Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8)

by Jeremy Robinson

  With the suppressor affixed to his pistol, more than doubling its barrel length, King was too close to aim the gun, so he did the next best thing. He swiped it across the side of the man’s head. The blow was hard enough that King felt the impact vibrate up his forearm. The killer just shook his head, pushed away from the pallet and twisted around to face King.

  King still didn’t have a shot. Judging by the guy’s size and ferocity, it would take more than a couple of bullets—even from a .45—to slow him down. So King used the only weapon he had left.

  Himself.

  “Bish! Belay on!”

  He launched himself at the big man, wrapping him in a bear hug and driving him backward, off the edge of the rack. King knew he would be going over as well. There was no avoiding it, but if Bishop understood his last desperate command…

  For a fleeting instant, both King and the shooter were in freefall, but then the downward motion ceased, as the rope attached to the grappling hook buried in the man’s back went taut again. The man’s weight and momentum tore the hook free, permitting King to resume his downward plummet. The pause gave him a chance to throw his arms around the rope.

  The line jerked taut again as the hook snagged his arms, the talon-like claws digging painfully into his flesh. He swung like a pendulum back into the rack, slamming into a loaded pallet on the fourth level, a dozen feet down from where he had been a moment before.

  Below him, the dazed attacker crashed down atop the litter of cartons that King had loosed a few seconds before. The other gunmen were in disarray, for the moment, but King knew it would not last. He tore his right arm loose from the hook, aimed the pistol in their general direction and emptied the magazine.

  The gunmen scattered. King couldn’t tell if he had scored any hits. He couldn’t win the battle from his precarious position, but he had bought himself a few more seconds in which to find a better strategy.

  He jammed the pistol into his belt—no time to futz around with the holster—and then knotted his fingers in the shrink wrap. Fueled by the urgency of need, he clawed his way up the pallet and then scrambled back up to the top rack, where he found Bishop. The rope was wrapped around her arms and her feet were jammed against an upright metal post.

  “A little warning next time,” she growled through clenched teeth.

  “I did warn you,” King said, as he heaved himself back up onto the half-emptied pallet.

  “A little more, then.”

  King shrugged out of his backpack and delved inside. As he did, he nodded toward the enormous water tanks on the opposite side of the aisle. “Think you can hook those?”

  “Of course I—” She stopped, her eyebrows furrowing in consternation. She bit back the unasked question and began furiously drawing the rope in. She whirled the grappling hook around several times and then heaved it out across open space. The hook sailed past one of the tanks and clattered down into the gap behind it. The throw had left Bishop with only a few remaining yards of rope, but she immediately began pulling in the slack until there was no more give. The hook had caught on something.

  “Now what?”

  By way of an answer, King clipped the Atlas ascender to the rope and then hooked the carabiner to the upright post. “Hang on to something,” he said, and then he pushed the button to activate the device.

  Almost immediately, the whir of the motor became a strained growl. The tension in the line increased until the rope was humming like a plucked guitar string. For a moment, King feared he had misjudged the capacity of the ascender or the load rating of the rope. Neither were meant to do what he was now attempting.

  But then a new sound joined the din: the groaning of metal beginning to flex.

  Then the entire section of pallet racking began to move. For a few seconds, it was barely noticeable, but as the degree of tilt increased, the equally distributed weight of the cargo loaded on the racks amplified the effect. Several loud reports sounded in quick succession—not gunshots but anchor bolts exploding out of the concrete floor, as the pallet rack leaned over like a toppling domino.

  King and Bishop scrambled up the ever-increasing slope and heaved themselves onto the backside of the falling rack. King managed to wrap his arms around one of the uprights, but then the rack crashed into the row of water tanks with such violence that he was ripped free and hurled into the chaos below.

  The water tanks split open like overripe watermelons. They instantly disgorged two hundred thousand gallons of water onto the warehouse floor. King had not even begun to recover from being body-slammed into a jumble of boxed food rations and metal posts when the tsunami hit.

