Swap Out!

by M. L. Buchman

  She waited.

  No shout. No complaint. No attempt to climb back the ladder into the booth. The cockpit of the old Robinson R22 helicopter, her first ever rotary-wing aircraft wrapped around her, safe, secure, alone. She’d mounted it high on the silo wall, but depended on the monitors that covered most of the yellowed Plexiglas.

  Jeff the Chef, give me a break, Davis, didn’t show up on a single monitor. Of course none were aimed at the booth itself, all the cameras looked outward. She scooted forward and peeked out the still clear upper portion of the Plexi bubble, but there was no sign of him. He didn’t wear a microphone either as he wasn’t a player in this scenario.

  Probably squatting on the ground below the door sulking.

  She had better things to do with her time.

  The trainees had finally figured it out. She didn’t even bother to check who had thought it up, the brains of this team had long since become obvious. Two of the men had lowered the senior airman, Penny, as far as they could reach while the two other women anchored them by lying across their legs. The man in the hole leapt up, grabbed her ankles and climbed out over her. He cried out when he reached the top.

  Both women who’d been lying across the men’s legs were marked with a bright red “X” on their back. Not a one of them had seen Grim arrive or depart, including the victims.

  Including Shelley. Which was disappointing, she could usually spot him. Was she slipping? No, she’d been worrying about Mister non-entity Davis.

  At the new alarm of the additional simulated deaths, the two men dropped Penny back down into the pit rather than hauling her the rest of the way out.

  Time to get them moving.

  Shelley released the barking dogs. Actually a pair of foot-tall, windup toys on a track that plunged along the trail roaring out tapes of German Shepherds and Dobermans. The best attack dogs were perfectly silent until the moment they ripped your throat out, but she wanted to scare them, not kill them. Wanted to test the extent of their poise.

  The answer. None.

  The remaining trio abandoned the two corpses, only remembering to grab their ammo and weapons at the last second. But they left the radios which would now be in enemy hands. Shelley bet herself five to one they’d forget to change the frequency they were using.

  They grabbed the sergeant, some points for that, who now had seven minutes left on his life-remaining timer, by the harness straps and sprinted down the trail dragging him along, not doing much to avoid obstructions in the trail despite his loud cussing.

  It was really too easy.

  She flipped on the sector fourteen hi-speed fan, barely a dozen feet from her cockpit aerie. The trees rattled and whooshed beneath the helicopter-like blast. The fake landscape blasted into a flurry about them until they were forced to drop their comrade to shield their eyes.

  Shelley opened a mic and set the volume near the limit.

  “Drop your weapons and lie down on the ground! This is your only warning!” Two dropped their weapons and covered their ears.

  The third rolled beneath a small rock overhang and brought his weapon to bear on the fan, not that he could do it any damage with sim-ammo.

  She flicked on the M134 mini-gun simulator, the most terrifying sound to any ground-pounding combat veteran. The wind-up whine of flying death. Six thousand rounds of 7.62mm ammunition a minute.

  Nothing happened. She flipped the switch back and forth. Still nothing. No popped circuit breakers, have to troubleshoot it later.

  Still, she had a half dozen fixed M-16s in the area. A row of six switches in their present sector. No one was in the carefully mapped lines of fire, they were all huddled on the ground except for Penny who was trying to leverage her way out of the hole by using the old mountain climber’s trick, feet on one side, shoulders on the other, push off to get traction. Almost seven feet up, not many could do that.

  Shelley would give Penny a chance to rescue herself, no point in adding to her woes. Back at ground zero, they were kneeling and the present leader, Torrence?, Lawrence? was actually standing. She threw all six switches at once.

  CHAPTER 47

  Six M-16s began emptying their practice ammunition.

  The plexi bubble of her control room was pounded with a rainstorm of bullets. She lay down across the seat Jeff the Chef had recently vacated as the old bubble shattered and the rounds pounded against the back of the seat where her head had been moments before. And she hadn’t bothered to wear safety goggles inside the booth.

  More rounds pounded against the back of her equipment as the cockpit was raked with hostile fire. Monitor after monitor shattered under the abuse, a cloud of sparks filled the small space and she covered her hair to avoid it catching on fire.

  In a final burst, the main circuit breakers blew and everything stopped.

  The gunfire ceased. Her ears rang with the sudden silence.

  The helicopter fan wound down until, moments later, it might never have been.

  The only light in the control room came through the space above the destroyed monitors.

  And that light wasn’t the previously set worst-visibility of dusk. It was the harsh emergency work lights.

  For all she could tell, she was the only one left alive on the exfiltration simulation level of Silo One.

  There’d been no alarms, it didn’t make sense.

  She’d worry about that later.

  Shelley pulled a Browning Hi-Power from under the seat, live rounds in this one, and swung open the door.

  No fire. No spattering of bullets against the panel.

  She gathered herself for the leap, which was far harder than she expected. She’d be exposed for several crucial seconds and there was nothing she could do about it. No one had fired live rounds at Shelley Thomas since the Q-course eight years ago.

