The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 Read online

  The driver squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. It made little sense but he wasn’t about to complain.

  Jay batted the weapon away. The driver reached for a combat knife. It came for Jay’s neck. Jay brought his elbow in front, catching the driver’s forearm. The knife stopped inches from his face. He grabbed the wrist and held tight. The driver tossed the knife into his other hand and went low, for Jay’s stomach. Jay slammed the same elbow down, clamping the hand against his thigh. The driver punched him in the face. The blow was unexpected and caught him across the cheekbone. Light popped across his vision. Another punch followed. Jay deflected it behind his head, into the cabin wall. The driver’s arm straightened out along the back of Jay’s neck.

  Perfect.

  Jay moved in a fraction closer. He could feel the driver’s elbow against the back of his neck. He reached around and, taking the driver’s wrist lightly, pulled down hard over his shoulders. The driver’s elbow joint snapped and he screamed in pain. His arm started to tremble. The knife came loose. Jay took it and sliced the arteries in the driver’s throat. In a few seconds, the guy had bled out.

  Jay reached for the pistol, only to discover it was secured by fingerprint access. He took the magazine instead and got out of the van from the passenger side. He stood in the middle of the intersection, half-soaked in blood. Around him, everything—traffic lights, vehicles, the neon lights on the convenience store, everything—had been knocked out by his EMP grenade.

  He reached for his Sig. He felt weak. His energy reserves were drying up. He put it down to post-adrenaline dump, but this felt different. He stumbled to the back of the van and opened the rear door, then stepped back at an angle, ready to shoot anyone inside as the door opened. No one retaliated.

  He made a careful arc around the rear and found only one person inside. Schlepper, the scientist. He was barely conscious.

  ‘I have the passenger. No hostiles inside,’ Jay said.

  Now that he said it, it seemed wrong. Where had the people gone?

  He adjusted his vision and peered through the infrared spectrum. Beside the scientist, a burning hot figure aimed a submachine gun at him. But nothing happened.

  The EMP grenade shouldn’t have affected a submachine gun, but maybe it had the same fingerprint scanner deal as the driver’s pistol.

  Jay aimed his Sig, but the figure had closed the twenty-foot gap. It knocked the pistol from Jay’s grasp with the butt of the submachine gun and drove the butt into his neck. The impact burned. He couldn’t breathe. The figure kicked him in the chest. He fell backward, rolled on his shoulder and came to one knee.

  His vision had withdrawn to normal wavelengths. He watched as the figure flickered into view. No shit, he thought. An invisibility cloak. He remembered talk of those back in Project GATE, but they’d been a long way from field ready.

  This one was field ready.

  The figure was dressed in tactical clothing but also wore a thin permeable hood around its face and wrapped around its rifle. Shocktrooper Mark II.

  ‘Guys … I need backup. Now,’ he said. ‘Fucking now.’

  Then he realized. The EMP grenade had knocked out his radio.

  The shocktrooper stepped from the van and moved toward Jay. His body flickered and rippled, then became invisible again. Jay tried to tune back to infrared so he could track the shocktrooper, but his eyes burned. He couldn’t do it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Grace was busy liberating the gray van driver of his weapon when Damien thought he heard something from behind the van. A rumbling sound. He moved around Grace, elbows tucked in and MP7 close to his face. There was nothing there. He checked the van’s underbelly and found no evidence of explosives. The rumble was coming from beneath him.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘The rumbling.’

  ‘That’s the underground gas main.’ She glared at him. ‘You can hear infrasound, you idiot.’

  Damien lowered his MP7. ‘Oh.’

  She turned her attention to the street behind them. Bystanders were staring at them, but she didn’t seem to care. Damien wondered if she’d spotted the police, or maybe the army or marines were making an appearance. But he couldn’t hear their arrival, at least not over the noise of the traffic.

  Grace’s eyes widened. She raised her Vector and fired a trio of rounds at an unseen target. People on the street ducked and ran from the burst.

  ‘They’re cloaked!’ Grace said, pulling back behind the van next to him.

  Damien could hear DC’s van roaring away. Metal scraped metal as he steered east, along the sidewalk. Under no circumstances would they let Freeman be captured. Gunfire erupted on the other side of the overturned van.

