The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 Read online

  ‘From the back, the east end,’ Grace said.

  Jay nodded his approval. ‘Shortest space between the forest and the fence line. The front of the station has a large open area. The guards will shoot us down before we even make it halfway.’

  ‘Actually there’s a tunnel that leads west under the station,’ Grace said. ‘It opens up inside.’

  ‘That’s convenient,’ Jay said. ‘Have you checked inside?’

  ‘It’s clear. But we’ll need to time it properly. Guards patrol inside the station on all sides, including the back. But the back has some distance to it; gives us a ten-minute window to cross a hundred feet of open ground without being seen.’

  ‘Saves us cutting through the fence,’ Damien said.

  ‘We still might have to, if we need to get out fast,’ Jay said.

  ‘What’s the security like?’ Damien asked.

  ‘Infrared cameras and motion sensors on each corner of the perimeter,’ Grace said. ‘One at the rear, right above the tunnel opening.’

  ‘How do you get through then?’ Aviary asked.

  ‘My squad will take care of that,’ Calvin said. ‘What about the guards? How many?’

  ‘I counted a dozen, but there could be a lot more inside,’ Grace said.

  ‘OK, that’s more than I expected,’ Jay said. ‘I thought you said this wasn’t a military base?’

  ‘It’s not. But it’s guarded like one. M4s, pistols, belt full of mags. Helmets, probably kevlar too. Hard to tell if they’re Blue Berets or mercs or just regular troops, but either way they mean business.’

  ‘Great,’ Damien said.

  ‘We’ll need weapons with some range then,’ Jay said.

  ‘Right this way,’ Calvin said.

  He took Damien, Jay and Grace to a series of drab green-colored crates. When he lifted the lids, Jay whistled. An odd assortment of AR-15 carbines, civilian models with various scopes and flashlights mounted to their rails.

  ‘How many mags do you have?’ Damien said.

  Calvin blinked. ‘How many do you need?’

  ‘All of them,’ Jay said.

  Calvin kicked over another lid. The crate was packed full of 5.56mm thirty-round mags.

  ‘Whoa,’ Damien said. ‘What is that—fifty, a hundred mags?’

  Jay looked excited. ‘It’s about time we had some decent supply. At this point I’m going with a maximum firepower strategy, American style.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Aviary asked.

  ‘We carry a shitload of mags and shoot everything that moves,’ Jay said.

  ‘And for those of us who can actually aim, do you have pistol magazines and 45s?’ Grace asked.

  ‘A couple,’ Calvin said. He opened another crate, this one full of gas masks. ‘We have plenty of these, do you need them?’

  Jay shrugged. ‘I guess. Yeah, why not?’

  ‘When do the guards’ shifts change?’ Damien asked Grace.

  ‘Every four hours,’ she said. ‘Your best shot is 0300 hours.’

  Damien nodded. ‘We’ll need to match it up with Sophia’s team. And we’ll need to do another recon, double-check this manhole.’

  ‘We can do that,’ Calvin said.

  ‘I’d like to do it myself,’ Damien said.

  Calvin wasn’t impressed but he didn’t argue.

  Jay tapped his watch. ‘We have one day left. If this EMP thing screws up and we have to blow it the old-fashioned way, then we need every hour we can get. Plus, Wonder Woman here already did the boring shit. Sophia’s waiting on us to be ready. I say we tell her we’re good to go. Let’s plan this shit now and do it tonight.’

  ‘I would’ve liked to check—’ Damien began.

  ‘We’re against the clock here, we don’t have time,’ Jay said.

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’ Aviary asked.

  ‘Yeah, actually,’ Damien said. He took the pencil from Grace, freed a blank page under the map and started scribbling. When he was done, he handed the paper to Aviary. ‘We need this shopping list as soon as possible.’

  Aviary read the list, perplexed. ‘You want blankets?’

  Damien nodded. ‘The darkest color you can get. Black would be ideal. Not shiny though.’

  ‘Do you want any bombs?’ Aviary said. ‘I’m good with explosives.’

  Damien and Jay exchanged glances.

