A subtle agency omnibus, p.51
A Subtle Agency Omnibus, page 51
part #1 of The Metaframe War Series
The Ford rig had driven from the airport and pulled into a nondescript warehouse. The driver had exited the cab and made a beeline for the exit. The truck would remain stationary in the warehouse during the operation. Ten minutes later James had met with the Vampire Dominion force.
They had emerged from the sewers, ten of them, led by General Haras Mosule. They were all dressed in typical Red Empire combat attire, but most carried modern weapons. One who looked like he could have been cast as Thor in a Hollywood blockbuster had introduced himself as Marcus Drake. He’d introduced an eight-man combat team led by Captain Tilson. They were heavily armed with modified M249 light machine guns fitted with two hundred round magazines and an under barrel experimental X41 rocket launcher. They also carried an array of white phosphorus grenades and thermobaric rockets.
James had nodded to himself. The focus on area of effect weapons made sense against fast moving opponents. He’d looked closely at the men, one of them had grinned at him, his fangs clearly visible in the gloom of the warehouse. They were all vampires, and by their modern bearing and speech, newly recruited. James had helped fit helmet cameras and tactical communications rigs strapped to their heads. The command center would act as a secure communications hub and would provide a control point for an array of autonomous ground and air vehicles, and a pair of high-flying surveillance drones.
The General had given the team their orders and emphasized the necessity of acting quickly. The General’s information would grow stale as soon as the Red Empire realized the location of their secret citadel had been revealed to their enemies. One of the new praetorians had remarked wryly about “Nuking the site from orbit,” and the General had simply stared at him until the young man looked away. He’d ended the briefing by giving James his orders. The team then left the warehouse, blurring away to the sewers.
That was just under thirty minutes ago.
Marcus Drake’s deep voice cut through James’ headset, and he declared, “Our men are in position.”
Unleash the drones, James thought.
His fingers flew over the keyboard and one of the screens divided into twenty smaller views. Each mini-screen was fed by a tiny camera mounted on a scurrying autonomous ground vehicle. The views were green lit, light amplified data feeds of the sewers near the Red Empire citadel.
“Crawlers are away,” James broadcast to the team.
“Copy that,” Marcus replied.
The vehicles rolled along the access paths next to the sewers, scanning for threats, identifying cameras, traps and automated weapons. Whenever they found something, they would fire an infra-red laser at it. The laser was small, but so were the hidden motion sensors and cameras. The twenty machines converged in a rough circle through the sewers toward the target. The Red Empire would know they were under attack as they lost sensors and cameras, but they could not be sure who was attacking or what size the force was.
The circle of drones contracted to the point where it was a mile across. James waited for the inevitable response. A handful of seconds later sentry guns opened fire. Bright bursts of light bloomed in the green tinged views. The data feeds from the autonomous ground vehicles started to go dark as the individual drones were shot to pieces. The sentry guns were expected. The ground drones were expendable. Every drone that ‘died,’ identified the location of an automatic weapon.
James flicked a switch and broadcast, “Fliers are away.”
“Copy that,” Marcus replied for the second time.
The second wave of drones, held behind the first wave of crawlers, swept forward through the sewers. Each of the second wave drones was a mini helicopter, the size of a tennis ball equipped with an explosive charge. The fliers flew erratically toward the sentry guns. Bullets flashing past them. A counter in front of James switched down from a 100 to 99, 98, 94, 91, 90, 86, paused for a second as three mini-views went dark in green flashes indicating successful detonations. The drones swarmed forward, the vampire assault team close behind them. The advancing drones came into contact with more sentry guns, the counter dropping rapidly into the 70s. The sound of gunfire came through the helmet comm links as the praetorians pushed up behind the drones. The circle contracted to a thousand yards across. The counter dropped past 50. The fire from the automatic sentry weapons intensified as the circle contracted past five hundred yards. In seconds, another hundred yards had been bought, and the counter was down to 24 fliers. The praetorians pushed in closer. They wanted to be right on top of the front door of the Citadel when they ran out of drones. Their job was to kick it down, push in hard, kill anyone they found, and then draw the assassins out of the citadel by retreating back into the sewers.
