Phantom zero, p.13
Phantom Zero, page 13
And Zero had no idea where to find them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Hit the ground,” Maya said over the radio. “Now.”
The team complied, hitting the deck and laying still. It was possible, likely even, that the drones had seen them already, but if there was even a chance that wasn’t the case, then it was a chance worth taking.
Maya’s heart pounded as the dark silhouettes of the drones descended lazily toward the team. They flew about fifteen feet above the ground, kicking up snow with their quad rotors but making very little noise. They must have electric motors rather than gas or diesel engines.
The drones continued to approach, weapons pointed directly in front of them. They hadn’t seen the team yet. That was good. If the drones had infrared sensors, they were screwed, but if they only had optical sensors, then they could play dead and hope that their white snowsuits looked too much like actual snow to trigger their threat identification software.
In other words, maybe every single thing would go right. What a lovely hope.
The drones passed overhead, whipping snow into Maya’s eyes. They didn’t stop, and the machine guns strapped to their fuselages didn’t tilt downward toward them. Maya remained where she was while the drones finished their sweep of the slope.
Maya felt a rush of relief, but they weren’t out of the woods yet, a fact Bolton affirmed a moment later.
“They’re scanning the aircraft.” He was facing down the slope while Maya and Trent were facing up. “They might see that we’re not there.”
“I don’t think they’re that smart,” Trent said. “I think they’re just looking for movement.”
“I hope you’re right, Talon.”
The drones remained over the airplane for a minute before heading back up the slope. They picked up speed, whipping past the agents and blowing more snow into Maya’s eyes before disappearing over the edge.
The group cautiously got to their feet. Bolton met Maya’s eyes and spoke her own worries aloud.
“If they catch us standing or walking, the game’s up. We need to find cover.”
“Drone!”
Maya looked up and saw the drones returning. Flying much faster this time.
And their machine guns were aimed straight for them.
“Shit. Return fire!” Maya cried. “Aim for their optical sensors! They look like camera lenses!”
She fired a burst at the nearest drone. The armor-piercing bullets cracked the composite shell effortlessly. The drone shuddered, paused, then dropped to the ground.
Maya felt a rush of elation that died quickly when the surviving drones separated at incredible speed. A few SOG agents fired, but their bursts plowed harmlessly into the snow.
The drones dipped their wings, changing directions almost instantly. Maya dove for the ground instinctively, crying out for her team to do the same.
Bullets slammed into the snow next to her, cracking ice and sending powder up in flumes above the ground. Maya heard a cry and rolled to her feet to see one of the SOG agents rolling on the ground, screaming in agony, clutching a shattered right arm to his chest.
She sprinted toward him, calling, “Stay calm! I’m—”
Another burst from a drone split the man in half from his crown to his groin.
“Shit!”
She fired at the drone, clipping one of its rotors. It veered sideways, nearly hit the ground, then recovered and turned back toward her, shaking a little. She aimed her rifle at it and—
Something slammed into her, throwing her to the ground. Bullets cut a hole in the ground where she was standing an instant before. Trent rolled off of her and fired at the drone aiming at her. It easily evaded his gunfire and aimed at him, but Bolton shot it in the back. The hulk burst into flames, tilted slowly downward, then slammed into the snow, leaving a groove of slush behind.
Another agent cried out, and Maya saw her stumble down the slope for a few feet. Blood poured from a wound in her abdomen. She lifted her eyes to meet Maya’s, and Maya watched them roll back in her head. She started to fall, and a drone burst her skull with another volley.
Maya shouted in rage and grief and emptied her clip at the drone. It tried too late to evade, and several rounds caught it in the midsection. None hit the optical sensor that Maya had designated as a target, but sparks flew from the wounds, and the drone shuddered, jerked, then fell.
Three drones down. Four remaining. Two of their agents are gone, leaving them with eight left in total, including Trent, herself, and Bolton.
“Specter, move!” Bolton called. “Don’t stand still!”
Maya leaped forward, and a bullet smacked one of the cleats on her boots, tearing it off and snapping her left leg to the side. She winced as something pulled in her hip, and instead of landing gracefully, she slammed into the snow, scraping her face and sending blood jetting from her nose.
“Damn it,” she growled, rolling onto her back. Her nose didn’t feel broken, but that seemed like a microscopically thin silver lining all things considered.
Another drone approached Bolton, dipping, weaving, and sliding out of the way of his return fire. Bolton fired from the hip, teeth bared, frustration overriding his common sense and causing him to ignore the good advice he’d given Maya a second ago.
Maya fired at the drone, shooting it through the back and causing it to stop evading. It flew straight forward, and Bolton’s next burst found its optical sensor. It dropped like a rock, and Bolton rolled forward to avoid being crushed underneath it.
Three to go.
She caught movement to her left and turned that way to see two of the surviving drones approach an agent in a pincer movement. The agent evaded one drone’s fire, but as he was moving, the other drone anticipated his action and cut him to ribbons.
“Damn it!” Maya shouted.
She fired at the drone, but both had already moved on, selecting their next target.
Trent.
Her blood drained to her feet. Nearly shrieking, she cried out a warning. “Trent! To your left!”