  6

  Ellesmere Island, Nunavut Territory, Canada

  Queen leaned forward, staying low over the handlebars of the Ski-Doo Expedition Xtreme, as she pushed the throttle to its stop. The spinning track underneath the vehicle threw out a horsetail of snow behind her, like an enormous exclamation point on the blank landscape.

  “Open it up,” she shouted into her radio mic, breaking radio silence for the first time since leaving Alert. There was no longer any reason to be slow or sneaky. The roar of jet turbines in the sky overhead was proof enough of that.

  They had barely reached the snowmobiles when the helicopters idling at the deserted black site rose once more into the sky. At first, the three of them had kept the tracked-machines to a stealthy twenty-miles an hour, barely faster than their running pace—or at least it felt that way. But as the helicopter engine noise grew louder, louder even than the two-stroke 800 cubic centimeter 163-horsepower engine atop which she was sitting, there could be no doubt that the helicopters were headed their way.

  Their situation was desperate, no question about that. Still, escape was not beyond the realm of possibility. An aircraft’s strengths could easily be turned into weaknesses during a pursuit. The pilots would have no trouble catching up to them or matching their speed, but actually stopping them was another matter. It wasn’t like they could run the snowmobiles off the road. There was also the question of how long the helicopters could sustain the pursuit. The Ski-doos could go for a couple hours, and at least a hundred and fifty miles, on a single tank of gas. The team had brought along more than enough fuel for a round trip back to Grise Fiord. While the helicopters probably had a much longer range than that, they almost certainly had used up quite a bit of fuel just to reach Alert. The pilots would have to reserve enough fuel to get back to their base.

  Of course, none of that would matter if the men on the helicopter opened fire on them. Trying to shoot the aircraft out of the sky with the weapons the three of them had brought along was a tall order. Not impossible, just very tall. Probably suicidal. Queen wasn’t going to give the order to start shooting unless their pursuers gave them no alternative.

  “Let’s make ’em work for it,” she said into her mic. “Rook, break left. I’ll go right. Knight, go wherever the hell you want, as long as it’s away from us.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she twisted the handlebars to the right, leaving the trail they had blazed on their approach to Alert. She plowed headlong across the pristine snowfield. Without reliable GPS navigation, the chances of getting lost were astronomically high, particularly if the weather changed. The batteries powering the heaters in their winter-survival suits would not hold out forever, nor would the fuel in the snowmobiles. But getting lost was a long-range problem. Eluding the helicopters was the immediate concern.

  The roar of a jet engine overhead continued without letup. Queen tried zig-zagging randomly, but nothing changed. It sounded like the helicopter was right above her.

  “It’s working,” Rook called out. “I think I lost them.”

  “Not me,” Knight said, shouting to be heard over the helicopter noise in the background. “They’re right on—”

  The transmission abruptly cut out.

  “Knight, what’s happening?”

  No answer.

  Queen cocked her head to the side, straining to catch some chang
e in the ambient noise that might provide a hint to Knight’s fate.

  Nothing.

  Shit, Queen thought. “Rook, if you can, double back and find a place to dig in. Hide out.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” she snapped. “Just do it.”

  A sudden gale force wind ripped at her clothes, as the pale green landscape in front of her disappeared in a white haze of blowing snow. Her mask and NODs partially shielded her face, but she had to squeeze her unaided left eye closed to avoid being blinded by the icy blast. As the whiteout intensified, she realized what was happening. The pursuing helicopter was using its rotor wash to stir up a blizzard.

  Clever, she thought, lowering her head. But now you can’t see me either.

  She let off the throttle, allowing the snowmobile to coast for a moment. Next she cut a turn so tight that she had to lean in the opposite direction to avoid flipping over. She dipped so low that she could feel the snow scraping against her shoulder. After a couple seconds, she straightened the handlebars and eased forward on the throttle, crawling the snowmobile forward through the whirling snow.

