The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2

by Nathan M. Farrugia

  She turned and walked away. He was alone in the crowd. Reaching into his pocket, he grasped the small gold wristwatch that had been his great-grandfather’s. When he was a child and sick with food poisoning, his father had given him the watch and asked him to keep it safe. If his parents were alive and right here today, he wondered what he would say to them.

  ‘Hey, everything good?’ Jay slapped him on the shoulder.

  Damien let the watch slip back into his pocket. ‘Yeah, all things considered.’ He turned to Jay. ‘I think I’ll stay in the airport with you.’

  Jay looked pleased. ‘Glad to hear. That way we might actually survive.’

  Grace’s voice crackled in Damien’s earpiece. ‘I have access. Still waiting on Nasira and Denton.’

  ‘Guys, get down there,’ Sophia said. ‘Grace and Chickenhead are waiting on you.’

  Through the crowd, Damien could see Sophia and DC. DC placed a hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. For a moment they seemed to share an unspoken understanding, then DC turned and disappeared deeper into the crowd.

  The flight information boards loomed above Damien. The word CANCELED appeared next to every flight. The fly ban had been in place for a few days now and no one knew how long it would last. Many of the people here were trying to get refunds for their flights and they weren’t happy about it.

  ‘I feel like I’m in a Dan Brown novel,’ Jay said.

  Damien looked over to see him tapping his foot on a stone block engraved with Freemason symbols. ‘Please don’t make this any worse than it has to be,’ he said.

  Jay was looking above Damien’s head. ‘I think someone just did.’

  Damien followed his gaze to the flight information boards. The flights were being updated. In a furious wave that rippled from board to board, the word CANCELED was replaced with newly prescribed boarding times. Actual boarding times.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Damien said.

  Over his earpiece, Sophia’s voice came loud and clear. ‘Change of plans,’ she said. ‘Stand by.’

  ‘What the hell do we do now?’ Jay said.

  Damien had no idea. But he hoped Sophia did. He saw her emerge from a camera store with a disposable camera in hand.

  ‘DC,’ Sophia said. ‘I need you to get to the FAA control tower now.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ DC said.

  ‘Grace and Chickenhead will escort you,’ Sophia said over the radio. ‘Go. Now.’

  ***

  DC stepped out of the elevator into the FAA control tower. The tower was square in shape with rounded corners and a 360-degree view of the airport through large plates of glass.

  ‘Could I have your attention, please?’ DC yelled, pitching his voice somewhere between auctioneer and boxing coach. ‘We are taking over this tower.’

  The eight men and women inside the tower turned to the source of the voice and startled at the sight of his drawn Glock G26. There were more staff than he was expecting. With this many people, it was pretty clear the airport had every intention of clearing flights for take-off.

  ‘We’d appreciate it if you could raise your hands and not pass out,’ he said. ‘This is not a drill.’

  The original plan had been for DC and his team of five jaguar knights to take the security office at the airport, so now he was improvising. He motioned his men out of the elevator and they spread out and wrapped the security cameras with duct tape. DC removed the cell-phone jammer from his bag. Several adjustable antennas protruded from one end, making it look like some sort of alien device. It was now jamming all cells except his own. His men moved around the desks, unplugging and removing all telephone, ethernet and fiber-optic cables. They stood guard over the staff individually, making sure they didn’t try any clever attempts to call for help online. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Provided you’re capable of following our instructions,’ DC said, walking through to the main quadrant of the tower, ‘we won’t harm you. Who’s in charge here?’

  A man in a black business shirt and slightly oversized gray suit pants offered his hand. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ DC said, approaching him. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Brian,’ he said. ‘Brian Connolly.’

  DC smiled. ‘Brian Connolly, we have quite the job to do today. But we’ll get through it just fine, and if you and your staff cooperate you’ll all be released unharmed.’

