Frostpoint

by Kenny Soward

  “You can probably take Frank’s Jeep. It’s a little beat up, but should be good to drive.”

  “No offense, ma’am,” Collier said. “But he means a real means of transportation. We’ll be expecting a ride to come soon.”

  Sara chuckled. “No offense taken.” She glanced through the backdoor glass and saw the morning was exceptionally bright. She stood and picked up her coffee along with a blanket from the laundry room. “I think I’m going to drink this outside.”

  “I’ll join you,” Barbara said, and she poured herself a warm cup of coffee before following Sara out onto the back porch.

  Sara found one of their cushioned lawn chairs and pulled it over to the edge of the deck. Then she sat with the folded blanket over her legs and the warm mug in her lap. Barbara pulled up a chair next to her, and together they stared out at the hazy Smoky Mountain peaks.

  The wind no longer beat at them. In fact, it was a whimper compared to the roar it had been over the past several days. While Sara still could not access the internet yet, she suspected the weather was evening out all across the country.

  “Would you look at that?” Barbara looked up into the clouds, which had thinned enough for them to see the sky. “It’s the sun.”

  A swath of golden, cleansing light fell across the peak to Sara’s right and shined down into the valley. Tree crowns that would normally be red and gold had been beaten by the merciless winds but still retained some of their fall color. Evergreens held their bright, verdant emerald as they stood tall amongst the rest.

  “It’s been weeks since we’ve seen it.” Sara smiled. “I almost forgot what real daylight looks like.”

  “It’s pretty,” Barbara said.

  “It’s absolutely that, and so much more. I can’t help but feel things are turning around.”

  “Your man is back in town,” Barbara said with a note of humorous swagger. “So, of course you’re feeling good. I’m just glad I don’t have to listen to you go on about him anymore.”

  Sara scoffed and turned to Barbara with an expression of mock offense before settling back in her chair. “I mean, look at him. He’s a hunk.”

  “He’s a handsome guy, for sure,” Barbara said with a respectful tone. “You have a really great family, Sara.”

  “Thanks, Barb.” Sara paused for a moment to consider if she should bring up the girl’s family. Barbara seemed ready to open up, so Sara went on. “What about your folks? What’s been going on with them?”

  Barbara set her coffee on the railing and pressed her hands into her seat. “I guess it’s kind of obvious since I don’t talk about them, right?”

  “Not so obvious.” Sara shook her head. “I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks now, but it feels like forever. At the same time, I don’t know a thing about you.”

  “My mom got killed in the flooding from the Douglas Dam,” Barbara said, bluntly. “That night we’d been arguing. Mostly about my dad. I stormed out and went to stay with a friend just before they blew the bridge. I didn’t even realize they were dead until I tried to come home the next morning. I couldn’t even get to the driveway, there was so much water.” Barbara shook her head sadly.

  “They?” Sara gulped as dread crawled up her spine with spidery fingers.

  “Mom and my little brother, Carl, too.”

  “Oh, no.” Sara put her hand over her mouth as her heart twisted for the girl. “I’m so sorry Barb. I really am.”

  “I know. I didn’t even get a chance to see them or tell them I loved them. You don’t want to know the last thing I said to my mom.”

  Instinctively, Sara put her mug on the rail, stood, and leaned over Barbara, wrapping her arms around the girl and hugging her tight.

  “Have you talked about this to anyone?” Sara asked as she sat back down, although she left her hand resting on Barbara’s arm.

  The girl shrugged. “Not really. Steven is a cousin of mine, so I called him when I couldn’t get to my house. He came and picked me up. Said he and the Good Folk were hunting down those who’d flooded the valley. You know the rest.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Mom and Dad separated last year, and he moved to Nashville. They’d been trying to work things out, but…” Barbara’s voice trailed off as her shoulders slumped. “I haven’t heard from him since this started. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” Barbara stared off at the distant peaks. “I’m almost afraid for my cell phone to start working again. I’m afraid that if I text him, he won’t text me back.”

