Minutes later Mattie maneuvered his parachute to a rocky outcropping bare of trees. He quickly unharnessed his chute and spread it out to make a signal for the rescue copters he hoped would be coming.
Once he climbed down from the rocks, he took off into the woods. It would be slow going in the snow, even with his enhanced speed, so he pulled out his knife and cut a few branches off a Douglas fir. He quickly molded the branches into makeshift snowshoes, a skill he’d learned in Special Forces training. He strapped on the shoes and headed out to the last spot from which the attackers had fired their missiles.
He soon picked up their trail, a clear path through the snow. He followed it for a short time before coming across the remains of a campsite. The fire was smoking ever so slightly.
They were close.
The trail split up into three directions. All headed out to where the parachutes had come down; the attackers were heading out to finish their job. He made a quick mental note of where they split up, then followed the path on the right.
Crack.
The branch snapping under the snow would be imperceptible to a normal man’s ears, but Mattie heard it loud and clear.
One of the attackers had stayed behind.
He crouched low, then sprang upward to the first branch of the pine tree nearest him. Just as he did, a bullet struck the spot where he’d been standing. He could instantly tell from the angle of the snow splash where the shot came from.
He grabbed the tree branch and swung himself up, shinnying up the tree like a monkey, away from the line of fire. A hundred feet in the air, near the top of the tree, he stopped and pulled out his assault rifle. After a quick adjustment to the scope, he took aim at a small spot two hundred yards away.
“Got you, motherfucker,” he whispered under his breath.
He fired once.
Normally one shot, one kill. Only this time it was one shot, one wound because he couldn't get information from a dead man.
He swung down from the tree, flipped in midair, and landed in a snow bank. A second later he was on top of the attacker. The man was wounded in the lower back, right through the spinal column, rendering his legs useless. He could only lie there as Mattie stood over him.
The attacker wore a ski mask, goggles, and heavy winter weather gear. Mattie pulled the mask off. Long dark hair cascaded down over the shoulders of the attacker.
It was a woman—mid-twenties and beautiful.
“Who are you?” Mattie said firmly, his gun trained between her eyes.
She said nothing, spitting at him.
Mattie jammed his thumb into the bullet wound in her back. She screamed in pain.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“I am a servant of God,” she said in a heavily accented voice. The accent was clearly Middle Eastern, quite possibly North African. The woman’s dark complexion gave further proof to his theory.
“And what does God want?”
“He wants blasphemers and unbelievers to die a painful death—to be wiped from the earth like vermin.”
Her eyes widened as she spoke, adding to the fervor of her words.
“But I’m a believer,” Mattie said calmly. He’d had enough experience with religious extremists to know how to speak with them to gain the greatest psychological advantage.
“What do you believe?”
The woman had said God, not Allah, which could mean she was not Muslim, but it could also mean that she was just using the wrong word in English. He thought he had her accent down now, so he spoke in Arabic, with an Egyptian accent.
“I believe that God has a purpose for all.”
The woman looked shocked and switched to Arabic as well.
“And he has a high purpose for me. The highest of all.”
This time Mattie picked up on her regional dialect. She was most likely from Cairo.
“And that is?”
“To kill you!”
She screamed as she pulled a knife from her jacket and tried to stab him.
He let her.
It hurt, of course. But he was using a psychological ploy that only he could accomplish, so he endured the moment of pain. Then he stood up, ripped open his shirt so she could clearly see the knife embedded in his gut, and waited.
It only took a few seconds before his body pushed the knife out and it fell to the ground, splattering his blood over the white snow. Then his wound healed, his skin sealing up like a zipper.
The woman gasped and stared at him, mouth open, eyes wide.
“Are . . . are you an angel? Am I dead?”
The woman began touching her body to make sure it was still there.
“I am a messenger from God.” Mattie flexed his vocal cords and spoke in a much deeper voice. “Speak the truth and you shall be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The woman’s hands began to tremble.
“We’ve been following the word handed down for centuries, from the holy parchment that speaks of the end times passed to my ancestors by an angel, one of your kind. The parchment speaks of those who would try to prevent the coming Apocalypse and the coming of the Lord. It tells us that they must be stopped at all costs.”
Mattie thought for a moment. Both Islamic and Christian religions believed in the end of days and both the Koran and Bible had text speaking of the Apocalypse. But what was this holy parchment she was talking about?
“How do you know that now is the time of the Apocalypse?”
“The sacred parchment gave us the exact date, which we've kept secret. Only the members of our special sect know that it's today, January fifteenth, in the year of our Lord 2038. But you know all of this already, do you not?”
She was becoming suspicious of his ruse. He needed to wrap this up quickly, then get this woman and her companions back to Holloman for more thorough questioning.
“I am testing you, my dear. Now tell me, have you put our other plans into place yet?”
He was grasping at this one, but he needed to find out what else this woman and her group had planned.