  He surveyed the equipment that fringed the control tower. One panel flickered with red digits, another showed a map of the airport with positions of boarding aircraft. There were four racks holding thin plastic strips with writing scrawled on them—each strip represented a single flight and each rack represented its status and controller. Beyond that, a row of computer screens and a screen floating above Brian’s head on an adjustable arm.

  Brian rubbed the gray stubble under his chin. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.

  DC flicked through the plastic strips. ‘I need you to ground all departing flights not already on the taxiway. And I need you to divert all incoming flights to other airports.’

  ‘Uh, we don’t have any due just yet,’ Brian said. ‘The ban was only lifted moments ago.’

  DC turned to face him. ‘We’re going to be here for a while. You need to turn everyone away. Do you understand me?’

  Brian’s face crinkled. ‘I … yeah. I’ll … we’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘How long will you need to get this airport clear of air traffic?’

  Brian thought on that for a moment. ‘Uh, about twenty, thirty minutes.’

  ‘You have ten.’

  DC walked out of earshot of the staff, shoved his pistol into his waistband, removed his freshly activated cell phone and dialed the number for the police substation under Garage West. It rang twice.

  ‘Denver International police station, Sergeant Hadfield speaking.’

  ‘My name is DC and I’m a member of the Akhana,’ DC said matter-of-factly. ‘I’d like to inform you that my team has taken the FAA control tower staff hostage. It might interest you to know that we have explosives placed at various points throughout the airport.’

  ‘OK,’ the sergeant said. ‘That’s a lot of information. The only thing I can ask you right now is that we want no one to get hurt. We don’t want the hostages hurt and we don’t want you and your team hurt.’

  ‘That sounds perfectly reasonable,’ DC said. ‘I have two requests of my own that I’d like to share with you. One: you evacuate the airport, including all police officers and the substation itself. Two: I would like to speak to a SWAT negotiator from downtown.’

  ‘DC, we really want to help you,’ the sergeant said, ‘but we will need our officers to enter the airport to help evacuate civilians.’

  ‘Fine. Do what you need to do. But I’d like to make it very clear that any attempt to breach or make entry to the control tower, or any attempt to place snipers within six hundred yards of the control tower, will result in at least one fewer controller making it out of here alive.’

  ‘We understand, DC, and we’ll take your request very seriously. If it’s OK with you, I’m going to put you in touch with a SWAT negotiator who can help you get what you want.’

  ‘You can contact me on this number,’ DC said, and ended the call.

  Right now, the police would be looking up the registration details of the SIM card. He wondered how long it would take them to figure out the identity was fake. Not that it mattered. All he was trying to do was buy Sophia’s infiltration team some time to get in and get out. At this rate, they were going to need all the time they could get.

  He held down the pressel switch in his pocket. ‘This is DC.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Flights are in the process of being grounded. Anything inbound is being turned away. I’ve demanded the police withdraw from the airport. They want to assist in the evacuation so don’t be surprised if you see a whole bunch of cops running around hot and bothered.’

  ‘Not
a problem,’ she said. ‘How long do we have?’

  ‘Twenty,’ he said. ‘I’m pushing for ten.’

  ‘We can’t wait twenty,’ she said. ‘We’re doing this in ten. Any longer and we have to scrap the whole op.’

  ‘Sophia, take care down there, OK?’

  ‘You’re not my bodyguard any more, remember?’

  He knew she was smiling. ‘Roger that,’ he said.

  ‘Nasira, Denton, are you there?’ Sophia said.

  DC waited for their replies but no one reported in.

  ‘I haven’t been able to raise them for a while now,’ Sophia said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  DC turned to find a member of his jaguar knight team aiming a Glock at him.

  ‘Lay down the pistol,’ the knight said. ‘And the microphone. Hands in the air.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ DC said.

  ‘Do as I say,’ the knight said.

  DC slowly reached down and removed his Glock. He placed it on the ground and stepped away, then removed the mic from his collar, wire and all, and placed it at his feet.

