Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  Exhausted from the misadventures of the past days and the long flight to Britain, he had nevertheless laid on the bed in the room the base commander had assigned him, unable to sleep. A mid-night knock at the door revealed the SOG operative, wearing only a pair of tight shorts and a form-hugging black vest. For a second, Raine had been disappointed, hoping to have found Nadia standing there, but his disappointed didn’t last long. Without so much as a word, Lake had peeled the vest from her torso and shimmied out of her shorts to stand there naked.

  Raine fully understood her need. Female SOG operatives needed to be of a certain mind-set to survive the testosterone-fuelled environment. It was some of the reason women couldn’t serve in Delta Force. But working for the CIA was different. There were certain missions where a female operative, trained to be just as deadly as any of her male counterparts, was essential. That mind-set required an adrenaline junky, someone who not only could handle the danger but thrived on it. She, like Raine and the rest of the team, were trained to control that excitement, to reshape and hone it into discipline, but Raine knew how that pent-up fire needed to be released.

  Lake wasn’t there for emotional comfort. She was there to fulfil the physical need of her body and who was he to deny her that? He’d simply shrugged then removed his own underwear.

  After an intense session of fierce, animalistic love making, they’d laid there for no more than five minutes, without any gentle touching, soothing stroking or whispered nothings. Then, without a word, Lake had stood, pulled on her clothes, nodded once and left-

  “Hey, Boss,” a voice suddenly broke into the sweet memory, shocking him back into the moment. “Sorry, I mean-”

  “It’s fine,” he cut off O’Rourke’s faux-pas. They had served together for a long time and in all that time the younger soldier had referred to him simply as ‘Boss.’ His new boss wouldn’t be happy about the slip, but that only made Raine appreciate it all the more.

  “Gibbs wants to see you. In the office.”

  “Okay,” he replied, removing his mirrored aviator sunglasses as he stepped back inside the hanger, sending a winning, roguish grin Lake’s way.

  King glanced behind to see Raine head towards the small office set into the rear of the hanger which Gibbs had commandeered. He stared at his back for several long seconds. Once again, the disgraced soldier had saved his life and try as he might not to, he was starting to consider the cocky pilot a friend. But something kept his ‘shields’ up, a barrier he wasn’t sure he wanted to break down. An ugly truth.

  “What’s his story?” he asked O’Rourke just as the SOG operative was about to head back inside. He stopped and looked at King.

  “Raine’s?” he asked, his words drowned out as the nine Arrows shot past before breaking formation, three teams of three splicing out in opposite directions. But King’s question had caught the attention of the two women as well.

  “Gibbs says he’s a traitor,” Sid added. “But I don’t believe it.”

  O’Rourke kept his face impassive as he came to stand between King and the women. He looked out, his intense eyes tracking the course of the planes across the canvass of a clear English summer sky.

  King knew the truth too. He could see it in the soldier’s face as his mind drifted off to some other place, some other time. King had seen that expression before. In Raine. Painful memories flooded both men, but King knew that Raine was no traitor. He had been wrongly accused, or taken a fall for someone-

  “He is a traitor to his country,” O’Rourke finally said, his face suddenly hardening. The words hit King. He hadn’t expected to hear them, not from this man at least. O’Rourke had been Raine’s only supporter on the team, which only made his judgement all the more damning.

  “I don’t understand. What did he-”

  “I can’t tell you that, Doc,” O’Rourke said. He watched as, to a collective gasp of awe, all nine Red Arrows released plumes of coloured smoke- red, white and blue- which entwined with themselves to create geodesic patterns in the sky. Then, the soldier turned back into the gloom of the hanger, returning to the darkness.

  “But I will tell you this,” he added as an afterthought but in fact it seemed to King as though something had just clicked in the man, as though some difficult decision had been reached. “Nathan Raine is a traitor to his country. But he’s the only man I know who ain’t a traitor to his conscience.”

