The Signal (The Bugging Out Series Book 8)

by Noah Mann

  Schiavo let a small breath slip out before keying the mic again.

  “Paul, I’m Colonel Angela Schiavo, and I need something from you.”

  “Of course,” Vega said, some surrender in his tone now. “What’s your target, Viper Diamond Nine?”

  “Not yet,” Schiavo said. “I need your location.”

  “Colonel, that’s information I wouldn’t give God.”

  “I am not God, but I need to know if you are within three hundred miles of the Oregon coast.”

  “Colonel, as I said—”

  “Captain Vega,” Schiavo interrupted. “There are two reasons I need to know that information. The first relates to the target I am going to give you. The second relates to your resupply, which I’m assuming comes from the same place as ours—Hawaii.”

  Once more there was a contemplative lack of response. The man was weighing how much, considering the way the world was at this very moment, he could violate longstanding protocols.

  “Captain Vega, there are no Russian subs stalking you,” Schiavo told the reticent sub commander. “The reality is, you have a bigger problem.”

  “I haven’t been able to reach Hawaii today,” Vega said without further prodding. “After the jamming ceased, we tried, but every method which had been successful before only gave us dead air.”

  Now Schiavo had to be the bearer of news that was likely more horrible than a mere cutoff of supplies. The sub, which was miraculously still on station, was crewed by sailors. Sailors with families, almost certainly. And, to allow those sailors to function free of concern for their loved ones, it was logical to assume that the government had afforded them protection and provided for them in what was believed to be the safest of places.

  Which, we now knew, turned out to not be that at all.

  “Hawaii is gone, Captain Vega,” Schiavo said, offering the sobering news without any attempt to sugarcoat it. “A captured cache of nuclear weapons was detonated there.”

  The silence that followed now lingered. The man on the other end of the transmission, and, possibly, those around him who’d heard what Schiavo had just shared, were reacting amongst themselves to this news. Debating its validity, I imagined. Discounting its source. None of that, though, would change the reality they, and we, now faced.

  We were on our own. All we had to to taste that new normal was survive what Lana had planned for Bandon.

  “Captain...”

  “Yes,” Vega replied, a change in his voice. “I’m here.”

  Between his words, in background chatter, other voices were parrying. Challenging the news. Supporting the possibility. It was a mutiny of acceptance.

  “Those weapons were transported to Hawaii aboard the USS Eisenhower,” Schiavo explained. “Another batch of those weapons are aboard the USS Carl Vinson. Captain, I’m standing on that ship right now.”

  “Excuse me...”

  “Also aboard this ship is the person who put this all in motion,” Schiavo said. “We’re at anchor right now, but if she’s true to her word, this vessel will sail toward our home, Bandon, and wipe out the survivor colony there in the same way Hawaii was obliterated.”

  “If this is true, why don’t you stop her?” Vega challenged.

  “Because we can’t. She’s sealed herself off with guards. We can’t get to her. But you can.”

  Schiavo took just a minute to tell Vega what she wanted.

  “Are you close enough to make this work?” Schiavo asked.

  “Yes,” Vega answered.

  “You’ve got to hit this ship at the agreed upon time,” Schiavo told him. “We have to have time to get off before she starts moving.”

  “Understood,” Vega said, though he wasn’t done. “Colonel Schiavo...”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re certain about Hawaii?”

  “Unfortunately, I am, Captain Vega. Prior to even learning of the action from the woman responsible, we detected an energy pulse from the area of the Pacific that correlates to Hawaii. This was noted even before we cut power to the jammer on this ship. Only a nuclear blast would produce enough to be heard over the interference.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry,” Schiavo said.

  A final time there was an interlude of quiet. Ten seconds, maybe, where the naval officer finished weighing what he could do with what was needed.

  “It will be the pleasure of the crew of the USS Louisiana to fulfill the mission you’ve given us, Colonel Schiavo.”