  The knight gave a nod. ‘And the fancy sword.’

  ‘Jesus,’ DC said. He slowly removed his jacket to reveal his tachi sword sheathed in its saya. He took it out and laid it down next to his pistol. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the knight said.

  ***

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Sophia said, covering her earpiece conversation with her cell phone.

  ‘Sophia, please understand that we are only trying to help,’ Abraham said, cutting in. His voice was soft, annoyingly calm. ‘Detonating the EMP while we have people in the air is not the path.’

  ‘The path?’ Sophia said. ‘We’re clearing the airspace. I don’t understand your problem and I’d appreciate you explaining it to me.’

  ‘There is no problem, ma’am,’ he said. ‘We simply want to ensure that the airspace within the EMP radius is clear. I really don’t want you doing anything detestable. Not any more. That chapter in your life is closed now.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Sophia said, pushing her way out of the crowd’s nucleus to somewhere she wouldn’t be overheard. ‘I don’t know what you think you know about me, and at this point I really don’t care, but we need the EMP to disable the service tunnel’s face recognition or we’re toast.’

  ‘You have a great many devices at your disposal,’ Abraham said. ‘I’m sure you can find one to accommodate the situation without endangering the lives of good, honest Americans.’

  She realized he was talking about the smaller EMP and explosive charges they’d prepared for the Seraphim super-array. ‘Those devices are for the OpCenter. Even all of them together wouldn’t make a dent in that tunnel. We need the big one and we need it ASAP. You have a team in the control tower. TRACON are going to wise up any minute now as to why everything’s being redirected. When that happens, we’ll have a pretty volatile situation on our hands. If we don’t—’

  ‘This is not the path, Sophia,’ Abraham said. ‘You don’t want to revel in sin.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ. You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  ‘He can help you,’ Abraham said. ‘But only if you let him.’

  Sophia wanted to strangle Damien and Jay for bringing him along.

  ‘Yeah, well the EMP can help us too,’ Jay cut in. ‘If only you’ll let it.’

  ‘We all sin,’ Abraham said, ‘in times of war and in times of peace. But we can still make the right choice. Sophia, you can make the right choice.’

  ‘Colonel,’ she said, ‘if you let the Seraphim super-array come online, there won’t be any war and there won’t be any peace. And the only person who will have sinned is you.’

  ‘There is no payoff for cutting corners on morality.’

  It was becoming painfully clear that trying to talk Abraham out of this was a waste of time. There were two detonators for the EMP: the main detonator was with the EMP itself and Grace carried the backup, which wouldn’t work from deep inside the automated transit tunnels. Grace would need to pull back to the West Garage to detonate it, and even then it required a few minutes of preliminary setting up that couldn’t be done remotely.

  ‘I suppose I have no choice then,’ Sophia said. ‘Changeover.’

  The last was a specific instruction that only Damien, Jay, DC, Nasira and Chickenhead knew. Sophia switched over to a different, encrypted channel and waited for everyone to do the same.

  ‘Report in,’ she said.

  Damien said his name and Jay’s too, followed by Chickenhead.

  ‘Chickenhead, I need you and Grace to get to that tunnel and be ready to open the door,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Uh, OK. Without the others?’

  ‘We can’t wait,’ she said. ‘Just do it. Oh, and tell Grace our channel and encryption.’

  If she wanted Grace on her good side, she needed to yield and trust her.

  DC wasn’t reporting in and neither was Nasira. Sophia didn’t bother with the radio any further. She shouldered her way through the crowds—now madly rushing to the security checkpoint for their flights—and found Damien and Jay looking decidedly concerned.

  ‘Where’s Nasira?’ she asked.

  ‘Still in Garage West, I think,’ Damien said.

  ‘So I’m guessing Nasira, Denton and the EMP are being held captive by our friends of Jesus,’ Jay said.

  Sophia rolled her eyes. ‘OK, here’s what I need you to do. Recon Garage West and don’t be seen.’

