“Good God! They’ve launched their escape pods!” Harper exploded. “They’ll all be dead inside of an hour!”
A second pod appeared before them, then a third and a forth. They were short, stubby, windowless objects rising slowly, even majestically, toward the surface, trailing a fine mist of bubbles behind them in the morning light. Each of them were rising on a final voyage to the brilliant light of a new day and the searing, silent and lethal rays of the quantum storm above.
“They’re committing suicide,” Seven whispered.
“It’s panic,” Harper said quietly to Seven. “Somehow, the skipper lost control and the crew decided it was better to die quickly than suffering slowly, locked up in the darkness on the ocean floor.”
“So you don’t think it’s the Captain’s plan?” Seven asked.
“No, I don’t,” Harper replied. “What you’re watching is what happens when command is lost in a life or death situation. It’s a very sad waste, but it pretty much solves your prisoner troubles, unless a few of them decided to remain behind.”
“Such as the skipper,” Seven added.
“If the skipper’s still alive,” Harper responded flatly, looking Seven in the eyes. “I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on that.”
Seven turned and looked outside once more. The last of the pods passed by very closely, rising and spinning slowly as it made its way toward the hellish light of day. Seven could even see red Chinese script painted on a yellow square on the outside of the pod.
Quietly, Edgar stepped beside him and said, “It reads, ‘FOR RESCUE – OPEN HERE.’”
70
Commander Kevin Winsteed stood in the doorway leading to his underground bunker just before the first rays of sunlight and the dawning of yet another deadly, new day. His eyes scanned the hangar door that he had just fully opened, exposing the guts of the building to the outside. He had not done this since the onset of the quantum storms. But today he was doing it for a terrible reason. He looked at the assembly of six 55 gallon drums lined up neatly, just outside the open doors, like a six-pack of death. Each of them were painted bright yellow, and on their faces were emblazoned a black, hideous, serpentine biohazard image underscored with the bold acronym HUDEW-MOD 1. At the center of the hangar stood a small, one man helicopter they had often used for reconnaissance, and strapped on each side of it were two, 35 gallon drums painted bright, fluorescent orange. On each corner of the hangar was mounted a small camera. All four pointed toward the center of the cavernous bay.
They had managed to evade another night-time attack on the hangar, but while they had worked, Winsteed’s security troops had detected the Russians making their own inspection of their position at the end of Dutch Harbor’s runways by rubber boats running at high speed on the Shaishnikof River , just beyond their range.
Their Russian prisoner had proven more problematic than he had anticipated. He feigned not understanding any English, but Winsteed knew it was merely a ruse. He could tell the Russian was carefully listening to every word they spoke and memorizing every aspect of their compound; Winsteed could see it in his eyes. He also knew that the Russian would try to escape, and would kill more of his people if he could. If the Russian made it back to his base, he would reveal their critical weaknesses and it would invariably be fatal for all of them.
Long after sunset, while Winsteed’s people worked outside the hangar, the Russian made his break for freedom. Unfortunately for him, Juarez was assigned to watch him. She shot him with a single bullet in the back of his head at 150 feet in the darkness as he ran across the tarmac.
Winsteed suffered a twinge of guilt over the relief he felt at the elimination of this particular concern, but he knew that another attack was imminent. He also knew they had finished their weapon just in time. For, if all went according to plan, by sunset of this newly dawning day, there would never be another attack from the Russians again. Winsteed sighed in resignation. Never in his life had he ever dreamed that he would be forced into such a position of ordering not only mass dearth, but a mass death so terrible, he could hardly imagine the degree of its lethality.
Leighter, Juarez and Cook stood nearby, each scanning the Horribly Unspeakable Destruction & Extermination Weapon that Cook and Leighter had dreamed into existence.
“Let’s get to shelter and have breakfast. After that, we deploy the HUDEW,” Winsteed ordered.
