Aviary dived back into the car and stared directly ahead, probably in shock. She turned to Nasira finally. ‘I did it, right? Just like you said.’
‘You did it,’ Nasira said.
Something heavy crashed through the parking lot ceiling, right beside the car. Nasira pulled herself low. Peering through the Mazda window, she saw something sharp and pointy protruding down from the ceiling. It was hard to tell with no lights on and pitch darkness outside.
‘Is that—’ Aviary began.
‘A 1000-pound bomb,’ Nasira finished.
The missile-shaped bomb groaned and dropped through the hole it had created, landing with a dull clang and crushing an inanimate Pariah.
Nasira held her breath. The bomb didn’t detonate.
She hit the pressel. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the bombs are now expensive Christmas ornaments.’
No response.
Aviary pointed at her mic. ‘I think the EMP took out our radios.’
‘Oh, right.’ She ripped it from her ear and pocket, and discarded it out the window.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Jay collapsed. Everything went suddenly dark. His hands were cool on the concrete floor. He felt Damien reach down and pick him up.
‘What’s wrong?’ Damien said.
Everything was black. Which meant the EMP was successful. He turned to face Damien, only he couldn’t see him. Then it dawned on him. It wasn’t just the dark tunnel.
‘I can’t see,’ he said. ‘I’m blind.’
It took a moment for Damien to respond. When he did, his voice was strangely slow and drawn out. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
He took both of Jay’s hands and moved them up his arms. ‘Hold on to my arm.’
Jay heard the metal scraping of Liberators in the distance.
‘Three coming,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’ He stopped when he realized Damien couldn’t hear him.
Damien pulled him into a fast walk, which soon turned into a run. Jay fell into line behind him, the palm of his hand on Damien’s back to keep himself oriented. As long as he followed Damien’s steps, he wouldn’t get lost.
Damien slowed down, then stopped completely. Jay could hear him searching through his daypack. A moment later, he heard the grinding of metal against metal, then Damien was helping him up through the train’s half-open doors. Jay felt his way inside, found a metal pole to cling to and pulled himself upright. He tried to keep calm, but being absolutely blind and helpless while Liberators hunted them through the transit tunnel was putting him on edge. His fingers were shaking. He wanted his vision back.
He heard Damien force the doors closed. It was probably so dark in the train that Damien wouldn’t be able to see much either. He felt Damien move around him and try to open a set of doors on the opposite side.
‘Where are we?’ Jay said softly.
‘Concourse B station,’ Damien said. ‘Almost there, buddy.’
Then Jay heard it. The snick-snick of Liberators as they approached the train.
Damien pulled him down, forcing him away from the doors. Jay rolled onto his stomach and crawled with his elbows and knees until he felt the end of the train carriage. He drew still, sensing Damien beside him. He opened his mouth and listened.
‘Don’t move,’ Damien said.
Even as he spoke, Jay heard a Liberator slink past the carriage. The Liberators couldn’t see through walls like Grace could, but they had night-vision and infrared and were probably tall enough to see through the train windows anyway. All they’d need was a glimpse of Jay’s and Damien’s burning hot bodies and they’d be moments from execution.
Jay could almost see them. It wasn’t his vision so much as an auxiliary sense, showing him faint clusters of sizzling white. It didn’t make any sense, then it dawned him. He was seeing electrical fields.
The train doors at the center of the carriage squeaked. He could see the Liberator—a rippling orb of circuitry—as it pulled the doors open, heard the scraping of metal against metal.
He tapped Damien on the leg, alerting him. He wasn’t sure if Damien had seen it yet, or if there was much he could see.
The Liberator’s leg wedged between the doors, prying them apart. Jay pressed his chest to the floor and waited, listening. He heard Damien reach for his Glock.
We’ll need more than that for three Liberators, Jay thought.
There was only one solution to this and it involved overloading the Liberators’ circuits with a power surge.
Problem was, he’d kill Damien.
