by Cliff Ryder
Sepehr dragged the body out into the hallway. “You see, my friend, precautions have to be taken, and leaving you here is the best way of insuring that no one comes looking for me.” He walked back inside the room, closed the door behind him and climbed through the hatch, pulling it shut above him once he was completely inside the narrow tunnel.
Every step sent a stab of pain shooting through Nate’s side, but he didn’t slow down as they ran across the compound to the front door. Made of heavy steel, he thought, it looked damn near impregnable. Reaching it first, he took up a position on the left side, and looked for a keypad or card slot or any other way of getting in. He was joined by Tracy, Briggs, Travis and four other Border Patrol agents. Around them, the battle raged as the snipers on the roof exchanged fire with the riflemen on the perimeter.
“Okay, hotshot, you got us this far. Now how are we opening this sucker?” Travis asked.
“Can’t exactly take a SWAT door knocker to it.” Briggs rapped on the door, getting only the heavy, distant echo of thick metal. “I doubt the Barretts could get through this.”
“No, but I know someone who can.” Tracy grabbed her cell phone and turned to Nate. “Send someone up to take out those emplacements. If—”
“We come at them from the side, we should be able to get the drop on them. I’m on it,” Nate said.
Travis gestured for two other agents to follow him, but was stopped by Nate’s hand on his shoulder.
“That hero bug better not be catching. I expect to see you back down here in one piece,” Nate said.
“Don’t worry, old man, someone’s gotta look good at the press conferences. Come on, boys.” The cocky Border Patrol agent led his small team around the corner and into the darkness.
Nate turned back to Tracy, waving at her with a “hurry up” motion. She was on the phone.
“No, the rocket is still on the ground, but we need access to the main door. Haven’t your people accessed their security yet? Look, we don’t have a few more seconds—just run the override on the door’s maintenance program—”
Shouts and automatic-weapons fire made everyone duck, and Nate, Tracy and Briggs all scanned around, looking for the threat. “Come on, come on,” Tracy muttered, keeping the phone glued to her ear. “I know the government is slow, but they have to get something done sometime.”
Over their radios, they heard, “Front door, this is Team Charlie. We have accessed the back door, and are on-site, over.”
Nate keyed his radio. “Roger, sweep forward, and we’ll come to you from the front and meet in the main control room, over.” Just when he was about to suggest trying to find another way in, the main door jerked up several inches, then stopped, then rose another three feet before grinding to a halt.
“Good enough, Stephanie, thanks.” Tracy put her phone away while Briggs handed Nate a flash-bang grenade.
“Just pull and throw it inside. Ready?”
Nate nodded, and the two men pulled the pins and tossed the grenades into the room, ducking and covering before detonation. The million-candlepower flashes lit up the area like a miniature supernova, their deafening blasts echoing in the enclosed space.
Nate took his hands away from his ears and whistled.
“Damn, that’s gotta fuck up your whole day. Let’s see who’s inside. Briggs, you go left. I’ll go right. Tracy, come in behind us and cover the middle. Take out anyone you deem to be a threat.”
He ducked under the door, leading with his shotgun.
The recessed halogen lights in the room flickered on and off, lending a surreal look to the area, now wreathed in smoke from the flash-bangs. A security console stood on one side of the main doors, and next to it was another formidable-looking metal door. Nate swept and cleared his side of the room, confident that Briggs was doing his part on the right and that Tracy had the middle covered, as well. “Clear left!” he called out.
“Clear right!” Briggs responded.
“Moving to—” Tracy froze as a flash of motion from the floor console alerted them that they weren’t alone.
Nate swiveled his gun over just in time to see a swarthy, bearded man bringing up a stubby assault rifle, aimed at Tracy, and spitting fire and bullets in Tracy’s direction.
Without thinking, he aimed from the hip at the shooter’s upper chest and squeezed the trigger. He cycled the slide and let the man have another, his shotgun’s boom overwhelming the popping sound of the AK-variant weapon.
