Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2)

by Burger, Jeffrey

  Standing next to the Chief, the big man looked down at her as she pulled her silken black hair back into a low bun. He set the butt of his plasma light machine gun on the toe of his boot and cradled the muzzle in the crease of his left elbow, his hands casually clasped at his belt line. Layora finished her hair and looked up at his hulking six foot, eight inch frame, “What's up, Truck?”

  “Chief, these people don't off-world, they don't have the technology...” he waved his hand, “except when the Grays take them for their little experiments. How are we going to communicate with them?” He had a voice befitting a big man, deep and mellow.

  “The Skipper has been communicating with the package with no issues, so I don't expect there to be a problem...”

  He laid down his weapon and crouched next to her, “I wonder how that could be?”

  Chief Cress shook her head, “I don't know, and it wasn't my place to ask.”

  ■ ■ ■

  Approaching the west coast of Florida from three-hundred miles out in the Gulf of Mexico and about three-hundred feet off the water's surface, the 77 was traveling better than Mach 4, her 296 foot long bulk splitting the water below. At fifty miles out, Commander Ribundell had the helmsman decelerate hard, but the 77 was still doing over four-hundred when it passed a mile off the bow of a US Coast Guard cutter patrolling the coast, about ten miles out.

  “Commander,” Lieutenant RyeCyn turned from his console, “that appeared to be a military vessel...”

  The communications officer was monitoring as many possible signal bands as she could. “I think I've got them Skipper...” She cocked her head, “Yep, definitely military. They can't identify us but they did see us. They've requested for something called a helicopter to help search for us.”

  Lieutenant RyeCyn was monitoring the cutters position, “They're turning toward our direction...”

  “Thirty seconds,” called the navigator. Approaching the landing zone hot, the helmsman zeroed the throttle, applied breaking jets hard and swung the stern parallel to the beach, the entire ship coasting sideways the last hundred yards or so floating on the anti-gravity field. “Preparing to deploy landing legs...”

  “Belay that helm,” ordered Ribundell , “keep us on the AG, no legs.” The ship coasted in over the beach and came to a stop with a couple quick puffs from the braking jets. Lights on her command console winked on, indicating the starboard waist cargo doors were opening and the ramp deploying. She stood up and paced the stations on the bridge. “Keep an open channel to the team...”

  ■ ■ ■

  Special Agent Doug Mooreland was getting bored with this assignment, every single time they came back to this damn house it was the same fucking thing. Nothing. Leaning against the SUV parked on the grass, he fired up a cigarette.

  SETI had originally caught the incoming transmissions from space and DARPA had noticed a sharp incline in chatter around the SETI community - there seemed to be some real excitement there. Enough to pique DARPA's interest and get their attention. But trying to decrypt the signal was unsuccessful... in the process, the cryptologists were the first to realize the signal was going both ways, coming in from deep space and going back out... And that was a staggering bit of information. It fell squarely upon the NSA's shoulders to find whoever was responsible and bring them in - quietly, with any equipment they found, intact. It took them the better part of a month to track the signal here to Steele's beach house. But this Steele character never showed up, just his sister.

  Some digital digging turned up a major FBI / CIA boondoggle connected with this family but it was well covered up and nobody was talking - somewhere, someone was pulling some pretty well-connected strings and Steele was off the grid. They originally had considered talking to the parents but they seemed so far removed from it all. The real action seemed to stem from here but none of it made any sense... the kind of power and equipment needed for sending and receiving these kinds of signals would be substantial - there was nothing like that here... but the signals kept happening.

  Doug Mooreland shook his head, either the Steele chic was getting back out before they got there, or there was a hidden cubbyhole somewhere they were missing. They couldn't simply tear the house apart - the assignment didn't give them that kind of latitude. It was still supposed to be a secret operation, although their constant visits were pretty obvious.

