by Leigh Barker
“Maybe he’s got other plans for you,” Ethan said, and shouldered his way past the little Latino.
“That don’t sound so good,” Loco said, pulling his goggles back into place and joining them as tail-end Charlie.
“They’re gonna keep coming,” Chuck said over his shoulder from his position at point.
“I’m hoping they’ll have better things to do when they find their boss has retired.”
“You’re hoping?”
“Thing I learned in my time as a civilian.”
“Yeah, I picked up a couple of bad habits. Like sleeping in a proper bed.” Chuck turned and concentrated on them not being ambushed.
There was silence as they made their way slowly down the narrow trail south towards the Land Rover. Not even Loco spoke, which meant he either hadn’t got anything to say or was listening intently for pursuers.
“Top,” he said urgently.
“I hear it.”
Andie tilted her head and strained to hear. “What is that?”
“Dirt bikes or some such off-roaders,” Ethan said. “Chuck, you make sure the girl…Andie gets the data back to the vehicle. We’ll stay here and say hi.”
“Copy that.” Chuck waited for Andie to break free of her comfort blanket and come forward. “You want me to wait for you, Top?”
“No, Gunny, you just hop in and drive on back to the hotel and have a nice rest.”
“Nah, I think I’ll wait. For a while anyway.”
“That one of your new bad habits? Generosity?”
Chuck led Andie down the trail. “Not really. I’ll need another driver.”
“Loco, you and Smokey set up here. Winter and me’ll be fifty yards south. Box. Wait for them to get to the middle.”
Loco disappeared off to the east of the trail and Smokey to the west. The off-roaders were close when Ethan and Winter did the same down the trail. As soon as they dropped down behind the trees, the bikes arrived.
They burst into sight, their screaming engines crashing into the silence. Five of them, each with xenon headlights and two spots that lit up the trail brighter than daylight as they bounced and bucked past the first position.
Three seconds later they were dead.
The squad did what they’d trained to do. Opposite-siding so they didn’t shoot each other. Loco took out the rider on the opposite side of the trail to his right and Smokey the opposite left. Winter and Ethan did the same to the leading pair. That left just one rider and he stood on the brake and overcorrected the skid. The back wheel grabbed the earth, twitched and flipped him up and over in a somersaulting highside. He hit the tangle of bodies and bikes and his machine crunched into him, its drive wheel still spinning. Ethan flinched and lowered his weapon. It wouldn’t be needed.
They stayed put and listened to the silence broken only by the bikes creaking as the heat bled away.
Ethan stepped onto the trail, keeping his M16 pointing at the bodies. “Can any of you ride these things?”
“Top, everybody can ride a dirtbike,” Loco said, coming up the trail, eager to demonstrate.
They checked the bikes over. One had a 5.56-caliber hole in the engine nobody would admit to, but the other four were working. They stowed their NVGs and used the Nightsun lights, fired the bikes up and took off after Chuck. It was way better than walking. Until Ethan realised Chuck wouldn’t know it was them screaming up behind him and might just set an ambush of his own. He stopped his bike.
“Problem, Top?” Winter said, stopping his bike next to him.
“I figure we’re about fifty yards from where Gunny is set up to blow our heads off.”
“That’s about what I was thinking.”
“You’re younger than me, jog on up the trail and tell him we’re friendlies.”
Winter got off his bike and stopped. “I’m a sergeant, right?”
“Last time I looked.”
“So I can give orders to lower ranks?”
“You can. What orders you got in mind?”
Winter waved Loco up and waited for him to lean his bike against a tree and walk slowly up as if he knew something shitty was coming his way.
“Loco,” Winter said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder like a long-lost friend, “we need somebody fit and agile to mosey on up the trail and tell Gunny we’re coming to pick him up on these stolen bikes.”
“Right, Sarge.” Loco looked around, but didn’t see anybody who fitted that particular bill. Then the coin dropped into the little metal box and he gave a start. “Me?”
