Control Point (2 page)

“Sir, I just want to confirm that this is a capture mission, right?” Britton asked.

Harlequin shrugged. “Of course. Rules of engagement are clear: If they engage you, escalate to deadly force. Err on the side of protecting your people.”

“They’re scared kids, sir,” Britton continued. “Maybe they’d surrender? Have we gotten in touch with their parents to see if they can talk them down? I know it sounds silly, but…”

“It does sound silly, Lieutenant!” Harlequin cut him off. “And we don’t have time for hand-wringing right now. Those kids had a choice. They could have turned themselves in. They didn’t. They chose to go it on their own. Remember, you’re only a Selfer if you run.

“Now, any other questions?” Harlequin asked, glaring at the assembled teams.

There weren’t any.

“Good,” Harlequin said. “Get geared up and get your asses in the air. I’m jumping now. Morgan! You’re on the ground manning relief. Britton! You jump with me. Co-ords are already in the bird. I’ll meet you on target.”

He leaned in to Britton as he left. “Look, Lieutenant. The law may require me to take you along, but you keep your men out of my way and out of the fight. You’re not trained for this. And if I ever again catch you putting doubt in the minds of an assault force about to go hot, I will personally fry your ass.”

Harlequin threw open the door and leapt skyward, flying quickly out of view.

“Sir.” Dawes tugged Britton’s sleeve. “Can’t they get another team? I don’t wanna work with no Sorcerers.”

“They’re on our side, remember?” Britton forced a smile. Terror curdled in his gut. “SOC’s still army.”

Sergeant Goodman, carrying the support weapon for Britton’s team, snorted and nervously tapped the safety on her light machine gun.

“Sir, it’s a high school,” said Dawes, sounding high-school aged himself through his thick Arkansas accent.

“Selfers or not, they’re just kids,” Goodman added.

They’re reading my mind,
Britton thought, but he asked “Why do we call them Selfers, Goodman?”

She hesitated. Britton took a step forward, glaring at her. She might have a point, but she had to believe in this mission if she was going to carry it out. They all had to. “Why?”

“Because they don’t think about how their magic puts others in danger,” she gave the textbook response. “Because they only think about themselves.”

“Absolutely right,” Britton said. “There are thirty-four American corpses buried in the rubble of the Lincoln Memorial because of kids like this! Who knows how many kids, hell, or even some of my former teachers, are down there right now? If you can’t do this, say so now. Once we go dynamic and hit that roof, I need everyone in the game. I give you my word; I won’t hold it against you. If you want out, now’s the time.”

He gave them a moment to respond. No one said a word.

Britton had to get his team moving. The more they stood around, the more the fear would take hold. “Okay, you heard the man, and you know the plan!” he called out. “Let’s show the SOC how the Green Mountain Boys get the job done! We’re going to be up to our assholes in elementals up there, so gear for it. Fire suppression for the pyro. There might be lightning elementals, too, so I want everyone to suit up in as much rubber insulation as the armorer will dispense. Move with a purpose, people!”

As his team hurried to comply, Britton looked back at the looping video and suppressed a shudder.

The world’s gone mad,
Britton thought.
Magic has changed everything.

Even if he wasn’t required to do the deed personally, he knew what Harlequin and his men intended.

Britton sat behind the helicopter’s controls and looked at the man floating in the sky.

Harlequin stood in midair, flight suit rippling in the breeze. Over a thousand feet below him, South Burlington High School glowed in the party colors of spinning police-car lights.

Behind Britton, four army assaulters looked down between their boots, dangling over the helicopter skids, shifting flame-retardant tanks and body armor out of the way for a better view.

Harlequin swooped down to land on one of the Kiowa’s skids, rocking the helicopter and forcing the assaulters to pull their feet back inside. The rotors beat the air over the Aeromancer’s head, stirring his close-cropped blond hair.

The assaulters looked nervously at Britton, and Warrant Officer Cheatham shifted in the copilot’s seat. Britton, at least twice Harlequin’s size, turned to face him. The Aeromancer was not impressed.