The man staggered backward, his chest erupting in bloody spatter as buckshot caved in his ribs and pulped his lungs and heart. He fired the last few bullets of his magazine into the air, then fell on his back and died.
Briggs, his pistol smoking, ran to Tracy. “Jesus, are you all right?”
She stood with her own pistol out and smoke curling from the barrel. “I—I think so. I don’t think I was hit. How is that possible?”
Nate pointed at the wall above her head, where a cluster of bullet holes provided testimony as to what had just happened. “Jumpy on the trigger—brought the gun up and let the burst go too late. The muzzle climb sent the bullets into the wall. Happens to inexperienced shooters all the time.” He motioned them forward, not wanting her to think about it too much. “Let’s clear that console of any more surprises.”
“Yeah.” Tracy shook off the near miss and strode forward, flanked by Nate and Briggs. Nate made a mental note to keep an eye on her as they went. He knew when an agent started overthinking something like that, he or she ceased to be effective in a combat situation.
They paused at the side of the console nearest to them, then all three moved at once, Nate over the top, Tracy to the left and Briggs to the right. The console was empty.
Nate walked over to the large door. “Great, another friggin’ security door. I don’t suppose that guy’s ID or key card survived, did it?”
Briggs knelt by the body, holding up a small shard of plastic. “I think this might have been part of it. Now what?”
“Tracy, get on the horn to your FBI buddy. Surely they can pop this one, too.” While he waited, Nate keyed his radio. “Travis, how’s it going up there?”
“We have secured the roof, and reinforcements are on the way. Four enemies killed, two wounded. We lost one, with one wounded.”
“Good work. We’re sweeping the rest of the building. Will radio when it’s cleared. Send the others in as soon as they’ve swept the rest of the buildings. We don’t want any ambushes.
We’re heading in to shut down the rocket guys. Spencer out.”
“Roger that, and good hunting. Travis out.”
“How’s that door coming, Tracy?” Nate asked.
“Just open all of them—that should eliminate the problem.” Tracy’s tone could have cut through steel by itself, but it wasn’t doing the trick this time. The door stayed closed. “We gotta get to those other guys right now,” she said.
Nate took a closer look at the heavy doors. “These look like they slide into the wall.”
“Yeah, so?” Tracy asked.
“Over, under, around or through.” Nate rapped on the wall next to the door, hearing a hollow echo under his knuckles. “Get behind that console—just in case I’m wrong.” He brought up his shotgun and fired a round to the left of the door, the double-aught pellets punching through the thin metal of the framing mechanism and out the other side. “I think we just found our way in.” He racked the gun again and fired until his magazine was dry, enlarging the hole until it was big enough to climb through.
Nate waved the others in as he reloaded.
Tracy and Briggs scrambled through the ragged hole, with Nate bringing up the rear. Just as they did, the security doors ground open with a whine, almost catching the border agent’s leg. Nate snorted. “That’s government work for you—always a day late and a dollar short.”
“What’s that say about you, buddy?” Briggs said over his shoulder as they went down the hallway, clearing each opened door as they went.
&n
bsp; “Hell, I’m a subcontractor—”
“Shh!” The urgent whisper silenced both men instantly.
Nate peered around. “What you got, Tracy?”
“A body.” Tracy knelt by the outstretched form of a man with a round, bloody hole in the back of his head. She rolled him over to reveal a once-handsome man, his eyes glazed and sightless in death.
“This is Joseph Allen, the founder of Spaceworks.”
Tracy looked up at the nearest door, which was closed. She waited until Nate and Briggs had taken covering positions, then pulled the door open, revealing a small, empty room with a hatch in the floor. “A falling-out among terrorists, perhaps?” she said.
“Who knows, but I’ll bet my next month’s pay I know which way al-Kharzi went.” Nate ran to the hatch. “You guys stop the launch. I’m going after him.”
