Harbinger

by S L Shelton

  From under the stack of cardboard, I found my broken pen and its clip. With my wrists bent as far as I could manage, I was able to slip the broken end of the clip into the ratchet of the zip tie. Using the toe of my boot as leverage, I pressed on the clip, wiggling it as I worked it under the catch.

  Ow, I thought as even that limited effort began burning my thighs where the blades had been. Blood was starting to pool on the cardboard beneath me.

  I took a deep breath and pushed past the pain as I continued wiggling the clip, trying to wedge it under the clasp. When it finally slipped in, I dropped backward on the cardboard and gasped from the exertion.

  Okay, the electricity has stopped, I thought to Wolf. Now would be a good time intervene on that pain issue.

  No reply.

  I shook my head. “Thanks for the support,” I whispered bitterly.

  I pressed my fingers together and spread my hands, slowly working the zip tie open. Now that the clasp slid above the notches, suspended by my makeshift tool, the friction was all that was holding it tight. When I finally wiggled enough slack in the loop, I extracted my hands.

  I paused to think. Wait! I can’t just take my restraints off if I want to draw the guards in.

  The tip of the pen I had stolen was just the right size to wedge under the clasp of the ratchet on the zip tie.

  Let’s make them think I’m still safely zipped up.

  I nodded. “Good plan,” I muttered as I shoved the point of the pen into the gap and began wedging it back and forth, attempting to break the clasp off permanently.

  Outside, voices passed nearby and I stopped, preparing to hide my tools. When the voices began to fade with distance, I continued my work. After a moment, the small piece of metal broke off and fell out of the clasp housing. I dropped back to the wall and breathed heavily, totally wiped. Turning my head to the side until it cracked, I set my jaw, preparing for action.

  Now, I thought. Let’s get some first aid up in here.

  I slipped my hands back into the loop of the zip tie and pulled it closed with my teeth. Without the metal clip in place, I would be able to free myself at will.

  “Hey! I’m bleeding out in here!” I yelled.

  Nothing.

  “I’m bleeding to death!” I sounded a little more hysterical that time.

  A second later, the door swung open and my tormentor stepped in, glaring at me.

  I lifted my head sluggishly. “I’m bleeding out,” I muttered weakly.

  He closed the door, but he returned a moment later with a roll of duct tape. When he came in, he left the door sitting ajar.

  Yes!

  He stooped to wrap tape around my leg. When he rolled it over the top, it slipped, unable to adhere to the slick blood smeared across my skin.

  “Here,” I said, reaching up as if to hold the end.

  He looked up at me, and I pulled my hands apart before jabbing the pen that I had palmed into his carotid artery. My other hand flew to his mouth as he began to thrash. I rolled him to the floor and pushed the pen deeper. His eyes flashed wide as I hit bone. I stared at him as the life left his body.

  I lay there for several minutes, catching my breath and reeling from the agony in my thighs. When his last breath bubbled through his damaged throat, I dropped my forehead on his to rest my aching neck.

  “Nineteen,” I muttered, counting backward the number of Harbinger’s men I had to deal with.

  When I rolled off him, I tried to stand and go to the door. Pain shot through my thighs like lightning, feeling almost as if the metal shafts were still embedded in my muscle. I crashed to the stone floor on my elbows. Once there, I crawled until I reached the door. It’s just pain, Scott, I thought, and I moved to get up again. Yeah, but that’s a lot of pain to ignore.

  Voices down the hall hastened the beat of my heart again, but they passed by, unaware I had just slain one of their own. I slipped the pen in the doorway and then closed the door until it stopped on my bloody weapon.

  **

  8:15 a.m.—Lucerne, Switzerland, G8 Conference

  NCS DIRECTOR MATHEW BURGESS walked to the waiting limo with the Secretary of State. Though the sun was up, it hadn’t yet started to warm the air. The haze of breath from the secret service agents hung low, seemingly reluctant to evaporate in the morning calm.