James vectored a reserve force of fliers past the praetorians. The drones zipped past Captain Tilson’s soldiers and threw themselves at the remaining sentry guns. The counter momentarily rose to 48 with the commitment of the reserves and then rapidly dropped back below 30. The circle contracted to two hundred yards across, and the praetorians pulled to a halt.
They were close enough to see the entrance of the Red Empire Citadel. The counter was down to nine fliers. They died in the next two seconds, taken apart by a pair of belt fed M134D-H miniguns. The automated guns tracked left and right, searching for targets as gray smoke curled from their barrels.
Captain Tilson’s soldiers blurred forward as a coordinated unit, eight thermobaric bombs rocketing toward the sentry guns. The men maneuvered backward as a well-drilled team. The explosions whited out all communications. James scanned the monitors. The head cams all came back online a second later. The team blurred forward again, rockets flying from the launchers under their gun barrels. The rockets exploded against the main doors, evaporating the entrance to the Citadel.
The force disappeared through the smashed doorway. Their head cams went dark. A single line of white text, ‘No Signal,’ appeared in the middle of each head cam view.
James frowned and demanded, “Captain Tilson, report in … Marcus Drake, report in … anyone?”
The only response was utter silence.
“Recording comms down at 20:16:34.”
He shook his head with dismay. Every monitor viewing a location within a mile of the Citadel was dark. Only the views from the high-flying drones overhead were still working. It was as if everyone in the team had simply vanished.
He considered the mission’s true objective and wondered if the target had been captured.
Where was General Haras Mosule?
* * *
The air duct was three feet in diameter, and Haras had nearly flown along it.
He came to an abrupt halt. A foot in front of him spun a metal fan. He pulled a device from his belt. A very short range industrial cutting laser, good for a single shot. He drew it close to the center of the blades and pressed the trigger. The laser gleamed like a living ruby in his vampire vision as it cut through the fans. He nimbly caught the blades as they separated from the hub and put them quietly aside. A moment later, he was past the fan and rushing along the air duct.
Haras came to a screened vent. He peered through it and listened carefully. His vampire senses extended to their maximum capability. He could hear the beating of six distinct hearts within fifty yards of his position. He crouched closer to the screen, the tip of his veiled nose an inch away from it. His brown eyes swiveled left and right. There were four Red Empire assassins in the immediate vicinity. They were standing still, waiting in the typical assassin guard pose. Relaxed, alert, and neatly balanced on their feet. He could burst through the screen with ease, but they would be on him in a moment.
He frowned. He was confident that he could defeat any two Red Empire assassins at the same time, but four at once would tip the odds in their favor. He waited, the first phase of his strategy was due to start any moment.
The explosions at the entrance of the citadel reverberated through the complex. The guards in the room all became preternaturally still. The lights in the ceiling of the room switched to a slowly strobing red. The Citadel was under attack. Haras grinned, soon at least some of the guards would have to leave to deal with the soldiers attacking through the front door.
There was a soft whirr. A metal shield began descending over the vent.
Haras’ mind raced, a lock down system!
His eyes widened, he thrust with all his might at the vent’s screen. It exploded into the room. He quickly followed it, catapulting forward through the vent and landing on his feet in the middle of the chamber. The four Red Empire assassins immediately blurred forward, their curved swords gleaming wetly in the red emergency lighting.
Haras dropped into silence, ramped, drew his swords in a flash, and fought for his life.
* * *
The crawler adjusted its position. Easing back past the blast debris before the front entrance of the Red Empire Citadel. Its motion detector red-lined. Its tracks spun, and it whirred backward at maximum speed. Its light intensifying camera continued to face the dark entrance. Its microphone, at full sensitivity, registered an outrush of air through the doorway.
