A subtle agency omnibus, p.69
A Subtle Agency Omnibus, page 69
part #1 of The Metaframe War Series
Francis declared, “We will go to the rendezvous point and see if he turns up. He’s got another thirty-five minutes to get there.”
Anton sank back in his seat. But what if Peter was tied up, drugged, or worse, and unable to do anything to get free? What then? He glanced knowingly at Li, she raised a quizzical eyebrow and then frowned, appearing torn between the mission and the option of rescuing Peter.
Whatever he was going to do, it was clear that he would be doing it on his own.
He could live with that. After all, he wouldn’t be abandoning Li in the middle of a battle - he would be saving Peter.
* * *
The lead Range Rover pulled to a stop at a ‘T’ intersection. A weathered sign on the far side of the road pointed to ‘Horncastle’ on the right and ‘Sleaford’ on the left. Francis waited for the traffic to clear from the road on the right so that he could turn to the north.
Anton rubbed his forehead; he still had a headache from knocking himself out with a clumsy landing in the wingsuit. The sky was lowering, gray clouds arching overhead from horizon to horizon. The sun was a dim orb vaguely present somewhere above them. The light dimmed further. Anton wiped his brow; his hand came away slick with perspiration. A queasy feeling overtook him, and he rocked forward in his seat.
Li’s left hand grasped his shoulder, and she inquired, “Anton, are you -”
Her voice trailed off as Anton’s perception suddenly accelerated, time slowing down in a deep spontaneous Ramp. Anton shivered, his breath misting before his face. A nondescript dark-gray van was passing in front of the Range Rover.
The world faded, the van coming into sharp relief. It dragged his eyes with it as it rolled through the intersection in slow motion. Faint scratches were crystal clear on the almost immaculate paintwork. The rubber tires thrummed hard on the bitumen. Air rushed over the blocky vehicle. Near invisible smoke puffed from its exhaust. The two men in the front seats were both young, wearing suits and high-end sunglasses, the nearest was touching an in-ear communications bud with a well-manicured finger.
Conviction flooded through him; they were Shadowstone operatives.
Anton tried to drop out of the Ramp, he needed to tell everyone the van passing them right now was Shadowstone, most likely it had Peter in it. He couldn’t do it, the Ramp had him in its grip and wasn’t letting go.
Time almost stopped. Anton could no longer feel his heart beating - he could barely move; it seemed the slightest movement would require maximum effort. He stared, the men inside the van withered inside their suits, their skin shrinking back over their bones, their eyes darkening to gleaming black orbs. Black streaks stretched across the gray sky like the ill-formed fingers of a malevolent god’s dark desire.
Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, the side of the van corroded away. Inside was Peter, hooded in black, bound in cables and chains. The sky became flame, great gouts of fire storming over the world.
Anton was filled with a dreadful terror. Peter writhed on the floor of the van, screaming once in utter agony before collapsing into dust. Above, flames roared and lightning sheeted over the sky. A gust of wind picked up Peter’s ashes, flinging them at Anton in a dark storm.
He tried to lean back but was frozen in place. The ashes washed around him, ripe with the charnel house stench of death.
Peter was dead.
The Ramp collapsed. The vision vanished. Li’s hand clenched tight on his shoulder, “- Okay?”
For an instant, the world felt less real than the vision it replaced.
Anton’s head snapped around to face Li. “Peter’s dead!” he shook his head. “No, he’s not, he’s,” his left hand shot forward between Juliette and Francis’ heads to point toward the van, but the van was no longer there. He twisted left. The van was disappearing southward down the road, closely followed by a dark-blue Jaguar sedan. “There, in that van!”
The Range Rover slammed to a halt. Francis and Juliette both twisted around to stare at Anton.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Francis demanded.
Juliette reached around, putting her hand on Anton’s knee and asked, “Anton what happened?”
Anton shook his head, his voice rising, he declared urgently, “There’s no time to explain.” He glanced out the window. The van and the Jaguar sedan had disappeared around a bend. “They’re getting away. We have to follow them.”
