will give you everything you need. And Agent Colter, I don’t have to remind you what’s at stake here.”
“No, sir. I’m crystal clear on that,” he said with a muffled sigh, then clicked off the speakerphone.
Matias frowned. “Great, now we gotta go haul in this little chica when our own guys need to get back to their families.”
“And who declared Mondays on the job are always dull,” said Shane, rubbing the back of his neck and wondering if Carlie was at the university. He had worked with various female federal agents over the years and found them all to fit the same profile: square-jawed tomboys that were emotionally aloof. Not Carlie—she had the usual cool exterior and confident sensuality of a fighter but exuded a sunny disposition beneath her jade green eyes.
“Monday…is it really Monday? This feels more like Dia de los Muertos to me,” said Matias.
Chapter 21
“So how long y’all been holed up in here?” said Jared to Amy, while looking over the eight college students slumped on chairs around the mortuary science room. Some were sitting while others were in clusters, leaning against each other, trying to feverishly call out on their smartphones.
“Since Tucson became cannibal central,” said Amy, folding her arms and brushing a lock of brunette hair off her shoulder. “How is it you made it here?”
Jared tucked the Glock in his beltline and ran his fingers over his day-old scruff. “Just out for a morning jog when everything went to hell in the city. I hunkered down near a bank a few blocks from here and then made a dash for it when I saw some lights on campus.”
“And you always go for a jog with two pistols, eh?” said Amy.
“Yeah, well, I happened across these on my sprint through downtown.” He leaned a hand on the wall and looked over Amy’s figure and into her eyes, then down at her left hand, which had a gold engagement ring. “And what’s your story, sister—you an ambulance driver for the university?”
“Paramedic for the city,” she said, flicking her badge with a finger. “But I teach on campus two days a week and was prepping for a lecture tomorrow—until I saw the rampage outside. I gathered up anyone I could find in the building and we headed down here, figuring it was the most secure place in the area. That was probably fifteen hours ago.”
“I don’t know what’s safe anymore,” Jared said, slumping against the cool concrete wall. “This day sure turned out a lot different than I ever expected,” he said, thinking back to the marshal who had planted his face on the pavement.
Amy tossed him a bottle of water. “Stay hydrated. By your accent, it doesn’t sound like you’re from around here, and being out in the heat all day can turn you into jerky pretty fast.”
“You got it, Doc, thanks,” he said, twisting off the cap and gulping down the liquid. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the package of slightly squashed Gummi Bears. “Here,” he said, tossing them to Amy. “My admission fee for letting me enter your fine abode.”
Amy opened the package and pried out a single sweet, then she walked over to the others and began dispensing what remained.
Jared looked around the dimly lit room. The stainless-steel tables had become makeshift workbenches filled with gauze, water bottles, and an assortment of bludgeoning weapons like an ax, splintered broom handles, and golf clubs. On the rear wall was a garden hose and spray nozzle along with bottles of bleach that were used for sanitizing the floor after autopsies. The entire room had a strong clinical odor, and the floor was slightly sloped, with a small drain at the center.
Jared scanned the other people slumped around him, taking in their features along with anything shapely or sparkly that caught his eye. Sitting in the corner closest to Jared were three women in their late teens. One was short with a round face and red hair. She had on a silver watch and dangling gold hoop earrings with a high luster that looked like the real thing. Next to Pumpkin Head was a blond woman who had a splatter of blemishes on her face and was wearing a faux-gold necklace with a ruby-red insert that looked like it was from Malaysia. Lying beside Freckles was a tiny woman with silky black hair that stretched past the soft curve of her back, but she was devoid of jewelry.
A few feet away from the Raven were two young men leaning back on their chairs and frantically trying to text on their smartphones while quietly cursing. One of them was gangly with dented cheeks that made him look like he had been beaten with a bag of coins when
he was younger. Next to Pockmark was a heavyset guy with a nose like a toucan and a shaved head. Jared noticed that neither of them wore anything on their wrists or hands, figuring they spent most of their money on computer games or porn-on-demand videos. Across from Bird Beak were two dark-skinned women. The petite one on the right wore a medley of Western and Mexican clothing and glitzy cowboy boots.
Besides her wavy jet-black hair and shapely figure, she was heavily adorned with gold rings, bracelets, stud earrings, and an alluring necklace whose high sheen was evident even in the dim light. Yowza—put her on the list of first to yank outta here. Resting her head on Tex-Mex’s shoulder was a lanky woman with a pleasing neckline and delicate fingers that bore a single gold Claddagh ring. From the moment Jared arrived, she had been talking constantly to her friend. Her mouth never seemed to stay shut as she nervously yakked about her roommates, pet goldfish, and her classes. He gazed over her lovely features and then felt the urge to plaster duct tape over her beestung lips. Instead he glanced away from Chatty Cathy and looked over the last lone figure slouched against the wall. He was dressed only in cut-off shorts and a tank top, his long dreadlocks almost as grimy as his bare feet. Jared shook his head as he stared at him. Maybe that’s what smells like an old sponge and is fouling up the air in here. He probably doesn’t have to worry about getting chomped on by those things. We might want to use him as our secret weapon.
Jared turned away from Floor Mop and glanced up at Amy, who was filling some water bottles from the metal sink. He walked up and stood beside her, noticing her slender features and lovely eyes. “You have a plan for finding help? Do you have a two-way radio?”
“We’ve been cut off since we got here, dude, and our phones don’t work for shit,” said Floor Mop.
Amy shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows we’re here. I figured we would wait until morning and then I’d go upstairs and take a look around and see about getting in touch with the police.”