The burly man in the front of the group, Stan Tremblay, callsign: Rook, was their heavy weapons and ordinance specialist. He had armed the team for this mission with a special weapon that operated like an underwater spear gun, but what it fired were short javelins with radio-controlled explosive rings around the shafts. They could be fired from a distance, arcing into the ground, and then detonated later from a safe distance. In addition to a rifle and a spear gun, he also lugged an M240B machine gun.
Behind Rook in their line-up, as they penetrated the storm, was a woman, callsign: Pawn. Anna Beck had formerly been the team’s security specialist, when they were a part of a larger organization. Now she functioned as a spotter for the team’s one-eyed, Korean-American sniper, Knight. She also held her own in a fight either with her FN SCAR or in hand-to-hand combat.
Shin Dae-jung, callsign: Knight, moved up beside Beck, and kept pace with her. After an injury in Africa had taken his eye, he’d learned several tricks to deal with the loss of depth perception, and he had even briefly used an artificial, computerized implant, but the thing had given him sizzling migraines. While the implant was still there, it was turned off. He was using old-school techniques until the pain-causing kinks were worked out. Pawn was always by his side, to prevent his limited vision from causing him problems. She spotted for him when he was sniping, covered his back during incursions and held his hand in their down time, as his lover and friend.
A few paces behind them, another small figure trudged through the howling snow and ice. At just over 5’6”, Bishop was the second of three women on the six-person team. Asya Machtcenko, a former Russian soldier, and King’s sister, hauled spare drums of ammunition for the M240B Rook carried. The huge weapon was also covered in plastic, although the vents on its barrel assembly were covered with a thinner layer, which could be quickly punctured with a pin, should the shooting need to start. The weapon needed to vent its heat. Bishop and Rook would take turns using it, if there was a need.
“It had to be during a Zud,” she said.
“A what?” Queen, the final member of the team, asked. Zelda Baker was the team’s medic, and also its most deadly hand-to-hand combatant. She stalked through the storm just behind Bishop, carrying yet another FN SCAR rifle, and several more ammunition canisters for the big gun.
Before Bishop could answer, the team’s handler, a man named Lewis Aleman, who communicated remotely with them from a hotel room in Beijing, replied, “She means the winter. It’s a Mongolian term for a particularly bad one. Entire herds of livestock can perish when these Siberian anti-cyclone storms keep temperatures plunging to forty below.” Aleman, callsign: Deep Blue, orchestrated matters from afar, providing whatever satellite intel he could for the team’s missions, although their resources were not what they used to be.
“This gorilla suit is keeping me plenty comfortable,” Rook said.
“Pretty sure she meant the lack of visibility, numbskull,” Queen retorted.
“It’s going to be hard enough to find this terrorist base,” King spoke up, “with them being dug in underground somewhere.”
“Sorry I couldn’t get you better intel, guys,” Deep Blue’s disembodied voice replied. “All we know is the Bright Tomorrow cell is operating out of the area. Military sat coverage didn’t show anything, so they must be concealing heat signatures and working out of a tunnel system or a cave or something.”
“We’ll find them,” King said, determination filling his voice and lending the others hope.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Rook said. “I think my Aunt Mabel’s half-blind dog could find them.”
The others reached Rook’s position, where he had stopped in his tracks. As they looked up, another hard gust of wind blasted into them from the north, pushing away a wall of grit and white, extending their view to over a hundred yards and revealing what appeared to be a huge castle.
2
“Can you believe this, Blue?”
“I can’t see it, King,” Aleman reminded him. While Aleman was used to having a video feed, on this mission he did not. The others quickly described the structure to him.
“Okay, you’re right. I don’t believe it. There was nothing on sat scans. Nothing on Google Earth or half-a-dozen geographic aerial photos.”
As Aleman spoke, the others melted back into the edge of the storm cloud behind them, until the building was no longer visible, and they were concealed from any prying eyes on the tops of the battlements, the style of which reminded King of the Great Wall of China. The sloped walls, constructed from rammed-earth, brick and stone, had crenellated tops, all supporting four corner watchtowers. He had glimpsed it only for a moment before moving back into the cover of the raging storm, but that was enough for him to question his location, since the nearest segments of the Great Wall should have been almost 400 miles to the southwest.
“Are we at the right coordinates, Blue?” King asked.
“That’s confirmed. My best guess would be that the Mongolians built it to be modeled after the guard tower sections along the Great Wall, which they would have been familiar with. Why? Beats me. The top must be painted in local camo patterns to conceal the structure from sat photos. And the area is covered in clouds or outright storms, like you’re dealing with, for much of the year. It’s still amazing nothing showed it being there.”
King settled flat on the snowy ground with the others. If the particulates in the air were swept away by another gust, their suits would camouflage them somewhat. All of them kept their weapons trained toward the strange building in the desert. “Sounds like the perfect place for Bright Tomorrow to operate out of. But I wonder why none of the other teams found it.”
