The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 Read online

  We’re sealed in. Don’t have long.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Sophia squinted against the wind as Nasira positioned her thick steel pliers over a link in the hurricane fence. She’d wrapped a mat from the Honda’s footwell around the wire to muffle the snap. Chickenhead had found a spot to conceal himself and his L22 bullpup carbine and was watching the installation through a pair of night-vision goggles. He had a length of paracord to tie up the fence once they were done, assuming they didn’t need to make a quicker, overt getaway. Sophia used the team’s only other pair of night-vision goggles to scan the area between the fixed searchlights. Leaves and twigs sprawled across the open ground, carried by the wind.

  Sophia’s satphone vibrated in her pocket. She checked it: Damien and Jay were inside. She didn’t say anything to the others yet; her voice might give their presence away. She’d tell them once it was safe to talk.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Nasira said, her hands tearing a triangle of the fence outward.

  DC crawled through, his Sig Sauer P329 subcompact pistol in one hand. Nasira squashed his daypack down so he didn’t snag. Sophia was next. A light rain slipped through the treetops onto her face. She blinked and crawled flat through the hole, one knee bent and drawn to the side, then the other. She used her hips to move fast. On one foot, and then the other, she turned her knee outward into a squat—an old habit from combat that improved her balance while getting to her feet within an attacker’s striking range.

  Chickenhead tied one corner of the triangle back in place. Easy to remove for their exit but hiding any evidence of foul play from a distance.

  The concrete-walled transmitter was in the center of the installation. With Nasira behind her, Sophia overtook DC and led the way, her Walther P99 in hand as she cut a fine path between the fixed searchlight beams. She moved softly, stepping inward from the blade of her foot to avoid crunching on twigs. Despite the wind and rain, the noise of a large twig snap would carry through the silent installation. Reaching the wall, she slipped her pistol back into her jeans and kneeled down.

  When DC reached her, she clasped her hands together. He put his boot onto her hands and she gave him a lift. With two steps up the wall, he was high enough to grab the top and haul himself up. She squinted in the rain: she could see him lying sideways along the top of the wall. He gave her the thumbs up.

  Sophia shuffled along another five feet and hoisted Nasira up. She levered herself over, next to DC, then turned around. DC disappeared. Sophia had to strain to hear his neat landing on the other side. She looked up to see Nasira’s arm hanging down, ready to help her up. Sophia gave herself a small five-step run and kicked along the wall. Her momentum would only carry her two steps, which was just enough to reach Nasira’s hand. With their wrists interlocked, Nasira pulled her up. Sophia crawled over her and found herself looking down at Nasira’s legs, which dangled on the other side. DC gripped her ankles with both hands, holding her in place.

  Sophia could hear a menacing hum from the transmitter. The two watchtowers remained eerily still. Their lights were still aimed at the same place as before. She started to wonder if they were even movable. She remained on top of the wall, waiting for Nasira to drop down and get clear so she could jump. When she did, she made sure to land in shadow. Behind the transmitter she could see a squat concrete block—the control center. At this time of night it was unlikely to be manned by civilians. But she saw at least one soldier stalking the other end of the block, rain-slicked carbine in both hands.

  Sophia pointed at Nasira, indicating that she take care of the guard. Killing a guard with a knife was not something she felt like doing right now, and that was the only option given their dwindling supply of ammunition and the real risk of someone hearing their muzzle report. Outside of the Fifth Column, suppressors were difficult to come by. Sophia hoped she wouldn’t have to explain herself for shirking the responsibility. Luckily, Nasira didn’t argue and immediately took on the task.

  She unsheathed her Gerber Guardian II knife and approached the soldier silently, walking in the same fashion as Sophia, from the outside of her foot inward. The guard turned as she approached. Nasira reacted quickly, using her knee to knock the carbine off aim and bringing her double-edged blade down like an ice pick behind the guard’s collarbone, slicing the subclavian artery. Withdrawing the knife, she ran it sideways across his neck, keeping her eyes behind her forearm so the spray of blood didn’t blind her. Then she hooked the knife behind his neck to spin him around, levering his elbow so he faced the other way and most of the blood sprayed away from her face. The technique often decapitated the victim, and in this case that was exactly what happened. Sophia watched the head detach and hit the ground before she moved in, scanning the surrounding concrete compound and the watchtowers for any sign of alarm. All quiet.