  “Matt, there are going to be questions if this doesn’t work out,” the Secretary said. “Hell—there’ll be a lot of questions anyway. Are you sure it’s a good idea for us to leave now?”

  “Madam Secretary, we don’t want to be anywhere near this place when this Op goes down,” Burgess replied. “In fact, I’m a bit nervous you made us hold on as long as you did. I would’ve had us out of here hours ago.”

  “I know,” she replied, her expression melting into helpless resignation. “But we’re so close to an agreement on the international banking rules. Even the Russians have seen the light.”

  “I sympathize with your dilemma,” he said after opening the door for her. “But we’ll lose a lot of credibility if an unauthorized tactical operation goes bad while we are still sitting around, waiting for the Russians to stop their passive aggressive delays.”

  She nodded. “Damned inconvenient timing though,” she muttered.

  “It’s never convenient,” Burgess said with a smile as one of the Secretary’s secret service agents started to get in.

  “Susan, the director and I have some sensitive things to discuss,” the Secretary said prompting the agent to freeze. “I need you to ride in the lead vehicle this morning.”

  The agent looked at Director Burgess and then back to the Secretary, tension on her face.

  “We’ll be fine between here and the jet,” the Secretary added. “I know it’s a breach of protocol. I won’t make a habit of it.”

  Susan nodded and closed the door before walking around to the driver’s window.

  “Do you think the Russians are being paid to slow things down?” the Secretary asked in a whisper.

  “That possibility has crossed my mind,” Burgess replied. “But we’re still working to uncover the conspiracy behind the subterfuge and the accounts.”

  She nodded before looking up thoughtfully. “Does the agent abduction you’re dealing with have anything to do with that investigation?”

  Burgess nodded. “It has everything to do with the investigation,” he replied quietly. “That’s why we’re risking the incursion.”

  She shook her head, knitting her brow. “As soon as we are back in the States, I’ll have someone brief you and your people on what the other Foreign Ministers have shared with us,” she said. “Something big is going on, and it’s making it difficult to set up the necessary political and economic safeguards in the global theater.”

  “It’s making it difficult back home as well,” Burgess added. “If we don’t head it off soon, it may be impossible to reverse the damage.”

  “You’re so pessimistic, Matt,” she replied with a disapproving grin.

  “That’s what I’m paid for, Madam Secretary.”

  She smiled and looked up to the driver. “What’s the holdup?” she asked. “Get us to the airport.”

  The driver turned after ending a call. “Yes, Madam Secretary,” he replied and spoke into his radio. “Rose Garden, rolling. ETA, twenty minutes to Alpnach.”

  **

  8:35 a.m.—South of Lucerne, in transit over the Sarneraatal Valley

  NICK HORIATIS was hanging over the shoulder of the helicopter pilot. “Step on the gas, son,” he yelled over the roar of the engine. “There’s people waiting on us.”

  “No offense, sir, but we’re flying pretty damn low in this valley to be going this fast already,” the pilot yelled over his shoulder. “If you want to make it at all, sit down and let me concentrate.”

  Nick resisted the urge to lash out and instead, returned to his seat between Dylan and Kathrin. Kathrin looked up and shot him a nervous grin as he came back. She had been otherwise quiet the whole tr
ip. She had even helped pull the weapon and equipment bundle from the snow-covered valley floor a few minutes earlier when they landed for the pick up—no hesitation. She had just jumped out and lifted, right alongside Dylan and the three SEALs that were aboard.

  Across the deck, the last three SEALs had their game faces on. Expressions of unemotional, heightened awareness gave them an aura similar to machines as they checked and rechecked their equipment.

  “Two minutes,” the pilot said.

  Not soon enough, Nick thought as he clicked his mic open to speak. “Arrow, this is Spartan. We are two minutes from the opposite ridge you are on.”

  “Roger that, Spartan,” Marsh replied. “We’ve taken up position on the edge of the tree line. There is no concealment for a hundred meters once we clear them.”

