“Speaking of that,” Clay said. “The outsiders are the only ones who can use the portals. So… What do we do with Darian when we’ve got him?”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Marty and Marissa tested their access to the GPS satellite three days before the raid, at 3:00 in the morning. The satellite tracked GPS monitors in western Europe; their hope was that a quick takeover wouldn’t be spotted at that time of night. The disruption of the system would last for less than a minute, and Travis was coordinating a fake power glitch at the comm center to coincide with the hijacking.
“Hopefully it’ll just look like a power outage,” Marissa said, chewing her lower lip. She was seated at her station, her chair pulled up close to the table, her hands hovering over the keyboard.
“Yep,” Marty said, never taking his eyes off his screen. Marissa had said the same thing a dozen times over the last two hours; he’d learned to humor her.
Checking her watch against the time displayed on her three monitors, Marissa said, “T-minus six minutes.”
“Got it,” Marty said. He began typing in the sequences that allowed him to worm his way into the satellite monitoring system. They’d come this far ten times over the last week, at different times of the day, using themselves as bait in case the Firsts saw the infiltration. So far, nothing had happened and no new firewalls or other deterrents had been put in place.
“Hope we’re not walking into a trap,” he muttered.
“Not this time,” Marissa said, watching her screens. “But after we free Darian, it won’t be this easy again. We haven’t tried any cyber attacks in all these years. They’re complacent. We need to get all the intel we can while the raid is going on because after that, our life’s going to be a whole lot harder.” She began chewing on the fingernail of her left thumb.
“You’d better stop chewing on yourself; you’re not going to have anything left,” Marty said, glancing over. “What’s the time?”
“T-minus three,” Marissa said, sitting on her hands. “I’ll start counting down at sixty seconds. Travis?” she called.
“On it!” Travis said from the other side of the table. “T-minus two and fifteen.”
“Jack?” Marissa called.
“Yep! T-minus two.”
The four were silent, the only sound the tapping of Marty’s keys as he worked.
“You on time, Marty?” Marissa asked. “T-minus ninety seconds.”
“So far, so good,” Marty answered.
“Okay boys, we all ready? We’re in and out in one minute. Take it down, monitor the response, put her back. T-minus sixty seconds…” Marissa situated herself over the keyboard, eyeing the monitors. “T-minus thirty… Twenty-nine… Twenty-eight…”
As the countdown continued, Marty held his finger over the “Enter” key. Once he pressed the key, he would move control of the satellite to his own monitor and keyboard. To the operations center at La Defense, it would, if all went according to plan, appear as if the satellite’s communications system had gone offline. The cell towers at the comm center were being hacked at the same time and in the same way. It was possible that the blip wouldn’t be noticed at all.
“T-minus ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… ready… three… two… one. Go!”
Frantically, all four attacked their keyboards. Marty hit Enter and watched as his middle monitor screen shifted to the orbit and controls of the geosynchronous satellite hovering over England. He did a screenshot for later use, then quickly explored the system, making sure his mouse was able to click on the controls. He could hear Travis and Jack muttering and yelling, riding the adrenaline. Marissa was counting down again.
“Five… Four… Three… Two… One!” As a unit, the four restored functionality to the systems they’d been jamming, then watched anxiously as activity scrolled down the screens.
“Nothing,” Travis called out. “I didn’t have any calls live when I crashed it and no one’s trying now.”
“Same here,” Jack said. “Nobody on this network was working.”
“Marissa?” Marty said, his eyes never leaving his monitors. As far as he could tell, no one had even noticed the blip.
“Nope. Nothing.” She was monitoring the communications into and out of La Defense. She sent her chair rolling back across the marble floor and grinned at him. “We did it!”
Two days before the raid, Landon came. No one saw him arrive, but he entered the dining room at lunch time and greeted the skeleton crew with a smile.
“Been busy, I see,” he said, accepting a plate from Will and sitting down next to Neahle.
“You could say that! We weren’t sure if you’d come,” Neahle said, chewing her cheese sandwich.
Landon glanced at Abacus, who merely raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.
“What about Rod?” Hannah asked. “He’s been working really hard since Abacus sent him to Naples.”
“Rod is fine,” Landon said. “I will speak to him later, but for now, he’s right where he should be. No worries.”
Abacus smiled with relief. Rod had worked tirelessly and hadn’t asked for any special favors, not even to come back to the tunnels to rest. As far as he could see, Rod had been true to his word. He was glad to remove that worry from his mind.
“Things are moving along,” he said to Landon. “Is there anything we need to know?”
“Nope. Things are looking brilliant. Did Marty tell you they got control of the satellite without anyone knowing?” Landon bit into an apple.
“He did. Those guys were pretty high after that; I don’t think they slept all night.” Abacus finished his tea. “So… Meeting?”
“I don’t think so. It looks like you have everything under control here.” Landon looked at Riley. “The arm doing okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Riley said, holding it up as proof. “Good as new. Thanks.”
“We do have one question,” Abacus said, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Shoot,” Landon said, looking at ease as he sipped his tea.