  They were stationed right across the street for God's sake, how could they possibly miss her? Still leaning against the SUV he took another drag on his cigarette listening to the radio chatter. Thirty minutes ago they caught a brief transmission to space, an email went out and a short cryptic phone call to the parents in Chicago. His team had gotten to the house in less than three minutes, but as usual there was nothing in the house. Doug had a sudden impulse to light it on fire as he fiddled with the lighter in his pocket.

  He remembered the first night in, it had been a mess. Blood everywhere. One guy with his brains blown all over the hallway floor, another bled to death on the beach a hundred feet from the Steele house and the third they'd caught trying to bind his wounds at Dr. Brodermeyer's house a few doors away. Good God, another bloody nightmare there, Brodermeyer and the maid both shot to death. They'd thought of handing the Russian over to the FBI but decided to hold onto him for a while - no telling what he might know, or how he was connected to the Steele gig. He hadn't said anything yet - he was a hardass, but he would, with time. The NSA had their ways... subtle, mind bending ways. Oh yeah, he'd tell them everything. In any event, the Russian was not likely to ever see the light of day again.

  Clearing his mind, Doug took another drag on the cigarette, exhaling, watching the cloud swirl away in the damp onshore breeze hitting his back, the streetlight turning it orange. When the light flickered, he hardly noticed, lost in his thoughts, until it went out completely. He looked at it curiously.

  “Doug...” The voice was soft but insistent. After all, it was one o'clock in the morning. “Doug..!”

  He flicked the remainder of his cigarette out into the street and keyed his radio to respond, before realizing it was dead. He whirled to search for the sound of the voice, his silenced H&K MP5 finding his hand. He adjusted the sling and moved around the SUV to meet the shadow of an agent standing at the corner of the house overlooking the beach. “What the hell is going on? My radio's dead...”

  Ignoring his comment, the other agent urgently motioned him over, never taking his eyes off the beach, “You've got to see this...”

  Doug Mooreland hurried over and took a knee next to the other agent, his submachine gun casually resting on his thigh, fully expecting to see skinny-dippers at the water's edge. All the lights on all the homes up and down the beach were out. He blinked hard to clear the streetlight impressions from his eyes, focusing on the large shadowy shape on the sand. “What the fuck?” As his eyes adjusted he realized there was red light coming from an opening in its side and a ramp extending down to the sand. He wasn't seeing it clearly enough yet and his mind was doing its best to fill in the blanks. “Oohh... It's a Marine Corps hovercraft...”

  The other agent would have looked down at him disdainfully if he could have taken his eyes off it. “That thing is the length of a football field,” he hissed, “it's the size of a destroyer, are you blind?”

  Doug Mooreland rubbed his eyes and began to see it more clearly as six armored figures descended the ramp, “holy shit...” Crouching, the other agent cleared the corner of the house and advanced on the landing party, his weapon at the ready. Doug grabbed for his leg and missed, “where the fuck are you going...?” A sizzling, concentrated blue-white flash came from the direction of the landing party and tossed the agent back towards Doug, laying him out, almost within his reach. Doug Mooreland lurched forward, grabbing the agent's tactical vest by the collar and pulled him back toward the protection of the corner of the house, a blue-white streak slashing past him, another hitting the wall in front of him, tendrils of electricity spreading out across the surface.
Behind cover, Doug checked the man over but found no visible injury, the man's eyes looking up at him, his muscles twitching. “You OK?” he whispered. The agent's eyes rolled around, his mind searching for words, he spoke but it was all gibberish and Doug couldn't make heads or tails of it. “Just relax; I think you're going to be OK...” Rising to his feet, Doug released the safety on the H&K and peeked cautiously around the corner peering through the sights, but the figures were gone. He stared at the ship for a moment seeing it clearly now, realizing it was hovering quietly over the sand, the only discernible sounds being a low hum and the noise of the surf. He could clearly see the gun turrets and small windows, wondering if anyone inside could see him, when something else caught his eye out on the water maybe five or six miles out, the shape of a ship heading toward shore. He turned and moved toward the front door of the house and could see another team of five agents running down the street toward the house, their stalled SUV sitting in the street about a half a block behind them. Not knowing the situation inside the house, he decided to wait for the arrival of the other team.

