The door parted and he could see Chickenhead’s sweat-slicked face. Water poured in past his legs. He stepped back, struggling to keep the door steady as Nasira stepped through. Damien and Grace staggered in after her. Jay followed, almost slipping on the rush of water. Nasira grabbed him and kept moving.
They reached the next door and Jay collapsed with exhaustion. Behind him, more and more water poured in. He rested against a bulkhead, watching as Chickenhead and DC slammed the door shut together and sealed it.
Jay exhaled slowly. He looked up to see Grace wrapping her arms around Damien.
‘Welcome back,’ Nasira said, collapsing beside Jay.
‘Hey, here’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Let’s not do that again.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sophia opened her eyes. DC was sitting in the corner, watching her. She tried to sit up but her head reeled.
‘What are you, Edward the glittering vampire?’ she said.
DC looked confused. ‘You don’t know who—’
‘Never mind, it was a joke,’ she said.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you know, considering you were—’
‘Completely fucked up?’ Sophia said. ‘On a scale of alive to dead, I’m somewhere in the middle. And even that’s debatable.’
‘Well, that’s good, I suppose.’
She wanted to shrug but it required too much energy. She settled for raising an eyebrow. ‘At least we’re alive. It just … it shouldn’t have been Benito. He shouldn’t have been dragged into this.’
‘Don’t blame this on yourself,’ DC said.
Everything surged inside her. She couldn’t hold it in. ‘I watched him die,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t save him.’
Tears blurred her vision of DC but she felt his hand across her shoulders.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t think that.’
Tears poured down her face, mixing with snot. ‘This isn’t how it was meant to happen,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t meant to turn out this way.’
Nasira appeared in the doorway. Or maybe she’d been standing there the whole time and Sophia hadn’t noticed. She was wearing the submarine-issue overalls and sneakers.
She took Sophia’s hands, squeezed them. ‘Hey, you can do this. You’re OK.’
‘I’m not OK, I’m really not,’ Sophia said. She forced herself to smile. ‘Those overalls really suit you.’
‘Don’t push it.’ Nasira grabbed a tissue from the infirmary’s solitary tissue box and handed it to her.
Sophia blew her nose. ‘Freeman,’ she said. ‘I never got to say goodbye.’
Nasira exhaled slowly. ‘I know, honey.’
‘I watched Benito die. I wanted to save him, I wanted to save them both. But I couldn’t.’ She swallowed back more tears. ‘There’s nothing quite like death to make everything seem pointless.’
Nasira looked away. ‘I went back for Freeman, I tried to save him.’
‘They killed him?’ DC said. His eyes were glassy.
Nasira stared down at Sophia’s injured leg. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘I’m surprised they didn’t want him alive,’ Sophia said, sniffing.
‘If it makes you feel any better, we put down eight of those motherfuckers today,’ Nasira said. ‘More shocktroopers than we’ve killed in our entire lives.’
Sophia forced a smile. She reached out and took Nasira’s wrist. ‘You did what you could. You both did. I’d never ask for more.’
A tear streaked down DC’s cheek, touching the corner of his lips. In all his years protecting Freeman, they’d grown close.
‘You’d be saying goodbye to my sorry ass too, if it weren’t for the boys,’ Nasira said. ‘And Grace.’
Sophia heard footsteps. She knew it was Grace even before she arrived. She didn’t say anything, just stood there in the doorway. She’d changed out of her wet clothes and into overalls. Her hair was untied: two thick black ribbons that unfurled past her shoulders.
Sophia wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘You could’ve run,’ she said. ‘You could’ve left Nasira, you could’ve left me. Why didn’t you?’
‘It was my op,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve never lost an operative. And I plan to keep it that way.’
She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then decided against it and walked out.
Jay and Damien took her place.
She smiled weakly. ‘Thanks for getting me out in one piece.’
There was a long pause. Jay seemed to have run dry on words. A rare occasion.
‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Damien asked. ‘Information?’
‘Enough.’ The word was sour on Sophia’s lips.
‘Enough for what?’ Jay said.
Sophia wiped her eyes and sat upright. ‘To do what needs to be done.’
