by AD Starrling
Conrad experimented with the toggles on the device as they covered the uneven terrain. By the time he sank to the desert floor next to Avery, he had started to get accustomed to viewing the world in the faint green, phosphorus light of the image enhancement, as well as the black and white screen of the thermal imager through his non-dominant eye. Stevens was not faring as well; he had already stumbled twice.
‘Target closing in, seven hundred feet and eighty degrees to the left,’ said the platoon scout sniper quietly through his throat mike a short distance away. The Marine gazed steadily through the integrated infrared laser rangefinder on his riflescope, his finger on the trigger guard.
Conrad turned his head and adjusted his night vision device to fuse the thermal imager with the low-light image enhancement. The guard’s figure became a crisp, bright shape in an eerie background.
The man was smoking a cigarette and strolling casually alongside the inner fence toward the southwest corner of the compound. He passed under one of the security lights mounted on tall steel posts positioned at four hundred feet intervals along the perimeter.
Conrad’s gaze shifted to the security hut. He saw the head of a single guard through the glass window. A background light fluctuated against the walls above the man; he was watching TV.
‘Ready for the decoy?’ murmured Avery beside him.
Conrad took a deep breath and rose into a low, starting-block position. He glanced to his right. Laura, Anatole, and Stevens were also up in crouches. The immortal nodded at Avery.
‘Go for decoy,’ the platoon commander ordered into her communication headset.
The scout sniper fired a single shot at the security light behind the ambling guard. The suppressor screwed on the end of the Marine’s M16 rifle silenced the sound and muzzle-flash of the discharge.
The bulb burst with a low crack of breaking glass. Shadows deepened over a hundred-foot-wide circle across the ground. The guard stopped in his tracks, cigarette frozen halfway to his lips. He looked over his shoulder and hesitated, before turning and heading back toward the fresh pool of darkness.
A thrill coursed through Conrad. Their attempt at misdirection had worked.
‘In three,’ warned Avery.
Conrad’s pulse jumped.
‘One, two, three!’ hissed Avery.
Conrad bolted across the ground toward the security perimeter with the two immortals and the Secret Service agent.
During their flight in the Osprey, Conrad and the platoon commander had decided that his team of four would infiltrate the facility first to try and determine the location of the missing professor and his family. Although Avery had initially been less than keen on the idea, her staff sergeant had advised her to agree to Conrad’s suggestion. The Marines would only intervene if the Hagens could not be extracted without drawing the attention of the security guards.
They dropped down by the outer chain-link fence. Rolls of barbwire topped the ten-foot-high barrier. They had decided to go through it rather than over it.
Anatole and Stevens used small wire cutters to create a man-sized breach at the bottom of the fencing. They rolled the three-sided section up, crawled through the narrow opening, and pinned the cut edge to the sand-covered dirt with hooked tent stakes.
Conrad glanced to the left. The guard had reached the broken light. He was staring at the glass on the ground. They crossed the twelve-foot gap to the inner fence and repeated their procedure. Less than ninety seconds after the scout sniper had shot the security light, Conrad and the others were inside Khan Inc. They melted into the shadows and raced toward the southwest corner of the compound.
The security post was housed inside a small concrete structure with a single door to the south and two windows, one to the east and another to the west. The blare of the TV reached Conrad’s ears as they closed in on the hut. He backed up against the wall, flicked up his night vision device, and peeked through the west-facing window.
The guard was sitting on a swivel chair with his back to them. His feet were up on a table and his eyes were glued to the small TV in front of him. He threw his head back and laughed at something on the screen.
Conrad signaled to the others and dropped to a squat. He scuttled beneath the window ledge and stopped at the corner of the building. Light washed across the ground to his left from the doorway. He located a suitably sized piece of rock and tossed it some ten feet in front of the opening. The rock thudded dully onto the ground. Conrad glanced over his shoulder.
Stevens peered through the window and shook his head. Conrad bit back a curse. The guard had not heard the sound.
Avery’s voice came over the immortal’s headset. ‘You have twenty-five seconds before the second guard reaches you,’ she warned.
‘Copy that,’ Conrad murmured into his throat mike. He looked around and grabbed another rock. He was about to throw it when he saw Anatole gesture from the other side of the doorway, where he lurked in the shadows alongside the building. Conrad hesitated and looked past the immortal. Laura shrugged behind Anatole. Conrad sighed and nodded once.
Anatole grinned. He raised his gun and fired twice. The bullets left the suppressor silently and struck the rock with sharp pings. It skipped noisily across the ground.
Conrad looked to Stevens. The agent flicked his thumb up. They heard the squeak of wheels as the guard shifted in his chair. Boots thudded to the ground. A shadow blocked the light coming through the door.
Conrad tensed as the guard took several steps outside, a rifle clasped in his grip. Anatole came up behind the man, clamped a hand over his mouth, and struck the back of his head with the butt of his pistol. The guard went down soundlessly, his gun falling at his feet.
Anatole hefted the unconscious figure up under the shoulders while Laura grabbed the man’s legs. They hauled him away and melted into the night. Conrad and Stevens raced past the open door to the other side of the building.
