‘I don’t like that depending part,’ Damien said, shooting Jay a sidelong glance.
‘Hey, when was that facial recognition meant to kick in?’ Jay said. ‘One, two years?’
‘2015,’ Damien said.
‘Let’s hope they’re still working on it,’ Sophia said.
‘How much time do we have?’ Jay asked.
‘Like I said, two days. We’re jumping back through timezones so it’s still two days when we arrive.’
‘And do we have a, uh, plan for infil and exfil on these locations?’ Damien said.
‘No, but you’ll have fifteen hours to think it over on the ride there,’ DC said.
‘You also need to get as much sleep as possible,’ Sophia added.
She knew that on these cargo planes sleep was pretty much impossible, which was why she’d added a small mountain of Ambien to today’s shopping list.
‘Damien, take a GPS receiver; Jay, smartphone,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a smartphone; DC, receiver.’
DC handed her the third receiver. ‘You take a receiver and a smartphone,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’
Sophia took the receiver and reluctantly pocketed it. ‘Fine. DC, you take a satphone. Damien, the other one’s yours. You’ve stored the phone numbers, right? We won’t be putting SIM cards into the smartphones so the satphone’s your only point of contact. Keep it charged and don’t lose it.’
Jay nodded. ‘Copy that.’
‘Once you reach land, recon the base at night, get some sleep during the day. That should be easy since at that stage your sleeping patterns will be reversed. We stay low and we only move at night.’
‘Where’s your next stop?’ Jay said.
‘The fourth transmitter’s in Nevada,’ Sophia said.
‘As soon as we hit the first transmitter, the Fifth Column — Cecilia — will know you’re in town,’ DC said to Sophia. ‘There’s nothing stopping her from slapping your face on every watch list and television channel across the country. You won’t be able to get ten miles near an airport.’
‘Your faces are still safe,’ she said. ‘You can fly across, recon the base, while I take ground transportation. Might take a couple days. Even if I don’t get there, at least you can go ahead without me.’
‘That’s one fucking tight schedule,’ Nasira said.
‘Actually, it might not be necessary,’ Sophia said. ‘The transmitters — what’s their frequency band? I mean, what can they operate on?’
She tried to remember Adamicz’s notes and what Freeman had told her, but no one had mentioned the limits of the frequency.
DC cleared his throat. ‘As low as one hertz right up to 2300 megahertz.’
An idea started forming in her head. ‘How large are the capacitor banks installed at these transmitters? Are they high voltage?’
‘You’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’ DC said.
Jay looked confused. ‘What is she suggesting? Seriously, I have no idea.’
‘Turning one of the transmitters into a high-energy radio frequency weapon,’ DC said.
‘Yeah,’ Sophia said. ‘If we can discharge the capacitors quickly enough—’
‘We have ourselves one badass electromagnetic pulse,’ Nasira said.
‘But will that be powerful enough to destroy the electronics inside an entire installation?’ Jay said. ‘On the other side of the freaking country?’
‘The installation might be shielded too,’ Damien said.
‘The transmitters generate the signals in the ionosphere,’ Sophia said. ‘That’s where an EMP is most effective. And it’s difficult to shield from such a low-frequency pulse.’
‘Just like a high-altitude nuclear detonation,’ DC said.
‘Shit, with that we could knock out the whole country,’ Nasira said. ‘One team, one hit, we’re done.’
‘I’m already responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t need to add half the population of America starving to death.’
‘At this rate, that’ll probably happen anyway,’ Jay said.
‘Not if we succeed,’ Sophia said.
Nasira held up her hands. ‘Alright, fine. Small blast then. We can do that right?’
‘We’d have to use the right amount,’ DC said. ‘A miscalculation could knock out an entire city.’
‘OK,’ Sophia said. ‘New plan. And we’ll only know once we’re inside if we can do it. Team A uses the New York transmitter to knock out the Alaska transmitter; Team B uses the Miami transmitter to knock out the Nevada transmitter. Then we self-annihilate — aim the EMP above our own transmitter.’
‘That’d knock out all our electronics, including radio,’ Damien said. ‘We’ll be dark as soon as we destroy our own transmitter.’
