by Bob Mayer
Moms slapped Eagle on the shoulder as Russia and Japan triangulated with the Can under Area 51 to get the first rough approximation of the pending Rift. “North or South Carolina.”
Eagle hit the thrusters and they were racing east.
UNC was ahead and only two minutes to go. The DVR cut to commercial and the jerks at the cable company didn’t allow fast-forwarding on some things. Ivar picked up his iPhone and checked his texts and e-mails, relayed from the small wireless transmitter he’d hooked up to the Internet line running into the lab.
“Frack!” Ivar exclaimed as he saw Doctor Winslow’s e-mail about the dampener. It was time-stamped over three hours ago.
Ivar looked at the computer. There was the slightest of golden haze around the mainframe. Anxiously, he checked the monitor and breathed a sigh of relief. All within parameters.
He went over to the keyboard and began to type in the code that should have been typed in three hours previously.
Winslow could barely sit back down. He felt drawn to the computer with an urgency he couldn’t comprehend. Lilith was still fuming at her end of the table. Winslow tried to remember what had initiated it. Something about prenups?
Lilith fixed him with her gaze. “Stephen here wants to know more about your experiment. Your new experiment. You know, the one you haven’t told me about.”
Winslow glared back. Stephen the chemist was an ass. He’d correct you if you called him Steve or even Steven as if you were ignoring his silent syllables. Winslow downed his glass of champagne and thought of the laptop. The golden glow. He noted that his wife’s hand was on Stephen’s arm. He’d never considered the fourth possible end of the evening—Lilith with someone else.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand it, Stephen,” Winslow said.
All the grad students were tracking him now, because it was one thing to be left out of the loop concerning what was going on at the lab, but it was another to see him in his cups and his wife provoking him. This would make great social media chat later.
Mary thought she was saving him by jumping in. “Yes, Doctor Winslow. What is this experiment?”
But that was just throwing gas into the fire. Winslow jumped to his feet, startling everyone. “I’ll show you.”
He took the stairs two at a time, his rage steadying him. The drawer was partly open. He unplugged the laptop and cradled it in his arms as he took it downstairs.
He was tempted to slam it down on the dining room table, but a small part of his brain that was still functioning knew that would be dangerous to the program running inside.
Stephen laughed, fueling Winslow’s rage. Stephen, who’d invented a time release for the pills that made overactive children go limp. “I hope your lab equipment is newer than that laptop.”
It was old. Under the bright light of the chandelier he could see a fading sticker for John Kerry, buried underneath a couple of band stickers. His real guests, not the students who were too young, hadn’t voted for Kerry. When a person got into houses like this, no matter what they’d chanted in their youth, most tended to change, as they had too much money. Which was funny because he’d met Lilith at a rally for liberals and he remembered what his own postdoc supervisor had told him at the time: everyone’s a liberal until they buy their first sofa. Students and liberals bought couches. For a moment, through the alcohol fog, he tried to tally how many sofas were in his house, but realized it was futile because there were rooms he’d only been in during the Realtor tour.
He heard Lilith give that girlish laugh, which meant she was now more inclined toward oral sex than evisceration and lamenting, but it was directed at Stephen, whose right arm was angled toward Lilith, under the cover of the table, which helped explain the sudden shift. He realized he’d zoned out, caught again by the golden glow.
Lilith was calling his name and he let the counting and memories go. “Yes, dear Lilith?”
“Are you going to show the rest of us?” Lilith was pointing at the laptop, the charm bracelet that she adorned with a new trinket every year, like a soldier accrued battle ribbons, dangling from her wrist.
Winslow turned the computer so that they could all see why he’d be standing on that dais in Stockholm. Everyone stared back blankly.
“Cool screen saver,” a less-than-quick grad student complimented.
“I can’t believe you got that old screen to be so bright,” another noted, as if that was what he was working on. “Did you figure out how to increase the refresh rate?”
