by A S Bond
“We’ve been here before.”
“Yes, I know.” A knowing smile. “But do you think those two idiots have left the front door open for us? It’s a question of survival. Do you want to live, or do you want to die?”
Chapter 39
Scott checked his watch: 9 am. The call to Operations had gone unchallenged, and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the little MG, thinking carefully about his next move. He was almost certainly wanted by the D.C. police, but if what he had seen earlier that morning was anything to go by, they had other priorities right now.
He couldn’t go back to his apartment, of course, and he didn’t have time to explain to the D.C. cops why there was a messy corpse in his living room. That would have to wait. He had to get out of the city, for Brooke’s sake, if not his own.
Reaching into his pocket, Scott found his wallet and opened it. His DOD identification was still there. A plan began to form in his mind, and he made another call, this time to Rosie. Then he restarted the little red car and eased across the parking lot towards the highway. It was a long shot, but maybe he could use the shut-down to his advantage.
Scott stayed on the rural roads, skirting south of the city. Military bases seemed to be everywhere, and he puttered past Dahlgren, trying not to attract attention. It was hard, though; the highways were almost empty, and as he drove out onto the bridge across the Chesapeake back into Maryland, his was the only vehicle. He couldn’t have felt more exposed.
He took the Crain Highway towards the city. There were more people around here, but still few police; they would be focused on the high-value targets. An hour later, he slowed and took a left, marked Andrews Air Force Base. This was it.
Four soldiers stood in front of the high metal gates at the entrance. All were heavily armed, and beyond them, the base looked busy. Scott slowed and stopped next to the guard hut and wound down his window, looking serious. That bit, at least, wasn’t hard.
“Scott Jensen for Captain Hardwicke. “ He flashed his ID, but the young man reached out, and Scott handed over the card, his heartbeat loud in his ears.
The boy - he seemed barely out of his teens to Scott - looked at the ID, then consulted his list, and frowned.
“Please wait, sir.”
Scott swallowed, but he tried to look nothing more than irritated at the delay. Had Rosie done what he’d asked? The boy nodded behind the glass, and replaced a telephone receiver. Walking back to Scott’s open window, he handed back the ID.
“Follow the road to the right; parking is in front of building ‘C’, sir.”
“Thank you.” Scott’s foot was on the gas before the boy could change his mind, and he drove forward under the raised barrier, imagining the eyes of all four guards on him, suspicious.
The skies above were unusually quiet, Scott guessed - and this was confirmed by the car radio - because all commercial flights were temporarily suspended over the city. Andrews, however, was teeming with personnel. He parked under a large letter ‘C’ painted on the side of a brick building, and got out. He could see into the office, where the desk sergeant appeared to be processing paperwork. She looked up as Scott swept in though the plate glass doors, a swirl of air lifting the paperwork.
“Yes?”
Scott showed her his ID again.
“For Captain Hardwicke’s flight, leaving in -” he glanced at his watch “ten minutes.”
She frowned and checked the manifest. Scott saw her eyebrows go up and she looked at Scott again, more carefully this time, but the paperwork was law. If it was written down, it was sanctioned. It wasn’t particularly unusual for DOD personnel to catch a lift on a military flight, but the circumstances and the destination might have raised questions, if the entire base hadn’t been so frantic. This that ensured the presence of one DOD director on an otherwise empty outward bound flight was of little consequence.
The Sergeant made a note of his ID card number, then picked up the phone. A moment later, the pilot walked in.
“So you’re my hitchhiker.” He smiled and gripped Scott’s hand firmly.
“Captain Hardwicke.” Scott did his best to appear relaxed. “Thanks for agreeing to give me a ride at such short notice.”Hardwicke was an older man, coming up to retirement, Scott suspected, but he still carried a now slightly portly frame upright. Hardwicke moved in a brisk fashion to usher Scott through the doors towards the plane, which still had the steps rolled up to the cockpit, and the cargo ramp open at the rear. It was a C17 Globemaster III; a big, heavy beast used as a general workhorse for cargo, medi-vacs, and air drops. Scott felt oddly comforted by its familiar bulk.