  ‘That’s a yes,’ Jay said. ‘And, Calvin, guns, all the guns.’

  ***

  Sophia sat in the Honda’s driver’s seat peering through her night-vision goggles. Dark clouds had overtaken the sky in the east and she could make out a thick band of pale gray in the distance, which suggested heavy rain. It was slowly crawling inland and would probably hit the island while they were breaching the installation. At first she’d thought it might be a serious hindrance but now she was starting to wonder if it would work in their favor. Fewer guards outside, more noise to use as cover.

  DC sat in the passenger seat, sketching the installation on a blank notes page inside the Honda manual.

  ‘You haven’t spoken a word since we got back to the car,’ Sophia said.

  ‘What if we’re making a mistake?’ DC said.

  ‘It’s not like you to get cold feet. Commitment phobic?’

  He didn’t smile. ‘On suicide missions, yeah.’

  She took his sketch and inspected it. ‘I disagree. I think we actually might have a chance.’

  ‘A chance is relative,’ he said.

  She tossed the Honda manual into his lap. ‘Your doubts are relative.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken a word either. Are you doing OK?’

  She knew he was talking about Benito and Freeman. But she’d pushed them from her mind for now. As much as she could anyway. She had to; her focus was the Seraphim transmitter. She cut the interior light, coating them in darkness.

  ‘I wasn’t finished,’ he said.

  ‘Those soldiers in there, they’re Blue Berets.’

  ‘I know,’ DC said.

  ‘They’re innocent.’ She watched the clouds through her window, without the goggles. ‘They follow their orders. And I’ll probably have to kill them tonight.’

  ‘If they try to kill you,’ he said.

  ‘Which they will.’ She chewed her lip.

  DC chuckled softly in the darkness. ‘You were never very good at running away.’

  ‘I could draw my knife through Denton’s neck,’ she said. ‘Watch him bleed out. I wouldn’t enjoy it. But I wouldn’t be disgusted either.’

  DC said nothing. She supposed that meant he agreed with her.

  ‘But at the bottom of the hierarchy, they all think they’re doing the right thing,’ she said.

  ‘In their ignorance,’ he said quickly. ‘They are still responsible.’

  ‘We were ignorant too. We all wake up from somewhere. I wasn’t born knowing this world was a scam.’ She laughed. ‘Hell, if I knew that I wouldn’t have wanted to be born.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I do. I don’t have the right to take their lives.’

  ‘Why don’t you have the right?’ DC turned the interior light back on. He was leaning toward her, his jaws set hard. ‘Because their stupidity assures innocence or because you killed—’

  He stopped.

  Sophia swallowed. ‘Finish what you were about to say.’

  ‘I said what I wanted to say.’ He shifted his attention to the Honda manual in his lap, but he wasn’t actually reading.

  ‘Finish what you were thinking,’ she snapped.

  He matched her stare. ‘Why are you doing this? Really? Is it because you killed those women with the Chimera vectors? Do you need to save another four hundred million people to balance your accounts, is that it?’

  Her mind iced over. ‘Look at that, you hit the nail on the head,’ she said.

  She needed some air. She stepped out of the car, goggles in hand, and walked around to the trunk. She could hear the crunch of sand on the a
sphalt. Nasira and Chickenhead were returning from their half of the recon. She confirmed their hunkered frames through her goggles, then turned back to the beachfront. The wind had picked up now, drying the sweat in her T-shirt and tangling her hair.

  DC’s door opened. ‘Sophia, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  He hesitated when he heard the others approach.

  ‘This weather might bite us in the ass,’ Nasira said, reaching the Honda.

  Sophia didn’t say anything. She returned to the driver’s seat and waited for everyone to clamber inside. Nasira would notice her and DC’s stand-off, but it didn’t matter. They had to get on with the job.

  ‘Damien got in touch,’ Sophia told them. ‘Forty minutes ago. They’re going in tonight. Guard changeover is at 0300.’

  ‘You wanna hit this place same time as them?’ Nasira said.

  ‘As close as we can get. Once they know we’re in one installation, they’ll reinforce all of them,’ Sophia said. ‘Any special defenses?’

