Ice in the pit of my stomach. I should have contacted Zhukova.
My jaw tightened. But this was the chance I had to stop that bastard Ellis from spawning more nightmares, and I was going to take it.
The fact that Titan and one of the factions Winterfield had warned me about were in on this, colluding with this maniac, smooth-talking billionaire, that cemented the deal.
I wasn’t calling Support. I was in the whole way. The Scourge and my cell were going to help me take out Emerald Green.
Chapter 23
Ashula took me inside the hangar at a private airstrip, flicked a wall switch. A single lamp, dangling from rafters, came on. Plastic crates were piled along one wall. On the opposite there were metal shelves filled with all kinds of junk, old engine parts, propellers, gas cans, you name it. There was a van parked in the center of the hangar. Your run-of-the-mill white courier van.
She opened the rear door. Half a dozen suitcases, the kind that were made out of ballistic casing, sat in a weird kind of rack that kept them from bouncing around when the truck moves.
“The EMP devices.” She said it quietly.
“I thought they’d be bigger.”
“Easier to transport this way.”
“But are they powerful enough?” It just didn’t seem like the cases were big enough.
“I assure you Mat, they are,” Ashula said.
I swallowed. Okay, these were dangerous, but they were EMP devices—Nefarious said non-nuclear, so it wasn’t like I was going to die as long as I wasn’t standing next to it when it detonated.
The EMP would destroy the artificial parts of the unplants Ellis had made, as well as wipe the computers and electronic controlled vats.
Almost seemed too good to be true.
“Which one is mine?” The case in the front seemed a little smaller. She pointed at that one. She unlocked the rack, and I pulled it out. Felt like the case weighed fifty pounds. Lighter than I thought.
I wasn’t so sure she was telling me the truth, but why would they send me on a suicide mission, with Obode and Lightning attached to my cell? I couldn’t get Lightning’s glaring out of my head—she was royally pissed off when she found out I was in charge.
Tough.
Obode had taken it easier than I figured he should, especially for a man as rich as he must be. That didn’t make sense.
“Why is Odobe even in the Scourge?” I asked Ashula. “He seems bent on getting money, but with his Earth power, he can mine for gold and gems. What does he need with us?”
“He’s a gambler and can never hang on to his money. He’s also propped up several African nations, and that becomes expensive when you are bankrolling your friends’ corrupt regimes.”
That seemed like a bullshit answer. Sure, I hadn’t figured him for a Good Samaritan, but there has to be something more than just greed with him.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I like to know motivations. Thing is, we are smashing Emerald Green, right?”
She nodded. She looked away again. “Yes.”
I had a feeling I was being set up, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to believe Ashula meant what she had said about taking down Ellis.
“As long as we can stop Ellis,” I said.
“We will.”
I followed her out, towing the suitcase behind me. Handy that it had wheels.
This had to work.
“I want to check on the bomb’s status,” Simon said. We were at a godforsaken place in the middle of Utah. The rest of the cell was at a greasy spoon diner next to a gas station. We had tanked up, and then pulled over across the lot, away from the diner, for some privacy.
The wind had whipped up, and the rusty “Diner” sign creaked on its rusty pole outside.
I pull the door shut and helped Simon pull the case. I took the key from my utility belt, then unlocked the case.
Inside, the black cylinder was secure in its foam casing.
I nodded at the EMP device. “See, snug as a bug in a rug.” The old rhyme popped into my head for some reason. Guess because it was always what Ruth used to say when she was trying to make me feel better, when I was little and she found a favorite toy I thought I had lost.
Funny memory to have just now.
Simon bent over the case, frowning.
“This is the EMP device?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He ran his fingers over the black casing, pried open a panel cover at the waist of the thing. There was a status indicator, showing numbers in green, and below that, a ten key pad.
“This isn’t an EMP device.”
“What?” I leaned forward. “I don’t get it. Ashula and Nefarious said we would get a bomb.”
He looked at me. “We did receive one. But not a specialized EMP one.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because I’m familiar with all sorts of ordnance, from conventional to nuclear. EMP devices are shaped differently than this, rounder, to maximize the electro-magnetic pulse.”
He stared at the device. “This is a neutron bomb.”
I moved back from the cylinder. “No shit?” It couldn’t be a neutron bomb.
“No shit. The display numbers indicate the status of the detonator, and the casing is made of a composite material that enhances neutron generation.”
I shivered. I only understood about half of what he said, but what I understood made me realize Ashula and Nefarious were in fact playing me.
They were aiming for mass murder. Neutron bombs were UN property only and had been used only a few times, in the Russian territories and China, in order to defeat criminals and rebels decades ago. Supposedly the Hero Council had banned them.
“We’ll have to be a lot farther away than we planned when this detonates, in order not to be killed,” Simon said.
“The other cases looked identical,” I said. “Neutron bombs as well?” Getting a hold of one neutron weapon was pretty incredible. Six? That was way beyond incredible.
Simon looked puzzled. “A neutron weapon is a better choice for taking out a hardened Hero Council installation, if what you want is to kill people. But didn’t you say the Inner Circle’s objective was to cripple the Q-T network and the Hero Council’s infrastructure?”