  ‘How many?’ Damien yelled over the noise.

  Grace held up three fingers, then two. She mouthed the word ‘shocktroopers’.

  Damien was sure he’d misread her. He mouthed the word back and she nodded. That wasn’t good.

  She pointed up and started to climb the belly of the van, pausing only to ensure he was following her.

  He climbed after her, the MP7’s vertical grip between his teeth. Once he was on top, resting on the van’s side door, he peered over to see nothing. Grace was beside him. She held a finger to her lips and aimed her MP7 carefully. At nothing.

  All he could make out was a spatter of blood on concrete. Had Grace killed one of them? He was starting to wish he had her pseudogene for seeing invisible shocktroopers.

  Grace held her fire. She pointed down. Damien looked to see the side door he was crouched on was open. It was a way out. Not the way he would’ve chosen, but Grace was the one with the invisi-vision or whatever, and the rest of her team were further east. MP7 in teeth again, he followed Grace’s orders.

  The driver was dead and the van seemed empty. Damien lowered himself down as carefully and quietly as he could. The shouts of civilians and nearby traffic masked the noise as he dropped the last foot. MP7 in both hands, he found himself facing the rear door. It was open now.

  He heard a creak on metal. Someone was in front of him. He could smell sweat, cordite. He aimed his MP7 and squeezed off two shots. Before he could see if he’d struck anything, his MP7 was twisted from his grasp. Inches from his face, a shocktrooper rippled into view. Damien pushed his chest into the side of the MP7 barrel, knocking the aim off. He kept his body pressed along the MP7 and kneed the shocktrooper in the left kidney. The pistol grip loosened, but only marginally. Damien turned the MP7 barrel around, slightly downward. The twin axis was too much for the shocktrooper to resist and the MP7 was his again. Momentarily.

  The shocktrooper’s knuckles smacked into Damien’s Adam’s apple. He drew breath sharply and collapsed to his knees, his hand reaching for the flashgun in his jeans pocket. The shocktrooper kneed him in the face. His nose buckled and a sharp pain overrode everything. The flashgun dropped back into his pocket. He collapsed onto his back. Warm blood flowed across his face. His vision doubled. He could see movement through the open side door. Grace and another shocktrooper fighting each other atop the van.

  The shocktrooper before him seemed to hover. He’d found Damien’s MP7. He was going to finish this.

  Damien felt for the flashgun, removed it just inches from his pocket and aimed from the hip. He shut his eyes and squeezed the trigger. His eyelids turned from black to red. When he opened them again, the shocktrooper was on one knee, waiting out the flashgun’s effects.

  Damien crawled toward him, searching for the MP7. He couldn’t find it. He climbed into the cabin, reached for the passenger’s side door and shoved it open with the full force of his weight behind it. He could crawl out through the top. He heard scuffling above, then a shocktrooper slipped on the door he’d opened and fell past the windscreen. He opened the door fully and saw Grace glaring at him.

  The side door slid under her feet. A second later, the side door slid shut. A Shocktrooper inside the van was trying to kn
ock her off balance. She averted her fall by hanging from the side of the van.

  Letting the passenger door close itself above his head, Damien peered between the seats to see the shocktrooper standing inside the van. He was approaching Damien unarmed. It seemed with his impaired vision he couldn’t find Damien’s MP7 either.

  Damien aimed his flashgun again, squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He remembered the recharge time. Sixty seconds. That was inconvenient.

  The shocktrooper halted, then moved to one side. That was strange. Damien looked over his shoulder. The shocktrooper who had fallen from above was on his feet and shooting into the van through the shattered windshield. Damien didn’t have time to climb out. As he watched, the shocktrooper firing at him shuddered. A round entered his skull, creating a cavity and pushing brain and bone out the other side. He collapsed on the sidewalk. That will look great on the evening news, he thought.

  He turned to see the shocktrooper inside the van reach for his knife. He heard Grace adjust her footing above him as she fired more rounds. The rounds punched down through the van and peppered the shocktrooper. He slowed, then stumbled. The side door slid open and Grace’s Vector barrel wavered into view. She finished him with a clear shot.

