by Greig Beck
Last look, she thought and quietly opened the door. It was cold – strangely so – the curtain billowed from a slight breeze. The window was open, and it shouldn’t have been. She frowned and her head snapped around to look to the bed. It was empty.
Movement drew her attention back to the other corner of the room, and her breath caught as a large shape loomed. There was a single red dot where two eyes should have been. Aimee screamed.
*
Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska – US Military Space Command, Classified Division
“Sir, extreme intrusion – Buchanan Road.”
“What the fuck?” First Lieutenant Sam Reid leapt to his feet, the huge HAWC towering over the soldier leaning in at the doorway.
At thirty-nine, Sam was the oldest HAWC in the ranks, but he was the strongest, and the best military tactician on the team. He was also crippled from the waist down, as he had suffered the brutal shattering of his L1 and L2 spinal plates, and worse, had had his cord severed.
But advancements in experimental bionics and battlefield armor had meant test pilots were needed – Sam had enthusiastically volunteered to try out the new MECH suit, or part of it. The Military Exoskeleton Combat Harness was the next generation heavy combat armor. On Sam, the half body synaptic electronics were a molded framework that was built on, and into, his body – light, flexible, and a hundred times tougher than steel. Sam was as good as new, except now the big man could run faster than a horse, and kick a hole in a steel door.
“Buchanan Road …” There was a near imperceptible whine of electronics as the mountainous HAWC spun back. “Goddamnit, that’s Aimee Weir’s place. Shit.”
He punched a button on his desk’s comm., breaking through to his superior officer.
“Boss, Aimee Weir’s house, trouble. I’m patching it, and coming through.” He turned back to the soldier at the door, as he placed a small plug into his ear. “Switch it through, Shorty … and link in the team.”
“You got it.”
The young soldier sprinted away, and Sam jogged down the hallway to the Hammer’s office. He pushed at the door and went straight in. Even as he got there, the wall was opening, revealing a huge screen.
Colonel Jack “Hammer” Hammerson, commander of the secretive HAWCs division within the US Special Forces, was already in front of the screen. He half turned, the granite-hard expression telling Sam the man was already pissed off.
“Talk to me, Reid.”
Sam listened to the comm. plug for a second or two and then pointed. “Data link coming through now. We’ve got two intruders in the house, got past our surveillance. They’re good.”
Hammerson’s screen split to show multiple darkened rooms. There was a single adult male, flat on his back in a doorway, a spreading bloom of red on his chest. Two large men, in blackout clothing and cyclopian night vision gear, were in the child’s bedroom. One of the men held Aimee by the hair and shook her as he shouted into her face.
Hammerson’s jaws clenched, and Sam heard something deep in the man’s chest. He could have sworn it was a growl. Sam stepped closer to the screen, enlarging the child’s bedroom view. “They’re looking for Joshua; they can’t find him.”
Hammerson didn’t blink. “Take ’em down.”
“Do we want to find out who sent them?” Sam asked.
“They can talk to me via an autopsy.” Hammerson turned, his eyes merciless. “Proceed with the order.”
Sam nodded, and touched the button in his ear. “Alpha team, go on insertion. No warm bodies.”
The man on the screen punched Aimee in the face, and then lifted her again by the hair. He continued to shout at her.
Sam’s teeth ground in his cheeks. Personally, he wanted them alive. Not from compassion, mercy, or because he really wanted to talk to them. Instead he wanted five minutes alone with them. Sam’s huge hands crushed into fists.
*
Joshua Weir curled up small. He barely breathed on the top shelf of his closet as he peeked from behind the wall of soft toys, Star Wars Lego, and boxes of broken Transformers. The room was near pitch dark, but he saw the men as clearly as he saw in daylight.
Mommy was in trouble and he watched as the men shouted questions at her, and shook her by the hair. While one man shouted, another man was flipping over the bed, and pulling out drawers – they would find him soon. Joshua eased back, but clutched a swimming trophy in his hand. The small silver figure on top, standing with raised hands, was now a sharp spike. The man hit Mommy, and Joshua’s hand tightened on the trophy.
