Gabe could hear the quotes Thad wrapped around that last word. The former Marine lifted a chin in the direction of the dive building.
“Wait for it. If I’m right, we’ll hear it again any minute.”
Sure enough, another roar erupted from the crowd as they trooped through the holographic turnstile and the SI running it matched their ID tokens with their tickets.
Gabe shook his head.
“What? No bungee in your future, hoss?”
Gabe shot him a jaundiced look. “I think I filled my adventure quota for the year this past week, thanks.”
Thad barked a laugh. “You and me both, ami. C’mon, let’s get ourselves one of them fancy umbrella drinks and pretend we’re enjoying ourselves while keeping four teens out of trouble. Shouldn’t be hard.”
It was Gabe’s turn to laugh. “You don’t have any nieces or nephews, do you? Teens are trouble magnets. Just ask my sister.”
Throwing Gabe a look that said she hoped he hadn’t just jinxed their day, Asha turned to the girls and pointed in the direction of the water attractions. “What’s first on the agenda? Lazy river or infinity pool? Or would you rather hang out by the beach?”
Thad appeared to give the question great weight, but it was clear to Gabe who held the real decision-making power.
“Beach!” cried one of the teens.
“It’s where all the cool guys hang out,” explained another.
“Well, there you go,” said Thad, shooting an amused look Gabe’s direction. “Lead on, mes cheries.”
9: SPOTTED
Employee Entrance
Searcy Sky Park
Boone decided to confirm what he saw before he contacted anyone back on Ouray. The last thing he wanted to do was blow the lid off a legitimate operation. He imagined the odds of that were pretty low on the probability scale, but he was also well aware of the fact that he was a mere lance corporal. If such an operation did exist, he wouldn’t be privy to it.
He also felt a bit foolish loitering beside the employees-only entrance but figured anyone who saw him there would assume he was waiting for a friend to get off work. The door finally opened and a woman in a park uniform carrying a load of towels stepped out. She gave him a friendly nod as she passed.
He waited until he was clear of her field of vision before launching himself toward the slowly closing door. He jammed his fingers into the opening just before it sealed, forcing the door back until the space was wide enough for him to slip through.
Luck was with him. The corridor inside was empty of any onlookers, though he could hear voices sounding behind closed doors. Striding toward the lift with a confidence he didn’t altogether feel, Boone passed by a line of offices, windows inset into their doors providing him with fast glimpses of the people inside.
Most were seated behind desks. Some were working with holodisplays. A few were gathered around tables, discussing stars knew what. Not a single person looked up as he crossed their field of view.
Boone left the quiet buzz of office chatter behind, eschewing the lift for a stairwell just beyond it, the entrance lit by the glowing red of a holographic exit sign. Treading softly, he descended the single flight to the door that led to the platform’s lowest level. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, he considered his options.
He had two remaining drones. Now might be a good time to launch another one. He let it loose, the drone handshaking with his wire in the same way the previous one had.
An ear pressed to the door revealed nothing; he couldn’t hear a thing through the thick, fire-resistant metal. On a deep breath, Boone took the plunge, palming the door open and sending the drone through.
Boone split his attention between the two feeds, watching as the smugglers lifted the stolen ordnance and applied some sort of code to it that cracked their biolocks. That last became evident when they cycled each weapon on and off before transferring it to a new container.
The boxes were smaller than the Navy’s ruggedized cases, with a far less distinctive profile. The logo for an adventure sports company was emblazoned on their sides, making them far less likely to catch anyone’s eye, especially inside a theme park such as Searcy.
Boone scrubbed back through the feed from the first drone, paying close attention to the path the group had taken, reconciling it with the imagery from his second drone. Comparing the feeds told him they should be a few doors down an adjacent corridor. He could always have the first drone send its location, but he’d purposely ordered the thing to its lowest power setting. The feed it was trickling to Boone was low resolution and unobtrusive. A location ping could draw attention he’d rather not have.