  “Thank you, Captain Vega,” Schiavo said, an addendum coming to her before ending the communication. “You are welcome to sail to Bandon for supplies.”

  “Thank you,” Vega said. “But once we complete your mission, we’re going to Hawaii. To see for ourselves.”

  It wasn’t doubt informing Vega’s decision, I knew. It was necessity. If all there had been lost, his sailors deserved to see that with their own eyes.

  “Godspeed,” Schiavo said.

  “Thank you,” Vega said. “And Colonel Schiavo, be off that carrier before we hit it. If you’re not...then Godspeed to you.”

  The transmission ended. Schiavo handed the radio to me and looked out at the rain cascading past the bridge’s windows.

  “Try Bandon,” Schiavo told me.

  I entered the frequency we knew would be monitored and tried to make contact three times, without success.

  “It’s just too far,” I said. “We don’t have com gear in town like the Louisiana has.”

  Schiavo nodded. Any word to Bandon on what it might be facing would have to come from another source.

  “Let’s get that plane airborne,” she said.

  I lay the radio down atop the open console and followed her off the bridge.

  Twenty Five

  Hart, Laws, and Westin were aboard the Cessna, none without protesting the fact that they were leaving their commanding officer behind. But none would violate her orders, either. They would rather die than do that.

  “Get on the radio when you’re close enough and give Lieutenant Lorenzen a heads up so the C-Four is ready to load when you land,” Schiavo said.

  She stood next to the Cessna, talking to Beekman through the open door next to the pilot.

  “You really think you can sink this ship with three hundred pounds of plastic explosives?” Beekman asked.

  “I hope we don’t have to find out,” Schiavo said. “Get my guys home and get back here.”

  “What, you don’t want to go down with the ship?” Beekman asked, shouting as he started the Cessna’s engine.

  “I’m not Navy!” Schiavo answered. “It would be bad form!”

  Beekman gave her a quick smile, appreciating the quip she’d returned fire with. He closed his door and throttled up. He and Westin had already unhooked the plane from its tie-downs, the other members of the garrison joining to help turn the aircraft manually to line it up for a takeoff.

  “Landing has to be harder than taking off,” Martin said. “Right?”

  “We’ll know in a minute,” I said.

  The Cessna’s engine revved as the brakes held it in place, the narrow bow of the carrier less than 500 feet away, that precipice nearly lost in the mix of weather and darkness. Only the cold waters of the Pacific lay beyond it should the aircraft not get airborne in time.

  Then, the plane began to roll, accelerating, the deck pitching beneath it.

  “He’s not gonna make it,” Martin said, stepping awkwardly away from the partial shelter of the island’s exterior.

  “Come on,” I said, imploring the Cessna to fly. “Do it.”

  They were a hundred feet from the edge of the flight deck. Then fifty.

  Forty.

  Ten.

  “Wheel’s up,” Schiavo said, just shy of an exclamation.

  The Cessna’s landing gear left the deck a scant few yards before that surface ended, the racing hum of its engine dissipating quickly as the aircraft disappeared into the night.

  “Having Bee
kman load all that C-Four will slow down his return to get us,” I said. “You sure you want to risk that after talking to the Louisiana?”

  “What if they fail?” Schiavo suggested. “We won’t be here to know.”

  I understood what she was planning.

  “You want to set the charges no matter what,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “We’ll set them the best we can, as fast as we can down on the hangar deck, with a twenty-minute fuse,” Schiavo said. “With any luck we’ll open a gash on the side of the ship that will reach to the waterline.”

  “Let’s hope Captain Vega makes all that unnecessary,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Schiavo agreed. “Now let’s get out of this rain. We can cover the deck from the bridge.”

  She turned toward the entrance to the interior of the island, but Martin didn’t. He stepped further out into the rain, limping across the deck toward the large cube which contained what had brought us here.

  “Martin...”

  He paused and looked back to his wife.