  Sara covered Barbara’s hand with her own as she stared out at those same majestic peaks. They stretched out infinitely to the east and west, filling Sara’s heart with possibilities.

  The clouds parted above them, and a hint of morning light broke through to cut a swath across the porch. The light touched her cheeks, and Sara closed her eyes against its warmth. When she opened them again, her heart surged with hope, and she made a resolution to pay forward the good fortune of Jake’s return.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help you find your dad, Barb,” she said. “Even if it takes a year. Even if it takes ten years. And you’re going to stay with us until we find him.”

  Chapter 17

  Yi, Somewhere near Gatlinburg

  “We have a connection!” Chen said where he sat at the rickety kitchen table in front of the computer console. It had taken the man several hours to align the transmitter and get into the system. Chen’s hacking skills were nowhere near Alina’s, and the password had died with her.

  “Good job, Chen.” Yi leaned his hands on the back of Chen’s chair and gripped it tightly. “Send the message.”

  Yi had composed a message to central command outlining the events of the past several days, their uncovering of the cache of weapons, and the subsequent deaths of Katrya, Ivan, and several members of their group. He wanted to be transparent about what had transpired. The best-case scenario was that central command put him in charge of finishing the mission. Worse case, they activated the tiny bombs implanted in their heads.

  That was fine by Yi. At least he could die knowing he did the right thing when he’d attacked Katrya.

  Chen tapped on the keyboard and used a tiny mouse ball next to his thumb to pull up Yi’s pre-written message, attach the appropriate encryption, and hit the Send button.

  “Sent,” Chen said, turning around with a hopeful expression.

  Nodding, Yi stepped away from the chair and moved to the window, looking out across a field of tall, waving grass. The land surrounding the abandoned farmhouse was wide open on all sides, making it impossible for anyone to come upon them unseen. Unless, of course, they were flying a helicopter.

  Yi had taken precautions against that as well. He’d placed two soldiers with rocket launchers at the edge of the clearing in the event another chopper showed up. And they, along with three other soldiers, patrolled the perimeter. Yi had placed two more soldiers at the end of the driveway hidden in the tall grass. They were to radio him at the first sign of the enemy.

  While he should have felt much better with Katrya gone, he couldn’t help but think the mission was now in severe jeopardy. The enemy was beginning to turn things around, and Yi had no doubt that very soon these mountains would be swarming with United States soldiers.

  He could only hope that central command gave them one final chance. There were many reasons they would not, all of them political. The New Block would protect their identity above all things, and if they thought the mission was doomed to fail, and their soldiers’ intelligence compromised, Yi had no doubt they would be terminated.

  Yi turned away from the kitchen window and walked down a long hallway to the back of the house. The floorboards creaked, and the home had an old, dusty smell that was somehow comforting and safe. At the end of the hall were three rooms, each with an injured soldier.

  He poked his head in the first room and looked upon one of Katrya’s soldiers, Nadia, who had her arm taken off at the elbow by a .50 cal roun
d. She was asleep, hanging on for dear life after losing an incredible amount of blood.

  The doctor, Boris, was doing all he could for her, though he was not equipped to handle severe injuries, especially those that required surgery. All he could do was ease her pain with the powerful drugs they’d taken from the resupply cave.

  Yi moved on to the next room to look in on a young man from Africa named Edet. He was surly and dejected where he lay on a bed made for a child, though he looked significantly better than Nadia. He only had a shrapnel injury to the leg that kept him from walking, though it was not life threatening.

  “How do you feel?” Yi asked.

  The man’s eyes lifted. “I’ll feel much better once I get up from this bed.”

  “I understand your frustration,” Yi said with a nod. “You feel powerless now, but you won’t be down forever. The doctor removed some shrapnel from your leg. You just need to rest. We will need you.”

  “When will we receive our next orders?”

  “I do not know. We are still waiting. Although, I expect we will know sooner rather than later.”

  Edet went back to his brooding as Yi stepped out of his room and moved to the last room in the hall.

  Inside was a soldier named Sam. Sam had received a bullet to the head from one of the mountain defenders. The projectile had cracked Sam’s helmet and glanced off, leaving her unconscious, and she showed no signs of snapping out of it anytime soon.

