“What’s all this?” said Spirit.
“Hell if I know,” said Tarzan.
“Just follow my instructions and don’t think too hard,” said Hawkeye.
“Hey, we work better if we know what’s going on,” said Bunny.
“It’s need-to-know.”
“You don’t know either, do you?”
Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “Shut up and listen. We’re making reinforced bags with the blanket material and duct tape, then lining them with foil and this wire screen. First, cut up your thermal blanket into four equal pieces…”
Chapter 33
“Hey, Miss Daisy,” said Shortfuse, “you want to drive for a little while?”
“No, thanks,” answered Skull from the passenger seat of the rented moving van traveling east on I-85. “Anyway, we’re almost there now.”
“Finally,” grunted Shortfuse. “I think I saw a ninety-year-old woman give us the finger while blowing past us in her hybrid.”
“The speed limit is our friend. The last thing we need is to get pulled over. Besides, what else have you got to do?”
“Build bombs?” said Shortfuse. “I don’t trust those fumblefingered goobers back at base.”
Skull smiled. “What I show you will make it all worthwhile.” He pointed at an upcoming sign.
“Charlotte, North Carolina?” asked Reaper from between the two. “What the hell is in Charlotte?”
“You’ll see,” said Skull, grinning like a maniac.
“Damn, and I thought demo guys were wack.”
They drove in silence as the traffic became heavier nearer the city. Turning off the interstate, Skull gave directions to the industrial part of the city. As they got deeper into streets filled with warehouses and decrepit factories, they saw fewer people.
“Why do I feel like we’re going to make some kind of drug deal?” asked Shortfuse.
“You have a fine sense of things, my friend. Except these drugs are like nothing you ever saw. I think you’ll appreciate them. Here, let me drive now.”
Once they’d switched places, Skull drove slowly up and down the nearly deserted grid of streets. He slowed and looked down one street before going to another and turning left. Shaking his head, he backed up and went to the next.
“You don’t know where you’re going?” said Reaper.
Skull waved his hand at her. “Just give me a second. It’s been a little while since I was here. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Great,” said Reaper, sitting back with her arms crossed.
“If you see a gas station or something,” said Shortfuse, “go ahead and stop. Those burritos we had earlier are trying to escape.”
Skull ignored them. He continued to drive sedately, looking up and down streets.
“Yeah, this doesn’t look suspicious at all,” said Shortfuse.
“Would a GPS help?” Reaper asked.
“Aha!” said Skull. “There it is.” He made a hard left down a street that looked the same as all the others, and then backed up against the loading dock of one large building with boarded-up windows and rusted sides. They piled out of the truck’s cab. “Come on.”
Skull banged loudly on a nearby personnel door. After several seconds he did it again.
“Go away,” said a high-pitched male voice from inside. “I don’t want anything.”
Skull leaned over to Reaper and whispered in her ear. “Be flirty. Get him to open the door.”
She looked back at him, incredulous. “Are you serious? Me, flirty? You should have brought Bunny.”
“I tried. You vetoed it, remember? Come on, flirty!”
“Oh, I got to see this,” said Shortfuse with a grin.
Reaper walked to the door. She smoothed her shirt and flicked her hair back.
“There you go,” whispered Shortfuse, nodding. “Work it, girl.”
“Shut up,” she hissed at him.
Skull pounded on the door again.
“I said go away,” the voice answered.
Reaper stepped closer to the door. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my car broke down and I’m not sure where I am.” She hesitated. “I’d have called my boyfriend to come help, but he…dumped me...yesterday. Now I don’t know what to do...I feel so alone...and vulnerable.”
Shortfuse bent over at the waist, trying to hold in his laughter.
Skull shook his head. “You’re terrible at this.”
“I know that!”
They froze when they heard a series of deadbolts turning. The door opened a crack to reveal a thin face with glasses, attached to a man with his hair in a ragged blond ponytail. He smiled shyly at Reaper, but his eyes widened as he saw Skull standing behind her. He tried to slam the portal.
Skull shoved on the door, and after an instant, Reaper joined him. The man stumbled backward. Shortfuse followed them into the vast spaces of a dimly lit warehouse, closing and locking the door behind them.
“Get out!” said the man, pointing a finger at Skull. “I’ll call the police, I swear I will.”
“Why, Bernard,” said Skull, soothing. “You act like you’re not happy to see me.”
“I saw what you did in New York City,” Bernard stammered. “The feds came crawling all over the place. I’m lucky I didn’t get caught with it. You’re lucky I didn’t get caught with it.”
Reaper turned to him with wide eyes. “There’s an EMP bomb here?”
Skull nodded with a wide grin. “Herschel and I left them in a dozen cities on the East Coast, just waiting to be used when needed.”
“Hell, yes!” said Shortfuse with a smile, rubbing his hands together.
“What if I told you I got rid of it?” asked Bernard.
“Did you?” asked Skull, his face suddenly dark.
Bernard scowled before answering. “No, but I thought about it.”
Skull smiled again, though without humor. “You made the right decision.”