“You fucking idiots,” Winslow said. “Don’t you see? And Lilith, why don’t you just blow Stephen right here under the table?”
The mainframe now glowed. Ivar stared at it, trying to figure out what label he could put on it. He dropped the labeler and hit the enter key for the dampener again and again.
Nothing.
The glow was expanding, covering the entire table.
Even though he had no clue what Doctor Winslow’s experiment was, Ivar had a bad feeling about the golden glow. If he screwed this experiment up, Winslow might derail his PhD.
They’d topped off once from a KC-135 tanker, somewhere over the emptiness of middle Kansas. Eagle had kept the Snake in lockstep with the bigger plane as the boom from the tanker descended in front of them, sucking in the precious fuel.
There was no discussion about who was going to jump first. Roland rigged, as Eagle began a descent when they crossed the Smoky Mountains, down into breathable air, and started depressurizing.
Moms held up an iPad from the copilot seat as Mac passed leg straps between Roland’s massive thighs. “We’ve got it pinpointed from the Japanese and Russians. Outside Chapel Hill.”
Nada took the iPad and passed it back to Roland, who paused in rigging. He checked the Google maps display, searching for landmarks he could reference on the way down. Jordan Lake was a great one for the FRP—far recognition point—that he could spot as soon as he exited the aircraft.
Then he zoomed, searching for an IRP—immediate reference point—to lock down his landing spot. Roland frowned. It looked like the target was inside a compound. “What kind of place is this?” Roland asked. “Some sort of secure research facility?”
“It’s a gated community,” Moms said.
“A what?” Roland asked.
“Bunch of houses surrounded by a fence, with a guard at the gate,” Moms said. “Sort of like Fort Bragg, except it doesn’t have the soldiers or the training areas.”
“It will have a golf course,” Eagle said.
Roland ran his finger over the screen. “It does have a golf course. You could land an entire stick of jumpers from a 141 on it.”
“I want everyone to rig,” Moms said. “We’re all going in via drop, even you, Doc. Mac, set his automatic opening device at one thousand AGL just in case. But please pull earlier, Doc, like you were trained, and follow us down. Eagle, you’re going to Wall the community’s perimeter. Put in probes to block any Firefly from getting out of that place.” She checked the time. “It’s going to be tight, but we can contain this and we have to go in quiet for concealment. Roland, right on the house, top-down, go in fast. HALO,” she added, meaning he would free-fall for most of the drop, then pull at the last minute to keep from crashing through the roof. “The rest of us are going out HAHO, right after you. So you don’t have much time on your recon before we land, because gravity rules.”
“Roger that, Moms.” Roland squatted and cinched his leg straps tight. A loose leg strap on opening shock would be literally ball-busting. Ready, he scooted out of the way as Moms climbed between the seats—careful not to hit any of Eagle’s controls—to join the rest in rigging and then inspecting each other. There were elbows, knees, parachutes, and weapons all over the place, but every member of the team had done in-flight rigging—not approved for amateurs—many times.
Doc looked very unhappy, having been forced to go through parachute training when he became a Nightstalker, but never liking it. Moms never had him jump if
she could help it, but this was the exception that made the rule for the training. And it was the price he was willing to pay to be on the inside.
By the time the Snake crossed over the Uwharrie National Forest where several of them had conducted their Robin Sage graduation exercise for the Special Forces Qualification Course, the Nightstalkers were rigged, passing the iPad around, memorizing this unique target.
Winslow wiped the Champers off his face. His guests were making their excuses, scurrying to the door, eager to get away from the coming debacle. He pressed his special card into Mary’s hand and leaned close. “Call my private number in a bit.”
Mary blinked, glanced over her shoulder at his wife, and let the card drop to the floor.
Winslow was impressed. Smarter than she’d appeared. “Winslow.”
Doctor Winslow turned. A colleague, albeit from Duke. “Yes?”