Uncle Peter came into the room, fast, and seemed at first confused, and then frightened. One of the men in black struck him across the throat and he went to his knees clutching his neck. Then another pointed a gun at his chest that barely made a noise, and Uncle Peter fell backwards.
“Peter!’ Mommy screamed as her potential protector first went down and then went to sleep.
Joshua turned his head to the dark doorway. He heard the other people coming, silent as ghosts, too silent for the men in the room to hear. He listened as they came up the stairs, and also crept on the roof. He knew they came to help. He didn’t know how … he just … knew. He also knew something else, and he urgently leapt from his hiding place.
Joshua landed on Aimee, causing the man holding her to leap back momentarily. The small boy immediately wrapped his arms around her eyes and ears, shielding her. He squeezed his own eyes shut, just as the window frame exploded inwards, and a small stun grenade detonated on his bed.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” he whispered, but knowing she couldn’t hear as he lay across her, shielding her. Like magic, and before the flash had even dissipated, there were several more huge black-clad bodies in the room. There was a soft sound like someone spitting, and the two men who were hurting Mommy just fell down.
A blanket was thrown over Joshua and Aimee, and Uncle Peter was also lifted from the room.
Mommy started screaming then, and calling his name over and over. But Joshua reached out to her, talking softly, telling her they were safe now. She pulled him to her, hugging him tight.
Joshua looked back, just as they were being bundled from the room. He knew the bad men had no breath left in them and were dead.
Good, a tiny voice whispered to him. He smiled at that.
CHAPTER 5
Aimee sat in the back of the black van as it sped away. There were three men and one woman in the back with her. She didn’t know them, but knew who they were – HAWCs.
Peter lay flat on the floor, his head propped and his chest bandaged. He groaned and coughed wetly. Aimee reached down to wipe the hair from his forehead.
“He’ll be fine. Collapsed lung, but otherwise, it’s through and through. He’s lucky.” One of the men wiped blood from Peter’s chin, and then read some figures from a small electronic pad they had stuck to his chest to monitor his vital signs.
“Lucky,” Aimee repeated, looking at Peter’s drained face. She felt sorry for him, but also something else – she suddenly knew that even though he was a good man, a good provider, and a good role model for Joshua, he could never be their real protector.
She turned to Joshua and he smiled up at her. In his face she saw him again, Alex Hunter, that specter from the past. She smiled back, amazed that her son seemed unfazed by the night’s brutal events. Instead, the boy turned to one of the HAWCs, and reached across to touch one of his gloved hands. Across the back of the knuckles and fingers was armor plating. Joshua made a fist and rapped on it.
“I bet that would hurt.”
The big man looked down, and grinned. “It’s supposed to.”
Joshua nodded, as though this was the answer he expected.
“Ma’am.” One of the HAWCs handed her a small pellet, and he pointed to her ear. “He can hear you as well.”
She nodded and inserted it.
“Aimee, are you okay?”
She closed her eyes, immediately recognizing the voice. She couldn’t decide whether
to be angry or happy. “You know I am, Jack. You’ve been watching me, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Jack Hammerson said softly.
“For how long?” she asked.
“We never stopped.”
She exhaled. “Thank you.” She had thought Joshua was a secret, now she knew differently. Strangely, rather than inflame her, it calmed her. If Jack Hammerson had known for five years, and done nothing, then they never intended to take him away at all, she rationalized. In fact, while she had been abominable to the HAWC leader in the past, he had secretly been guarding them all along.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“The sins of our past … or perhaps the sins of others, now carried by you, whether you like it or not. I’m the one who is sorry, Aimee.”
She leaned back. “So, what now?”
“That depends on you. Say the word, and you can go back to your home, or a home somewhere else. We’ll patch up Peter, and generate a cover story.” He paused, waiting.
