by Guy Riessen
“The Citation ...” Derrick whispered, eyes raised in reverence.
“Los Angeles Sweeps?” Howard said, ignoring his friend.
“Yeah, they agreed to shift their chopper up there even before we got the OK from MARC. We’ll be coordinating the strike itself with the San Francisco Sweeps of course, since those agents are the closest we have to the target site.” Sarah paused, then added “But you and Derrick are taking the VW Bus overland.” She added emphatically, “We have to have boots on the ground.”
Derrick threw his arms up and shouted, “What? You’ve got to be kidding me. We need to get all of us out there ASAP—I certainly know you can’t afford to have Howard and his guns driving through Ohio while you guys are coming in hot in California. I mean that’s just ...” Derrick sputtered to a stop when he realized the other three were calmly smiling at him. Derrick dropped his arms back to the tabletop. “Ha, ha, yeah, very funny ... again, let’s all pick on the wounded guy.”
Sarah’s tablet pinged, and a notification dropped into the top of the overhead-screen. Message from MARC: requisition approved.
“There we go. OK people, time to drop the hammer on some ‘bad mountain hombres.’ Grab your go-bags and let’s get up to the roof and take a ride. Full weapons compliment, whatever you want, Howard. Assume this is a Hot Zone drop.”
“You got it, Chief,” Howard said.
There was a cacophonous squeal, four chairs scooted back in unison as Howard, Sarah, and Mary hurried to the door. Derrick was wrestling with his cane, trying to lever himself up, when Howard turned back. “Hey, buddy, let me help,” he said, slapping Derrick’s shoulder, pulling him up with one hand and positioning the cane with the other.
“The Raven, H. And this time I’m not sedated for the ride!”
Howard laughed and said, “Better enjoy it. You know how rare it is that Sarah hooks us up with the fancy rides. We need to hit your office for any gizmos?”
“Yeah. My office first, then my locker for my go-bag. Then we can stop by the candy store ... er ... I mean, the armory.”
“Hells yeah!” Howard pumped his fist.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A STOCK CESSNA CITATION X has a max speed of just under the speed of sound since it’s a commercial craft. But the one DCV housed in an off-the-books hangar at Logan International Airport was substantially upgraded from the base build, and could reach speeds over Mach-two above thirty thousand feet.
It was also black and had a yellow smile painted on the nose. The CX was also the only thing that Derrick thought was cooler than the Raven helicopter.
The plane dropped under the speed of sound over Lassen National Forest about two hours after taking off from Logan. The Citation could carry up to six passengers and their gear, it also had a wide variety of electronic countermeasures on par with military aircraft. When Derrick’s face wasn’t pressed against one of the windows, watching the clouds below streak by, he was wandering around the rear of the plane where much of the electronics were housed.
Twenty minutes into the flight, he had several panels at the rear of the plane pulled off and was rooting through the circuitry. At one point, he had pulled two aluminum boxes out of his go-bag, peeled the duct tape off and was soldering wires between the boxes and the onboard circuits. He was laying on the floor with his head inside the wall of the plane.
“Hey, Derrick,” Sarah said, walking back to stand near the wall.
When he didn’t respond, she shouted, “Hey, Derrick!”
Derrick pulled his head from behind the panels, “Yeah, Sarah?” He had to shout. Removing the panels had defeated much of the sound proofing.
Sarah squatted down next to him. “You know McQuade, the co-pilot?”
“Yeah.”
“He just came back a second ago to tell us you gotta stop soldering in the cabin while we’re flying. It’s playing havoc with the air filtration.”
“Oh?” Derrick slid out a little further and sat up, his bad leg sticking out at an angle. “Crap. I didn’t think to bring my portable filter.”
“I promise to give you a few hours to make improvements to the plane after the mission, OK?”
Derrick’s mouth twitched with disappointment. “Yeah. OK.” He held out one arm. “Help me up, then?”
Sarah grabbed his arm and twisted her body slightly, easing Derrick up on his feet. He was always amazed how she could do that so easily since he outweighed her by at least twenty kilos.
She looked at the bulkhead and wall. “What about the holes in the plane there, Derrick?”
