by A D Davies
“Not yet,” Jules said, having read the report over the man’s shoulder. “They could be hiding from the cameras.”
“Or giving commands from elsewhere,” Dan suggested.
Tane quickly digested the intelligence reports submitted from the dozen or so eyes in the town a couple of klicks south and hit them with the highlights. Namely, ten Chinese tourists who did not appear interested in the traditional Maori dances, local history, or the menu on offer for that evening’s hangi. Two of them matched the individual likenesses of people NZSIS had asked them to look out for. It was not unusual for the village to see large Chinese tour groups, but they rarely comprised so many athletic, bleak-eyed civilians as these appeared to be. Eight men. Two women.
Jules said, “Don’t sound like they’re trying too hard to blend in.”
“Agreed,” Dan said. “Either they didn’t expect you to have extra people in place, or they’re coming at us soon. And probably hard.”
“Then we get to them first.” Tane leaned on the barrier overlooking the control room and, through that, the enclosure. Anger darkened his face. “They didn’t track us. That means someone blabbed.”
Dan wasn’t the only one who looked toward Prihya.
“Now, hang on a second,” she said. “Just because I—”
“What?” Charlie said. “Worked against us for over a year? Am employed by a billionaire psychopath who thinks nothing of slaughtering innocents?”
Dan pulled his gun and aimed it at Prihya. “Search her.”
All had backed away, watching her face go slack, her mouth curling into something akin to disgust. Her eyes were wet. The curl quivered, and she bit her bottom lip. “I didn’t do this. I’ve been here for months. They showed up when you did.” She jabbed a finger toward Dan. “You brought them here, not me.”
“Ain’t got time for this,” Jules said. “Toby, step in here.”
“It isn’t our jurisdiction,” Toby agreed. “Agent Wiremu and the staff here should—”
“No.” Tane moved in front of Dan’s gun, facing Prihya, as if he could read her mind should he stare hard enough. “We need to deal with the threat. Then we work out how they got here.”
Dan lowered the gun. “Fine. What are our options? Assuming that’s an assault team recce, we can catch them by surprise if we move quick. Or we shore up the defenses here and wait on reinforcements.”
“There are no reinforcements nearby. Just intel.”
Tane pulled away from Prihya, returning to the console with the monitoring station, the weather, the dome instruments. He opened a secure channel and got straight through to the minister who was on screen with Colin Waterston.
“You heard?” Tane said.
“Yes,” Julia Grainger replied. “We received the same report you did. What are your intentions?”
“We’ll keep the research station submerged. But I need permission to engage them. Lethal force. I can’t see a way to keep them out if we have to play nice.”
Colin nodded beside her, and Dan felt an oily film on his skin at the man agreeing with his own first choice. “You have the military option, Julia. The Americans are talking directly to the North Korean authorities, but they are still denying an incursion.”
“But that’s what this is,” Dan put in. “Foreign troops invading a top-secret research facility.”
“Ma’am,” Tane said. “We need your authorization for the assault weapons.”
Grainger’s unhappy glint showed she was uncomfortable, but she decided quickly. “Lethal force is approved but keep it quiet and away from any kids. No civilian fatalities.”
“Got it. Thank you.” After a couple more niceties, Tane signed off and stood tall. He faced the institute’s contingent. “Action dudes and dudettes. We have a security team here to hold the perimeter. But I need people with training to take out the bad guys before they get here. Volunteers only, of course.”
Dan was first to state the obvious. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Harpal said.
“I’ll neutralize them,” Jules added. “But you know I don’t kill. If that ain’t good enough, I’ll stay here.”
“Probably best you do,” Tane said. “This is not the time to get squeamish.”
“I dunno.” Harpal looked sideways at Jules, then back to Tane. “You want to draw them away from the civilians, he’d be the best person to do that.”
Dan recalled how easily Jules moved over unfamiliar terrain, calculating complex distances, gaps, and timing. In vehicles or on foot, there was something seriously freaky about him. But… “Yeah, we take him. Charlie?”
