On the hill, Queen, Rook and Bishop sat silently, eating small vacuum-packed energy foods and drinking small sips of water from Camelbak water reservoirs hidden under their ghillie suits, the camouflage-painted drinking tubes secured to their shoulders, so a simple tilt of the head would allow them to grip the bite valves with their mouths. Despite the brief lapse in protocol, the three stayed silent for most of the hour, lost in their own thoughts. When the first hour had nearly elapsed, a shrill voice shattered the silence.
“Ma! Eolleun il-eona!” The voice was high-pitched and screechy. Queen, Rook and Bishop turned to look behind them on the hill and saw a small squad of five North Korean soldiers, each armed with a fully automatic North Korean produced Type-58 version of an AK-47 rifle. Most of those weapons were pointed at the team, although some shook, the hands holding them unsteady. The men looked no more than eighteen years old, but it was difficult for Queen to tell their ages.
The man that had spoken, yelled again. “Eolleun il-eona!”
“Party’s over,” Rook said, slowly raising his hands above his head.
Knight’s voice came over their earpieces. “He said ‘Stop’ and ‘Get on your feet.’ He sounds upset. I’d do what he says.” Knight was of South Korean ancestry. He was fluent in the South Korean language, and it was similar in some respects to the language here, even though he had remarked that the North Koreans had challenging accents.
Queen slowly stood and looked at the five young terrified soldiers. “Wonderful,” she said.
The man who had ordered them to stand began to shake violently with fear, the barrel of his rifle wavering and swerving, sweat running down his forehead. Then his rifle went off, sending a small burst of bullets at Queen.
FOUR
Endgame HQ, New Hampshire
Deep Blue stood up from his computer chair and stretched his lower back, twisting side to side, then he leaned forward and touched his toes. He took pride in the fact that he was probably the only former US President who could touch his toes. He was young for an ex-president, and he had stayed in good shape through those grueling years. Then he had been forced to play a more active role in the field with Chess Team, reminding him that while he was exceedingly fit, he was still getting on in years. Injuries that would have been mild during his days as an Army Ranger took far longer to heal now. After the last major catastrophe the previous year, where searing spheres of energy had devastated several global population centers, he decided to officially retire himself from the field.
Besides, people in DC were starting to ask him as Tom Duncan, former US President, if he would undertake some humanitarian missions. He was genuinely interested in some, but he had needed to turn them all down.. As far as the world knew, he was simply retired and reclusive. Following the lead started by Jimmy Carter, and later by Richard Nixon in 1985, he was hardly the first former President to refuse secret service protection post-presidency. His stock excuse was that he was enjoying his time fishing and resting after the stress of four years in the White House and several years before that in the capitol.
In truth, his work with Endgame took up all his time. He had formed the organization to combat extreme forms of terrorism, but it had ended up becoming a full-scale assault force for dealing with viral outbreaks, genocidal madmen, marauding cryptids, dimensional incursions and rampaging rock creatures.
Now, just finding time to exercise was a challenge. With the bulk of Chess Team in North Korea, King and Asya frequently coming and going while looking for their abducted parents, keeping his global eye on possible hotspots around the world and assisting and advising with some of the reconstruction after the energy-portal fiasco the previous year, Tom Duncan was exhausted.
It was nearly 10:30 at night, but with the time difference in Korea, Duncan knew he would be awake for several more hours. He looked around the empty computer room. Lewis Aleman, his right-hand man and computer guru, had turned in, and the other staff members had gone home or to their on-station quarters to get some sleep. With little happening for Chess Team in Asia, and with King and Asya at the base, the other support members really weren’t needed to keep tabs on things overnight. Plus, Duncan enjoyed working alone in the electronic womb of the command center.
The central computer room was kitted out with all the latest equipment he could get his hands on using the deep-black Pentagon budgets he had procured for the team before officially leaving office. Large flat-screen monitors lit up the walls, allowing him to keep an eye on the world from a multitude of satellites. He used surveillance cameras too numerous to count and too easily hacked. He even used video streams from field operatives equipped with hidden video cameras on their persons—both those they knew about and those they did not. In the intelligence game of the 21st century, it was all about the cameras.
Besides the large video screens, the room was filled with several workstations and ergonomic chairs. Air-conditioning systems even pumped in a slight scent of jasmine. In the corners of the room were several oxygenating peace lilies and philodendrons, whose vines stretched up to and across the ceiling. Both plants could exist off the artificial lighting in the room, with occasional bursts from solar simulator lamps. They helped to reduce the stress in the room visually, but they also pumped plenty of clean air into the space as well.
Duncan dropped down to the carpeted floor and performed twenty pushups. On the last repetition, he heard the door open.
“Seventy-eight…” he said.
When he looked up, Jack Sigler, callsign: King, was standing in the door with a goofy smile on his face.
“Yeah, right,” King said.
“Even we desk jockeys have to stay in shape, Jack.”
“You are the most in-shape desk jockey I’ve ever seen,” King said.
Duncan stood and walked over to the door. “What’s up?”