“Yes. So, how much damage would a neutron bomb do?” Despite the heat, I felt ice cold. I couldn’t believe I was asking about damage and nuclear weapons.
“A fair amount. Not as much as a higher yield nuclear device. There would be some EMP, and this could be adjusted…” he peered closer at the casing. “Ah, see here?” He ran a finger around the upper and then lower parts of the casing. “This is added on. It’s subtle, but there. So this neutron weapon will generate more EMP than normal, but it will also kill everything within a decent radius.”
Decent radius. I swallowed. “How many people?”
“Depends of course on the population density of the target area. But assuming an installation like the Arch in Paris or the Pagoda in Tokyo, at the very least hundreds of thousands of people.”
Hundreds of thousands of lives. Maybe even millions. Times five. It wouldn’t just be a blow against the Hero Council. It would be an attack on the United Nations. And on all the people who happened to live in those places.
Who knew what would happen if the Hero Council and United Nations were crippled at the same time? Maybe the other weapons were “just” EMP devices, or perhaps they were neutron bombs as well like this one.
“You all right, Mat?” Simon asked me. The set of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, I couldn’t tell if he was concerned or trying to decide if I was weak.
Damn it.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just surprised. The Inner Circle is playing for even higher stakes.”
He nodded, face expressionless again.
We drove into Boulder just after dark. Nefarious and Ashula and their small army were arriving in Colorado Springs early the next morning, on official UN transport.
We parked at a
motel at the edge of town. The “M” and “O” on the sign were burned out, leaving “TEL.”
The place looked like a roach-infested hellhole, with taped windows and worn carpet. We got three rooms. Keisha and I shared one.
I couldn’t stop glancing outside. I was amped up.
A neutron bomb was in our truck. Why hadn’t Ashula and Nefarious told me?
If they didn’t trust me, why hadn’t they killed me? Or put Lightning or Odobe in charge? Because placing a neutron bomb and getting away was a long shot.
Which meant that their sneak and drop scheme at the Citadel was a suicide mission. They just hadn’t bothered to tell the rest of us. Nefarious’s shakes. Ashula’s worry. A desire to remake the fucking world, no matter what it cost. Killing all of us in the process. A lot of Empowered would die. So would a lot of normals.
“You okay?” Keisha sat on the edge of her bed, concern on her face.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t. I fingered my wrist comm. There was a payphone outside. I could call Winterfield, tell him what was up. They could lock down the Citadel. For how long? And would that really stop the Inner Circle, or just delay them?
What about Brandon Ellis? Would that spider escape all of this? Maybe he really wasn’t at the Hothouse. He moved around a lot.
“You don’t seem fine at all,” Keisha said, her voice suddenly small.
I wanted to tell her, tell her everything, but then she’d see me as a traitor.
Traitor. Who was betraying who? I was supposed to betray the Scourge, and they had betrayed me, and Ellis was betraying humanity.
But what about everyone else?
I didn’t make that call. I sat there and stared at the sign saying “Tel” in red glowing neon letters. If only I could.
We reached Colorado Springs just as the sun was coming up. The Rockies were all crags and shadows just before, then snowcapped peaks flashed and suddenly they loomed ahead of us.
Simon drove. He wore night vision googles, now perched on his head.
“It would have been easier to have done this at night.”
His way of complaining.
I rode shotgun. The others were in the back. Lightning had looked at Keisha and Connor like they were bugs she wanted to zap, while Odobe had just glanced at them, and shook his head. Everyone wore earth-toned camouflage jumpsuits.
Simon took us down a dirt road, then up another until we reached the top of a rocky hill. I raised the rear door and let a still grumbling Keisha and a still glaring Lighting out. Odobe jumped down.
“Rise and shine,” I told Connor.
Connor blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Are we there?”
“Yup. This is as far as the truck takes us,” I said.
Below the hill, the ground sloped down into a tree-lined valley and then up again to another hill.
Simon had binocs out and was sweeping the far side. He looked like a soldier, lying there between two boulders, while the rest of them crouched behind me.
“What do you see?”
“Concealed security cameras.”
Big surprise.
I looked at Odobe. “You can do this, right?”
He wore wraparound sunglasses with a head strap. “Of course.”
Crazy, but what else was new? Everything we did was on the crazy side.
“Lightning and Connor, you’ve gone over working together, right?”
Lightning sneered. “This child’s power is nothing.”
“Don’t be an idiot. We need you both.”
While we were blabbing Simon had rolled the bomb to the back of the truck. Keisha and I helped him lower it from the truck.
I turned to Keisha. “You need to be ready to cut through any metal barriers,” I said. “You know, gates and stuff.”
She jerked her head at Odobe. “I thought Earthmover would take us under and around all that.”
“Well, that isn’t the only thing you might have to do. Get ready to throw steel shit at security.” I was practically jumping from foot to foot, like Lightning and Connor had combined to run like a million volts through me. I ran the mission through my head. We needed to get to the center of Emerald Green and take it out, and that would probably mean cutting down a lot of security. But what about the attack on the strongholds? Damn it, too many things to think about.
