by Michael Todd
“Perfect,” Sal said. “Keep up the good work and let me know if you need anything else.”
“I could use a coffee machine in the server room,” she said disarmingly.
“Put it in the suggestion box,” he replied and left the woman confused for a moment as he turned his attention to Amanda. “I’m a little concerned about the number of people we’ve pissed off so far. They’ve already tried to eliminate us while we’re in the Zoo, and I don’t think it’ll be long before they turn their attention to the compound. What would you say is the state of the defenses?”
The armorer shrugged. “I’ve updated much of the software with Anja’s help but it’s fairly basic overall. We do have top-of-the-line motion sensors connected to some heavy machine guns mounted on automated turrets. If anyone tries to attack us on foot, they’ll eat a shit-ton of lead.”
“What if they come with armor?” Madigan asked. She took a sip from Sal’s cup and made a face.
“That depends.” Amanda shrugged but frowned as she considered the question. “The suits won’t stand up well against that kind of firepower. Most of the Hammerheads the folks at the base use would get the Swiss cheese treatment out there too. But if what we’re worried about is the damned private contractors, I can assure you that they have something heavier, like what you said the Russians were using. Those could cause serious trouble if they approached head-on.”
Sal immediately looked serious. “Do you think there’s anything you can do to improve our defenses with the resources we have?”
She leaned forward with a grin on her lips. “Oh… I have a couple of fun ideas I think would make all the difference in the world. But I’ll need some space and time, though. And you can’t complain about what might look like destruction to you but is actually simply my creative process.”
He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to come between the woman and her creative process, even if security wasn’t at the root of it. “Have at it.”
“Remember,” she said, “anything I mess up is something I intend to fix, so whatever happens, I expect you to keep your dick in your pants about it. Or your vaginas corked, in the case of the two of you.” She pointed to Anja and Madigan.
“I’ve helped to install a basic AI system to make sure that my servers are all connected to the security system too,” Anja said and merely shook her head at the other woman’s challenge. “As they are, they’re open to cyber-attacks from the people who could come after us. It’s best if we make things as difficult as possible.”
Sal finally dragged in a deep breath. “That sounds like some good work for the day. I expect everyone to pitch in and help in any way that they can. That includes me and Madigan too, so don’t hesitate to call on us. Of course, I’m not sure how much help I’d be with the mechanical stuff, and I’ll probably be grumpy if you wake me before noonish. Otherwise, I’ll be in my lab. Oh, while I think of it, Madigan and I have a thing to do tomorrow. But other than that, we’re as free as birds.”
“Cool beans,” Amanda said with a grin. “With that, this gal needs her beauty sleep. Have a nice night, y’all.”
The group parted ways and headed off to their respective apartments.
Chapter Six
Anderson stepped out of the Hammerhead that he’d rented from the base and studied his surroundings cautiously. The coordinates he had been given were less than half a mile away from the wall construction. From where he stood in the silence, he could hear the heavy machines used to put together the massive feat of engineering. There was talk about the various walls being visible from space, but he doubted it. They weren’t that tall—or wide, for that matter. What made them so damn impossible to comprehend was the sheer length. The damn things stretched longer than the Great Wall of China—and construction continued relentlessly.
The view was even more impressive, he noted, with the sun as it rose in the east and crested the endless shifting sands on the distant horizon. He looked around appreciatively and drew in a deep breath of the cool air. It would be scorching hot in a couple of hours, especially out there where the dunes could reflect the sun’s heat and make it even less tolerable. He missed the cooler climes of his own home. Even the cheap air conditioner in his office would have been acceptable at this point.
Another Hammerhead came into view and lumbered over the dunes and rooster tails of sand sprayed as the wheels spun. The driver was clearly a reckless person, someone who cared more about getting where they were going as fast as possible and less about the state the vehicle would be in by the time they arrived.
He’d done his research, and he could place a fairly well-informed guess as to who was behind the wheel of the rapidly approaching vehicle.
It skidded to a stop some twenty paces away from him and the occupants waited until the sand had settled before they pushed the door wide.
Only one door opened, Anderson noted as the person he’d guessed to be the driver stepped out. She wasn’t too tall but had a hard build and the look of a soldier, all things considered, with vaguely Hispanic features. She was dressed in civvies with her dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail. Her stride was confident and limber as she made her way to where he stood and stopped immediately beyond arm’s reach.
“Colonel James Anderson?” she asked and regarded him with open curiosity. “You’ve grayed somewhat since they last took a picture of you. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t salute.”
“Madigan Kennedy,” he responded with a small, polite smile, “formerly sergeant in the Marine Corps, held under contract here in the Zoo after your tours expired and recently branched out in the private sector. Color me impressed. Not many former soldiers do as well as you have when they strike out on their own.”
“I’m far from alone, Colonel,” she said and folded her arms in front of her chest.
