by James Hunt
“It’s something I’ve been working with at R&D,” Bryce said. “It’s a camouflage blanket that is adaptable to any environment. Using the satellite, I can control the light frequencies to blend it seamlessly to any background. Check it out.”
Slowly, with the blanket still in her hands, the fabric disappeared. “Holy shit, it’s magic.”
“Actually, it’s a blend of light emission and the bending of—”
“Ugh, I can literally feel the excitement being drained from my body.” Sarah slumped in her seat, her head leaning against her shoulder. “Too much nerd. Can’t go on. Light… fading.”
“Just don’t break it,” Bryce said, his tone dry and unamused.
“Name one time I’ve broken something that you’ve given me,” Sarah said, straightening back up in her seat.
“Example one—”
“Never mind.”
Chapter 10
Bikaner Air Force Base in Rajasthan, India, was enormous, but the surrounding desert terrain provided little in terms of cover, and Sarah found herself glad she had the blanket Bryce had developed. She moved among the patrols of soldiers and Humvees undetected. And with the number of aircraft taking off and landing at the base, she could have been easily spotted from above without it.
“This invention is the envy of every adolescent male teen in the world.” She squinted. “Why haven’t we developed any tech like this before?” Sarah skirted a platoon of soldiers on her path to the base’s chain-link fence.
“I actually proposed a prototype for a drone that could basically do everything you could and never be seen. When I showed it to Mack, he had me put it on the back burner.”
“Really? Why?” Getting rid of the human element seemed right up Mack’s alley, even if only for the simple fact that he wouldn’t have to deal with her antics anymore. She knew she boiled the man’s blood, which wasn’t always intentional. But much of the time it was.
“He said that while a computer could be told what to do, it didn’t have the human instinct that makes what we do so important,” Bryce said. Raising his voice one octave higher, he added, “Though I think you might be solely responsible for changing his mind on that particular issue.”
Sarah stopped at the fence, waiting for a Humvee to pass before she attempted to climb over the top. “Yeah, I am pretty special.” The fence buckled from her weight, but there wasn’t anyone around to see it. “Everyone in position?”
“Yeah, looks good so far,” Bryce answered. “And remember—”
“Don’t start World War III.” Sarah moved swiftly across the grounds, following the highlighted path to the control room that she needed to infiltrate to install Bryce’s program. She kept her feet light and quiet on the journey through the base, resisting the urge to seriously mess with the soldiers she passed. This little device was going to change the game for Halloween this year.
“The other agents are approaching their sectors,” Bryce said. “Less than sixty seconds till upload.”
A clock ticked away the remaining seconds on the display on Sarah’s forearm as she paused at a door to let a group of soldiers pass. By the time she arrived at the elevator, she had thirty seconds left.
“You’ll need to take the elevator underground,” Bryce said. “I’ll override the controls.”
Out of all the missions she’d ever been on, this one seemed the most surreal. She was literally standing beneath an invisibility cloak, sneaking around a nuclear base in India, and because she had to remain quiet, she had to keep every single Kwik-E-Mart joke bottled up inside. And Mack thought she didn’t have restraint.
***
Langley was in a flurry of activity, and Mack found himself in the eye of the storm. It took the coordinated efforts of nearly every asset the CIA had, in addition to Homeland, NSA, and the FBI, to ensure that the countries they were in communication were on the same page. The big fear was if Grimes got wind of one of the nukes going offline, he would set them all off.
Phones were glued to ears, and eyes were burned by the glow of computer screens. Everyone kept their eyes on the global timer, because once it hit zero, the program would be simultaneously uploaded. But out of all of the installations around the globe that were involved in this, there was one in particular everyone was nervous about.
The map of the Pakistan–India region was plastered on the main screen in the conference room, and just like Mallory and the rest of his team, Mack couldn’t pull his eyes away from the scene unfolding halfway around the world.