The glass above Jay shattered, covering him in fragments. He remained perfectly still. Something slammed down in front of his head, scraping the carriage wall. A Liberator leg. He saw long slivers of white in darkness. Further along the train, a second electrical shape. And another Liberator scraping at the doors at the far end. Their operators knew Damien and Jay were inside.
Jay dragged himself a few inches toward Damien. ‘I have a plan,’ he said. Hopefully Damien would read the movement of his lips.
‘What is it?’ Damien said in a low voice.
‘I have to kill you,’ Jay mouthed.
‘Again?’
‘Just for a minute.’
Damien paused. ‘I don’t like this plan.’
Jay saw the Liberator open the middle doors and scrape through. Blades of white sizzled across the floor. Damien fired his Glock. Their position was now compromised.
Jay wrapped both hands around the pole in front of him and clenched his teeth. His muscles contracted, kicking the air from his lungs. He heard Damien scream, then fall silent. The cluster stood before him, glowing brighter. A leg slammed the pole inches above his head. He fell backward, reaching for his own Glock.
There was a hollow bang, followed by a heavier bang. The cluster seemed to fade and crumble before him. The Liberator fell against the pole and slipped to the ground. Outside the train, he watched the other two clusters slowly extinguish.
Darkness again.
‘Damien,’ he whispered.
No response, but his body was still shimmering.
If there was another Liberator lurking outside Jay didn’t give a fuck. All he wanted to know right now was if Damien was OK. He shuffled over to Damien’s body and ran his hands lightly over his legs, checking for injuries. His legs were clean, his stomach was intact, his chest free of wounds, his arms. Even his neck and face seemed unharmed. Jay ran a hand through his hair, checking for head injuries. The Liberators hadn’t touched him.
His pulse was gone. The light was fading.
‘Shit shit shit shit.’
Jay placed one hand on the right side of Damien’s chest and the other below his heart. He took a breath and focused. Just a tiny, quick jolt. That’s all.
He defibrillated Damien. Checked his breathing. Nothing.
He’d done this before; he could do it again. Couldn’t he?
He moved straight into compressions. One. Two. Three.
What if the first time had been a lucky shot?
Four. Five. Six.
What if he couldn’t get Damien back?
Seven. Eight.
He stopped. He thought he heard breathing.
Damien inhaled sharply, then quickly sat upright, smacking Jay’s head with his own. Jay fell backward, stunned.
The electrical field around Damien seemed to shudder.
‘Seriously,’ Damien said. ‘That’s the last time.’
***
The jaguar knight team leader untied DC. ‘You were right,’ he said.
DC flexed his hands, the blood flow making his fingertips sting. He peered through the control tower windows. The airport was dotted with holes from the bombs. With their onboard GPS and laser-guided computers deactivated, they’d failed to reach their assigned targets and instead had landed randomly. DC was relieved since one of the targets would have been the control tower.
‘What do we do now?’ the team leader said.
DC grinned. ‘I thought I wasn’t part of y
our team any more.’
‘Yeah, we won’t be making that mistake again.’
The knight handed DC back his tachi sword and pistol. He took the sword and shoved the pistol in his waistband, then reached for his daypack and plucked out his shielded radio.
‘This is DC,’ he said into the mic. ‘Sophia, are you there?’
Silence.
‘Is anyone there?’ he said.
He felt the uncertain gaze of the controllers and the jaguar knights as he waited for a response. His prepaid cell—previously shielded from the EMP—started ringing inside his backpack.
‘Wait one,’ he said into the mic and pulled the cell out. ‘Let’s have a little chat with our SWAT negotiator,’ he said to the jaguar knights.
Twelve pairs of eyes looked on in silence as he answered. ‘This is DC.’
‘Sir, this is Sergeant Wade Suarez of the Denver Police Department. If it’s OK with you, I thought we could have a chat.’
‘Sergeant, you have impeccable timing,’ DC said.
‘Sir, may I call you DC?’
‘Terrorist, DC, whatever works for you, Sergeant.’
‘Please, you can call me Wade.’
‘Oh no, I’d prefer Sergeant,’ DC said. ‘It keeps things in perspective.’