“Maybe not,” said Bernard, his hand out toward Skull. “You gonna take out Charlotte?”
“What if we did?”
“Please don’t. I kinda like it here.”
“Today is your lucky day,” said Skull. “We’re not going to set it off here. As a matter of fact, we’re going to take it off your hands.”
“Awesome!” Gleeful surprise transformed his face. “That thing gives me the creeps.”
“So lead us to it.”
Bernard nearly raced across the warehouse, zigzagging around pieces of ancient machinery, concrete columns, and sagging sections of the old wooden floor. Eventually they arrived at a separate room, where the hum of electricity was heavy. Unlike everything else in the building, the large circuit boxes and electrical conduits on the dirty walls looked new. They supplied racks of computers, as well as air conditioners to handle the heat.
“You’re a hacker?” Reaper said.
“Hacker, cracker, darknet demigod, at your service.” Bernard pointed to a tarp covering something in the corner. “There it is.”
Skull carefully pulled the tarp back to reveal several small boxes and one large plastic ice chest. Heavy wires lay like rubber snakes among the pieces.
Shortfuse squatted down with a look of childish delight. “Can I touch it?”
“Go ahead,” said Skull. “That’s why I brought you. Bernard here is going to give you a crash course on how to rig it up and set it off.”
“Set it off?” asked Bernard. “Where?”
“Far from here. Don’t worry.”
Shortfuse opened the ice chest and looked at the guts of the thing. “By the size of these relays, it takes a lot of electricity to initiate the sequence.”
Skull nodded. “You’re right. It pulls a hell of a lot of current.”
“Where we going to find industrial-level power in the middle of the woods?”
“There’s a distribution substation not too far from our target. Should work nicely for our purposes.”
“They’ll have backup power,” said Reaper. �
�This is pointless.”
“It’s not about power. It’s about functioning electronics. This thing will burn out everything not shielded within a dozen miles.”
“Yeah, a dozen miles,” Bernard echoed.
“Is this power plant guarded?” asked Shortfuse.
“I doubt it, but we’ll handle that when we get there.”
“We’ll need a remote trigger,” said Shortfuse. “I should be able to rig something up.”
“If we need to emplace it tonight, we need to get a move on,” Reaper said.
“You’re right,” said Skull, turning to Bernard. “Tell my technical friend here everything that Herschel told you, but make it quick. We have to get moving.”
Skull and Reaper went back to open the truck. “You really helped build these things?” asked Reaper.
“Not really. I played nursemaid to a drunk genius while keeping him stocked with bourbon and tortilla chips.”
“The feds put out the word there were no more EMP bombs, that they had found them all.”
“Surprise, surprise. They lied. Or hoped a bit too much.” Skull checked his handgun, and then pointed. “Eyeballs. You take that corner, I’ll take this one.”
Half an hour later, Bernard and Shortfuse stepped out the door. “I think I got it,” said Shortfuse.
“Make damn sure,” said Reaper. “You can’t come back here and get a refresher if something goes wrong.”
“I got it,” Shortfuse assured her. “It’s simple.”
“Then why didn’t you patent it?”
“Okay, not that simple.”
“Enough yakking,” said Skull. “Load everything very carefully. Strap each component down. It’s all jerry-rigged, not robust.”
They spent the next half-hour loading the pieces of the device, strapping it down carefully, and then placing several large pieces of old machinery around it to camouflage it from a cursory search. The hard work left them dirty and sweating.
“Is that it?” asked Bernard.
“That’s it,” said Skull, shaking the thin man’s hand. “Mission complete on your part. Well done and have a nice life.”
Reaper held her handgun near her thigh, ready.
Skull closed the sliding door and climbed into the cab, surprising her.
“Ma’am,” said Bernard to Reaper.
“Yeah?” She kept one eye on Skull.
“Your boyfriend was an idiot to dump you,” Bernard said, absolutely serious.
Shortfuse made a choking sound from behind her.
“Thank you,” said Reaper. She gently patted his cheek. “Be good, Bernard.”
Bernard touched his face where she had, and then disappeared into the warehouse.
“Let’s go, people!” said Skull.
They loaded into the cab. Skull glanced at Reaper as she holstered her weapon. “Expecting trouble?”
“I thought you might kill him.”
“Oh, that popgun was for me?” He chuckled. “Bernard’s far too valuable a resource to deep-six. Besides, by this time tomorrow he’ll barely remember we came by. Nothing outside the web is real to him.”
“God help us.”
Traffic was light and the dire weather warnings filled the radio. Snowplows spread salt and the sky turned pregnant and heavy with the impending winter storm.
By the time they returned to the mountains it had started to snow.
Chapter 34
The prediction of the worst storm in decades turned out to be woefully inadequate to describe what the media was already calling the Snowpocalypse. Freezing rain, snow, and ice combined with gusts of near-hurricane force winds to cancel thousands of flights. The media trumpeted government calls across ten states for people to stay indoors and off the roads.
“Buzz, go tell everyone to come here,” Reaper said.
“What’s up?” that man asked.
“Did I stutter? Get your ass in gear and round them up.”
“Everyone who?”