  Well, it was time to face the music. Someone was gonna be in a world of hurt for shooting at her and killing the Air Force team. A world of hurt.

  She dove out of the control room, past the ladder, and onto the dirt slope along the wall. She let the slope add to her speed. The underbrush whipped at her, breaking her fall, pounding against her limbs, whipping her face, which stung like hell.

  Shelley rolled to her feet in a low crouch, her pistol aimed downrange.

  Two men stood in the middle of the clearing.

  In plain view.

  Holding M-16s loosely.

  She fired off a round before she could stop herself. Only a quick jerk sent it whizzing past the chef’s ear rather than penetrating his brain.

  Jeff and Grim ducked and stared in her direction. The bullet rattled and zinged off the steel and concrete walls of the silo.

  She closed her eyes and winced until the ricochets ceased. There was no cry of pain at the end. That was the good news.

  Jeff stood there in the open, Grim beside him.

  Both in plain view, both gawking at her like she was a circus show freak, and both were white as ghosts.

  “Drop your weapons!”

  They looked down at the M-16s cradled in their hands and then dropped them like hot rocks. The control lines were still attached to them as were the hundred-round snail-feed magazines. It wasn’t invaders bypassing her alarm systems. They were her people using her weapons loaded with sim-ammo. They’d removed them from their mountings and redirected the machine guns at her control booth. Jeffrey had recruited Grim against her. That betrayal was one she would not soon forget.

  Bottom line, she’d just shot up her own control room. All they’d done was re-aim two of M-16s.

  She locked the safety on the Browning.

  The other trainees slowly rose to their feet and stared up at the smoking destruction. The Robinson R22 was a disaster inside and out. Dozens of pockmarks had dented the thin metal. The destruction of the equipment looked even worse from the back side.


  Penny trailed in behind the others, having somehow freed herself. Scaling the hole wasn’t the hard part, it was flipping from fully braced across the hole onto solid ground. Shelley wished she had the recording of how Penny had done that, but it too would be up in smoke.

  Jeff was the only one who noticed her, and returned the airman’s cheery wave. Then he walked away from Grim and came to where Shelley stood, her pistol still only half lowered. He had some dirt on his clothes, but was otherwise untouched. Even his ponytail was still in place. When he was close enough she could smell the cordite on his clothes.

  “Sorry.” He glanced up at the R22 nose section once more. “I only thought to startle you.” His face was indeed contrite as he chewed on his upper lip.

  “You succeeded. But why?”

  “When the enemy sets the rules, you lose. Unless you change them.”

  “And where did a television chef learn this bit of wisdom. A fan of Sun-Tzu?”

  Now he grinned unabashedly.

  She’d spent a great deal of time and money putting together her control room and he’d just blown it to shit. And the Robinson. That hurt most of all. The last remains of her first helicopter, shattered. A feeling came over her, one that didn’t very often, but that she’d learned to recognize. It was a tightness, a tensing, not in her muscles but of her whole body. A desire to pound, to beat against something, against all the unfairness and bias that had kept her from the front li—

  “Kobayashi Maru.”

  “I don’t speak Japanese,” she managed through gritted teeth. She did some, but didn’t know that phrase.

  Grim had come up beside him and barked out a laugh that startled the trainees from their fixation on the control room disaster to stare over at her.

  “What?” Only clenching her fists kept them at her sides.

  Grim kept giggling. “You were just beaten by a Star Trek aficionado. Like Captain Kirk, he reprogrammed the game so he could win.”

  CHAPTER 48

  A warble filled the air.

  Jeff noticed Shelley’s pistol as she holstered it. It had no orange stripe. Was it real ammo? He could feel his breath catch and the blood draining from his face. How close had he just come to death? He hooked his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking. He’d had enough of not knowing what was happening. He was tired of one cell after another, was this one any better than the Chicago high-rise? Three days there, three more here. He hadn’t seen any sunlight in almost a week. No freedom of movement.

  This morning he’d opened the door of the guest level, awake and ready at four a.m. as ordered, but hadn’t dared move. That stupid bowling ball. It ran wild in the kitchen, the halls, it had appeared again in the workout room, this time crossing the track at ninety degrees. The only ball he had any sense of was the one in the kitchen. It was better than a lock and key. He’d sat there on the edge of his bed and awaited Shelley’s arrival to guide him past the traps.

  The warble sounded again. Shriller.

  It was coming from one of Shelley’s thigh pockets.

  “Your leg is ringing.”

  Shelley jolted and stared down at her leg as if a viper wrapped there.

  It rang again before she pulled a cell phone from the leg pouch and pressed a button to silence it. She stared at it for several seconds and then looked strangely at Jeff.

  What had he done now? He really didn’t care.

  “Grim,” she covered the picture phone, but didn’t put it away. “Teach them how you do what you do. People, you pay attention, he’s one of the best.”

  “You,” she pointed at Jeff, “come with me.”

  He was sick of being locked up. Sick of being ordered around like a stupid wind-up doll. To hell with Master Sergeant Thomas and her live ammo. He turned to follow Grim.