Shuffling footsteps rose from the direction of the inner fence. The second guard had reached the security hut.
‘Hey, one of the lights broke,’ he started to say in French as he came around the corner. He stopped in the open doorway. ‘Khaled?’ he said in a puzzled voice.
The jingling music of an ad break on the TV was the only response he received in the lull that followed. Conrad waited tensely in the shadows a few feet away.
‘The bastard. He must have gone for a piss,’ the guard finally muttered under his breath. He twisted on his heels and walked a few feet toward the fence. A scratching noise sounded as he struck a match and lit another cigarette.
He had barely inhaled when Conrad rose from the darkness and closed his forearm in a vice-like grip around his throat. The guard choked, his cigarette falling to the sand. A strangled gurgle left his lips. The fingers of his right hand dug into Conrad’s skin as he reached blindly for the rifle slung across his chest.
Conrad kneed him sharply in the small of his back, yanked the firearm out of his reach, and released the chokehold. He struck the base of the man’s neck sharply with the edge of his hand. The guard crumpled with a low grunt.
Conrad and Stevens restrained the man’s wrists and ankles with nylon straps before carrying him some eighty feet to where the other guard lay, bound in the darkness behind one of the trailers. Anatole had taped the first man’s eyes and mouth shut. They did the same with the second guard and divested them of their radios before returning to the security hut.
Conrad found what he was looking for on a clipboard hanging on the wall. It was a manifest of the staff accommodation. His heart slammed rapidly against his ribs as he ran a finger down the first page. He flicked it over. His hand stilled halfway along the second sheet. Relief flooded him.
‘Hagen’s in trailer 21,’ he told the others.
Laura checked one of the guards’ radios, commun
icated the bandwidth to Avery, and disabled the devices. The Marines would now be able to keep track of the enemy’s movements while outside the facility.
They exited the hut and headed swiftly back to the living quarters. Laura lobbed the radios under a mobile home just as they entered the network of passages that separated the cabins and trailers. Small plaques gleamed on the corner rear walls of the lodgings, denoting their numbers. They swerved into the corridor between the first two lines of mobile homes and paused in the lee of a caravan.
‘Hmm,’ murmured Anatole. ‘I anticipate a problem.’
Conrad frowned as he studied the courtyard fifteen feet ahead. It was bathed in the glow of six security lights. According to his calculations, Hagen’s living quarters were directly across the brightly lit space, facing onto the square.
Conrad increased the magnification on his night vision device and scanned the line of dark structures. His gaze stopped on a lime-green mobile home. ‘Third one from the north,’ he murmured.
They considered their approach. They could either cut across the courtyard or go around it to the north or south, steering clear of the lights. The path to the north would put them directly in the line of sight of the security station in the middle of the compound.
They went south and crossed the shadowy strip of land between the fence and the living quarters at a dead run, their boots drumming the sand with a faint patter. They turned the corner into the corridor between the first and second rows of trailer houses on the east side and skidded to the ground almost immediately.
Someone was leaning out of the window of a trailer some twenty feet ahead. The orange glow of a cigarette flared in the gloom and cast an eldritch light across the man’s face as he sucked on the stick. They waited breathlessly in the darkness. Conrad glanced at the face of his watch. It was 05:53. He gritted his teeth. They had less than forty minutes left to find Hagen and his family, and get them out.
A faint clatter sounded in the night. The man had tossed the cigarette butt to the ground and was closing the window. They were on their feet a heartbeat later.
Hagen’s mobile home soon came into view. Lights from the security station in the middle of the compound glowed some five hundred feet to the northeast.
They staggered to a halt with their backs against the trailer. Conrad studied the rear wall. Four dark windows faced their way. There was no way of opening them from the outside without alarming the people inside the trailer and alerting the sleepers in the adjacent caravans. They would have to go in through the front door.
‘Anatole, eyes to the north,’ Conrad instructed. ‘Laura, you’ve got the courtyard. Stevens, come with me.’
Anatole faded into the darkness toward the first two trailers. Laura darted down the passage south of the mobile home, while Conrad and Stevens crept alongside the north. They stopped at the corner and scrutinized the brightly lit square fronting the mobile home.
‘Clear on my end,’ said Laura over the headset.
‘Same here,’ murmured Anatole. ‘The chickens are in the coop.’ The immortal’s breath suddenly hitched over the comm line.
Conrad froze. ‘What is it?’ he hissed into his throat mike.
‘Those bastards are having pizza!’ Anatole replied in an affronted tone. ‘I can see them through the scope!’
Conrad bit back a curse and heard Laura mutter something unsavory. He signaled to Stevens. They darted around to the trailer steps.
It took ten seconds to pick the lock on the door. The immortal was aware of how terribly exposed they were throughout that time. All they needed was for someone to look out of a window or step outside a caravan and their presence would be detected.
The door opened with the faintest of squeaks. They darted across the threshold and closed it behind them. Conrad flicked down the night vision device. The mobile home’s interior became visible in his left eye.
They were faced with a sparsely decorated, open lounge and a kitchen diner. A corridor to the right led toward the rest of the trailer.