“Everyone that’s hitting the camp.”
“Okay, boss.” Buzz circled the cave, passing the word.
When Reaper’s and Derrick’s teams had gathered around, she said without preamble, “I’m moving up the timetable by two hours. Any show-stoppers?”
“Why?” said Derrick.
She ticked off reasons on her fingers. “One, the weather’s getting worse, faster than expected. Two, it will give us more daylight to move the civilians. Three…I’ve got a hunch.”
“Hunch?”
Reaper stared at Spooky. “Cassandra taught me some tradecraft over the last few years.”
“Tradecraft?”
“Espionage techniques. They’ve been surprisingly applicable to covert ops. In this case, changing the scheduled go-time in case the enemy’s been tipped off.”
“Who would tip off the enemy?”
“Funny that you ask who rather than how.”
“I know human nature,” said Spooky.
“We good?” Reaper stared Spooky down until he answered.
“Very well. You’re in charge.” he turned to walk away.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Spooky stopped, but did not look back. “I have a lot to do, and two fewer hours to do it in. I suggest everyone get moving.”
Everyone moved into position two hours early, as ordered.
The support team, made up of Derrick’s fighters, situated themselves in the reconnaissance holes Reaper’s team had dug a few days before, in the hills above the concentration camp.
The assault team consisted of most of Reaper’s team plus several of Derrick’s, the ones with the most direct combat experience and skills. Reaper gave Spooky personal command of the assault team. Skull attached himself to it as well.
They armed themselves with the less-lethal, virus-soaked frangible ceramic SAM rounds, which had composed the bulk of one of the airdropped pallets. Reaper had given Derrick’s folks a first-hand demonstration of their use and had sensed their reluctance to attack wane. The ammo gave everyone hit a fighting chance to live through any wounds. Turning more enemies into Edens was merely an ironic benefit.
Reaper and Derrick formed the ops team, with Livewire to work the comms and Shortfuse for the remote demolitions. They intended to oversee, coordinate and provide a reserve if the plan went to hell.
Plans always went to hell.
“Good thing you got all these thermal blankets,” said Reaper to Derrick, pulling hers closer. “They’re not only good for hiding body heat. They’re warm.”
“I think we’ll be working up enough heat soon enough,” said Derrick. He looked at his watch, and then keyed the radio at his neck. “Teams, confirm position.”
“Support team in position,” said Big Jim over the radio.
“Assault team in position, ready,” said Spooky.
Derrick turned to Shortfuse and Livewire, who both showed him thumbs up.
“At the end of this transmission, shield all your electronic devices. When you see the effects of the pulse, remove them from the shielding, turn them on and perform commo checks. You have one minute. Command out.”
He signaled Shortfuse, who popped open his laptop and typed for a few seconds. He then stared at his watch.
Reaper looked down at the orange-lit camp below them. In the storm’s afternoon dimness, every outside light had been turned on.
“That’s it,” said Derrick pointing at Shortfuse. “Let’s do this.”
Shortfuse tapped a few times on his computer, and then shoved it and the radio into one of the shielding bags. A moment later, all the lights of the camp below went out.
“Okay people,” Derrick yelled. “Let’s get it all back out again. Move fast.” His words only carried to the nearest of the teams, but they knew the plan. The camp going dark had signaled the start of the attack.
Troops rushed to several small, camouflaged metal sheds they had set up under cover of the storm. Wire was woven throughout their surfaces, a
nd metallic tape sealed all the edges.
ATVs powered up and the assault team began to drive out of the sheds and hook up to long trailers they planned to use to carry out the least mobile Edens. Shortfuse and Livewire pulled out the explosives-packed drones they’d commandeered right before the storm hit, and began booting them up from several laptops. Derrick turned his radio back on for the commo check.
“Assault team checking in,” said Spooky.
“Support team checking in,” said Big Jim.
“Read you Lima Charlie,” said Derrick. “Prepping the drones now. Stand by.”
Livewire arranged the drones in a circle and commanded them to all power up. After a few seconds they were airborne and headed in different directions, fighting the wind to stay on course. “Hopefully their internal software is good enough to compensate.”
“How much time until they reach their targets?” Reaper asked.
“Two minutes, if everything goes well. I’ll be surprised if they all hit simultaneously as planned, but they should be close.”
Reaper watched the drones as they struggled through the air and faded into the gusting snow, following their invisible military-grade GPS signals toward their targets.
A loud explosion sounded from the camp. They looked down and saw a gaping hole torn in the front gate. The drone’s explosives had not only blown the fence apart, but also the nearby guard shack. Troops began scurrying here and there in the camp below.
Another explosion took out the southeast tower, and then another the north tower.
“Four more,” said Shortfuse.
There was one more explosion at the south tower, and then nothing.
“Everyone hold,” ordered Derrick over the radio. “We’ve still got three more drones to go.”
“We can’t wait,” said Spooky. “We’re losing the element of surprise.”
Reaper grabbed the radio. “Stay put, dammit.”
“If we wait too long they’ll start executing prisoners.”
Nearest Night Page 20
