Callsign: Deep Blue - Book 1 (A Tom Duncan - Chess Team Novella)

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Next, he had gone back to his HDT and opened a small equipment case that was attached to the rear. It contained all kinds of useful items such as a small blowtorch, a small fire extinguisher, MREs and the items he had retrieved—a diving mask and small pony bottle of oxygen that could be used in a pinch, as a SCUBA tank. Not bothering to remove his BDUs or his boots, Gino had taken the pony bottle with him and dived into the lake, not yet using it to breathe.

  He had aligned himself with the deck off the camouflage cabin and had dived under the water, using only the mask and his own lungs first. He would save the pony bottle for when he needed air. There were only a few minutes of air in it anyway. Although he wasn’t a big swimmer, he had large lungs and could hold his breath for a long time. He was easily able to swim down far enough to see the top of what would normally be the massive underground doorway leading into the submarine dock that was hidden under the cabin. The door itself stretched into the depths of the lake farther than he could see. A Typhoon class sub ran a draught of almost forty feet, with almost 60 feet of hull and sail above the water. They also had a beam of around 75 feet. Gino didn’t know just how much bigger than the sub the underwater tunnel was, but he knew it was the biggest damned door he’d ever seen—above water or below it. And right now, the door was locked tight, just like the rest of the facility. He had taken one small breath from the pony bottle, and ascended back up to the deck that hung out over the water off the decrepit cabin.

  He had had only one option left. Back on land, fifty yards off to the side of the cabin in the woods, was a small storm drain grate set in front of a tunnel that laid horizontal to the ground and pointed toward the lake. Gino had seen the tunnel on the schematics of the base and had figured the tunnel and the cistern it led to was a storm drain that would deliver overflowing rainwater running off the road to the lake. He knew a small portion of it ran under an office in the Dock section of the base. That was how he would get in. He had used the blowtorch on the grate and slithered through the tight confines of the tunnel to the top of the cistern.

  That was when he had realized what the cistern was really for, and when he remembered that the tunnel off the bottom of the cistern didn’t just lead under an office in the Dock section—it ran under a bathroom.

  “This is gonna suck so friggin much.”

  Gino slowly descended the rusted ladder, promising himself he was going to bathe for a week once he got out of this mess.

  8.

  Pinckney, near Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  A sentry post had been installed at the gate on Gilford Avenue, the entrance to the former Pinckney Bible Conference Grounds. The entire campground and surrounding area where Chess Team had battled the Lernian Hydra was now owned by the US Army. A tan concrete wall, with a fence of concertina wire on top, had been constructed around the entire 15-mile perimeter. The public had been told there was initially a toxic leak that had occurred on the site, and that while cleaned up now and safe to the locals and the water supply, the Army had purchased the land and was keeping folks out on general principal. The local population of the town bought the story and secretly hoped that the site housed some cool, top-secret Special Forces training center.

  The two guards stationed at the sentry post knew better than to think any cool spec ops stuff was going down. They had strict orders to rotate out every eight hours and to never enter the site at all. They figured it was still a hazmat site and hadn’t been cleaned up properly, although the Army had guaranteed them they were safe in the guard shack. The MPs stationed in the shack were two of the total of 12 men and women stationed in Pinckney to guard the site. The Army had purchased a large Victorian house in the local community, and much like the Marine Corps did with their Embassy Guards in non-hostile foreign countries, had housed the MPs inside the rambling structure, turning oddly shaped bedrooms into a dormitory under the eaves of the house. Every day MPs would journey from the house in town to the guard shack at the front gate of the Army site and to the wall around it.

  Sergeant Mark Greene and Private First Class Ryan Davis had the guard shack duty today. The guard duty was better than the perimeter duty. At any given time, two MPs were in the shack at the gate on Gilford and three MPs were doing a walk around the huge perimeter. The perimeter duty sucked, because 15 miles was a long way to go on foot for anybody, and there was nothing out there on the wall but the surrounding woods. In the winter, they had to cross-country ski the circumference of the fence line and that was considered to be a bitch, but it was also the Army.

  Besides the physical labor involved in the perimeter duty, the job was dull. Guarding a big empty patch of forest and former campground in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire. Nothing ever happened. The previous year a few of the very limited number of people authorized to visit the site would arrive and get passed through the gate. They would go in unescorted. The MPs had no idea what they did in there, but they would come out again sometimes hours later or sometimes days later. Then things had quieted down for months. Now the only people that would come were the five members of a security team that was guarding a different, but nearby facility. They were known only by their callsigns; each had a “White” in the name followed by a number. All twelve of the MPs had met the security team, and wondered about the callsigns and the lack of rank on their uniforms. Davis and Greene had spent long hours discussing whether those guys might be Delta, but ultimately they decided that the “Tightie Whities,” as the MPs referred to them, were probably just more security guards, based on the way they each held themselves and the kinds of questions they asked on their infrequent visits to the guard shack on Gilford.

