The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 Read online

  Denton looked thoughtful. ‘Depends. Which project?’

  Gabriel brought his glass to his lips. ‘Phoenix.’

  Denton didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His son would draw his own conclusions.

  ‘This is bad,’ Gabriel said. ‘This is worse than I thought.’

  Denton leaned in closer and watched his son drink. He didn’t just take a sip, he drank the entire glass, leaving only the large ice cube.

  ‘Where is the sample?’ Denton said.

  His son gathered his breath. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Gabriel, I need your help.’

  ‘Father, I can’t—’

  ‘The Akhana are too dangerous now,’ Denton said. ‘We need to destroy them.’

  ‘Their value outweighs—’

  ‘We’re running out of time,’ Denton said.

  Gabriel slumped in the armchair. ‘The project’s cancelled.’

  ‘What happened?’ Denton said. ‘You just told me you’re running Project Phoenix.’

  His son’s fingers tightened across his empty glass. ‘I’m off the project now. I don’t know what’s happening but the orders came from high up.’

  ‘The General?’ Denton said.

  His son shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But they’re locking it down. Research has been suspended. I’m taking over another project—Seraphim. They’re entering the human testing phase.’ His gaze flickered to the stairwell. ‘You don’t know this but your bodyguard downstairs, he’s one of the test subjects.’

  ‘Seraphim was supposed to be mine,’ Denton said.

  ‘Project GATE was supposed to be yours,’ Gabriel said. ‘If you don’t want GATE I’ll gladly take it,’ he said. ‘We can swap.’

  ‘It’s doing quite well, actually.’ Denton’s hand tightened around his glass. He should have both projects. And if he couldn’t have both, he wanted influence over both. ‘Do you still have access to Phoenix?’

  His son coughed, then shook his head. ‘No. Not anymore.’

  ‘Where are the samples? Gone?’ Denton said. ‘Did the Akhana get to them?’

  ‘Grand Central,’ Gabriel said finally. ‘There’s one sample in Grand Central.’

  ‘Still?’ Denton said. ‘The base was decommissioned last month. Everything else is at Desecheo Island now.’

  ‘There’s a lower level,’ Gabriel said. ‘Storage only. No one goes in, no one goes out. It’s only for the Defense Sciences Division.’ He leaned in to whisper. ‘I mislabeled one of the samples on purpose. No one knows it’s the Phoenix virus. I don’t know where the General sent the other samples, but the mislabeled sample is still in Grand Central.’

  ‘What’s on the label?’ Denton said.

  ‘Violet plague,’ Gabriel said. ‘Dated November 22 1998.’

  Denton sank into his armchair and filed the date away for later. ‘Good,’ he said, finishing his drink.

  Gabriel nodded and coughed some more. It quickly turned into a coughing fit.

  Denton placed his empty glass on the table and reached over, taking the wallet from inside Gabriel’s untailored suit. While Gabriel continued coughing, Denton found his ID and badge and slipped it into his own pocket. Blood stained Gabriel’s collar.

  ‘Gabriel Denton,’ he said, leaving a fifty on the table. ‘You’ve been reassigned.’

  On cue, Denton’s bodyguard reached the top of the stairs. He’d heard Gabriel coughing.

  ‘DC,’ Denton said. ‘Take care of him.’

  Denton took his overcoat and left DC to deal with his son.

  The second Phoenix virus will have to wait for now, Denton thought. He needed to do a few things first. He needed a better position. As he left the bar, he thought of his test subjects in Project GATE. Their programming had been a success. He thought of one test subject in particular: Yiri’s granddaughter, Zofia.

  Now she was Sophia.

  Denton stepped out onto Vanderbilt Avenue and pulled on his overcoat. He had two Phoenix viruses almost in his grasp now. He looked up into the night sky, felt the breeze on his younger face.

  All he needed was the third.

  Chapter 6

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Present day

  Sophia pulled her rucksack open on the motel bed. On casual inspection, it was a discreet black ruck with a bare fifteen liters of capacity. It was in fact the perfect ruck for her. Waterproof, military grade, slim against the contours of her back. Inside, she had two field packs and three rows of webbing fitted with essentials.