“Not alone you’re not!” Tracy started to walk toward him, but Nate was already lifting the metal hatch. She heard a click before the world exploded around her. Tracy heard a deep thunderous roar from somewhere far away, echoing through the hallway and shaking the floor.
Oh, shit, she thought as she sank into darkness, the rocket’s launching. We’re too late.
“Preliminary data indicates that the SWAT team has taken control of the main control room, but they also reported that the rocket completed its launch cycle and lifted off twenty-three seconds ago. If its intended target is the Washington, D.C.–New York corridor, we have approximately eight minutes before optimal altitude and geographic coordinates are reached. Here’s the projected flight path.”
A radar screen popped up on Kate’s monitor. It showed a red line arcing out from El Paso on a direct route over the Midwest toward the East Coast. A three-year-old could have drawn a line indicating where it was going to end up.
Denny sounded as stressed as Kate had ever heard him—which wasn’t much, as the military-man-turned-businessman had seen too much in his lifetime to really be fazed by anything anymore. “I hope you stocked up on bottled water, because if this thing does go off, it’ll make the ’03 power outage look like a flicker.”
“What about a self-destruct? Doesn’t every rocket have one, in case it goes out of control?” Kate asked.
“Sure, if it’s a government-backed one. Private companies are supposed to, but since we’re dealing with terrorists posing as rocket scientists, who the hell knows? The SWAT guys said the scientists have locked down the computers, and they aren’t giving up the password.”
“Well, where’s our two cowboys? After everything they’ve done, sweating the access out of an engineer geek should be a walk in the park for them,” Kate said.
Denny bent over his own monitor, keeping track of three camera feeds and a half-dozen audio streams at once.
“Radio chatter says they heard a secondary blast right after they secured the room, but before the rocket launched.
They’re investigating right now.”
“Get every hacker on duty targeting that rocket with anything they’ve got to bring it down, preferably in an un-populated area. I’ll take any idea anyone’s got—self-destruct, laser beams, sun spots, anything. I’ve got one last ace up my sleeve, and it better be enough.”
She opened her window to B2S. “What’s your status?”
“Still working on it. I noticed a big spike in data transmission. Don’t tell me—”
“Got it in one, the rocket has launched. Your window of opportunity just shrank to six minutes and counting.”
As she spoke, Kate brought up another window that, un-beknown to her hacker, showed her every keystroke the girl was making.
“Okay, I’m in. Now I have to trace and link back to his control program, and take control of it. Once I have that, I can send this thing anywhere you want.”
“Fine, just do it in the next four minutes.”
Kate watched the seconds tick away, knowing that the rocket with its deadly cargo was racing closer and closer to her home, and that of about twenty million other people, with each passing moment. She pushed away the imagined carnage and destruction that something like this would spread in its wake. Not on my watch, she told herself. But at the moment, she was stuck in an all-too-familiar position—watching as one of her people tried to stave off disaster. Come on, girl, you can do it! Her screen flashed.
“All right, I’m in! I’ve got telemetry control of the rocket. Where do you want it?”
“Where is it right now?” Kate asked.
“At its current rate of speed, it’s crossing out of Missouri and into southern Illinois. How about putting it down in a large body of water?”
With the tap of a finger, Kate brought up a map of the southern half of Illinois and highlighted every body of water. “The only problem is finding one that isn’t right next to a populated area.”
“You better find something fast, ’cause this sucker’ll be hitting Indiana in about ninety seconds. Why not Lake Michigan? It’s close enough by now.”
Kate increased her scrolling, searching for any lake large enough to serve her purpose. “Now’s who’s putting the pressure on? Besides, I want that warhead, assuming it survives impact, and I’d rather have it not irradiating a Great Lake for about fifty thousand years.” Kate scanned through huge swathes of land with finger flicks, trying to find the right combination of depth and remoteness. “Jesus, why couldn’t they have flown over Minnesota? Wait a minute—I might have something. It’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do. Can you put it down in the westernmost fork of this lake?” She transmitted coordinates to B2S.
