The Immortality Code

by Douglas E. Richards

  Eve identified it as having been built by a company called the Sioux City Bakery.

  “Why build it here?” he asked the AI.

  “According to company documents that I’ve accessed, there are numerous wheat farms within a fifty-mile radius of the factory. The company’s founders thought they could save money by locating very near their principal ingredient. And could also produce a product fresher than that of the competition, focusing on whole wheat bread and flour tortillas.”

  “How long ago did they fold up the tents?” asked Quinlan.

  “It’s been almost a year.”

  “Did they use the Sioux City Bakery label on all of their products?” asked Reed.

  “Yes.”

  The commander rolled his eyes. “No wonder they went out of business,” he said in amusement. “I mean, Sioux City tortillas? The name doesn’t exactly scream authentic Mexican, does it? They may have used the freshest ingredients, but their marketing sucked.”

  The lieutenant grinned. “So you aren’t just good at soldiering,” he said in amusement, “but marketing also. A double threat. After the war, we should think about going into the shrimping business together.”

  Reed laughed, but only for a moment, before questioning Eve further. According to the AI, the factory building had been for sale, and had been purchased just the day before by a man who had wired in the asking price of nine hundred thousand dollars, and who had turned out to be untraceable. No surprise there.

  The price seemed low, but Eve explained that all factory equipment and anything else useful inside had been stripped out and sold months before, leaving an empty husk.

  Lieutenant Quinlan turned to Reed. “Which raises another question,” he said. “You’ve convinced me that the CCP is behind this. But why would they bother to buy the factory? It’s boarded up. If they only needed it for a few hours, they could have just taken possession. Suggests they have long-term plans here.”

  “You could be right,” said the commander. “On the other hand, the sellers must have had cameras monitoring the site. Which I’m sure the new buyers removed immediately. Long-term use or short, why take any risk? Just buy it and kill any surveillance. Get the right keys, remotes, and alarm codes. For the CCP, nine hundred grand is pocket change.”

  “But why here?” asked Quinlan.

  “Great question,” said Reed. If the office building had made no sense, taking Dr. Keane to an abandoned factory thirty miles out of Sioux City, Iowa, made even less. Unless they were setting up equipment and quarters here for the physicist’s use, a guest pressed into service against her will, certain their misdirection had removed them from anyone’s radar.

  The purchaser of the facility in question had used an untraceable identity, but he could have made other mistakes. “Eve, did the man who bought the warehouse make any other purchases in the past few days? Focus your search on Sioux City and vicinity and then gradually expand the search outward from there.”

  “Accessing sales records now,” replied Eve.

  There was a long pause, as this was a difficult task, even for a next-generation AI with all the resources of the NSA at its disposal. “I found another purchase by the same person,” reported Eve finally. “Made forty miles from the center of Sioux City. A Robbins Urban TBM 250. Purchased two days ago and delivered to this site late last night.”

  “A what?”

  “A Robbins Urban TBM 250. TBM stands for Tunnel Boring Machine. This model is built to be used near streets and urban environments, so is more gentle on its surroundings. Fully automated and robotized, so it can be used by a relatively inexperienced operator, even though a license is technically required.”

  Reed’s eyes widened. Bingo! These type of machines had become all the rage after Elon Musk had founded a tunneling company in 2016, and new models from his company and others around the world were now setting speed and efficiency records nearly every month. “How fast does this one tunnel?” he asked.

  “That depends on the type and quantity of rock in the soil. But, on average, about forty yards an hour.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Quinlan. “One last ruse. If there was a Nobel Prize for creativity in losing a tail, this group would get it.”

  “It’s brilliant,” said Reed in admiration. “And again, it makes me believe they expected their abduction to land them on the radar of multiple players, and are making sure they can shake them all.”

  If Allie Keane was being followed by multiple groups, most would bite on one of the two parking garage ruses. But just in case a party miraculously saw through both, and found the Tesla, they planned yet another ruse. Once the physicist was driven inside the factory, satellite footage would indicate that she remained there. Anyone tailing would either stop and patiently plan an attack on the structure, or wait for an extended period for their quarry to exit. Either way, they’d be sitting on their thumbs long after Dr. Keane had been escorted through a tunnel to whatever final destination they had in mind, now completely in the clear.

  And it would have worked if not for Eve.

  “Let’s get our asses inside that factory and find out where this tunnel leads,” said the lieutenant.

  Reed shook his head. “No. I have a sense of how they think now, and this would be a mistake. They expected anyone who tracked them this far to eventually breach the factory. Since they aren’t inside, I’ll bet they booby-trapped the crap out of the place to wipe out any guests.”

  “But why? They’d be long gone. They’d have already won by then.”

  “Because the CCP has shown a willingness to do anything to get this scientist. And they don’t play by Queensberry rules. They play for keeps.”

  Quinlan swallowed hard. “Good point.”

  “When we arrive on site, we’ll send in some recon drones. They can find the tunnel and traverse enough of it to give us its direction.”

  “Why not have a drone go all the way to its exit?”

