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

by Robinson, Jeremy

  The big man in black lunged forward, his huge blade coming in straight at Johnson’s midsection like a spear. Johnson parried the blade with his M9 and stepped to the side before attempting a similar lunge, but the big man was too far away. They had traded slashes a few times now, and Johnson was no closer to ending this fight. The initial scuffle when the Gen Y man had been playing possum under the detonated door had cost Johnson his sidearm and his rifle. The Gen Y man had stood in his dusty black BDUs and produced the large knife, holding it up for Johnson’s inspection. Johnson had glanced to the floor of the hallway and seen his own pistol ahead and behind his opponent, and he knew the MP5 and his FN SCAR were on the floor well behind him. No choice but to pull his M9 and wade into it with the Jolly Green Giant.

  The larger man lunged again, but it was a feint. He turned his blade sideways and targeted Johnson’s defending knife arm. The blade of the oversized knife tore into Johnson’s digicam woodland sleeve and cleaved into the skin beneath it. Johnson yanked his arm back and glanced at the wound. Deep, but not life threatening. He took a step back and used his left hand to unbutton the BDU blouse as the men slowly circled each other, keeping their eyes on their opponents. In a fluid movement, Johnson shed the blouse from his uninjured arm, and wrapped the jacket around his knife forearm. The move was so slick, it looked practiced, even to Johnson, but he’d only just thought of it. His opponent smiled appraisingly. Then the man made his mistake. The one Johnson knew a crappy Gen Y soldier that would think a Rambo knife was a good choice was likely to make. The man changed his grip on the huge weapon, so that the blade pointed downward, as if he were going to be attacking Janet Leigh in the famous shower scene in Psycho.

  Finally, Johnson thought.

  The problem with such a hold is two-fold. The first is that you have to get in close to use it. The tall man rushed in to do so and Johnson demonstrated the second issue. He raised his uninjured arm and blocked the overhead stab by crossing his forearm under his attacker’s, then he dropped low and spun, slashing laterally with his M9. By the time Johnson had darted away from the reach of the Gen Y man, the top of his opponent’s black trousers were already damp with abdominal blood. Johnson’s cut had gone deep.

  The Gen Y man staggered backward a few steps, dropping the foolish knife while trying to keep his organs from spilling out. Blood dripped onto the floor. As he neared the fallen pistol, Johnson’s level of alert increased, but the man was looking on the floor for something else. Johnson was about to wonder what it could be. The man had passed up the knife and Johnson’s pistol. But before White Five could do more than begin to form the question, something freakishly bizarre interrupted the conclusion of the knife fight.

  Three shiny black heads poked around the far corner of the corridor and looked at Johnson. The Gen Y man didn’t see them—his back was to that end of the white corridor. Johnson’s attention picked up the movement immediately.

  “What the f—” he started to say.

  Then everything happened at once. The bleeding Gen Y man lunged for a small backpack that was leaning on the floor, further back toward the new arrivals. The three creatures darted out into the corridor, looking for all the world to Johnson like black speckled alligators. Big ones. Johnson himself was in motion—diving forward into the corridor, but away from the Gen Y man. Johnson was going for his SIG Sauer P226. Two human bodies slid along the linoleum floor while three amphibian bodies glided across the walls toward the two men. Time seemed to slow to a crawl for Johnson. His perception moved into bullet time.

  Johnson snatched up the handgun and let off a few shots at the crawling intruders up on the walls. He rolled into a back flip, and landed crouched on his toes as he fired three more shots. Nothing. He turned back toward the Gen Y man in time to see the taller man flinging his retrieved knife at Johnson. Johnson ducked and rolled forward, the whirling oversized knife passing overhead and sticking hilt deep into the skull of one of the huge salamanders on the wall behind him. Johnson came out of his roll and shouldered the Gen Y man to the side of the corridor before turning to fire more at the attacking beasts on the walls. He took a breath and lined up the shots carefully, targeting one of the dark creature’s silver-dollar-sized black eyes.

