Callsign: Bishop - Book 1 (An Erik Somers - Chess Team Novella)

by McAfee, David

  “What about Ilias?” he asked.

  “He’s got his rifle. That’s all he needs. Right Ilias?”

  Ilias nodded, then showed Bishop his right hand. It shook with a mild palsy, and Bishop understood. The old man would never be able to aim a pistol properly, but he could brace a rifle against something—a four-wheeler, perhaps—and still be an effective shot. Although it limited his availability in a crisis. Still, looking at Ilias with his wrinkled skin and rheumy eyes, Bishop wasn’t sure how much use the old man would be in a firefight, anyway.

  “All right, then,” Bishop said, swinging a leg over one of the bikes. “Let’s go.”

  Together, the three men sped south over the dry, unforgiving terrain.

  ***

  Massai and Ahmad sat in the rear of the Bell 206 LongRanger, while the pilot—a grumpy, middle aged Iraqi refugee named Devan—flew on in silence. The two men had been forced by limited aircraft and time constraints to secure a private aircraft for this trip, and Devan had been the first available pilot they found. They’d interrupted his lunch, and he complained loudly about it until Massai, in a moment of weakness, had allowed the man to see his pistol. After that, the pilot wisely kept quiet.

  It was all a bluff. Massai couldn’t harm the man. Neither he nor Ahmad knew how to fly a helicopter, and they were flying over the desert. Even after they landed, they would still need to get back. Hopefully they would have Somers with them when they did.

  The desert passed below the blue and tan charter helicopter at a rapid pace, but to Massai it seemed they were barely moving. Joker and Somers could already be there, and who knew what reinforcements they could have accumulated in the interim? Probably none yet, but CJ would find allies soon enough, and Massai had only Ahmad and a reluctant, grumpy pilot.

  He leaned forward and poked his head between the two front seats. “Is this the fastest you can go?” he asked.

  “We are already traveling at 220 kilometers per hour,” Devan replied.

  “Can we go faster?”

  “I am sorry, but this is as fast as the helicopter goes.”

  Massai grunted, then sat back in his seat. “220 kilometers per hour. They are probably in Joker’s plane already, and they have a large head start. We should have waited for the Sikorsky.” Shahid’s sleek black Sikorsky S70—the civilian version of the famed Blackhawk—could fly at speeds of over 350 kp/h. They would have had no trouble catching up to Joker and Somers in that, but there was no time to get it here. Shahid had promised to send it to Hassi as soon as he could, along with the pilot and the mounted minigun, which would have proven very useful if Joker had any of his friends with him.

  Ahmad put his hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Allah is watching over us. You will see. Even if they are in Joker’s plane, it does not go any faster than this helicopter, and he cannot land it in the Kavir, so they will have to travel overland from Hassi. We can land in the Kavir. The advantage is still ours.”

  Massai tried to share Ahmad’s fervor, but he had never been as spiritual as some of his countrymen. He tried to think of his lack of faith as realism. Too often, his comrades would rely solely on the will of Allah to get them through any tough situation, and all too often, it ended with someone dying. His friends and associates would attribute this to “Allah’s will” and go on as if that solved everything, but Massai’s pragmatic side would remind him that he could do better for himself and his people by staying alive as long as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any faith at all, Massai simply preferred to try to keep himself safe and let Allah worry about bigger things, like running the universe.

  “How long before we reach the site?” he asked, raising his voice to make sure Devan heard him from the back seat.

  “The coordinates you gave me are not far,” Devan replied. “As long as they are correct, we will be there within an hour.”

  As long as they are correct, Massai mused. The pilot was finding his courage again. He briefly entertained the notion of putting the fear of death back into Devan, but decided against it. When they reached the site, they might need all the courage they could get.

  7.