Odobe went past the front of the truck, knelt down, put his hands on the ground, and closed his eyes.
The earth started to tremble, and then the ground opened up. Keisha jumped back. “Shit!”
Connor’s eyes went wide, but Lighting and Simon didn’t react.
A tunnel now sloped underground, the dirt steaming.
I snapped on a headlamp, and the others did the same. We followed Odobe into the ground.
“How much farther?” Keisha yelled in my ear.
The low rumble from Odobe boring through the dirt made every bone in me rattle. “Not sure,” I said. It had been, what, ten minutes? We were all covered in dust, and had to crouch down beneath the tunnel’s ceiling. I felt like a damn mole. Odobe walked slowly in front, bent over now, arms still raised, hands working away. Steam billowed in my face from the dirt, and I waved a hand to clear it.
“Hey, Odobe!” I yelled at his back. Nothing. He kept moving forward.
I got right up behind him. “Hey!”
He stopped, lowered his hands.
“How much farther?” He pulled a rag from his jumpsuit, wiped his face. The rag was covered in sweat and muddy tracks from the dust.
“I don’t think much farther.” He swayed.
Shit. I grabbed his arm and Keisha took his other side. We helped him sit.
He was breathing hard, like he’d been running miles.
“Rest for a minute,” I told him, and pulled Keisha back down the tunnel to where the others were.
“What is wrong?” Lightning frowned. “We should keep moving at all times.” She and Connor didn’t have a speck of dust on them.
Using their power to keep themselves clean. Cute. “You’re wasting energy just to look spotless,” I said. Connor ducked his head, embarrassed. Yeah, busted.
Lightning ignored me, pushed past to get to Odobe. Shook her head. “You fat gangster, you spend too much time gambling and chasing women.”
He started to push himself up.
I got between them, pushed at Lightning with my chest. “Stop it.”
A nasty look crawled on her face. “You shouldn’t be leading this group. I have read the intelligence. Your power is useless against what lies within the complex.”
I hefted the bag. “Not with this, it isn’t.”
Her face twisted into a sneer. “I should have that.”
“But you don’t. Ashula gave it to me.”
“If anyone should have it, it should have been me,” Odobe wheezed. The wheezing became a laugh. “But I’m surprised Nefarious didn’t keep it.”
None of them knew what it was like to wear the Amplifier. I was the only one here who knew what using the damn thing was like.
Didn’t want to think of Lightning with it.
She wouldn’t let it go.
“Give that to me.” She raised her hand, and the air crackled.
“You’re going to do that, in here?” I waved my arms around. “You’ll take out Odobe and Keisha too.”
“I don’t need them. I will strike you with my lightning if so much as the tip of a vine emerges from the earth. Give it to me.” The air crackled. “At once.”
Simon pushed the muzzle of his stunner into the back of her head. “However, you do need the back of your skull.”
She laughed, and the air crackled, making our hair rise. Electrical flashes went up and down her arms. “Your stunner can’t hurt me.”
“It isn’t just a stunner.” He pulled back a slider, making a loud snick. “Try thinking with a few bullet holes in that skull of yours.”
She stiffened.
“What’s another crime when we are all al
ready going to die if we are caught?” he asked.
Lightning kept her mouth shut, but if looks could kill, we’d be dead already.
I pulled out my data pad. We weren’t under the incubators. No, that would have been too easy. Looked like we were at least two hundred meters short. He’d just begun sloping the tunnel upward.
Odobe pushed himself up to standing. “I can do this.”
I could give him the Amplifier, but the thing would eat him alive. He might only have enough juice for just one more push.
That decided it.
I nodded at the tunnel roof over our heads. “We’re going to have to go up from here.”
“That’s probably twenty feet of earth, maybe even thirty,” Odobe said. He sounded like he was ready to fall over.
“You expect us to climb straight up?” Lightning spit the words.
But we couldn’t wait. If Emerald Green had seismic sensors, or there was a high-altitude blimp with ground pen radar like Nefarious thought, they’d know something was up—we didn’t have time for anything else now. Odobe wasn’t going be able to tunnel all the way under the hothouse chamber, and the tunnel wasn’t going up at a steep enough angle anyway.
“Yeah, with a little help from all of us.”
I looked at Keisha. “Can you create a ladder?”
“Not fast I can’t.”
“What about metal hand holds, just enough so that we can reach from one to the next?”
“That’ll still take too long,” she said.
Simon smiled. “I imagine pitons you could do.”
“If I knew what the hell those were, maybe.”
“Climbing pegs, with an eyehole in them.” His fingers danced on his datapad. He flipped it around. There was an image of a piton. “Like that.”
“Yeah. Maybe a half dozen.”
“That will be enough.”
We moved back, gave Odobe some room, while Keisha did her metal trick and pulled metal together from the ground and air. A couple of minutes later, there were six pitons lying on the ground. Keisha coughed.
She pushed me away with her hand. “I’ll be fine.” She swigged water from her canteen.
Empowered: Traitor (The Empowered Series Book 2) Page 21