Aleman had tasked the team with finding the terrorist command camp after several attempts by US and joint European teams had failed to locate the headquarters. Most of the special forces teams sent into the stormy region of desert had simply not returned. Those who had come back alive complained of supernatural creatures in the sand that had killed or eaten entire squads of men. The stories had been conflicting and unbelievable – exactly the sort of thing Chess Team faced on a regular basis.
Although the team had been surprised by the sight of the building when they had been expecting caves, King was already strategically assessing the situation. “Bishop, take the 240 and break right. One hundred yards, and set up there. Crawl forward until you can just barely see the building. The edge of the storm probably won’t hold here, but you should have some cover.”
Bishop collected the big gun and slipped away into the white gloom.
“Rook and Queen, break left.” King didn’t need to elaborate any further. “Knight and Pawn, the back. Find a way in. Those towers look like good overwatch.”
“Visibility would be crap from up there, but we’ll find something,” Knight replied. He and Pawn were up and following Queen and Rook to the left. They would then circle around the left side of the structure to the back. That left King to cover the front of the building – a hundred yard long wall with a massive twenty-foot high set of banded wooden doors in the middle, closed against the rage of the storm.
He crawled forward in the blinding snow and sand, noticing for the first time that the grit scraping across the full faceplate of his helmet was actually scratching the plastic. If this went on too long, they would be blind, even when the wind cleared the air. Another of a thousand small variables he filed away in his head for later.
“Blue, how long until you can get us infrared coverage?” King asked Aleman.
“Another twenty minutes – and that’s if I can get in. It’s a DARPA satellite, and their encryption is crazy.”
“Do what you can. I’d like to know if someone’s coming up on us from behind, before they actually step on me.”
“It’s not that bad,” Knight mumbled.
King recalled a report from a mission Knight had been on in Uganda, where a soldier had actually been standing on Knight’s concealed sniper pos
ition – had actually been standing on Knight’s arm, completely oblivious to the danger he was in. If that was the only time that ever happened, King would be happy.
He felt a twitching sensation at the back of his neck, and quickly whirled around, scanning the swirling white and tan haze. The base looked abandoned, but King’s instincts told him it wasn’t. Not being able to see or hear in the field was as limiting as wearing a bag over his head. With the helmet keeping in heat as well, he couldn’t even smell an attacker sneaking up on him. The only thing the team had going for them was the weather. It was unlikely any Bright Tomorrow security would be outside in this mess – and the building looked pretty sturdy against attack. Between its remote location, the camouflaged roof and the extreme temperatures and low visibility, they probably had their forces set up inside the outer walls of the building. It would be enough. That’s how King would have done it.
“Knight, are you in position in back?”
“We’re up top, in back. Place is totally deserted. Looks like no one has been up on these walls all winter.” It didn’t surprise King that Knight and Pawn would have taken the initiative to scale the back wall without reporting on the lack of posted guards. They all knew each other’s strengths and played to them.
“North and east are clear,” came Bishop’s thick Slavic accent.
“South is… wait. Do you feel that?” Rook said.
King was about to reply when he did feel it. A tremor in the ground. Aleman had briefed them about the region, which was prone to mild earthquakes and aftershocks. After a second, the rumbling sensation faded. “Just a quake. Moving on the door. Watch me.”
King stood in a low crouch, waited for a strong gust of wind and then sprinted forward, toward the looming doors of the big building. He zigzagged as he ran, hoping to throw off the aim of any guards Knight and Pawn might have missed. They were at the back of the square, castle-like base, and the length of each wall was over 100 yards, so even with Knight’s keen eye, they might have missed someone in the front. But with Rook and Queen on one side of him, and Bishop on the other, King felt safe in making the dash to the wall.
When he reached the sloped surface next to the looming doors, he turned his back to the stone, sweeping his SCAR back toward the snowstorm. If there was a threat above him on the fortress wall, Bishop would have him covered. He was far more concerned about the concealment the storm afforded anyone circling behind the team. And if he was honest, the rumors of supernatural creatures had him on edge – he’d faced things that shouldn’t have been possible on more than one occasion.
He turned and faced the door, prepared to plant one of Rook’s explosive spikes in the dirt in front of the threshold, but at the last second he had an idea. The doors had massive circular iron rings for handles, about the size of dinner platters, hanging at King’s shoulder height. He guessed most of the much shorter Mongolians would have had to reach up for the handle. King just reached straight out and grasped the ring in his gloved hand.
He tugged, and the door opened, as if its hinges had been oiled at least sometime in the last week – otherwise all the grit in the air would have jammed them up.
“The place might look abandoned, but someone’s here.”
3
Knight hurried along the edge of the crenellated wall, running his hand along the edge of the parapet for balance. He knew Pawn would be on his blind side, doing the same. The wind was worse up on the forty-foot tall wall, and the snow and sand blew so hard that he couldn’t see more than a few feet.
They had been lucky to get one of the gusting bursts that had cleared the air temporarily, so they knew they were alone on the top of the wall. As they raced to the nearest corner watchtower, they stayed low, but speed was now more essential than stealth. With the snow untouched on the walkways along the walls, and on the pagoda-like central building inside the outer wall, anyone even glancing out this way during a clearing in the storm would see the new footprints.