A tall, blond vampire was the first to emerge from the darkness. His left arm hung limply at his side as he blurred past the crawler. A moment later, another four vampire soldiers erupted from the gloom, rushed past it, and disappeared from its scopes.
A second later a pair of rockets zoomed out of the doorway, whizzing over the crawler and vanishing around the sewer corners. A fraction of a second later there were massive explosions, and fire rolled back through the sewer pipes. The crawler lay flat against the ground as the edge of the flames blew over it.
The crawler started to rise, then flattened again. Red Empire assassins blurred above it. Booted feet fell to the left and right of the crawler as it hugged the concrete floor. In a moment, the assassins were gone.
The sewer was quiet, then gunfire erupted in the distance. There was the crump of explosions, magnified in the confined space of the sewers.
The crawler rose slowly, pivoted 180 degrees on its tracks and rolled forward. Its communications with the command center had been cut at 20:16:34. It had waited sixty seconds for the comms to come back online. The default protocol kicking in after the re-connect sequence had timed out. The crawler scanned the space in front of it for threats. It was time to preserve itself, leave the Red Empire Citadel behind, and find its way back to its origin point.
The crawler moved off into the pitch darkness.
* * *
There was a loud crack.
Haras let go of the fourth Red Empire assassin’s throat, and the man collapsed limply to the floor. Haras winced and looked down at his waist. A polished hilt and leathered handle jutted out from his stomach. The blade had pierced all the way through, courtesy of the dying effort of the assassin. He flicked his remaining sword clean and sheathed it at his belt. With both hands, Haras pulled the short-bladed sword from his gut and dropped it on the floor. He held his fingers over the wound for a few seconds, he could feel it knitting back together.
Haras stepped over the fourth assassin’s body. His second sword was embedded in the skull of the third assassin. He pulled it free, flicked it clean and sheathed it next to the first. He walked calmly to the first assassin to die. An officer of the Red Empire. His head was severed from his body, and Haras picked it up by the hair. With the officer’s head in hand, he strode over to a large, steel door in the wall opposite the chamber’s entrance. Next to the door was a retinal scanner. He pried open the head’s right eyelid and positioned the eye in front of the scanner.
“This had better work,” he whispered.
A green light appeared above the retinal scanner.
Haras could taste victory. The Codex would be on the other side of the door. The Red Empire never changed the architecture of their citadels. The Codex vault was always located at the geometric center of the building. Only the defenses around it had evolved over time.
Something slammed behind him. The lights switched from dull red to a bright white glare. Dropping the head; Haras whirled around, shielding his eyes with his hands. Gray spots danced in front of him. He blinked, the spots cleared and he dropped his hands. There was a great polished steel door across the exit. The vent he’d used to enter the chamber was still covered by another steel sheet. The vault door behind him remained still and silent.
Stones ground above him, a thin sprinkle of dust fell from the ceiling. Hundreds of tiny holes appeared above him, and a gleaming mist of metal dust descended into the room. Haras’ heart sank. The cold, sharp, stench was unmistakable. He coughed as the first particles struck his face. His mouth went numb. He collapsed face down on the floor before the full effect hit him.
In moments, his body was paralyzed, but his mind remained active.
Silver.
The far door slammed again. Footsteps, dulled by the paralytic effect on his hearing, approached.
A triumphant voice spoke, sounding as if it was a long way away, “Wrap him in the silver net and transport him to the real Citadel.”
“Yes, Shabbah al Ahmar.”
“Remove our honored dead from this illusion and detonate the charges. Erase all existence of this place.”
Helpless rage burned through Haras as strong hands lifted him and carried him away.
Al Far managed to lie to me, Haras thought incredulously. He was bait. This whole site was a trap.
* * *
The mid-morning sunlight bathed the private Jerusalem airfield. Four black Chevrolet Suburbans sat on the tarmac. In front of them rested a dart-shaped white and blue, Spike S-512 supersonic business jet.