“Each cell has specific orders. We have no idea who the others are or what they are planning. My orders were simply to come here at this exact time and shoot down any military helicopters flying over the forest. But I do know this: we have agents everywhere, and we will not stop until the prophecy is fulfilled.”
Beep, beep.
Someone from Mattie’s team was trying to contact him. He didn’t want to take the call in the middle of an interrogation, but it could be important. He tapped the back of his ear.
“Colonel, Evangelista here. Two snipers ambushed us and killed several of the Chronos survivors. After an exchange of fire, we were able to take one out and capture the other. However he took poison and killed himself. Are you okay, sir?”
The woman stared at him intently. She was grimacing, obviously in pain, but she was also calculating her next move. Mattie chose not respond to Evangelista.
“Who sent the bomb back?”
“What bomb? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He could tell from the subtle movements of the muscles in her face and the dilation level of her pupils that she was telling the truth. She continued to look into his eyes with cold venom.
“You’re no angel, you’re something else. A deceiver. One of Satan’s horde. You have no power over me and my fellow believers. We shall win in the end. And we will bask in the glory of Christ the Lord.”
The woman smiled and reached for something in her jacket. He easily grabbed her hand before she could get to it. But she kept smiling, and he heard a crack from inside her mouth—a fake hollow tooth breaking.
He reached up and pried open her mouth. A tiny wisp of smoke puffed out. Cyanide. A very old but still effective suicide technique used by captured spies since the days of the Cold War.
The smile left her face, and she began shaking violently. He backed away, and seconds later her seizures subsided and she lay dead in a twisted mess.
> There’d be no more questions for her, but there was one more thing he could do to confirm his suspicions. He took off the dead woman’s jacket, unbuttoned her shirt, and pulled it down enough to reveal her arm.
There, tattooed inside the upper part of her right arm, was a cross. It had two bold lines intersecting in the middle at right angles. At the tip of each line were three points. In the center of the thick lines bright colors—purple, red, and yellow—weaved through the cross like vines.
Mattie blinked to pull up stream access and found the symbol immediately. It was a Coptic Orthodox cross, the twelve points symbolizing the twelve disciples, the Coptic writing on the outside translating to Jesus Christ Son of God.
The Copts were the native Christians of Egypt. The sect dated back to the introduction of Christianity in Egypt by Saint Mark around 42 AD.
Mattie blinked off the Stream, then accessed his own memories. He recalled a reference to the Copts in a report filed thirty-six years ago by then Lieutenant Commander Charles Paulson. Mattie had read it as part of a briefing many years ago.
A Coptic group had tried to assassinate Paulson while he was working undercover in Iraq in 2002.
But the Copts had no history of extremism, nor had they postulated any kind of jihadist agenda. But somehow this sect had gotten their hands on a parchment that declared the exact date of E-Day. All signs pointed to temporal manipulation. Somebody from the future had influenced the group.
Suddenly the conspiracy became much deeper, extending back not just decades, but centuries.
Chapter 22
10:30 a.m. Local Time, January 15, 2038
Ranger Cabin, Lincoln National Forest
Holly crossed her arms and rubbed her hands on her shoulders, trying to help the fire warm her. She only had a thin jacket, not the thick winter coat she needed for these conditions. Of course, she’d thought she’d be a mile underground at the Chronos base rather than sitting in a ranger cabin in the middle of a dense forest during a snowstorm.
They’d expected a rescue party to come for them by now, but no copters could land with the blizzard raging. It’d be at least several hours before the storm cleared, which left them trying to make the best of a horrible situation.
She looked around at her fellow scientists and engineers. None had been ready for a day like today. Many spent more hours working in virtual reality than they did in the 3-D world. As a result, their muscles had atrophied and they could handle very little physical exertion. And everyone was scared. They’d already faced two attempts on their lives, and soon a third would be raining down from the sky.
Several of the top members of the Chronos team knew what was coming, but not all. Full disclosure would’ve leaked out to the general public and caused widespread panic. Those who did know looked anxious. None of them wanted to be out in the open in four and a half hours.
The gravity of the situation weighed on Holly’s mind. How could someone nuke the base, killing thousands of her coworkers and their families—destroying one of the greatest scientific achievements in all of history, the only chance they had to save humanity if all else failed?
She stepped away from the fire, allowing three chattering children a chance to warm up, and made her way to a window. Outside the snow was coming down hard and swirling in the wind. She tried to hold back her tears, tried to stay strong, but suddenly she broke down and began sobbing. She leaned forward so her head touched the cold window, rhythmically tapping her forehead against the freezing glass. How much more tragedy and hardship could she endure?
The tears continued to flow, but she felt a warm hand grip her shoulder. She turned to found Patrick Chen standing beside her, leaning on crutches. His eyebrows furrowed together in concern, and what looked like a tear at the corner of his eye was quickly blinked away.
“Took a bit of a tumble on my landing,” he said, nodding toward his leg, which was covered in a biocast. “We’ll get through this, Holly. Don’t lose hope. Not now.”