  On the top row of webbing she kept a small torch with a red lens filter. She liked it because it had a dedicated strobe button and it took AA batteries she could source anywhere. Next to it, a monocular. Beside the monocular she kept a cheap GPS with a color touchscreen. It ran happily off two of any civilian GPS services at any time: American GPS, Russian GLONASS, European Galileo and Chinese BeiDou.

  On the second row of webbing she kept a pair of compact night-vision goggles, generation two. She pulled the door wedge from under the motel room door and slipped it between her goggles and baseplate compass. In the next motel room, glasses clinked and someone laughed. She ignored them. On the end of the second row, her black oxide multitool in a pouch. Wedged in behind it were a few strips of plasticuffs. Next to the multitool she had a second multitool. It was a present for Aviary; her birthday had been the week before.

  Sophia had removed the Velcro from all the pouches and sewn in press-studs. She’d converted one of her field bags into her trauma kit. Trauma bandages, tape, burn dressing, a scalpel and a tube of Dermabond. Aspirin for pain relief or fever reduction, metoclopramide for nausea, loperamide (an anti-diarrheal agent), an EpiPen (adrenalin auto-injector), morphine auto-injector, two sachets of QuickClot and a spare tourniquet. A tourniquet was the only medical kit she carried both in her ruck and on her person, usually secreted in her jacket.

  She kept a hard, water-resistant Pelican case the size of a smartphone. It was identical to the one issued to her in Project GATE, just small enough to stuff down her jeans. She’d customized the contents quite a lot, given the urban environments she was now operating in. This time, she didn’t bother with a wrist compass. They were inaccurate to the point where she never bothered using them. And she hardly needed one when Nasira the human compass was around.

  She neglected to insert a small multitool into the Pelican case because she already carried a larger one. The issued flint-and-striker combo barely worked. She used a cigarette lighter and waterproof matches as backup. The laser pointer went—as an operative she hadn’t used it once. She’d filled the gap with iodine tablets and ten foot of paracord. And a hypodermic needle and vial she’d taken from Dr Cecilia McLoughlin. The vial McLoughlin had almost injected into her.

  Sophia had planned to destroy it when she was ready but she hadn’t gotten to it yet. Every time she packed her ruck and checked it over, she found herself distracted by the tangerine liquid. She didn’t know why she hung onto it. If injected, it would obliterate her conscience. To her, that was almost suicide. Or worse than suicide. She tucked it behind the waterproof matches so she couldn’t see it through the Pelican’s transparent lid.

  In the ruck’s interior zipped pockets she kept a few other items. Small headsets with earpieces and throat mikes; an old iPod Aviary had passed down to her. It was an unapologetic red that Aviary had probably bought to match her hair.

  Sophia also kept her essential toiletries in her ruck, along with hand sanitizer, water, some dried food, a pair of cheap sunglasses, sewing needles and safety pins. She also kept a full set of lockpicks and a small tin of WD-40—good for erasing fingerprints and DNA. And of course secondary batteries and chargers for everything. She lived out of her bag so it was always packed and ready to go. One spare pair of jeans, six T-shirts, one sweater that she wore mostly in her room. Seven pairs of underwear, six light support bras, two sports bras and five pairs of socks, a cluster of elastic hair ties, all zipped into a compact washba
g so they didn’t get in the way when she was groping for tools.

  In the interior pocket that ran across her back: a single flashbang and two Glock mags, upright so she could grab them. In the exterior pocket against her back she stored another two mags.

  Depending on the environment, her clothing and the level of danger she was walking into, she either carried her Glock 17 pistol in her waistband or in the interior pocket of her ruck. But she always carried her Gerber Mark II fighting knife. She could reach for either the knife or the pistol quickly without having to take the bag off her shoulders. Naturally, the pistol was already loaded. She also carried a cleaning kit in the ruck, and her backup Gerber knife, which she was planning to give to Aviary for her birthday.