  As the beast with the knife stuck downward through the top of its head leapt off the wall toward the Gen Y man, Johnson watched as the taller man turned and kicked out with one leg, his combat boot connecting soundly with the front of the leaping creature’s flattened looking head. In the man’s functioning hand, he tightly clutched the backpack from before. One of the other two salamanders was initiating its own leap toward the Gen Y man, as Johnson noticed in the slowed-down passage of time that the beast whose eyes he had shot out was still approaching him and the eyes were sealing up.

  Time almost ground to a stop for Johnson as several thoughts jammed into his skull at once. The backpack was a bomb. The salamanders were regenerating. The door to the utility closet with the hole leading down to the cavern below Labs was open and just a few feet to his left. He didn’t have any grenades on him and even if he did, the resulting explosion from the backpack bomb might kill everyone and everything in the corridor. It might even ignite the natural gasses down in the cavern and destroy the whole base. No matter what, Johnson was screwed.

  Snap.

  Where time had been slowed to a crawl before, now everything kicked into hyper-motion. The Gen Y man tossed the backpack and it slid across the corridor’s linoleum toward the natural rock hole in the floor of the closet. Two of the salamanders lunged at the Gen Y man, one landing on his chest and taking him down, and the one with the knifehead latched its huge mouth, knife blade and all, around the man’s thigh. When the mouth opened, it looked like the creature’s entire head had split open like a trash can lid coming off the can. The third salamander was leaping for Johnson.

  Johnson lunged laterally for the backpack to the strains of the Gen Y man screaming, as the two creatures began to devour the bleeding man. Johnson dropped his handgun, but held onto his knife as he scrabbled for the straps on the backpack. His body slid headfirst across the slick white floor of the corridor. At the last second before the backpack dipped into the gaping hole in the closet’s floor, Pete Johnson snagged the tailing strap on the canvas-covered bomb. Unfortunately, his body was still sliding and moving so fast that by the time he attempted to arrest his momentum, the pack, his arm and part of his torso had all already fallen into the hole. Johnson was just about to accept the inevitability of the fall to the cavern floor, nearly a mile below him, when he felt a strong tug on his leg.

  He twisted as he fell and looked back up the hole into the closet. The heel of his combat boot had stopped at the lip of the hole. He was hanging upside down, the bomb dangling in the yawning abyss below his head. The salamander that had come for him began to slide into the hole with him, its tongue tightly wrapped around his leg like the stripes on a candy cane. When the beast’s shoulders jammed against the edges of the hole, they both came to a jerky halt. Johnson looked up at the creature in astonishment as it opened and closed its massive maw, scrabbling backward with its suction cup-like toes. For a second, it seemed like a stalemate to Johnson. They were stuck, with the salamander jammed into the hole and Johnson’s body dangling over the cavern like the Sword of Damocles.

  Then the salamander found its purchase and began moving backward, hauling Johnson’s leg up out of the hole.

  “Oh for the love of…” He pushed against the lip of the hole with his other foot, halting his ascent.

  Johnson quickly ran though his choices. Plunge to certain death with a bomb that might destroy everything or get hauled up and eaten by a mutant monster. There was no guarantee if he got the bomb back up into the corridor that it would minimize the effects of the detonation. On the other hand, if he managed to survive the fall for even a few minutes after the impact, he might be able to defuse the bomb. Unless it went off while he was fighting the salamander.

  There was no choic
e after all.

  Johnson shoved his leg hard, dragging the Salamander’s head back into the hole. It opened its mouth again and made a noise that sounded to Johnson like a growl as it struggled to regain its footing. When they stopped descending again as the creature’s shoulders lodged against the edge of the hole, Johnson brought his bayonet up. The salamander growled at him even louder.

  “Wanna impress me, fucker? Follow me down.”

  Pete Johnson, White Five, swiped at the long pink tongue wrapped around his leg with the knife, and the sharp edge split the meat and tissue with ease. The salamander retreated back out of the hole as Johnson started to fall into darkness. As he fell, he pulled the backpack with the bomb to his chest and hugged it tightly, ready for the ride.