“As much as I know you could use a sensible head, I’m staying here.” Charlie shifted her kit around. “Someone has to figure out how all this connects to the site in Korea. We’ll be safe with the current security measures. And if you guys can avoid that being necessary, maybe it’ll mean they don’t send anyone else to finish the job.”
“Then we have a plan.” Dan clapped Tane on the shoulder. “Lead the way.”
Jules handed Bridget the backpack containing his bangles, removing a handful of gear as he said, “Your mission is more important than ours. We’ll make sure you got time. But you and Charlie gotta figure this thing out. If it can be used to stop the big bad.”
“I will,” Bridget said, solemnly accepting the bag.
Tane hustled toward the steel staircase, calling a pair of security agents at the door. “Situation report is on your devices. Follow the protocol.” He pointed toward the remaining team members, all standing aside from Prihya, who was now hugging herself, watching the jungle-like scenery below. “Stay with them. Protect them and beware of any unauthorized comms.”
That last comment drew a sharp glance from Prihya before she returned to her self-imposed vigil.
“With me.” Tane marched onward.
The four men proceeded in silence down the first pristine corridor, out another set of security doors, and into an elevator. The tense silence during the ride up reminded Dan of the approach to missions from his military days. All focused, all knowing this might be the last time they were all together.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Lost Origins Recovery Institute was an archaeology club, one that ventured into hostile territory occasionally, and often snatched artefacts from under the noses of men, women, and companies hoping to profit from certain finds. One of Dan’s first projects with Toby was to beat a drilling company to the site of a petrified Crusader fort. Not valuable in itself, but it gave them the final resting place of a fabled knight, one of many on which the amalgamated character of Saint George, the patron saint of England, was thought to be based. If they hadn’t taken the chance and placed themselves in danger, the company would have destroyed the fort’s remains as they blasted sand and rock that had concealed it for over six centuries—all in the name of exploring for oil.
Those were the missions Dan relished. The ones they hired him for.
They were not a SpecOps unit.
The elevator opened at the top, facing into the caldera so it couldn’t be seen from the valley. The wind buffeted them and the cold bit hard, and when Dan checked his surroundings, he found they could see for miles. A second helicopter pad waited twenty feet down, a camo net obscuring the equipment from anyone observing via satellite or drone. An Eagle helicopter’s engines were whining to life. It was the type of aircraft used by police forces, so it would have more oomph than the chopper that brought them in.
Surrounded by what looked like natural rocks and pumice, trees, and bushes, Tane flipped open a hidden hatch and placed his hand on a scanner. A locker opened, the door sliding aside to reveal a small arsenal of firearms.
“Nice.” Dan selected an MP5A3 and a belt to strap across him containing spare magazines. “And that?”
Tane handed him the Benelli M3 tactical shotgun and a case of shells. “Be my guest.”
As Dan stowed the MP5A3 on his back and accepted the piece of raw firepower, Tane help
ed himself to a Benelli too, along with a Glock 17 and a MAG 58 machine gun.
“In case we need cover from the chopper,” Tane explained, referencing the larger weapon.
Harpal selected an identical submachine gun to Dan’s and a Glock 17, checking they were ready to go. “Let’s hope we don’t need any of this.”
Jules said, “I’ll stick to my own kit.”
Dan picked out one of the compact Glocks and offered it to Jules, handle first. “At least take it. One magazine. In case you have to point it at someone. Who knows, maybe you can… I dunno, use it to fire over their heads. Or pop a slug in someone’s thigh.”
Jules stared at it. Unusually quiet for him.
“Come on.” Dan put it in his hand. “You know it makes sense.”
“You a cop or not?” Tane asked. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Right?”
Jules said nothing but helped himself to a holster.
Kid must be more spooked than he let on.