“Aw, shoot,” he said.
Sarah squatted down again and picked up the two boxes.
“Here,” Derrick said, reaching a hand down.
She placed a box in his hand and he taped a cover back on it, wrapping a little extra duct tape around where the wires came out. He did the same for the second box that Sarah handed to him.
“Now what,” Sarah asked.
“Well, those panels go back on with those little turny-screw-things to lock in place,” Derrick said.
“All the electronics are reconnected already?”
Derrick nodded. “Sure, yeah. It’ll be fine. Just as long as they set the plane down nice and easy-like. As long as the pilot doesn’t drop us in too hard ...”
Howard looked up from his seat, “What? Oh shit, Sarah—make him get back in there and really reconnect everything!”
Derrick laughed, “Ha! Now who’s the easy target, sucker!” He leaned against his cane and made a finger gun with his other hand, popping it at Howard. Then he looked back at Sarah, and said, “Actually, when you came back there, Sarah, I had reconnected what I was working on and hadn’t decided on what I was going to work on next.”
Sarah smiled, nodded, put the panels back on and turned the attachment screws. The sound level in the plane dropped dramatically once they were all back in place.
“You sure you don’t need those whatever-you-broughts?” Sarah waved her hand in the direction of the metal boxes Derrick had pulled apart.
“Nah. Those were just boxes of spare parts. One was a partially completed Batdar ... but just partially complete, so you know, really, just spare parts.”
“But now you don’t have any spare parts?”
“Nah, I shouldn’t really need any spare parts. I build these things to...”
“We know ... Military Spec,” they all said in unison.
“Tha’s right, man,” Derrick said, nodding.
Sarah leaned in a little closer and said quietly, “So if you didn’t need them, why’d you bring ‘em?
“You see the size of Howard’s go-bag? And me with my light little bag. There’s probably quite a few things in there I don’t need.” He also kept his voice low.
Sarah slapped Derrick on the arm and smiled at him, making him hide a wince. “Gotcha.”
Over on the table between Mary and Howard, Sarah’s tablet beeped. Mary looked at Sarah who nodded as she walked over. Mary opened the cover and swiped her finger across the print-reader. The screen flashed on as Sarah sat down next to her. “Urgent,” flashed on the screen in large red letters.
“Holy shit,” Sarah said as she swiped down and saw the message headline.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SARAH PULLED HER STYLUS from where it was clipped to the thigh pocket of her black cargo pants and tapped on the tablet. She scrolled down.
“MARC’s got reports of a major disturbance at our target site. Calls coming in from Shadow Lake vicinity.” She looked up at them. “That’s the nearest town. Population one hundred eighteen.”
Derrick said, “Yeah that’s the name of the fire station, Shadow Lake Volunteer Fire and Rescue, where one of the weather stations is located. Sheriff Department is county-level—Trinity County Sheriff Department. The third weather station was not named but was off Shelbyville Road.”
“Well PEEVIE is reporting earthquakes in the area, corroborated with local call-ins to the Sheriff’s Department. W
e’ve also got weather and luminance phenomena associated with high probability of Veil breach.” Sarah paused a moment while she read then said, “That’s weird ... there’s been no answer at the Sheriff’s Department, everything’s being routed to an answering service.”
PEEVIE stood for Potential Entity Evaluation and Verification Information Exchange, and was a collated database of skimmed data-points that included trigger-reports for a vast number of disparate agencies like USGS, NOA, and phone and television companies, which MARC used when potentially assigning DCV agents.
“Jesus, I reckon we’re headed into something big all right.” Mary got up and walked to the cockpit and leaned in, saying something to the pilots.
Mary came back to the table and said, “Pilot says he’s got the PEEVIE warning too, and the tower has cleared us to come in fast on the main runway. Five minutes until we’re on the ground. The Raven’ll be spun-up and waiting at the end of the runway. All air traffic has been rerouted over the site. Any idea how long it’ll take to get from the airport to the site?” She took her glasses off, squinted at them, lit from the light streaming in through the oval windows, then slid them back on.
Howard and Sarah looked at Derrick.