‘That’s fine, no problem. DC, are you injured at all? Do you or any of your team require medical attention? The most important thing right now is to make sure you’re not injured.’
‘Thank you for your concern, Sergeant. We’re doing just fine.’
‘Are your seven hostages OK? Is everyone safe?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Eight hostages,’ DC corrected him. The wrong number was no accident; he was looking for clarification. Standard tactic to make sure DC wasn’t bluffing about the hostage scenario.
‘DC, I just want to be straight with you. At the beginning of this thing, in the parking lot, everybody was confused and people started shooting. This happens in a situation with panic and uncertainty,’ the sergeant said. ‘But you’ve done a good job of keeping things cool in the control tower. I’m pleased to hear that no one else has been hurt.’
‘That shootout was an unfortunate incident,’ DC said. ‘I can tell you we certainly didn’t plan that.’
‘Of course,’ the sergeant said. ‘Everybody here knows that, don’t worry. Now let’s see if we can keep things peaceful for now so that you and everyone else involved can come out of this situation safely.’
‘I have to say, Sergeant, we’re doing our best,’ DC said. ‘As much as I’d like to thank the government for its assistance in augmenting our terrorist activity—we do thank you for the 1000-pound bombs you dropped on the airport just now—if I’m going to be a terrorist then I’d like to perform my own terrorist acts. You hear what I’m saying, Sergeant?’
‘I don’t know about these bombs, DC,’ the sergeant said. ‘I can assure you there hasn’t been any government or military retaliation here. We certainly don’t want anyone attacking you. I’ll get my people to look into it, but I want you to know, DC, that we want to resolve this as peacefully as we can. Is that what you want?’
‘What I want is to remain alive,’ DC said. ‘And dropping bombs on me isn’t going to improve that situation. You see, Sergeant, I have these very fancy transient electromagnetic pulse devices, one of which I was planning to use as a statement of sorts. A warning, if you like, to stay the fuck away. I have one located at this airport and it has an effective radius of eight to nine miles. Since the government decided to carpet bomb the place, we had no choice but to use our neat little device to save the very people you were sworn to protect.’
‘DC, I honestly don’t know anything about these bombs, but we’re looking into it right now and as soon as we—’
‘The point is, Sergeant, our device renders all electronics useless and irreparable. We were successful in disabling the bombs before they struck. If we are going to negotiate then I’d like to do it without being blown up. Is that something you can manage, Sergeant?’
DC knew full well the SWAT negotiator was in the dark about any bombing order. The order had come from the Fifth Column: compartmentalized and deniable. He knew that any investigation the negotiator set in motion would turn up dry pretty quickly.
‘DC, we don’t want to see you or anyone in that control tower hurt,’ the sergeant said. ‘I can assure you that we do not want to resort to violence. We want to help you. But first you need to tell me what it is you want. Is there something you want? Do you want to be on TV?’
‘I want your men to stay outside the airport under all circumstances,’ DC said. ‘For every person who steps inside—the garage, the terminal, the runway, the hotel, I don’t care—I will execute one hostage. And I will continue to execute hostages until we have four remaining. At that point, I will be taking greater measures. We have electromagnetic pulse devices in Seattle, New York and Houston. These devices have an equal range of eight to nine miles. Your non-compliance will result in a penalty.’
‘OK, DC, we really want to cooperate with you,’ the sergeant said. ‘But first you need to do something for me.’
‘I’ll send you photos of the hostages with my cell phone,’ DC said.
The sergeant hesitated. ‘Yes, that … that would be good. Thank you.’ He gave DC a number to send the photos to, then said, ‘DC, I’d really like it if you could release one hostage.’
‘Sorry, Sergeant, that’s out of the question.’
‘DC, I’d like to know what it is you want. Why you’ve taken hostages and what you need from us. How can I help you get what you want?’
‘You currently have twenty-two members of the Akhana—American citizens—detained in a consolidated navy brig in North Carolina.’