  ‘On it,’ Jay said.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Grace and Chickenhead, clothed as police officers, moved into Concourse B. The greatest benefit of impersonating law enforcement was being able to conduct surveillance without attracting suspicion. It also meant you could go places you would otherwise be denied access. And that was about to work in their favor.

  Grace stood on the underground train platform, intentionally placing herself next to a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. Chickenhead stood beside her, hands in pockets because she’d told him to. He was fidgeting with all that nervous energy and it was irritating her. The trains were automated, moving at regular intervals. She timed it on her watch. Ninety seconds between each train, give or take three seconds. She looked up as a new train arrived. The doors separating the platform from the train opened in tandem with the precisely aligned train doors. Commuters poured in and out.

  The train departed, shuttling down the tunnel. Moving quickly, Grace grabbed the fire extinguisher and made for the platform doors. She took the pry bar from Chickenhead’s daypack, hidden underneath a high explosive charge Aviary had made for them, and pulled the metal doors open a crack. Chickenhead used his hands to open them wider. She slipped the pry bar back in his daypack, slung it over her shoulder, took the fire extinguisher in one hand and then stepped down onto one side of the track. It was smooth and concrete, nothing like the New York subway. She stepped carefully over the center rail and to the other side, Chickenhead following. There was a concrete walkway on the other side, elevated by a few feet. She pulled herself up and then hauled Chickenhead up.

  ‘What’s the fire extinguisher for?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t have time to pick a lock, so this will have to do,’ she said.

  She started running. Chickenhead kept pace behind her. The tunnel was lit sporadically by blue and green lights. She had the detailed tunnel map in her pocket, but the more she could rely on the map in her head, the better.

  She soon found what she was looking for: the automated guideway transit system maintenance shed. In fact, it wasn’t precisely what she was looking for, but it was a good marker. Fifty feet shy of the shed there was a fire door. She slammed the bottom of her fire extinguisher down on the doorknob. It snapped off. Chickenhead opened the door, which led them into the first service tunnel. From there, they looked for the second tunnel.

  This door was a little more difficult to access. Grace removed the General’s silicon fingerprint, courtesy of Dent
on, and pressed it against the fingerprint scanner. As long as there wasn’t a retina scanner after this door, she was in the clear. And according to Denton, there shouldn’t be.

  The red light flicked to green and the door lock released. Before turning the handle, she used her hexachromacy to take a quick look through the door. She spotted a suspicious protrusion in the ceiling about fifty feet ahead, and another on the side. Sensors and cameras, just as she’d suspected.

  She let go of the door handle. ‘This is as far as we go until the EMP is about to detonate.’

  ‘And what if it doesn’t?’ Chickenhead said.

  ‘I’m still working on that.’

  ***

  Sophia was in the painfully extended queue at the security checkpoint, false boarding pass and passport in hand, when Jay reported in.

  ‘Nasira, Aviary and Denton are being held captive by Abraham’s resistance guys,’ he said into her earpiece. ‘There’s a shitload of them. We can pull this off, but we’ll need more than a few minutes.’

  ‘Shit,’ Sophia said. She pulled out her cell phone as cover. ‘We don’t have that time. Wait one.’ She switched frequencies. ‘This is Sophia. Abraham, I’ve thought about what you said.’

  Abraham was quick to respond. ‘Sophia, I’m very pleased to hear you’ve given this serious thought.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  For a moment she thought he wouldn’t reply, but finally his voice crackled in her ear.

  ‘You’re doing the right thing, Sophia. I want you to know that.’

  ‘But I want something in return,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it alone as long as you give me my people back.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing stopping you from mounting an attack on my men and attempting to trigger the EMP. As much as I want to trust you, I did not become a colonel by placing my faith in those who have no faith in themselves.’

  Well, that didn’t work, she thought.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Give me Nasira. I need her to continue.’