‘Anything you want to keep, wrap it in a towel and place it in a metal box to insulate it,’ Sophia said.
‘You’ll be needing these then,’ DC said. He placed Benito’s Interceptors on the crate, along with six access cards.
‘And they do what?’ Jay said.
‘For sure. The Seraphim installations have access-card readers protecting their control centers,’ Sophia said. She removed an access card from her pocket, the one Schlosser had given her. ‘This is Schlosser’s old access card. We copy his code onto one of those two blanks there.’
‘And then what?’ Damien said.
‘Connect the Interceptor to the access-card reader,’ Sophia said. ‘All the Interceptor needs is some form of access, even if the access has been revoked. It needs a template to work from. Swipe your new Schlosser card with his code on it, the Interceptor snatches the code, escalates the security privileges and stores the code. Then you swipe one of those two replay cards and open sesame: the Interceptor deploys the code to the controller and access granted.’
‘So we’ll be needing one of those,’ Jay said, suddenly interested.
‘What are the other two cards for?’ Damien said. ‘You said you have two blanks and two replays.’
‘Disable cards,’ Sophia said. ‘Swipe those and the reader will only grant access to your new Schlosser card, no one else.’
‘We can lock ourselves in,’ Damien said.
‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ Jay said.
‘A bad thing if we can’t generate an EMP with these transmitters,’ Chickenhead said.
‘That’s why we have a Plan B,’ Sophia said. ‘We plant explosives and detonate the transmitters.’
Jay nodded and collected one of the Interceptors. ‘The old-fashioned way.’
‘You’ll need to source the explosives,’ Sophia said.
‘And you guys in Miami?’ Jay said. ‘What are you going to use to blow the transmitter if the EMP doesn’t work?’
‘We’ll have to improvise,’ Sophia said.
Damien shrugged. ‘After we blow them or fry them or whatever we do, won’t they just rebuild them?’
‘It would take them years,’ DC said. ‘By then we hope the Fifth Column will be dismantled.’
‘That’s a big hope,’ Damien said. ‘I mean, it’s just us. There’s no one else who can help?’
‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘I’m sorry. There’s no other resistance. No other good guys left. Just us.’
‘A bunch of washed-up ex-programmed damaged soldiers,’ Nasira said.
‘And what happens if we fuck this up?’ Jay said. ‘Tinfoil hats?’
‘Zombieland,’ Sophia said. ‘Population seven billion.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The goliath-sized Antonov turboprops sat dormant on the tarmac. As Damien and the rest of the team were taxied toward them in a minibus, he noticed the Antonovs’ tails were scribed with the letters WFP in blue. The aircraft’s tails and back ends were flipped upward, like the lid of a zippo lighter, and food pallets swathed in cargo nets were being loaded inside with forklifts.
Sophia’s team split up. Damien and Jay headed toward the Antonov scheduled for New York, while Sophi
a and DC veered toward the first of the two bound for Miami. Nasira and Chickenhead went for the second.
Damien and Jay’s pilot, a mountain of a man with large teeth and an American accent, introduced himself as Will.
‘Missionary, mercenary, misfit or broken heart?’ he asked, beaming at them.
‘Do I have to choose?’ Damien said.
Will cackled with laughter and directed them to the seating area in front. He didn’t ask any more questions, much to Damien’s relief. The seating area was directly behind the cockpit, as he’d anticipated. The seats were foldable and steel, with an afterthought of padding in the center and freshly installed waist seatbelts. There were no other passengers, so Damien took one side and Jay the other. Will appeared a moment later, telling them take-off was in five minutes.
Damien wanted to attempt some sleep, but the engines howled to life on both sides. Jay wiggled his eyebrows with faux delight. Damien buckled his seatbelt and popped an Ambien, watching as Jay grew noticeably tense. A parachute pack already lay between his tapping feet, on top of his new daypack. He had another parachute pack already strapped on his back. Jay wasn’t a big fan of heights.
Once the Antonov leveled out, Damien unbuckled and grabbed his own parachute pack from a large metal box. Jay thrust a pack into his hands. Damien tried to explain they didn’t need two but the engines were too loud, and Jay just ignored him anyway and stuffed the spare one into Damien’s daypack. Damien pulled it out to get to his parachute hammock, but Jay stood with his hands on his hips until he put the spare parachute pack back in.
