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

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Carrack ripped the mask off his face and took in a lungful of the air. It was stale and smelled bad, like deep caves tended to, but it was breathable—his heaving lungs didn’t cough it out. He handed her the mask back anyway, and she took it from him. “We’re here,” she said.

  The beam of her LED spotlight on her tactical vest illuminated a wall up ahead and hole in the center of it, just large enough for them to squeeze through. He took the backpack off and passed it to her after she had scampered through. Then he leaped through headfirst and rolled on the concrete floor on the other side.

  They were in the tunnel.

  Beck was already running toward the distant end of the rail line. He could see the ruined bio door from the beam of her LED. He got up and sprinted after her. She was fast, but he was way faster and with far longer legs. He caught up to her as she flung the backpack across the surface of the train platform. She scrambled onto the platform and he leapt up onto it ahead of her, leaning down and snatching the strap of the pack off the ground as he ran.

  “Where?” she asked. She was out of breath as she staggered behind him across the platform.

  “Up,” he replied as he raced down the corridor at the far end of the platform to a stairwell. He passed the first one up because it was still under construction from the Hydra incident. He spotted something in the stairwell that provided inspiration. “I’ve got an idea.”

  He reached the next staircase—this one intact—and started taking the stairs up, two at a time.

  “I’m so glad you have a plan, White One. I was beginning to think we were winging it.”

  “Five minutes. And let’s make it Matt. I’m sick of this White One crap.” He tugged on the stair railing as he pivoted his body around the landing, launching up the next flight of steps.

  “Fair enough. I’m Anna.”

  She must have been getting her second wind, because Carrack noticed she was catching up with him on the stairs. “If we make it out of this alive, I’m gonna need a drink.”

  “If we make it out of here without getting our asses blown off, we’re getting ripped. Drinks are on me.”

  “Screw that,” Carrack said between breaths. “Drinks are on Deep Blue—for like a year.”

  She laughed and vaulted a few more steps until she was now ahead of him.

  “Have you noticed that the lights are back on?”

  As she rounded the next landing on the laboratory level, he heard her voice cry out to him.

  “Maa-aat” she stretched his name out into almost three syllables, but he was hearing her over his shoulder, because he had exited the stairway on the laboratory level. “We’re running out of time!”

  “Three minutes,” he shouted back at her. He was racing back along the corridor two levels up from the one they had just run. As he darted into a lab door, he caught sight of her chasing him down the hall.

  “What the hell are you—oh. Oh, you’re good.”

  Carrack was kneeling beside a huge airtight chemical safe. He was spinning the dial of the lock to the combination he had memorized. He knew the code for every lock in the facility by heart. He took his job seriously, and he had done a lot of late night study of diagrams and schematics over the last few weeks. He threw the lever and the door to the large green safe opened. He dumped the bag with the bomb inside and pushed the handle and spun the dial. Beck was already turning to leave the doorway.

  “Left!” he shouted. She faltered for just a second because she had been planning to turn right, heading back to the stairwell. She turned to face left, and he slammed into her from behind, shoving her down the hallway in the direction he wanted, but he held onto the strap of her tactical vest, so she wouldn’t stumble and fall. As he helped her right herself, she turned to face him as they ran for the end of the corridor.

  “But out is up,” she pointed out with dripping sarcasm.

  Carrack pointed to the end of the hallway up ahead at the former staircase that had been destroyed years earlier in the Hydra battle.

  “More fun to go down.”

  Next to the stairwell was a large pile of concrete rubble and debris that had been swept into a pile before the restoration in this wing had been cancelled. Deep Blue had been embroiled in the golem incident with Chess Team and was orchestrating his political exit strategy—there hadn’t been time to oversee things here in Labs, so they had shut down the clean-up. Beyond the rubble pile, was a large orange plastic tube. It ran vertically down the three levels to the foot of the ruined stairs that Carrack had seen a few moments ago as he ran past it. Construction crews used tubes like this one to drop debris down to the ground level. In this case, the clean-up crew hadn’t even used the tube yet.

  Carrack jumped into it feet first, only widening his stance as he neared the bottom to slow his descent. Each segment of the tube was about a meter long, and the piece below it fit snugly around the outside of the segment above it. Objects going down the tube faced no resistance as the tube repeatedly widened after each joint and then narrowed slightly again. Carrack burst out of the bottom of the tube and moved away just in time to avoid getting stomped on by Beck’s boots. They sprinted back to the train platform only to find yet another surprise waiting for them.

  “The train!” Beck shouted with delight.

  “Hot damn. All aboard. It’s faster than the bikes!”

  They jumped aboard the train that had returned in the moments they were in the upper levels of the Labs section of the base. Carrack operated the engine, setting them off past the blasted bio doors and down the tunnel, gaining speed as quickly as he could coax the train to do so.

  “Time?” Beck asked.

  Carrack checked his watch. “Ten seconds.”

  He mashed the throttle as far as it would go and the train sped through the tunnel, the safety lights on the walls blinking past. He guessed they were maybe a quarter of a mile away when Beck leapt down to the floor and the bomb detonated. They felt it more like an earthquake than an actual explosion. He could only just see down the length of the electric train to the end of the tunnel as debris rained down onto the platform they had just vacated. A cloud of dust and rubble burst into the end of the tunnel behind them, but they were far enough away now that the train experienced no damage.