  The ride to the site didn’t take very long. What had taken the two men from Hassi that had inadvertently discovered the site, a day and a half to walk, took less than three hours on the bikes. Sometime around sixteen hundred hours, Bishop pulled his bike to a stop alongside a large concrete cylinder sticking up from the ground. Atop the cylinder was a solar panel ten feet long and half as tall. Not nearly enough of a panel to power any sizable outpost, even with the constant sunshine of the Kavir Desert to charge it, at least under normal circumstances.

  But nothing about Manifold ever turned out to be normal. Ridley had already impressed everyone from physicists to guys with a PhD in engineering with some of his advanced technology. This would probably prove to be more of the same. Bishop made a mental note to take pictures of anything that looked like it might be useful intel, as he got off the bike and stretched.

  “Still clear?” CJ’s voice crackled through the radio on his waist. Bishop grabbed it and brought it up to his face.

  “Clear,” he said.

  “On our way,” CJ replied. He and Ilias were about a hundred yards back, watching through field glasses. They had stopped at that distance to assess the approachability of the outpost. After watching through the binoculars for about half an hour, they’d had a short debate over who should make the initial approach. It ended when Bishop crossed his arms and looked down at his temporary partner whose thigh was about the same thickness as Bishop’s upper arm.

  Bishop had approached with one hand on the throttle and the other on his pistol, fully expecting to be accosted by guards before he reached his destination. But nothing happened.

  He heard CJ’s bike rev, and a few minutes later, they stood side by side looking up at the top of the cylinder. Ilias had remained behind, his rifle now mounted to a little tripod on the front of his four-wheeler. He would cover them if things went bad in a hurry.

  “How good is he with that rifle?” Bishop asked.

  “Pretty damn good,” CJ replied. “He might not look like much, but that old geezer is a product of the Iranian Special Forces. They forced him out after they discovered his palsy a few years ago, and he came to Hassi to live a quiet, nonmilitary life. But he’s still got the eye. As long as the rifle is braced against something solid, he could shoot the tail off a field mouse at five hundred yards.”

  “Field mice don’t shoot back,” Bishop said, but even inaccurate cover was better than no cover. He turned his attention back to the cylinder and resumed his examination of the site’s exterior. There were no cameras or security devices that he could see. The only wires that ran into the structure came from the solar panel. In fact, the only other feature on the outside was a vertical set of metal bars that formed a crude ladder to the top. Since he couldn’t find any way in, he reasoned that the door must be on top of the cylinder.

  “I guess we go up,” CJ said, echoing Bishop’s thoughts.

  Bishop went first, climbing the ladder and pulling himself up and over the edge in less than two seconds. Once at the top, he noted the hatch. It should pull right up, provided it wasn’t locked. But what would he find when he opened it? An empty site? Or a small army of heavily armed terrorists? He turned toward Ilias and saw the man staring at him through the scope of his rifle.

  CJ pulled himself up next to Bishop and casually reached out to open the hatch. Bishop grabbed his arm, stopping him. It’s a wonder the man is still alive, Bishop thought. He’s as quick to act, as he is to talk. “Slow down.”

  “Nobody’s home, B.”

  Bishop agreed with the man. There were no guards. No fresh tracks. But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any danger. Tracks could be concealed, as could security measures, not to mention traps. And Manifold was good at all of the above. “Pull the hatch on three. I’ll sweep.”

  “Roger,” CJ said. He took his place a
t the side of the hatch. He crouched and took hold of the hatch’s handle. “Ready,” he said.

  Bishop aimed his Sig toward the still closed hatch. If he saw anything move inside, it would get a bullet. Or three. “One.”

  CJ tightened his grip on the hatch.

  “Two…three!”

  CJ jerked the door upward.

  Bishop began to lean over the hole, sweeping the Sig from right to left. As he did, he saw the familiar shape of a shotgun barrel just a foot below. But instead of firing he flinched back, yanking his arms away from the opening.

  The shotgun boomed just as the hatch fully opened and a fraction of a second before Bishop pulled his arm back. There was a pinch of pain in his forearm but he ignored it when he saw CJ spill over the side.

  8.