  Sam was exceedingly pale with dark circles under her eyes, and her curly brown hair was plastered to her sweaty forehead where she lay on the bed. As Yi looked in, he noticed Boris sitting at her bedside with his hand lingering on Sam’s arm, and Yi could not imagine what the doctor would be doing to her if they were alone.

  “Hello, good doctor,” Yi said, barely able to keep the rancor from his words. He’d disliked Boris from the beginning, especially after what he’d done to the lodge family. In many ways, he was worse than Katrya. At least the Ukrainian agent, the Red Blade, had been a skilled warrior.

  The German looked up at Yi and jerked his hand away from the woman’s arm as if he’d just gotten caught “with his hand in the cookie jar.” That’s what Ivan would have said if he were here, using the American expression.

  “Hello, Captain Yi.”

  “Will any of the wounded be ready to fight soon?”

  “Nadia will be dead in an hour or two,” Boris’s beady blue eyes glanced toward that room. “Edet is questionable. This one…” Boris looked at Sam. “She is a mystery. I suspect she has a brain injury with potential swelling. Without proper medical equipment, I can’t be sure.”

  “Very good, Doctor. I appreciate all that you’ve done. Please keep me posted. I suspect we will get some mission details soon.”

  With that, Yi left the room and returned to his window.

  Chapter 18

  Jake, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 12:10 p.m., Wednesday

  “I never thought sleeping late would be an option ever again,” Jake laughed as he ruffled Rex’s fur and squeezed the dog to him where he lay half in Jake’s lap and half on the couch cushion with his tail wagging like crazy. Todd had brought the German Shepherd and his puppy friend, Astro, up to the cabin earlier in the morning, and Jake was more than happy to receive a big dose of happy barks and face licks.

  Sara had told him how the dog had saved her life at the lodge, and Jake couldn’t be more grateful.

  “I’ll give you a couple days of sleeping late before you need to start working on the cabin,” Sara teased him as she sat on the other side, snuggled into his arm. The woman had hardly left his side since he’d been back, and that was fine by Jake.

  Zoe sat on the floor between his feet, watching a movie. They’d left the generator running in celebration of Jake’s return, so hot showers and entertainment were on the menu all day long. Jake grinned as he was absolutely smothered by the people who loved him, and it made his days in Boston seem like a distant dream.

  Collier and Ostrosky were taking turns patrolling the grounds, front and back. And between Karen, Dion, Natasha, and the Good Folk leader, Steven, they always had a pair of eyes on the gate. Not that Jake thought the crawlers would come back. He figured they’d had enough of the mountain folk, and the United States military were ramping up stability efforts in the area.

  The crawlers would soon be hunted down and destroyed.

  “I’ll be happy to work on the cabin,” Jake said.

  “There’s just some shingles and siding missing,” Sara murmured happily. “And the tool shed got blown away.”

  “But the cabin held against the storm.” Jake looked around proudly at the home he and Sara had built, and he hoped that Marcy and everyone else he’d traveled with through Boston were as safe and comfortable as he was.

  “It held up great.”

  Jake glanced over at Spitz where he’d resumed monitoring the laptop for signs of crawler communication. While Jake appreciated the hacker’s dedication, he was beginning to think they wouldn’t pick up a signal at all—either Jake hadn’t wired things up properly, or the transmitter or receiver was damaged.

  Of all the people Jake was getting to know, all the people who’d been a part of his family’s life for the past month and a half, Barbara was the most interesting. He’d noticed right away that the girl and his wife had a strong bond. Sara treated Barbara almost like a daughter. And it had taken Jake a total of fifteen minutes to realize there was an even stronger bond between Barbara and his son, Todd. It was the way they looked at one another and the way they seemed to always be in the same place at the same time, like two celestial bodies drawn together by gravity.

  There was no doubt about it. Todd had a girlfriend.

  The radio in Sara’s lap crackled, and Dion’s voice cut through. “Sara, this is Dion. Do you read?”

