by Brian Tyree
“Proceed to the end of the hall. Look for a stairway.” Hal did as instructed, lurking down the hall. Loose boards creaked beneath his feet. “Walk against the wall.” Hal did, finding the boards didn’t make as much sound. He reached the stairwell, opening the door inch-by-inch to muffle any rusty squeaks, then tiptoed up the stairs. He entered the third floor hallway. His target room was halfway down the hall. His vision remotely switched to thermal view. He passed by a room, seeing the thermal form of a horizontal man, sleeping on a living room couch.
Hal went from apartment to apartment, arriving at the door of his target. The thermal image bloomed orange and red, filling the frame. “GET BACK!” McCreary shouted. A shout through a bone implant was much different than one normally heard through air—it resonated through his entire skeleton. Hal felt it all over. He stepped back. Clinging to a wall as it flew open. A Middle Eastern man bolted out, talking on his cell phone. Making haste to an apartment across the hall—leaving both doors open.
He’s coming back. Hal thought. He remained against the wall, waiting, invisible to the man.
“Turn toward the room,” McCreary ordered. It was a good idea, Hal thought, as it gave him the layout of the target room through the open door. The front living room was vacant, but several heat signatures were visible further away, in a kitchen, dining room or bedroom. Hal heard the man approach from across the hall, and ducked back, unseen. The man carried a cardboard box, holding the phone with his jaw and shoulder. He entered the target room and closed the door. “Grab it!” Hal heard over the bone phone. “Don’t let it close.” Hal thrust a gloved hand to the door, stopping it an inch from closing and locking shut. Hal saw the man continue his march toward the others, oblivious to Hal’s jamming the door.
Hal stealthily eased the door open. Softly entering. He could hear the conversations of a handful of men coming from the other room. Indistinct and Arabic. The thermal vision deactivated and he could see normally through his visor. The lights from the other room were enough to illuminate the small living room. Hal glanced around the room. An AK-47 leaned up against an old French couch. Open containers of switches and wires were on the living room floor. Bomb-making parts, Hal thought.
He made his way across the living room. Slowly approaching the lit room with all the voices. The apartment room didn’t look lived in at all. It was probably their armory, and they lived in surrounding apartments on the floor. Four men stood around a scuffed wooden table cluttered with bomb parts and what appeared to assembled pipe bombs. Along with more advanced, remotely-detonated bombs. The order came over his bone phone loud and clear, “Eliminate all targets.” Hal raised his MP10, realizing rifle fire from this range could ignite the bombs and kill him along with the four. Danger close. At the same time, there were too many to kill hand-to-hand. Hal observed one of the men train the others how to use a burner cell phone as a detonator. Showing them how the screen turned to a countdown clock. He then typed in a code to disable the ticking bomb.
♦ ♦ ♦
“What’s he doing?” Baldo asked, as all eyes in the box locked on to the helmet cam monitor. “Why is he waiting?” It showed Ghost One backing up and moving to the side. Out of the way. He froze, slowly gazing around at his surroundings.
“Has he ever done this before?” Douglas asked. Even the new guy thought it was uncharacteristic behavior. McCreary appeared troubled by it.
“Command him to attack!” Trest’s voice boomed over the speaker.
“Beacon to Ghost One—engage!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal watched the Middle Eastern man set the cell phone down on a counter behind him cluttered with bolts, screws, a soldering iron and duct tape. Hal eased closer to the counter.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Why is he ignoring you?!” Trest hollered over the comms.
McCreary repeated the order. “Beacon to Ghost One, engage now! Eliminate the hostiles!”
They watched in the box as the helmet cam view backed out of the dining room and retreating through the living room the way he came. Ghost One inched the door open and stepped back into the hallway. Gingerly closing it behind him.
“What the—” Baldo said. Baffled.
The helmet cam monitor suddenly went black.
♦ ♦ ♦
A loud knock rapped at the apartment door, followed by galloping footfalls dashing off in the distance. A hush grew over the men inside. The leader strode across the living room and peered through the peephole. He spied a distorted view of digital numbers rapidly counting down. Hal had snatched the cell phone and duct tape from the counter, activated it and taped it to the door before bolting to the stairwell. The man could only watch the counter race down to zero. Sealing his fate. He threw the door open in a futile effort to escape while screaming his last words... “ALLAHU AK—”
—BOOM!!