Francis stared at Juliette intently. “Is there anything to this? Did you see enough of the van?”
Juliette’s eyelids closed; her eyes vibrated behind them briefly as she accessed a tightly focused mind palace. She gasped, “Yes, mon ami.” Turning to stare at Anton, she insisted, “After this is done, you must tell me exactly what you saw.”
Francis declared, “We need to be quick.” He floored the accelerator. The supercharged engine roared, the SUV’s big wheels smoking as the car shot forward through the intersection and raced away to the south. The second Range Rover with the rest of the team racing after them.
Luther’s voice screamed over the communication links, “What are you doing? We have to go north.”
Anton affirmed, “We’re getting Peter.”
“Where is he?” Luther asked.
“In a van,” Anton asserted with absolute confidence. “It just passed us heading south.”
“A van? What? Are you claiming x-ray vision now? Hell, this is madness. Francis, what of the mission?”
Francis glanced at the clock. “We still have thirty minutes before we need to be at Peter’s designated rendezvous point. Even if Peter is not in the van, we can still get back there in time without affecting our overall schedule because we would have waited there until noon anyway.” He glanced knowingly at Juliette. “We have the information he is in the van on good authority.”
“Mind palaces,” Luther uttered in disgust. “They’re unreliable. This is a wild goose chase when Ramin Kain needs our help.”
Li chimed in. “Peter would never leave any of us behind.”
“He’s expend-,” Luther hesitated for a split second. “Going to have to make a noble sacrifice for the good of the Order.”
A chill silence fell over the comm links.
Juliette explained clearly, “It’s an unnecessary sacrifice when he is within reach.”
“The mission has to take priority,” Luther asserted, but the force had drained from his voice.
“Who are we?” Juliette asked as if instructing a wayward child. “What do we stand for if we can’t even look after each other?”
Luther fell into silence.
A wave of relief rolled over Anton. They were going to save Peter. He sucked in a deep breath and sighed, left with the mystery of what had just happened. This had been the third vision he’d experienced in his life. The first one was an uncanny sexual encounter with Chloe Armitage at the homeless shelter. It had left him feeling violated, even though he’d given in to it in the end. The second vision occurred during the battle on the Boston docks, where Armitage had beckoned to him. What was going on? Where were the visions coming from? What did the first vision mean? Was Armitage inside his head? Was she figuratively screwing with him? Why did he give in to her at the end, did some part of him want her to win? What the hell was going on? One time he could dismiss as something freakish, twice as coincidence, but three times?
And what was the extreme Ramp experience where time external to the vision seemed to freeze? His mind must be racing through each event, and if the Ramp was involved, how on Earth had he had the first vision before Gang had initiated him?
He had no answers. The only thing he was sure of was he had to rescue Peter or something terrible was going to happen. Something terrible like the end of the world terrible. The shadows and flames in the sky had felt malignant as if driven by a horrific and malevolent intelligence.
Li was looking at him with a ‘what the hell is going on?’ expression on her face. His face froze, he would like to be able to tell her, and he would if only he knew what the answer was. He decided to talk with her later, and explain all three visions. No doubt, Juliette would want to know too.
He hoped they wouldn’t think he was going mad.
He prayed he wasn’t going mad.
He craned his neck, looking through the windscreen. There was no sign of either the dark-gray van or the dark-blue Jaguar sedan.
He whispered harshly, “Damn it.”
* * *
“Where the fuck are we?” Luther asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
The pair of Range Rovers were flying along the road at well above the legal speed limit. There was no sign of the Shadowstone van or its trailing Jaguar sedan. Unless the Shadowstone operatives were hammering their vehicles or had pulled down another road, they should have caught up with them by now.
Juliette glanced up from her laptop and advised, “No police radars on this road, … which in itself is an oddity. The UK is one of the most surveilled societies in the world. Why are there no cameras here, especially this close to a major RAF airbase?”
