by Rick Partlow
“We have the target secured, Niner-niner, and are ready for pickup, over.”
“Good to hear, ma’am,” the voice of CG99 sounded relieved. “Any casualties?”
Shannon opened her mouth, then closed it again, swallowing the reply she wanted to give but couldn’t. “Negative. We have four to pick up at the hangar elevator exit…just follow my homing signal. The load will consist of myself and three Priority Targets. The rest of the unit will be staying to secure the complex. Over.”
“Roger that, Charlie Gulf One, I’m on my way, over.”
“We’ll be waiting for you. Charlie Gulf One, out.”
Shannon looked over to Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, who stood watching her with arms crossed, eyes squinting against the morning sun, the warm New Mexico wind tugging at his grey-streaked beard, looking like Moses in the desert.
“Very nicely done, Colonel Stark,” he said genially. “I wonder…since you are now a Colonel, is my old friend Jason McKay a General?”
“Yes, he is,” Stark replied, her voice quiet and neutral, without a hint of feeling. “The President promoted us both yesterday.”
Antonov laughed, looking over to Fourcade. The slick-backed lobbyist was grinning himself, as he held a gun on Brendan Riordan, conscious once more but securely handcuffed, with a burlap bag pulled over his head. “I wonder, Kevin, if General McKay will find out about his promotion.”
“I suppose that depends on your feelings about the existence of an afterlife, General Antonov,” Fourcade cracked, chuckling.
“You know,” Antonov mused, running fingers through his beard thoughtfully, “it is very pretty out here.” He nodded towards the red-hued rolling hills in the distance. “I will have to have a ranch built for me in this place, once I rule this world.”
“There’s the aircraft, sir,” Fourcade told him, looking northward.
Antonov followed his gaze and saw the black shape in the impossible blue of the clear desert sky, curving around a stand of low hills as it approached. “Time for a bit of maskirova,” Antonov said, placing his hands before him. Shannon wrapped his wrists with the plastic band of a flex-cuff, then did the same for Fourcade, taking his gun and shoving it in her belt.
“Now, remember, Colonel Stark.” Antonov told her quietly as the assault lander came closer, its deadly, angular lines coming into clear focus, “once we are on the lander, you will have the pilot fly directly to the coordinates I gave you. No unnecessary talking, no radio communications whatsoever. Do you understand?”
“Of course, General,” she said with the same, calm tone, eyes fixed on the lander. The attack craft descended on a column of superheated air funneled through its reactor and directed through rotating ducts on its belly, the roar of the engines making the ground beneath their feet tremble from nearly a hundred meters away.
A sandstorm of red dust lashed at them as the lander came to a rest, and Fourcade and Antonov turned away to shield their eyes from the blast, while Shannon watched impassively from inside her helmet and Riordan stood in numbed silence under his hood. The lander touched down on heavy-duty retractable skids, the roar of the jets dying down to a high-pitched whine as the turbos spun down, and a boarding ramp lowered from its curved belly.
A lone figure stepped down the ramp, dressed in standard, sanitized Intelligence combat gear with no nametag or unit designation, and a mirror-visored helmet, arms full with a short-barreled carbine. The trooper advanced towards them as they all marched towards the lander, Riordan shuffling uncertainly with Shannon’s hand on his arm.
“I’ll take care of the prisoners,” Shannon announced before the Intelligence trooper could reach them. “Tell the pilot to go to complete radio silence and get us in the air now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” a female voice said over the helmet’s external speaker, and the trooper turned and trotted back up the ramp.
The whine of the turbines pitched higher as the pilot fed power to them, and dust began to bloom around the aircraft even as Shannon escorted the three men up the ramp, out of the increasingly hot desert morning and into the shaded bliss of climate control. Shannon paused as they stepped into the passenger/cargo compartment and hit the control to raise the ramp. The lander leaped into the air before the ramp was halfway shut, letting a haze of dust blow into the cargo area before it cleared the ground.