Everyone observed breakfast in silence. Each of the surviving members of the Dutch Harbor contingent knew well the potential for the weapon’s destructive capacity. And while the enemy had proven themselves a formidable, merciless foe, it was nearly impossible not to feel sorry for them for what was about to come upon them.
Leighter and Cook had worked up the weapon together. It was as inspired and creative as it was deadly. When Winsteed heard the final version of the plan, after it had gone through several revisions, he involuntarily shivered. It would be difficult to imagine a more horrible death. And yet, after the last attack that had killed almost half of their number, Winsteed knew he had no choice but to proceed. It was their lives or the Russians, and the Cossack mercenaries had forced their hand in a deal Winsteed was loath to make.
“Dutch Harbor One is up and running,” Juarez reported, sitting at the remote control console Leighter had designed from a cannibalized game joystick. On their monitors they could see the small helicopter’s blades spinning up a cloud of dust from inside the hangar void.
“Launch it,” Winsteed commanded.
Immediately, Juarez’s fingers eased back on the joystick and the helicopter rose half a foot off the hangar floor and slid outside onto the open tarmac into the bright Alaskan morning sunshine.
“You’re clear,” Leighter said, watching the view from an outside camera. Juarez elevated slightly, hovered over one of the six barrels, then lowered a cable with a magnet on its bottom and latched onto the top of the barrel.
“Make your altitude 150 feet, then fly directly to the target,” Winsteed ordered.
All eyes watched the small helicopter and its colorful payload rise effortlessly into the clear, blue sky, then pivot slightly and fly away from the hanger. Obviously, there would be no threat to their craft. No human could stand in the daytime against the quantum storms, and with the remote capability Leighter had developed for the small helicopter, they could safely deliver their weapon to the enemy’s front door without resistance.
The weather could not have been more perfect. There was no wind in a cloudless, brilliantly lit sky dominated by the lethal sunshine and uninhabitable curse of the invisible quantum storms.
How many individual enemy there were was not known. Certainly their numbers included at least twice the Dutch Harbor contingency and they estimated up to more than four times as many. They also included an unknown number of women. They were holed up in the bottom of the glorious Inuit Empire hotel, built right across the street from the famous and historic Grand Aleutian Hotel, which had been ruined by the criminal element of the Russian mafia that had taken over the community. But by careful study of photographs taken before the quantum storms had begun, they could see that the entrance to the sub-basement of the hotel was gained by a single exterior, metal door at the base of the south facing loading dock. It was that fact then enabled the rest of their plan.
“I have the hotel in sight, sir,” Juarez reported, although everyone in the room could see what she saw – the four story hotel coming into view. It was shaped like a “V” with a huge fountain and statue sitting in front encircled by a spacious circular drive. The loading dock was located in the back, at the bottom, or southernmost tip of the “V”.
Juarez gently coasted up to the front of the hotel, carefully nudging the helicopter down and ahead in small increments, looking out her front facing cameras as well as at her down facing images.
“Now place HUDEW one into position,” Winsteed said softly behind her.
Juarez gently swooped down into the back parking lot behind the hotel and lowered th
e first yellow drum into position, just six feet in front of the metal door.
“Good, now unlatch and back off,” Winsteed directed.
Juarez touched a button on her game joystick and the electromagnet released itself from the barrel.
“Great, now come back home and fetch HUDEW number two,” Winsteed ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Juarez responded, backing the helicopter gently away from the barrel and rising above the hotel. The small helicopter then began to fly back to the hangar to pick up the next barrel. Juarez expertly directed the small chopper back, picked up HUDEW two and flew it to the hotel, proficiently placing it two feet behind the first and four feet to one side. She repeated this with barrels three through six, until they were all lined up in a staggered fan before the hotel door.
After placing the last barrel, she reported, “Sir, they’re all in position. I’m now ready to execute the first Barn Burner on your command.”
Winsteed took a step back, considering the pieces lined up before him as though it were the final match of an international chess tournament. Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke. “Drop your first round,” he commanded.