  Fastened to the ruck’s carrying handle were two carabiners. One was a non-locking carabiner, the other locking. She’d connected them with forty foot of paracord. She’d wrapped the paracord over the locking carabiner to the point where she couldn’t even see it. Handy in case she needed to do any climbing. Or falling.

  On her person she kept very little. A slim wallet, a burner phone, a waterproof watch. And her own version of the cumbersome escape and evasion kit she’d once been issued. Her new kit was as thin as a credit card and not much longer than a toothpick. It wasn’t really a case at all, just a few items bundled together. A single handcuff key, kevlar rope, a shim and her pair of mini lockpicks. She could walk through any metal detector without arousing attention. With this kit secreted in slits cut in the waistbands of both pairs of her jeans, they would also go unnoticed in a casual body search.

  She checked her wallet. Various dollar bills, false license and false debit card. Behind them, a photo of Leon Adamicz. Behind that, a photo of Owen Freeman. Behind that, a photo of Benito Montoya. They weren’t her own; they weren’t taken by her or anyone she knew. They were photos she’d printed at an internet café after a quick Google Image Search. They were photos she should have burned by now. In fact, they were photos she should never have had to begin with. Accompanying the photos, a motel business card. On the back she’d written the names of her sister, her brother, her mother and her father. To anyone else they didn’t exist, but she needed them to exist for her.

  The motel room next to her thumped soft music from someone’s phone or laptop. She could hear voices chatting and laughing: she counted at least four. They weren’t packed and ready to go. They weren’t concerned with who might be tracking them, or how many exits this motel had, or who knew their real name. They didn’t have the laces on their sneakers pre-tied. They just laughed, talked excitedly, told each other stories, poured drinks.

  She closed her ruck, turned her burner phone on and lay down on her bed, wondering for a moment what it would be like in that room next door. Listening to a story that didn’t involve the Fifth Column or a deniable project. Laughing, holding her cup steady as someone refilled it.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d lain on her bed awake. In whatever motel, hotel or apartment she’d rented for the night she listened to conversations next door. She liked the concerned murmurs, sparks of gossip, pop music while they showered, cable television they watched, gasps for breath.

  The hardest thing about being an operative in exile was the time. She had too much of it. And all she could do was think. About everything. It might explain why her ruck was so well organized. She had little else to do.

  It had only been a week since her new ally, Aviary, had found someone talented enough to pinpoint and remove the genetic marker McLoughlin was using to keep tabs on her. McLoughlin was dead now, but Sophia couldn’t be sure who else might take over the tracking. For two months she’d moved daily, stayed mobile during daylight and hardly slept at night. It was hard to break the habit now, even though she no longer needed to go to such extremes.

  Her burner phone buzzed across the carpet floor. She’d only just turned it on.

  The number was stored as A.

  She almost let it ring out but decided to pick up.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Aviary said.

  Sophia sat upright, phone to her ear. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Yeah, um, actually calling people is weird. I have something to show you. Do you want to meet? I’m—’

  ‘Don’t tell me where you are,’ Sophia said. ‘When are you thinking?’

  ‘Um, as soon as you can. This Friday?’ Aviary said. ‘I’ll send you the address tonight.’

  Sophia had been training Aviary over the past six months, on and off. Aviary knew not to send anything direct. The address would appear on the front page of a company website they’d agreed on. Aviary would hide the meeting address in the source code. Sophia could reveal it using the inspector tool in any web browser. Following Sophia’s instruction, the numbers in the address would be offset by twelve. 108/170 Broadway would become 120/182 Broadway. The time would not be offset. But if Aviary needed to communicate a red flag, the last two digits would both be 9. That was all Sophia needed.

  ‘What time tonight?’ Sophia said.

  ‘When I finish my shift,’ Aviary said. ‘I have to go now, but tell me if you can’t make it.’

  Aviary ended the call. She was using a burner phone too, as much as she detested it. She’d vowed to convert Sophia to a smartphone made sometime in the last decade but Sophia didn’t trust them. She’d been out of the loop with technology since defecting from the Fifth Column.