“Uhm,” Derrick rubbed his neck. “Redding to the site you plotted, Sarah, is about one hundred twenty klicks. The Raven maxes out around four hundred eighty-two kilometers per hour. We’re looking at about fifteen minutes from takeoff to arrival.”
The speakers overhead crackled to life. “Buckle up! We’re coming in fast. Hope you enjoyed the friendly skies.” The pilot’s voice boomed over the intercom.
Derrick hobbled across the cabin to the side-facing seats and buckled the 5-point belts over his shoulders and lap. Sarah, Mary, and Howard did the same at the seats at the table. Howard scowled and looked over at Derrick. “You damn well better’ve gotten all the electronics hooked up again!”
Derrick gave Howard a thumbs-up and a lopsided grin, and he enjoyed the look of nervous discomfort that washed over his friend’s face.
The wind was gusting, and they all swayed in their seats as the wings tipped left and right. Through the window by his seat, Derrick watched the ground rush up much faster than he was comfortable with. But when the wheels touched the runway, the landing was smooth as silk. At least it was until a gust slammed the nose gear down hard. The pilot kept the ground speed high until they were about halfway down the runway before he powered the reverse thrust up to a scream and started to brake.
The team unbuckled, and Howard and Sarah got up and split the four go-bags between the two of them. Mary stood near the door, ready to spin the lock and release the stairs. Derrick stayed seated until the plane came to a stop with a jerk, then grabbed his cane and stood.
“Man,” Derrick said, waiting behind Howard, as Mary opened the door and the wind pushed in. “Know what would be cool?”
Mary went down the steps and jumped the gap at the bottom.
“What?” Howard said over his shoulder as he started down. He stopped at the bottom and dropped the two go-bags then turned to help Derrick manage the distance from the steps to the tarmac.
“If we used one of those inflatable slides—you know, the ones for emergency evacuation,” Derrick said.
Sarah smacked Derrick in the back of the head. “Last thing you’d need with your leg like that.”
“Yeah, when my leg is back to normal, I mean. A slide would be cool, man, and you know it.”
Howard took one go-bag, then slid his arm around Derrick and supported him at a half-run. The black Raven helicopter was just across the runway on a patch of dead grass. Dust and grit blew out from under the spinning rotors.
Sarah picked up the other three bags and followed at a jog.
“Dang, H, check out Sarah running with three bags.”
“Yeah. She’s a total badass all right.”
“Totally,” Derrick said just audible over the churn of the rotor blades.
The Raven sat just off the tarmac from where the plane stopped at the end of the runway. It was a modified Eurocopter X3 with a fat, squat body and twin tractor rotors mounted on short wings. One of the fastest helicopters ever designed, it was also capable of lifting heavy loads. On the first mission Derrick was on, right after he was recruited, they had to lift a giant stone wheel, which Howard explained was a Norse Taranis Wheel, and fly it from Sevastopol to an airbase in Turkey. From there it was airlifted back to the U.S. and eventually to Miskatonic University, where it now sits in the Vault.
The Raven’s modified rear door was opened all the way to the ground, so they could use it as a ramp to enter the chopper. Mary jogged up to the passenger area as Howard and Derrick came onboard, and Sarah started up the ramp. Settling a headset over her ears, Mary made a circular motion with her hand; Sarah looked at her and nodded. Mary cupped her hand over the mouthpiece attached to the headset, spoke to the pilot, and the helicopter lifted off the ground. The rear door lifted rapidly and closed with an audible sealing of locks even as Sarah stepped off it, into the main cabin area.
Sarah dropped the go-bags on the floor and motioned for them to move forward. As the ramp clanged shut, Sarah grabbed a headset from a hook on the wall. Howard and Derrick did the same.
The DCV Ravens were Spartan, with none of the flashy interior pretension of the commercial versions made for the wealthy. There were fold-down orange webbed seats along the side of the cabin with belts hanging above them. The walls and ceiling had storage-webbing which hung empty except for a few small boxes up near the front. Strapped to metal loops that rotated up from depressions in the floor were several stacks of ammunition boxes. Near the door to the cockpit, on the right side, bolted to a swing-out pintle mount, was a large GAU-21 fifty-caliber machine gun.