“Aye, sir, positioning over target.”
Everyone in the room held their collective breath.
“Barn Burner one away,” Juarez said, toggling a silver switch mounted on the board before her.
All eyes could see one of the small fluorescent orange barrels break free from the undercarriage of the helo and drift down in silence toward the roof of the hotel. A moment later, there was a bright orange and yellow flash as the entire eastern roof of the hotel was swathed in a sheet of fire.
“Drop Barn Burner two,” Winsteed ordered.
Juarez drifted the chopper to the opposite roof.
“Drop it when you’re in position and ready,” Winsteed said just as her fingers toggled the switch that released the barrel. The entire back half of the hotel roof was bathed in a continuous sheet of flame.
“Land and assume safe observation at point kilo,” Winsteed commanded.
Juarez backed the chopper away, rotated it, moved it into the back parking lot and sat it down, its cameras facing the single door into the underground shelter.
“Kill your engines,” Winsteed commanded. “Now we wait.”
One of Winsteed’s men was from Dutch Harbor , Inuit native Pitseolik Aglukark. Aglukark had worked as a bus boy in the hotel for six years and knew it well. He had been in and out of what the Russian Mafia were now using as a shelter. It was originally designed as a deep, concrete and steel safe room where they kept watch over their gambling and prostitution cash. Aglukark knew there was only one way in and one way out – a security feature designed into the room. What he did not know was how the ventilation of the room was handled and whether it was ventilated through the hotel’s system or via external vents. That question was critical to what would happen in the next few minutes and would determine the remaining strategy.
The small helicopter trained its remote camera-eye on the door. If the safe room filled with smoke because of the inferno raging over the top of it, the residents would have little choice but to scramble through the door to the outside, quantum storms or no quantum storms. But if they could shut their ventilation down, or if it was ventilated from a source away from the building, they would stay put until darkness. Either way, Winsteed was prepared for whatever their next move might be.
“Oh wow, this is creepy,” Cook said, staring over Juarez’s shoulder at the monitor.
“What?” Winsteed asked.
“They’re looking at us – at the helicopter.”
“How do you know that?” Juarez asked.
“Look at their camera mount,” he said, placing his finger near the screen. “It’s swiveling back and forth. It’s pretty much scanning the chopper and all around it.”
“Well I’ll be dipped in spam! No joke, they are! Now I wish I’d painted them up a “have a nice day in hell” sign…”
The entire building was now totally engulfed in flames; a thick black pall of smoke was rising straight up in the clear blue, windless skies over Unalaska. The tongue of fire was lifting over one hundred feet, flickering in and out of the black cloud. Winsteed could see that half the center roof had already collapsed as the inferno engulfed the once magnificent hotel.
In an instant, and with no warning, the steel door leading into the shelter burst open, and out of it leapt a man engulfed in smoke, with a white towel wrapped about his face, firing his AK-74 wildly toward the chopper’s position.
Juarez needed no prompting. Her right thumb lowered itself over a button on her panel labeled “1”. She pressed it once and the man with the gun, standing just two feet in front of the six pack of what they had christened Horribly Unspeakable Destruction & Extermination Weapons, instantly disappeared.
The bottom of number one barrel was filled with four inches of lead. Above it was a special mixture of C4 suspended in jet fuel A. The barrel had been designed to burst open in a forward direction, and was positioned to aim directly at the steel door. Whether someone exited the door or not, the number one barrel was designed to blow it off its hinges. But since the man with the Kalashnikov had done the honors for them, the blast filled the downward leading tunnel with jet fuel vapors that were then ignited by the slower burning plastic explosives. The design of the weapon was to fill the tunnel with jet fuel, then ignite it so that a massive overpressure was created, blowing the bottom door open to the shelter below at the moment of ignition.