  She checked her watch. It was already past ten at night so she decided to wait until first thing in the morning. Friday was still a few days off.

  Chapter 7

  Sacred Mountain Range, Peru

  Nasira drew to a halt along the rocky path. Her lungs screamed to catch up and her legs burned. The path had led her higher into the mountains. High enough that clouds shimmered before her, tempting her to the unknown.

  She’d reached the Forest of the Clouds.

  After spending a few days in Cusco, a town below the mountains, to acclimatize herself to the altitude, she had started her trek through a less explored region of the Incan empire. And she had still a way to go.

  The tops of the rocky mountains were swathed in haze. She’d clocked another thousand meters of elevation today, reaching an uncomfortable 5,000 meters above sea level. And it was starting to show. She had to stop every twenty paces to catch her breath.

  She wielded two staffs fashioned from small tree branches along the way, using them to transfer some weight from her knees to her shoulders. Her arms could handle the fatigue but her lungs were really slowing her down. And it was starting to piss her off.

  She took the moment to sip from her canteen and watch the clouds drift between the mountains and past a flock of grazing alpacas. They jerked their fluffy, unshorn heads in her direction and hummed. The cloud drifted over them, coating the yellowed grass and low bush.

  She wanted to reach the summit before sundown and lay up overnight. She started moving again, able to breathe calmly in through her nose and out her mouth. She used her wooden staffs to help herself across some rocky steps and around a sharp bend. The side of the mountain dropped sharply below and she had to be mindful not to stray too close to the edge.

  The last hours of the afternoon slipped behind her as she thought of Sophia. With each passing week Sophia had withdrawn. She still acted like everything was cool and nothing had changed. But everything had. She was struggling and Nasira could see it in her eyes.

  With Sophia’s tagging mechanism removed, she could afford to slow down and move as she pleased. But she never did. Even her plans to fight back against the Fifth Column seemed to evaporate. Nasira knew they were still there, but she stopped talking about it. She hadn’t mentioned Denton in a while.

  That wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was Sophia didn’t speak of anyone. Not Freeman. Not Benito. Not even DC. If he had been in contact with Sophia she certainly hadn’t told anyone. It annoyed Nasira because Sophia had the support of her friends to help her do what had needed to be done. At Deseche
o Island. In the Philippines. And in Denver. And then she had just shut down.

  Sophia was supposed to be here with her. In the mountains. But she’d used some bullshit excuse of putting people at risk by being here. That she might lead the Fifth Column to a remote location in the mountains and put a village in danger. Even though the tracking mechanism was gone and that wasn’t possible anymore. They both knew it wasn’t the real reason. Sophia just wanted to be left alone.

  So Nasira had left her alone.

  Nasira reached the summit between the two mountains and fought the urge to collapse where she stood. She wiped sweat from her face. Her lungs struggled to pull enough oxygen and it took a few minutes before she felt normal again. As normal as you could feel up here.

  The mountains in the distance were a faded blue. Between them and her, an ocean of cloud. They were beneath her now. Soon the sun would move under the clouds and darkness would coat the summit. Nasira set up camp in a clearing, erecting a hammock and tying her waterproof poncho overhead to keep the rain off. She sprayed the ends of the hammock and the two trees with bug spray before curling up inside and listening to the night.

  At this altitude the sound of wildlife was sparse. Most of the nocturnal activity was far below now. She kept her Gerber Mark II fighting knife in the hammock with her. It dug into her side if she kept it in the scabbard so she held it, sheathed.

  She wondered what Jay was up to and whether he was thinking of her much, if at all. Where Sophia had slipped, Jay had improved. A large part of his improved day to day function was because he worked with Damien now. The fools were almost brothers. Although Jay still called occasionally and asked about Sophia. But it wasn’t why he called.

  Last week Jay had floated the idea of a reunion, just the four of them. Grab some food at the diner, nothing fancy. He was on for a job in New York next week, which was only one state north from where Nasira was supposed to go anyway. Talking Sophia into it would be another thing.