Trent turned that way and fired at the approaching drone. While he did, Maya fired at the drone to his right. Trent’s bullets found its mark, but the other drone evaded Maya and turned toward her, opening up with its machine gun.
Maya threw herself to the side, but her foot slipped, and instead of rolling back to her feet, she started to tumble down the mountain. She tried to slow her descent by slamming her rifle into the ground, but that only tore the weapon effortlessly from her hands. She curled into a ball, covering her head and hoping she didn’t fall so far she couldn’t catch up.
She didn’t. Instead, she slammed back first onto one of he downed drones. She gasped and slid behind the craft, the wind knocked completely out of her.
Bullets cracked through the shell of the drone, missing Maya by millimeters. Maya gasped and staggered to her feet. She looked up the slope and saw her rifle over a hundred feet higher than she was. There was no way she could reach it in time to affect the outcome of this fight.
She drew her handgun instead and fired. The bullets cracked the glass of the optical sensor but didn’t pierce it. The drone fired, missing her, probably because of the damaged optical sensor, but causing the drone behind her to slide. It knocked the back of her leg, and she stumbled, nearly falling and righting herself only to see the drone sliding toward her.
She jumped to the right, slid another foot, then mercifully stopped. The drone hellbent on killing her scanned around with its damaged optical sensor. Maya braced herself, aimed carefully, and fired again. The bullet struck the drone, widening the crack in its “eye” but still not killing it. It turned toward her and fired.
Fire seared her shoulder, but she held her ground and fired again. This one did it, punching through the cracked “eye” and scrambling the drone’s brains. It tilted up and shot past her, then fell to the ground.
She sighed and checked her sound. A groove just above her collarbone. Nothing serious.
She breathed a sigh of relief, then looked up the slope. Trent and Bolton were both firing bursts into the sole surviving drone. It shuddered, then broke apart in a shower of sparks.
Maya climbed back up to the team. Only three SOG agents survived to stand with their three leaders.
Maya sighed as she surveyed the battlefield. The bodies of their comrades lay in the snow, sacrificed to protect the innocent. Losing people was a part of this job, but it never got easy. They all left loved ones behind, families who would never see them again because they chose to fight to protect the world from people like Keller.
And Maya couldn’t even give them a proper burial.
We’ll come back for you, she promised. We won’t leave you here.
“We keep going,” she said. “We’re close to the surface of the glacier. From there, it’s a straight shot to the facility.”
The team continued on. The sun was high in the sky now, and its rays shimmered off of the great expanse of white. Not much longer now, and they were taking the long way around.
And leaving the bodies of four more comrades behind.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Panic is death.
Zero couldn’t remember where he’d first heard those words. They’d been part of his mantra for decades. Panic is death. When he was caught in a storm off the coast of Madagascar in a sinking boat, he fought panic and formed a raft from a section of the boat’s mast to keep himself afloat until he could find rescue. When he was struggling to prevent an oil tycoon from causing a nuclear meltdown that would have destroyed the city of Vienna, he fought panic and found a way to shut off power to the mechanism that would have caused the meltdown. When the massive Russian giant working for the Dragons broke into that room and nearly beat him to death he…
Well, he tried his best, but if it wasn’t for Maya’s last-second intervention, he would have died. That was the problem. Panic was death, but a lot of other things were death too, and overcoming panic wasn’t a guarantee that you’d avoid all of those other things.
Now all three of Zero’s children were risking their lives. It was bad enough to think of Maya in the field without him, but he was supposed to protect Sara and Mischa. They, at least, were supposed to be safe.
Instead, they were gone going God knows where doing God knows…
Actually, Zero had a pretty good idea where they were going.
“They’re going after Meridian.”
“Yeah,” Alan said.
His face was green and sick, possibly a lingering effect from the sedative, but most likely guilt. He confirmed that a second later when he said, “Zero, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have drunk that beer. I should have known—”
“Alan, just…” Zero took a breath to keep himself calm. “I’m not mad at you. This one’s on the girls. I also don’t have the energy to manage your emotions right now, so let’s just focus on getting them back. They’re going after Meridian. I’m going to bet they’re going after the van I was following. The breach occurred when I pulled onto Okeechobee Trail. That trail leads to BLM land just past the Maryland border south of Sugarloaf. I’m thinking that’s where Meridian’s hiding their army. We can take my truck and head them off.”
Alan swallowed and pressed his palms to his temple. Zero amended that. “Actually, I’ll head them off. You stay here and watch the radars.”
“No,” Alan groaned. “No, I’m definitely going with you. But I think we need to slow down before we decide where we’re going. Forest Road 92 leads to BLM land, but it also intersects with about a dozen trails that lead into National Forest Service land. It also links with some major roads that lead to towns with empty warehouses, farm silos, and so forth.”
Zero sighed. “Shit. Well, maybe we pick up the trail and see if we can find the girls?”
“They took Sara’s Civic,” Alan said. “They’re not taking forest roads in a Civic. The one in front of the cabin is maintained, but 92 gets a plow once a year, and most of the rest don’t even get that.”
“Well, we have to do something, Alan. We can’t just sit here.”