  “Please?” So soft. He didn’t know her voice could be that soft. He looked back at her. Her eyes were wide, like a little girl’s when she’s afraid of the dark.

  She may have scared him, but maybe he’d scared her as well. Scared her enough to nearly kill him. She might not be the sort of person he’d want to count in his circle of friends, but she was definitely someone he didn’t want as an enemy.

  Grim must have heard her as well. He’d stopped short of reaching the cluster of trainees. His face watched Jeff’s impassively, too impassively. Shelley was important to him. This dangerous young man followed her with a complete faith that was hard to ignore. He could be making a living running with the drug lords of Manhattan and instead was following Shelley up and down an old missile silo.

  And more, this moment was important. So important that the fluid young man was as stiffly solid as a week-old baguette. Shelley didn’t strike him as a woman who asked for help, ever. Grim’s reaction confirmed that.

  Jeff nodded to Shelley to lead on.

  Grim relaxed and turned to the trainees.

  Jeff followed Shelley to the exit and they quickly climbed the five stories to the Level One cross-tunnel that connected the two silos. They were still forty feet underground.

  Something had changed between them, between the three of them.

  Had he gained some respect by turning her own simulation on its ear? Perhaps.

  They trotted down the tunnel, not at her normal pounding pace, but one a little more considerate of his lower degree of training and the five flights of steps they’d just climbed.

  The corridor between the silos was still surreal. It was a tube a dozen feet in diameter and pipes in a variety of sizes hanging from all the walls until there was very little wallspace or ceiling exposed. Fresh air wafted down the corridor like a giant ventilation shaft. What was the weather like forty feet above them? It was only five a.m., it probably wasn’t even light yet. He had no more sense of time here than he did when drugged and incarcerated in Chicago.

  But something had changed and not simply respect.

  Shelley stopped at the hatch and waited for him to pass. Not with that impatient edge. But with the courtesy one might show . . . a friend? No. A dangerous unknown? Perhaps. A potential enemy?

  He was so startled that he stopped in the center of the hatchway.

  She raised her eyebrows in a question.

  Okay, maybe this woman who was an island unto herself had decided something, but he didn’t think he’d actually like to know what. She was so forthright, she’d probably answer if he asked. Sometimes, Jeff decided, it was better not to ask the question to begin with.

  He moved out of the way and she closed and dogged the hatch. He’d never seen her do that before.

  They were now locked in the uppermost story of the second missile silo where he’d arrived in the first place three days ago. The room was completely filled with the helicopter she’d used to rescue him. The rotors reached out to within a foot of each wall. The helicopter itself sat on a square of the floor that must be an elevator to lift it up through the blast doors overhead.

  Carts lined the walls laden with great ropes of ammunition and missiles of various sizes were racked on rolling carts. A large mechanic’s tool set took up ten feet of wall along with a spare-parts rack of impressive proportions.

  “Best helicopter ever. Comanche RAH-66.” Her voice like a lover’s.

  “Looks nasty. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “They’re incredibly nasty and you won’t. They only ever built two reconnaissance-rigged prototypes, then they canceled the program.”

  “That doesn’t look like a reconnaissance craft.” The brilliant red warning tags hanging off the various missiles didn’t bode well for them being dummies.

  “This is the third one. Almost no one knows it was ever finished. It was a present, from my mother.” She bit off the last word too quickly.

  “Must be some mother.”

  No response. He carefully didn’t look directly at her. Gave her a bit of perso
nal space.

  When she turned for the service elevator to descend to the lower levels, he followed quietly.

  CHAPTER 49

  Jeff and Shelley rode down to Level Five in silence.

  The roving bowling ball didn’t put in an appearance.

  In the other silo Level Five was the weapons training level. Jeff didn’t know what he’d expected when the cage rattled to a halt here in her private missile-home, but this wasn’t it.

  They were five stories down, over a hundred feet below the rolling wheat fields. He looked around and breathed it in like fresh air.

  The entire space was done with an elegance that matched his own Manhattan apartment. Granted with a different taste, but nonetheless exquisite. In contrast to the last few days, it was so normal that he could almost pretend the rest of it hadn’t happened.

  A fairy princess four-poster bed, right down to diaphanous sheer curtains. A curved bookcase, actually curved, not short segments of straight shelves, ran well along the similarly shaped wall. Paperbacks stuffed together so tightly that there was not a single space available for more. The carpet was a deep plush of the softest lavender.

  He took off his boots even if Shelley didn’t because there was no question when entering this room. This room wasn’t like the rest of the silo. This was a sanctuary.

  A great desk of glass and steel faced toward the bed, and a luxurious couch covered in a dusky blue-and-gold flower brocade faced a wall of monitors. A large shower and soaking tub were ensconced behind a half wall of buttercup yellow tile.

  “Not a word.”

  He realized his jaw was hanging loose and closed it. Shelley crossed quickly to the desk and rested her palm against one corner of the glass. A blue light slid back and forth across her hand, palm and print reader, then the entire wall in front of the couch lit up. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant were frozen in mid-banter surrounded by a store of travel books.