“Well, thank you, Loco.” Winter turned to Ethan. “You see that? Loco volunteering. Don’t see that often.”
“But, Sarge…”
“Get going, then, volunteer. Before the bad men catch up.”
Loco looked at Ethan for help, but there was none coming. He set of at a slow trot along the ink dark trail.
“Gunny, don’t shoot me in the ass. It’s me, Loco,” he called while trying to keep his voice down.
“You’re a bad sergeant, you know that?” Ethan said, with a mock shake of his head. “A leader of men would’ve taken on that hazardous mission himself.”
“He would, Top. He would.” Winter looked first at Ethan, then at the bike he was sitting on, but left it at that.
They waited until they heard Gunny telling Loco to shut the fuck up before he woke the whole neighborhood, then fired up the bikes and rode down the trail, passing Loco running back the other way a lot faster than he’d gone.
“Got a bike for me?” Chuck said, but knew they hadn’t, both because he could count and because he couldn’t see how they’d bring a spare along.
“You get to hug one of us,” Ethan said, and pointed at Winter. “Or you can ride with Loco when he gets back.”
Chuck walked quickly to Winter’s bike and swung up behind him without invitation.
Andie looked from one man to the next, their faces drawn and hard in the harsh lights.
“Hey, kid,” Ethan said. “You ride with me.”
“I’m a lance corporal, not a kid.”
“Right. Lance Corporal, get your ass on the bike.”
She adjusted her backpack unnecessarily, put her foot on the peg, swung up onto the saddle and put her arms around Ethan’s waist without thinking. She let go quickly.
“You’d better hang on, ki—Lance Corporal, or you’re gonna end up on your ass in the dust.”
Winter rode past with Chuck hanging onto him and led the way down the trail at a pace that wouldn’t get them killed but got them out of there.
It took ten minutes to get back to the Land Rover, and both Chuck and Andie were glad to get off. Neither of them got a kick out of hugging men.
Another ten minutes and everybody except Smokey and Andie was fast asleep. Andie was awake because she was unpacking the data she’d downloaded from the colonel’s system onto her laptop, and Smokey was driving.
Five hours later she was still working on her laptop when Chuck and Smokey changed places. She looked up as Smokey got into the back seat, then realised it was dawn and she hadn’t noticed. Something had grabbed her attention and held it, but she wasn’t going to wake Ethan to tell him this news. Not until she was a hundred-percent sure.
Chuck parked the Land Rover right where they’d picked it up, checked that all the weapons were back in their place under the floor, locked the doors and followed the rest of the squad back towards the hotel.
The non-kung-fu-fighting CIA agent walked towards them on the way to recover his vehicle, but gave no sign of recognition.
“Back in the jungle,” Ethan said as he passed.
The CIA agent glanced at him.
“Thanks.”
He nodded once. “You’re welcome.”
Chuck tossed him the ignition key.
“How’d you get there and back so fast?” Loco said.
“Ninja,” the agent said, and walked on.
“Oh, yeah. Right,” Loco said, but was frowning as he tried to work i
t out.
They walked on without looking back.
“No way he could’ve got back before us,” Chuck said.
Ethan shook his head. “Wasn’t him.”
“Then who?”
“A spook.”
“Must have been a bunch of them,” Winter said, glancing back. “Mayhem they caused.”
“Don’t think so,” Ethan said. “I think it was a lone wolf.”
“I’d like to shake his hand,” Chuck said. “But only in broad daylight.”
Ethan leaned back in the seat and let the waiter put the coffee pots and cups on the table. It was a beautiful sunny day, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Are you sure?”
Andie looked up sharply, then relaxed. Of course he had to ask that.
“Yes, Top. Certain.”
Winter sat in the empty chair between Loco and Chuck and leaned forward. “Certain of what?”
“Go ahead, tell them,” Ethan said.
Andie took a long breath. And told them about the end of the world.
