He checked his bearing. He was straying slightly to port so he adjusted and checked again. He was on bearing now.
He continued to breathe only through his mouth. He focused on his legs and kept his hands on the board, using it as a barrier in case he smacked into rocks or something — which he knew wouldn’t happen unless he strayed off course. Once he reached shallower waters his visibility should improve, hopefully to the point where he could actually make out the inlet and swim into it.
He was starting to regret joining up with Sophia. Did he really want to be part of this? Here he was, swimming through darkness toward a new country with no idea of what to expect. He’d scraped through their last operation, Desecheo Island, but what if this time he wasn’t so lucky?
He pushed the thoughts from his head and focused on his legs again. The rebreather tanks added a bit of extra weight, but he was grateful he wasn’t lugging a rucksack. The darkness hadn’t changed. It was still inky and impenetrable. Damien started to worry if he was even going in the right direction. He checked his bearing. He was still right on mark. His compass was accurate and there was no magnetic interference. His G-Shock told him he’d only been swimming for seven minutes. He estimated he was halfway there.
He continued swimming and his breathing quickened. A sudden sense of panic overtook him. He breathed in sharply, fogging his diving mask. He looked down at his navigation board and couldn’t make out his bearing properly. His legs stopped kicking and he had the feeling he was sinking suddenly. It was impossible to tell in the darkness and that scared him even more.
His navigation board faded to black. He was losing consciousness.
During the combat-diving module in Project GATE, the test subjects had to swim with fins through crashing surf at night, half a mile out to a designated buoy and half a mile back. On the way back, Damien had felt the same panic shiver through him. And then darkness. When he’d opened his eyes again, another test subject, Grace, was holding him on the surface. She must have seen him go under. She’d slapped him and whispered in his ear: ‘Damien.’
Damien opened his eyes. Water lapped at his ears. The coast was nearby, marked by tiny beads of light. He turned his head to Grace but he wasn’t in the combat-diving module, he was in the South China Sea near the coast of Candon City. Jay was above him, holding him, his diving mask still on.
Panic surged again and Damien started kicking his fins. He reached down and found his navigation board dangling at his side. The panic trickled away and he tried to calm himself with deep square breaths, taking his heart rate down. He gave Jay a thumbs up and Jay slowly released him.
He watched Jay go under. He did the same a moment later, not wanting to get kicked by Jay’s fins again. Jay disappeared. Damien kept below the surface, letting himself sink until he hit thirty feet and then kicking off again, slowly and carefully. He adjusted his heading. From what he’d seen on the surface, they were only a few minutes from shore. He kept calm and kicked on into the darkness.
A moment later, he was sure the water had turned a shade lighter. The further he progressed the lighter it got. Soon he could see Jay’s feet ahead, kicking rhythmically. Damien was relieved.
He checked his bearing again and noticed as Jay suddenly changed course, veering starboard and aiming for the coast inside the inlet. Damien continued on for a moment before doing the same. He resisted the urge to break the surface and check their surroundings, instead swimming right to the shoreline.
Jay, the rucksack and air tank on his back, moved into a crawl through the water, then a walk. Damien felt the sand rub his gloves. He crawled along the sand, navigation board lifted high so it wouldn’t snag. He broke the surface and saw Jay moving quickly across the beach and into the darkness ahead.
With little light during his swim to spoil his night vision, he could clearly make out the shapes of the palm trees, and the human shape of DC hunkered on the fringe of vegetation. Jay was moving toward him, so Damien followed, glad to finally release his bite on his mouthpiece. His jaws ached. When he pulled his mask off, he sucked oxygen in through his nose.
Once he reached DC, he switched off the rebreather valve and set about quietly removing the tanks. DC was already out of his camo wetsuit and in his civilian clothes. Damien caught the glint of a pistol tucked into the front of his jeans.
The next shape to break the water was Sophia and Benito together. Damien was quietly impressed by how Benito had managed given that he had no training whatsoever. Damien had training and he’d barely made it.
He turned to Jay. ‘Thanks.’
Jay nodded and almost stumbled where he stood. ‘No problem.’