“That isn’t right, is it?” And with that, the colleague was gone with the rest of them.
At first Winslow thought it was about his wife and the Champers and his telling her to go blow Stephen in front of everyone, but then he saw it. The screen of the laptop was going crazy. The gold field was writhing; that was the only way he could describe it.
Well, of course it was, he realized just as quickly.
It was working.
But why weren’t the dampeners kicking in?
“Opening ramp,” Eagle announced.
Roland walked forward, carrying parachute and reserve, a machine gun, a flamer, body armor, ammunition, and a bunch of other gear that added over 160 pounds to his body weight.
“I’m going to give green directly above the LZ,” Eagle said. “So if you don’t pull, you’ll go through the roof, but be on target.”
“Funny guy,” Roland said.
Mac started humming and the team joined in, and then, surprisingly, it was Moms who began chanting: “Roland was a warrior from the land of the Midnight Sun.”
A couple of those in the know joined in.
“With a Thompson gun for hire.”
The ramp cracked open and air swirled in. The rest of the team joined in for the next line.
“Fighting to be done.”
The ramp locked in place. Roland looked over his shoulder at the team and Moms, a big grin on his face. He gave a thumbs-up.
The green light went on and he stepped off into darkness.
Moms fell silent and so did the team.
Moms stepped forward and took Roland’s place on the ramp.
In the lead.
Winslow ignored everyone and grabbed his cell phone. What the hell was that landline number he’d installed in the secret lab? He scrolled through his contacts list and found it, under Nobel. He pressed.
It rang. And rang.
Finally a hurried voice answered. “Yes?”
“Ivar! The dampeners?”
“I’m trying.”
Winslow gripped the phone so hard it creaked, close to cracking. “They’re not in already?”
“No.” There was a pause. “Uh, it’s glowing.”
“The mainframe?”
“And it’s all around the table. It’s getting bigger!”
The professor looked at the laptop screen. It too was glowing. Pulsing. Outward. Not possible. But it was happening.
It worked.
Nobel, here I come, bitch, Winslow thought.
“What’s the particle reading?” he demanded.
“Negative twelve point six.”
“Negative? It can’t be a negative.”
Ivar had no clue what was going on, as Doctor Winslow hadn’t told him.
He typed so hard the keyboard almost broke, but it was no use. The dampeners Doctor Winslow had developed, something no one had understood, were simply not engaging.
Roland was at terminal velocity as he dropped through four thousand feet. He was alternating between watching the terrain and houses below and his altimeter.
“Ivar? Ivar?”
There was a burst of static so strong that Winslow pushed the phone away from his ear. Lilith was in front of him, in 100 percent anger/regret mode. Stephen had smartly scurried out the door with all the others.
“Ivar?”
Just static, then it went silent.
Winslow looked at the screen of the laptop.
A golden pulse surged from the screen, hitting the professor. Smoke rose from the singed spot on his shirt.
“Shut it down!” Lilith was pounding on his back.
Winslow leaned over and his fingers flew over the keys to no avail.
No Nobel?
He punched the small button on the left side to eject the hard drive.
To no avail.
He slammed the laptop shut, but the glow was bigger than the machine and nothing happened. He opened it back up to work the keyboard with one hand while his fingers on the other were still pressing to eject. His hand on the keyboard began to quiver. He tried to stop it, but watched helplessly as that hand tapped the return key and he saw the screen begin to shimmer with lights, brighter than the gold behind them, and these tiny lights started to move toward him out of the screen like when he was a kid and holding a mason jar for the fireflies.
They flew out of the screen as he saw his hand being sucked into it. He had a moment of feeling good, feeling superior, because he actually thought of Ivar and that meant he wasn’t completely selfish.
Roland pulled at eight hundred feet AGL. He had pinpointed the target house, noting several cars moving away.
He touched down on the peak of the roof as gentle as Santa delivering goods to a child who’d been nice—even though the one in this house was almost certainly naughty.