“What do we do with Darian when we get him?”
Neahle sat down across from her brother in the library. Clay had missed lunch, poring over maps of Rome instead. He was trying to help Abacus figure out how to hide Darian in plain sight and then evacuate him from the city. There were a lot of tunnels in Rome, ancient catacombs where early Christians had hidden from persecution, but the Firsts would assume that’s where they’d go and concentrate their search on them. The outsiders were still debating a less obvious choice. Now Clay closed the street guide to Rome and sat back, his hands crossed behind his head.
“He said that?” he asked, his blue eyes intense. Neahle noticed that his hair was almost long enough for a ponytail and smiled at what her mother would say.
“Yep. Darian can use the portals. All we have to do is get him to Paris and Landon will be waiting for us.”
“I don’t understand. I thought the humans here couldn’t use them.”
Neahle shrugged. “I don’t either, but then, how did he get any of us here? It’s not like he’s a regular person, or that there’s some law of physics we followed to jump to a whole new planet in another dimension, or a logical explanation as to why we go through the portals and end up halfway around the world. I guess he can do what he wants.”
“That’s epic. Seriously. I wonder if he’ll let any other humans from up top come here. I mean, Darian will want an army, and generals and stuff, right? Maybe they’ll all meet down here, or in Jordan where it’s safe. That would be awesome.” He pushed the map away from him. “It sure saves us a whole lot of headache.”
“We still have to get him from Circus Maximus to the portal,” Neahle reminded him.
“We do that kind of stuff all the time,” Clay said. “Wi
th seven hundred of us out there, we should be able to hustle him away and hide him.”
Neahle frowned. “That seems too easy. The Firsts have vehicles and guns… They’re going to chase us.” She was with the infiltration team and was terrified of being caught inside the prison. “If we even get out in one piece.”
“We’ll get out,” her brother assured her. “We have motorcycles and guys that know the streets. All the streets. We may have to hide Darian for a night or two in the city or switch him off to other riders, but Vasco’s got a dozen rebels on bikes who can drive the city at a hundred miles an hour, down every tiny alley. They can draw off the chase or carry Darian away from any fighting. All of us…” He paused, saying a quick prayer that all of the infiltration team would actually get out of the prison alive. “All of us will meet at the drop point. Someone will deliver Darian there and all we have to do is get him through the tunnel and into the portal.”
“Oh, that’s all?” Neahle said. “Sounds like a walk in the park.”
Chapter Fifty
The raid was scheduled for 5:30 in the morning. Seventeen other events were happening worldwide at the exact same moment, from the bombings of the comm center in Paris and the breeding centers in Osaka and Istanbul to the destruction of factories and even vehicles in other cities. Everyone who could organize an op in the short time available had done so. The proverbial watches were synchronized. They wouldn’t know for weeks how it all went and who had survived.
By 4:00, the infiltration team was looking down on the prison from Palatine Hill. The building was dark and foreboding but not as large as Neahle had imagined. Small, barred windows broke the dark red brick exterior, indicating three stories. The front and back doors were steel. It was strictly utilitarian. A small white van was parked in front of the door. Surveillance suggested that shifts were changed via a transport bus twice a day at 8:00 and 8:00. Rebel cells who had been watching the shift transfers in Beijing and Osaka over the last two weeks reported that there were fifteen individuals per shift: five armed guards and ten slaves. No one knew how many prisoners were held in the building.
“I still don’t know how we’re getting in,” Neahle whispered to her brother.
“I don’t know if they aren’t saying or don’t know.” He was lying flat on his stomach, resting binoculars in his hands as he looked down at the building.
“What do you see?” Neahle asked. They had two pairs of binoculars for the entire team, but she didn’t mind not seeing the building magnified. She’d be seeing it up close and personal soon enough anyway.
“There’s an electronic pad by the door. I can’t tell if it’s a scanner or a keypad with the angle. I can just see the red light.”
“Great. So someone has to know the code or… What? Have cut off someone’s finger?” Neahle rested her head on her arms, breathing in the smell of dirt and grass, wondering if it was the last time she would smell them. She felt more than saw her brother shrug.
At 5:00, they began to creep down the hill. The Circus Maximus, when unoccupied by the prison, was a long rectangular stretch of grass, with the ruins of walls and seating alongside. The Seven Hills of Rome hadn’t been maintained for their tourist value, so the infiltration team had the cover of long grasses, trees, and rocks as they made their way down. They stopped in pairs behind marble ruins, staying out of the minimal moonlight.
At 5:20, Neahle clicked the stopwatch she had in her pocket. Each pair had a stopwatch, a Maglite, a baseball bat, a fully charged taser, and a bag full of smoke bombs. Monkey had been busy all around the world over the last few weeks, picking up whatever he could find to help the rebels and his fellow tunnel fighters defend against armed Firsts. Abacus had made the decision to eschew guns in the close quarters of the prison; he was afraid they’d shoot each other by accident. Neahle was beginning to regret that decision. She nudged Clay and he nodded.