  In the rear-vision mirror, she watched Nasira shake her head. ‘Just a high perimeter fence and thick steel gates on the west side.’

  ‘No guards?’ Sophia said.

  ‘Only on the inside,’ Chickenhead said.

  ‘How about your side?’ Nasira asked.

  ‘Same,’ Sophia said. ‘One searchlight on the southeastern corner, manned.’

  ‘There’s another on the northwest,’ Nasira said. ‘Fixed though, not scanning.’

  ‘Electronic surveillance?’ DC asked.

  ‘Fuck all,’ Nasira said.

  ‘Our fences weren’t electrified,’ Sophia said. ‘I’m guessing yours weren’t either.’

  ‘You got it,’ Nasira said. ‘And I’m guessing that interior concrete structure and the massive spire thing is the transmitter.’

  ‘We can vault over the concrete wall, it’s only ten feet,’ Sophia said, picking up DC’s sketch on the Honda manual and passing it to the back seat. ‘The control center and the transmitter are isolated inside.’

  The two manned searchlights saturated half the installation, but there was a narrow gap of fifty feet in width where they could slip through. Sophia, DC and Nasira would breach the perimeter and scale the concrete wall while Chickenhead would remain at the perimeter and keep watch, providing covering fire if needed. Sophia hoped they wouldn’t need it.

  DC reached into his daypack and retrieved the Interceptor and the three access cards. Sophia had programmed them before their flight out of Kuala Lumpur. Jay had the other set. If they were going with Plan A—blast all the transmitters with electromagnetic pulses—they’d need local access to the control center.

  ‘There’ll be guards indoors,’ she said. ‘We don’t have much firepower.’

  ‘We need something else then,’ Nasira said.

  ‘Damn shame we don’t have any of those flashguns,’ Chickenhead said. ‘Smoke grenades would’ve been good too.’

  Nasira’s eyes lit up. ‘We just gotta make our own then.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Grace and Jay didn’t need torches inside the tunnel, but Damien and the others did, to avoid slipping on the disgusting liquid that trickled along its bottom. Damien followed Grace, with Jay right behind him, and behind Jay, Calvin and two other jaguar knights. Aviary was along for the ride too, having received informal training from Calvin’s squad in the past. Damien had tried to talk her out of it, but she seemed to think she owed them. He wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the rations or her stabbing him in the leg, twice. Grace hadn’t been pleased about having her tag along, but had given in as long as she didn’t get in the way.

  They were almost at the end of the tunnel when someone behind him slipped, splashing into the gunk at their feet. Everyone froze.

  ‘Shit,’ Aviary said.

  No one else said a word.

  Damien tuned his hearing. He picked up soft footfalls on the surface above as a guard approached to inspect the noise. There was a click, hopefully of a torch and not a firearm.

  ‘Hello?’ the guard called out.

  Silence, then more footsteps, this time moving away.

  Damien waited a bit longer. When he was satisfied, he nodded to Jay, who turned to help Aviary up. She shook the dirty liquid from her arms, disgusted.

  ‘I don’t even want to know what’s in that,’ she whispered.

  Jay stifled a laugh. ‘I think you said it yourself a minute ago.’

  Grace hushed them, then continued forward.

  Everyone was equipped with a very particular load-out. They each carried Aviary’s special blend of explosives and a windscreen protector wrapped in a black blanket. This would shield them from both the motion sensor and the thermal sensor on the rear wall of the transmitter building. They were also carrying small backpacks with various items inside. Damien had made sure there were duplicates of everything, just in case. Even some basic medical supplies.

  Jay had made sure everyone was armed up the wazoo. AR-15 carbines secured to their bodies with shoulder straps—necessary given the amount of kit they were lugging to get inside. Grace was carrying her Vector SMG with two extra mags Calvin had given her.

  Damien had supervised the clothing. He’d joined Calvin on a shopping blitz through a Century 21 department store in Brooklyn and gone to great lengths to ensure everything was dark and non-reflective, preferably cotton or wool. He’d cut out all the velcro, shiny buttons and drawcords—anything that might get in the way, be seen or make noise.