He nodded and took a moment to look around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the Hammerhead, a fact which made him feel a little more comfortable. He’d come alone as well, unarmed and unarmored. It was one hell of a risk, all things considered, since they were fairly close to the Zoo, where humans were far from the most dangerous creatures to be found.
But he was the approaching party. He was the one who needed their help and had to be willing to take the proverbial first step—which, in this case, was to allow them to trust him. He merely hadn’t expected her to do the same.
“You came alone,” Anderson noted aloud. “And without any form of armor too. That’s awfully trusting of you, I have to say.”
Kennedy smirked and shook her head. “Sorry, Colonel, but I don’t trust anyone but Heavy Metal.”
As if to prove her point, she raised her right hand and held a clenched fist in the air. After a moment of bemusement in which he wondered what she meant, he glanced down at his chest and a bright red spot on his white shirt. A laser pointed at him, obviously directed from the wall. He couldn’t see the origin, but he didn’t doubt that there was a massive rifle on the other end.
“Salinger Jacobs, I presume,” he said with a smile. “PhD candidate with a gun. Do you really trust him to make that shot from…let’s call it seven hundred yards?”
Kennedy shrugged. “I’d trust that man with my life. And considering that I trained him myself, I think I can trust that he can shoot your ass dead from however far away he is.”
Well, he acknowledged calmly to himself, she wasn’t an idiot, but then he’d known that about her already. He’d viewed footage of the two in action. Teams comprised of only two members required a high degree of synchronicity to make it work, and from what he’d seen, it looked like they had fought together for years. She had an impressive record from her time in the military, so he didn’t doubt that she’d trained her pet scientist well enough that he would be exceptionally handy with a rifle.
All that was moot, though. He merely allowed his mind to assimilate the details out of habit—a souvenir from his time as a wet operations specialist with the military. Those had been good
times that, unfortunately, had long since passed.
“I’ve read your file, Kennedy,” the colonel said and cut abruptly to the meat of why they were out there. “I know that you only agreed to meet me because you read my file in turn.”
“Sure,” she admitted without hesitation. “Much of it was redacted, of course, although a friend of mine helped to fill in the missing pieces.”
“Fair enough. You know, then, that I’m a man of my word, out here to serve my country to the best of my ability. I’ve never done any less than that, and have often done more, sacrificing my own health and family to do what needed to be done. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was always necessary, and I’ve managed to square it away with my conscience…more or less.”
Kennedy drew in a deep breath. Anderson could see that she wanted him to quit his rambling and get to the fucking point, but something about her training held her back. Maybe it was about not disrespecting a superior officer or something similar that no amount of time away from the Marines would completely eradicate.
“The point is,” Anderson continued, “I’m here to hire you. I need a team that’s trustworthy and competent—good people who can use their brains on the go and know how to handle tough situations.”
“I sense a lot of vagueness in your description of what you need people for,” she noted.
“Force of habit,” he admitted and shrugged in an offhand way. “This operation is completely black. Off the books and honestly, up against people who operate off the books too. They have their fingers in all the right pies, and they have people in almost every team coming from the Staging Area, which is why I need people who aren’t on the official payroll.”
“Impressive work. There’s so much blackness around here that you’ve started to suck all the light out of the fucking Sahara.”
He chuckled. “True, but my point stands. Anything you do for me, you would do in service of your country, but it would be something that can never see the light of day—both for your sakes and for mine.”
“I’ve served my country a long time,” she said quietly, “but my country hasn’t done much to serve me back. Over the past months, I’ve chosen to serve myself instead. I only came to this meeting because you seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t try to have me and mine shot down. We’ll need some added incentives if we work together.”
“Fair enough,” Anderson conceded with a nod, drew a small credit chit from his pocket, and moved slowly forward to hand it to her. He was well aware that the shooter might take this as a hostile action and shoot but he trusted the man to hold off until Kennedy’s command.
She took the chit and scanned it quickly with her phone.
“Fifty grand,” she said and looked impressed. “That’s almost unbelievable from a guy on a government salary.”
“I managed to squirrel some money away from my work around here,” he explained. “Unfortunately, that’s all I have that I can access without it being flagged as suspicious by the people whose radar I’d rather not be on.”
“Look, Colonel,” Kennedy said and raised her hand to stop him from further speech. “This works as an up-front payment, but if you want us to work for you full-time, we’ll need a steadier source of income. I assume, obviously that our work for you will cut into our bread and butter trade of stripping the Zoo of anything of value.”
Anderson smirked. “I would have thought that your love for your country and fellow soldiers would help grease your palms a bit.”
She regarded him with a slightly challenging expression. “I’m not saying I don’t love my country or my former fellow soldiers, but out here in the Zoo, they don’t take care of me. Money does. Or…it helps, anyway.”
