And as soon as he hit the water, the world went dark and he realized the boat was sliding over the top of him. He began to panic, fighting for breath and flailing his arms, when an elbow hooked into his own and dragged him clear – out from under the boat, up out of the surf, and back into the air.
It was Sarah who pulled him out.
Looking back, Wesley realized what had happened: the others had hopped out and were pushing the boat faster than he was pulling. Essentially, he’d been run over. His mind and then his face flashed with anger and he even got as far as opening his mouth to give the others a bollocking for this. But just in time he caught himself, realizing he’d better not say a damned thing, or even let it appear on his face. The very worst thing he could do would be to recriminate or blame someone under his command.
As awful as it was to look stupid, careless, incompetent – and now dripping wet – that was preferable to passing the buck.
It had to stop with him.
So now he just had to do something smart – smart enough to overshadow looking like a blithering idiot in front of his whole team.
Together, the five of them hauled the boat out of the surf and got it stashed under a dock. Wesley paused to tie the bow line firmly around a piling, in case maybe the tide came in or something. They’d be in big trouble without that boat.
And then he strode off inland, remembering not to look back… but feeling rather less confident that anyone would be following him now.
Yesterday’s Tomorrow
Jizan Economic City, Saudi Arabia
Jizan Economic City was like Disneyland in ruins.
No, scratch that, thought Wesley, wishing that his wet riot armor would stop squeaking, that he’d stop leaving wet footprints everywhere he went, and that he might stop feeling so ridiculous.
It’s like Tomorrowland – but yesterday’s Tomorrowland.
Everything in the city had been constructed in a very short period of time, and to very modern standards – they evidently hadn’t lacked for funds. Someone told Wesley much of it had been built by the Saudi Binladin Group. Wesley had no idea how to feel about that. But in any case, everything was pristine – except for what two years of post-Apocalypse had wrought. It was weird. Wesley couldn’t quite figure out whether he was looking at the distant future – or the distant past’s idea of the distant future.
He was now leading the team over a stretch of man-made waterway, across a narrow pedestrian bridge that connected the docks to the outer rings of the city, much of which was built in concentric circles.
He’d been concerned that he’d have to keep an eye on Judy, and worried that he hadn’t brought a leash for her – but she stayed with the group, kept her mouth shut, and moved when they did. Once again, it seemed an awful lot like she’d done this before – unlike most of the humans on this team.
At the end of the bridge, Wesley crouched down to let the others finish crossing before taking the lead again. He spared a glance at the sun, which was now nearly on the horizon. There was still daylight – but they didn’t have any to burn. They had to keep moving.
After crossing the bridge, they had a big open stretch of what felt like harbor-front to cross, before finally passing between two sleek crescent-shaped buildings and getting into an area of parkland in the interior. The park had obviously been extremely well-manicured at one time – equally obviously, it was now badly neglected and overgrown, which suited Wesley just fine.
“Everyone okay?” he whispered.
Sarah, Browning, Burns, and Jenson all crouched down around him in the thick foliage, clutching their weapons, and looking around wide-eyed. But everyone nodded, so Wesley guessed that was all right then.
But they all needed to catch their breath already. The ground seemed to slope slightly uphill away from the water. Moreover, none of them were used to moving with that much gear on – never mind with their adrenal systems going crazy underneath. The only ones who seemed to be breathing normally were the dog, who had no weapons or kit, and the one human who had passed on the riot gear – Sarah Cameron.
Smart woman, Wesley thought, as he took a knee under a palm tree that had obviously been transplanted here, probably at great expense, and among some huge palm-frond-like plants on the ground. Unprompted, Judy pushed out ten meters ahead of them and stood facing away, forward, once again looking like a sentry. Quality, Wesley thought. Raising his rifle to his shoulder and peering over the sight, he realized he didn’t even know for sure whether it would fire after being dunked in salt water, when he did that face plant in the shallows.
And he was too embarrassed to ask.
Luckily, Sarah seemed to read the consternation on his face. “Let me see that.” She unclipped his rifle, pulled open the bolt, popped the receiver up, and did a quick drain of the barrel and the gas tube, then clipped it back on for him. “Your M9 should be fine,” she said, nodding at his side arm. “Just make sure and clean it properly when we get back.”
Wesley nodded, but didn’t speak. He didn’t care to admit that he had no idea how to clean a pistol – nor that he was having a hard time even picturing them making it back to the carrier. But he quickly banished that thought from his mind.
He wondered if he should check in with CIC on the radio in some way. But then he saw the camera on Sarah’s shoulder – and remembered CIC, and both Sergeant Lovell and Dr. Park, were seeing everything they saw. Which was slightly reassuring.
He took a look down at the clever digital map and GPS device strapped to his forearm. He’d carefully studied their route through this sprawling artificial city – but he realized now he needn’t have bothered. His arm told him everything he needed to know. He hadn’t been doing this long enough to know that electronic devices ran out of power, took bullets, got smashed in roll-around fights… or that the GPS satellites themselves often crapped out.
So, falsely reassured, he rose and led the team out again.