Once the entire team was out of the water, they moved deeper into the forest and covered their rebreathers and rucksacks with palm fronds and leaves. DC showed them where the rations were in one of the rucksacks, then checked his watch under the moonlight and told them he was going to walk into town to make contact with the Akhana base.
‘How are you going to do that?’ Sophia said.
‘Phone call,’ DC said. ‘Coded, of course.’
‘You’ll need money for that, won’t you?’
DC shrugged. ‘I’ll take care of that.’
‘I’m the best pickpocket in the group,’ she said. ‘I’m coming with you.’
DC rolled his eyes but he didn’t protest.
‘Hey,’ Nasira said to Sophia. ‘Be careful.’
With silent steps, Sophia and DC moved southwest toward the specks of light. It wasn’t long before Damien couldn’t hear or see them at all. He shed his wetsuit and used it as a makeshift pillow. He was too wired to sleep, but he could already hear Jay snoring softly on a rock. He closed his eyes and, ignoring Jay, listened to water splash the shoreline and motorbike traffic idle in the distance.
Chapter Fourteen
Sophia and DC emerged onto Canton City’s main night strip. It was almost midnight but the street was alive with eateries and bars, locals moving in and out of venues, crisscrossing the street among motorbikes and pedicabs. Pairs of eyes fixed onto Sophia. Men smiled at her. Whichever way they cut it, they’d look out of place, so the best thing to do was play the tourist card.
DC stepped suddenly into a narrow eatery on their left. Sophia went in after him. A group of four girls were eating at the table in front, tiny hands picking at grilled tiger shrimps. They stared at DC. His skin color was probably a rare sight here. Then again, so was hers.
‘Don’t you need some cash?’ Sophia whispered to DC. ‘That’s why I’m here, remember.’
‘You’re here because you don’t completely trust me,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need cash.’
He approached the counter. Behind it, a woman in a faded floral dress perched on a stool.
‘Excuse me,’ DC said, ‘can I use your telephone?’
The woman looked suspicious at first, then grinned and leapt off her stool. Enthusiastically, she steered him out a side door, to a telephone in an alcove. Sophia followed awkwardly. DC waited until the woman had retreated back to her store, then punched in some numbers.
‘Freeman’s at this base, isn’t he?’ Sophia said, pressing two fingers down on the telephone hook. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You’re both our most valuable assets,’ DC said. ‘And, for the Fifth Column, the most lucrative. The plan was to keep you separate.’
‘Well, that obviously didn’t work out. So what’s the plan now?’
‘The only plan we have left. Find a place where people won’t try to kill us.’ He shrugged. ‘Or you, specifically.’
He lifted her hand from the telephone hook and lowered it carefully to her side, then punched in the numbers again.
‘That might be a tough one,’ Sophia said.
‘Yeah, you are popular,’ he said.
She could hear the phone ringing in his ear. ‘Is that a hint of jealousy I detect?’
‘No, just the requisite amount of sarca—’ His expression hardened as someone answered the
call. ‘Hello. This is DC. We need a ride.’
* * *
The sun was starting to set when Sophia stepped out of the jeep. It was a few degrees cooler in the mountains and the air wasn’t as thick, but still warm enough that she shed her jacket.
Nasira, Benito and DC formed up behind her. From the second jeep, Damien, Jay, Chickenhead and Big Dog disembarked. Before them, the mountain town split between two streets. The right street was cobblestoned. It twisted up the mountain around a cluster of brick and wooden buildings. The left street was asphalt and descended smoothly, flanked all the way down by two- and three-story buildings, balconies webbed with clotheslines. The streets were quiet. Parked 4WDs, jeeps and vans dotted both sides. Kids played and dogs basked in the sun, reluctantly moving off the road when a 4WD or trail bike blasted past.
‘Not bad,’ Jay said.
‘It’s nice,’ Benito said. ‘Peaceful.’
Waiting under the awning of what looked like a post office or convenience store was Owen Freeman. He leaned against the wall, lit a cigarette and waved them over. An uneasiness Sophia had carried since New York began to melt away.