  “Yo, what’s up?” Raine asked casually as he walked into the office Gibbs was using. His lack of formality was intentional, yet the effect on Gibbs was more intense than he’d expected. Instead of his usual scowl, he looked as though he was about to explode. His face was flushed red with anger, his eyes intense and hateful as he glanced in his direction. Then, thunderclouds darkening further still, he turned back to finish his conversation with the image of Alexander Langley on the laptop’s screen.

  “I’m calling the president,” he growled.

  “Be my guest,” Langley replied with all of his customary calmness, but Raine detected the concern in his former mentor’s voice. “But I’ll tell him the same thing I told you. This is a U.N. mission, and I’m in charge. Now, is he there yet?”

  Gibbs glowered over the top of the computer at Raine, the resentment of all the years spent in his shadow evident on his ugly features. “Yes.”

  “Then put him on, and leave the room.” Although Langley’s voice barely changed, there was no mistaking the authority in it. Raine could remember the exact same tone barking orders at him over a battlefield, the exact same tone dressing him down or complementing him. He suspected it was the exact same tone that neutralised arguments in the U.N.

  Without another word, Gibbs pushed away from the desk upon which the laptop sat and pushed bodily past Raine. He paused for just a second, leaning in close to his face.

  “Whatever you and the old man are planning,” he hissed, “you can forget it. This is my team now, not yours. I’m in command. Got it?” He didn’t even give Raine a chance to answer, instead waltzing through the door and slamming it shut behind him.

  Raine came around to the front of the laptop and looked at the image of Langley being fed via a secure satellite feed. His own image was being recorded, compressed, encrypted and transmitted to New York also. He wondered if that image presented him looking as much like a deer-in-the-headlights as he felt.

  “You know, Alex, I’m perfectly capable of pissing Gibbsy off all by myself without you getting involved,” he joked.

  Langley, however, did not smile. “Is that room secured?”

  “Yeah,” Raine replied, double checking. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a mole in the team, Nate,” he said. “And, right now, you’re the only person over there that I can trust.”

  It took a second for Langley’s statement to sink in. “A mole?”

  “A contact in the Company just informed me that one of their ‘assets’ intercepted a heavily encrypted file which had been sent as a data-burst and routed through a number of NSA servers. The file contained all the data we had accumulated up until that point on the Moon Mask, the Kernewek Diary and the team’s first destination; Jamaica.”

  “So that’s how the mercs knew where to find us,” he realised. “But why are you telling me, not Gibbs?”

  “Because you’re the only one on the team who has been denied com access. Quite simply, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t have sent that data burst. But anyone, anyone else could have.”

  Raine glanced through the office window and into the hanger, glancing at each member of the SOG team in turn and then at King, Sid and Nadia. An icy feeling began to twist in his gut.

  “Where was this data-burst intercepted?”

  Langley hesitated for half a second. “Moscow.”

  Raine’s blue eyes immediately zeroed in on Nadia. She stood next to Sid, watching as O’Rourke explained something about the equipment to King.

  “Now don’t jump to any guns,”
Langley cut into his thoughts. “Obviously, she’s the most obvious suspect, but you know her history. Her father was killed by the Russians, she was assaulted by Russian soldiers and forced to apply for asylum in Great Britain. Like I said, Nate, it could be anyone.”

  Raine felt a jolt of betrayal and it affected him far more personally than he would have expected.

  “I need you to review all the team’s communications equipment. Look for any trace of the data-burst being sent.”

  But Raine wasn’t listening now. His mind was shifting through all the data. Of course, anyone of the team could have been the traitor, but Langley was forgetting one thing. If the mercenaries led by Bill Willis were being paid by the Russians, then a previous data-burst would have been sent to Moscow before even the Chinese arrived at Sarisariñama. At that time, the SOG team wouldn’t have known the full details about the Moon Mask, meaning that it had to have been someone on the expedition itself: King, Sid or Nadia. And who was it who knew about tachyons and the practical applications of them before anyone else? Whose father spent years developing technology that could have been turned into a tachyon bomb? Who was it that had unlimited com access to investigate the mask and the diary? Who was it that had escaped Sarisariñama, Jamaica and Patagonia almost totally unscathed?