  Carrack slumped to the floor next to Beck and they both breathed hard for a few minutes, neither saying anything as the train sped along the ten-mile distance to the Central section.

  “How the hell did we get lucky enough that the train came back?” Beck asked.

  “Maybe it was an exit for the guy with the bomb?”

  “Nah, they came in this way.” She shook her head and her long brown ponytail swayed over her shoulder.

  “Deep Blue then. Or an automated reset function after a power outage?” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling of the train’s engine car. Beck leaned her body against the wall next to him and slid down until she was almost lying on the floor again.

  “Mission accomplished. Well done, Steed,” she told him.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Peel,” he said with a smile.

  24.

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

  When Duncan stepped into the hangar back in Central, he wasn’t surprised to find the lights still out. He had emerged from the submarine to find the flames in the dock area dying down and the lights on up on the ceiling above the twisted catwalks and the water. The salamanders were nowhere to be seen. He reasoned that the computer operator left behind in Central that had engineered the power outage had set the computer systems to reboot after a certain period of down time, and the power to turn back on in Dock at a prescribed time, so that the Gen Y men could make their planned escape out with the Typhoon. But Duncan had put the kibosh on that plan, and the salamanders had probably done enough of a job of it even before he had arrived to be the monkey in the wrench.

  He assumed correctly that they would have instructed the computers to leave Central dark. When
this was all done, he was going to have to rip out every last damn circuit board in the base and replace it to ensure Manifold never regained control of the computers in the base again.

  After leaving the sub and stepping over the remains of charred and blackened salamander carcasses, he had climbed the metal rungs in the freight elevator shaft, back up to the train platform. He gratefully collapsed in the engine car of the train as it whisked him along the rails in the underground tunnel back up to Mount Tecumseh and the Hangar. He had hoped that Carrack and Beck would have been there already and would have successfully stopped the bomb and apprehended the Gen Y man with the egg sample. He would explain that he’d had a date with a salamander the size of a dinosaur, but as he stepped into the hangar, everything was dark and quiet.

  He sensed at the last moment that he was in danger and crouched low, just in time to avoid a body in the dark, swiping at him with a knife. The room wasn’t in pitch blackness—Carrack had cracked a half a dozen glowsticks that he’d left on the floor of the hangar, but they had faded now and only provided a minimal glow. Duncan realized it was the scent of the man that had tipped him off. Cologne, sweat and something else. Nicotine? No. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it had been enough to save his life. He sprang to his feet and backward from the man as he loomed forward and took another swing with the blade. Duncan’s left arm, already injured by the metal shrapnel earlier, took the blade lengthwise. The cut felt deep to Duncan and he backed further into the darkness, pulling his M11—the EOD variant of the Army’s M9 bayonet—out of its sheath on his hip. The knife was the last weapon he had on him. He didn’t even have a flashlight.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Duncan,” came an Irish brogue from the gloom. “Martin Damien here. I could not believe me fookin eyes when I saw who it was blowing Holy Mary, Mother of God, out of me men back there. I’m a big fan. Loved your public bloody meltdown. Makes yer man William’s indiscretion with the cigar look like grammar school, it does.”

  Duncan remained silent in the darkness as he circled away further into the gloom. He moved over to the pallets, careful to stay out of the small and ever diminishing circle of ambient light cast by the fading glowsticks. Still, Damien had been waiting in the dark for a while and seemed to know exactly where he was. “Come now, Tom,” the man called out. “Ye’ve got yer pokey bit there. Let’s have some fun.”

  Damien rushed Duncan with his knife thrust forward like a spear at Duncan’s mid-section. Duncan moved the M11 to block the strike, but Damien turned the blade downward and slashed toward Duncan’s inner thigh. Duncan saw the attack at the last second and threw his weight over to the side, so his leg came up, the knife slashing across the front of his kneecap. The blade cut, but it was a shallow wound. Duncan followed through with the leg raise, as he fell to the side and cracked Damien in the back of the man’s head with a steel-toed combat boot.

  Duncan rolled on the floor and stepped away in a crouch, with his M11 at the ready. Damien had landed on the hangar floor on all fours, but was already picking himself up. The man rolled his neck, freeing up his cervical vertebrae with loud clacking and popping noises. “That was a good one, Tommy. Very slick. Didn’t know you went in for the chop-socky action, but I suppose I should have guessed.”

  Duncan stayed silent in the dark, watching Damien search for him. The man was going the wrong way. Duncan could sneak out of the room and escape, but he wanted to end this fight with Damien dead, or at least in severe pain. He crept up the side of the nearest pallet and squatted down on the top of the crates stacked on it. In a crouch, he moved to the next pallet that was also stacked with wooden crates. He would have to be careful. He knew that some of the pallets contained cardboard boxes that wouldn’t likely support his weight. Damien had moved further toward the front of the hangar. At least the Irishman had the good sense now to stop talking and giving his position away in the dark, while he searched for Duncan.

