‘Alpha Zero Two to Whiskey Six Five Zero,’ Nasira said.
Her voice was husky even through Sophia’s flight helmet. The operation currently hinged on her acting ability.
‘We’ll be escorting you to Desecheo Island under terror attack threat level “severe” in this region. Please stand by as we move into position. Over.’
‘Whiskey Six Five Zero to Alpha Zero Two,’ the cargo plane’s pilot said. ‘Standing by. Over.’
Sophia breathed easy. Well, not too easy. The next phase was going to require a little more than acting.
She looked out the window of the helicopter to see the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean collide below, the water’s surface rolling under the three-quarter moon, concealing the five-mile depth below.
Sophia was happy with her team. It was smaller than she would’ve liked, due to time constraints, but the ex-operatives under her command were no less than exceptional. In addition to Nasira, the team included Cassandra and Renée.
Cassandra had been on an operation in Libya when Sophia and Nasira captured and deprogrammed her. She was African American, had brilliantly dark eyes and naturally pentachromatic vision, wore her hair in micro-mini braids, had a flair for explosives and quantum chaos theory, and an impatience bordering on intolerance. Still, she found passion in the Akhana’s crusade.
Sophia had collected Renée in Ireland, which, coincidentally, was also Renée’s background. She had strawberry blonde hair cut short above her frequency sensitive ears. A sliver of Spanish warmed her freckled cheeks.
Only moments ago, Sophia had told her team this was no longer a trial. It was a live op, weapons hot. She hadn’t been able to give them any forewarning because the spy in their midst might very well be a member of her hand-picked team. She hoped that wasn’t the case but she couldn’t rule it out. It wasn’t paranoia, it was common sense. She’d split her team into pairs so no one would be alone. Lucia accompanied Nasira in the cockpit, while Cassandra and Renée controlled the winch.
Nasira was piloting a heavily modified Hughes OH-6A light helicopter, pulled right out of the early 1970s. They’d done what they could to make it airworthy: modified the main and tail rotors so they spun at a lower rate; altered the tips of the main blades, added an additional rotor blade; installed a large muffler on the rear fuselage, and even a baffle to block noise slipping out of the air intake.
Through her helmet visor, Sophia had a visual on the cargo plane.
‘Five Zero,’ Nasira said, ‘bring your speed back to niner zero and descend to flight level one zero. Over.’
There was a pause, then an uncertain, ‘Alpha Zero Two, copy that. Over.’
Sophia concentrated on her breathing as she waited for their response. If the cargo plane’s crew became suspicious, they’d contact the facility immediately. Then it was up to Lucia to block their outgoing transmissions as fast as possible, and Nasira would need to pull out an Oscar-winning performance and pretend to be the cargo pilot as she explained to Desecheo Island that her distress call was a false alarm.
Sophia didn’t take her eyes off the cargo plane as it descended to 10,000 feet. At this elevation, what she had to do next would be a hell of a lot easier. Easier but definitely not easy.
‘Alpha Zero Two, we’re at flight level one zero and steady. Over,’ the pilot said.
‘Copy that, Five Zero. Over,’ Nasira said.
Ten minutes passed and the aircrew still hadn’t attempted to contact Desecheo Island.
This was it.
Sophia watched Cassandra give the hand signal to switch frequencies. She did so, in time to catch Nasira speaking on their own encrypted frequency. ‘OK, Sophia, ready when you are.’
Sophia switched on her oxygen and turned to face the side door. Gripping the handle, she twisted, then slid the door to one side, shuffling along with it so she finished up pressed against the inside of the hull. The cold wind bit into her exposed neck and wrists. She sat and rested there a moment while Cassandra and Renée set up the magnetic grappling gun on the winch. Pneumatically powered, the gun was designed to be used in deep space with spacecraft, but the principle was still the same.
‘Ready to go fishing,’ Renée said, her American accent still carrying a hint of Irish. ‘Stand by. Over.’
‘Copy that. Over,’ Nasira said from the cockpit.