  His eyes fixed on the Russian woman across the hanger, boring into her. She glanced up and looked straight at him and it was almost as if she could read his thoughts. Instead of offering a smile or a nod, she looked away guiltily.

  He would check the com equipment, more for evidence to support his accusation than in the belief it would reveal a different suspect. But he was absolutely certain about one thing.

  Nadia Yashina was the Russian mole.

  “Okay, once you’ve secured the mask, you place it in here.” Rudy O’Rourke held out one of the two metallic rucksacks which they had been carrying around since leaving the States. The hard shell, painted yellow with the easily recognisable radiation warning symbol on it, was battered and scratched after being blown up when the Super Stallion had been shot down in Port Royal. Nestled within the foam-padded interior was the fragment of the original Moon Mask which had been extracted from the Xibalban mask.

  The archaeologist took the case reluctantly. Despite Nadia’s assurances that neither he nor Raine had been affected by the close proximity of the Moon Mask in Venezuela, holding something with a symbol of almost certain death etched into its side was nevertheless unnerving.

  He stood in the hanger dressed in a black Nuclear, Biological and Chemical suit just like those he had seen worn by the troops in Venezuela. The hood and helmet was off, hanging halfway down his back but the summer breeze slapping his exposed face did little to cool his sweltering body.

  Outside the hanger, the thunderous roar of jet engines and helicopter rotors continued to swoon the masses.

  Despite there still being no indication of tachyon emissions coming from the mine shaft, he and Raine would be going down alone and relying on their natural immunity rather than the suits to protect them once they found what was hopefully down there.

  “It’s heavy,” he complained about the case.

  “Its outer shell is solid lead,” O’Rourke explained. “It’s pretty much impervious to anything you can throw at it- fire, water . . . you name it. This bad boy ought to survive a nuclear blast.”

  King grimaced. “Let’s hope it doesn’t have to.”

  “Amen to that,” the soldier replied with a smile. King decided that he liked the man. Out of all of the Special Forces soldiers he had been forced to work with these past days, O’Rourke seemed to be the most . . . human.

  “Inside, there is foam padding. The bit of the mask you found in Venezuela is already in there so you can check the pieces you find against it to make sure you’ve got it all before the rest of the team come down. But, just to be sure these tachyon things Nadia’s so worried about don’t seriously damage a potential Mrs O’Rourke’s baby-dreams, she rigged this up.”

  King placed the case on the ground then took the proffered device from O’Rourke. “What is it?”

  “A tachyon particle detector,” he replied. “A fancy Geiger Counter. Miss PhD over there has rigged it up to read the tachyon levels. Once all the pieces of the mask are safely snuggled up inside the case- and it’s locked, tight- the readings should drop to almost nothing.”

  “Almost?”

  “Well, she reckons there’ll be some residual tachyons like, I dunno, floating about, or whatever they do, but not enough to cause any harm.”

  Just then, the door to the office opened and Raine emerged. Gibbs was instantly on his feet, moving in like a predator about to strike, but Raine ignored him. Instead, he marched resolutely across the hanger towards Sid and Nadia. King could instantly tell that something was wrong. The ‘other’ Raine was there again. Not the easy-go-lucky flyboy that he portrayed, but the intense, searing, determined man whose shockingly blue eyes held menace and danger. The air practically buzzed with an almost palpable charge. A storm about to erupt.

  Quick as a flash, Raine grasped Nadia and hauled her off her feet, slamming her down on the bonnet of the jeep parked in the hanger.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” Sid demanded, rushing forward to grasp his arm, but he held tight to Nadia’s throat, pinning her down.

  “You sold us out to the Russians!” Raine spat, his face twisted in anger.

  “Nate!” King bellowed at him as he ran to join the commotion. Gibbs was there also, pulling Raine away from the Russian woman. Everyone was yelling at him but Raine was focussed solely on Nadia.

  “You nearly got us all killed!”