When the stopwatch read 3:00 minutes, they ran, bent over at the waist, towards the front door. The other three teams came from various directions; they all converged in front of the big steel door. Abacus stared at it. There was no handle and no hinges. The keypad had a touchscreen, no buttons, and a solid red light glowing at the top left.
“What now?” Riley asked, looking at the older man. “You know how to open it?”
Abacus shook his head. Neahle looked at the stopwatch. They had less than six minutes before all hell broke loose all over the planet. They needed to be inside when that happened.
“Landon didn’t tell you?” Hannah said incredulously.
Abacus shook his head again. “He said one of us would know.”
Mouths fell open; they all felt like ducks in a shooting gallery.
“That’s crap!” Hannah said. She looked around at her friends, knowing they were all going to die. Clay met her eyes.
“I know,” he said.
“What?” Neahle said, grabbing his arm. “How can you know?”
Pushing back his sleeve, Clay exposed the tattoo of his brother’s fingerprint and pressed his arm against the touch screen. There was a five second lag and the light turned green. The door clicked and opened an inch. Abacus reached out and pulled it wide with a grin, motioning for the team to enter. Clay stood for a moment, staring at his wrist, at the tattoo he’d gotten for no clear reason. He glanced at Neahle and shrugged, then took her hand and ran inside.
Strips of red lights ran along the concrete floor, similar to those on an airplane aisle. There was no foyer or reception area, simply a hallway that ran the length of the building to the smaller rear door beyond. Halfway down, a metal stairway ascended. Six doors ran along each side of the hall. All were closed and no light shone under them.
Abacus guided the heavy steel door closed; the only noise it made was a soft snick when the lock engaged. The keypad to the right of the door reassured the team that they would be able to get out… If they got that far. Gesturing with both hands, he sent them down the hallway, two teams per side, hugging the wall.
When they reached the stairs, Abacus motioned for Clay, Neahle, Monkey and Riley to go up while the others stayed behind, standing guard. Carefully they put their sneakered feet on the bottom step, listening for any creaking or groaning of the metal. It was solid. Silently they rose to the second floor.
At the end of the hall, on the back side, a light came through a glass door on the left of the hall. The doors on the right side were steel, each with a hatch at face level, a door handle and a bolt lock. They were closed and dark. Those on the left were wood. They appeared to be offices like the ones on the ground floor.
Making a circle with his hand and pointing upwards to the second flight, Monkey led them upward. Riley stayed on Monkey’s right, one step behind. Clay led Neahle, who held onto her brother’s belt and tried not to hyperventilate. Four steps from the top, Monkey halted the team, going forward alone, crawling up the final stairs.
After a minute, he came back down. Pulling out a small pad of paper he wrote, “One door has a keypad, middle, left side. Other doors like level 2. Another guard room, far end, lighted. Where are slaves, staff???”
They all knew there was no answer to that, but they also knew that the worldwide chaos was going to start soon and it would surely put those in this building on alert. They had to do the thing in front of them: try to open the one door with a touch screen and pray it was Darian’s cell.
Clay pointed to himself then to his wrist, at the tattoo. Monkey nodded. Neahle shook her head. Clay hugged her and looked her in the eye. She felt his confusion at his role, at the tattoo being the right fingerprint to unlock this place. She knew in her heart that he was the only one who could free Darian. She knew he was meant to free Darian. Reluctantly she nodded, touching his cheek.
Clay grabbed Monkey, pointing for Riley to stay with his sister. Riley nodded, taking a taser out of his pocket and checkin
g that it was on. Clay quietly went up the stairs, took three steps to the left, and put his wrist to the pad. The light turned from red to green and the door popped open without a sound.
Pulling it open, Monkey entered first, his Maglite in his hand. Inside was pitch dark; the cell didn’t have a window.
“Don’t turn the light on,” a voice said in harsh whisper. “It will activate an alarm. I’m ready.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Darian was tall, easily six feet four. He had long blonde hair pulled back in a low braid that ran down to the center of his back. He was dressed in hiking boots and cargo pants and looked remarkably like Vasco. He smiled at his rescuers as he entered the hall but he didn’t stop moving. Monkey led the way; Clay brought up the rear. When they reached Neahle and Riley, Darian smiled again, but again kept moving. They all flew down the stairs, turning left into the hall. The rest of the team fell in behind them as they raced to the steel door. Clay put his wrist to the screen, the door opened, and Abacus reached to pull it.
If he had but looked, Abacus would have seen the hand of his watch tick to 5:30. He held the door open and the team lunged out. Just as Hannah was passing Abacus, all the lights went on, an alarm sounded, and they could hear the doors along the hallway slam open.
Abacus pushed Hannah outside and threw himself through the opening as gunfire began to echo in the sterile hallway. He staggered but kept going, taking Hannah’s hand and dragging her south, away from the Coliseum and Palatine Hill, towards their hidden motorcycle. The doors of the prison banged open and two Firsts appeared with machine guns at each end of the building, firing indiscriminately into the darkness. The exterior lights along the building, which had gone on when the alarm was sounded, blinded them to anything in the black morning beyond.
Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy Page 25