  There was another blast of sound in her ear as someone broke squelch. She heard Knight’s voice, a labored stage whisper, barely audible over the din. “Knocked me off…ride. Digging in.”

  When the transmission ended, Rook’s voice replaced it. “They’ll have to set down to take us. We can ambush them.”

  Queen nodded. An ambush was about the only chance they had. Unless the helicopters were big passenger ships—Chinooks or the like, which was doubtful—they would be dealing with no more than a squad or two. Ten to twelve shooters max, but probably not even that many. Their camouflage would give them a temporary edge. Her decision to have Rook and Knight disperse cut both ways though, since Rook might be too far away to make much of a difference. Still, Knight’s prowess with the sniper rifle would more than make up for that.

  The static haze cleared as Queen emerged from the snow vortex. The first thing she saw, a hundred yards away, was another huge column of blowing snow, marking the spot where Knight had been forcibly dismounted. Above it, barely visible, was the black outline of a helicopter. There was not even a glimmer of light visible from the aircraft. A glance over her shoulder revealed a similar shape hovering above and behind her.

  Close. Almost too close. But do they see me?

  She realized she might not get another chance to strike a blow against the hunters.

  Releasing the throttle, she stood up in the stirrups and launched herself off the snowmobile. She twisted in mid-air, hands finding the FN SCAR a split-second before landing on her back in the deep snow. The strident whine of the snowmobile engine ceased as the throttle kill-switch—a safety measure to prevent a runaway sled—cut in. Queen barely heard the change over the roar of the helicopter’s turbines and the rush of blood in her own ears.

  “Take them out!” she shouted, and she aimed the assault weapon at the nearest hovering shape.

  Before her finger could tighten on the trigger however, a loud voice—louder even than the deep bone-shaking beat of the rotors—boomed down from above.

  “This is the United States Army. Stand down, and you will not be harmed.”

  Queen’s finger came off the trigger, as if she had received an electric shock. The identity of their pursuers did not come as a surprise. In fact, she had assumed that the helicopters were military. Who else had the resources to mount an Arctic expedition and operate in total blackout conditions? Even the fact that they were Americans, conducting operations on Canadian turf, was not altogether unexpected. Somebody in the Canadian government had sanctioned the black site, so it only made sense that the same entity would have given the U.S. military authority to act in its defense.

  What stopped her was the warning itself.

  The soldiers aboard the helicopters could have opened fire at any time but they had not. If the disembodied voice was to be believed, they would continue to refrain from taking lethal action.

  “Queen, what’s the play?” Knight’s voice was taut with urgency.

  That he had not already taken a shot placed the burden of the snap decision entirely on her. She almost regretted that he had not fired when she had given the initial order. Now she was faced with an entirely different set of variables.

  They could start this fight, and they might even be able to win it. Military gunships were up-armored against small arms fire, but they weren’t invulnerable. A burst from the SCAR might strike a vital, exposed component and take the aircraft out of the sky, or the rounds might find their way into the passenger compartment.

  But it would be a fight against American soldiers. There was no longer any uncertainty about that.

  “Stand down,” the voice repeated. “We know who you are. We mean you no harm.”

  “Queen,” Knight said again. “Call it.”

  “Standby, Knight.”

  Queen shuffled through her options, but it was like rearranging a losing poker hand and hoping the cards would magically get better. Fight, and either lose and die, or win and cement their fate as fugitives. There would be no going back if they declared war on the Army.

  Surrender was the wild card, but she couldn’t see it making a bad situation any worse.

  Unless they’re going to cross us off anyway.

  She realized that she had chosen the wrong metaphor. This wasn’t a poker game where the bluff made all the difference. It was a chess game, and they had been outmaneuvered.

  “Queen sacrifice,” she muttered. “Knight, Rook, hold your position. I’m going to see what these guys want.”

  Rook’s objection was immediate. “Queen, no. You can’t trust them.”