Winslow saw the gold sparks flash by. The last thing he saw was Lilith’s face, screaming something and swatting futilely as the six sparks circled her briefly then raced out the front door.
Then Winslow’s arm went into the screen.
Followed by the rest of him.
The big platinum Rolex fell with a thud onto the keyboard.
Roland popped the quick releases, letting his chute slide onto the roof as he readied the M-240 machine gun. He was scanning, quickly doing a three-sixty, when he saw them come out of the walls of the house and scatter in different directions.
“I count six Fireflies leaving the target,” Roland announced. “We’ve got Rift.”
Lilith collapsed in shock. The hired help had left after serving dessert, the guests scattered at the confrontation, so there was no one left in the house as the Fireflies left.
Moms dumped air, the rest of the team following. “Mac, you take the front yard. Nada, back. Doc, safest place for you is to follow Nada. Eagle, how’s the Wall going?”
Eagle had the Snake at sixty feet AGL and was flying the outer fence of Senators Club. Every quarter mile, he fired a probe into the ground. The probes linked to each other, transmitting a field that would contain the Fireflies inside of them.
“It’s a big damn compound,” Eagle said. “Forty-four percent contained.”
“Faster,” Moms ordered. “Roland, we’re coming in.”
Roland had heard the screaming, which had abruptly stopped, but he was more focused on the immediate area. The Fireflies were out and who knew what they would get into? He grabbed his deflated parachute and wound some of the material around one of the pipes that protruded from the roof, using it as a makeshift rope. He climbed down to a balcony on the second floor. He busted through a large set of glass French doors.
Roland moved swiftly along the second-floor hallway, kicking doors, clearing the top floor.
There were a lot of doors.
Moms landed in the front yard, dumped her chute, and readied her MP-5. The area was well lit with streetlights and all she needed was someone working the graveyard shift to spot her. Then again, the only people here who might work a late shift were ER doctors. Support was on its way to help secure the community, but while Eagle was working on containment, she had to maintain c
oncealment. She dragged her chute and stuffed it behind a clump of bushes in front of the house, then went to the wide-open front door.
She slid in the door, back against the wall, quartering the room, muzzle of the weapon following her eyes. The foyer was overwhelming, double staircases wrapping down to an entrance bigger than the house in Kansas where she’d spent many dark years.
She edged around to the open doorway.
There was a Rift. It appeared stable.
A woman lay in front of it.
Moms knelt next to the woman. Reaching into her vest, she pulled out an amyl nitrate capsule and cracked it under Lilith’s nose. She stirred, eyes blinking, disoriented.
“How many golden sparks came out of the computer?” Moms asked.
Lilith frowned. “Six. I think six.”
“Anything else?”
“No. It got my husband.” She giggled drunkenly. “No prenup, but a great insurance policy.”
Moms already had a syringe in her hand and jabbed it into Lilith’s arm, knocking her out.
Roland’s voice came over the net. “I’m coming down the stairs. Uh, the set to the, uh, east.”
“Doc, I’ve got the Rift in—” She looked about. “I guess the dining room. Front of the house, to the right as you enter; the front left coming from the rear.”
Doc was breathing hard—he was always breathing hard after he jumped. “On my way.”
“I saw six Fireflies leave the house,” Roland reported, walking up next to Moms. He took up a position just behind her, covering her blind spot.
“Eagle?” Moms asked over the radio.
Eagle reported in. “Eighty-two percent secure.”
“We’ve got six Fireflies, people,” Moms announced on the net. “Let’s secure this house as a base of operations and get a Wall around it.”
Eagle shot the last probe into the ground and checked his display. A continuous flashing red light surrounded Senators Club: a Wall that the Fireflies could not breach. They never ventured that far from their entry point anyway, the record being just short of two miles, but the Wall was an extra measure, and the Nightstalkers excelled at extra measures.