Damien took a moment to check the contents of his daypack. He had a tin of hot and spicy spam, satphone and charger, a backup battery for the satphone, one pair of night-vision goggles, his flashgun, disposable razors, a couple garbage bags, paracord, a row of Ambien and a hundred in US bills, along with his mostly empty wallet and false New Zealand passport.
He was still wearing his own jeans, and inside one of his hip pockets he carried his usual low-profile slimline pouch containing essential items: penlight with red filter lens and spare battery, waterproof pencil, two tylenol and ibuprofen capsules, two alcohol wipes, four material bandaids, two safety pins, three rubber bands, two paper clips, a plastic nylon handcuff key, single- and double-notched lockpicks that also doubled as tension wrenches, a handcuff shim, electrical tape and some kevlar cord. For now, he kept his medium-sized multitool loose inside his pocket and kept his great-grandfather’s watch in the gap where his multitool normally went. Jay carried a similar kit, although he didn’t need a torch because of his enhanced vision; instead, he carried a Gerber knife and a single emergency cigar.
Damien also had a sachet the size of a credit card in a secret pocket sewn inside the left hip of his jeans, invisible to searches and pat-downs and reachable even if his hands were tied. Inside the sachet was his emergency kit: two-inch lockpicks, a handcuff key and shim, and a short length of kevlar cord. He knew Jay’s emergency kit was almost identical, except that the kevlar cord was replaced with a ceramic blade taped to an inactive credit card and a small diamond wire blade — everything they needed to escape from all forms of restraint and escape. Damien hoped they’d never need to use the emergency kit, but it was there for when the time came.
Damien strung his parachute hammock to the fuselage struts with paracord. There was no way he was going to sleep lying across those metal chairs. If he could manage four hours he’d be happy. The flight was seventeen hours, but since they were traveling backward in time he’d only lose five. ETA was 0300. Night arrival, which suited them.
He curled up in the hammock, parachute pack on his back and daypack on his front, wrapping the silk over himself to keep warm. He wondered what had come of Grace. Where was she now? What was she doing? Why had she just disappeared without saying goodbye to him — to anyone? Sophia didn’t even seem to care. Had Grace been working for someone else before Freeman? What was she up to?
He wondered whether she thought about him much, or at all. Did she miss him? When she’d briefed the team in the mountains, she hadn’t checked once whether he was looking at her or not. Then again, he was meant to be looking at her: she was briefing the team and he was part of the team. He growled at himself for overanalyzing.
He remembered how, during their downtime in Project GATE, they used to lie on the floor in his room. He’d stroke her hair and she’d tell him about the four dragons, the Long Dragon, the Yellow Dragon, the Black Dragon and the Pearl Dragon, a fairytale she recalled from her mother. Did Grace even care about him any more? Maybe the deprogramming had wiped all of that.
Too many questions and too few answers.
He pushed her from his mind and let the Ambien numb him to sleep.
* * *
The props screamed and the Antonov shuddered violently. Damien woke to find the entire tailgate had torn away from the rear of the aircraft. They’d taken a critical hit.
He was tossed from his hammock and fell down the center of the cargo hold, his spare parachute pack tumbling in his wake. He reached out and snagged one of the shoulder straps. The Antonov pitched dangerously to one side. He continued to slide to the rear with nothing to slow him. Beneath his feet he could see the dark ripple of water at night. Wind battered his ears, cold biting into his scalp. A high-pitched alarm pierced the air.
He slid past a pallet of rice bags, managed to grab onto the webbing. He hung there, a mere twenty feet from the gaping hole at the end. Further inside the cargo hold, he could see Jay clinging for his life to the fuselage struts on the starboard side. He was wearing his daypack but his spare parachute pack was nowhere to be seen. Damien realized in horror that Jay would need to pull his parachute pack out of his bag and pull it over both shoulders and up his legs before he could deploy it. He looked over his shoulder at the hole and saw ocean rushing below.