Shannon guided Antonov and the others into a set of seats mounted on the wall of the cargo area and strapped them in, then moved up a short set of steps into the lander’s cockpit. The female trooper who had met them was seated in the copilot’s position, so Shannon dropped into the command seat behind them, pulling off her helmet and holding it in her lap.
She was expressionless as she leaned over and typed a destination into the navigation console. “These coordinates. Get us there as quickly as you can.”
“There are priority communication requests for you from President O’Keefe, ma’am…” the female trooper began.
“Radio silence for now,” Shannon stated flatly. “Notify me when we’re close.”
With that, she rose from her seat and stepped back down to the passenger compartment, halting in front of Antonov’s seat. “We’re en route,” she told him.
“Excellent,” the Russian said quietly. “When we arrive, you will escort us to our vehicle, then you will re-board the lander and head for Capital City.”
Shannon blinked, but remained silent. Antonov laughed, an unpleasantly harsh and chilling sound. “You thought I would kill you. No, my dear…you’re far too valuable an asset to dispose of so quickly. I have a very big job for you, prekrasnaya zhenshchina.” Beautiful woman. “You are going to take a message from me to the fool you call a President…”
* * *
Ari Shamir grunted as he dropped the two meters to the ground from the hovering lander, absorbing the shock with his knees as he fell into a crouch, holding his carbine out in front of him to avoid burying it in his gut. He quickly scrambled away from the shadow of the aircraft, moving out thirty meters to get away from the dust cloud the lander was generating, then going prone and scanning the area for threats as he waited for the rest of the team to disembark.
The noonday sun beat down on his back as he lay there, overtaxing the cooling systems in his Marine-pattern body armor and the polarization of his helmet visor. He was beginning to sweat by the time a hand slapped down on his shoulder and he looked back to see Roza’s eyes through the visor of her helmet. She gave him a thumbs-up and he scrambled to his feet, waving a hand for the rest of the unit to join him.
There were a dozen of them in all, a mish-mash of stray Marines he and Roza had dragged away from desk assignments in the Fleet offices in Capital City when the call had come in from Lt. Franks a few hours ago. He’d heard scattered reports of a missile attack aimed at Capital City, at evacuations to the emergency shelters, engagements in orbit…but everything was a chaotic roar with a very low signal-to-noise ratio right now and the only thing he knew for sure was that Colonel Stark was overdue and Franks thought that someone needed to check on the situation.
He tried to push down the worry he felt about what was happening out there and concentrate on what was directly in front of him: the entrance to the underground hangar of Riordan’s bunker. The giant hangar doors were closed and well-camouflaged, colored rust brown like the dirt and covered with bits of rock, but off to the side of them was the entrance to a tunnel, where a set of stairs led downward. It had been left glaringly open, as if someone had departed in a rush and not cared what evidence of that they left behind them.
Ari edged up to the opening, a ring of heavy, dark metal set in the sandstone, then used the video connection between his carbine’s optical sight and the reticle in his helmet to check inside. The shaft was empty, the steps half-covered in sand blown in during the time the entrance had been left open. He shrugged and started down the steps. It could be a trap, but they weren’t going to find out what had happened by sitting on the surface waiting for an epiph
any.
The silence as he descended was deafening, making the sound of his own breathing in his helmet incredibly loud in his ears. All he could hear through the external pickups was the soft scraping of his soles on the sand-covered stone steps. The stairs ran a good fifty meters down to the main hangar, where a VTOL aircraft rested lonely on the bare concrete, with no human in sight, not on visual or thermal.
A quick scan showed only one way out into the complex from the hangar: a large set of double-doors standing open that revealed a short corridor ending in a freight elevator. Ari led the group across the large hangar with Roza bringing up the rear and the Marines maintaining a good tactical separation for all that they’d been riding desks for most of their careers. Once they reached the corridor, Roza directed them via hand signals to take positions near its opening, then she joined Ari by the elevator doors.