* * *
Less than twenty minutes later, following that gentle uphill grade from the waterside, they stood at the outside of the gigantic warehouse-like building that was the electrical and desalination plant for the whole city.
So far the only dead they had seen were catatonic – standing in the open alone or in groups of two or three, mostly in the middle distance, and easily detoured around. This place was big and elaborate enough that Wesley could always pick a slight detour, a route that would keep them under cover from any dead they spotted.
He kept waiting to round a corner and surprise one or more of them – and then have to deal with them. But it kept not happening. Their luck was holding.
But now they were standing on a waist-high platform, a half-flight of stairs above ground, totally stopped by a heavy locked door in the side of the plant. Wesley suddenly had no idea how they were going to defeat this obstacle. And he felt very disinclined to start circling the giant structure looking for an unlocked door or window left ajar.
Because he knew their luck wouldn’t hold forever.
But then he felt a hand on his shoulder, gently but firmly pushing him out of the way. Burns took his place at the door, already opening up a little leather case. Inside were twenty or so thin metal tools with thick handles and thin ends – which were bent, curved, twisted, or serrated in slightly different ways.
It was a lock-pick set, and Burns withdrew two of the tools and inserted them into the lock on the door handle. Wesley made a mental note to ask Burns why he happened to be in possession of that particular item – but he’d barely finished the thought when the handle turned and the door swung open. Tucking the leather pouch back into a pocket, Burns gestured for Wesley to lead the way inside.
Wesley shook his head. The security guard in him was aghast at how quickly and easily Burns had been able to get into what should have been a secure building. But the nascent military small-unit leader in him was happy that he had such skills on his team – and, moreover, that they’d all be getting off the street.
&
nbsp; And getting LT Campbell’s reconnaissance job over with, hopefully fast.
Wesley brought his rifle to his shoulder and tried to move inside as smoothly as the Hollywood commandos did it on screen. Sarah, last in, pulled the door quietly closed behind them. As she did, the light level dropped, but not to nothing. Glancing up, Wesley could see there were dirty, mostly opaque windows high in the building walls, admitting enough light to make operating in there possible.
Possible – if dangerous and spooky.
He moved forward down the corridor but soon came to a T-intersection at its end, and realized he had no idea where he was leading them. He felt another hand on his shoulder and turned to see Jenson motioning to him. Going back five feet, Wesley saw he had found a wall-mounted map of the whole complex – miraculously, in both Arabic and English.
Wesley smiled at the young man. This was turning out to be a hell of a team – weapons maintenance, breaking and entering, navigation. They had all kinds of skills. Wesley wondered what his contribution would be. But at least he now knew where they were going. Committing the route to memory from the map, he went to the front and led them forward again.
Ten minutes after that, they entered a cavernous open area filled with the biggest cylindrical vats Wesley had ever even heard about – dozens of them. Whispering and pointing, he positioned the others at points he imagined might be tactical, then mounted the steel ladder up the first vat. Soon he was twenty feet above the floor – and it was not the ocean below him this time, but bare concrete.
And he still weighed too much, and moved too awkwardly.
But at the top of the vat he was relieved to find a kind of hatch or cover, which he unlatched and lifted up. He was immediately hit with the rich smell of fuel oil. Feeling around on his belt, which seemed to have about a hundred things clipped to it, he finally found his flashlight, got it free and turned on, and pointed it down inside. The nearly water-tower-sized vat was probably two-thirds full of oil.
He put the light away and climbed down carefully, trying to keep both his rifle and his sword from banging around. He was starting to think the sword had been a pretty crap gift. But he couldn’t talk himself into ditching it. He didn’t relish having to explain that to Fick later.
He spot-checked a half-dozen more of the vats, climbing up and down more carefully each time as he felt his luck wearing thin. Halfway across the room, he passed what looked like a big water-pumping station. He followed the pipes that came out of it, up the inside walls, and all the way up to the ceiling.
There he saw two things.
One was a series of metal-grille catwalks that hung from the ceiling, perched over the whole room. It went around the four edges of the huge rectangular space, and also described an X, starting at the four corners and converging in the center.
The second thing he saw was what looked like an elaborate series of sprinklers dotting the ceiling. He followed the pipes back down to the pump station, and realized this was the heart of a serious fire-suppression system. Set-up like this had better have one, he thought, initially reassured. But then he saw a big white pressure gauge on the pump – the needle of which rested on zero. He guessed either the system had just bled off over the last two years, or else it had been shut off and drained by the last guys alive here, for some reason he couldn’t guess at.
He moved on and climbed up to check a couple more vats, and soon enough was safely back on the ground – or as safe as he was going to be on this ground – and he had the info Campbell had demanded of him. Half of it anyway.
Wordlessly he rallied the team and moved them toward the exit on the far side of the giant mushroom field of vats. Luckily there was another map of the complex beside the exit. Wesley re-memorized the route from there to the desalination plant, nodded contentedly, hefted his rifle, and moved to open the door.
Judy got there first. She barked, just one time.
Wesley looked to Sarah, who was giving him an I told you so look. Wesley wasn’t so sure. One hand on his rifle, he put the other on the door latch, pushed it down, and eased the door open slowly, and just a few inches.
The hallway beyond was full of dead.
