The phalanx code, p.24
The Phalanx Code, page 24
“Status of south apex?” I asked.
“In control room. Bogies coming. Need to act fast,” Maximillian said.
“Roger,” I replied. “Any intel on friendlies?”
“One pod at north end. Video shows people. Looks like your people. Four women, ten males. They have rifles and weapons but are enclosed in the pod. Ruddy called it right.”
“Roger,” I said.
My gut clenched. My entire world was encapsulated in a pod inside a vacuum-sealed tube pressurized ten times over a Boeing 747 flying at thirty thousand feet. There was no escape unless Maximillian and team could release the pressure.
“Another pod in the tube seems to be loaded with explosives,” he said quickly. “Pardon, but we’re just getting the intel here. Looking at cameras. Our engineer is studying the pressurization.”
I knelt and looked at the tablet JD was holding in his gloved hands. Blanc’s face appeared on the screen. The wind whistled along the valley and over the hilltop. It was biting cold.
“Blanc here. What’s the psi in the tube?”
“Fifteen X is what it says,” Maximillian said.
“That’s fully pressurized. There are two courses of action here, and we probably need to do both. First, each section of the tube has shutoff valves that can stop or minimize the air blast from one end to the other. Find those,” Blanc said. I noticed someone had activated the “record” function of the video call. Why would Blanc want a record of this call? Maybe to cover his ass later, but it was risky, as we were breaking and entering the Drewson compound and Drewson could simply claim it was an innocent malfunction that had locked my friends and family in the pod. Which, it still could be.
“Pressure sections?”
“Sounds right,” Blanc said.
Gunfire pinged in the background.
“We’re taking fire. I’ve got two snipers on the ridge holding them off. Not sure how long they can do it.”
“Attack drones?” I asked.
“On station,” Ruddy said.
“Bring them in,” Maximillian said.
“Go,” I said.
The sound of miniguns is an unforgettable noise, the burping whir they make while spitting out hundreds of rounds of high-explosive ammunition in seconds. The echo of reverberations up the valley was reassuring, especially knowing it might buy some time for Maximillian and his team to depressurize the tube. Distant combat noises on a cold night brought back many memories from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other locations. The pang of guilt and worry tried to emerge, but I held both at bay, hoping they would be supplanted by joy and relief. But I knew better than to open myself to hopeful thoughts, so I remained focused on the task at hand.
“Movement,” JD said. He kept the video on and attached the tablet to a small plate in his outer tactical vest with the camera facing outward.
“Engage,” I said. “We have positive ID that they are Optimus.”
“Roger. Engage,” he repeated.
Four men were walking from the chalet to the SUVs parked in front. All four dropped dead to the ground. JD’s fire control was impressive. Four shooters, four dead.
“Prepare,” JD said.
Two men came running out, looked down, looked up, and caught bullets in the face.
I thought, six down and four to go. As far as we knew.
The double oak doors slammed shut while two men attempted to slide to our flank by moving from the back of the chalet into the low ground. The left side security team exchanged fire and quickly silenced them. Our element of surprise had worked to our advantage, but now we were six attackers against at least two defenders, which were textbook odds: 3–1 was what all the manuals told us.
But actual door-to-door combat was much more challenging. There were always the one or two crafty commandos who were driven to win at all costs or go down trying. It was our moment to move, and our math told us that at least two commandos remained.
Sensing this window, JD said, “Close from the flanks. Middle will move once in place.”
The flanks were two teams of two. JD and I were the middle team. In my goggles I saw two dark shapes scramble to the east side of the chalet. They were hunched over and running, staying low to stay alive. On my right, two more figures appeared and crawled to the west side of the chalet. Both teams of two stacked against the cedar planks on the side, weapons at the ready.
“Alpha in position.”
“Bravo in position.”
“Moving,” JD said.
We jogged to the rear of the lead SUV. Kneeling, I watched as two men appeared behind the west team and fired into their backs.