‘Freeman’s gone, Soph.’
‘The Seraphim transmitters,’ she said. It was all she had left. The only reason she still wanted to live. ‘I need to do one good thing now. You understand, right?’
‘Sophia, they’re in America,’ Nasira said. ‘No way in hell—’
‘We have the coordinates for all the transmitters now,’ she cut in. ‘That’s all we need. That’s all I need.’
‘What is it that you need?’ Nasira said. ‘Really?’
Sophia looked away. ‘Atonement,’ she muttered.
She tested her feet on the floor. Her injured leg was still tender.
‘You’re just going to infil all by yourself?’ Jay said.
‘You’ve done enough. You don’t have to help, no one has to. But I’m doing this.’
‘I’m coming,’ DC said.
Sophia smiled. ‘You’re relieved of your duty now. You don’t have to do anything.’
He crossed his arms. ‘Too bad, you’re stuck with me now.’
‘We barely escaped from the US just six months ago,’ Nasira said. ‘You realize it’s pretty much the most dangerous place in the world right now?’
‘Especially for you,’ Jay said. ‘No offense.’
‘Don’t even try to talk me out of this,’ Sophia said.
‘Dude, it’s a one-way ticket,’ Nasira said. ‘They’re halfway to total martial law over there. You go in, you don’t come out.’
‘We’ve done it before,’ DC said. ‘We can do it again.’
‘This whole thing started with me,’ Sophia said. ‘It ends with me.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kuala Lumpur simmered in a haze that clung to the streets like finely strewn cotton candy. On her wrought-iron balcony, Sophia sucked in a thick lungful and looked over at the Petronas towers in the distance, then down at the hilly street below. Only men walked alone here. She watched two standing opposite her safe house. One had a shaved head and wore insectile sunglasses and a navy jumpsuit winged with white stripes. Cigarette smoke wafted from his mouth. His companion was pudgy and slightly unshaven. He wore tiny round glasses and a sweat-dampened business shirt in pale blue. They weren’t intelligence and they definitely weren’t shocktroopers. She decided they were in the neighborhood for their own less than savory business. As long as they kept out of her way, they could do as they pleased.
She spotted DC and Chickenhead approaching from the northeast corner, plastic shopping bags in hands. They were dressed as tourists, in shorts and T-shirts, but didn’t act like it. They barely said a word as they walked up the hill. She watched them cross to her side of the street to avoid getting too close to the two men on their left.
She removed a small creased business card from her pocket and held it under the flame of her zippo. The pottery business was no more, and now the Akhana darknet code would also be no more. She’d committed the code to memory, and she’d promised Freeman she would destroy the card. Dropping it on the balcony floor, she watched it burn to ash.
She limped back inside the room; the fracture in her leg was still healing. The rest of her team had finished their assigned tasks and were collapsed under a wobbly ceiling
fan. Damien was the only one on his feet, pacing.
‘Where’s Grace?’ he said.
‘She left,’ Sophia said.
‘When?’ he snapped.
‘About ten minutes ago.’
Grace had had an agreement with Freeman. She would help the Akhana secure the asset, then take the information she needed and move on. There was nothing more to be said, really. Sophia didn’t particularly trust Grace: she was too guarded, too closed off. But she had to admit Grace had more than pulled her weight in Manila and Boracay. An unspoken respect had emerged between them, which Sophia was careful not to confuse with friendship. She was glad to see Grace go, if only to relieve the stress on the team. Jay didn’t like her, Nasira was suspicious of her, Damien clearly still had feelings for her. Without Grace, things were simpler.
‘Which way did she go?’ Damien said.
Sophia gripped his shoulder with her good hand, holding him in place. ‘She’s gone.’
Damien stared at her, his hazel eyes dark. She felt his shoulders roll forward and his gaze drifted to the floor.
Chickenhead and DC reached the top of the stairs, slick with perspiration. Sophia left Damien to his own thoughts and approached them. DC looked exhausted.
‘That’s everything covered,’ he said to her.
Sophia cast her eyes across her group. Nasira sat on one of the crates in the center of the room sharpening her knife. Jay leaned against a cracked wall, arms folded.