  “We haven’t seen what’s inside,” he said.

  “There’s no way in,” I said.

  Westin and Laws had scouted the perimeter of the object while on deck, they’d reported. It was sealed, only a small opening in place to allow the power cables to pass through.

  “Martin, come give your leg a rest,” Schiavo said.

  Instead, he looked back to the object, the wall facing him twenty feet high. It was a smooth slab of some synthetic material, hard enough to keep anyone out, yet able to allow the jamming signal through without degrading it. In essence, the monolithic structure was a simple radome in place to protect, and conceal, the equipment within.

  “You don’t even want to see?” he asked. “You don’t want to know?”

  “No,” Schiavo said, walking out to stand next to her husband.

  I moved to join them, soaked already. The weather was working on us. Exhaustion, too. And pain. Martin, most of all, was facing the latter, his leg clearly hurting more than he was letting on. Worse, by far, than my finger. Still, he was ignoring it. Maybe, I thought, this mental excursion to what was hidden within the cube was partly an exercise in distraction.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It won’t exist in a little while.”

  He shook his head, at the cube, first, and then as he turned to eye the island, and the ship it rose from.

  “We almost get done in by a bug that has it in for everything green, and then someone who’s bothered by the fact that it didn’t finish the job and take all of humanity with it turns to technology to finish us off. Some scientist creates the bug sixty years after other scientists make possible the bombs we’re sitting on. Science created this ship. Its reactors. The thing inside that cube.”

  Martin paused his diatribe for a moment, growing still and contemplative before he looked to the flight deck and shook his head once more.

  “Science couldn’t save my son, but it can end the world,” he said, looking up at his wife and me. “Where did this all start to go wrong?”

  I’d known Martin Jay to be a strong man, with a passionate belief in his town, and in himself. He’d wielded so much power and influence through the darkest times, partly in hopes of keeping his ailing son alive. When Micah Jay succumbed to the medical issues which had plagued him, Martin had pressed on, leading the town which owed so much to him, and to his late son. I’d never witnessed him express confusion, nor bitterness, to the degree he now was.

  “One person decides we all should die, and she can make that happen?” Martin asked, knowing that neither Schiavo or I would be able to soothe him with any definitive response. “Maybe we are the true blight.”

  “Some are,” Schiavo said. “She is. And that sort of belief can spread, just like the grey grit moved from tree to bush to weed. Her thinking infected others.”

  Schiavo reached out and took hold of the M4 slung across her husband’s chest.

  “You can kill Fletch and me right now,” she said. “With this. But you don’t. Because it’s not in your head, or your heart, to kill. You only do so when you’re forced to, and you don’t chalk it up to some forced ideology that says humanity was a mistake from the beginning.”

  She let go of his weapon and let it hang again from its sling.

  “That woman,” Schiavo continued, “the hate was in her heart before she had the means to act on it.”

  Martin absorbed what his wife had laid out to him. He glanced back to the large cube, then faced us again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t let things... I mean, this is so beyond anything I’ve had to wrap my head around. I fought so hard to keep Micah alive. So many people did. And Lana, she has the power to negate anything good. I just don’t...”

  “No one does, Martin,” I said, agreeing with the incomplete, but not unknown, sentiment. “How can you understand madness?”

  “You think she’s crazy?” Martin asked, probing my estimation of the woman he’d not been face to face with.

  “No,” I said. “I think she’s evil.”

  The rain picked up, pushed by rising winds. Martin looked away from me, staring into the storm for a moment.

  “Let’s get out of this,” Schiavo said. “Martin?”

  He turned to her and nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  We left the deck and headed into the island before making our way up to the bridge. I paused at the entrance, looking back to the flight deck and the maelstrom of weather pounding it. It was true that we were facing evil in human form, but we were also facing extreme circumstances and the tests that Mother Nature was throwing at us. For Schiavo, Martin, and me, the effects could be minimized by seeking the shelter that we were. But for Chris Beekman...