“For how long? Until someone finds us again?” Aimee lowered her voice and turned away. “That was no random break in, they wanted him, didn’t they, Jack?”
“We think so. The secret’s out – the Israelis know about Alex Hunter now, so do the Russians. They captured one of our people, interrogated him. Probably learned everything there was to know about him, and the people around him,” he said. “More worrying is the Chinese joining the party. We know they have their own Advanced Soldier Program. Getting a little crowded now.” He sighed. “A lot of choppy water, Aimee.”
She shut her eyes. “Is anywhere safe?”
“Nowhere is ever really safe. But there are places that are safer than others.” Again he waited.
“What about Joshua? I know, you know, he’s … different,” she said.
“He might be. But my only interest in him is that he stays happy and healthy. Aimee, we can protect you.”
“If … there’s always an if.” She waited.
“No Aimee, no if, no catch … a request maybe, but no catch. My priority is protecting my country, and its people. That includes you and Joshua. You both can live a happy and safe life under our care and protection. No one will ever touch you or him again. No one will ever even get close to either of you again. A normal life; I promise you that.”
“Normal?” She leaned back, knowing that the devil always wanted its pound of flesh. “And the request?”
“Come in and we can talk about it. There’s a lot to catch up on.” Hammerson ended the call.
*
Captain Wu Yang lowered the night-vision glasses, revealing eyes that were coal dark in a face that looked like it was carved from solid stone. The Chinese captain was tall, even by Western standards. He and his team had benefited from early detection and then cultivation of the XYY chromosome phenotype breeding programs – the extra Y chromosome in males delivering height, strength, and aggression well above average, and ideal for roles in the Special Forces arm of the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA.
Breath hissed from between Yang’s clenched teeth, as he turned away from the breached house in Boston, heading for his car. There was no need to wait for any result – his men were already dead, and if not, and they were captured, they were ordered to take their own lives.
Inside the dark car, he sat for a moment, feeling the throb of pain in his head. He gripped the steering wheel, the hard polymer beginning to bend in his hands as his rage built. This was supposed to be a simple mission, to enter the country, take the child, and be gone, all in twenty-four hours. He had erred by not expecting there might be surveillance. But why would there be? he wondered.
The wheel began to crack as it bent towards him. Who was this Joshua Weir that he had some sort of Special Forces operatives as his personal protection? Why wasn’t he told, so he could successfully execute his plan?
The top of the steering wheel snapped off in his hands, and he exhaled, releasing the building pressure. It was over, and he had failed. All that remained was to leave the country and report the result to his Controller, Chung Wanlin – and this was not going to be well received.
Yang sped away from the sidewalk, his large calloused knuckles beginning to bend the remaining portion of the steering wheel once again.
CHAPTER 6
Beijing – Central Military Commission
General Banguuo Tian read the report on the Xuě Lóng Base in Antarctica for the second time, this time slowly and with growing interest.
The secret Chinese project, one of hundreds being undertaken globally, had been an REE mining program undertaken by the Ministry of Land, Resources, and Mineral Exploration. The military’s limited involvement had been the supply of a few basic support personnel.
Now, all communication had ceased; it seemed they had all vanished. Banguuo knew they had satellite links, radio, and in emergencies could tap into Australia’s phone system to reach one of the dozens of safe houses situated down there. It was simply not feasible for all of those contact pathways to go dark all at once.
He placed the report carefully on his desk and steepled his blunt fingers. The report suggested possible causes, such as cave-in, gas leak, or electro-magnetic disturbance, and he could guess at a hundred other benign reasons for their non-communication. But, his own parallel intelligence report mentioned intercepted chatter from Australia – the Australians were radar-scanning the base. They had also performed a high level fly-over, and if the Australians had ground penetrating radar, they might have picked up the below-ground activities. This ally of the United States would not hesitate to pass on the information, and it would then find its way to the American Antarctic base at McMurdo.