Orpheus
SecNav watched Andie’s face closely in the hope that she might be joking, though who would joke about such a thing?
“You’re sure?” He felt stupid for asking that right after what he’d just decided, but a falling man will grab a feather.
Andie nodded once and glanced at Ethan as if for confirmation.
“She’s says it’s so, it’s so,” he said.
“If the X-37 had evolved to be a reusable weapons platform, I’d know about it,” SecNav said.
Ethan let it hang in the air. No point stating the obvious. “So SecAF would tell you about a secret development to deliver men, equipment and ordnance using a low orbital aircraft?” he said.
SecNav smiled, throwing him a curveball. “You just reciting that? Or do you actually know what all those words mean?”
Ethan turned to Andie. “Well, maybe not all, but she does.” He gave her a nod. “Go ahead. Don’t be shy.”
She looked like she was caught in a car’s headlights and looked from him to SecNav and back.
“It’s okay, Petty Officer, you’re among friends here,” SecNav said.
She doubted that, but took a long breath and went for it. “The data we got from Milaris told us everything we need to know about his drug distribution in the US. But…” She took another slow breath. “There was another file. Something he’d saved from the web.” She glanced at Ethan.
“Go on, nobody blames you for what you found,” Ethan said.
“He’d saved his bid for the plans to the SUSTAIN project—”
“I know about that; it’s hardly a secret,” SecNav said.
“Yes, sir, I’m aware that it’s been discussed openly from as far back as ninety-nine. There’s even been three test flights.”
“That I didn’t know.”
“No reason why you should, sir. Thirteen-man squad and all their gear transported via low orbit to anywhere in the world in seventy-five minutes. Impressive, but not a great deal of use.” She saw his frown. “Thirteen men?”
He nodded. “Not really an invasion force. But a well-equipped special forces team at the right time in the right place can change history.”
“But with the X-37B there’s always been the problem of extraction. Insertion is a done deal, but it’s a one-way trip. The X-37 can’t take off again.” She waited a moment for a response.
“X-37’s the suborbital transport,” SecNav said. A statement, not a question. “Piggybacks on an Atlas Five, then glides in for touchdown. No way back.” He was used to sending men on one-way trips. Came with the job.
“But that’s not a problem if your team knows it’s one way,” Ethan said.
“Suicide squad?” SecNav said. “Terrorists?” He looked past them at the map on the wall. “Still, an hour and a quarter. We’d see them coming.”
“Only if we were looking up into space,” Ethan said.
“Somebody is always looking,” SecNav said.
“Sure. Deep space and even satellite orbits, but the X-37 is only twenty-nine feet long. It’ll look like a piece of space junk. Until it’s too late,” Ethan said.
SecNav looked back to Andie. “And you’re saying terrorists have gotten their hands on an X-37?”
“No, sir. They have the design schematics for one.”
SecNav visibly relaxed for a moment; then reality elbowed its way in. “They could build one.”
“Yes, sir,” Andie said. “They could build as many as they want to. As many as they could get the materials for.”
“How in God’s name did they get their hands on highly classified material like this?”
“Harold Martin. Edward Snowden,” Gill said, and shrugged. “And the Chinese got the design specs for the engines and radar for practically the whole air force.”
SecNav sighed heavily, lifted his coffee mug and looked inside. There was never coffee when you needed it. He saw Andie still watching him as if steeling herself to say more. He put the mug down.
“Something worse?” he said.
She took a breath. “Yes, sir. Much worse.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
“When Milaris bid for the plans, I guess he could see the potential for his business,” Andie said.
“Two and a half tons of pure cocaine anywhere in the world in a little over an hour,” Ethan said.
“You said he bid for the plans,” SecNav said.
“Yes,” Andie said, “but he didn’t get them.”
“How much did he bid?”
“One point five billion.”
SecNav blinked hard. “One point five billion dollars?”
She nodded.