Freeman was the leader of the Akhana, but during his time in the Fifth Column he had also headed up a team of scientists secretly responsible for discovering the psychopathic genes in humans. Freeman understood psychopaths and their role in the world; the kind of people who operated the Fifth Column. People who, for thousands upon thousands of years, had saturated humankind in its own blood in order to keep kings on their thrones, directors behind their desks and the Fifth Column at the world’s helm. The more humans fought each other, the more these psychopaths could rest easy knowing their true nature would never be suspected and their true activities never exposed. It was the reason Freeman set up the Akhana, an international resistance that kept eyes on the Fifth Column, subverting and sabotaging them at every possible turn.
Freeman had worked for the Fifth Column as an assistant to their most revered psychiatrists. Their exploration of the human mind was later coupled with Adamicz’s programming techniques — the same techniques used to program Sophia in Project GATE. As a young man, Freeman had tried to anonymously disseminate their findings but was blocked at every turn. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’d gone underground, leaving the Fifth Column and taking a handful of like-minded colleagues with him.
The Fifth Column recruited the best and brightest, and Freeman recruited from them for the Akhana, taking on their disillusioned scientists and soldiers, many grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder. And the more he recruited, the more he was able to pry open the Fifth Column’s weaknesses. Naturally, this placed him on the most-wanted terrorist list for the Fifth Column. Although his identity hadn’t been publicly revealed, there was no doubting that the Fifth Column wanted desperately to siphon his mind of everything he knew and then separate his head from his shoulders with a dull blade.
Sophia’s driver went to grab her backpack, but she beat him to it, slipping it over her shoulders. It was good to be on land, and with such fresh air too. Freeman looked just as she remembered: weathered, unreadable, always calm. Only now his arms and face were golden from the equatorial sun.
With the others in tow, Sophia walked straight toward him and shook his offered hand.
‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,’ he said.
‘Debatable,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here. DC never said as much.’
He chuckled, handed Nasira a cigarette. ‘Cheap here, dollar a pack.’ He turned back to Sophia. ‘You didn’t think I’d still be in the States, did you?’
‘No, but I don’t know where the other Shadow Akhana bases are.’
‘That’s by design,’ Freeman said. ‘We keep our locations secret, even from each other. Few know all the locations. DC is one of those few.’
‘Like a terrorist cell,’ Jay said.
Freeman drew on his cigarette. ‘Like the Fifth Column.’
‘What is this place?’ Sophia asked.
‘It isn’t a forward operating base as such,’ Freeman said. ‘More an auxiliary base. We hide exiles here. We don’t have much.’ He gestured down the asphalt road. ‘All the modern conveniences; we’re linked up to the darknet so we have comms. It’s a mix of local farmers and Akhana personnel. Everyone gets along, mostly. We look after each other. No one else really knows this place exists. But if anyone does visit, we just look like tourists or expats. We even have a lodge for tourists, which is where I intend to place you and your … new recruits.’
Big Dog shouldered his way to the front and extended one hand. ‘Honor to meet you, sir. I’m … uh, Big Dog.’
Freeman shook his hand. ‘Owen will do.’ He shook hands with Chickenhead, who also introduced himself. ‘You stole these guys from Australia?’
‘They volunteered,’ Sophia said. ‘We took the sub.’
‘We stole the sub,’ DC corrected her.
Freeman gave a big toothy grin. ‘I thought it would’ve fallen back into the hands of the Fifth Column. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.’
‘That don’t sound good,’ Nasira said.
Freeman’s grin dissolved. ‘I’ll fill you in after we sort out your quarters.’
* * *
The restaurant’s tables had been pushed to the sides to make room for everyone. The place reminded Sophia of a log cabin; it even had an open fire crackling at one end. Sophia’s team crowded in for the briefing: Nasira, Benito, Damien, Jay, DC, Chickenhead and Big Dog. A few local Akhana members were present too.
‘It’s good to see some familiar faces,’ Freeman said, ‘and some new faces too.’ He turned to introduce an elderly woman next to him. ‘This is Sara. She keeps this place running better than I ever could.’