“I can try—you realize there’s a good chance the whole thing might burst apart on impact and scatter plutonium all over the place?”
“Better than plunging several million people into chaos.
I’ll fix it with the DNR later. Just do it now.”
The hacker switched to a phone line so she could talk to Kate as she worked. “Okay, here goes…coming up on the coordinates…sending the new change of course.
Guidance system has accepted it. According to my calcs, it should be hitting the lake right about…now. Hope we didn’t scare the crap out of some early-morning fisher-men.”
As Kate watched, the red line abruptly terminated in the southeast quadrant of Illinois. She sighed with relief.
“Congratulations, B2S, you probably saved about a million people’s lives.”
“I’ll be sure to remind you of that at my next evalua-tion. You need me for anything else?”
“Yeah, as long as you’re inside the Spaceworks network, make sure they can’t destroy any of their data. I have a feeling the FBI folks are going to find it very interesting. Let me know when you’ve got it locked down.”
“I’m on it.”
Kate was already switching to another channel to the Super Hercules. “MR-1, this is Primary. Repeat, this is Primary. I am altering your flight plan, priority one.
Change course and proceed to the downloaded coordinates. And tell the team to break out their hazmat gear and their scuba tanks, because they’re about to go swimming.”
Next, she dialed Tracy’s line, wanting to tell her the good news.
Tracy noticed a dull ringing in her ears, accompanied by a throbbing behind her temples that felt like a hundred tiny men were playing drums inside her skull. An acrid smell invaded her nostrils, and her eyes fluttered open to see a SWAT team member crouched over her, holding something under her nose.
“Hey, you are alive.” He helped her sit up slowly. “Careful, you took a pretty nasty jolt.” His voice sounded muffled, as if he was talking through thick cotton.
Tracy tried to speak, but her throat felt as dry as the desert. “Water,” she whispered. The SWAT officer produced a canteen, which she grabbed and lifted to her lips.
“Slow down, too fast and—”
“I know, I know, I might get cramps.” Tracy took one more big gulp of water, then looked around. “What happened? The last thing I remember was Nate going into a small room….”
“We heard an explosion. When we found you, Briggs was knocked out, lying on top of you—we think he tried to get you out of harm’s way—and there was what was left of a person blown across the hallway. Uh, don’t look over there.”
“Nate…oh, my God…” Tracy’s gaze involuntarily went to the red spray against the far wall. She winced and looked away and swallowed, trying to control the bile rising at the back of her throat.
“Was that his name? He must have triggered some kind of booby trap on the hatch in the floor. It collapsed the entrance to the tunnel or whatever’s down there. He took the brunt of the blast, too, actually ended up protecting both of you. I’m afraid that’s what’s left—it was pretty nasty, sorry.”
“What about the rocket?” Tracy asked.
“We couldn’t stop it in time. It’s already launched.”
“Can’t we stop it from here?”
“They’ve locked us out of the system. No one’s willing to give up the codes to gain access. They say they’re all willing to die for Allah.”
“Shit.” Tracy pulled out her cell phone, hoping it hadn’t been broken in the impact. It rang just as she flipped it open. “Stephanie?”
“Tracy, we’ve stopped the rocket. It’s splashed down in Illinois, and we’ve got people heading over there right now. Is the compound secure?”
Tracy asked the SWAT member who nodded. “Yeah, but al-Kharzi got away. He took off in a bolt-hole that led to an escape tunnel—Nate was killed going after him.”
“How’d you like to catch up with him?” Kate asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Our plans show the main tunnel under the building. It goes north, and comes out near a normally unused access road. If you hurry, you might be able to intercept him. Take him alive, if you can.”
Tracy rose, fighting off a wave of dizziness. “I’m on it.
Thanks, Stephanie, for everything.”
The SWAT officer eyed her dubiously. “Where are you going? You need to lie down, and should really have someone look at your head. You’ve probably got a concus-sion—”