  “Damn!” Bishop swore, skirting the now open hatch. With his free hand, he grabbed his radio. “Ilias, CJ is down. Repeat, CJ is down. Can you—”

  A string of coughs and curses rose up from the other side of the cylinder. “I’m okay,” CJ said. “—the hell happened?”

  Bishop looked back to the hatch. He could see the unmoving shotgun muzzle. “A trap.” He’d seen the shotgun with no operator when the hatch opened. It wasn’t exactly a deterrent to any force larger than two, but it could have killed one of them.

  CJ popped back up over the edge of the roof.

  “You hit?” Bishop asked.

  “No. I tripped.” CJ held up a finger and was clearly about to defend himself, but looked suddenly serious. He turned the extended finger toward Bishop’s left arm. “But you were hit.”

  Bishop looked at the arm. The sleeve was stained with blood. Not a lot, but enough. He rolled up his sleeve. The blood came from a small red hole where a single ball of buckshot had struck. He saw the lump of metal just beneath his skin, a centimeter away from the wound. He pushed his thumb against the ball of metal and pushed it back toward the wound.

  CJ sucked in a quick breath. “Geez.”

  The black ball popped out of the wound a moment later. Bishop picked it up, rolled it between his fingers and flicked it away.

  “That’s…hardcore, B.”

  Bishop leaned slowly over the open hatch, aiming his Sig down the hole. He saw no movement and the shotgun had been spent. It was a trap using a system of wires and pulleys, rigged to fire when the hatch was opened. Not likely to be the work of Manifold. Too crude.

  “You going to take care of that?” CJ asked, motioning to the wound.

  “It’ll stop on its own,” Bishop said. “I’m on point.”

  CJ nodded. For once, it seemed, he was out of bravado.

  Bishop checked the trap once more to make sure it couldn’t fire again. The shotgun was old, but clearly still functional. However, it had been loaded for just one shot. Without someone to pull the trigger a second time, it was technically disarmed. That didn’t stop him from kicking apart the wire and pulley system. With the trap in ruins, he put his pistol in his waistband and grabbed the top rung of the inside ladder.

  “Cover me,” he said.

  CJ nodded and pointed his Beretta down into the building. “If anyone pokes their head out, I’ll put a bullet in it.”

  Bishop lowered himself down into the structure. CJ would come down behind him. So far, the guy had proven pretty handy, if only he’d take this a little more seriously. He reminded Bishop of Rook in that sense.

  Thinking of Rook brought a twinge of tension to his back. The team hadn’t heard from him since they lost contact with him in the former Soviet Union. He had yet to resurface. Bishop hoped his friend was all right. Too often, someone on the team would say something, and then pause for Rook’s inevitable jab, but it never came. It was weird, like losing a limb. It felt like it was there, and it should be there, but no matter how many times you closed your eyes and opened them again, it never grew back. Queen took Rook’s disappearance the hardest. She hadn’t said much to anyone before heading out on a personal mission to find him, but it was obvious to everyone how heavily his disappearance weighed on her mind.

  Rook will be fine, he thought. He can take care of himself. Bishop found himself wondering what Queen would do first when Rook finally did resurface. She’d most likely either hit him or kiss him. Probably both.

  He reached the bottom of the ladder and looked around, squeezing thoughts of Rook and Queen from his mind. The last thing he needed right now was to be distracted. He would worry about his friends when this ergot business was finished.

  He stood in the center of a large room filled with computers and other electronics. Everywhere he looked, a light blinked or a control screen beeped. Here and there, he spotted signs of human habitation: a coffee cup, an empty water bottle, a jacket draped over a chair. Yet there was not a single person in sight, and a thin layer of dust coated everything in the room.

  Almost everything, he realized when he looked down.

  Multiple sets of footprints marred the dust on the floor. The tracks led in every direction, and occasionally he spotted a square of dust-free space that he guessed to be the former location of lab equipment. Someone had gone through the place and taken everything they deemed valuable. Bishop’s money was on the jihadists. They hadn’t taken much, though. They probably didn’t know how to use most of it. Bishop could relate. The vast array of blinking and beeping machines would confuse just about anyone who wasn’t trained in their use. The only thing he thought he recognized was a base unit for a small, hardwired security system. If he followed the wires leading out of the unit, they would probably take him right to the facility’s security console. He would have to check that out before he left; there might be some video files that would help.