“Zero, calm down,” Alan said. “Trust me, I am just as broken up as you. I dropped the fucking ball again.” Zero started to shake his head, and Alan said, “Thank you for saying otherwise, but the point is that I am angry and scared and guilty on top of that. I want to go out there guns blazing too, but that’s not the right call because that’s not what the girls will do. Sara is rash, but if there’s one thing Mischa isn’t, it’s impulsive. I’m willing to wager that it was Sara’s idea to leave, but I’d bet money it was Mischa’s idea to drug me. She’s calculating even when she’s overconfident. We need to think like her if we’re going to find her. So what would Mischa do?”
Zero thought for a moment. Mischa was supremely confident. The only reason Zero wouldn’t say overconfident was that she so rarely found herself in a position she couldn’t overcome. In fact, Meridian was, to his knowledge, the only group that had ever truly threatened her.
So how would she respond to this threat? How would she adjust to facing an enemy she was committed to defeating, but one she knew could honestly threaten her?
His heart sank as he realized he didn’t know. It had been so long since he’d been in combat with her. She was still a child, but she was closer and closer to an adult every day, and he’d missed so much of that growth.
Another proverb came to him. Guilt weakens.
He pushed his emotions aside and said, “Honestly, you’d know better than me. You’ve been working with her for the past four years.”
“Well, more like two years. She didn’t start right after… You know what, nevermind. Um…” He groaned and rubbed his forehead, but color was returning to his face, and his eyes didn’t look so vacant anymore. “She would find resources. She never went anywhere without lining up everything she might need for an operation.”
“Okay,” Zero said. “Where would she get those resources? She can’t go to Todd. We cleaned out the house, so there’s nothing there. What about your network?”
“Maybe,” Alan said. “But they’d call me. They’re my contacts. They wouldn’t just hand Mischa stuff.”
“Would she take it?”
Alan frowned. “Not violently. But… maybe she’d sneak into a place. Hold on.”
He sat in front of his computer and pulled up a list. Zero's eyes widened when he saw the number of contacts, caches, and safehouses. "This is just in the D.C. area?"
“Well, they’re not all ‘mine’, per se. Just places I know about. The ones highlighted in gold are mine.”
“Damn. You’ve kept busy.”
Alan scoffed. “Yeah. That’s my weakness. I can’t figure out how to fucking stop.”
“I know the feeling,” Zero commiserated. “Unfortunately, so do the girls.”
“Yep. Must be genetic. Which means we must be long-lost cousins or something. Okay.” He tapped a key and most of the items disappeared, leaving three caches and a safehouse, all gold. “I’m assuming she’d prefer something that belongs to me, in other words, someplace that no one else is likely to realize is being robbed. I’m also assuming she doesn’t want to actually interact with people who might call me. She could subdue them, but she’s not going to go around being indiscriminately violent either. That leaves these four places within a tank of gas from the cabin and accessible by a Civic.”
“They could switch vehicles,” Zero pointed out.
“They could, but the name of the game, at least in the beginning, is to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. Mischa won’t want to make noise until she’s far enough away that it won’t matter. She dosed me lightly, so she knows I’m up by now, and she knows the very first thing I’m gonna do is work with you to find her. She’s going to want to be quiet and quick. Which is why I’m thinking…”
He tapped the keys again, and two caches and a safehouse vanished, leaving one remaining. That one was near James Hite Park outside of Leetown in West Virginia, about forty-five minutes away.
Which means the girls would have reached it already, loaded up, and left.
Panic scrabbled up Zero’s neck. He shivered and laced his fingers behind his head, gripping until his knuckles hurt. “Shit. God damn it.”
"We'll head straight there," Alan said. "I know we're behind them, but they'll have left clues. Mischa will value speed more than excessive caution. She won't have stopped to cover their tracks."
“Yeah, because she knows that speed is the best way to avoid us. She’ll be in the goddamned—”
“Zero,” Alan snapped. “Focus. We can do this. Even now, they can’t have gone far. We’ll follow the trail and treat this just like any assignment.”
“Yeah, but it’s not any—”
“I know. But we’ll treat it like one. Panic is death.”
Zero nodded. “Right. Panic is death.”
The scrabbling fingers receded. A little.
The two of them grabbed weapons, body armor, and enhanced vision goggles, just in case they couldn’t reach Mischa and Sara before the two of them found Meridian and started a firefight. They jumped into the truck. Zero started the motor and sped off down the road he’d taken to get here. That would intersect with State Highway 287 in a mile. He would take highways to Leetown and exit on Leetown Road, then take a park trail to the cache.
“You’re sure no one else has gotten into it?” Zero asked.
“I’m sure. There are sensors there that would send an alarm to my phone if anyone breached it. I believe that Mischa could disable those, but anyone less capable than her is going to have a hell of a time even realizing they’re there. Shit.”
Zero glanced at his friend. He was fiddling with Zero’s radio, splicing wires and adding modules. The curse had come when a spark from the radio shocked his index finger. “What are you doing?” Zero asked.
“Installing an amplifier that will let me pick up shortwave signals from a fifty-mile radius. I might be able to pick up Sara’s car radio.”