Weapon up, I returned fire, though they were quickly out of sight.
“Bravo, status?” JD asked.
No response. I felt JD’s body stiffen. We were shoulder to shoulder, protecting each other while attempting to coordinate a complex operation.
“Alpha, Bravo may be down. Two bogies. Watch your flanks.”
A prolonged exchange of gunfire from the east interrupted the conversation.
“Alpha. Sitrep, over.”
No response.
“Alpha, sitrep, over,” JD asked again.
No response from Maximillian or his six-man team.
My phone buzzed in my pocket again. I didn’t have time for histrionics or Drewson’s bullshit. I didn’t answer it as it continuously buzzed against my hip. Hanging up and calling back. Hanging up and calling back.
“Alpha hit,” the team leader croaked into the microphone. “Got one.”
If he was correct, that left one rogue vigilante somewhere roaming the terrain for us. We had no security, save ourselves.
“Back to back,” I said to JD, since it was just him and me now. “Move to the door.”
“Roger.”
JD and I pressed our backs together and held our weapons at eye level as we spun and walked toward the door. A head popped up to my two o’clock and I unloaded five rounds into the vicinity, suppressing him if not killing him.
We made it to the heavy doors where we felt the concussive impact of multiple rounds of ammunition hitting the door from the opposite side. The lone survivor inside? Drewson?
“South apex taking fire again,” Maximillian said. “We’ve shut down five sections of the tube, but someone is at another control station slowing our progress.”
“Roger,” I said. “Five minutes, we should be at the controls.”
JD counted to three, and on two was barreling into the front door, weapon raised. I followed him as if I was a private in a battle drill to enter a building and clear a room. He spun left with his weapon raised and I slid to the right. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. The front doors were splintered and pockmarked on the inside. A dim light shone from a stairwell that went below the main floor. The chalet was finely appointed with dark leather and mahogany wood, which told me we were in Drewson’s man cave, if not primary residence here in Wyoming.
“Stairs,” I said.
JD led the way, and we moved down the stairs until we were on a brightly lit landing. It was a white tiled room exactly like the one I had seen in the east and west apex stations twenty miles away. Next to the sliding hydraulic doors was a control room with monitors and keyboards. On the monitors I could see my team and my children in the pod stuck in the middle of the tube. Mahegan was staring into the camera. Hobart and Van Dreeves were wrapping their shirts around Reagan and Misha. They were taking care of one another in the direst circumstances. Misha was crying, surely knowing by now that she had made a mistake by trusting Drewson. Reagan was staring into space while Brad was scribbling something on the back of a piece of paper. Matt Garrett was inspecting the pod with his hands running along the seams. Jeremy West was playing with some kind of panel at the front, as if he was hoping it would fly and he could control it. Amanda Garrett was on one knee in front of Zion Black, who was injured in some fashion.
Standing in front of the control panel in the chalet was Mitch Drewson.
“It’s not what you think,” Drewson said. He sounded like a husband who had been caught cheating by his wife. It’s not what it looks like.
“Let them go,” I said.
“I’m trying,” he said. “Blanc has jammed up my system. Trapped your team down here. I was bringing them up here for protection from Blanc’s assassins.”
While I knew what he was saying was false, it gave me pause.
“He’s lying,” Blanc said into our earpieces. I assumed he was listening and hearing through JD’s tablet.
JD’s weapon was trained on Drewson’s tall figure. Drewson’s signature blond shaggy hair was askew. He looked harried, as if he actually had been trying to help Dagger team and my kids out of trouble.
But his people had killed Sharpstone commandos, and all the evidence pointed at Drewson deliberately blackmailing Blanc.
“Do whatever you must to get that pod here and release them,” I demanded.