  Nadia tried to protest, her hands clamped around the man’s wrists, trying to prise him off but to no avail.

  “Let her go!” Gibbs shouted. “That’s an order!”

  “What are you talking about?” King barked. By now, the entire team was gathered around. Outside, a Merlin helicopter bowed to the audience in a display of the machine’s agility. “Nadia’s not betrayed anyone.”

  “I won’t tell you again, Raine!” Gibbs un-holstered his sidearm and jabbed the muzzle firmly against the side of Raine’s head. “Let. Her. Go.”

  Raine’s eyes locked on Nadia’s, fury seething from them. His face was hard and unforgiving. Despite her lack of breath, Nadia’s remained cold and impassive. Fire and ice.

  “Nate!” Sid snapped.

  As though it was a physical struggle, Raine pushed away from Nadia, allowing her to slide to the floor, gasping for breath. She wheezed, pulling long breaths down her bruised wind pipe. Sid was at her side, her hands supporting the trembling woman. King immediately felt a pang of concern at his fiancée’s proximity to the woman who had just been accused of betraying them. He felt guilty for thinking it, but what if Raine was right? What if Nadia was working for the government of her birth? What if, now cornered, she took Sid hostage?

  Then the ice cracked and Nadia’s face twisted in anger. “You crazy fucking son of a bitch!” she spat.

  “What’s going on, Raine?” Gibbs demanded. He hadn’t holstered his weapon yet, but neither had he decided where to point it: Nadia or Raine? King noticed also that the other soldiers all had moved their hands to their respective weapons. They were twitchy. The situation was tense and King feared that one false move could result in a bloodbath.

  “Sid,” he said softly, trying to catch her attention and draw her away.

  “It’s okay, Ben,” Nadia replied for her, her voice scathing. “I’m not going to hurt her if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to hurt anyone.” She looked pointedly at her accuser. “Because I have nothing to hide! Nothing to fear.”

  “That’s what Langley wanted to talk to you about?” Gibbs asked. Raine nodded. He briefly summarised his conversation with the ambassador.

  “And so, because the data was sent to Moscow, it is obvious that I am the traitor!” Nadia declared, sarcasm drip
ping off every word. “How very astute of you Nathan. I am Russian, therefore it must be me, yes?” Her face twisted into a sneer. “You have the intelligence level of a Neanderthal!” As she spoke, more vehemence rose in her voice. She pushed up to her feet but all eyes remained fixed on her. Jumpy. Twitchy. Ready to gun her down at the first sign of trouble.

  “You are an idiot!” she shot at him. “And you have now tipped off whoever the real traitor is.” She glanced menacingly at each member of the team, King and Sid included. Her stare was accusing.

  “I checked the com-logs,” Raine said. “You tried to delete the data-burst once it was sent but it left a digital fingerprint on the laptop’s hard drive. Three bursts altogether. One, shortly after we landed in Jamaica, when we on our little shopping trip in Kingston. Not only do the data traces left on the laptop prove it, but your login was active at the same time that the transmission was received in Moscow. A second burst,” he counted down, “when we were en route to Patagonia. What was that for, Nadia? To give Bill Willis a heads-up that we were coming?”

  “No-”

  “And a third time,” he cut her off. “When we were on the jet heading to England.”

  King saw the concern suddenly flash over Gibbs’ face. The enemy knew where they were . . . again.

  Slowly, Gibbs brought his weapon around and pointed it at Nadia. Garcia and West both followed their commander’s action and pulled out their own weapons. King hurriedly pulled Sid away.

  But despite the three weapons pointed directly at her, Nadia’s complete attention remained focussed unwaveringly on Raine. His gaze didn’t flicker either.

  “Garcia,” Gibbs barked his orders. “Secure Miss Yashina.”

  “You nearly got us all killed!” Sid suddenly erupted. King held onto her as she lunged towards the Russian woman. O’Rourke moved in to intercept her as well. “Ben nearly died because you sold us out! You bitch!”

  “Hold her back!” Gibbs shouted.