  Sara lifted the radio and pressed the talk button. “I’m here, Dion. What is it?”

  “Just wanted to let you know that Jenkins radioed Collier and Ostrosky on their military radios. They’re going to dig through the helicopter wreckage to see if there’s anything else left to salvage.”

  “She’s already got Clara out.” Jake grinned. “But the radio might be salvageable.”

  “Okay, I got the radio part,” Sara said to Jake. “But who’s Clara?”

  “That’s the .50 caliber gun Collier handed up to us from the wreckage. Jenkins named it after her dead mother.”

  Sara pulled an incredulous but accepting expression before she talked into the radio again. “Thanks for letting us know, Dion.”

  “No problem, Sara. Dion out.”

  “You’ve made a lot of friends since I was gone.”

  “Friends. Enemies. It’s been a busy month.” Sara stretched up and kissed Jake on the jaw, further reinforcing that he was, indeed, home.

  “We’ve got something,” Spitz said from the kitchen table, his voice edged with tension.

  Jake looked over his shoulder and saw the kid was serious. He’d straightened in his chair as his eyes read text flashing down the screen.

  “What is it?” Jake and Sara rose at the same time, gently pushing dog and daughter out of the way.

  “Gosh, Dad!” Zoe said with annoyance as Jake’s knees shoved her aside.

  “Sorry, Zo,” Jake said, ruffling her hair before he followed Sara to the kitchen table and peered over Spitz’s shoulder.

  “Looks like we’ve got an encrypted communication from another transmitter emitting a similar signature to ours.” Spitz put his coffee cup aside and began slamming keys with his fingers. “Re-assembling the encrypted message now.”

  As Jake watched the screen, the garbled text changed to plain English, and he was able to see what was being sent even as Spitz read it out loud.

  “Dragon Leader sending encrypted data via X-82 encryption,” Spitz read. “This message is intended for New Block central command, protocol one-two-nine-seven. Message start. Team leader, agent Katrya Rusak, was killed while carrying out operation
against local militia and United States military forces in the Smoky Mountain region. Yi Peng has assumed temporary command of the team.”

  “That’s the guy who took me and Tex hostage,” Sara pointed out. “He’s the one who wanted the computer. The other one. The woman, Katrya…she was pure evil. I’m glad she’s dead.”

  “Please advise on next mission,” Spitz continued reading. “List of deceased and remaining roster to follow.”

  Jake read down the list of remaining crawlers as the message scrolled. “They only have eleven operatives left. That has to be good news. We need to tell Collier to get word to Captain Stern right away.”

  “I’m on it,” Sara said, lifting her radio to her lips. “Dion, this is Sara. Has Jenkins left yet?”

  “As a matter of fact, she hasn’t.” Dion said. “I was just about to radio you about that.”

  A quizzical expression crossed Sara’s face, and she took a step back from the table. “Why? What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a visitor at the gate,” Dion said as a gust of wind made a crackling sound on his end. “Military Humvee. It’s a Captain Stern. Says she wants to come up and retrieve her helicopter and soldiers. I told her I needed to talk to you first. But I’ll be honest here. I don’t think she’s going to wait.”

  Sara glanced up at Jake with a worried expression, and Jake quickly put her fears to rest. “She’s the commander at the White Pine base. She’s okay. You’ll like her.”

  Sara nodded and spoke into the radio once more. “Jake says she’s okay, Dion. Send her up.”

  “Gotcha, Sara. Will do.”

  “I’ve never met a military captain before,” Sara said, gesturing to the door. “Should we go meet her?”

  “That would probably be a good idea.”

  Jake led them onto the porch just as a clean green Humvee came around the curve in the road. The powerful vehicle handled the climb with supreme ease and then pulled up to the bridge that crossed the stream running through Sara and Jake’s property. The vehicle didn’t try to cross the bridge, and the driver brought it to a stop just on the other side. The front and back doors opened, and several heavily armed soldiers exited the vehicle, spreading out ten yards in all directions with their eyes prowling the area for threats. The tall, lithe Captain Stern got out of the passenger side door and started across the bridge.