‘For anyone who’s interested, the skipper hasn’t left yet,’ she said. ‘He’s leaving at 0800 tomorrow, bearing north for the nearest Shadow Akhana base. In Ho Chi Minh.’
‘Can’t we just take the sub to America?’ Jay said.
‘That would take weeks. We don’t have that much time.’
‘How much time do we have exactly?’ DC said.
‘According to Schlosser, two days from now. The same day Cecilia promised to roll out a new security program.’
‘Something tells me she’s not talking about pepper spray,’ Nasira said.
‘And you think this is Seraphim?’ Damien said.
‘It’s her pet project,’ Sophia said. ‘Whatever’s happening, it’s happening in two days.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Damien said. ‘I mean, really.’
‘We don’t need to have this discussion now,’ Sophia said. ‘As for our kit—’
‘No, I think we do.’ Damien looked around the group. ‘We all do.’
‘The Fifth Column killed people very close to us,’ Sophia said. ‘People we cared about very much. Including an asset who was extremely valuable to us.’
‘Turns out they weren’t interested in capturing Schlosser,’ Nasira said.
‘I know how Cecilia thinks,’ Sophia said. ‘She thinks this will crush me. And you. That’s how she’s trying to weaken us. By killing people we can’t protect.’ She paused. ‘And it does crush me. It really does.’
Nasira folded her arms. ‘You’re angry.’
‘How can I not be?’
‘Is that the right emotion to be riding in on?’ Nasira said.
‘I don’t have much left to lose right now,’ Sophia said. ‘None of us do. That makes us dangerous to them.’
‘Not if we wind up dead,’ Nasira said.
‘Speaking of dead,’ Jay said, ‘what’s our armory looking like?’
Sophia wasn’t going to sugar-coat it. ‘Minimal at best.’ She stepped forward and placed her P99 pistol on one of the crates. ‘Empty.’
DC put his Sig P329 subcompact pistol next to her P99. ‘I’m not letting you do this alone,’ he said. ‘Five rounds.’
She noticed his hands were shaking and wondered how long he’d been short on amphetamines. Must be at least three days.
She watched the rest of the group carefully, waiting to see who would speak next.
‘Fuck it, I ain’t going down without a fight,’ Nasira said, placing her MP7 on the crate. ‘And I sure as hell ain’t letting you walk into another war zone. Not without me.’
She removed the magazine on her P229, pried three rounds out, then put the magazine back into the pistol and rested it beside her MP7. She put the three rounds upright, beside Sophia’s P99.
‘Three for me, three for you,’ she said. ‘MP7 has one full mag.’
‘You might need a little more than that, guys,’ Jay said from the back wall.
‘What we need and what we have are two different things,’ Sophia said. ‘I’m not going to lie to you: I don’t know what sort of storm we’re riding into. And I understand if you walk away from this. That would be the smart thing to do. I’ve already asked enough.’
‘But there’s more, right?’ Chickenhead said.
Sophia shrugged. ‘I’m tired of running. If the bloodshed of the last sixty years has gone unnoticed by you, if you don’t care that the Fifth Column has a stranglehold over the whole goddamn world, then you don’t need to be here. But if you want to give it one last shot before Cecilia burns everything to a cinder — because, fuck it, what else do we have to lose — then throw in your hand.’
Chickenhead reached for his L22, which was resting in the corner. ‘When I have grandkids and they ask me about all the horrible things that happened at the turn of the twenty-first century, I want to be able to say that I saw what was really happening and I did something to stop it.’ He placed his L22 on the crates, barrel facing the window. ‘One mag.’
‘Is there anyone who is having second thoughts about this?’ Sophia said.
‘Pretty much all of us,’ Damien said.
‘You’re out?’ Sophia asked.
Damien paused, eyes on the weapons in the center. He shook his head. ‘I want to see this through.’
Jay was the last one left. Sophia wasn’t sure if he was in, even with Damien already in.
He pointed to her arm, currently in a sling. ‘That’s your shooting arm. Will you be good to go?’