He sent the second drone drifting down the empty hallway, bringing it to a halt right before the intersection. Slowly, it crept forward until its tiny sensor array just breached the cross corridor.
Boone considered what he was seeing. There seemed to be nothing there, and yet Boone couldn’t accept that this was the case. Surely those reinforced containers held a supply of these same surveillance microdrones. They were ubiquitous within the Navy.
He straightened as a horrible thought occurred to him. Quickly routing his way through the drone’s app, he came to the command menu that controlled its ‘Identify Friend/Foe’ protocol and shut it off. He only hoped he’d been fast enough…
* * *
Inside the laundry room, Petra’s attention was drawn from the weapons she was transferring to a sudden movement at the door. Looking up, she saw a frown cross Delia’s face.
“What is it?” she asked.
Delia tilted her head in a listening motion, eyes slitting almost shut as she considered what she’d just seen.
“There was a blip,” she said, then stopped and shook her head. She began again. “I thought I saw a blip, but then it disappeared. The drone out in the hall isn’t showing anything, so it must have been some sort of a glitch.”
“What did it look like to you?”
“Well, for a second there, I could have sworn our surveillance drone intercepted a ping from another one. Did any of you turn one of those things on?” She looked sharply around at the three men who were loading the crates.
Kele lifted his hands in silent denial. Bobby glared. “We had to cycle the canisters to make sure the interlock and serial numbers were removed,” the hacker retorted, “or did you forget the reason we’re hanging out inside a laundry room with a bunch of dirty towels that smell like sweaty kids?”
Petra raised a calming hand and turned to Delia. “Could that have been what you saw?” she asked the other woman.
Delia scowled thoughtfully. “As fast as it came and went, I suppose it could have come from that. But I could’ve sworn the ping came from outside the room, not inside.”
Petra considered the other woman’s words. She motioned to Ike. “Go back out. Make your way up to the surface. Be very sure no one followed us here, got it?”
Ike nodded, grabbed a weapon, and headed for the door.
“And Ike…”
He turned at her words.
“If someone did, you know what to do.”
* * *
Enough time had passed that Boone felt confident the drone had evaded detection. Moreover, he’d not seen any evidence the thieves were using their own drone for reconnaissance.
Sucking in a breath, Boone braced, and then stepped out of the stairwell. He tried to ignore the wet chafing of his PT shorts between his thighs and focused instead on approaching the intersection on silent feet.
He instructed the drone to do one last sweep of the corridor that led to the laundry room, and when it returned null, he stepped out into the hallway. He hadn’t gone three steps before the laundry room doors snapped open.
Boone froze, but the sight of the weapon in the hand of the man who stepped through the door quickly galvanized him. He pivoted and went racing back the way he’d come.
The pounding of feet behind him told him the man was in pursuit. The sizzling sound of a pulsed las
er strike just above his left shoulder indicated the man had reached the intersection.
He ducked into the stairwell, pulse hammering as he took the steps two at a time and burst into the upper-level hallway. The ringing of footsteps on metal treads had him pouring on the speed, his eyes riveted to his goal, the exit now mere meters away.
He reached the door and slapped at its controls, willing it to open. A round of gunfire smacked into the wall beside him, trashing the door’s control panel and freezing it halfway open. A quick glance behind him showed the man had resumed running. Boone jammed his shoulder into the opening, forcing his way through—just as the man fired once more.
10: SHOTS FIRED
Saltwater Wave Pool
Gabe suppressed a smile as Asha tried once more to get her niece to join a water volleyball game.
“Why not give it a try?” The medic pointed to the net, hovering just above the waterline, and injected a cheerful tone into her words. “Just think how much fun you’d have.”
Tatiana wrinkled her nose in distaste. “It’s too hot.”
Thad made a choking sound. Asha shot him a warning glare, which she then turned on her niece. “You’re in the water. You won’t get hot.”
“But it’s, like, exercise, Aunt Asha. And I need to relax and destress.”