  “Understood,” Nick replied. “What’s the SITREP?”

  “We’ve only seen three Tangos on the wall…no entrances we can see from this side. There’s an old gate in the wall but it’s been bricked up,” Marsh replied. “I’ve got Majesty moving closer to see if there’s a way to enter from the cliff side…but it’s slow going.”

  “Any surveillance or weapons systems viewable from your angle?” Nick asked.

  “Negative, Spartan. Like I said…just the three Tangos on the wall and only one or two at a time. We can’t use the drones with them up there.”

  “Roger,” Nick replied as he caught sight of the ridge. “On the back side now. Give us five minutes to get to the summit.”

  “I hear your chopper now,” Marsh replied. “The Tangos are looking around for the source.”

  “Let ’em look,” Nick replied. “They won’t see us coming.”

  “Roger that.”

  When the helicopter touched down, Dylan and the SEALs slid the door back and exited. Kathrin started to get out of her seat, Nick put his hand on her shoulder.

  “That wasn’t the deal,” Nick said. “You stay put.”

  “I can help!” Kathrin said, trying to rise again.

  Nick grimaced through the pain from that simple motion. “No,” he said sharply, reaching up and turning on the radio. “You can listen, but if I see you coming up that hill, I’m having one of those SEALs carry you back down over his shoulder.”

  She sat back in her seat with an angry glare.

  Nick looked at the pilot. “Make sure she stays put,” he said. “If she moves, let me know.”

  The pilot nodded and returned his attention to gauge and dial checks.

  “If he needs me, I’m going,” Kathrin said as Nick exited the side door. “Even a SEAL can’t stop me.”

  Nick grunted as his feet hit the ground and then turned, smiling. “What are you going to do?” he asked facetiously. “Throw rocks? They’re almost two thousand meters away on the opposite ridge…and there’s a five hundred foot granite rock face between the bottom and that fort over there.”

  She shrugged indifferently.

  “Stay,” he said.

  After he closed the door, she flipped her middle finger, jabbing it into the air at his back.

  **

  With great difficulty, I stripped off my own clothes. I paused briefly to towel off the blood that was still running down my leg and the wet from between my legs from when my bladder had released during torture.

  I then began removing Mister Torture’s clothes. “Nothing personal,” I said to him as I yanked his pants off before I paused and glared at him. “Okay…maybe it was a little personal.”

  Before slipping his pants on myself, I duct taped both leg wounds. If nothing else, it would stop the bleeding. It’s just pain, I thought to myself. The pain won’t kill you, but giving into the pain will.

  I paused and listened halfway through a wrap when I thought I heard a helicopter. I looked toward the window, straining to hear, but it was so faint and brief that I couldn’t even be sure I had heard it at all after it had ceased.

  After slipping his pants on and cinching up his belt around the slightly-too-large waist, I pulled his sweatshirt off. I paused once as people passed the door again, bracing to fight if necessary… But they kept moving down the hall.

  I’m not going to be that lucky every time.

  As soon as I had switched into his clothes, I pulled him over against the wall and piled the sheets of cardboard over his body.

  “Thanks,” I whispered as I covered his face. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  I held my breath and listened through the door. As soon as the hall seemed quiet, I stepped out and walked as normally as possible. I looked into the radio room as I walked past—Harbinger stood there facing the computer.

  “There’s been a delay of some sort,” the man in front of the computer said over his shoulder to Harbinger.

  Harbinger straightened and turned slightly toward me. I ducked back quickly.

  “Let me know as soon as you get confirmation,” he said. “The batteries on the launchers won’t hold out indefinitely in this cold. If you don’t hear anything in the next thirty minutes, wake the night shift and have them go power down the arrays.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said as big footsteps came my direction.

  I turned and walked down the hall at a normal pace toward the torture room. As I went in, I looked over my shoulder and saw Harbinger’s giant back, moving away from me down the hall. A shiver raced up my spine as I ducked back into the torture room, fearful that even staring too long would alert him to my escape. After pushing the door slightly ajar to hide my actions, I took the jacket Mister Torture had left on the table there.