The Antonov lost another chunk, almost taking Jay with it. He slid helplessly down the cargo hold, toward Damien. He struck the rice pallet and rolled over it, hands grabbing at the webbing. His grip slipped and he kept moving. Damien reached over as far as he could but missed Jay’s hands. He caught hold of something. His ankle. One hand on the webbing, the other on Jay’s ankle, Damien felt his body stretching as the Antonov hurtled toward Manhattan Island.
Jay tried to pull himself up, but the speed and resistance was too much for him and he flopped back into his headfirst position. Damien’s hand squeezed around his ankle, his fingers numb, slipping. Then a sickening jolt. The Antonov wrenched and shuddered. Debris and shrapnel roared beneath them. Behind Jay, Damien saw the Statue of Liberty, decapitated. Its head tumbled and dropped onto the building below.
Jay’s ankle tore from Damien’s grasp. He watched in horror as Jay disappeared into the night. Damien didn’t know what to do. He was the only one with a parachute pack properly strapped on and ready to be deployed. Would Jay make it to his own parachute in time?
Damien let go of the webbing. He was thrown back with a heavy lurch and found himself spinning blindly through the night. He scanned the spinning landscape for Jay’s figure, but a dark figure falling into darkness was hard to spot with un-enhanced sight. The Antonov burned above, a ferocious ember.
He hit something heavy, dark. Limbs entangled, a fingernail cutting below one eye. His face burned hot and the air was knocked from his lungs.
Jay.
His body rolled before Damien, unstable. Damien angled down, struggling to make out Jay’s shape in the darkness. He collided with him again, wrapped his arms around him and didn’t let go. He hooked his legs around Jay’s, elbows under his armpits. They rolled through the air at dizzying speed.
With Jay locked in, Damien stretched his arms and extended his locked legs as far as possible. Their sickening spiral started to slow, then he and Jay leveled out. Jay had wrapped his arms over Damien’s legs so tight he was cutting off the blood circulation. Damien pulled his main line. There was a rumble behind him as his chute unfurled. It flapped in the frozen
wind and almost wrenched him and Jay apart with a sudden jerk.
Damien checked his canopy. He could hardly make out the shape and color in the darkness but it looked good. He reached for the steering toggles and peered over Jay’s head. Before them, downtown New York was an infinite strip of sharp, gleaming spires and monoliths. Damien spotted the shredded Antonov diving low into a collision course with Battery Park.
The Antonov smashed into the coastline, its cigar-shaped body hurtling through the park, flames kicking across its path. The noise was resounding. Damien steered to one side, trying to avoid the black smoke that poured in its wake. Below his feet, the park rushed to meet him. Jay released himself, tumbling into the grass below. Damien hit the ground, rolled, pulled at his canopy. He had come to a halt but his mind was still spinning inside. He rolled to one side so his daypack wasn’t digging into his back. His arms and legs screamed in pain but they didn’t seem broken. He wrenched his canopy off, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jay could taste the ocean. He rolled over and blinding flashes of pain twisted up his spine and shoulders. He swallowed blood and blinked at light shining above him. At first he thought it was an angel who had taken pity on his agnosticism, but as his vision cleared he realized it was a street lamp. His fists closed over short, damp grass. He was in a park. He could hear a dog barking and the distant wail of sirens.
He sat upright, or tried to. He was wearing his daypack with a parachute pack inside, not yet deployed. Nasira had given him her MP7, so that was in there too, hopefully still in one piece. He noticed a crop of flames in the distance. They were soft at first, then became crisp and jagged — just as the pain became jagged. He traced the source and found a laceration across his left arm. He tested the range of motion in his limbs, slowly at first. Nothing broken or fractured, but his neck throbbed and his upper back felt like it was on fire.
A hundred feet to the left and he would’ve been on fire.
He scanned the grass around him. Damien was nowhere to be seen. In the distance, the Statue of Liberty stood eerily without her head. He stumbled toward the burning Antonov, searching for Damien’s familiar shape, but found no one. The torn shell of the turboprop had shrieked through the park, knocking over lampposts and trees and churning the earth until it had come to rest. Food pallets littered the grass around him. The police sirens were growing louder. How long had he been lying here?
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