Barrel three was identical to barrel one and was designed to make sure the bottom door was open. As soon as the fire no longer leapt through the opening, Winsteed ordered that barrel three be detonated. Again, there was a flash of white steam as the jet fuel was vaporized and filled the tunnel. In the mere blink of an eye, the vapors ignited and were followed by a gush of orange and red flame from the tunnel. The explosion was so powerful, the view from the camera on the helicopter leapt into the air, then bounced back down.
But there were four barrels left. The real horror was yet to be unleashed.
Winsteed knew there would not be any more mad Russians exiting from the tunnel, so he relaxed, lit up a cigar and pulled up a chair backward beside Juarez and straddled it.
“This one’s for Aaron Seven, little Luci and Podosky,” Winsteed said softly, naming off three of the victims of the Russian’s violence. “Do it, Juarez…”
Juarez’s finger poised itself over the button, hesitated for only a moment, then plunged.
Barrels two, four, five and six were truly unspeakable weapons scavenged from the deepest and most repulsive part of hell. They were designed to not only inflict maximum injury, but would leave a horrible legacy in their wake that would long outlive any of the corpses. And, if by some astonishing miracle anyone did survive what was to come, they would long to crawl up the extensive stairs to enjoy the relative merciful death of a mere quantum storm.
Barrel two ignited and its explosion resembled the first two in many ways. Like them, it was a directed explosion designed to fill the shelter with a fine mist. But that is where any similarity ended.
These HUDEWs were filled with jet fuel A that had been jellied, like napalm. But unlike napalm, it was not designed to burn in a flash. This jelly resembled a tar like substance that was laced with sulfuric acid. The tar would burn, but it would burn far more slowly and far hotter than napalm. First, the explosion would coat every square inch of the space below in a hot mist of tar blended with acid. The blaze would follow and would enable the simple fire to transform itself into something far and away more horrific. The acid was not placed in the mix to make it simply more nasty, but to synthesize a secondary wave of reactions within the explosive mix.
The barrel had been laced with metal canisters jammed with moth balls coated with a half inch of paraffin wax, concentrated bleach, gasoline and liquid mercury. When the first explosion detonated the barrel and mixed the tar-like jet fuel, it also vaporize
d and mixed the moth balls, bleach, gasoline and mercury into a fine mist and created a cloud of super-hot phosgene gas. Not only would the air be filled with steaming jet fuel tar, it would contain one of the most toxic clouds of gas known to mankind. If there were any air left to breathe, it would be replaced with lethal, superheated gas.
Behind the gas, behind the fine mist of jet fuel tar, came the flame, deliberately slowed by the density of the mixture. And when the mixture finally began to burn with a vengeance, the mercury mist would be transformed into a hideous and deadly cloud of mercuric oxide, intermingled with the phosgene gas. The remains of the hotel, and the land downwind of the conflagration, would be so contaminated with deadly particulates that it would be totally uninhabitable for thousands of years. The HUDEWs were a weapon so horrible that had they been dreamed up before the quantum storms, it was most certain that any civilized nation would have banned them forthright.
The tongue of flame created by the HUDEWs was at first colored a deep red intermingled with bright yellow, energetic smoke created by the oxidation of the liquid mercury metal. But as the fire raged out of the shelter, it quickly changed into a dense, black pillar of smoldering flame that seemed to rage on without diminishing.
To make everyone’s worse nightmare come true, a pair of Russians came stumbling out of the inferno, gripping one another around the waist. Both victims were totally blackened and flames covered every square inch of their bodies.
“Cane, Frisk and Marlatta,” Winsteed said with brutal slowness, naming three more victims. “Next…”
Juarez’s fingers depressed the button as the next barrel exploded, delivering its payload of living hell into the mouth of the enemy’s shelter, obliterating any memory of the two stumbling, flaming humans from the earth.
Winsteed waited even longer, his eyes, like everyone else’s, glued to the monitor before them, watching it all in widescreen, high definition color. He chewed on the end of his cigar, the faces of his dead and injured troops flickering before his mind.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 66