  It seemed like it was going to be another boring day of standing or sitting in the guard shack when Davis called out to his sergeant.

  “There’s a Tightie Whitey coming. Look alive.”

  Greene leapt to his feet and they both stepped out of the shack, their M4 carbines held formally across their chests.

  ***

  White Five made the turn onto Gilford so hard on the HDT dirt bike that he left a skid mark on the asphalt of the entryway. The road had been dirt before the Army, but the Army liked things tidy and they had paved every road inside the facility before they had even finished building the wall. White Five rebalanced, and raced up to the gate and the guards in front of it. He slammed the brakes hard enough to gently pop the rear wheel off the pavement and startled both of the Army MPs. Neither of them was privy to Chess Team information of any kind.

  White Five pulled an ID card out of his BDU blouse’s chest pocket and held it up for the guards. Before they had even stepped closer to examine the badge, he barked an order at them.

  “Get it open fast, Sergeant. If anyone other than me comes toward this gate from the inside, you detain them at gunpoint, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Greene clearly didn’t know White Five’s rank—in fact, when White Five was in 10th Mountain, he had been of equal rank to Mark Greene—but the man understood that the White Security Force was in charge. Without any rank insignia on their uniforms, the MPs weren’t required to salute or call them “sir”, but White Five knew Greene hadn’t just called him the same kind of “sir” he would have used for a civilian either. The chain of command was clear here, and the fact that White Five had just intimated that trouble might be coming seemed to have put the young sergeant on alert. That was good.

  The gate opened and White Five raced inside along Gilford Avenue. He throttled the HDT hard, popping a front wheelie as he went. He wasn’t showing off though—he was just in a damn hurry. He raced right up the hill to the former abandoned campground and drove toward the vehicle entrance to the secret underground Labs section of the Alpha base. This was the same door that Knight, of the Chess Team field members, had used to gain entrance a few years previously, and which led to the defeat of Manifold and the acquisition of the property. The vehicle entrance, designated Post 1, was sealed with a thick steel door that looked
just like a miniature version of the one that had slammed down over the hangar, nearly scaring White Five half to death. White Five, known as Pete Johnson until signing on with Chess Team’s Security Force, had expected no different. Without slowing the bike, he turned and made for the dirt path that would take him around the side of Fletcher Mountain to the helipad that was hidden by the canopy of trees above it. Johnson knew that the door off the helipad hidden under the trees with the diagonal approach would be likewise locked. However, he also knew that the steel security door at that location would be thinner than the others. And while the small amount of C4 explosive the team members normally carried on them wouldn’t have even put a dent in the security door now obstructing the hangar back at Central, the door over the entrance at the helipad would be shredded to razor thin slivers of shrapnel once Johnson was done with it.

  A few hundred yards out from the concealed helipad, Johnson dismounted from his bike and took the path slowly, moving from cover to cover behind the maples and pines scattered across the hillside. He didn’t know if an actual hostile force was present or not, and if they were, he had no idea whether they might have left sentries, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Johnson had started seeing a local girl in town named Shelly. The sex was hot and the conversation was scintillating—she had studied philosophy at Dartmouth before coming back to town and taking over a small book store that her grandfather had run. Johnson was not about to get himself killed, not with a great woman like Shelly waiting for him each night.

  He crept up to the edge of the clearing under the trees, again marveling at Ridley’s ingenuity at creating such a perfectly camouflaged helipad, and also at the skill needed by the pilots to land on such a site. Chess Team’s own helicopter pilots, formerly with the 160th and known as “Nightstalkers,” were able to stick the landing like it wasn’t a thing, but Johnson wondered what Manifold’s pilots had been like. Or maybe they had been former Nightstalkers themselves. Johnson knew from the files that Gen Y had liked to hire former US military members. Maybe Manifold’s pilots were all mercenaries too.

  Johnson scanned the clearing and the entrance to the Labs section. Its steel door was in place as he had expected. He spent a long minute searching the trees opposite the door. That’s where he would have set up an ambush if he had been left to defend the door from possible intruders. He remained perfectly motionless, hunkered down on the forest floor. He spotted a chipmunk darting through the undergrowth, but otherwise everything was still. Convinced he was alone, Johnson made for the steel security door and quickly squatted down and faced back the way he had come, again searching the trees. He felt a bit uncomfortable going it alone, but White One had explained to them all the rationale for a small five-man security team—small, lightweight, fast, mobile. Each man was a self-contained unit, armed with a variety of objects to be used in their mission of defending the base and the people stationed here. They were not meant for an offensive role, but if any of Chess Team’s enemies—human or otherwise—were to assault the base, the gloves were to come off and each man was expected to deliver their weight in a shitstorm of violence. Scanning the tree line on the edge of the clearing for the final time, Johnson wondered if this was indeed the day.