The small apartment erupted in a giant fireball that simultaneously shot out into the hall on one side and the windows on the others. Shattering glass into the street.
♦ ♦ ♦
The explosion appeared on the satellite feed in the box. Baldo was ecstatic. “He did it!! He pulled it off!”
McCreary wasn’t so thrilled. “Where is he now?”
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal leaned up against the back of the apartment building in an enclosed grassy courtyard. Fire alarms sounded. He knew he had to evacuate the area. Quick. His helmet was off with the face shield pointing at his chest, blinding all those watching from the box. He knew they had a tracking device on the suit and deduced they were watching over a helmet cam. His first order of business was to find shelter and remove the tracking device. He put the helmet on, dashed across the courtyard to the darkest corner he could find and scaled the building.
♦ ♦ ♦
“He’s back,” McCreary said as the helmet cam image popped on the screen.
“That was a deliberate breach of protocol,” Trest replied over the speakers. “He’s conscious and he knows. Initiate self-destruct.”
“What?” Baldo asked.
“Yes, sir,” McCreary replied. “Self-destruct initiating.” He looked to a reluctant Baldo. “Do it or I will!”
“Yes, sir.” Baldo quickly typed in the command to self destruct. Typing fast enough that his keystrokes were a blur to Douglas and McCreary. Allowing him to enable the self destruct countdown on the visor HMD. The only warning he could give Ghost One. Baldo didn’t know if he did it to spare Hal’s life or to prolong his own entertainment of vicariously living the adventures of Ghost One.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal froze on the roof when he saw the thirty second countdown appear in his HMD. They know. Hal never accounted for a self-destruct device. He scurried over the roof and descended the apartment building. Racing down headfirst like a lizard skipping across a boulder in the hot sun. Hal leapt from the wall, landing on the pavement of a quiet street the width of an alley. The numbers on his HMD raced down. 05… 04… 03… He ripped the helmet off and hurled it. It hit twenty feet away and rolled down the dark, vacant street like a bowling ball. Hal watched. And waited.
♦ ♦ ♦
The helmet cam monitor looked like the view from inside a crashed race car, tumbling down the road. The helmet finally setting on a sideways image of a helmet-less Hal at the end of the street. The self destruct counter in the box reached zero. Hal stood there, frozen. Nothing happened.The monitor in the box flashedSELF DESTRUCT ACTIVATED.
“Why isn’t it working?” McCreary asked.
“What the hell’s going on?” Trest’s yelled. So loud, the sound level clipped from the inferior speakers in the box.
Baldo feigned bewilderment. Rattling away at the keyboard, looking up the source code. “I don’t know, sir.” He found the error lines. “It appears the self destruct signal broke when the helmet detached.”
“How?”
“I could only guess, sir. The programmers might not have accounted for a helmet removal in the self destruct. They
probably figured helmet removal meant decapitation, so self destruct would be ineffective at destroying the entire suit.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal stood motionless in the quiet street. Looking at his helmet fifty feet away. Wondering why there was no explosion. He remembered how they powered up his suit—the control pad on his arm. He ripped the Velcro flap back, reading the labels on the flexible membrane buttons—POWER—PRESSURE—STEALTH. He pressed the power button. Nothing. He pressed it again, holding it down. His suit shut down. The cooling system came to a stop. Reassured, Hal strode to his helmet and picked it up. Feeling around inside for a similar power switch. Pushing padding to and fro until finding a membrane button. He pushed and held it. The visor HMD power shut down.
♦ ♦ ♦
The flashing dot representing Ghost One disappeared from the satellite feed. “He’s gone dark,” Douglas said. “We lost his tracker.”
“We lost everything,” Baldo said. Wildly typing on the computer to start it back up.
“You can’t override it?” McCreary asked.
“No, sir. Manual power control is the default setting.”