  16.

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

  White One had heard enough. He had peeked around a pallet and seen the black uniforms and the chest emblems. He knew the men in his hangar were Gen Y. There were about ten of them and he’d overheard that at least one of them was heading into the cavern below the Labs to plant another bomb down there like Ridley had done. This group was heading to the computer lab and then the submarine dock. And the Irishman was their leader.

  Carrack seethed. These scum had casually strutted into his base, killed his men with deathtraps and planned to blow the place off the face of the planet when they were done. So much for going into action before things turn FUBAR, he thought.

  At least I can still bring the hellfire.

  Carrack stood up from behind his pallet and pulled the safety clip off of an M67 fragmentation grenade. As a lefty, he held the device upside down. He pulled the pin out and let the safety lever flip into his right hand. He paused one second and then lobbed the device through the air of the hangar at the cluster of Gen Y men by the corridor leading down to the train platform. He squatted down behind the protection of his pallet just as the device detonated. The resounding boom of the explosion echoed loudly in the confined space and the smoke from the Composition B detonation filled the space between the corridor and Carrack’s cover.

  Men were screaming and Carrack heard MP5 fire. He had no idea whether his opponents knew the general direction from which the grenade had come. He figured they didn’t. It was panic fire. He glanced around the side of his pallet, with his head no more than a foot off the ground. The smoke was rising in the hangar’s air—he wouldn’t be able to see the corridor at head height but he could see their ankles. It looked like his blast had killed at least five of the men. Then he corrected his assessment when he saw that one of the men on the floor was moving and hollering at the damage to his leg.

  “Shut it!” Carrack heard the Irishman shout at the wounded man, a moment before the loud report of a 9mm handgun went off. The injured man stopped moving and made no more noise.

  Son of a bitch. He just killed his own man!

  Carrack opened fire with his FN SCAR at the calves of the men he could see. Panic erupted as another of the men fell to the low angle of fire. From the cloud of smoke, the Gen Y men returned MP5 fire at Carrack’s position. Carrack retreated behind his pallet and ran in a squat for another pallet across the hangar floor. Between the smoke and the confusion, there was no way the Gen Y men could see him yet. He peered out from his new hide and watched as gunfire impacted against the pallet where he had hidden. As one man foolishly stepped out of the cloud of smoke, Carrack moved the firing selector on his FN SCAR to single shot, took and released a breath and then fired off a round. The bullet found the middle of the Gen Y man’s forehead and the exit wound spread brain and bone backward into the still dissipating cloud of smoke. Carrack was behind another pallet before the man’s body hit the floor.

  “The train. Now! Move yer bastard arses!” the Irishman screamed, and Carrack watched as the dark shapes he could see through the low light and smoke turned tail and fled down the corridor. He took that as his cue to abandon cover. He stood and raced toward the first pallet behind which he had hid and moved his firing selector to A for automatic. He leaned around the stack of plastic wrapped boxes and let a full auto burst follow the retreating men down the corridor.

  No one returned fire, but he could still hear the men shouting as they ran away. He stepped away from the pallet and out into the open, firing the last bullets in his magazine down the corridor, then swiftly ejecting the spent cartridge and loading another. He moved forward in a squat and saw that his grenade had in fact taken down four of the Gen Y men, although the fifth man had a handgun wound in the top of his head. Carrack had taken the sixth down with the single shot to the head as well. That left four including the leader. Carrack was disappointed to see that while there was a trail of blood leading down the corridor from where he must have wounded one or more or the men in the legs, none of his targets from that attack had fallen. Still, one against four—with a fifth and possibly more in another section of the base—was far better odds than it had been a few minutes ago.

  He was debating whether to give chase to the escaped Gen Y men or try to contact Deep Blue again, now that he was in the facility and whatever interference or jamming had prevented communication from outside the hangar door might no longer be as effective. Motion in his peripheral vision caused him to dive back under cover. Across the hangar from where Matt Carrack had stood, another corridor led to the train platform that would take you to the Labs section of the base. Two of the hideously large salamanders had just crawled out of the corridor on the walls and were now wiggling in bursts up the walls of the hangar.