  “All clear?” CJ asked from the entrance above.

  “Clear,” Bishop replied, moving deeper into the facility, following some tracks.

  He walked down a narrow hallway, passing numerous doors that opened into empty rooms. Tracks leading in and out of the rooms indicated that the jihadists had looted most of them, but as he looked into one room, he found a plain white refrigerator in a corner. The door hung open, facing him and blocking his view of the inside. On the door was a bright yellow and black Biohazard sign.

  “Uh-oh,” CJ said behind him. “Don’t get too close.”

  Bishop ignored him and took a step forward. He walked around the refrigerator, giving it a healthy distance, and peered inside.

  It was empty.

  “They took whatever was in there,” he said.

  “They got the weaponized ergot?” CJ asked.

  Bishop shook his head, just how much did CJ know, anyway? He would have to have a long talk with Deep Blue and Keasling when he got back. “Looks like it.”

  “This is bad,” CJ said.

  “Keep looking. Maybe we’ll find something useful.”

  The room with the refrigerator occupied a corner of the facility, with the hallway leading off in two directions. They split up, with Bishop going right and CJ going left. Numerous doors lined Bishop’s section of hallway, but none of them were locked. Some had been forced open by a crowbar or some other tool. All proved useless. The very last door opened up on a room lined with row upon row of empty shelves. Bishop tried to think of what it could have been used for when he spotted the empty potato chip wrappers in the corner.

  Food storage, he realized. It had been cleaned out, as well. No surprise, there. He turned and walked out of the room, almost bumping into CJ. He dodged aside just in time to avoid crashing into the man. Why was he back already? Had he found something? Had he even looked?

  “That was fast,” Bishop said.

  “Sorry, B,” CJ said. “I should have warned you I was there.”

  “Did you find anything?” Bishop said, ignoring the apology.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. That’s why I was coming to get you. Follow me.”

  CJ turned and walked back the way he’d come. Bishop fell into step behind him, wondering what was so important CJ couldn’t just tell h
im what he’d found. When they reached the other end of the hall CJ opened a door on the right. Judging by the icon painted on the front of the door, he was leading Bishop into the facility’s lavatory.

  Bishop stepped into the room and stopped. Not everyone had left the facility, it seemed.

  Two dead men sat on the floor in a rust-colored puddle of dried blood, propped next to one of the urinals. The bodies leaned against the wall in a sitting position on either side of a urinal. Both looked to be of Arab descent, with black hair and dark, Mediterranean skin that had paled somewhat after their deaths.

  The cause of death for each was immediately obvious. One of the men had a flat spot on the back of his head where his skull had been caved in, and the other sported a single gunshot wound to the head. The dry air and moderate temperature had combined to preserve the bodies a bit, but decomposition had begun, and the room smelled of dead flesh.

  “That’s nasty,” CJ said. “What kind of guy wants to take a leak with that right next to him?”

  Bishop ignored the joke. There was nothing funny about this. “Any idea who they might be?”

  “A couple of terrorists who pissed off the rest of the bunch?” CJ offered.

  “Maybe,” Bishop said. “But weren’t there two guys from Hassi that led the terrorists here by mistake?”

  “You think that’s who these two are?”

  “It’s as good a theory as any. And I know how we can find out.”

  “How?”

  “I think this place had security cameras inside. I’ve noticed a bunch of wires close to the ceiling that look like they’ve been snipped. If we find the room where their security was based, maybe we can scan the video files. That should tell us something.”

  CJ’s eyes widened. “That’s a pretty good idea. But what if they took the security system?”

  “I don’t think they did,” Bishop said. “They might have taken the cameras, but I think the system itself is still here.”

  “You saw it, already. Didn’t you?”