She sniffled, wiped her running nose and eyes, and tried to regain her composure.
“You need to try some of the happy juice they pumped me full of for the pain in this leg. It might help us both forget this day.”
Holly tried to smile, but bitterness stuck to her, as cold as the snow and ice clinging to the trees outside. All the backbreaking work over the last decades obliterated in an instant . . . No jokes or words of consolation could mend how she was feeling.
The door to the cabin opened, wind and snow pouring in like a fury and wiping away Holly’s thoughts. A man walked forward wearing snow gear and a ski mask and carrying an assault rifle. He shook the snow off his body and pulled his mask from his head.
It was Mattie.
He quickly said something to one of his men, then turned to address the group.
“You can relax for now. My men and I have scouted the area and there are no signs of hostile gunmen. We’ve established a perimeter, and this cabin is secure. After the storm passes, a Chinook transport copter should be able to land near here and take us to Holloman Air Base. Until that time, I suggest you get some rest.”
Mattie signaled Holly and joined her.
“Are you okay?” He spoke with warmth and his eyes held true concern.
Holly nodded as she wiped her eyes again, the last few tears drifting slowly down her chin.
“I know you’ve been through a lot. We all have.” Mattie glanced around at the others huddled in the cabin’s living room, in front of the fireplace. Holly looked as well.
Some were crying, others were numb, as though they were still in shock. Very few were socializing. The severely injured lay in the corner, military medical personnel trying to keep them alive and as comfortable as possible until they could get them to a fully equipped treatment center.
“I was hoping we could talk later.” He gently placed his hand on her arm. “If you’re up for it. Someplace private. Would that be okay?”
Holly nodded, wondering what he had to tell her, wondering if he knew exactly what was about to happen.
“Sometime in the next hour. Just stay close.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t like she was going anywhere. Not in this snowstorm. She passed the next hour or so catching up with news on the Stream and chatting with some of her coworkers, trying to comfort them as best she could. Most were simply inconsolable. Their world had been devastated. Many had lost family members. Holly couldn’t help weeping again as she visited with each person. Finally Mattie came for her.
She followed him up the stairs to the second floor of the cabin and into a bedroom that looked like the personal quarters of the ranger. He pulled up two chairs.
“Thanks for joining me, Holly. The vice president has asked me to personally head the investigation into the bombing of the base. I just need to ask you a few questions to clarify some leads I’m following. Is that okay?”
“Of course.” She wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery as much as anyone.
“Who would be able to access the vortex on their own?”
“You mean without the entire team helping them? No one. The system is too complicated for one person to operate it alone. It would be like one astronaut launching himself into space without the help of anyone at NASA. It’s technically not possible.”
“How many people would you need then? Minimum.”
Holly thought for a moment. She’d never considered that before. It must’ve taken a sophisticated, coordinated effort to get a nuclear bomb into the Chronos base and then send it back in time.
“You could realistically do it with only five people. But it’s highly unlikely those people would be working together for some type of evil cause. Don’t you think it’s more likely they were forced to open the vortex?”
“That’s a logical assessment. Despite the tight security around and within the base, a tactical team of covert operatives could’ve pulled this off. The scientists in charge of the vortex could’ve been forced to send t
he bot back. The bomb was covered, so they may not have known what they were sending.”
“But I don’t think any of our people would agree to that willingly. They all know the damage that could be inflicted to the timeline.”
“Don’t be too sure. I’ve seen trained men much tougher than your group down there crack under the right kind of pressure.” Mattie pointed down to the floor below them. “Plus, remember that everyone had their families with them too. That would’ve provided the bad guys leverage with which to threaten your people.”
“It sounds like we’re just guessing,” she replied, indignant.
Holly knew what Mattie said was true, but it angered her nonetheless that her coworkers and friends could be forced into something so horrible.
“Let’s move out of speculation then,” Mattie said.
Holly was happy to move on. The discussion was beginning to feel more like an interrogation.
“I need you to recall everything that happened before the bomb came through the vortex. Anything you can remember would be helpful. I’ve looked at all the videos and LiveStreams, but I still feel there’s something I’m missing.”
Holly rubbed her forehead and thought back to the early morning hours at Chronos.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep at all last night, with everything coming to a head today. So I finished up some work, then headed to the cafeteria. On the way there, the vortex alarm went off, indicating something had arrived from uptime.”
Holly searched Mattie’s face. “Do you know what that was?” she asked.
Mattie stared at her for a second, as if assessing her level of trustworthiness.
“A com-link data drive. It sent a message out to someone, then transferred a large amount of encrypted data. Our experts are working now to figure out what the information was and who received it. Unfortunately, we can’t analyze the com-drive, as it was destroyed in the blast.”
Well, that was a dead end. Holly had no idea what information the drive contained or the content of the message.
“So then you had a midnight snack?”
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 18