Conrad scanned the front room. His gaze landed on an object atop a side table next to the couch. He crossed the floor and picked up the discarded badge. A grim smile of satisfaction dawned on his lips as he studied the photograph on the ID.
‘His daughter was right after all,’ said Stevens in a low voice behind the immortal. ‘They’re still alive.’
They had found Svein Hagen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Conrad turned and headed toward the narrow hallway leading to the rear of the trailer. He walked past a closet and reached an unlocked door. An empty twin bedroom lay beyond. He frowned, glanced into the bathroom, and stepped to the last door. He tried the handle; it turned easily in his grip. He entered the room, Stevens on his heels.
A man lay asleep under a thin cotton sheet on the bed taking up most of the floor space. He was alone. Conrad scowled. He had assumed that the scientist’s wife and daughter would be inside the mobile home with him. He stood still for a moment before gesturing to Stevens. The agent crossed the room and closed the drapes on the rear window.
Conrad walked to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. He placed his hand an inch above the sleeping man’s mouth, leaned toward him, and flicked up his night vision device. He reached over and switched on the lamp on the table next to the bed.
‘Mr. Hagen?’ he said in a low voice.
The man’s eyes snapped open. Pupils dilated in the blue expanse before constricting in the light. Conrad clamped his fingers over the man’s mouth just as he started to scream and struggle.
‘It’s alright!’ the immortal said hastily. ‘Dawn sent us! We’re with the US government!’
Svein Hagen froze.
‘I’m going to take my hand away,’ Conrad warned after a second.
Hagen nodded wildly. The immortal uncovered the man’s mouth.
The professor sat up, his gaze swinging between the silent agent and the immortal. ‘Who are—? How did—? I don’t understand!’ he stammered.
‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Conrad said urgently.
Hagen glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was six in the morning.
‘We’re on the trail of a group of people who are behind the assassination of the Russian premier and the attempts on the lives of several other prominent heads of state, including the US president,’ Conrad continued.
Hagen paled. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘It’s started.’
Conrad stared at the scientist and swallowed the questions rising in his throat. There would be time for that later, if they made it out of there in one piece.
‘We found evidence of your work concerning a powerful new explosive on the database of a company in Paris,’ he added. ‘A Professor Itaka from Case Western pointed us in your direction.’
‘Aki?’ Hagen whispered in a dazed tone.
‘I don’t have time to go into details; suffice it to say that I spoke to your daughter, Dawn, and she explained her suspicions concerning your accident in Hawaii,’ said Conrad. ‘She got your email.’
Tears glistened in Hagen’s eyes. ‘How is—?’
Conrad suddenly raised a hand in warning, cutting off the professor; Anatole’s voice had just come over the headset.
‘There’s a guard coming this way from the central post,’ warned the immortal.
‘I’ve got movement here as well,’ whispered Laura. ‘Someone just stepped out of a building in the courtyard.’
‘From the chatter on the radio, it looks like an early change of shift,’ said Moore. ‘The rest of them will swap places at sunrise,’ he cautioned.
Alarm tore through Conrad. ‘Your wife and daughter, Bridget, where are they?’ he asked Hagen hurriedly.
‘They’re being held in one of the outbuildings next to the adm
in office!’ said the professor. He had climbed out of the bed and was changing hastily into jeans and a T-shirt. ‘The others are there as well!’
Conrad went still. He exchanged a startled glance with Stevens.
‘What others?’ the immortal asked slowly.
Hagen explained. Twenty seconds later, Conrad swore.
‘What’s wrong?’ Laura hissed over the headset.
‘It looks like we have a more complex situation on our hands than previously anticipated,’ Conrad replied bitterly. ‘Avery, I think we’re gonna need that back up. We have Svein Hagen, but there are four more hostages to rescue.’
‘Four?’ said the platoon commander sharply.
‘Yes. Hagen’s wife and daughter, a Professor Alison Williams, and a Dr. Ed Henderson. The last two were also kidnapped by these guys and are being forced to work for them.’ Conrad glanced at the disheveled professor. ‘I’ll have Stevens bring Hagen to you. Laura, Anatole, and I will proceed to Zone Three. The other hostages are locked up in a building there.’
‘I’m not leaving without my wife and daughter!’ Hagen blurted, blue eyes blazing with a stubborn light.
Lines creased Conrad’s brow. ‘We haven’t got time to argue, professor,’ he said coldly. ‘Besides, you’ll only slow us down and place this entire operation in jeopardy.’
Hagen’s hands curled into fists. He opened his mouth to retort. His protest died on his lips when Conrad froze.
‘Shit!’ Avery exclaimed in the immortal’s ear. ‘Something’s up! There are a whole bunch of guards heading to the empty coop you guys cleared earlier! They know we’re here!’
Conrad’s stomach twisted. ‘How?’
‘It looks like they might have gotten a tip-off, Greene,’ said Moore grimly over the headset. ‘We can’t track their chatter anymore. They just changed their communication channel.’
Conrad scowled. The mole! He didn’t have time to dwell on the matter further. They had to get Hagen out of there. ‘Let’s go!’ he snapped to Stevens.