“I’m trying, General. You must believe me.” The look on his face was believable, but I had negotiated with the best of the Afghan warlords, the Serbian henchmen, and the Iraqi tribal leaders. They all had one thing in common: great theatrics. Like some of our own politicians, their pretensions of innocence were worthy of Academy Awards. Here was Drewson, standing in the control room of the hyperloop looking like the befuddled Wizard of Oz. All he needed was a curtain to pull across the opening so that he could return to his work.
JD and I were still back to back. He was covering the stairwell. I had barely lowered my rifle to speak with Drewson.
“I don’t care what your beef is with Blanc. I told you that if you mess with my people, I was coming for you,” I said.
His countenance changed and he smiled an “aw shucks” grin. “Yes, General, that’s what I was counting on.”
From two side doors sprang four commandos with their weapons up. They were wearing black tactical clothing and carrying SIG Sauer long rifles with flashlights and scopes. One of them shot JD, who fell to the ground at my feet.
They descended on me before I could fire a shot, then wrestled me to the ground. One of them placed an electric prod against my neck, but I prevented him from pulling the trigger. JD must have been only wounded because he shot two of the commandos in the back while I retrieved my Beretta and fired two shots into the gut of the prod wielder. The last man standing leaped onto me as I flipped the blade on my knife into position.
“Stop!” Drewson shouted.
“Second pod levitating,” Maximillian said. His voice was nervous. Shaking.
My knife had nicked the femoral artery of the fourth commando, who was bleeding out next to me. Drewson awkwardly held a pistol in my general direction. I gave him 50–50 odds of hitting me, but I had made it this far and didn’t want to risk it anymore. I felt like there was a path to success here.
Looking at JD, I saw he was gut shot, but hanging in there.
“Your people, Garrett Sinclair, are all right there,” Drewson said, pointing at the monitor. “Twenty-five miles away on the other side of the mountain is a pod filled with explosives, not that they’re needed.”
His hand hovered over a button on the panel.
“If I press this button, this pod will travel at Mach one and in less than a minute hit the pod your team and children are in, and they will die instantly. The force will be tantamount to the World Trade Center collapsing onto them. It’s not survivable.”
“I thought you said this was all Blanc,” I replied, stalling. “Why would you be doing this?”
I was staring at the monitor. Mahegan was pushing at something on the ceiling of the pod.
“System shutdown in process,” Maximillian said into my earpiece. “Five chambers closed. Now six.”
“No,” Drewson said. “What’s going on at south station? Come in,” he said to no one in particular.
“West station here. All clear,” someone said.
“South station come in,” Drewson said again.
“What’s going on?” I asked Drewson. I knew exactly what was happening but wanted him to keep thinking and talking, anything to keep him from pressing that button. The more sealed hatches Maximillian got in place, the safer I assumed my people would be. Instead of a bullet train car filled with explosives hurtling at Mach one directly into the pod, the pod would have to punch through multiple steel plates, presumably losing energy and explosive power. The unknown was what would happen to the section of the tube that my team was in? I didn’t know nor did I think Blanc actually knew. I was sure they had run tests and experiments on pressurized sections of hyperloop tubing, but in real life, there was always a variable. What Maximillian was doing to section off the tubes with circular reinforced steel plates was crucial to the survivability of my team.
“Seven shut; four to go. It appears there is one steel plate every two miles or so,” Maximillian said.
I remained stoic, not wanting Drewson to know that someone was talking in my ear.
“Team closing on south station now,” a voice said over the command center.
“Let them go,” I said to Drewson.
He looked at me with a drawn face. Gone was the cocksure billionaire. The energized control freak. What I saw now was someone who was genuinely scared. His scheme had not gone according to plan. There appeared to be no backup strategy, so sure was he of succeeding by holding my people hostage as a simple blackmail scheme.
“Get Blanc on the video,” I said. “Let’s work this out. I just want my people safe.”
Anything to buy time.
“You don’t understand. What your guy is doing in the south station is going to kill your people. By shutting down the sections of the tube, there’s no way into or out of the remaining section without imploding it.”