“All right,” he shouted loudly enough to be heard over the Kiowa’s engine, his blue eyes hard. “You’re to hold position here while we do our job.”

Britton’s brown skin concealed an angry flush. Harlequin might be a Sorcerer, but the assault order came down from on high for all of them. But the real rage came from the sense of relief. No matter how badly he didn’t want to do this, he still had to. Holding position would be tantamount to dereliction of duty.

“With all due respect, sir,” he called out over the whine of the rotors, “I have to follow the TOC’s orders. ‘Big army’ has to run shotgun on this raid.”

“That’s crap,” Harlequin responded. “We’re not in the damned briefing room anymore, and I don’t care what Tactical Operations Command says. This is a real fight, with real magic. I don’t need regular pukes fucking it up. You will hold your position here until told otherwise. Is that perfectly clear?”

Britton sympathized with Harlequin’s desire to avoid unnecessary loss of life, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d flown onto Britton’s helicopter and insulted his team.

And it didn’t change the nagging feeling that if there was
any chance at all those kids might be saved, Britton had to be there to make sure he saw it through.

“Negative, sir,” Britton said. “My orders are to accompany you to the target and deploy my team. That’s what I intend to do.”

“I’m giving you an order, Lieutenant,” Harlequin said through gritted teeth. He stretched an arm outside the helicopter. The brilliant stars winked out as shreds of cloud unraveled over the rotors, thudding against thickening air.

Britton’s stomach clenched as thunder rumbled, but he did his best to look unimpressed. He toggled the cockpit radio. “TOC, this is support. Can someone put me through to Major Reynolds? I’m being ordered to…”

Harlequin conjured a gust of air that toggled the radio off. “Fucking forget it!”

Britton sighed and listened briefly to the radio static. “Sir, my orders come directly from the colonel, and last time I checked, he outranks you.”

Harlequin paused, his anger palpable. Britton gripped the controls tightly to keep his hands from shaking. He felt the tremble in the rudder pedals as the rotors spun up, slicing through the summoned clouds.

“We’re moving, sir,” Britton said. “Are you riding with us or with your own team?”

Harlequin cursed, dropped backward off the skid, righted himself, and flew off, outpacing the helicopter easily. The cloud cover around the Kiowa instantly wafted apart.

“Holy crap, sir,” Master Sergeant Young leaned in to shout over the Kiowa’s engine. “I’ve never seen anyone talk to a Sorcerer like that.”

“Seriously, sir,” Sergeant Goodman added. “The SOC don’t give a fuck if they get court-martialed. They’ll just zap you.”

“The army’s the army,” Britton said with a conviction he didn’t feel. “Latent or not, we all follow orders.”

“Thank you, sir. Seriously,” Cheatham said, “I wouldn’t want anyone talking to my people that way.”

Britton nodded, uncomfortable with the praise.

The Supernatural Operations Corps bird, another Kiowa, sleek and black, came into view as they descended. Its side was blazoned with the SOC arms—the Stars and Stripes fluttering
behind the eye in the pyramid. Symbols of the four elements hovered in the corners representing legal magical schools: Pyromancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, and Terramancy. The red cross crowned the display, symbolizing Physiomancy, the most prized of the permitted schools. The banner beneath read:
OUR GIFTS, FOR OUR NATION
.

The high-school roof materialized below them, a pitted atoll of raised brick sides stretched with black tar paper. A single, brick-housed metal door led into the building.

Britton set the Kiowa hovering and nodded to Cheatham to take the controls. He turned to the assaulters.

“Okay. You all got the brief,” he shouted. “Two targets barricaded inside. Keep the perimeter secure and the fires under control. Remember, one Pyromancer and one Probe Elementalist.”

“They’re Selfers, sir,” Goodman said. “Why can’t we just bomb the building? Why’s it worth risking our lives?”