Sophia heard a dull whoosh as compressed air propelled the grappling hook into the oil-black sky. From where she was sitting, she couldn’t see how accurate they were. All she could do was wait for confirmation.
‘Hook engaged!’ Cassandra yelled, a little too loudly.
Cheers erupted from the cockpit.
Sophia wanted to join in, but she was too nervous. While Renée connected her rope to the winch, she checked the pouch strapped to her chest. Inside were the explosives she needed.
Once the winch was connected, she secured her body harness to it, tested her weight on it, had both Renée and Cassandra double-check it for her, then gingerly made her way to the edge. She could see the magnetic grappling hook stuck to the side of the cargo plane. It was an odd-looking rectangle with rounded edges, its powerful electromagnets glued to the hull with an attractive force of several thousand kilograms.
‘Moving into transfer position. Over,’ Sophia said.
Her heart was racing and her gloved hands felt like they were shaking uncontrollably. She looked down to find they weren’t shaking at all. She gripped the handles on the winch and took three deep breaths from her tank to oxygenate her blood.
This was going to be one hell of a flying fox.
She pushed off and slid down the rope. The icy wind thrashed into her. She swung from side to side as she rocketed towards the cargo plane, her hands tight on the winch handles. Harness or no harness, there was no way she’d relax her grip.
The wind knocked the air from her, slammed her into the plane’s tail. She had no air in her lungs to cry out in pain. The impact made her let go of the handles. She caught sight of the ocean surging fiercely below. The harness held her. She was still sliding down towards the magnet.
‘Whiskey Six Five Zero to Alpha Zero Two,’ the cargo plane pilot said. ‘Please check our niner. Sounds like a goddamn meteor just hit our side, over.’
Sophia found the handles again. The wind flayed her. Her arctic jacket rustled angrily across the plane’s exterior. She shut her eyes for an instant. Her body slammed into the plane again.
‘Alpha Zero Two to Whiskey Six Five Zero,’ Nasira said. ‘Checking your niner. Wait one.’
Sophia’s lungs burned. She breathed and breathed and shut her eyes. The winch hit the back of the magnet, swinging her wildly. She hung there at the mercy of the wind. It howled through her goggles. It sounded like a giant wind tunnel aimed right at her face.
‘Alpha Zero Two to Whiskey Six Five Zero,’ Nasira said. ‘We have a flock of birds getting a little too close. Reporting no sign of damage. I repeat, no sign of damage. We’ve got you nice and safe; proceed with your flight path, over.’
From where Sophia was hanging, it was impossible to place the explosives above the magnet as she’d planned to. Instead, she’d have to put them below. Only problem was, the surface curved under. Great. There was no choice now. She let go of the handles and placed her complete trust in the harness.
‘Whiskey Six Five Zero to Alpha Zero Two. Roger that,’ the pilot said. ‘Whiskey Six Five Zero out.’
Removing the explosive charge from the pouch on her chest, she held it against the plane’s exterior with one hand and engaged the magnets with the other. There was a dull smack as the magnets on the charge married to the hull. Now all she needed to do was get back in the helicopter. Alive, preferably.
Gripping the handle, she engaged the winch’s motor. Slowly, it began to reel her back into the helicopter. All she could do was hang on and try not to injure herself. Despite the thermals and arctic gear that covered her from head to toe, the cold air still managed to find its way in. Inside h
er mask, the howling wind was joined by her chattering teeth.
Cassandra and Renée helped her back into the helicopter. She tried to extricate her harness from the winch but her hands were too numb. Renée did it for her while Cassandra disengaged the magnetic grappling hook and slowly reeled it back inside.
Sophia found a safe corner to sit down, relieved to be on solid ground. Cassandra slid the door shut. Warmth, at last.
The sudden shift in temperature made Sophia’s fingertips burn. She removed her oxygen tank and mask, and all of her clothes, including the thermals. If she kept her thermals on while running around inside the facility, she’d end up passing out from heat exhaustion. She put on her para-aramid vest and strapped her helmet back on. Then she inserted a boron carbide plate onto the front and back of her vest. A bit of extra protection never hurt, she thought as she unzipped her left chest pocket and pulled out a worn, first-generation iPod already cued up for the White Stripes’ ‘Little Cream Soda’. She plugged it into the speaker system they’d installed in the helicopter.