“Juliette,” Francis stated, without taking his eyes off the road, trees, and farms whipping past like ghosts of the daylight beneath a gray sky. “We have a fork in the road coming up. Which one did they go down?”
Juliette touched a key on her laptop’s keyboard, a GPS map swapped to front and center on her screen. Two miles ahead, the road forked. What would she give for a drone right now? She stared into the distance, dropping into silence and bringing her mind palace into being. Her mind integrating everything she had to hand.
Her mind palace bloomed into being, the external world dropping away. She found herself standing at an empty crossroad, the world was silent, a zephyr of a breeze tickled her nose. The sky hung low overhead, an oppressive grayness smothering the light.
She spun around, four roads, all seemingly identical. But it was a fork they were heading to in the real world, how could there be four choices? Was there another dimension to this problem? Something else, in the air, or underground? Alternate pathways in a mind palace vision could also mean something from the past or future intervening deeply in the present.
Shadows pressed in from each direction.
Despite her stillness, silence, and depth of concentration, Juliette shivered. There was something else here, something very dangerous was moving through her vision. Her skin crawled, loneliness bordering on terror sweeping through her. The real world receded further away.
Her mind palace deepened, the roads and shadows falling into sharp relief. She breathed deeply, sighed softly, and reached along the roads.
The implant in her arm burned like a hot coal, hooking through to her laptop, accessing all the available information. The nearest police camera was on one of the roads, the rest fell into deep shadows. It was the clue she needed, the road with the police camera was the wrong road.
The lurking presence receded into the darkness; the gray clouds lifted. She ascended out of her mind palace, the world snapping back around her. The fork in the road was upon them. “Left,” she advised urgently. “Left, now!”
Francis turned the steering wheel slightly, the car careered forward along the left road.
The sense of threat hung around Juliette for a long moment after the mind palace had closed down. A rare frown hung over her forehead. She’d never experienced a mind palace so filled with portentous evil. Something dark and deadly was waiting in the near future - she was sure of it.
She stared through the windscreen. The Range Rover was eating up the miles. There was still no sign of the van or the sedan, but they were out there, somewhere in front of them. Driving at their limits to whatever destination they sought.
Wherever they were going, both Shadowstone and the Mirovar force team would be there soon.
* * *
A thick cloth hood clung to Peter’s face, blocking all sight and dulling sound.
The four Shadowstone agents who shared the back of the van with Peter had barely said a word, giving nothing away. One had kicked him hard in the guts. Still immobilized by the nano-fiber nets, Peter had been unable to respond in kind. He filed the position of that agent away. If he got the chance, he would extract a little payback. Kicking a bound captive was beyond the pale, an unforgivable cowardly act.
When the fourth net had begun to wrap around his body outside the hangar, he’d flexed every muscle he could to maximize his size and give himself room to maneuver within the net. But the smart materials the net was made out of tightened as he inevitably relaxed, eliminating the use of an old Houdini trick to deal with being bound.
As soon as the van started moving, he’d begun a one count per second count. He was already at one thousand and seventy-two, nearly eighteen minutes had passed since his capture. Lying on the floor of the van allowed Peter to feel the vibrations of the motor, driveline, and the tires rolling over the road. He could sense acceleration and changes in direction. The engine was working hard, and the brakes had barely been touched. He was pretty sure they were heading south, and fast, at an average speed well over the speed limit. He estimated they were already at least twenty miles south of Coningsby. He would need to steal a vehicle once he escaped, otherwise he would miss the rendezvous with the Mirovar force team at 12:00.
In any event, he only had a little less than half an hour to affect an escape from the van and break contact with Shadowstone.
His hand reflexively went to rub his chin thoughtfully as he planned an escape but got nowhere. The inability to perform simple gestures irked him more than being hooded and bound in the back of a Shadowstone van. He grinned at himself beneath the hood and chuckled softly.
One of the agents kicked him in the stomach again. “What are you laughing at asshole.”