  Duncan lost sight of the Irish Gen Y man in the dark, but he continued to make his way across the floor of the hangar by taking the high road on top of the piles of stacked equipment. Duncan was about to delicately test the surface of the next pallet with his toes to determine whether it contained more crates or softer cardboard boxes, when Damien popped up right next to him and slashed out at Duncan’s ankles. Duncan leapt forward over the man, slicing out at the man, from an upside down position in the air and scoring a long slash across Damien’s back. They both dropped their knives—Duncan from the impact and Damien from the pain—and Duncan completed his flip, landing off balance on his feet and stumbling forward into the dark. He stopped himself from falling with his hands touching down on the slick concrete, and he continued running into the deeper recesses the shadows. His ankle was screaming at him from the abuse.

  Damien shouted in pain from the long diagonal gash on his back. “That’s it, you fookin tosser. I’m going to make you cry before I’m done with you.” He squatted down and picked up his knife, and then he stalked into the hangar again, looking for Duncan.

  Duncan stayed where he was, his hand on the piece of machinery behind him, watching the Irishman hunting him before disappearing—in the wrong direction—into the dark again. Duncan turned to look at the thing he was touching and smiled in the dark. One of us is going to be crying.

  25.

  Post 3, Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  Outside the massive steel door, the M1A3 Abrams tank was rolling to a stop. Still classified as in design, the experimental tank weighed and looked like a regular M1A2 Abrams tank, but it had been fitted the latest technology and experimental weapons, as well as a remote-controlled .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the top of the turret. The vehicle had been driven up to New Hampshire on the back of a speeding flatbed truck with an Army escort of Humvees.

  At the end of the short paved road leading to the hangar door of the Central section of the former Manifold base, the soldiers had stopped the flatbed and backed the tank down its folding ramp. Then the vehicle had raced at its top speed of 45 mph down the short private road to the massive steel security door they had been told to expect. The escort soldiers remained on the main road, while only the skeleton tank crew of two men (where the Abrams normally took four) traveled to the hangar door. General Keasling had been extremely specific when giving them his orders. They were to take just the two men in the tank to the steel security door and then blow the thing sky high with the tank’s main gun and its 120 mm shells. One shot would do it. Then they were to sit tight in the tank and wait for further orders.

  It was the weirdest mission either man had ever been on, but Sergeant David Wallace and Captain Peter Jesse were both Army men through and through. Both the enlisted man and the officer were used to bizarre orders and sequences of events that made little to no sense. That was the Army. Being ordered to blow up giant steel doors in the wilds of New Hampshire would have only started to surprise them if they had been asked to do it while wearing clown outfits.

  Captain Jesse sighted in on the door. He checked his scopes for motion and infrared. They couldn’t see through the thick security door, but they could scan the trees around the tank to search for hostiles. Keasling had stressed that this was a full on terrorist incident and good men were trapped inside the facility, with the possibility of multiple hostiles both inside and outside the base. With no movement and no heat signatures on the infrared larger than a ground squirrel, Captain Jesse determined they were good to go.

  “Wallace, sit tight. I’m about to fire main gun on my mark.”

  “Yes sir.” the sergeant replied. He was in the driver’s seat of the vehicle, strapped in and ready to watch the show through the periscopes on his hatch.

  Although Jesse was the tank commander, today on his skeleton crew, he sat in the gunner’s seat of the 65 ton vehicle. The main gun was already loaded. He looked through his periscope and briefly considered the absurdity of using an Abrams main battle tank against a station
ary target that didn’t shoot back.

  Talk about overkill, he thought.

  He spoke softly into his microphone while gripping the firing mechanism.

  “Three…two…”

  26.

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

  Duncan remained silent waiting for his chance. He sat in the dark, comfortable with his view of things. He was wearing a helmet with night vision optics attached. He could see everything in the hangar well enough. He patiently waited as Damien stalked slowly from pallet to pallet in the dark. He breathed slowly in and out, watching.

  Damien worked his way around the pallets, sometimes springing up and swiping, as if he expected another attack from above. When he had made his way forward in the hangar and run out of obstacles behind which Duncan might have hid, it was clear the man was losing his patience. He broke the silence again.

  “So where are ya, Tommy-boy? Don’t tell me yer too scared to keep playing our little game?”

  Duncan smiled in the darkness. He had never left the game.

  “You know I’m going to find you eventually, right? And then I’ll be carving me up a slice of presidential corned beef, is what I’ll be doing.”

  Duncan raised his hand and the object he held. He pointed it at Damien but didn’t turn it on yet. No, no yet. Wait for it to be perfect.

  Damien stepped backward in the dark. The faint glowsticks had finally died completely and the man’s pupils—no matter how dilated—could not see in the total dark of the yawning hangar’s space. The man spun suddenly, slashing out with his knife at nothing. He dropped slowly to the floor and crawled in the total dark toward the steel security door. When his outstretched fingers in the dark brushed against the door, Damien stood and put his back to it. He waved out in the dark again with the blade of his knife. Then he slid his back along the door, moving toward the center of the giant steel obstacle.