Trest barked and screamed over the comms, saying he was on his way there. When he finally arrived, McCreary and Baldo had no answers for him, other than saying a ghost waking up was so improbable that no contingencies existed for the suit computer. If they became conscious, they wouldn’t know how to use the suit. “Unless they were conscious and watching when you powered it up!” Trest yelled.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal heard the Parisian fire trucks arriving at the apartment on the other side of the block. He took off in the opposite direction. Heading toward an intersection of a busy street.
Hal stood under a building awning that stretched to the curb—mindful of spying eyes above. Helmet in hand, he tried flagging down a taxi on either side of the street. Car after car whizzed past. He realized the submachine gun stuck to his chest may be scaring them off. He removed the MP10, pressing it down into the thick grass at his feet. He waved his helmet at approaching taxis and one finally stopped. Hal opened the door. Thanking the driver for stopping. Keeping the drivers eyes on him while he reached down and slid his rifle to the floorboard in back. Hopping in.
“Où aller?” The French cabby with a face of whiskers asked.
Hal’s strained accent and attempt to French-ize English words made it clear he was an American. “Uh, Le Hotelle?”
“L’hotel?”
“Si—, eh, OUI!”
The taxi took off. The cabby stared in the rear view. Looking at Hal’s black suit. “Fête costumée ?”
“Uh, no, non comprendevous?”
The cabby pulled on his own shirt at his shoulder. Motioning to Hal’s suit with his eyes. “Masquerade?”
“No. Uh—” Hal gave up on the accent and left it up to the cabby to decipher his English. “Motorcycle.”
“‘Moto!’“ The cabby smiled, humored by Hal’s surrender of butchering the language.
“Yes, moto! Oui moto!”
The cabby pulled to the curb in front of a l’hotel. It looked like the neighboring buildings that sandwiched it in, aside from the small sign protruding from the wall. “Un hotel, monsieur.” The cabby nodded to the meter. “Douze Euro.”
Hal read the number twelve on the digital display and reached down to his boot. Giving a good tug. The cabby looked at him oddly. The stealth boot came off and Hal pulled down his sock, revealing the Ace bandage wound around his ankle. Hal quickly unfurled it. A passport and credit cards flew out of the wrapping. Hal finished unwrapping it and a couple hundred-dollar bills fell out with one stuck to his sweaty leg. Hal scooped up the whole bundle of Ace bandage, passport, cash and cards, asking the driver… “Change?”
The driver shook his head no. Then nodded to the hotel. “L’hôtel peut.”
Hal stuffed the entire bundle in his helmet, slipped his boot on and opened the cab door. “One moment.” He left and once the door closed, the cabby muttered the correct translation to himself. Over exaggerating the French accent.
“Un moment!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DESERT LAKES
High-pitched chirps sounded from a security alarm. Weng’s eyes flicked awake to see the flashing light of the security monitor next to a laptop on the table. His looked up to the window and the dark and starry sky beyond the motion detector alarm. “Someone’s coming!” Weng said in Chinese, rustling the other two awake.
The three MSS spies sprung from their narrow bunkhouse beds and took their stations. Matt stirred a laptop awake from sleep mode, viewing a grid of night vision surveillance cameras hidden around the property. Charlie fired up another laptop with a view from the spy satellite orbiting above in space. Weng peered through the night vision scope at the Holloman runway. It was as quiet as the night around it.
“Southern quadrant,” Matt said in Chinese. He enlarged that square to full screen on the monitor. A truck blazed a trail of dust on the way to the ranch house. “The rancher?”
“Show the driveway,” Weng ordered. Matt enlarged the view overlooking the front of the house and driveway. Both Barrett vehicles were parked beneath a wooden carport resembling horse stables. Whoever drove onto the property and triggered the alarms wasn’t either of the Barrett’s. “The barn.”
Matt showed the view from the pinhole camera they drilled through the wall of the bunkhouse. The truck arrived at the barn and its own cloud of dust caught up to it, engulfing it as it came to a stop. The dust cleared, revealing the flat gray color. “Air Force,” Weng said.
A lone man stepped from the driver side in civvies. They zoomed the camera to him, but couldn’t verify his identity from this distance. “Pull up time lapse on the runway,” Weng ordered Matt. “Starting at 10 p.m. and fast forward.”