James Haley stood at the base of the stairs leading up to the cabin. Beside him was a simple fold away table with a cardboard box on it. The last two men in the line moved in front of him. There was a single parcel left in the cardboard box. He looked at the assassins in front of him. One he recognized from the data that Marcus Drake had provided him. Nasr al Dam, the Blood Eagle, team leader of the group destined for the USA. Marcus’ data had listed sixteen Red Empire assassins organized into two teams. James had spent all his available time over the last two days preparing a cover identity for each of the men. He’d handed a package to each of them before they boarded the plane.
James gave the final package to Nasr al Dam and indicated the plane with a slight nod of his head. Nasr nodded once, mounted the stairs and disappeared into the body of the plane.
The final assassin moved forward to stand directly in front of James. The man was of medium height and athletic build, with a touch of gray at the temples and in his neatly cropped beard. He carried himself with the casual ease of a skilled operator. It was clear this was a man who stood high in the ranks of the Red Empire. They spent a long moment staring at each other. A slight smile of studied indifference curled the edge of the man’s mouth, and he instructed, “I am Thueban Kabir. You may call me Taipan.”
“Okay,” James replied, arching an eyebrow. “You have something to tell me?”
“Yes. You have delivered us our traitor, and in return, we have kept our word. These men will serve your master unto death, or if she orders them to attack each other or the Red Empire - whichever comes first.”
James nodded once.
Taipan turned on his heel and strode over to the closest car. He quickly got in, and the suburbans pulled away.
James made a note to himself to remember everything that he could about Thueban Kabir or given a literal translation of his name, the Great Serpent. He’d given James the name Taipan. A snake species with the most toxic venom in the reptilian world. A single bite could kill a hundred people.
James asked himself, is Taipan the most dangerous assassin in the Red Empire?
He believed it was a question he would one day have to answer. He walked up the flight of stairs and entered the pleasantly luxurious interior of the plane. First stop would be Whitby in Yorkshire, where he would drop off most of his cargo and four of the assassins. Then it would be a quick flight over the Atlantic to Logan International Airport in Boston. The final twelve assassins were to be made ready for a mission in New England. Time was fast running out for the Mirovar force team and their safe house in Maine.
* * *
Haras Mosule sat in utter darkness. He extended his vampire senses to their maximum power. The susurration of air through a vent far above him was the only thing he could hear.
The floor was hard and smooth. It felt like polished glass, as did the walls. He’d measured the dimensions of his cell. It was a cylinder, three yards across and an unknown number deep. The Red Empire had descended with him via a rope ladder. They had removed the silver net and wiped off the silver dust. They had used the rope to climb out of the hole. The rope had disappeared into the darkness and minutes later the silver paralysis was gone.
He had no way to judge the passage of time, but given how famished he was, it was at least two days since his capture.
A thin green slit appeared above him. Haras blurred to the center of the cylinder directly beneath it.
The light disappeared for a moment, and a hard voice snapped, “Here you go bloodsucker.”
The green strip appeared twice more before being extinguished. There was movement above him. Something was falling toward him. He stepped aside and adroitly caught a soft plastic bag. Moments later, he caught two more. His nostrils flared with a familiar scent. He plunged his face into the first bag. His fangs ripping through the plastic and warm blood splashed into his mouth. He gulped and sucked, finally twisting and squeezing the last drop of blood from the bag. He dealt with the second and third bag in the same manner.
“Shabbah al Ahmar wants to keep me alive,” Haras stated to the empty cell. “But for what purpose?”
Haras’ mind flashed back to the capture of Al Far. Marcus Drake had led him to where Al Far had been discovered. Not obviously, but through hints during the night. They had captured Al Far together after a chase. They had nearly been beaten by the rising sun. Marcus Drake had knocked Al Far unconscious and grinned at Haras in triumph.