  Nasira had already moved to the front door of the control center and was picking the lock. It was a reasonably secure lock with security pins, so it took her a few minutes to get it open. Once they were inside, Sophia found the secure access door. It was hard to miss, it was the only door there. And they certainly couldn’t lock-pick their way inside.

  Nasira and DC dragged the decapitated guard’s body into the entrance and laid it down in the corner. Nasira collected the head and also took it inside, not wanting it to be discovered by another guard. It was a gruesome sight and Sophia kept it out of her vision. DC cast one last look at the watchtowers outside, then closed the door.

  ‘Damien and Jay are already inside the New York installation,’ Sophia said. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  The secure access door was made of thick reinforced steel and reminded her of the surface of a tank. There was a card reader on the right-hand side. Sophia popped off the cover and used her multitool to unscrew a pair of small screws underneath. She was able to remove the reader from the wall and expose the attached wires—two black wires that supplied power to the reader, and one green and one white that transmitted data. She used her multitool to cut a black wire, stripped the end and connected it to the Interceptor. It had its own power source, but she needed the power to hold up during their entire visit here. She stripped the white and green wires and attached them to either end of the Interceptor. With that done, she tucked the Interceptor inside the card reader, screwed it back to the wall and snapped the cover over it. The Interceptor was completely hidden and no one would suspect tampering.

  In her right hip pocket she carried three access cards, each of them clearly labelled. She took the one marked SCHLOSSER.

  ‘Do you want the soldier’s card instead?’ Nasira said.

  Sophia shook her head and swiped her card. ‘If he doesn’t have access it could trigger defensive measures.’

  A pair of heavy steel bolts slammed over the doors, inches from her face.

  ‘Like that,’ she said.

  ‘So I’m guessing we tripped an alarm,’ DC said.

  Sophia swiped the REPLAY card. Behind the bolts, the reinforced steel door opened inward.

  ‘Impenetrable, my ass,’ Nasira said.

  Sophia ducked under the bolts and stepped inside. ‘A suitably crude quip from Jay comes to mind,’ she said, handing the DISABLE card to Nasira.

  ‘And if it did, I would smack his bitch face,’ Nasira said, swiping the card as she stepped inside.

  DC snorted with amusement as he followed her through. Together they pushed the reinforced door closed. It sealed with a slight pop.

  Sophia reached for her Walther P99 and assigned DC as point. She followed as the controller of the team. The corridor ran along the left side of the concrete building. Nasira faced mostly behind them, only checking her shoulder to make sure she was moving in the right direction. For the next ten minutes she was their rear security.

  DC stopped and indicated to his right. Sophia moved closer and followed his gaze to a large, glass-walled room. It was cluttered with computers and cumbersome slabs of monitoring equipment with dials and numbers.

&nbs
p; ‘This looks like the place,’ she said, stepping inside.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The control center held a semicircular desk with four computers on one end and six on the other. Grace had pulled out one of the wheeled metal chairs and stood over a computer. She seemed to know what she was doing. Sophia and DC had given Damien and Jay uncomfortably vague instructions on how to operate the transmitter, so any additional knowledge from Grace couldn’t be a bad thing.

  ‘What station do you want to hit first?’ she said.

  ‘Alaska,’ Damien said, handing her the paper with the GPS coordinates.

  He watched her punch them in. His satphone rang. It was Sophia.

  ‘Yeah,’ he answered.

  ‘We’re inside,’ Sophia said. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘It’s now or never,’ he said. ‘We have the coordinates punched in. I’ll hand you over.’

  He passed the satphone to Grace. She listened intently for a moment, the satphone wedged between her ear and shoulder. Her hands ran across the keyboard. He watched as she set the frequency, the power of the transmission and then the focus. Either Sophia was giving her instructions or Grace was already well versed in how to operate the control center of a Seraphim transmitter installation. Damien was pretty sure this hadn’t been covered in his Project GATE training, but maybe they did some optional courses he didn’t know about.