Mack knew that his agents would be able to pull it off, but he still wasn’t sure how Grimes would react to their success. There was, however small, the possibility that Grimes had anticipated this move and was somehow prepared to stop them, though he couldn’t see how. Bryce had the schematics, and he was the best support agent that the GSF had ever known. No, this was just pre-mission jitters.
Mallory paced directly in front of the screen, blocking sections of it with his head, but only in brief spurts. “How many boots do you have on the ground?”
“Fifty,” Mack answered, reaching for the coffee to help steady the light tremor he felt in his right hand. “One agent for each nuclear installation.” He took a sip and grimaced. It was cold. Still, he choked it down then reached for his phone, which was alive with notification updates from each mission. “Everyone is in position. We’re just waiting on the uploading of the program.”
One of Mallory’s aides put down the phone. “China and Europe are good to go. Russia is finishing up preparations right now.” Almost immediately the young man returned to work, speaking in Russian to the Kremlin.
“Thank you.” Mallory spun around and then collapsed in a chair, immediately burying his face in his palm. His shirt was untucked, his tie undone, and what hair he had left on his head was disheveled. He looked like a kid after prom, tired and disappointed that he didn’t get laid. “You know what happens if any of your people are caught, right?” He lowered his hand, revealing a pink and worried face. “If they trace this back to us, Mack, we’re done. It won’t be Grimes that starts World War III, it’ll be us.”
“My people won’t fail.” Despite his lack of handing out gold stars for every good job done, he knew what his team was capable of accomplishing. His thoughts drifted to Hill, and he found her notifications on the screen as Bryce helped guide her into the facility.
The snapshots of data included brief portions of the mission commentary between the two agents, and Mack couldn’t stop the low grunt and eye roll that was commonplace whenever he reviewed their transcripts. It never ceased to amaze him just how delinquent Hill could act. But then a notification arrived that raised an alarm. “Oh my God.” It wasn’t until Mallory grabbed Mack’s arm that he realized he’d said that aloud. Mack quickly dialed Bryce and pressed the phone to his ear. “What the hell is going on?”
Bryce answered in one breathless, lightning-fast sentence. “Boss, I’m a little busy right now.”
“Bryce, don’t—” But the call disconnected before Mack could even finish his sentence. He turned to Mallory and the rest of the agents in the conference room. “Tell everyone to hold off on the upload!” Everyone froze, and Mack repeated the order. “NOW!”
The room broke into a flurry of activity as agents instructed the other countries to hold while Mack quickly rose from his chair and stepped out of the room, walking down the hall, his eyes scanning the incoming notifications, doing his best to segment out Sarah’s choice words. But no matter how he interpreted the communication, there was one clear truth: something was wrong.
***
The descent underground was short—so short that Sarah didn’t anticipate the length, and when the elevator doors opened and four guards bumped into her, she watched the same surprise and confusion spread across their faces that must have been plastered on hers.
One of the guards extended a finger and poked the air around Sarah’s cloak. She took a step backward, avoiding contact, but the remaining gua
rds spread out, blocking the narrow exit from the elevator and trapping her inside.
Sarah pressed her back against the wall as the four Indian soldiers continued their press forward, and when one of them reached for his radio, speaking in lightning fast Hindu, Sarah lunged forward, punching him square on the nose.
The sudden burst of action triggered the other three guards to swing in front of them wildly and blindly, one of them removing a blade that slashed the camouflage blanket, which exposed Sarah to the startled soldiers. “Hi there.”
Sarah flung the blanket to the side and dodged left, right, then ducked as the soldier sliced his blade through the air. The other two soldiers also drew blades, circling to Sarah’s left and thrusting attacks in quick, alternating jabs. She caught one of the wrists brandishing the weapon and snapped it hard left, feeling the crack of bone and intricate cartilage as she thrust the soldier to the side, catching a slice on her cheek as she narrowly escaped a death blow from the soldier on her right.
The elevator doors shut, locking Sarah and the four soldiers in close quarters. Then the elevator started to ascend. “Bryce!”