  She released her empty magazine. It dropped on Damien’s head.

  ‘Ow,’ Damien said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Grace said.

  ***

  The shocktrooper was almost on Jay when a jeep screamed toward them. The shocktrooper rolled clear, behind the white van. The jeep pulled up sharply next to Jay. He could see Nasira in the back seat, MP7 resting on her half-open window.

  Sophia leaped out of the jeep and pulled Schlepper or whatever his name was out of the van.

  ‘Jay!’ Nasira yelled. ‘Injuries?’

  Jay shook his head and climbed to his feet. He was sore and numb in places, but otherwise OK. He quickly checked himself to be sure.

  The shocktrooper had found another position and opened fire.

  Sophia pulled Schlepper into the jeep. ‘Go! Go!’ she yelled.

  Benito hit the gas.

  Jay collected his Sig and clung to Nasira’s open window. Schlepper was next to Nasira, bewildered and mostly in shock. Sophia handed Nasira a GPS receiver. She stuffed it in the scientist’s pants pocket in case he got lifted again.

  Jay pointed Benito to his bike, hidden behind a row of cars. ‘Get me over there.’

  ‘Just get in,’ Sophia said from the front seat. ‘Freeman’s in trouble.’

  ‘Bike’s faster,’ Jay said. ‘Pass me that backpack.’

  Nasira realized what he was talking about and hauled it over onto her lap. Leaning in through the window, Jay rifled through it until he found his oxygen tank. He stuffed it into his daypack, still slung over his shoulders, while Nasira stared at him quizzically.

  ‘Jay, your radio working?’ Sophia said.

  He tapped his ear. ‘EMP grenade.’

  ‘Here,’ Sophia said. She relieved Benito of his radio kit and passed the bits to Jay.

  He grabbed them in one hand—earpiece, mic cable and receiver—and tossed his dead radio bits on the street, the circuitry fried. When he reached the bike, he jammed his new earpiece in and shoved the receiver in his pocket. With his Sig in the back of his jeans again, he faced the bike north.

  ‘Let’s move,’ Sophia said.

  The shocktrooper was still in range.

  Benito took off, retracing the path of destruction Jay and the van had taken. Jay started the bike, mildly surprised when it rattled to life. He sped after Benito’s jeep, overtaking it moments later.

  ‘I’m back,’ he said into his mic so everyone could hear. ‘Miss me?’

  ‘Shopping mall, north wing,’ DC said. He sounded out of breath.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ Jay shouted.

  ‘Traffic locked us in, we’re on foot,’ DC said between breaths. ‘Shocktroopers are right behind us.’

  ‘Everyone on DC’s loc!’ Grace ordered.

  Jay was on a one-way road, going the wrong way. He gave his bike more throttle and sliced through traffic. The shopping mall loomed on his right. He pulled up onto the sidewalk and weaved around pedestrians.

  A guard armed with an M16 assault rifle stood out the front of the building. Fuck it, Jay thought. He sped straight past the guard, taking the bike into the shopping mall. All eyes were on him again. Not the most subtle approach, but he didn’t care. He needed to find DC and Freeman.

  ‘Damien, where are you?’ he said into the mic.

  ‘I’m with Grace,’ Damien said. ‘North wing now.’

  ‘I’m in, southwest,’ Jay said.

  He followed his wing from the south, hoping they’d connect somewhere in the middle, and ignoring the screams as he scared the shit out of a long Starbucks queue.

  ‘Great,’ Sophia said in his earpiece. ‘We have company. Police.’

  Jay pressed on until he reached the atrium, an oval-shaped area overlooked by white pillars and a stack of four balconies. Shoppers paused to watch, strangely fascinated, as he drove through.

  ‘Sophia, Jay, what’s your locstat?’ Grace said in his earpiece.

  ‘I’m in the atrium,’ Jay said, drawing to a halt. ‘Where’s the party at?’

  ‘We’re heading in now, from the southwest corner,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Party is going to be everywhere pretty soon,’ Grace said. ‘The army have paid us a visit. North end, outside. But not for long.’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ Jay said to a passer-by. ‘Have you seen a really tall Australian dude, gray hair? And a black dude with a sword? Probably not hard to miss.’