“Some good news for a change, Tom,” King rarely used Deep Blue’s first name, although Duncan had, on many occasions, encouraged him to do so, especially when they were alone. Duncan smiled expectantly. He had an idea what this might be.
“Sara and I are engaged,” King said, his grin growing to epic proportions.
Duncan beamed, then hugged King. “Congratulations! That’s fantastic! Does Fiona know yet?”
Fiona, King’s foster daughter, was attending a boarding school nearby at Brewster Academy, where she stayed along with three rotating Endgame bodyguards.
“No, it just happened an hour ago,” King said.
“You popped the question here at HQ? How romantic, Jack.” Duncan raised a disapproving eyebrow.
“I didn’t want to wait. Who knows when Asya and I will have to head out again on another false lead.” King frowned.
Duncan placed his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder. He knew that King was worried for the safety of his missing parents. The Siglers—no, the Machtchenkos, Duncan reminded himself. Their true name had been revealed once King had learned his parents were former Russian spies. They had been missing for several months now. Endgame assumed that Alexander Diotrephes, their former ally and now a possible enemy, held King’s parents. But they had found no proof, and had seen no sign of Peter and Lynn Machtchenko. Nor had they been able to find Alexander, a man better known as the historical Hercules, who, although immortal, was no bastard child of Zeus. For months, King and his sister Asya had been following every lead, but they kept coming up empty.
“You’ll find them. I know you will,” Duncan said. Then, trying to bring the conversation back to the upbeat, he asked, “So when is the happy date?”
King looked up and grinned again.
“Actually, we—”
“I have hit ‘Herculean Society’ Jackpot!” Asya interrupted. She burst into the room, a living projectile fired from the hallway beyond. She was small and lithe, with long dark hair. Stunning to look at, but often deadly serious. She moved to a computer station and brought up an e-mail account.
Initially given the callsign: Hammer, by Queen, a
s both a nod to the woman’s Soviet heritage and standing her own in a knock-down drag-out fight with Queen when the women first met in Norway, Asya’s callsign was later changed by Deep Blue to a permanent Pawn status. Far from an insulting callsign, the designation was used for temporary team members in the field, but in this instance, it was an honor for Asya—a woman with only basic Russian infantry training—to be included as a long-term member of Chess Team, which was comprised of former Delta soldiers. Asya had made no complaints about the new callsign.
Now the small woman brought up a digital image of a building. “It is here,” she said.
“What are we looking at?” Deep Blue asked. The photo showed the front of a European building with Roman style columns. A statue stood in front. In the foreground was a plaza full of umbrella-covered tables. It could have been any of a number of similar plazas all over Europe, where tourists and locals alike drank beer, ate pizza and ogled passing strangers.
King leaned closer to the image, and brushed his hand through his shaggy dark hair. “Looks like a library.”
Asya turned to the men. “It is. National Library of Malta, in Valletta.”
The woman turned back to the computer and brought up a second digital image. This one showed a drawing of the building, before the installation of the statue in front of it.
“1812. The library was moved to this building from a different location. Notice the circular arch in front of the entrance.”
Both men had. A huge stone circular arch had been erected before the columns, making the two inner columns on either side of the door form the stylized letter H of the Herculean Society, a group of secretive people dedicated to helping Alexander Diotrephes hide certain historical truths and artifacts. King and Pawn had been searching for Society facilities for months, often finding empty office spaces, and in two instances discovering just recently vacated premises. They seemed to always be two steps behind, in their search for Alexander.
Pawn turned to the men and smiled widely. On the normally dour woman’s face, the smile held a sinister look. “The arch was taken down after just two years. This was only image I could find with it. Queen Victoria statue was placed in the exact same location in 1891, covering up any evidence that the arch had ever even been there. If the Society people are not in the library…” She let the thought hang in the air.
“They might be under it,” King finished for her. “Let’s go.” King turned and strode out of the room. Deep Blue watched him go. As Pawn neared the door, following her brother, he called out to her.
“Asya.”
The woman turned.
“Take care of him. And get him to tell you the good news.”
The woman nodded, then hurried after King. Duncan could hear her Russian-accented voice in the hallway as she asked, “What is good news? Blue says you have some.”
Duncan smiled. He hoped the lead in Malta would finally go somewhere. Then he turned back to the ergo chair he liked best, a swiveling thing that resembled a dental patient chair, with a split keyboard on either side, touch screen controllers that swung in front of the user and comfortable memory foam seating from head to toe.
He activated his radio for the Chess Team members in North Korea and immediately heard rapid gunfire. His good mood was crushed as his heart began to race.
FIVE
North Korea
“You little shit!”
Queen looked down at her left hip and saw her blood starting to soak through the artificial fabric of the ghillie suit. She looked back up incredulously at the shaking North Korean soldier. “You fucking shot me.”
The wound was shallow—just a nick for Queen, who had taken far worse injuries, but the fact that the soldier had unintentionally loosed six rounds in her direction, made her furious. Most of the bullets had gone into the soil around her, but the one had creased her hip.