‘It’s fine. I’m just keeping it out of action for now.’ She nodded at the beer in Jay’s hand. ‘And if you’re joining us, that’s your last beer. When we hit the ground, I need your body in ketosis not a hangover.’
‘Not like I have much else scheduled this week,’ Jay said.
‘You’re in?’ Sophia said.
Jay placed his beer on a crate and straightened up. ‘My chips are on the table. All in.’
Given their lack of resources and the odds, Sophia had expected someone to drop out. But no one had.
‘OK, that was a great pep talk,’ Jay said. ‘Now what toys have you brought us?’
Chickenhead dumped the contents of the plastic bags he and DC had been carrying on the floor. He looked up at Damien and Jay. ‘Sneakers size twelve and thirteen, right?’ Having left the overalls and sneakers on the submarine, the team had nothing to wear but jeans and flip-flops — and in Damien’s case, not even flip-flops. They needed proper clothes before they could go anywhere.
Jay began picking through the pile of stuff Chickenhead and DC had purchased. ‘Daypacks, sneakers, two satphones, cell chargers, US adapters, batteries, three night-vision goggles, two big pairs of fuck-off steel pliers, tinned food, bobby pins, penlights, pens, disposable razors, roll of garbage bags, hammocks, bandaids, electrical tape, paracord, aspirin, sleeping pills, US currency, cigarettes, lighters, lipstick — red, my favorite — nylon stockings, condoms.’ Jay shrugged. ‘Hey, we can have a good weekend in Vegas with all this.’
DC placed three GPS receivers on the crate. ‘We need to distribute these.’
Sophia added a smartphone to the pile. ‘This was Grace’s.’
Jay fished a smartphone out of his pocket. ‘I grabbed the other one,’ he said.
Sophia tried to suppress the image of Jay kneeling beside Freeman’s dead body and taking the cell from his pocket.
‘Body armor?’ Nasira asked.
‘Negative,’ DC said. ‘Would take our contact a week to get some in town here.’
‘So what’s the plan then?
’ Damien said. ‘Last I heard the United States is a no-fly zone.’
‘According to FEMA, military and aid are exempt,’ Sophia said. ‘Which is why we’re hitching a ride on cargo planes. As of tonight, we are United Nations aid workers.’
Everyone was silent. Even Jay seemed impressed.
‘How’d you swing that?’ he said.
‘The World Food Programme’s aviation service doesn’t actually own or directly operate aircraft,’ DC said. ‘It’s chartered out.’
‘It’s chartered to a contact of ours,’ Sophia said. ‘The WFP are shipping ready-to-use supplementary food to the US at 2200 hours tonight. Two Antonov cargo aircraft will fly to New York and two to Miami. We split into two teams. Team A goes to New York, Team B to Miami.’
Jay held his hand up. ‘Can I vote Miami? I mean, I never really got that suntan.’
‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘You’re Team A.’
‘As long as A stands for awesome,’ Jay grumbled.
‘Team A is Jay and Damien,’ Sophia said. ‘Team B is DC, Nasira, Chickenhead and myself.’
‘How come we get the small team?’ Jay said.
‘Your ego counts as two,’ Nasira said.
Damien was counting on his fingers. ‘Three,’ he said. ‘Your ego counts as—’
Jay batted Damien’s fingers away. ‘Shut up.’
‘There are four Seraphim transmitters in America,’ Sophia said. ‘Team B, my team, will be responsible for the transmitter in Miami. Team A has it a little easier.’ She paused. ‘Well, New York’s kind of hairy right now, so I won’t say easier.’ She ignored Jay rolling his eyes. ‘But we have assets there and some of them may still be in place.’
‘Some of them?’ Jay said.
‘Your first transmitter isn’t too far. It’s concealed beneath a decommissioned air force base on Long Island. From there, you’ll need to make your way to Fort Greely in Alaska.’
Jay did a double take. ‘What? That’s fucking miles away.’
‘Four thousand to be exact,’ DC said. ‘You won’t be able to make it by car. But your identities should hold up at airports.’
‘It all depends on how discreet you are in New York,’ Sophia said.
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