DC knew of this list only because Dolph—the Akhana elder from Australia—had tried to negotiate their release in exchange for Sophia. Of course, being a Fifth Column prison camp it didn’t officially exist, so the poor sergeant was going to have a hard time locating it.
‘I would like them released and transported to this airport,’ DC went on. ‘Accompanied by two pilots in a light aircraft. You’ll need something you can land without assistance because our control tower is—thanks to our EMP—inactive. You have eight hours or one American city will enter the dark age.’
‘Seven members of the Ark … eena?’ the sergeant repeated. ‘Do you have names for me?’
DC spelled out Akhana. ‘No, I don’t have the names,’ he said. ‘That’s your job.’
‘I’ll get onto that immediately and see what we can do,’ the sergeant said. ‘I need you to keep your cell charged and nearby so we can keep communicating while I arrange the release of your friends. And if I can arrange their release, I’ll need something from you in return.’
‘And that is?’ DC said.
‘The release of one hostage.’
‘Let’s just see how you go with the detainees first.’
He ended the call, drew his tachi blade and approached the jaguar knight leader.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Damien left Jay sitting in the Concourse A atrium while he crossed the skyway alone. The backpack loaded with radios was on the other side at the security checkpoint. As the only person with vision right now, it was quicker if Damien retrieved the bag himself. Jay had told him he was starting to see spots of color in his vision. Or at least that’s what Damien thought he’d said; he still had to lip-read. In a way, not being able to hear was a blessing right now because, according to Jay, the deafening evacuation alarm was still doing its thing.
The airport was completely empty. The two travelators on each side of the skywalk’s lower walkway were dormant, and the lights above them were toast. He checked the taxiways under the skyway. Airliners of all sizes were berthed at gates all the way from one end of the concourse to the other.
Damien increased his pace to a light jog, Glock in one hand. Nasira and Denton should be moving to AGTS Control by now, but he hadn’t seen them
yet. He reached the escalators at Jeppesen terminal. Everything was eerily silent, although that was largely due to the fact he couldn’t hear anything. The terminal looked a bit like an abandoned shopping mall. He moved down to the checkpoint and found his backpack. He checked the radios were inside before heading back up the escalator.
At the edge of his vision, an arrowhead-shaped aircraft cut through the paper-thin ceiling and crashed silently into the fountain. At first he thought it was a stealth bomber, but it lacked a cockpit. He recognized the fifty-two meter wide unmanned combat air system as a Dominator and realized it was one of the craft that had dropped the bombs on the airport. It sloughed through the fountain and bounced high into the air, gliding straight toward him. Damien quickly realized the elevator shaft in front of him wasn’t tall enough to stop its momentum. There was no time to dive sidelong across the balcony. He turned and ran across the skywalk, in the same direction as the Dominator. It scraped over the top of the elevator column and continued on its path of destruction toward him.
He sprinted for the travelator. The Dominator slipped through the air, its arrowhead shape casting a shadow over his path. He hoped its wingspan would be too wide for the skywalk walls, but it slipped through with room to spare. He dived into one of the travelators, between its rubber handrails, hitting the floor chest first.
The Dominator’s wings came down on both handrails. The glass on either side of him cracked and buckled, but the rails held the weight of the Dominator as it continued to slide up the skywalk’s incline. It slowed slightly as it reached the apex, then gained pace again as it slid down the other side.
Then Damien remembered Jay sitting in the atrium on the other side of the skywalk. He was right in the Dominator’s path and he wouldn’t see the damn thing coming.
***
Jay was tired of waiting for Damien to return with the radios and for his vision to come back. Hunger hit him suddenly, so he reached into his daypack for some cling-wrapped pork rinds, carefully unwrapped them and started shoveling them into his mouth. He paused between mouthfuls to listen for sounds. The incessant alarm and the crunching of pork rinds in his mouth was all he could hear. But then something else crept in. A mechanical groaning up ahead—he couldn’t quite identify it. The key thing was it didn’t sound anything like a Liberator. Those Liberators gave him the heebie-jeebies.
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