“Shit,” Ari grunted as he examined the control plate. “It’s a biometric scanner. Gonna take a bit.” He pulled a small computer module from a belt pouch and touched a control then stuck it to the face of the scanner plate. “Honestly, I hate the idea of using the elevator at all, but it would take hours to get in through the entrance Colonel Stark’s team used.”
“I think the element of surprise isn’t a factor anymore, kedves,” she replied. “From the looks of the place, we are, as they say, a day late and a dollar short.”
Ari started to agree when the elevator’s indicator display suddenly lit up to show that a car was ascending to the hangar bay. His head swiveled back and forth between the display and Roza for a split second before he turned to the Marine squad.
“You two,” he jerked a finger at two of the troopers who were at the end of the hallway, “watch our backs. The rest of you spread out and cover the elevator!”
The Marines trained their weapons on the broad double doors of the lift and Ari and Roza moved to the corner to give them a clear field of fire.
“Remember,” Ari said quickly, “the last report we had was that there were biomechs down there, so aim for the head.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the door began to open with a grinding squeak of old metal and Ari quickly brought his carbine up to his shoulder and slipped his fingertip over the trigger.
“Hold your fire!” A male voice called out loudly. “We’re friendlies!”
Ari’s eyes narrowed, then widened as the doors slid all the way open. The elevator was occupied by three men in Intelligence-pattern stealth armor, one of them laid out on a gurney and being tended to by a fourth, a short, frumpy woman with a doughy face that grew paler as she stared at the rifle barrels pointed her way.
“Put your hands on your head,” Ari snapped as he cautiously approached the four of them. “Don’t move.”
“I’m Reynolds,” the closest of the men insisted as he raised his arms, his voice tinny over the helmet’s external speakers, “Fleet Intelligence Special Operations.” He motioned at the other armored man, who had a blood-stained smart bandage on his leg and was struggling to remain standing with his arms over his head. “That’s Von Paleske…we were with Colonel Stark’s raid team.”
“Get out of the elevator and on the ground,” Ari ordered, motioning with his carbine, “all three of you.”
“That’s Tom Crossman,” Roza said tightly, gesturing to the figure on the gurney. Ari let his vision, which had been scanning back and forth between the two armored figures and the civilian, focus on the man on the medical bed and he cursed softly as he recognized the unconscious man.
Dammit, he thought, we don’t have time for this.
“Take off your helmets,” he told the two men as they began to step out of the elevator. Reynolds did immediately, pulling off the full-face helm and dropping it on the ground. Ari had never met the man, but he recognized the young NCO’s face from files he’d viewed. Von Paleske took a moment longer, having to lean against the elevator doorway to wrestle off the helmet.
Ari gave the man a once over, then nodded to Roza. “They’re who they say they are.” He turned back to the two men, pulling off his own helmet
“Captain Shamir, thank God…” Von Paleske sighed. He’d met the young man before, though briefly, during the spin-up of the last few weeks.
“Let’s not be thanking anyone just yet,” Ari muttered. “Who’s she?” He nodded towards the civilian. “And what the hell went down here?”
“I’m Dr. Maggie Cochrane,” the woman stammered. “I work for Mr. Riordan…”
“She was in charge of keeping Antonov healthy,” Reynolds interjected. “Captain, I was covering the rear entrance and Von Paleske came back to my position after he got shot…we couldn’t contact anyone except the lander because we were too far underground.”
“Stop wasting time, dammit!” Ari nearly jumped at the hoarse, labored voice that came from the gurney. Tom Crossman pushed himself into a seated position, waving aside Dr. Cochrane’s objections.
He looked, Ari reflected, like hell: His armor had been cut off and his utility fatigues were torn and coated with blood all along the right side of his body. Smart bandages were stuck to his right thigh and hip, his right arm and the right side of his neck; and an IV in his left arm was attached to a pump and reservoir on the gurney, feeding his veins a blood substitute. His face was ghostly pale and his hair was matted with sweat, but his eyes were alert.
“Captain,” he said, taking a breath and wincing as it hurt his neck, “Antonov was waiting for us…it was a trap. The place was full of biomechs…”
Ari inadvertently glanced around in alarm. “Where are they now?”