Thad had just brought his water to his lips. That last comment sent him into a fit of coughing, which had the teens turning to stare at him in alarm.
“You okay, Mister Severance?” one girl asked.
“Jus’ … great… ” he wheezed before another round of coughing hit.
Asha, on the other hand, knew exactly what had caused this. Her narrow-eyed look held no sympathy. Hand on hips, she pivoted back to the girls and expelled a slow breath through pursed lips like a balloon leaking air.
“Fine,” she said, giving in. “We’ll be over here if you need us for anything.”
Marching past Gabe, she whacked Thad on the head as she collapsed into her deck chair.
“Nice recovery there, soldier,” Gabe murmured as Thad straightened.
“Destress, she said.” Thad’s words were low and came out raspy from the water that had gone down the wrong way. He hid a grin behind his hand.
Gabe’s lips twitched. “I’m thinking your definition of the word might be a bit different from theirs.” He nodded in the direction of the wave pool, where four girls were pushing a mammoth float out toward the edge.
Thad sat back, eyeing the girls as they scrambled aboard, the inflatable lounger rocking gently on the waves. He looked up past the sky park’s ES field and the cables that attached it to its tether. The sky above was dark and glittering with faint specks of light from ships coming and going from Beryl’s orbital spaceport.
“Can’t think of anything much more boring than just sitting around, doing nothing,” he admitted. “Only time I’ve done that has been when I’ve been laid up after taking a hit on an op.”
Asha snorted. “Even then, I had to strap you into the surgi-suite so it could do its job.”
Thad shifted and looked around as if the mere mention of inaction made him restless. Gabe knew the former Marine well enough by now to understand that idleness didn’t suit him well.
Thinking now might be a good time for a distraction, Gabe stood and looked over at Asha. “I think I’ll go stretch my legs. Want me to grab some snacks from the concession stand for the girls while I’m up?
Thad jumped to his feet. “I’ll help.”
Gabe managed to keep his face impassive. Lifting a brow, he asked, “Think I can’t manage a few trays of food?”
Thad took his time pretending to size Gabe up. “Dunno ‘bout that, with you bein’ NCIC and all. Better to err on the side of caution.”
Asha groaned and rolled her eyes. The exaggerated movement pulled a deep chuckle out of Thad. White teeth flashed in a dark face, and the deep brown eyes that met Asha’s danced with amusement. “You know it’s true, cher. Plus, who knows what hungry hordes this special agent might have to fight off to get to the front of the line.”
Gabe fielded the jab good-naturedly. Slapping Thad on the shoulder—which he actually had to reach up to do, the man was so much larger—he said, “Come on, jarhead. We can’t abandon the medic to the tender mercies of these teens for too long. That’s considered hazardous duty.”
Despite his words, Gabe had no issues with spending some time just wandering the sky park. By unspoken agreement, he and Thad strolled through the crowd, familiarizing themselves with Searcy’s layout. Reconnaissance was second nature to both men, yet it was something they’d been unable to do with the girls around. Gabe found himself unwinding a bit now that he had a solid mental map of the structure in his mind.
He pointed to a concession stand that had a shorter line than most. “What do you think?”
“Looks as good as any,” Thad replied, angling for the back of the line.
Fifteen minutes later, they’d shelled out an insane amount for two trays of sad-looking food. Thad looked doubtfully at the tray he carried and then over to the identical one in Gabe’s hands.
“Looks like something printed from a cut-rate DBC.”
Gabe winced. He didn’t disagree. “Think they got their hands on the formation bricks the Navy uses to print meal rats?” he half-joked.
“Dunno, ami. We can always hope the girls have never eaten meal rats—”
He broke off, head whipping around at the hard slap of shoes against ceramacrete. It was the kind of sound someone made when they were running flat out. Both men went on alert, bodies tensing and eyes scanning the crowd.