“It’s no problem.” said Hardwicke. “We’re just hopping up to get some boys who’ve been doing survival training up there. Right now, they’re more use to us down here.”
The co-pilot walked down the steps from the cockpit, and nodded to Scott as he passed on his final walk-around check.
“This is our loadmaster, Jeff Kemp. I’ll leave you in his hands.”
A large man with a thick neck and small eyes shook Scott’s hand and Hardwicke turned for the cockpit.
“Don’t often get passengers on this route,” Kemp said conversationally, as they boarded.
“I imagine not,” Scott said, as pleasantly as he could. “But these are strange times.”
“I guess.” Kemp aimed a thumb at a bucket seat in the cavernous hold of the plane. With a nod, he left Scott to strap himself in. A few minutes later, the engines started, roaring around the empty space. The plane taxied for a while, before the noise reached a crescendo and Scott felt the lumbering old bird detach from the ground. He leaned back, and sighed. He might be almost deafened by the time he got there, but he was out of Washington and on his way to Goose Bay. He just hoped David had fulfilled his part of the bargain.
Chapter 40
BBC Online News
In a daring night time mission, US Special Forces have rescued the missing British journalist Daisy Donnelly, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence confirmed this morning. Fearing booby traps, the select Team 5 squad was flown into the area by helicopter pilots known as ‘night stalkers’. The squad then used fast-roping techniques to descend directly from helicopters into the compound where the journalist was being held.
“The decision to go in and rescue Ms Donnelly was taken after intelligence on the ground pinpointed her location,” said a spokesman for the US Department of Defence. Daisy Donnelly, a veteran war reporter for the British press, and latterly BBC TV News, was held in a village at an unknown location in eastern Afghanistan. The assault team shot all six of her captors, including one man who was thought to be wearing a vest packed with explosives. In the past, British hostages have been beheaded in live footage online, as propaganda for Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.
Ms Donnelly had been missing, presumed dead, following the first successful attack by insurgents on a US Army Patrol near the Pakistan border, in which several men were killed and an Apache helicopter was also destroyed. A second, similar attack was also successful earlier this week, raising fears that this type of weapon will offer a big step forward for the Afghan insurgency, which was previously believed to have only standard Rocket Propelled Grenades.
Ms Donnelly is currently at a US military base in Germany, where she is undergoing medical treatment, but is thought to be stable.
In an unusual move, the British Government refused to give any further details on the circumstances that led to Ms Donnelly’s recovery, but a spokesman said that the operation, carried out by US Navy SEALS, “exemplified the way in which the combined forces within ISAF could successfully work together.”
Chapter 41
What makes you think this place is going to blow? asked Brooke, kneeling to slit the ties at Maynard’s wrists.
“It’s my facility.” He dabbed gently at his split lip with a bony hand. “I designed it to be destroyed. Just not with me inside.” A faint smile turned to a grimace as he stood up. “That no
ise you can hear is the test power source for an EMP. It’s a kind of large generator, which has been set to run to destruction, so when it explodes, it will deflate this old place like a pack of cards - “
“And set off a massive EMP pulse,” Dex added.
Maynard inclined his head in agreement, so he didn’t see Dex until his fist made contact with Maynard’s eye, forcing him against the wall and knocking the breath out of him. There was no contest. Maynard was tall, but Dex was younger and fitter, and his anger gave him strength.
“Tell me what happened to my brother, you bastard.”
“Dex!” Brooke cried, but he ignored her and banged Maynard’s head against the rock.”Tell me.”
Maynard, unable to speak or move, stared at Dex, who loosened his grip slightly so the older man could speak.
“Your brother?”
“The bodies in the forest. The prospectors. The boys. Ringing any bells?”