  The woman nodded and pointed to a wing that split east from the one he’d just traveled in on.

  ‘Jay?’ Sophia said. ‘Anything?’

  ‘They went south,’ Jay said. ‘Down the other wing. South . . . kinda southeast.’

  Jay turned his bike around and dodged the seating arrangements on the tiled floor. He caught snatches of conversation: soldiers were in the Pedro Gil wing. He wondered if they meant DC’s team or the police, or even the army. He hoped it was DC’s team.

  He drove his bike onto the escalator. While it delivered him to the next floor, he took the opportunity to check his kit. His magazine had ten of its twelve rounds remaining, and he had another mag he’d stolen from the van driver. He checked the round on top, pleased to find it was the same caliber as his Sig.

  ‘Nice bike,’ said a boy watching him from two steps above.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jay said.

  He reached the next level and was rewarded with expressions of surprise from onlookers.

  Jay nodded. ‘Ladies.’

  He took off past them, guiding the bike alongside the glass balcony so he could keep an eye below. The crowd thinned out fast so he slowed down. He heard shots ahead. The echo bounced off the walls. DC’s team were down here somewhere. That explained the lack of people.

  Jay increased his speed, passing a string of eateries before he spotted DC. He was on the ground floor, crouched inside a Krispy Kreme store, pistol in hand. Jay thought of calling to get his attention, but didn’t have to because DC noticed him. Hidden deeper in the Krispy Kreme store were Chickenhead, Big Dog and Freeman. No one else. In fact, this end of the wing was pretty much empty.

  Jay pointed further south, hoping DC could fill him in. DC displayed his middle three fingers, indicating six enemies. Jay nodded. They needed a distraction, now.

  Jay couldn’t see the approaching officers or soldiers or whoever they were. He rode further ahead, watching the ground floor with infrared. He spotted the figures moving cautiously and with purpose, armed.

  He pulled up short of a glass balcony, right next to a brasserie and wine bar. Under the balcony he spotted a nice chokepoint, flanked by a juice bar and a sunglasses store. He shrugged his daypack off and slung it over the bike’s handlebars, then steered the bike into the wine bar, grabbing as many wine bottles as he could fit into his
daypack. Hiding near the entrance of the wine bar, he waited for the armed men to approach the chokepoint. They could hear his bike’s engine rumbling idly and some of them aimed their weapons skyward, looking for him.

  Jay accelerated toward the glass balcony, the daypack filled with wine secured on the handlebars, and leaned hard to one side. He lost balance on purpose and—not wanting to trap his leg—jumped clear of the bike. He rolled across the tiled floor and watched as the bike fell to one side and continued to slide into the balcony.

  He pulled his pistol out, ready to shoot the oxygen tank. The bike smashed through the glass and dropped down onto the ground floor with a spectacular crunch. The armed men dispersed. The oxygen tank cracked, igniting the daypack full of wine and sending the tank smashing through the juice bar like a missile. Jay lowered his pistol, realizing that wasn’t needed at this point. The alcohol burned ferociously, igniting the bike’s gasoline tank and cutting the armed men off with a wall of fire.

  Jay ran back across the first level toward DC so he could signal him, but DC must’ve heard the chaos because he’d already started moving Freeman, Big Dog and Chickenhead out of the Krispy Kreme store and north through the Pedro Gil wing. Jay sprinted to catch up.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sophia kept one hand on her MP7 in the footwell and the other on the dashboard as Benito bounced them over a speed hump and toward the shopping mall’s main entrance. In the rear-vision mirror, she could see two white cars—police squad cars with sirens wailing—struggling to keep up.

  Ahead, the mall shared its entrance with a pair of high-rise condominiums. Benito maintained his speed and followed the curve of the drive-through, lined with potted ferns and palm trees. The mall was a glistening four-story fortress of glass, decorated with red umbrellas and neatly manicured balls of shrubbery. Benito swerved the jeep around the taxis, then screamed to a halt. Another police car intercepted them from the other side. The officers were already out of the car, pistols aimed. Benito shifted to first gear, his fingers nervously drumming the steering wheel.