The soldiers were shouting at each other now in a heated argument, and Queen quickly determined that no one was in charge. She could probably kill all five with only her hands before they got off another shot, but amateurs were often unpredictable. It made them dangerous. So she hesitated. Plus, she knew Rook had something special in store for them.
Instead of moving toward the men, she took a step backward.
The men ceased arguing and they all trained their weapons more carefully at her. Behind her, she could hear Bishop breathing slowly and regularly.
“Geulaeseo?” she asked in Korean, based on Knight’s radio advice. So? What now?
“Son deul-eo!” the soldier that shot her screamed.
“Hands up,” Knight translated in her ear.
Queen squinted at the man.
“Quee-eeen,” Rook implored her from behind.
“SON DEUL-EO!”
Queen spat on the ground and stared at the man.
“Bil-eo meog-eul!” the man shouted and stepped forward. As he did so, his ankle pushed against a cleverly concealed tripwire Rook had placed, attached to a modified trigger device. The ground in front of the soldier exploded upward with an ear-shattering boom, the C4 explosive in the M18A1 Claymore mine spraying one-eighth inch diameter steel balls directionally through all five North Korean soldiers, effectively turning the young men into little more than perforated meat bags. The five soldiers were dead as their shattered remains collapsed on the grassy hillside with wet thumps. Queen and the others, on the far side of the device, were blown backward by the blast’s pressure wave. They were spared from the hail of projectiles because they launched in just one direction—toward the enemy.
“Queen, what’s going on?” Deep Blue’s voice came over the radio.
“Communication difficulties. These guys can’t read English.” Queen stood and brushed dirt off her face.
“Explain,” Deep Blue’s voice came back, frustrated.
“Three little words…” Queen began.
Rook chuckled, thinking of the words stamped on the front casing of the Claymore. “Front toward enemy.”
“Target confirmed,” Knight’s voice came over the radio.
“You have visual?” Deep Blue asked, before Queen could do the same.
“Affirmative,” Knight said. “I’m bugging out while everyone is distracted by the blast and heading for you guys.”
Queen turned to Bishop. “Light it up.”
Bishop stepped over to the fourth bush on the hill. A camouflage net, similar to his own ghillie suit, covered the ground, forming the artificial bush. He pulled it back, revealing an AGS-40 Balkan automatic grenade launcher. For this mission, the team had been equipped with primarily Russian armaments, with the exception of Rook’s mines. Each member of the team had SR-3 Vikhr machine guns, but Bishop had decided to bring a little something extra. The Balkan was a tripod-mounted beast that looked like a forward slung cannon, with a giant green side drum that held a chain of caseless 40 mm grenades. He opened fire now on the facility down in the valley. The launcher had a maximum effective range of over 8000 feet, and he was well within that distance.
“Better run, Knight,” Bishop said calmly. With each pull of the trigger, another grenade was fired down the valley, creating a deep plunk noise. The weapon had a firing rate of 400 rounds a minute, but Bishop was shooting leisurely, targeting the guard towers first, then the center of the concrete building. Plumes of orange flame and thick black smoke erupted from the chemical weapons factory, as grenade after grenade exploded in the distance. Soon it was impossible to even see the former facility through all the smoke.
When they heard weapons fire down the slope in front of them, Rook sprayed down the hill with his Vikhr. The few soldiers down the slope ran in all directions without focus, as soon as they realized they were under fire. Then Bishop angled the Balkan down the hill at them, and sent off a few rounds for good measure. He watched as four of the ill-trained soldiers went airborne, grenades detonating all around them, ending lives in an eruption of fire and soil.
“I almost feel sorry for them,” Bishop said.
Queen stepped up next to him, firing down the hill with single shots, eliminating anything that moved. “Fuck ‘em. Play with chemical weapons, you get burned.”
Rook stopped firing, sensing the battle was pretty much done. They would need to hustle a few miles to the south and get to the sea, before reinforcements were called to the area. “I think their real mistake was shooting at you. Must be one of the quickest ways to get dead.”
“Aww, hon, you know how to flatter a girl,” Queen said with a grin.
“You know it,” Rook said and turned to help Bishop pack up the Balkan and their supplies.
“Knight, where are you?” Queen asked.
“I’m already on the other side of you guys. I’ll try to provide cover as you make for the boat.”
“Copy that. We’re moving.” With that, Queen turned and began to run for the shore. Rook hefted a supply pack and followed her. Bishop collapsed the tripod, and lifted the still warm barrel of the Balkan over his shoulder, then followed them at a jog.
“Queen, the jet will be providing your distraction in twenty minutes. You better hustle.” Deep Blue was referring to a stolen Chinese jet they had acquired that would be firing rockets five miles east of them. With the chemical weapons facility so close to the Chinese border, the plan had always been to implicate the Chinese in the attack, and to focus the North Korean forces toward the border, while the team slipped out to sea on a Zodiac inflatable, to rendezvous with their submarine they’d dubbed the Kraken. Once safely out in international waters, the sub would surface and the team would be collected with a vertical take off and landing (VTOL) troop transport, the team had rechristened Crescent II. The plane would take them back to New Hampshire at supersonic speeds, while the submarine would move on to the next hotspot.
Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller Page 3