He sighed heavily and wanted to be offended, but she had a point. They ran a business, and he was well aware that private operations needed far more to fund them than something out of the military. It was unfair, really, that the guys who had the kind of money needed played cheaply with the men and women still in uniform, while he was the one forced out there to deal with freelancers when he lacked the kind of cash that would get them on his side.
“Look,” he finally said, “I’ve worked with Pegasus for a while now. They don’t quite trust me, but they need me to be in the know of what they’re doing out there in the Zoo. I have maps and coordinates to their various tech and supply caches that they left out there, and you can sell them for a hefty profit. Obviously, since the stuff comes from them, I would ask that you guys avoid selling it back to Pegasus—as a personal favor—since they would probably know where your intel came from. That aside, it would still be good for a lot of money.”
He could see the way her interest lit up when he mentioned the name Pegasus. Kennedy was no intelligence operative, and no matter how skilled she was with a gun, that didn’t change the fact that he could read her like a damn book. Interestingly enough, what he read told him that the name wasn’t unfamiliar to her at all.
But it really wasn’t his place to pry at that moment. If they were on Pegasus’ payroll, he would be dead within the week. But if they weren’t—and maybe they were the party that ran the foreign investigation that his contact had told him about—maybe them working toward the same goal would help him out further.
“I think we can do business,” she said finally and regained control of her expression as she tucked the chit into her pocket, having scanned it for tracking devices first. “This cash will be enough to hold our services, but we’ll need the location of one of those caches to make sure that you’re not yanking our chain.”
Kennedy pulled an old flip phone from her pocket and tossed it to Anderson, who caught it deftly, satisfied that his combat reflexes weren’t quite a thing of the past.
“Totally reasonable.” He nodded. “Those terms are agreeable.”
“There’s only one number saved in the address book in that thing,” she explained. “Call it and leave a message with the coordinates. You’ll receive a text about a meeting once we’ve verified your information, with details on when and where you can meet us. Once the text is received, ditch the phone and we’ll give you a new one when we meet again.”
The colonel nodded. Maybe he had been wrong about her. She did seem to know how to cover her tracks, although it was possible that she merely acted on someone else’s instructions. Someone who probably knew a thing or two about flying under the radar.
“Understood,” he said and tucked the older piece of tech into his pocket. “I look forward to doing business with you, Kennedy.”
“Likewise, Colonel,” she replied calmly. “I’d take it as a kindness if you were to mount up on your Hammerhead and drive away first.”
“Will do.” With a chuckle, he turned and clambered in his vehicle, put it quickly into gear, and headed back to the Staging Area. Kennedy remained outside her own vehicle and watched his retreat until a couple of dunes hid her from sight.
This should be interesting, he mused.
Kennedy remained watchful for a long while until the colonel’s vehicle disappeared before she headed to her own, started the engine, and revved it a few times.
“Okay, he’s gone,” Sal confirmed through her earpiece.
She didn’t respond and instead, put the Hammerhead into gear and accelerated hard to reach the spot where she’d left him. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, but there were some things you simply couldn’t teach someone. One of those was long-distance shooting. Anything over five hundred yards would have required more training than she’d had time for.
Thankfully, old-school worked perfectly in this instance. As she pulled to a stop some two hundred yards from where she and the colonel had stood in conversation, Sal removed the ghillie suit that had hidden him from view and hefted the heavy M40A15 anti-tank rifle that she’d supplied him with. Of course, modern snipers had a version of power armor to ensure that the new and improved magnum rounds didn’t kick their shoulders to oblivion with each shot, but she hadn’t really expected Sal
to need to actually fire the weapon.
“It looks like we’ll do another retrieval run,” he commented as they swung back toward the compound. “Those never get old.”
They pulled to a halt inside the compound again a short while later and Sal couldn’t help but marvel at the amount of damage Amanda had done to the place. She’d used one of the suits to help her to dig the ground up to find the wiring that connected the security system outside. From what he could see, she appeared to be in the process of removing them from the simple security system and connecting them instead to other wires that led from inside the main building. Sal assumed that the origin was the server room.
“Holy shit,” Kennedy exclaimed as she stepped out of the Hammerhead. Sal grinned at how impressed she looked by what the armorer had achieved in only one morning—and with the temperature soaring as midday drew closer.
Amanda peeked up from one of the holes she currently worked in. Her face was covered in grease and dust, her hair in a mess, and the rest of her clothes and body coated with a similar mixture.
“You’ve been busy,” Sal said and squatted beside the hole.
“Well, yeah, obviously,” she retorted and looked decidedly smug. “You put the fear that someone would try to invade into us, and after a long conversation, Anja and I agreed that our security system needed a complete overhaul. She dipped into the funds you put aside for us. Well…used it all, actually. And some more besides, which I had to give her out of my own pocket. You’ll reimburse me for that, right?”
“Get me a receipt,” he said. “Wait—how the hell did you guys blow through the budget so quickly? That was fifteen thousand dollars.”