  He pulled out a small mound of C4 plastic explosive and a tiny pouch with detonators. He planted the explosive on the door and then high-tailed it to some cover behind a nearby tree. The door exploded inward, and true to Johnson’s expectations, it resembled a nest of metal angel hair pasta on the floor of the corridor, once the smoke cleared.

  He stepped into the hallway with his FN SCAR at the ready and immediately discovered a body. The man had blood down one side of his face and was clad all in black BDUs. He had been holding an MP5 submachine gun, which was now across the hallway on the floor. His left arm was twisted at an unusual angle reminding Johnson of one of those wind-spinners with the shiny foil. On the breast of the BDU blouse was a logo Johnson had seen in the files. This man belonged to the Gen Y security team that worked for Richard Ridley’s manifold company.

  Cocky sons of bitches, wearing that patch like a badge of honor.

  Johnson leaned in close to examine the body and check for a pulse. A hand reached up and grabbed him by the throat.

  HELLSPAWN

  9.

  Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  Lori Stanton hammered furiously at the keyboard. She had moved to a large computer lab in Central, with wall displays, tabletop monitors and about a million feet of wiring and Ethernet cable lying around the room. The room hadn’t been set up properly yet, but Deep Blue had assured Lori it would be completely state of the art once they were done. She could believe it from the equipment arrayed around her.

  Only one computer had yet been set up, and that was the one Deep Blue himself normally used. It stood in the center of the room, on a swiveling ergonomic chair that had her reclined at roughly the angle she would have been in, had she been reclining in a La-Z-Boy chair. Seen from the side, the computer station resembled a giant letter C lying on its curved side, with its points pointing upward. A monitor screen floated in front of her face and the keyboard was at just the right position. It was actually difficult to get your shoulders into an aggressive position in the relaxing chair, but Lori was trying.

  She was trying hard to isolate the intruders into the computer system, but she wasn’t having any luck. She knew someone else was in the facility from the motion sensors that she monitored in the Labs section occasionally. The resolution wasn’t good enough to show her how many there were, just that they were present. She knew they had hacked into the system—which was built on the remains of the extant computers temporarily until they could gut the whole thing. She was going to insist the upgrade process happened immediately, now that they had been hacked. They had shut all the security doors and locked her out of the security portion of the computer system. It hadn’t taken her long to learn that much.

  It also hadn’t taken her long to figure out who. It had to be Manifold agents—probably their blasted Gen Y soldiers—because they hadn’t actually crashed into the system. They had used an old extant override code that had originally been implanted in the Manifold computers. After the Hydra incident, Deep Blue and Lewis Aleman had crashed the entire base’s computer systems. Later, once Eli Jacobs and his cleanup team had been sent in, they had resurrected some of the system, to get certain parts of the base functional, and they had begun the slow and painstaking task of deconstructing (and in some cases unlocking) Manifold’s old data architecture. Sifting through thousands of computer logs, science reports, blueprints, diagrams and descriptions, files and video footage of genetic experiments had taken months. Deep Blue still hadn’t sorted through the whole mess, but they had made enough headway that Jacobs and his cleanup team had been dismissed. Deep Blue was content to slowly discover what else he could over time with the systems. The base would now be repurposed for Chess Team’s usage and people were due to start setting things up right away.

  Lori had pretty quickly seen that she wasn’t getting past the override code, so she had thought outside the box—and outside the room. She had gone into the nearby server closet and rewired some of the powerful Juniper Networks routers and gateways. Where she had been locked out without access before, now she could at least get to some parts of the system with a direct connection. She knew a few things now. The intruders had gotten in using the terminal outside the door to Post 2 at the helipad attached to the Labs section. They had further controlled the system wirelessly with a laptop. She had shut that shit down, killing all the wireless access points throughout the base. She didn’t know why they were here or what they were after, but she could see some of the old data architecture they had examined from the laptop before she had killed the wireless. They hadn’t done much in the system. After locking the doors, they took computer control of the trains between the three sections of the base, and they had looked at one researcher’s notes in particul
ar. A genetic researcher named Todd Maddox. Lori knew the name from the files Deep Blue had given her to read on Manifold. She shuddered.

  The man had been instrumental in the experiments on regenerative creatures and with the Hydra, but it seemed to Lori that his true interests and talent was with his experiments with the regenerative abilities in smaller creatures. nAG proteins, pig bladder extract, blastema cells. Lori didn’t understand half of it, but what she gleaned was that Maddox had been working on a different project from the Hydra experiment on his own time. He was speeding up the regenerative abilities of ambystoma maculatum—some kind of salamander from what she could tell. He seemed first interested in applying the regenerative abilities of the creatures to humans, but was unhappy with the speed of regenerating cells in humans. A lot of his work had focused on ways to speed the process up. Maddox had started out in the Manifold Beta facility in Peru but his work had ultimately been moved to New Hampshire for access to…