The tunneling work beneath the Xuě Lóng Base was close to a pocket of the frozen continent designated as restricted by the Americans. Military map code Area 24. It was termed a forbidden zone by his US military counterparts. He snorted his derision – the American designation was worthless – China’s rising power meant nothing was restricted or forbidden to them anymore.
Normally, this eventuality would only have mildly interested him, and he would have left it to the mining ministry to sort out. But there was something in the report that grabbed his attention. Banguuo’s jaw worked, as his eyes traveled over the paragraph again. There was an unknown signal emanating from this Area 24. The code ciphers had already identified it as being a unique automated distress signal from an American naval vessel, registration unknown.
Area 24 was over two miles below the rock and ice. The signal was no communication aberration, but instead was coming in over the secret frequency used by American submarines when they were in distress.
There was no formal naval notification of a missing vessel – ship or submersible. But not everything that occurred was broadcast. Banguuo knew of America’s secret Sea Shadow project that was shut down after the experimental craft had vanished. He remembered at the time having one of China’s submarines search for it.
“Nothing ever stays hidden forever,” he said quietly, as his blunt fingers now drummed on the desk.
Maybe we now know where it was really lost, he thought. The signal was so deep beneath rock and ice it was only through chance that they had picked it up when the mining team had broken through a rock wall into a subterranean void.
What if somehow the submarine got trapped under a shelf or in some sort of cave? The signal was so deep that it could not be detected above the ground. Perhaps we are the only ones to have received it. What if the Americans don’t even know it’s there? Maybe we have the only tunnel down to their experimental submarine. Banguuo sat back, his mind working. An opportunity to leap decades in submarine research and development, offered to him on a plate. Who could refuse? His grin widened.
He needed speed, and he needed a crack team. He had just the thing in mind.
CHAPTER 7
US Naval Pacific Command Headquarters – Honolulu, Hawaii, Island of Oahu
“This can’t be possible.” Five-star
General Marcus “Chilli” Chilton’s eyes moved over the information brief. “The Sea Shadow? Our missing Sea Shadow?”
Jim Harker, his staff sergeant, nodded. “We believe so. It’s the correct frequency and automated coded message. And it gets weirder – it’s coming from designated Area 24.”
“Area 24?” Chilton groaned. “And it just started up all by itself?”
“Maybe, but we don’t think so. It’s a fluke that we even got wind of it. The signal was in an old parcel of data sent by some Brit exploration team that’s drilling into the Antarctic ice. They’ve got funding for another round of digging, and wanted some previous data verified, so they forwarded the packet to one of our scientific teams, who detected the buried signal. This data they sent is years old, but …” Harker shrugged. “The Sea Shadow was, is, nuclear powered, so the energy source would have continued to fuel the signal beacon for as long as it remains operational.”
Chilton sat back. “How could it be operational, when it vanished years ago in abyssal water? We spent months looking for it, but in water that is some of the deepest in the ocean.” He frowned. “And then it ends up in Area 24? That’s damn well miles away … and miles inland.”
“And two miles down, under the ice and rock.” Harker tilted his head. “But we know there’s more under the Antarctic ice sheets than just snow, ice, and rock, don’t we?”
“That’s why we quarantined the area,” Chilton said.
Harker raised his eyebrows, further wrinkling an already heavily creased forehead. “So here’s my wild theory: what if the Sea Shadow found a way in, or was sucked in … all the way to Area 24?”
Chilton sat staring at the data sheet in his hands. His large head lifted. “Who else knows about this?”
Harker exhaled. “I think more people than we’d like. This is where it gets choppy. Two hours ago, several Chinese high-speed choppers were dispatched to their Xuě Lóng Base in the Antarctic. This has been followed by the Kunming, one of their new guided missile destroyers. We’ve plotted its course – it looks like it’s on its way there. You might have expected a supply ship, or even an engineering vessel. But instead they’re sending an attack and defense craft packed with enough armaments to start a war. Bit extreme for a quick run down to resupply some hungry scientists.”