She was already on the encrypted channel, so she began speaking straight away. ‘Maintain our heading. When the time comes, we’ll give them five minutes to find their parachutes before we blow the charge.’
Nasira lit a cigarette. ‘How generous.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Sophia hit the play button. ‘Make it three.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Damien knocked on Jay’s door. Jay opened it, toothbrush shoved in his mouth and toothpaste oozing down his chin.
‘Hey,’ he said, inadvertently spitting toothpaste onto Damien’s T-shirt.
He turned away, leaving Damien to invite himself in. Which he did, six-pack of Coronas in one hand, limes in the other. Toothpaste was running down Jay’s neck; he disappeared into his en suite, spat a little too dramatically, washed his mouth.
When he returned, he said, ‘And to what do I owe this honor?’
As Damien ripped two bottles from the six-pack, he noticed a scrap of paper on Jay’s desk. There was an email address scribbled on it.
‘We’ve been put on standby tonight,’ Damien said. ‘You got the call, right?’
Jay went hunting for his bottle opener. ‘You think Denton knows she’s coming?’
Damien frowned. ‘What else could it be? Last time we were on standby was a year ago.’
Jay opened his beer for him. ‘And nothing happened.’
‘But this time—’
‘It’s different. I know.’ Jay opened his own beer, then snatched a lime from Damien’s other hand.
Damien snuck a quick look around the place. Clothes were strewn over the carpet and bed, but it wasn’t as messy as he’d expected. There was a television positioned ridiculously close to the bed. Everything else looked pretty much the same as his own place, just arranged in a different way. A less efficient way.
He picked up the scrap of paper; it was only half an email address. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, right,’ Jay said, cutting the lime with his tactical knife. ‘The PT instructor gave me her Twitter.’
‘Twitter?’ Damien said.
‘Yeah, I think it’s a porn site.’ Jay shoved a wedge of lime into Damien’s bottle. ‘Thejayunit.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s my Twitter.’ Jay grinned. ‘Good, huh?’
Damien blinked. ‘That was… the best you could come up with?’
Jay slipped some lime into his own bottle and licked his lips. ‘Yeah, jaymachine was taken years ago by some dude in Korea.’ He dropped himself onto the floor at the end of his bed. ‘Besides, it’s not like I can say anything cool. Operating procedures and all that.’
Damien sat beside him. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Jay was silent too. That was unusual in itself. He must be as on edge as Damien felt.
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ Damien said. ‘I mean, before all this.’
‘I have.’ Jay drank his beer, faster than usual.
Since he was letting it lie, Damien moved on. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’
Jay laughed, then fell silent again. ‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Jay shouldered him lightly. ‘You having second thoughts?’
‘No.’ The beer was making his fingers cold. He put it down. ‘I just don’t know how this is going to end.’
‘Yeah, me either,’ Jay said. ‘As long as we look out for each other. That’s what brothers do. And if we make it out alive—’
Damien raised his eyebrows at Jay’s dramatic pause.
‘I make pretty good nachos,’ Jay said. ‘Just saying.’
Damien smiled, but it faded quickly. They sat in silence for a moment longer. All the possibilities ran through his head, and most of them weren’t good.
Jay’s com beeped.
‘You should get that,’ Damien said.
Jay stood up. ‘Twenty bucks says Viagra.’
Damien licked his lips. ‘I’m betting Nigerian banking opportunity.’
Jay checked the com. ‘Nuts.’
‘What was it?’
Jay tossed the com to Damien. ‘What’s she trying to say? Is that a joke?’
Damien checked the com. The message read: Would you rather have more than enough to get the job done or fall very short? It's totally up to you. Our methods are guaranteed to increase your size by 1–3". Reply YES to see how.