Pain shot through him; this could get ugly. He needed it to get uglier, and offered derisively, “I was just thinking of your mother pleasuring the village idiot on the night you were conceived.”
“Are you asking for it?”
“Of course,” Peter snarked, “it wasn’t the first time for her.”
“Fuck you!”
The four agents started in on Peter with hard, booted feet and fists like steel. The kicks were relentless, they must have been crouching over him, giving him everything they could in the cramped space. Fists pummeled him remorselessly, the punches snapping in whip-fast.
Peter grimaced, waiting for his chance.
He crunched, lifting his head half a dozen inches off the floor. One the agents smashed him hard on the right cheek. He went with the blow, hitting his head against the floor of the van. Stars shot before his eyes, and he went limp.
“Check him,” one of the agents growled.
A pair of fingers pressed against his throat, finding his carotid artery. “He’s still got a pulse, damn slow but strong.”
“He’s out cold, you might have thumped him a bit too hard.”
“Heathmont won’t be happy if you’ve damaged him too much.”
“Fuck Heathmont.”
“Stow that shit, Collins.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The agents fell silent.
Peter continued breathing slowly. Let them think he was unconscious. It was a lever he could use to escape. All he needed was the slimmest of openings, the slightest mistake and he would be gone. He’d already shifted the situation in his favor. They were unaware he was awake and waiting for the first opportunity to take action.
They would regret underestimating him.
He continued his silent counting.
* * *
A flash of dark-blue disappeared around a broad-left curve in front of them.
“It’s the Jag!” Anton asserted, pointing forward with his right hand between Juliette and Francis.
“We’ve caught them,” Francis declared.
The two Range Rovers barreled around the corner, ten or eleven seconds behind the Shadowstone vehicles. The road stretched straight for half a mile before curving to the right. Halfway along was a turn off to the left. The dark-gray van slowed down, the Jaguar sedan with it. Francis tapped on the brakes, bringing the Range Rover back under the speed limit. The Shadowstone vehicles took the left turn, keeping their speed low as they moved along the side road.
There were thick screens of trees along both sides of the main road. Anton’s SUV approached the intersection, a gatehouse and boom gate nestled down the side road emerged from the tree line. Camouflaged painted metal dominated on the far side of the boom gate, a pair of long gun barrels jutted out to the left and right of a bulbous turret, pointing down the side road toward the main road.
“A tank,” Anton observed. He stared intently at the massive vehicle as the SUV approached the intersection. Details of the military manual Peter had given him to read on the flight over flashing through his mind. It was one of the newly deployed ‘Commander,’ tanks, named for their ability to dominate and take command of a battlefield. It was the first tank to be deployed with a viable rail gun able to deliver a kinetic spike made of tungsten at nine times the speed of sound. It had a more conventional 105mm gun with high-explosive rounds, a 7.62mm minigun, and a belt-fed grenade launcher. Its weapon systems were largely automated, simplifying operations down to two people, a driver/gunner, and a commander. If necessary, the tank could be fully operated by only the driver/gunner.
Francis took the SUVs past the intersection, as if they were just simple, law-abiding traffic with no interest in what lay down the side road.
Anton stared out the window as they passed by. The boom gate was up, the van and the Jaguar were passing beneath an arching sign that proclaimed ‘Squadron F,’ in large black letters. They were obviously expected, no checks on those vehicles. The Commander tank sat on the right side of the gate, opposite the main gatehouse. One of the crew was climbing down the side of the tank, heading toward the gatehouse, leaving the turret hatch open. Fifty yards behind it, a pair of wheeled armored personnel carriers bristled with firepower and menace. Beyond them, the side road ran another fifty yards before turning to the right and disappearing behind a stand of trees stretching parallel to the perimeter fence. Anton counted heads as the Range Rover sped past at sixty miles per hour. There were four men in standard dark-gray combat fatigues manning the gate. Another eight men, wearing the standard matte black Shadowstone body armor stood on the far side of the gate. All of the men were armed with automatic rifles.