  ■ ■ ■

  Chief Petty Officer Layora Cress was the first one off the 77's ramp onto the beach, followed closely by the rest of her team. “Phase weapons only... Truck, the big gun only if we have to.”

  “Gotcha Chief.” The big man slung the light plasma machine gun behind him and drew his sidearm.

  Looking left under direction of one of the 77's turret gunners, the Chief acknowledged the message. “I see them, thanks.” She continued to move toward the target house, “Spread out people, two targets left side...” A Petty Officer and Seaman paused, knocking down the advancing target, allowing the second to recover the first then driving him back to cover with a few choice shots, allowing the rest of the landing party to clear the beach. They hustled to catch up, running across the soft sand in their armor. The Seaman stayed at the foot of the deck on the sand to defend their egress, two sharpshooters lying prone in the doorway of the 77 at the top of the ramp, covering the beach in both directions.

  The Chief Petty Officer peered cautiously in through the sliding glass doors, “Three more,” she whispered, testing the sliding glass door. The door didn't budge, “Dammit.” She knocked on the glass and stepped back, flattening herself against the outside wall.

  “I have an angle...” came a whisper.

  A face appeared in the glass, barely visible in the darkness. After a moment the door unlatched and slid slowly open, the muzzle of a submachine gun leading out of the opening, “Mooreland?” Hit by a blue-white phase shot, the agent's muscles momentarily seized and the full-auto silenced MP5 fired a burst of rounds that stitched a palm tree on the other side of the deck before he relaxed and fell backward into the house.

  “Go, go, go,” the group poured into the house, the two remaining NSA agents firing a hail of 9mm at the intruders on full auto, their rounds sparking on the alien armor, shattering the sliding glass doors and shredding the wall around the doorway. The phase weapons silenced the agents and it was quiet again. “I need a medic; we have a man down...”

  “Copy, Chief, medic's on the way.”

  “Search the house, find the package,” she told the rest of the team as she knelt down next to the wounded Petty Officer. “Medic's coming, hang in there, just stay still.” Using her helmet's mini-light she searched his body armor looking for penetrations. Finding none she checked his broken and bloody arm.

  “Bridge to Chief, have you recovered the package?”

  “We're searching now Skipper...”

  “Step it up Chief, we're attracting a whole bunch of attention out here...” the mic stayed open for a moment, “the forward observer is picking up additional threats moving to your location from the street and it looks like one individual outside the front of the residence...”

  The team returned to the kitchen and the Chief had two members cover the front door while the medic attended to the wounded Petty Officer. “Chief to bridge, we cannot locate the package, can you make contact?”

  “Stand by Chief...” came the answer through her helmet.

  The medic took one look at the Petty Officer's left arm and stuck him with a mini-lancet in his bicep above the damage, “This'll dampen the pain...” She tossed the empty lancet aside, “you having a hard time breathing?” He nodded. “Hmm, yeah,” she slid her fingers underneath the armor above his left breast and could feel the deformity on the back from the hits he took. Popping open a pouch on her bag, she retrieved a small silver cylinder about the size of a Cuban cigar with a mouthpiece on it. “I want you to bite down on the mouthpiece, breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose. Don't take it out, understand?” He nodded and she popped it into his mouth, “good, breathe slow and easy.” The cool, dense, medicated expanding air, opened up his air passages and forced his partially collapsed lung to inflate, allowing him to breathe again. Splinting his arm with a simple inflatable sleeve she was ready to get him out. The medic tapped Layora Cress on the elbow “Chief, I'm gonna get him back to the ramp...”

  “He can walk?”

  The medic put one foot on the floor between his legs at his crotch, grabbed him by the straps of his armor and stepped back with her other foot, pulling the Petty Officer to his feet, “Yes ma'am, the armor held up - he'll be fine. His arm's in bad shape but I've got it stabilized.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and snatched his phase rifle off the floor before heading out onto the deck, “Medic to 77, two to egress.”

  “Copy medic, you've got gawkers on the beach, but no threats...”