It was Sophia’s signal.
Damien grinned. ‘There’s no need to be ashamed.’
Jay snatched the com off him. ‘Don’t need it, thank you very much.’
‘You have your memory stick?’ Damien asked.
Jay nodded. ‘You?’
Damien tapped his jeans pocket. ‘Where we’re going, there’s no coming back, is there?’
Jay drank the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash can. ‘Yeah well, where we’re coming from, who’d want to go back?’
* * *
Denton stepped into the oval-shaped security control room, a sports bag in one hand. The room’s otherwise featureless walls were broken by an array of monitors that offered just a sample of the surveillance images transmitted from the 968 cameras strategically placed throughout the Desecheo Island facility. The cameras themselves were on timers controlled by six control-room operators. To Denton’s right, a temperature-controlled compartment held a petabyte array that faithfully recorded everything the cameras could see.
The security chief, a solid man in his late forties with flushed cheeks and ill-fitting glasses, said without looking up from the operator-manned computers, ‘Colonel, could you take a look at this?’
Denton tucked his sports bag under a desk and marched over to the monitor the chief was watching. The screen displayed a radar detection interface that showed the slightly askew, diamond-shaped Desecheo Island and the surrounding ocean up to a distance of thirty miles, all contained in a circle as wide as the screen itself. Green writing filled the screen images’ corners and there was a column of data on the right-hand side. The only thing he could make sense of were the GPS coordinates of the facility at the bottom of the column, and below them the current time: 03:05 LOCAL.
Inside the circle, a rectangle of yellow marked the dead center. Outside the rectangle, there was the occasional spurt of green.
Denton crossed his arms. ‘What am I looking at?’
The chief stabbed a fleshy finger at an already marked place on the grid. ‘Here’s where we lost contact with the cargo plane.’
‘What plane?’ Denton snapped.
‘A cargo plane that we lost contact with.’
Denton glared at the chief. ‘I presume we share the same suspicion?’
The man’s attention remained glued to the screen. ‘Uh, something shot it down, but we’re not picking anything up.’
Denton looked back at the screen. The chief’s finger had left a smudged fingerprint. Denton leaned in, but suppressed the urge to wipe it.
>
‘I’d make that about 700 yards from the facility,’ he said.
‘It’s 720 to be exact, Colonel.’
Denton nodded. ‘That appears to be correct.’
A yellow dot appeared onscreen — on the other side of the island — and then vanished. Denton stared at it, waiting for the mysterious aircraft to reappear. But it didn’t. For a second, he thought he’d imagined it.
‘What was that?’
His voice thundered through the room, making one of the operators jump from his chair.
Denton pointed his comparably slender finger to where he’d seen the dot. ‘We had something right there. Then it disappeared.’ He turned to the nearest operator. ‘You, at workstation five. Play back the radar from the last few minutes. I want an analytical report in two minutes.’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ the operator said.
If Denton hadn’t been here to notice the yellow dot, it could’ve been a good half-hour before any of these numbskulls picked it up. He eyed the chief coldly. ‘Show me the cameras in the BlueGene lab. We’re expecting visitors.’
He knew how Sophia thought. The sudden disappearance of the dot was a distraction. She was hoping it would keep everyone busy while she snuck in from the other side of the island. Denton reached for his headset. He would allow her to get as far as the BlueGene lab. In fact, he was counting on it.
* * *
Sophia’s com guided her to Jay, courtesy of the virus he and Damien had released into the facility’s intranet. Not that she needed it. She spotted him a mile off, striding the mostly vacant gray-walled corridor. Fluorescent tubes lit the corridor over-enthusiastically. He wore nothing over his combat vest, possibly to show off the definition in his arms. She imagined his muscles looked better through his eyes than they did through hers. His vest appeared to be bullet resistant to Type III. At least he was sensible.
She doubled her pace until she was beside him, her lab coat flapping behind her.
Jay played it smooth and matched her pace. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Where’s Damien?’
‘Catching up. As usual.’
‘That’s a pity. You two make a good couple.’
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