  “We can try, but I suspect we’ll lose contact as it flies deeper into the tunnel. But once we learn on which side of the woods the exit lies, we can send out our Bloodhound drone aboveground to find Dr. Keane.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “You know, Commander, you aren’t half bad at this job,” he said with the hint of a smile, subscribing to the philosophy among many soldiers that compliments had to be delivered in insult’s clothing. “I know you were with SEAL Team Six. But if you were just thirty percent more talented, I think you might have had a chance of becoming a Green Beret.”

  Reed grinned. “Dare to dream,” he said in amusement. “But pissing contests aside,” he added, “you do have to admit SEAL Team Six has the better name. Infinitely more bad ass, right? Green Beret? Really? I get that your little hats are the distinguishing part of your uniform. But did they really have to name the entire unit after them? I mean, was the name Pink Unicorns already taken?” he finished, bursting into laughter at his own joke.

  10

  At Reed’s order, the large van rolled to a stop as the now defunct bread and tortilla factory came into view about sixty yards distant. He had Eve park it sideways to the facility to provide a privacy shield so they could plan and prepare behind it. The road to the facility, before it worked its way around to the parking area in back, dissected the spectacular grounds into two halves, with an almost equal number of massive trees on either side. The lawn that covered the rest of the grounds was mostly overgrown, almost three feet in height, indicating that the sellers had let the proper maintenance schedule slide as time had worn on.

  The five commandos in the back quickly exited the cargo section and joined Reed and the lieutenant behind the van. Reed sent six microdrones flying off toward the facility to find the expected tunnel while he and his team all donned bulky belts and tactical commando vests, teeming with pouches, pockets, and endless compartments for ammunition, first aid, knives, handguns, machine pistols, electronics, and so on.

  Meanwhile, Reed readied his only Bloodhound drone, a
specialized model designed for recon, detecting enemy snipers, and locating hostiles in hiding or attempting a stealth approach. The tiny drone carried a camera feed, which could be accessed remotely, but no weaponry, and its minuscule AI brain lacked the versatility and intelligence of most such systems.

  Still, it was optimized for the hunt, and truly excelled at the task of finding and tracking human beings who didn’t want to be found. It was equipped with mics that could detect and amplify the slightest sounds thousands-fold, and sensors that could detect organic molecules responsible for scent almost as well as a dog’s nose, which is how the Bloodhound drone had earned its nickname.

  Reed was acutely aware that time was of the essence. Still, without a second Bloodhound drone, it was prudent to wait to learn if the tunnel led to the west or east woods before his lone specimen was deployed to hunt for Allie Keane.

  He had learned from Eve that the woods extended over four miles to the west, and five to the east. Hard to imagine the scientist’s captors planned to march her all the way through. Which meant they would almost certainly exfiltrate the physicist from above. If they were able to drill a tunnel, they were able to carve a clearing in the heart of the woods where a helicopter could land.

  The commander ordered the AI to have satellites look for new clearings on both sides of the woods, and any air traffic in the vicinity.

  The moment the direction of the tunnel was known and the Bloodhound drone was deployed, Reed and his team would make their way to the tree line on the proper side, ready to quickly arrive at whatever coordinates the Bloodhound drone provided. With any luck they wouldn’t be too far behind the woman they had come to protect, but every second mattered.

  While the team finished loading up their belts and vests, Reed opened a storage compartment in the van and passed out grenades, proximity drone jammers, and MK-52 assault rifles. The MK-52 was the latest model of handheld submachine gun favored by the SEALs and Green Berets alike, possessing a sixty-round magazine, and capable of firing single shots or short bursts.

  He removed two four-foot-long shoulder-mounted rocket launchers from a recessed compartment and inspected them carefully. While their destructive potential was awesome, he decided to leave them in the back of the van. They were too bulky to bring along, and had almost no value in a forest environment.

  “One of the microdrones has found and entered the tunnel,” reported Eve, and then transmitted the feed of this discovery to Reed’s lenses. A circular entrance had been cut cleanly through the concrete floor of the factory, and the tunnel snaked down at a steep, thirty-degree angle. Wide enough to be comfortably traversed, but only in single file.

  “The tunnel takes a quick turn and then heads due east,” the AI added a moment later.

  “Thanks,” he said unnecessarily to the AI. “Launch the Bloodhou—”

  Reed stopped in mid-sentence as a faint scream broke out in the distance. A woman, begging for help. And it was coming from the east, the exact direction Reed was about to travel with his team.

  The scream started relatively weakly, and seemed to fade before it had even played itself out. It conveyed a sense of horror and urgency, but its volume and vigor were lacking.

  It was the scream of the dying. The scream of a woman on her last legs.

  All eyes frantically swiveled to find the origin of the wail, which quickly became clear. Two figures could now be seen off in the distance, both down, having apparently just exited the woods to the east. Reed zoomed in on the scene with his contacts, while his men brought binoculars to their eyes with practiced efficiency.

  The man who had been driving the limo was on his back on the grass, his chest covered in bright-red blood from what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds, center mass. And Allie Keane, the woman who had issued the fading scream, was also on her back nearby, bleeding out before their eyes. A combat knife had been plunged into her gut and was still embedded there.