  The front door of the house exploded open, slamming against the wall, a hail of 9mm submachine gun fire coming in through the doorway, shredding anything in their path, the kitchen furniture splintering and shattering, knocking both of the Chief's men stationed there, on their backs. Lying on the floor, the Chief pulled down her visor and attempted to roll clear of the mayhem. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Truck hustling down the corridor,”Nooooo..!”

  Truck had unslung the light plasma machine gun as he ran and sliding to a stop at the corner of the wall, stuck the muzzle around the corner and squeezed the trigger, letting off a long burst of hot magenta streaks slashing through the doorway, cutting two NSA agents in half, the rest of the burst passing through the grill of the black SUV sitting on the front lawn, blowing out through the back of the vehicle as it erupted into a fireball. The explosion lifted the entire vehicle off the ground and slamming it back down, spread broken parts and debris out in a hundred foot circle. The mangled SUV continued to burn as a column of dense black smoke drifted upward, little smoldering pieces of ash and fabric drifting to the ground all around.

  “Bridge to Chief, Chief can you hear me? What's going on down there...?”

  The Chief lifted her visor and watched the members of her team give her an OK sign. “They tried a frontal breach, Skipper; we had no other options...”

  “The forward observer reports there are four pulling back, looks like they've had enough. Our package is in a hidden area of the back room of the house, she's coming out...”

  “Copy that Skipper.”

  “Step it up Chief, we've got air and surface craft approaching... guaranteed that little fireworks display is going to garner us some additional attention...”

  ■ ■ ■

  Pulled off a drug interdiction patrol by an urgent call from one of their cutters, the pilot of the US Coast Guard MH60T Sea Hawk was eating up precious fuel by keeping her near her maximum flight speed of 168 mph, to get to the coordinates as fast as the helo could deliver them. A cousin to the military's UH-60A Black Hawk, this model of the Sea Hawk from the Clearwater Station was armed and armored.

  Flying about a half a mile off the beach at about six-hundred feet, they followed the coastline down toward Ft. Myers Beach. Anyone walking on the beach below would have heard the familiar, steady, thump, thump, thump, of the rotors as the helicopter passed overhead. Cutting across Pine Island they were ag
ain over the water as they crossed the Cape Coral Inlet, searching the coastline ahead for what was reported to be a large unknown craft on the shore.

  “There's Punta Rassa point...”

  The pilot nodded, “Yep, and I can see the tip of the Ft. Myers beach...”

  The street lights glittered in the darkness, mixed in with muted lights from the homes and cars traveling on the main roads looking like little toys. A stream of emergency vehicles coming over the San Carlos Boulevard bridge and heading south along Estero Boulevard, their blue and red lights flashing, reflecting off everything around them, drawing their eyes farther south on the beach where darkness prevailed. A large swatch of the area was without power, totally dark, except for a lone bonfire almost at its center.

  “What the hell is going on down there...?” The pilot eased the throttle and pulled gently on the cyclic, pitching up the nose to slow the helo as they approached. Pushing the cyclic back, the helo felt like it was sliding forward as it returned to a normal attitude. They could see the form of the Coast Guard cutter about a mile offshore to the right, holding station, her lights flickering intermittently. Radio communications with the ship had been broken and spotty but were currently not available at all. The helo crew was glad to see she was not in distress. The black form on the beach appeared longer than the cutter in the water, and from their approach angle, considerably wider. “Is that a beached ship..?”

  “Doesn't look like any ship I've ever seen, Lieutenant...”

  “Yeah, me neither - I was afraid you'd say that,” he glanced over his shoulder, “harness up...”

  “Machine gunner, harnessed...”

  “Fifty gunner, harnessed...”

  “Crew Chief, harnessed...”

  “Crew harnessed,” confirmed the pilot, “copy. Gunners deploy.” The waist door slid open on the starboard side of the Sea Hawk, the machine gunner unpinning the M240 machine gun, swinging it out on its articulated pintle mount. The pilot glanced over at the copilot, “Anything on the FLIR?”