  Harbinger’s computer sat there still, running, begging me to check it out. No, I thought. I don’t have time. Get a weapon and go.

  But I couldn’t resist, and my fingers went to the keyboard almost as if they had a mind of their own. I paused after a second and went to the door, checking the hallway once before returning to the computer. I went to work, doing what I did best…accessing information.

  I went directly to the list of recent files accessed, harvested from his registry. Below the listings for his video software, I found an entry called “Strelets arrangement”. I copied the file location and then pulled it up. It was a text file with labels and what looked like coordinates.

  “What are you targeting?” I whispered.

  I brought up a mapping interface and overlaid the coordinates. As the map was rendered on the screen, I began to see that something big was in the works—four separate installations of Strelets rocket launch arrays were mapped on four separate mountaintops, all surrounding a Swiss airbase called Alpnach.

  Why are they going after a Swiss base?—and with rockets? How much damage could they possibly hope to inflict on a base that size? And then the fog cleared from my head. Airbase! They have an air target in mind…going into or coming out of Alpnach!

  It dawned on me that I might find out where I was by using the location function on the map program. I clicked the “locate” pin.

  “Shit,” I muttered as the green pin dropped smack dab into the middle of a town called Flühli. We were centrally located between all of the rocket arrays.

  I heard voices in the next room, forcing me to stop my research. I turned, about to leave, when the side door opened and one of Harbinger’s men walked in. He barely even looked up as he came in, but when he did, his face snapped up in a double take.

  I was already two-thirds of the way to him when he opened his mouth. From the torture case, I grabbed one of the daggers that had been used on me and jabbed it into his throat. Before his hands could come up in defense, I yanked it out and thrust it up through his chin. Instead of a scream, he released a ghastly, gurgling whine behind my hand before the blade pushed into his brain. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Through the open door, another man appeared with an inquisitive expression.

  “Did you find it?” he asked. Then he looked up.

  I slammed my shoulder against the door, catching his head between it and the timber
doorframe. His shoulder stopped me from doing any real damage, but the wind left his lungs in a rush.

  As the first man fell to the floor, I yanked the thin steel dagger from his chin. While the other man struggled to take a breath, I reached over with my free hand and grabbed a handful of his hair. His eyes met mine as I pulled his head back.

  “Help!” he finally managed to call out, gasping, but I sank the steel shank into his throat.

  “Seventeen,” I muttered as I took the blade and rushed to the door before he had even collapsed. My chest heaved, and the short-winded breaths coming from my nose sounded loud enough to me that I thought they might be heard everywhere—but no one appeared and no one came running.

  I felt as if I were on the edge of collapse as I went back to the bodies and then slowly, painfully moved them into the other room. Neither of them had a weapon—and neither of them had a phone.

  Shit!

  I looked through the window of the small room and saw it faced a large courtyard…its tall walls were lined with doors and windows. Were it not dark in the room, anyone across the yard would be able to clearly see me hiding my crime.

  I heard footsteps in the hall outside.

  That’s enough fucking around, Scott, I thought to myself. It’s time to get the hell out of here.

  As they passed the room, I exited, walking away from them back down the hallway I had come. There were too many voices in the other direction, and I had already risked too much. Now that I knew where the Igla Rockets and their automated Strelets launcher arrays were, I had no reason to hang around. Whoever they were planning to bring down with the rockets would have a better chance of survival if I could get down off that mountain and get a call off to Langley.

  I was about to push the door of my cell open when it swung in from the inside—Bellos stopped cold with a surprised look on his face.

  “You,” he sneered.

  I shoved him, pressing my hand to his mouth as he tried to call out. His hand shot up and knocked my wrist against the doorframe as we barreled into my cell, causing me to drop the blade. It clattered down, ringing out on the stone floor.