  Jay was checking his Nokia. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘We have company outside. Army’s here.’

  ‘National Guard?’ Damien asked. ‘Rangers, Blue Berets?’

  Jay shook his head. ‘Not sure. I asked the knights to keep an eye out. They’re holding the front now but I don’t think they’ll last long.’

  Damien didn’t like this situation at all. There was one way into the transmitter building and one way out. If the reinforcements secured that, they were screwed.

  ‘Have the knights rig petrol bombs at the front with tripwires and withdraw deeper,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to pulse the compound and move on that. We’ll have eyes and they won’t.’

  ‘I like it,’ Jay said and typed the order into his Nokia.

  Grace was half-listening to their conversation as she did some typing of her own. ‘There’s a microwave in the room opposite that tripwire we hit,’ she said. ‘Get them to put all their torches and cells inside and unplug the microwave from the power socket.’

  It was a good idea, Damien thought. If they wanted their electronics to survive, they needed to shield them inside something. A microwave was essentially a Faraday cage.

  Gunfire roared from above. It sounded like it was coming from just outside the front of the building, or possibly even inside. It was hard to pinpoint from inside the control center.

  ‘Shit.’ Jay quickly swapped his Nokia for his carbine. ‘Grace, how’s it clocking?’

  ‘Alaska in three, two, one …’ she said.

  They stood in silence.

  Damien waited a few seconds before opening his mouth. ‘Did it work?’

  Grace was staring at her screen. ‘Transmission sent. Looks successful from this end. Hard to tell without a visual confirmation if the signal bounced back to Alaska.’

  ‘What I’d give for satellite optics right now,’ Damien said. ‘OK, what’s next? Our own?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Thirteen minutes until the capacitors charge.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Jay said. ‘We won’t last that long!’

  ‘This transmitter isn’t designed for electromagnetic pulses,’ she said. ‘It needs to charge up.’

  ‘This joint has its own freaking power plant,’ Jay said.

  ‘EMPs don’t require a high-wattage power supply,’ she said. ‘They require a large bank of capacitors. And I just drained them to hit Alaska.’

  ‘Let’s hope it worked then,’ Jay said. He moved around the semicircular desk and aimed his carbine at the top of the staircases.

  Grace passed the satphone back to Damien.

  ‘Damien?’ Sophia said into his ear.

  ‘We hit Alaska, but we’re pinned down by reinforcements. Thirteen min—’

  ‘I know,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘We have about six.’

  ‘Have you hit Nevada yet?’ he asked.

  The naval base in Nevada was Sophia’s target. If they took out Nevada and Damien’s team took out Alaska, they only had their own stations to worry about. Mission accomplished.

  ‘We just have,’ she said. ‘No reinforcements here yet but I’m certain we tripped an alarm coming in. Can you hold out for thirteen minutes?’

  Damien didn’t reply immediately. ‘They’re already here,’ he said. ‘We’ll damn well try.’

  ‘OK,’ Sophia said. ‘Hold out for six and we’ll hit you.’

  ‘What about you?’ he said.

  ‘We’ll have to hit our own station after. Let’s hope our party isn’t crashed before then.’

  Damien pulled a boot off and removed his sock. He switched the satphone and Nokia off and dropped them inside the sock, then placed the sock inside a small metal ammunition container—a makeshift Faraday cage to shield it from the forthcoming EMP.

  Something exploded upstairs.

  ‘Well, there goes one of our petrol bombs,’ Jay said.

  Another explosion. Damien could hear debris blasting down the corridor above.

  ‘And another,’ Jay said. ‘They’ll be on us in no time.’

  Damien straightened up, checked his carbine. ‘We have,’ he checked his watch, ‘five minutes. Sophia’s hitting us first.’

  ‘EMP?’ Jay yelled.

  ‘Yeah,’ Damien said.

  He heard gunfire in the corridor above, some shouting. More explosions, smaller. Grenades, flashbangs, he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘We’re done here,’ Grace said.