  While he was busy shopping, Aviary was busy making petrol bombs with soapsuds, petrol and fuse wire. Jay had paid another visit to his old pal Kevin in Chinatown, this time for some cheap Nokia cell phones and prepaid SIM cards activated under stolen identities. The MP7 had more than paid for that. Everyone had a phone, silenced and loaded with each others’ numbers. If they got separated, they needed to be able to communicate. Damien had passed on the Nokia numbers to Sophia over his satphone.

  Sophia had just texted him satphone to satphone with the words, ‘Moving in.’

  If her team were beginning their infiltration of the Miami installation, they needed to be doing the same very, very soon.

  Grace drew to a halt in front of him. Damien stopped immediately and switched his torch off. Those behind him did the same. Now they waited.

  Before entering the tunnel, Damien had convinced Jay to conduct a quick recon again, just to double-check the guard numbers. They’d discovered four on the ground, a fifth at the gate, another four at the power plant and at least another four at the transmitter building.

  A third jaguar knight had remained at the tunnel opening so his cell would have good reception. A fourth knight was placed outside the perimeter, within line of sight and with eyes on the station, waiting for the shift change. As soon as that happened, he would signal the third knight at the tunnel opening who would move through the tunnel and signal the rest of the team, then join them, increasing their number to nine. Damien was glad they’d planned the signaling because when he checked his Nokia inside the tunnel it had no bars.

  He could hear someone moving through the tunnel behind them, quiet but careful. Soon his torchlight was splashing over them. It was the jaguar knight Damien was expecting, carbine in both hands and maquahuitl concealed along his back. Damien figured the knights must have some sort of layer between the jagged-edged sword and their clothes, otherwise the obsidian would slice their backs every time they moved.

  Grace indicated for Damien to move closer. Above her, he could see the manhole cover. He helped her lift it as slowly and carefully as possible. It barely moved under their combined strength, but after a couple of hard pushes it came free and they could slide it to one side. Grace did her cloak thing and popped her head up. Better her than him, he thought. He didn’t want his head getting shot off.

  She ducked back into the tunnel and nodded. ‘It’s clear. We move now.’

  She stepped past him and quietly addressed the tea
m: Jay, Aviary, Calvin and his three knights. ‘There’s a building a hundred feet ahead. The transmitter building is directly behind that. Wait for us to reach the wall, then move as quietly and as gradually as possible. Make sure your shield is facing the building at all times. Don’t make any jerky movements. Keep it smooth until you’re against the wall.’

  Calvin’s knights were former Special Forces, but Damien doubted they’d used windscreen protectors to breach an enemy base before. They’d conducted a trial with the shields earlier this evening, using Jay’s infrared vision to check how well they worked. Without the windscreen protectors, their faces, necks and hands glowed red and the rest of their bodies varying shades of green. With them, they were just a big rectangle of cool blue. Damien hoped the thermal sensors were on par with Jay’s vision.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t run that last step or you’ll screw everything up,’ Grace said. ‘Got it?’

  Everyone nodded, gripping their makeshift shields.

  ‘OK, move out,’ she said.

  Damien checked his watch: 0311. They had ten minutes. Maybe more with the shift change, maybe not.

  Grace moved first, cloaked. With her shield in one hand she advanced twenty feet and hunkered down. She rested the shield on her shoulder and took her Vector in both hands. Damien climbed out, breathing in to slip through with his backpack, then oriented his shield. Once they moved closer, they’d be in range of the motion detector, but they were safe at this distance, right near the fence line. He knew this because any detector sensitive enough to pick them up from this far would frequently pick up wildlife. He picked a position slightly behind invisi-Grace, out to the left by fifteen feet or so. With both sides covered, the rest of their team could move knowing they had cover.

  Once he’d made it across, he brought his carbine around to the front and held the grip with one hand, pulled the charging handle back into position and switched the fire selector from S to R.

  Jay was next. Typically, he maneuvered his carbine out of the manhole first, then squeezed his shield up. He got to his feet and slung his carbine back over his shoulder and head. Then he helped Aviary up, followed by Calvin. He pointed the direction for them to move and helped the next knight up.