Sara nodded, then blushed. She had a wide nose and fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She wore a colorful scarf wrapped over her head, dotted crimson and emerald. She also wore a baby blue suit jacket over a pink knitted top, a string of bright red beads around her neck, and a striped blue, green and crimson skirt that competed with her scarf.
‘Welcome to my town,’ she said. She met Sophia’s gaze. ‘We hear a lot about you.’
‘That can’t be good,’ Sophia said.
Sara smiled. ‘Sit. Please, sit.’
Sophia sat at the nearest table, beside Nasira.
‘Is everyone happy with their bedding?’ Sara asked.
The team murmured their appreciation. The beds were basic but more than what they needed.
The light from the fire flickered over Freeman and Sara, etching deep into the lines on their faces. Their smiles vanished.
Freeman ran his finger along the edge of a glass ashtray. ‘I know this is meant to be my briefing, but I have to ask. What happened in Melbourne?’
‘Dolph happened, that’s what,’ Sophia said. She felt residual anger return. ‘He never trusted me. He had this ridiculous plan to use Anonymous to hack the Fifth Column.’
‘Anonymous?’ Sara asked.
‘A loosely associated group of hacktivists from around the world,’ Freeman explained. ‘Hacktivists use computers, hacking, to protest for political reasons.’
‘He wanted to hit the Fifth Column in their financial pipelines,’ Sophia said.
‘It’s good idea?’ Sara said.
‘That depends,’ Sophia said.
‘Anonymous usually react against anyone who tries to clamp down on free speech and human rights on the internet,’ DC said.
‘Last year they supported Occupy Wall Street,’ Nasira added.
‘Ah,’ Sara said. ‘A digital Robin Hood.’
‘I tried to explain to Dolph that turning Anonymous into his personal attack dogs wouldn’t end well,’ Sophia said. ‘They don’t like being manipulated toward anyone’s agenda. But he thought everything I said was an effort to undermine him. He thought I wanted to replace him.’
‘That’s because he’s an incompetent motherfucker,’ Nasira said.
Freeman nodded. ‘He deserved what he got.’
Sophia’s anger faded. ‘What do you mean?’
The lines in Freeman’s face seemed to run deeper still. ‘The Melbourne base was compromised. We suspect he leaked something, even if by accident.’ He buried his face in large, rough hands. ‘The more we piece together about what occurred there, the more I realize that he never should have been allowed to run one of our bases.’ He pulled his hands away. ‘That’s our first Shadow Akhana base gone. We can’t afford to lose another.’
‘And everyone inside?’ Sophia asked.
Freeman reached for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. ‘Gone. Blue Berets raided the place. It’s toast. No survivors.’
Sophia’s mouth hung open, her lips dry. She thought of everyone she knew there. She thought of poor Elizabeth, who probably couldn’t even remember her. She would be dead now.
‘It’s my fault,’ she said.
‘No,’ DC said firmly. ‘It’s not.’
‘He’s right.’ Freeman waved his unlit cigarette. ‘You’re our Phoenix, Sophia. You rose from your own ashes.’
‘Two bases,’ Sophia said. ‘Shadow or not. Two bases that have been wiped out because of me.’
‘We had to evacuate, plain and simple,’ Freeman said. ‘And it’s not your fault that Dolph was an egotistical dick.’
‘I seem to bring out the best in people,’ Sophia said.
Freeman smiled as he lit his cigarette. ‘I set up most of the Shadow Akhana bases in Asia. It took a long time but it was worth it. Our research shows there’s a comparatively low number of psychopaths in Asian countries. The UK, Australia, ten, fifteen percent are psychopaths. Here in the Philippines, it’s more like one or two percent. Only good thing I ever did.’
‘Sir, you’ve done much more than that,’ DC said.
Sophia clasped her hands on the table. ‘So you’ve been here the whole time? The founder of the Akhana in exile.’
Freeman laughed. ‘The entire Akhana is in exile now. But yeah, I’ve been here, keeping an eye on the Fifth Column.’
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