As one, they all looked up at him.
Wesley shut the door again.
Unsafe House
Hargeisa - CIA Safe House
The CIA safe house in Hargeisa hadn’t burned to the ground – but only because big sections of the heavily modified structure had been constructed to be fireproof. Now it was kind of a burnt-out shell, with intact staircases, and two more or less intact floors, above the ground-level garage. Up above, the roof had totally burned away, leaving the top level open to the sky.
Handon, after stepping over the fallen fence and a bunch of long-ago destroyed dead, took point for Alpha – pushing the heavy security door out of its frame and mounting the stairs. If these fell through, he preferred to take the fall himself. Weirdly, he was the only member of Alpha who hadn’t suffered any wounds or injuries since leaving Britain on this globe-spanning epic mission.
And not epic in a good way.
The tiny little superstitious part of Handon’s brain thought the fact that he hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch up until now made him vulnerable – that his number had to be coming up. And it might prove to be a full ticket-punching. But that wasn’t a useful thought, so he pushed it away. It didn’t matter, anyway. Only the mission did. If it was his time, he would go. And the others would carry on – with Predator, highest ranking and most senior, left in charge.
“Two from One,” he said into his radio.
“Go ahead,” Fick said, from the other side of town.
“We’re at the CIA safe house. Going in now.”
The charred and twisted stairs buckled but held, and Handon emerged onto the main floor. He knew four of his people would be following him up, with one strong-pointing the ground-floor entrance – Ali, in the event, as she’d been in the rear. As he stepped out into the hallway, he saw the joint looked to have taken every possible kind of damage: fire, bullet holes from both small arms and heavy machine guns, and blast damage – RPGs, probably.
It was utterly quiet and still, and smelled of must, mold, dry rot, and embers.
Reaching the first door off the hallway, Handon looked in and saw it was full of half-melted computers, monitors, and radios. It had clearly been the TOC and thus the room in which he had most interest. But they had to finish clearing the building, so Handon twisted at the waist and pointed a bladed hand, waving Juice in there. Pred squared up at the door, pulling security for his friend, a silent and hulking god of war.
Handon moved out again with Henno and Homer following close behind. All three moved in perfect silence, stepping heel-to-toe, heads on swivels, weapons panning smoothly to cover all directions and angles, the three operators perfectly coordinated. Tier-1 guys cleared rooms like the Swiss put together watches.
Farther down on this level they found a tiny kitchen, two bunk rooms – and what looked like a small team room, with weapons racks, gear lockers, and a modest improvised gym. Handon figured this was for the security detachment, and he’d seen enough of these to figure it had belonged to former team guys – SEALs. He put his rifle barrel through a twisted piece of metal and lifted it up. It was a pull-up bar, the kind you mounted inside a door frame.
When he came out again, he found Homer in the second bunk room. Stepping up behind him, he saw the SEAL holding up a half-burnt and twisted photograph. It wasn’t too burnt to hide the striking beauty of the woman in the photo.
“Recognize her?” Handon whispered.
Homer turned to face him. “No. But I recognize the taste in women.” He let the picture drop, then turned toward the other bunk and flipped open another small burnt object with his rifle barrel. It was a thick paperback, charred but intact. The cover showed a single chess piece, a king, and it read Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. Homer gave it a long and deep look. Finally, he said, “I knew the men who slept here. Both
from Dam Neck.”
Handon didn’t waste breath or time commenting on the coincidence. They all knew how small the special operations community was. And virtually all the CIA paramilitaries had been Green Berets, SEALs, or in some cases Delta or DEVGRU guys. But then Homer actually surprised him. He said:
“I saw one of them.”
“What? Where?”
“Back at Lemonnier. He was still on his feet.”
That didn’t surprise Handon. It was tough to knock down a Team Six guy. Whether Homer’s acquaintance had been alive or dead was neither here nor there. They still had another level to clear. Handon headed out again, knowing the others would follow. When they emerged onto the roofless top level, it was into the lengthening shadows of dusk and the end of day.
The scene up there was more dramatic – or looked like it had been at one time. Handon could do the forensics, and work out that there’d been some kind of defense of the building run from up here. The piles of brass by the four windows partially told the tale. There had also been wounded treated on the floor. But the only thing of any real interest was some big Pelican cases stacked against one mostly intact wall. Handon knew they, and their contents, would have survived the fire. Pelican cases were built to survive anything.
When he flipped a couple of them open, he found a lot of heavy metal: a couple of Javelin missiles, a TOW missile, even a light mortar – the kind that SEALs employed by the CIA never fired from rooftops anymore, not after Benghazi. This was the kind of stuff that could prove useful in a pinch, so Handon took two seconds to put it out over the radio, making sure the Marines knew it was here. He also reported that the safe house had been cleared.
He’d just squelched off when Juice came on.
“Hey, Top. Got something for you in the TOC.”
“On my way.”
* * *
“Copy that,” Fick said about the heavy weapons.
“Nice,” Brady said. “Could come in handy – a big stack of fuck-shit-up.”
Fick scowled. “We’re not here to fuck shit up,” he said, sounding cranky.
The Flood Page 12