Maynard pointed towards the corridor. Dex glanced in that direction, and Maynard used that moment of inattention to punch Dex hard. Dex let go of Maynard, who in turn grabbed Dex by his collar, spinning him around and thrusting him up against the wall with an agility that astonished Brooke. Speaking loudly and slowly, he said
“We. Must. Leave. Now. Your - “ he stopped as Brooke pressed the flat of her knife against his neck, then angled it slowly, until the blade’s edge pressed hard into the skin below Maynard’s jaw. She could see his pulse bulging above the steel.
“Get your hands off him.”
Maynard dropped his grip immediately and stepped back.
“There’s another hostage, here in the caves. Or at least there was. I don’t know who he is; my men brought him in. He was just...in the way.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Right,” Brooke said, stepping back, but keeping the knife visible. “We find that guy and then get the hell out of here. All of us.” She stared at Dex, who, after a moment, nodded, then said
“How long have we got, Maynard?”
“I’m not sure. Ten minutes? Maybe fifteen.”
“Can’t we stop it?” asked Brooke.
“Not now. We don’t have time - it’s in a secured area and our two friends have the keys now.”
Brooke started running towards the passageway before he even finished speaking, but Maynard caught her in a couple of long strides and pointed down a much narrower passageway she hadn’t noticed before. She looked at him for a second, unsure if to trust him.
“I want to get out too.”
“Okay.”
Maynard moved sure-footedly, even in the darkness. They weaved in and out of different tunnels, some tighter or lower than others. Occasionally, a small LED light flickered. It seemed like ten hours, but was probably no more than a couple of minutes, Brooke realized, before Maynard stopped suddenly, and Brooke smacked into his back.
“In here.” Maynard reached to one side, and she heard the screech of metal, as he turned the key in a door she hadn’t seen in the darkness. As it opened, a small line of light widened, and, looking over Maynard’s shoulder, Brooke saw a man in the bare cell, sitting in one corner next to an empty plate, his head in his hands.
Dex squeezed past Brooke and pushed Maynard forward roughly, so he could look past him into the cell.
“Kyle!”
The man on the floor looked up, and Brooke saw that he was no more than about twenty-five, despite the beard and the grime that lined his face. A dirty, blood-stained bandage circled his lower thigh. Only his eyes blazed as he embraced his brother, the relief and amazement leaving him in great gasps that were half laughter, half tears. Then he focused on Maynard, standing in the doorway.
“You...I’m going to kill you, you - “
“You can kill him later,.” Dex said, catching hold of Kyle’s arm. “Right now, we have minutes to get out of this place before it blows up.”
“Shit, man. Let’s go!”
“But where? The hillside adit was destroyed,” Dex said. Maynard ignored the implicit accusation.
“There is a shaft...” he checked his watch. “We might make it.”
The four of them scrambled through the subterranean maze, twisting around corners, banging their heads on the roof and, occasionally, passing through larger chambers. The light was intermittent and only a handful of small LEDs gave enough of a glow for Brooke to distinguish the floor from the roof. Everything else was touch.
Glancing down at her watch as it glowed in the darkness, Brooke saw it was eight minutes since they’d started out. But who knew how accurate Maynard’s guess was? They might have another 20 minutes, or they might have 20 seconds.
“Here.” Maynard stopped at the junction of two tunnels.
“What? I can’t see anything,” Brooke said.
“Look up.” She looked and saw that the tunnel roof there rose so high she couldn’t make it out in the darkness.
“It’s the bottom of a vertical shaft.” said Maynard. There should be some hand holds once you’re up inside.”
Brooke stood directly underneath it. Was that a whisper of fresh air she could feel on her face?
“Here, put your foot in my hands...” With no time to waste, Dex gave her a leg up into the unknown blackness and she flailed about for a moment in space. Just as she was about to overbalance and fall back, she flung up her hands and felt rock in front of her. Sliding them frantically from side to side, she found a horizontal iron bar. It was no more than four inches long, thin, and rusted, but she gripped it and, reaching up, found the next one.