  She pulled another container of Aviary’s special blend from Jay’s daypack and placed it under the desk where all the computers were stacked.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Jay asked.

  ‘In case the EMP doesn’t happen,’ she said.

  A high-pitched whine drilled through Damien. His balance shifted and the tiled floor hit his face. Grace was above him, talking. Then the room went dark. He heard computers under the desk sizzle and bang. Above ground, he heard other explosions. They didn’t sound like petrol bombs or grenades. Sophia’s electromagnetic pulse, he thought.

  It hit the station right on target, taking out everything electronic: burning semiconductor devices, melting wires, frying batteries and even exploding transformers. The power lines, phone lines and even the metal pipes became unintentional antennas, passing the spike to anything down the line—computers hooked up to power, neighborhoods further out. Damien realized with a sliver of guilt that they’d probably cut the power and fried the electronics in half of Long Island. He also realized that he was in pitch darkness and couldn’t see a thing. It would take some time for his night-vision to adjust, but at least Grace and Jay were able to cope.

  ‘Damien?’ Aviary called out. ‘Jay?’

  ‘We’re here,’ Damien said before Grace could stifle him.

  ‘Are they coming to kill us?’ She sounded terrified.

  ‘Yes,’ Grace whispered. ‘How far inside are they?’ she called out to Aviary.

  ‘I … I don’t know. Pretty far I think.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Grace said. ‘Get down.’

  Damien ran his fingers across his carbine to find the trigger guard and the vertical grip. Upstairs was eerily silent. That wasn’t good. He heard Aviary scuffle as she moved for better cover. He didn’t know who else was around or how many soldiers were upstairs. He didn’t even know what sort of soldiers they were. Their level of training played a large factor in their odds of getting out alive.

  ‘We need to move now,’ Jay hissed. ‘While they’re blind.’

  Damien didn’t want to go anywhere but he knew Jay was right.

  ‘I can’t see, you’ll need to guide me out,’ he said. ‘And Aviary too.’

&
nbsp; Grace found his hand and placed it on her backpack. He followed her around the desk, relying mostly on his memory of the room. He could hear Jay helping Aviary.

  Grace took Damien to the stairs on the right. He could hear Jay’s movements as he approached the stairs on the left, Aviary scuffling behind him. Damien let Grace climb the stairs first. Judging by her feather-light footsteps, he knew when to start climbing without bumping into her legs. He moved as carefully as he could, making a concerted effort not to bump or rub against anything that would create noise.

  He reached the top and wasn’t impressed to find zero ambient light. His night-vision was improving but it still wasn’t giving him enough to judge the layout and distance of the passageway. Reaching out, he found Grace’s backpack again. Her hand touched his arm and tapped it twice. He understood what she meant and let her move forward without him. She was probably scouting ahead, cloaked. Jay would be holding back with Aviary, ready to assist if Grace needed it.

  Damien listened keenly. Even with his enhanced hearing, he was only just able to pick up on Grace’s footsteps. He stopped hearing them and figured she had stopped moving. Then he heard her move back to him, less silently.

  She spoke softly into his ear. ‘Clear. We’ll move up.’

  She turned and let him touch her backpack again. He didn’t grab onto it and risk impeding her movement; just kept enough contact to follow her. They reached the T-intersection and started for the stairs, heading up to the surface. His night-vision had improved and his hearing was even sharper than usual. He could hear the footsteps approaching from above. He tugged on Grace’s backpack. She paused.

  He felt her arm move. She was signaling Jay, probably telling him the number of soldiers that were approaching—maybe she could see them with her X-ray vision. He wished he could see, but at least if he couldn’t then neither could the soldiers.

  Grace spoke into his ear. ‘Six soldiers, retreating.’

  Why were they retreating? Then it occurred to him that with no vision and no tools to assist in vision, it would be too dangerous to enter the lower levels. The soldiers would need to retrieve night-vision goggles and torches from outside the pulse radius before they could re-enter the transmitter building. Until then, they’d keep the place locked down. At least outside they’d be able to see in the moonlight.