“Blanc said there’s a way,” I said. “He said this was the strategy. Protect the pod by sealing it off from a potential weaponized pod.”
Drewson chuckled. “Yes, he would say that.”
Drewson’s hand hovered over the button to send the bullet pod into the steel plates. I was done wasting time. I imperceptibly pressed the detent button on my microphone.
“Can you bleed the pressure from the system? Make it so they can get out.”
Simultaneously, Maximillian said, “Yes, trying. Taking instructions from Blanc,” and Drewson, who thought I was talking to him, said, “No, it’s not possible. What the people are doing at the south station is not helpful.”
Suddenly, Blanc’s face appeared on the screen above Drewson’s.
“You know that’s not true, Mitch,” Blanc said. “Tell me what you want.”
Drewson was nonplussed by Blanc’s sudden appearance in the control room. The video on the monitor also showed that it was recording.
Maximillian spoke into my ear, “It will take twenty-seven minutes to depressurize the tube fully and safely. Oxygen indicator on the pod is only showing nineteen minutes. With so many bodies in the pod, they’re consuming oxygen at a much higher rate than it is programmed for.”
No one could live for eight minutes without oxygen. The tube was a vacuum, hence no oxygen. The pod was supplied by a tank that was running on empty. I looked at the monitor that showed my people in the pod. Misha was hyperventilating. Her special tri-colored glasses had slid down her nose. Mahegan was on one knee rubbing her back. His cheeks were bulging, as if he was holding his breath. Hobart was next to Brad and Van Dreeves was on one knee next to Reagan. They were all holding their breath, but I noticed something else, also.
Amanda Garrett was walking from her uncle Matt toward Reagan. She was carrying a small medical bag with a thin clear tube and a mask extending from the pouch. I couldn’t be certain, but it looked like she had an oxygen supply she was sharing. She confirmed this when she turned her back to the camera and slipped a mask over her mouth and then shielded Reagan from the camera and gave her a pull, then Van Dreeves took a quick pull and she moved to Misha. Calles was in the corner, passed out. Amanda moved to her and shook her, but she didn’t respond. She gave Calles some oxygen and she moved her head slightly. My team was in bad condition. I needed to act now.
For his part, Drewson was too focused on Blanc’s image to notice the oxygen sharing. Little good it would do if we couldn’t get in there to rescue them.
“It’s a moot issue now, Aurelius. They’re dead. There’s no escape,” Drewson said. “They’ll be out of oxygen in ten minutes.”
My neck was tighter than steel tension wires. My breathing began to elevate as the clock ticked down.
“Nothing is moot, Mitch. You can have it. I don’t care,” Blanc said. “We can’t let innocent people die. It defeats the entire purpose of what we have separately been trying to do. If I need to tilt my king forward to the board, I’ll do it,” Blanc said.
Drewson looked at me and said, “You understand what’s happening, right?”
I believed I did, and it wasn’t what Blanc was hoping I’d think. I’d come to the realization that Blanc needed me and my kids dead so that he could inherit Coop’s fortunes, which included Sharpstone. Everything had been a deception, using the layperson’s general lack of understanding of difficult concepts such as blockchain and Web 3.0 to disguise a simple plot to gain and maintain power.
“Sadly, for you, I do,” I said. My rage was simmering but I had to maintain my cool to keep my people alive.
“I’ve enjoyed the chat, Aurelius, truly. And I understand that what you and the general here have been doing is to buy time to somehow save the miscreants in the pod. You always underestimated me, didn’t you? Well, this is warfare today, is it not, in which all things are fair? I hold hostage the team of your long-lost nephew in an effort to outmaneuver you on the battlefield, such as it is. My Optimus teams have been successful in portraying you and your company as evil. Meanwhile, we put a code bot on your much discussed Phalanx Code to keep everyone laboring away while we got the one thing you value in the world more than your precious Phalanx Corporation.”
Drewson paused, looked at the weapon in my hand, and then continued.