“There.” Gabe pointed to a figure, moving fast through the mass of people. Where the crowd thinned, they could see a young man, dodging and jinking in a way that made it obvious he was being pursued.
“Shit just got real, hoss,” Thad said in an undertone when they spotted the man chasing him. The glint of a weapon had Thad grabbing Gabe’s tray and thrusting both at the nearest person in line. He took off, Gabe at his heels.
Gabe nodded to the man in front. “I’ll take that one. You take the—”
He broke off as the man fired. The man in the lead either had the instincts of a wild animal facing off against a predator, or he was the luckiest bastard on the planet. He threw himself flat just as a round of flechettes tore through the air, shredding a display of floats behind him. Rolling to his feet with an adrenaline-fueled agility, he used the shredded air mattresses for cover. Colorful streamers fluttered to the ground behind the man as he disappeared into the brush that bordered the lazy river.
{That’s no civilian, ami.} Thad’s voice sounded in Gabe’s head as he launched himself after the shooter. {You see his dress? That’s standard-issue Marine PT; don’t ask me why he’s wearing that in a sky park.}
{Yeah, I saw.} Gabe chanced a look over his shoulder and saw that the man with the flechette had come to the realization that the hunter had just become the hunted. With a large and angry special operator bearing down on him, the man had wisely chosen to switch his target.
Thad casually reached up and ripped a metal sign advertising cold drinks off its hinges, wielding the makeshift shield like a Spartan at Thermopalye. The next time Gabe caught a glimpse of the man, Thad had already acquired a small collection of the tiny, vaned projectiles.
Gabe focused on his own quarry, pinging Asha with an update as he stalked the kid. If the guy had as much of a tactical head on his shoulders as he did pure gut instinct, Gabe figured he knew where the Marine was headed. Breaking into a run, Gabe wove through pedestrians, racing toward a foot bridge up ahead that crossed over the meandering water ride. He ignored the irritated shouts of people as he brushed past, intent on reaching the bridge before the other man.
He skidded down the short ceramacrete embankment on the bridge’s far side and stilled, listening.
There. When he heard the slight rustling to his left, he knew he’d guessed correctly. He crouched beside the bridge’s suppor
t beam and waited for the man to appear.
The guy was good. Gabe saw him before he heard him, and he was fairly certain the man wasn’t using a cloud of audio chaff to disguise his movements. Gabe began to ease forward just as the man crossed in front of him.
With an almost preternatural sense of awareness—and absolutely no warning—the stranger pivoted, a metal pipe in his hands slicing through the air with deadly accuracy, right at Gabe’s head.
11: SANDY BEACH
Saltwater Wave Pool
After the guys bailed on her—as if anyone really comes to a sky park to eat the crap they serve, she thought with some derision—Asha settled back in her deck chair, her eyes on the silhouettes of her niece and her friends.
She loved Tatiana, but that didn’t mean she understood her. Asha’s childhood had been very different from that of her niece. She’d loved sports and was competitive both on the field and in the classroom. Tatiana was more interested in the latest tri-D games.
Asha shook her head, still unable to believe none of the girls could be talked into playing water volleyball. All four preferred to lie on the float instead, immersing themselves in one of the hyperrealistic VR simulations the sky park offered.
She could hear the girls’ reactions all the way across the sand-lined pool. The waves rocked them gently as they alternately squealed, shrieked, and giggled in reaction to whatever it was they were experiencing.
“Let me guess; you must be the ‘fun aunt.’”
The voice came from Asha’s left. She turned to face a man, seated in a deck chair identical to hers, parked beneath a beach umbrella. His legs were extended, ankles crossed, feet buried in the soft green sand.
He grinned over at her, and when she didn’t immediately respond, his smile fell away, and he lifted a brow questioningly. Something about his expression looked familiar to Asha, though she could swear she’d never seen the man before. Belatedly, she realized she hadn’t answered him.
Sudden Death (A Military Sci Fi Thriller) (The Biogenesis War Files) Page 7