“Working on it!”
Sarah rammed her knee into one soldier’s stomach then catapulted his body forward, slamming him into one of his comrades, knocking both to the floor. Lightning-fast strikes to the ribs, jaw, and chin, quickly accompanied by the appropriate groans and cries, dropped the last combatant just as the elevator stopped.
Sarah turned, reaching for the Colts in her holsters, waiting for the doors to open and expose her for the shit storm of soldiers no doubt waiting for her on the ground level. Her body jerked slightly from the inertia of the elevator’s descent, and she exhaled. “How many would it have been?”
“Twenty,” Bryce answered. “But there are more on the way. We don’t have a lot of time, Sarah. You need to get that program inserted into their system before Grimes gets wise to what we’re doing.”
The doors opened, and one of the soldiers she’d choked with her throat punch had gotten to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. He reached for the pistol, but Sarah charged him before he could pull the trigger. She slammed him up against the wall, a harsh crack sounding from the contact of skull and concrete, knocking him unconscious.
A swift kick to the chin of the second soldier, who was still writhing on the ground, put him in the same sleepy boat as his comrade, and she glanced down at the four unconscious bodies on the elevator floor. “What I wouldn’t give for a nap.” Sarah turned around and snatched the camouflage blanket from the elevator’s corner.
The blanket flickered on and off, but the fabric had been so badly torn that Bryce couldn’t get it to function anymore. “That’ll make getting out of here an interesting story.” Sarah bunched up the blanket and tucked it under her arm. “How did you miss those guards?”
“The satellite has never run this many missions at once before, plus Mack has me keeping an eye on the CIA communications,” Bryce said. “I’ve had to sacrifice some of the scanning technologies to make that happen.” He paused. “But you’re welcome for stopping the elevator that would have brought you back up to the ground level, where a platoon of Indian soldiers was waiting to wipe you off the face of the earth. Or to torture you until you confessed everything you’ve ever known about the GSF.”
Sarah scoffed, jogging down the hallway to the bunker door that sealed the control room where she needed to upload Bryce’s program. “If I can sit through Mack’s boring human resources meetings, I think I could stand up to a few hours of interrogat—”
Small slits in the door opened, which rifle barrels penetrated and opened fire. Bullets ripped through the hallway, and Sarah spun left, tucking herself behind a small protrusion from the wall.
“Son of a bitch!” Sarah pressed her palm to her right rib cage and dropped the torn blanket from her arm, the sting of the bullet lingering through the thick pieces of Kevlar meant to withstand such a hit. She plucked the bullet from the fabric, the tip of the piece of lead covered in blood, and she chucked it to the ground. Armor-piercing rounds. “Little bastards are starting to get on my nerves.” She reached for her belt, but Bryce’s voice stopped her before she even had a chance.
“No grenades! We need the control room intact, and we can’t risk damaging any of the systems. It could cause one of the missiles to detonate. Shit. The whole base is on high alert now.”
“So I’ve noticed.” Puffs of dust sprouted from each bullet that smacked against the cover of her wall. Sarah crouched low, planted a foot around the corner of her tiny island of cover, and returned fire. The bullets ricocheted off the heavy metal door, barely even offering a scratch. She spun back around, avoiding another spate of bullets to the head. “Bulletproof. Of course.”
The Indian soldiers on duty were nestled behind plates of reinforced steel and concrete, turning her .45 Colts into nothing more than pea shooters. The only weak points were the small crevices they slid their rifle barrels through, but the small space affected their aim. However, all they had to do was wait until reinforcements arrived down that elevator shaft behind her. Time was against her. Sarah looked to the crumpled camouflage blanket in the corner. “Can that thing be sewn up?”
“Not with anything that you have,” Bryce answered. “The stitching requires a diamond needle capable of withstanding—”
Sarah slashed the fabric in half from the point where the guard had slashed his knife through. “Yeah, that’s great. Look, I’m just gonna use half of it to sneak my way up to the door and then drop a flash disk inside that slit. So just get ready to disarm the lock.”