Tane took them down to the pad where the Eagle was ready to launch. The net withdrew via some mechanism and they climbed on board. They strapped in two-by-two, facing one another in their seats, and donned ear defenders and mics. Their pilot was a Maori with similar face ink to Tane’s.
“Bobby Arono. Meet the action dudes.” Tane fired off their names, and the pilot pumped a fist at each in turn, then got back to his job. “Hold tight, folks.”
Within minutes they rose high above the caldera’s rim and banked to the south.
“Do we have an actual plan yet?” Dan asked through the helicopter’s mics.
“I’m gonna recon,” Jules said. “Are we using those?”
Tane was pulling a set of walkie-talkies from under the seat. “Not quite bone conducting subvocal ear buds, but they’re small enough to go mostly unnoticed.”
Dan took one of the units, a walkie the size of an iPhone that would clip to his belt, then fed an earpiece and throat microphone. They’d used similar spec in the Rangers, although these were less bulky.
“Don’t freeze up,” Tane told Jules. “These fellas are vouching for you, but as far as I can tell you’re still a civilian.”
The helicopter dropped lower than the town, its altitude falling below the lush, green hilltop that gave Kainga Pukepuke its ever-so-touristy name.
Jules said, “I don’t freeze. I improvise.”
“These aren’t hired goons working for a paycheck.” Tane glanced at Dan and Harpal, but his concern remained with Jules. “They’re fundamentalists. They believe—almost like a cult—that a western invasion is inevitable, and they obviously need something other than that shield to finalize their plans. You have to be prepared.” Tane pointed first to the Glock on Jules’s belt, then to the left side of his chest. “Protect and serve, right, brah? You can do that here. If you got your head in the game.”
Jules fixed on Tane like he was interrogating a murder suspect. “I’ll do what I need to. Scout around. Get noticed. Draw them out. When we flew over earlier, I saw a track leadin’ west through the trees. There’s a river running beside your dead volcano. Plenty of chances for an ambush.”
Again, Tane deferred to Dan.
Despite Jules’s arrogance and his aversion to teamwork, Dan was confident. “Listen to the kid. He’ll come good when we need him to.”
Tane nodded. “Okay, Bobby, gotta find somewhere to set us down away from the town.”
“Don’t set down.” Jules unclipped his belt and straightened his leg, accessing the baton he insisted on bringing everywhere instead of a gun. “Up ahead, that field. Get as low as you can.”
“There’s a rugby match on, man,” Bobby Arono replied through the headphones.
Bobby flew up over the land, keeping them straight, Pukepuke coming into sight along with what resembled a football field, but the goals were shaped like a capital letter H.
Rugby. A sport Dan had never got his head around.
“Get low.” Jules unclasped the hook side of his baton and made a massive step over Tane to access the sliding door. “If you don’t set down, they don’t know anyone got out. And you can’t hide a helicopter. I just need at least thirty feet.”
“We’re at twenty meters,” Bobby announced.
Jules cracked the door and the wind and rotor wash thundered inside. Measuring by sight and touch alone, Jules fed out a length of bungee cord, then opened the door fully.
Tane grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
“Relax,” Harpal said. “Watch and enjoy it.”
Dan had definitely not enjoyed it the first time Jules performed this trick near him. He’d landed on the wrong end of the kid’s aikido flips and throws. It had proved useful in the past, although never at high speed on a moving vehicle.
“See ya.” Jules jumped out.
Tane jerked forward to see what the hell this crazy kid just did.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It might have sounded ridiculous to the vast majority of Earth’s population but dropping out of a moving helicopter felt natural to Jules. As the semi-conscious side of his brain snapped and crackled with definitive calculations of speed, wind shear, height, and the apparent softness of the ground, Jules saw the good he was doing. He was operating with full permission of the government, a law enforcement officer giving the orders, and a cause worth fighting for.