“Yes, sir.”
Video sped backwards on Matt’s laptop screen through several hours of recording, well past 10 p.m., then advanced in fast motion, scanning the footage for any take-offs or landings. A blur moved across the runway and he played at normal speed. A pair of F-22s took off on patrol. Matt sped the footage forward, nearly missing a black streak that quickly passed by. He reversed the footage and played in normal speed. The Aurora took off with the stealth AOD attached to the fuselage.
“Go forward until she lands,” Weng said, eyeing his watch. Realizing at 3 a.m. there was a good chance she had already landed.
Matt skimmed the footage. Only F-22s and a pair of F-16s. Nothing else, all the way up to the present time.
Weng studied the surveillance feed from outside the barn. The Air Force truck was alone in the dark in front of closed barn doors with no light emanating from within. “Something’s gone wrong,” Weng said, pulling a dark hoodie on and reaching under the bed, tugging a black bag out. He unzipped it, removing dark camo grease paint. Lathering it on his face, arms and neck. “I’m getting a closer look. Charlie, cover me. Matt, stay here.” Weng collapsed the tripod of the night vision scope, taking it with him.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I said a men’s tracksuit,” Hal told a young bellhop standing in the door of his l’hotel. Disappointed as he held up a neon green and blue track suit. Wearing only a bath robe—the only thing he had to wear that wasn’t a high-tech stealth suit.
The bellhop replied with attitude in broken English. “It is a men’s tracksuit, monsieur.”
“I also said bring me something to blend in, and you deliver a glow-in-the-dark Halloween costume.”
“Very popular!!” the Frenchman defended his apparel choice. “Futbol tracksuit BHWYFC Survetement. You weel blend in, monsieur!”
Hal didn’t have time to argue. Beggars can’t be choosers. “How much?”
The bellhop pondered. Calculating his own mark-up on the €45 tracksuit, charging Hal extra for his unpleasant demeanor. “Eh, seventy-five euro.”
Hal fished out a wad of bills from this robe pocket and peeled off a hundred Euro bill, handing it to the bellho
p. “Keep the change.”
Hal’s generosity humbled the Frenchman and he felt guilty for overcharging. “Merci beaucoup! You are too generous, monsieur. Is there anything more I can assist you with?”
“Yes,” Hal said, appreciative that the bellhop had dropped the snobbery. “I need a cell phone... a suitcase, and to go to a department store. I need more clothes. Can you tell me where to go?”
“Oui, monsieur. I will do even more. I will escort you there myself.”
“A map and a taxi will be fine. Thank you.”
“Right away, monsieur. Thank you, sir.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Where is he?” Trest angrily asked from inside the dimly lit box in the barn.
“We don’t know, sir,” McCreary answered. Baldo and Douglas kept their eyes glued to their respective monitors.
“What are you doing about it?”
“The MQ is circling, trying to pick up his tracker, but it’s not showing up. When he powered down the suit, it cut the power to the tracker. If he powers it up again, the tracker will appear and we can spot him.”
“So, he could be anywhere?” Trest asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“How did he know? How did he awaken?”
McCreary shrugged his shoulders, not able to answer.
“He must have known for a while,” Trest speculated. “Maybe even before the training. But who told him about the suit?”
“Who else knows about it, sir?” McCreary asked.
“Only the fabricator,” Trest said. “We have to get the designs and any prototypes… After we clear out of here. Get the AOD on the carrier and call the Aurora back.”
“Yes, sir,” McCreary replied.
“Call up Ghost Two. Send him to the home of Henry Banks.”
“Roger that, sir.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Weng zoomed the night vision scope through a sagebrush concealing him. Aiming it on the barn doors less than a hundred feet away. A faint light bloomed at the base of the door and through gaps in the siding. Weng lowered the scope and whispered to Charlie, who crouched down the thick brush beside him. “I’m going for a closer look. Cover me.” Charlie raised his QBZ-95 assault rifle with suppressor and night vision scope, locking and loading, then peered through. Following Weng as he paused at the grey Air Force truck for cover, and stealthily stalked toward the barn.