“… You’re very difficult sometimes, you know that?”
“Yeah, but I make up for it with my sense of humility.”
“You’re insane.”
“And incredibly attractive.” Sarah frowned and shook her fists. “Ugh. There goes the humility card!”
The blanket flickered on, and Sarah tucked herself behind it, though it was significantly smaller now, and she was forced to duck on her approach. The rifles were still poking through those slits. If the blanket malfunctioned now and they opened fire, those armor-piercing rounds would tear her to pieces.
Once at the door, she slowly lowered and pressed herself flat against it, discarding the blanket and reaching for the disk at her belt. She pushed herself up toward the nearest slit. She took a breath and then shoved it inside.
The subsequent bang was quickly followed by screams. The keypad that kept the door locked flashed green, and Sarah yanked the handle, heaving the heavy hulk of a door open.
Inside, the soldiers were spread across the ground or blindly pawing the walls near the entrance. Sarah knocked them unconscious while they were still disoriented from the flash disk and then tied their wrists and ankles together, shoving them into a corner.
The control console blinked with a million buttons, and Sarah had no idea what they controlled.
“You’ll need to find the override port,” Bryce said. “It’ll be slightly larger than the drive you have with you, but it’ll still fit.”
Sarah scanned the console, finding the port on the far end. She inserted the drive and then let Bryce work whatever magic he needed to do. “So what happens if this doesn’t work?”
“A couple things could happen,” Bryce answered. “But all of them end with you being blown to smithereens.”
Sarah nodded. “Just another day at the office.”
***
Once Bryce gave the go-ahead, Mack ordered the rest of the uploads to commence. While the room relayed the order and the coordinated download began, a wave of relief washed over Mack, and judging from Mallory’s collapse into a chair, he bet that his colleague felt the same way. Quick congratulations were sent around to the intelligence directors and their collective coordinated efforts, something that Mack made sure to stay out of the way for.
While the other agencies might have completed their job, for Mack, there was still the matter of making sur
e all of his people got out of Pakistan and India alive. The tension of the past hour had sapped what strength and resolve remained to him, and Mack desperately needed a cup of coffee. With his phone still clutched in his palm, he rose from his chair, his knee popping from the sudden jolt of activity, and limped the first two steps toward the coffee pot.
Halfway through his pour, he felt his pocket buzz once, then twice, then pop off at an alarming rate. Mack nearly dropped the piping hot coffee cup to the floor and dialed Bryce immediately. “What the hell is going on?”
“Sarah’s stuck in the control room,” Bryce answered, shouting as though he was in a wind tunnel.
“How the hell did that happen?”
Bryce paused. “There was a miscue with the satellite. I had to drop some of the scanning functions to accommodate all of the missions.”
Mack turned away from Mallory and the rest of his cohorts, keeping his voice low. “I don’t think that I need to remind you what happens if she is caught!”
“Yes, sir. I’m aware.”
“Then get it done, Bryce.” Mack ended the call before Bryce could respond, and the moment he turned around, Mallory was standing only a few inches from his face.
“What’s going on?” Mallory attempted a stern tone, but the past few days of unrest had crippled his ability to hide the crack of fear that broke his voice an octave higher at the tail end of the question.
“Slight hiccup at one of the installations in India.” Mack took a sip of coffee, maintaining his best poker face. “We’re working through it now though. Where are we at with stabilizing the conflict at the border?”
Mallory regarded Mack with a physician’s eye, examining the body language, and after a pause, he seemed satisfied with his findings. “We’ve mobilized the Fifth Fleet in the Indian Ocean, and we’ve got our boys doing recon in the air close to both Pakistani and Indian air space.” Mallory stopped at the end of the table. “We think the conflict will peter out now unless some private decides to get a happy trigger finger.”