“And it wasn’t successful?” He shook his head. “Then who has it?”
She was silent.
“We don’t know, sir,” Ethan said. “Only that it wasn’t Milaris.”
“Do we know who put it out there?” SecNav said.
“Orpheus,” Andie said, and looked at her knees.
“And we don’t know who that is?”
“No, sir,” Ethan said.
SecNav pushed his coffee mug along the edge of his desk with his finger, then looked up. “But thirteen men, even suicide bombers, bad as it is…” He shrugged.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
SecNav stopped thinking of coffee. “And?”
“The X-37 has a payload of five thousand pounds,” Ethan said. “That’s just about the weight of two nuclear weapons.”
SecNav’s hand jerked and his coffee mug bounced onto the carpet.
“Two nukes?” He stood up. “They could put them right on the White House.”
“Wouldn’t need to use both, sir,” Ethan said. “Drop the other one in New York.”
“The X-37 could do that?”
“Yes, sir,” Andie said. “It doesn’t have atmospheric engines, but it’s designed to glide to earth. Nothing to stop it passing over New York on its way here.”
“How would they deploy the nuke on New York? The orbiter doesn’t have bomb doors.”
Ethan shrugged. “Maybe they’d throw it out of the loading bay. Maybe they’d drive it there once they land. Doesn’t matter, there’d be two nukes on US soil in the hands of suicide bombers. Nobody could stop them both. There wouldn’t be time.”
“A nuke hits the White House and New York, it will trigger an automatic response. The missiles will fly to Moscow.”
“That’s a hell of an assumption on automatic, sir,” Ethan said.
“Thing is we’ll all be dead.”
“Might as well take the world with us?”
“Works for me,” SecNav said.
“We should alert all the other agencies, sir,” Ethan said.
“What?” SecNav put his hands on his desk as if to steady himself, and focused. “Not yet. Government leaks like a sieve. Snowden, right? If this gets out, there’ll be panic in the streets. The terrorists won’t need a bomb, the people will do it for th
em.”
He sat down and looked at the map again as he processed the enormity of what he’d heard. “You say they only have the plans?”
“Right now, but it’s everything they need to build one.”
“I get that. But it’ll take time. And they’ve got to get their hands on a nuke, or two.”
“Yes, but that’s easy enough. You can buy a nuke from just about any news kiosk in Moscow these days.”
“I hope not,” SecNav said. “But I get your point. How long will it take to build it?”
“I’m no engineer,” Ethan said, “but it’s a massive undertaking. If they throw everything at it, say six months?”
“Say three,” SecNav said. “So that’s how long you have to stop them.”
“Us?” Ethan said, genuinely surprised. “This is a job for the CIA at least.”
“Somebody put our most secret military plans out into the world,” SecNav said. “Who’s to say it wasn’t somebody in the CIA? God knows kids are selling our secrets on the fucking shopping channel.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “Just us.”
“Yes, you go find this Orpheus and rip his nuts off.”
“I’ll ask him who bought the plans first, sir,” Ethan said.
SecNav almost smiled. “But only talk to me. You get that?”
“I do,” Ethan said.
“This is way past top priority. Anything you need, any resources, people, access, you have it. I’ll read my aide in on this, but nobody else. Until I have to. You speak to her and say—”
“That we’re executing your Orpheus directive?” Andie said.
“What? Yes.” SecNav pointed a finger at her. “That. You say Orpheus directive, and whatever’s in your way will be gone.”
“Copy that, Mr. Secretary,” Ethan said. “One thing I do need right now.”
SecNav waited.
“A hall pass for NCIS.”
“You have it.” SecNav leaned forward against his desk. “But only their resources. No contact with Special Agent Lyle. Call on whatever you need, but nobody gets read into this.”
“You think your own service leaks?” Ethan said, with a faint smile.
“Don’t you?”
“Any agency is only as strong as its weakest link,” Ethan said, and stood.