“I’m in!” she shouted, hearing her voice bounce around the increasingly narrow chimney. She climbed upwards. Her legs were weak from the after-effects of the drugs and lack of food, but she kicked out her hiking boots until they touched each grip and she could reach for the next. It must be ten minutes now, she thought. Probably more.
The dark was unrelenting. How far did she have to climb? Would the exit be open, or barred? Below, Brooke could hear the others climbing. Occasionally a hand brushed across her ankle as its owner searched for the next grip. Who would be last? Brooke was a tall girl, but she had still needed a leg up - could the last person make it to the first rung? She realized she didn’t care, as long as it was Maynard. She trusted that Dex had made sure it was.
Brooke’s hand reached for the next rung, but it wasn’t there. She felt around frantically.
“What’s up?” came a voice from below.
“We’re out of rungs!” she shouted. It must be the top. She couldn’t see any daylight, but she could smell vegetation; the rich, slightly sulphurous smell of green things damp and rotting was distinct and welcome after the musty dryness of the mine. Her thirst, forgotten for a few minutes, came back to her with agonizing urgency.
“Feel around; there’s a trapdoor.” It was Maynard’s voice, distant but unmistakeable.
“But is it locked?” Brooke muttered to herself. She dare not dwell on that. Reaching up, she felt the cold of metal and followed it to the edges. It was small. She heaved upwards. Nothing.
“Is it locked?” she shouted down. Please don’t let it be locked.
“No.”
Brooke let go of the rung with her other hand and braced herself against the trapdoor above. It was precarious. Would the rung take the extra pressure? Brooke pushed upwards, with all her strength, palms flat against the metal. It gave way suddenly, in a shower of rust and earth, unbalancing Brooke.
“Steady there.” A hand reached up to the small of her back, supporting her.
“Move it!” Brooke heard panic in Maynard’s voice for the first time and it took her seconds to climb up and out, sprawling in a patch of berries.
It was daylight, but only just. Had she really been out of it for almost 24 hours? The sun was setting and it was cold; really cold. Brooke shivered. She had used what little energy she had left getting out. She had no reserves left to keep warm as night fell this far north. Brooke looked around, trying to ori
ent herself as Kyle, Dex and Maynard followed her quickly out of the shaft. Were they somewhere behind the mine complex? Maybe close to the river? Brooke struggled to think back just a few days, her mind woolly and lethargic.
“Stay with him!” Dex hissed, and Brooke turned to see Maynard running through the shadowed trees. With a supreme effort, Brooke got to her feet and Dex moved ahead, keeping close to Maynard. It was hard going through the brush; at every step her feet conspired to snag in the undergrowth, or sink into moss. Kyle put out a hand to steady Brooke as she stumbled yet again. What was wrong with her?
“It’s me who should be helping you!” she gasped, noting his limp.
“No time to argue, Ma’am” said Kyle with a smile and, taking her hand, half guided, half dragged her after his brother.
Soon, they came within sight of the river. Was it really just four days ago? Or five? The river broadened here, just before it swung around the corner and joined the sea. Brooke didn’t think it was wide enough for a seaplane, but there was one tethered to a large rock, swinging lazily in the current.
Brooke watched as Maynard splashed through the shallows and, unhooking the looped rope, flung it aside as he climbed onto the float. Dex followed close behind.
“What’s he doing?” gasped Brooke as the two men made it into the cockpit. “We can’t fly that through an EMP pulse!”
“We can’t stay here, either,” Kyle said. “If that mine blows, this whole area will disappear into one great big hole.”
Her attention snapped back to the plane as its engine tuned over once, then roared into life, the propeller speeding to a blur. Dex opened the door and leaned out.
“Get in, for Christ’s sake!”
She didn’t need to be asked twice. Brooke waded and splashed through the water, her breath taken away by the iciness of it. It numbed her legs so much that when she tried to climb onto the float, her feet slipped hopelessly. Only by catching hold of the spar did she stay upright.