“We’ve only got a few minutes to the Hot Zone, Howard. Go ahead and set up the gun, but leave the door shut until we’re on approach. I don’t want the drag to slow us down if you open it too early.” Sarah was looking down at the tablet in her hands again, scrolling through messages. “Sweeps are approx. ... seven minutes out. We’re looking at less than ten at speed until we’re at the target.”
Sarah looked up, directly at Derrick. “Before you ask, Derrick, that means you too, no one opens the side door until we’re over the target ... no matter how much you want to hang out the side like a dog in a pickup.”
“Hey, man, I didn’t even say anything,” Derrick whined.
“Yet,” Mary said, laughing.
Derrick frowned at Mary.
Howard moved over to the stack of ammunition boxes and grabbed four cans. Carrying them over to the GAU-21, he set three down then held the fourth up for Derrick to see. “Check it, dude. I get four hundred rounds in each can!”
Derrick gave him a thumbs-up, but was still a little irked at being called out about opening the door. To take his mind off it, he moved from window to window, using the overhead-webbing to help support his weight, peering outside. The Raven was flying low, only thirty meters or so off the tree tops. At over 420 kilometers per hour, the speed at which the ground flew by was exhilarating.
Howard took three ammo cans and hooked them onto the lowest part of the pintle swing-arm, while the fourth he set up on the can-attachment on the gun itself. Opening the can, he pulled the belt up through the feed chute and into the receiver which he slammed shut. He wouldn’t pull the large lever to chamber the first round until they opened the door.
Derrick moved over to Howard, swaying on the overhead-webbing to keep himself upright and keep the weight off his bad leg as the helicopter jinked and rolled over the terrain. “I read they’ve got six-thousand-round ammo crates now that can feed straight into the GAU without having to swap out empty cans.”
“Don’t kink my burrito, D. Four Hundred rounds is awesome. I just hope there’s plenty of stuff to shoot.”
Sarah spoke over the common headset intercom, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Howard. First reports are coming in from a rec
on flyby. It sounds like all hell is breaking loose.”
The pilot’s voice came over their headsets. “Hey folks, we’re coming in to a hot site. I’m patching in the intercopter audio. When I flip the red light to green, you’re clear to open the gun door.”
Derrick looked up at the red light over the side door as the audio on their headphones crackled and flooded with voices. Gunfire rang and the thwump of helicopter blades punctuated everything. The chatter of the Sweeps’ voices started to waterfall over the headset.
“We’ve got possible civvies down.”
“Petrol tank south of building.”
“Law is on the move. Northwest.”
“Pit is your target, repeat, pit is your target.”
“Propane tank southwest. Near pit.”
“Open flame. Looks like torches. Watch that LPG tank.”
“No way to tell civvies from perps, we’ve got people scattering.”
“I’ve got eyes on a Mythos Entity. Holy shit, it’s a big one. Central pit, repeat M.E. is in the central pit. Laying down fire. Get your birds down.”
“Sweep bird is down ... Sweeps free. We’re up and away.”
Howard’s head snapped up as the light over the door turned green. He grabbed the handle and heaved the door back on its hydraulic assist. Wind slammed in through the open door as he swung the GAU out on the pintle and unlocked its rotation gimbals. He grabbed the lever on the side of the gun and racked the first round into the chamber. He kicked his feet into two straps on the floor and pulled a safety line from the ceiling and clipped it to his shoulder harness.
The pilot’s voice came over the headsets, “Over this ridge and we’re in the cauldron. We’ll swing once around the central point which sounds like a pit with a big fucking M.E. Fire at will—we’re MARC-cleared for total removal.”
The gunship swung up sharply, then down over a ridge. Derrick’s feet left the deck as he swung free, his hands wrapped in the overhead-webbing. Sarah and Mary, belted into the seats on the sides, leaned right with the force. Then the Raven banked right, and black smoke blew in through the open door. The fifty-caliber machine gun began its staccato thunder as Howard sighted down at something beyond Derrick’s field of view.