  A silenced semi-automatic pistol could be seen just a few inches from the open fingers of her right hand, which she had no doubt used to shoot her captor before he had managed to stab her.

  All six Green Berets rushed toward the fallen scientist at once, a woman they had been ordered to protect at all costs, desperate to reach her before she finished bleeding out.

  They sprinted forward, much too close together, abandoning the cover of trees in their race to get to her in time to administer lifesaving first-aid—if this was still even possible.

  Reed started forward also, but stopped abruptly as his gut cried foul, once again reaching a conclusion faster than his panicked intellect ever could.

  Only after his instincts had stopped him did he begin to piece together why.

  This was another sucker play. He didn’t know how, but it had to be. There was no way this petite civilian had gotten the drop on a seasoned warrior. No chance she had snatched his gun and used it on him, even if he was caught in a bear trap at the time. She had reportedly never even used a gun before. It was as impossible as a tennis beginner beating Rafael Nadal.

  All of this flashed through Reed’s mind in an instant of insight

  He planted the red dot of his handgun’s laser sight on the deceased limo driver’s forehead and fired three times in quick succession, again without knowing why, obeying a directive from his inner mind.

  Nothing happened. The driver’s head didn’t move a single inch. It didn’t explode like a dropped pumpkin, expelling brain matter onto the leaves that marked the edge of the woods behind it. No extra holes appeared in the man’s skull.

  Impossible.

  Reed gasped as his conscious mind finally realized what his subconscious had known from the start.

  This scene was nothing more than an elaborate holographic projection. A spectacular new technology the Chinese had just developed, which he had been briefed on during his first day on the job. He had failed to factor in this recent intel and reach the proper conclusions, but his subconscious had not.

  “Down, down, down!” he ordered his team as the truth finally penetrated. “Keane is a holographic lure! Hit the ground! Now! Now! Now!” he screamed, his voice blasting through their comms.

  All six men dived to the overgrown grass, and the moment they did all hell broke loose. Fire from numerous automatic weapons pierced the air where their bodies had just been, bringing the deafening cacophony of high-caliber rounds, all coming from just behind the tree line in the direction they had been recklessly charging.

  Reed had made sure they armed themselves as if they’d be facing a veritable army, but he hadn’t believed one was really out there, even knowing Keane’s importance to the CCP. One could talk about pulling out all the stops, insurance policies, and snatching a queen from a hive, but this was a next-level display of preparedness. Truly off the charts.

  Fortunately, the enemy had been waiting for Reed’s team to sprint even closer, making themselves fish in a barrel, and had held their fire too long. But now the Green Berets were alert and hidden in the tall grass, difficult to kill.

  Reed raced the short distance back to the van the moment his team hit the deck, ignoring the now continuous automatic fire behind him, so dense and jarring it sounded like a battle raging between warlords in a third-world hellhole.

  He reached the back of the van and lifted the heavy rocket launcher to his shoulder, firing blindly into the tree line where he calculated the greatest density of hostiles had congregated. The rocket streaked straight ahead at jaw-dropping speed, and seconds later an explosion rocked the grounds as the missile slammed into the trunk of a tree growing near the edge of the woods. Tree limbs, human body parts, smoke, and fire burst into the air as a fireball erupted, leaving a section of scorched, barren forest twenty feet in diameter.

  Reed raised the second launcher to his shoulder, noting approvingly that his team had had the presence of mind to rise up off the grass as the aftermath of the explosion raged on, and were now sprinting for cover behind widely separated trees.

/>   Reed fired a second missile just to the north of his first one and was rewarded by the same devastating explosion and fireball, which obliterated several additional hostiles and gave the rest something very serious to think about.

  “Eve, send the Bloodhound drone due east,” he yelled, finally completing the sentence he had been about to utter before hearing a woman’s scream. But instead of ordering the drone to find Dr. Keane, he now had other needs. “Have it map out the number and position of all hostiles protecting the woods. I want a tactical display on my lenses ASAP.”

  The tiny drone emerged from the back of the van and sped off toward the east, while Reed used his contacts to zoom in on the few bodies that had been disgorged from the woods after his two missile strikes. There were pieces of five men in total, and two of the faces still intact were Chinese, a confirmation that the CCP was behind this.

  More submachine blasts rang out through the grounds, but now the battle had been joined by the Green Berets, who were now in position to return fire. Based on the dispersion of the incoming, the enemy had spread out, having learned the hard way not to congregate and invite additional missiles.

  “Eve, can you locate the holographic projector based on its EM signature?” said Reed.

  “I can’t,” replied his AI companion. “But I can divert the Bloodhound drone to where you saw the images being projected. It’s only seconds away. I can take over its camera while it does a quick flyover. I estimate I can locate the projector with only a fifteen- to thirty-second delay to the drone’s original mission.”

  “Do it!” said Reed immediately.

  Less than ten seconds later an image of the projector floated in front of the commander’s eyes, and Eve informed him that the Bloodhound drone was now resuming its mission to identify and map all enemy forces.