Crossman shook his head impatiently. “They’re down in the holding area…”
“They’re just standing there,” Reynolds interrupted, “not moving, like they’re waiting for orders. They didn’t even move when me and Von Paleske finally went in.”
“They haven’t moved since Antonov left,” Crossman snarled, giving the lower ranking noncom a glare that made him shut up. “Captain, the room where Antonov was being held was rigged with stunners. Everyone else is dead, but the Russian psycho captured Major…I mean Colonel Stark.” Even under the circumstances, Tom’s face had a hint of a smirk at the promotion. “They thought I was out, and I let ‘em think so, but I was awake for all of it. He had me in there…he told her that he’d let Fourcade cut me up unless she submitted to it.”
“To what?” Ari demanded impatiently, feeling a pit opening up in his guts.
“A hypnoprobe,” Crossman replied grimly. “Sir…he has her brainwashed. He used her to get in the lander and escape. He promised her that he’d leave me behind and let the Doc here fix me up if she didn’t fight him and make it take longer.” There was agony on Crossman’s face that wasn’t just from the pain of his wounds. “You’ve got to track them down, because God knows what he’s going to do to her when he doesn’t need her anymore…”
Ari swallowed hard, looking back and forth between Tom and Roza.
“Holy shit,” he blurted, eyes wide. “I just realized, I have no idea who to call.”
“I think perhaps,” Roza said slowly and quietly, “I do.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Mr. President,” Captain Di Ndinge called, “we have a report from Fleet Headquarters!”
Daniel O’Keefe stepped across the crowded, chaotic, makeshift ready room that had been set up in an antechamber off the Senate floor, pushing aside staffers, both military and political, making his way to the small tactical readout that had been hooked up to a terminal in a corner of the chamber. Divungi Di Ndinge was a slender, gracefully-featured officer from Gabon in the African Confederation and he was normally a reserved and soft-spoken gentleman, but at the moment he seemed almost giddy.
“What’s happening out there, Captain?” O’Keefe asked the man, who was part of Admiral Patel’s senior staff.
“A cislunar patrol craft received a transmission from the Bradley,” the Captain told him. “It was fairly low power-the ship is in pr
etty bad shape. But according to their report, they managed to destroy both enemy craft.”
“Thank God,” O’Keefe sighed in relief, leaning heavily against the back of the officer’s chair. There was a smattering of applause and relieved exclamations around the room as the word spread. He even heard someone softly sobbing. “You said they took damage…how many casualties?”
“There are a few serious injuries-bad burns and shrapnel wounds in engineering mostly, but just one fatality, Mr. President: Captain Perez, the ship’s commanding officer. He apparently somehow broke his neck during the intercept maneuver with the first enemy vessel. The report wasn’t clear on how it happened.”
“My God,” O’Keefe murmured, shaking his head sadly. “The man died saving our lives, Captain. I’ll make sure his sacrifice isn’t forgotten. For now…do we have any ships that can get help to the Bradley?”
“Yes, sir, there’s an antimatter freighter that was on the way from the Mercury production facility out to Fleet Headquarters. I’ll have them divert to the Bradley and aid her in repairs.”
“Excellent, Captain. Keep me informed of their status, please. And let me know if any of the other cruisers return from outsystem” They’d ordered a recall weeks ago, but when the fastest interstellar message went at the same speed as the ship carrying it, there was no way to know when the half dozen interstellar warships on routine patrols would make it back. He turned to Zhakarova. “Spread the word that the threat is over and sound the all-clear to the people who went to the shelters.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged before hurrying out of the room.
The President stepped over to the small workstation where Marine General Rietveld was hunched over a communications display, speaking in hushed tones to someone wearing a flight helmet.
“Any word from Colonel Stark?” O’Keefe asked him.
“Nothing yet, sir,” the tall, shaven headed officer reported, coming to his feet. “I have Captain Shamir’s pilot on the line, but the last report he heard was a few minutes ago when Shamir and the others entered the bunker.”