“This feels all wrong,” Pawn said, speaking directly to Knight on a separate sub-channel they had between them, for additional communication. It was another subtle tool they used to compensate for the loss of Knight’s left eye, but they rarely needed it for that purpose. Instead, they used it to talk privately, away from the ears of the others. The system was set up so that if anyone spoke over the network, they would hear the exchange in their left ears. If Pawn and Knight wanted to speak exclusively to each other, they would hear the replies in their right ears. A toggle switch allowed them to choose on which network to broadcast. So far, they hadn’t mixed up the channels.
“I agree. I know it’s brutally cold out here, but they don’t even have any cameras,” Knight said, as he reached the doorway into the corner tower.
“Sand would probably scour the lenses on the first day,” Pawn observed.
“Front door’s open. Going in,” they heard King report from the front of the building. “Stay frosty. The hinges have been oiled recently.”
Knight felt the need to get deeper inside the building than King, and faster. He knew it wasn’t necessary to compensate for his injuries with his actions, but being sneaky and fast was something he had done even before the loss of his eye.
Pawn didn’t need him to explain the plan. They had become like one human in two bodies over the last few weeks. She would anticipate his moves, learning his style and his intentions from simple gestures. Pawn was fast enough to anticipate what he would do, and to keep up with him.
He grasped the door to the tower, and tugged on it. It opened a little stiffly, as if it, too, had been oiled, but grit from the blowing storm had still found its way into the frame and the iron hinges. Pawn covered his entrance, then they leap-frogged positions into the unlit stone stairwell. Knight pulled the door closed after them, plunging them into darkness.
“Blue, do you copy?” Knight asked.
“Crystal clear,” came Aleman’s reply.
“We’re inside the southwest tower. What’s the temp in here?”
Their suits, which Aleman had appropriated for them on the black market, had temperature sensors inside and out, allowing Aleman to monitor their bodies in the frigid climate, but also so they would know if the temperature outside the suit warmed up enough for them to remove it.
“Ten above,” Aleman said after a brief pause. “It’ll be chilly, but you can remove the helmets.”
“‘Bout damn time,” Pawn groaned, slipping the helmet off over her head.
Knight did the same, and instantly he heard the roaring of the wind outside the thick wooden door. The sound was somewhat muted, so he was able to listen for sounds in the darkened stairwell. Convinced they were alone, he donned an AN/PVS-14A night vision monocular, and Pawn did the same. The devices were strapped over their heads, amplifying the available light. In this case, there wasn’t any ambient light, so Knight activated an extremely dim LED at the sole of his boots. The light was so slight and diffuse that an unaided human eye could see it, but not be able to pinpoint its exact location. That wouldn’t help them much while in the confines of the tight stairwell, but once they were down at ground level, the space would open up, and they would be able to hide in the darkness. Also, at the first sign of contact, Knight could douse the dim light, switching it to a pulse mode. It allowed both he and Pawn to see the walls and the steps of the twisting spiral stone passage, and he quickly descended, looking for tripwires or other security devices as he went. So far, he was disappointed in the security, but terrorists weren’t known for their adherence to norms, and he supposed with the remote location and the climate, they really wouldn’t need too much to dissuade visitors.
“There should at least be a guard dog, or something,” Knight said softly, over the open comms.
“Perimeter report,” King asked.
“All clear, Boss,” Rook said.
“Nothing,” Bishop added.
“We’re approaching the ground level,” Knight said.
“Warmer inside,
but still no tangos,” Pawn said. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“Agreed...” King said, and then he lapsed into silence. Knight could tell from the way he had said it that he was considering calling the operation off. It wouldn’t have been the first time King had done so, and he tended to be the most cautious of the team now. Knight continued down the steps, waiting for the call.
It didn’t come.
Oddly, neither did the ground floor.
The stairs kept circling down, and Knight was sure they had descended close to sixty feet now. The ground level would have been at forty.
“These stairs keep going down, King. We’re investigating.”
“Roger,” King said. “I’m checking the main floor, but it looks deserted here, too.”
As Knight and Pawn descended, they noticed the shades of green in their monocles brightening. Knight switched off his boot LED and found he could still see. “Light source,” he whispered, speaking only to Pawn. She made a soft grunting noise he knew to be an acknowledgment.
After a few more steps, the stairway opened up onto a catwalk in a dimly lit, wide open space. The lights were far below, but bright enough that Knight removed the monocular entirely. They stayed in the shadows of the doorway, stowing the assistive devices, before Knight belly-crawled to the edge of the metal catwalk, and peered down into the chamber forty feet below him.
“Shit. King,” he whispered on the team network. “This looks like a bio-weapons lab. All bright white walls and glass down here. We’re forty feet below the surface level. I’m seeing large glass vats with nuclear green liquid and bio-hazard symbols on them. A few people milling around in white lab coats.”
“Deep Blue?” King asked, irritation audible in his voice.
“Everything we have says it’s a simple terrorist command center. I have no intel on labs or chemical weapons.”
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 30