As his stomach looped into his throat at the sudden pull of gravity, the grappling hook section of his rapid descent line snagged the helicopter’s skid and he plummeted for 1.5 seconds before the bungee rope slowed his fall. Since the drop wasn’t from an immovable point, he had allowed an approximate value for how much roll the helicopter would yield and factored it in conservatively, expecting to end his journey around two feet above the grass. However, because he hadn’t studied the Eagle model before, he had no baseline for its capabilities, and it proved a far sturdier bird than he’d guessed. As the elastic cord reached its apex, Jules found himself short of the ground by 6.2 feet.
Not a huge obstacle but traveling at fifty knots he wasn’t confident of an injury-free landing. In the split-second in which he processed the speed, remaining drop, and taking in two teams of teenaged boys scattering from their rugby game, he let go of the baton.
Flying through the air thanks to his fierce momentum, Jules pulled his knees up to his chest, swung himself around using his body weight, and he adopted the tuck-and-roll approach as the field came up to meet him.
Better a bruised rib than torn knee cartilage.
As Jules hit the grass, he skimmed over it like a stone, popped up, expanded his legs and arms to create drag, and performed a simple somersault. He literally hit the ground running, his legs pistoning as he righted himself. But it was still too fast, and he stumbled, rolled once more, and sprang up, again at a sprint.
Finally, he was moving smoothly, able to absorb his surroundings.
It wasn’t a full rugby game—ten on one side, nine on the other, all kitted out in shorts and either red or white long-sleeved shirts, mouth guards, and a sprinkling of soft helmets. Now the helicopter had swooped back into the sky, banking away from Kainga Pukepuke, all attention fell on Jules.
The biggest lad in a muddy red shirt called, “Hey!”
Jules kept running, eager to get out of the open. But rugby is a game of tackling, and these players had watched a man dressed in black drop out of the sky and interrupt their rugby match—a sport taken very seriously in this part of the world. The people working up at the lab had also made them aware that outsiders who mean to harm their sacred mountain could be in the area, so it was not an unreasonable assumption that Jules could have been one of them.
Luckily, in games of tackling, individuals hurling themselves at the target can be predictable. As Jules veered around the first, then skipped a diving tackle from the second, the two sides merged and swarmed toward him.
At one time, Jules had learned the rules of rugby, mainly because it had been a source of conve
rsation during a job in which several British expats were involved during the Rugby World Cup. He didn’t want to seem ignorant, or miss out on conversations, especially since he was gathering intelligence on a stolen bust of Alexander the Great.
This was how he knew the word for what faced him was “maul.”
Usually, though, the target of the maul would have been holding the ball. A ruck happened on the floor; a maul happened when players were on their feet.
A ruck in the muck, a maul with the ball.
That this group of kids defending their village were clearly experienced players worked in Jules’s favor. They seemed to be instinctively obeying the tactics from the game, one person taking point to initiate the tackle with four teammates backing him up. This allowed Jules to stutter in his sprint, leap in the air, and kick an incoming opponent in the chest. He somersaulted over the attempted maul and landed the other side.
As fast as these players were, Jules was always going to beat them in a dead sprint. He kept his head down, running free, extending the gap between him and them. Looking back, at least three players jogged toward sports bags left on the sidelines. One of them had a phone out before Jules could jump the barrier and flee around the side of the clubhouse.
They had flown over this village less than an hour earlier, so Jules had sealed the image from above in his mind. But it took concentration for him to apply it to ground-level navigation.
The manufactured village was based around a central circular point, a meeting place where they buried a pig carcass in the ground for several hours, roasting it over hot coals with herbs and vegetables, which they would serve to tourists paying a small fortune to not only enjoy a tour of Pukepuke but to dine with the guides and Maori people who lived over in Taone Pukepuke. A “hangi” as it was known.
Not that the details mattered much as he jogged through a deserted channel, arriving at a street where Maori men and women gathered in long coats, some of them open to the elements to reveal the traditional dress in which they would likely perform later. A break from rehearsals, it seemed. He hadn’t run out into the group, so startled no one. Instead, he caught his breath and ensured no heroes from the rugby game had pursued.