  Naturally.

  Now he rejected the idea of contacting Deep Blue and tried to make his choice between pursuing Gen Y or pest control. Before he had long to ponder the thought, another two of the sleek black, yellow polka-dotted monsters came racing out of the corridor. Then another two came lunging out of the hall on the floor. Then a whole stream of them came pouring out of the corridor, filling every part of the corridor’s walls, ceiling and floor. They spread out over the walls and floor of the hangar like inky liquid, reminding Carrack of a swarm of angry black insects, as they filled every space at the mouth of the corridor. Many of the creatures were darting for the corridor to the other train platform that led to the Dock, where the Gen Y men had fled. Carrack turned and headed into the hangar space, toward the front, and the only pallet that held the one item that might save his life.

  17.

  En Route to Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  “Seal off the tunnel?” Beck wanted to know.

  “Hell no!” Duncan had made that mistake at the other end of the rail tunnel, ten miles back. He wasn’t about to do it again. “Take the stairs.” They raced out of the rail tunnel and into the platform at Central. At this point, hordes of the creatures were fleeing in front of the dirt bike, the signal somehow having gone through the mass of bodies that something on the bike was painful to the creatures and they were currently as much prey as predator. More salamanders were still pursuing the bike back in the tunnel—many, Duncan assumed, in a rage at the loss of their tongues from the cutting torch he still wielded in his right hand. The light in the platform seemed to offer little additional deterrent. Duncan let go of the spotlight with his left hand, the lanyard on its end allowing it to swing off his forearm. He wrapped his arm around Black Zero’s mid-section as she accelerated the dirt bike up a short set of concrete steps to the top of the platform, crushing the wheels over the limbs of two the beasts that had been crawling up to the platform.

  The bike launched off the stairs and from his brief moment in the air, Duncan could see at least forty or fifty of the things scrabbling all along the floor of the platform and starting to take to the walls in an effort to escape the airborne dirt bike and its fire-wielding passenger.

  The bike landed with a heavy jolt as it impacted the floor, two salamanders lunging away from the landing site so as not to get crushed by the fast moving vehicle. Anna Beck, Callsign: Bla
ck Zero, steered the bike for the corridor that would lead them back to the hangar where all this had started for Duncan. He was eager to get Lori to safety but he wasn’t sure yet how to do so. He hadn’t come up with a survival plan in case he was locked in his own base with enemy combatants and murderous amphibians—and certainly not before he had even taken up occupancy in the damn place.

  The bike raced down the corridor with salamanders skittering everywhere, both looking to escape and attack. Duncan was struck by inspiration. “Stop outside the restroom!”

  To her credit, Beck didn’t argue. She just pulled the bike up against the restroom door, put her feet down on the floor and cracked a flare to throw behind them and stall their pursuers. Duncan launched off the bike and sprinted into the women’s room. He came to a sliding stop on the tile floor, facing a white tile sink with pink accents. He quickly snatched the tall can of hair spray on the counter that Lori was fond of using. He turned and started to race out the door when he heard Beck calling from the corridor. “Bad time to take a leak, Boss!”

  Duncan leapt out of the doorway to the women’s room in time to see an overly large salamander falling from the ceiling and twisting as it fell to attack Beck. Beck was pulling her M9 bayonet from a sheath on her leg—the only weapon she had left.

  In mid air, as Duncan leapt, the salamander fell and Beck began her thrust with the knife, Duncan held out the can of hairspray in one hand and the still lit cutting torch in the other. He sprayed the noxious flammable chemicals and the resulting ball of flame engulfed the salamander. It squealed loudly, flipped over and bounced off the bike’s handlebars. Beck’s swing with the knife completely missed and Duncan’s arc through the air took him crashing into the far corridor wall, but as he slid down it, he rotated his torso and fired another blast of flame back down the corridor behind the bike, causing the pursuing amphibians to retreat in a frantic scrambling herd.