  In a few hours, he would have to land once again on the pitching carrier in the stormy darkness. That wasn’t any manifestation of evil, but it could kill him just as easily. And all of us in the process.

  Part Four

  Danger Close

  Twenty Six

  Two and a half hours after the Cessna rose from the deck with its four souls aboard, when Chris Beekman was almost certainly on his way back for his final taxi run of this mission, a series of explosions shook the Vinson. Four sharp blasts that ripped the nighttime stillness in quick succession, seeming to bracket the bow of the vessel.

  “What was—”

  “Shhh,” Martin said, cutting me off.

  I did as he said. So did his wife. The three of us tuning our ears through the remnants of the detonations to notice the unmistakable sound of big metal dragging across bigger metal.

  “The anchor chains,” Schiavo said.

  We moved to the starboard side of the island and found a vantage point on an exterior platform hanging over the right side of the ship. Looking forward from that position we could, between flashes of lightning, see that the anchor chain on this side of the Vinson had been severed. Smoke drifting from where it had penetrated the hull indicated that some sort of shaped charges had cut the massive steel links, untethering the carrier from her anchors.

  “That was coordinated,” Martin said.

  Schiavo nodded, but had something to add.

  “More than that,” she said. “It was planned. Long before we got here.”

  “Why set the ship adrift?” I wondered aloud. “The current here will push us southwest. It will end up nowhere near—”

  The sudden jolt of motion ended the necessity that I finish my train of thought. We were moving. Slowly, but the giant ship was beginning to cut through the waves.

  “Northwest,” Martin said. “We’re heading northwest.”

  “Right toward Bandon,” Schiavo said.

  I let out a grim chuckle, realizing too many things right then for any revelation to be welcome.

  “That’s why she didn’t come after us,” I said, the fact that had troubled me resurfacing. “It wasn’t so she didn’t waste more of her crew chasing us d
own. She doesn’t need a crew. This was all planned to be automatic so no one can get cold feet.”

  “Lana isn’t even necessary,” Martin said, agreeing. “There’s some computer deep inside the ship somewhere that’s in control now. She could have blown her brains out already.”

  Schiavo thought on these new events, and likely explanations. One part, though, she did not agree with.

  “She’s still with us,” she said. “She’s not dead. Being here at that final moment is what holds meaning for her. Experiencing that last instant of life as it ends in a flash.”

  I nodded. The woman would not take her life as the others had. There would be no rope nor bullet for her.

  “How fast are we moving?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Martin said. “But these ships can get up to thirty knots.”

  “At that speed it’ll be on top of Bandon in just over four hours,” I said.

  “We can’t let it move,” Schiavo said. “Forget home, for now. If it moves ten miles the strike we called in may never hit it.”

  I instinctively looked around the gutted bridge, hoping to spot something of use. Some cable to be cut. Anything. But there was nothing. All we had was us.

  “We have to go back below,” I said, looking to Martin. “You can cover the deck and stay off that leg.”

  Martin shifted weight onto his bad leg and grimaced through the pain. He brought his M4 up and clicked the selector to switch to burst mode.

  “I’m not sitting this out,” he said.

  Schiavo waited just a moment, closing her eyes as she nodded.

  “Maybe she still won’t care,” Schiavo said as she stood. “Maybe the way below will be clear.”

  “Maybe,” Martin said, attempting to allow the possibility.

  “None of us really believe that, right?” I said.

  “Right,” Schiavo said, bringing her shotgun up.

  “Right,” Martin agreed.

  * * *

  We jogged across the flight deck through waves of rain and wind threatening to push us off the rolling ship. Once more we slid down the rope to the hangar deck, its dimly lit expanse another point of vulnerability. Yet again, we crossed it, covering each other, making our way to the stairs, then transferring from balcony to balcony, until we were back in the part of the Vinson cut off from the rest.