  “I don’t. That’s why you’re going to do what I said. Hold your position and be ready to light their asses up.”

  There was a pause, then Knight said, “Roger.”

  “I didn’t hear you, Rook.”

  “This is a bad idea, babe.”

  “That’s what they said about you and me.” She took a breath. “Okay, I’m doing this.”

  She lowered her carbine, allowing it to hang by its sling across her chest. She stood up, raising her hands. She didn’t know if the men in the helo could see her, white against a white background, so she swiveled the PVS-14 unit away from her face, and twisted the mode selection knob to activate the built in infrared light. Invisible to the naked eye, the IR light could offer additional illumination in conditions where there was not enough natural light for the NODs to function at their best. The light served a more important role as a sort of friend-or-foe identification system. In most combat scenarios, only the good guys had night-vision, so anyone with an infrared light shining from their face was probably someone you weren’t supposed to shoot.

  She hoped the men on the helicopters would understand that as well. Evidently they did, because instead of drilling her full of holes, the nearest bird shifted position slightly. The voice from heaven spoke again.

  “I see you. Stay where you are and keep your hands away from your weapon, or we will act accordingly.”

  Queen was relieved that he had not said something like, ‘We will open fire.’ In a tense standoff, men with itchy trigger fingers tended to hear only the last two words.

  “We’re going to land now. Stay where you are.”

  “That’s right,” Rook muttered in her ear. “Come out of your nice safe helicopter and stand where I can kill you.”

  “Rook!”

  “If they scratch their asses wrong,” Rook said, undeterred, “I will act accordingly.”

  “We got your back, Queen,” Knight added. “If you even catch a whiff of this going south, hit the ground.”

  Lights began appearing on the exterior of the hovering black shape, bright enough for her to make out the familiar outline of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The aircraft’s nose came up, and then the vehicle settled toward the ground fifty yards away, like a hawk coming to roost. A wild flurry
of snow hid the final touchdown, but Queen could hear a change in the pitch of the turbines as the pilot reduced power to an idle and adjusted the collective so that the rotor-blades were no longer pushing air.

  She remained where she was, arms raised high, and waited for the storm to clear. As it did, she saw two figures emerging from the flurry. Both wore white camouflage shells, their faces hidden behind matching masks and ski goggles. Both were armed with FN SCAR-L rifles, exactly like those she and Rook were carrying. The man on Queen’s right held his weapon diagonally across his chest with the barrel pointing up, while his companion had allowed his weapon to dangle from its sling at his side. In his hand, he held a flashlight, aimed in Queen’s direction, though he was careful not to point it directly at her face. They walked with some difficulty through the loose snow, finally stopping about twenty yards away. They stood there for almost a minute, staring at her and seemingly daring her to say the first word. She decided to oblige them.

  “You guys lost? Or is this the start of Operation Canadian Freedom?”

  There was a snort of laughter over the comm line—Rook—but the two newcomers just exchanged a glance. The man with the flashlight pushed his ski goggles up onto his forehead and drew down his face-covering to reveal clean shaven, handsome African-American features. That was about all she could tell about him from a distance. “You must be Zelda Baker.”

  It was the same voice she had heard over the public address. Queen was not surprised to hear the man use her given name. He had after all, claimed to know who they were.

  “Callsign: Queen,” he added. “Am I right? Who’s with you?”

  “That’s not an answer. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Well, among other things, we’re looking for you. We heard a rumor that you might be on your way to the station in Alert.” He paused. “It’s like a slaughterhouse in there. Your doing?”

  “Didn’t even go inside.”

  The second man emitted a harsh disbelieving laugh, but a sharp look from his companion squashed any further displays of skepticism. He turned back to Queen. “That’s something we’ll have to look into. For now, I’d appreciate it if you would instruct the rest of your team to stand down and join us. We’ve got a long ride back to civilization, and I’d just as soon not stand around here any longer than we have to.”