“Our orders are to take them down and bring them in for justice,” Britton replied. “If the rules of engagement change, and we have to kill them, then we will. Until then, we’re on a capture mission. Everybody square?”

It’s a damned lie,
he thought.
Those kids are dead. Harlequin has no intention of capturing anybody.

He made eye contact with each member of his team. None looked away.

Satisfied, he nodded. “Okay, double-check your gear and let’s do this.”

He barely had time to retake the Kiowa’s controls before the commlink crackled to life with Major Reynolds’s voice in the TOC trailer on the ground below. “Full element heads up! Support element, this is TOC. Go hot. I say again, go hot and prep for entry on target.”

“Acknowledged. Support element is hot,” Britton said into the commlink. “You heard the man!” he called to his team. “Weapons free and eyes on target!” He heard the click of safeties coming off on Dawes’s carbine and Goodman’s machine gun. Hertzog and Young hefted their flame suppressors. A quick glance confirmed the assaulters’ sighting down their barrels at the roof.

Oh God,
he thought.
I didn’t sign up to fight children.
He
tried to push his doubts away. The law was the law. You didn’t negotiate with unregulated magic users.

“SOC Element,” came Reynolds’s voice over the commlink. “This is TOC. Aero-1, sweep perimeter. Pyro-1, go hot.”

Harlequin dove from the SOC helicopter and rocketed around the school. A figure leaned out of the SOC Kiowa, pumping his fist. His arm erupted in bright orange fire.

Harlequin’s voice came over the commlink, “Aero-1 pass complete. All’s quiet. South Burlington police have the perimeter secure.” A pause, then, “Pyro-1 is hot and ready. SOC Assault-1 and -2 are good to go.”

“Roger that,” Reynolds said. “South Burlington SWAT has been kind enough to provide perimeter and entry from the ground. I’m patching them through now.”

A short crackle was followed by a thick New-England-accented voice. “This is Captain Rutledge with South Burlington PD tactical. Perimeter is secure. Students and faculty are clear, fires are out, and we’ve got the first two floors locked down. Your Selfers are above there somewhere. My men are withdrawn under sniper cover. You’re good to go when ready.”

“Roger that,” said Reynolds. “Okay, Aero-1. Your show. Call ’em out.”

Harlequin streaked over the roof and lit gracefully on the SOC helicopter’s skid. He reached inside and produced a microphone.

“This is Captain Thorsson of the US Army Supernatural Operations Corps,” his voice blared over a bullhorn mounted beneath the Kiowa. “You are accused of unlawful magic use in violation of the McGauer-Linden Act. You have thirty seconds to surrender yourselves. This is your first and only warning.”

The only sounds that followed were the roaring engines of the Kiowas.

“Christ,” Cheatham whispered. He had two high-school-aged girls of his own.

“We have to do this,” Britton said, his voice hollow in his own ears. “They’re walking bombs.”

Cheatham set his jaw, “They’re probably hiding down there, scared as hell.”

Dawes was scared as hell, too. Britton put his hand on Cheatham’s shoulder. “Dan. I need you focused.”

Cheatham didn’t look at Britton. “I’ll do my job, sir.”

“‘You’re only a Selfer if you run,’ Dan,” Britton parroted Harlequin’s words. “They could have turned themselves in. They had a choice.”

Cheatham framed a reply, but was cut off by Reynolds’s voice blazing over the commlink. “All right! That’s it! Element! Go dynamic!”

“To arms, Pyro-1. Let’s smoke ’em out,” Harlequin’s voice crackled over the channel. “Spare the good Captain Rutledge’s men and light her up, stories three and higher.”

The Pyromancer stepped onto the helicopter’s skid, the bright fire extending to engulf his entire body. He raised his arms, and the flames curled in on themselves, shifting from red to orange to white. The air shimmered around them, then folded in on itself as the Pyromancer thrust his arms forward. The flames rocketed outward with a roar that competed with the helicopter engines.

The fire struck the building just above the second floor, punching through the windows. A moment later, the remaining glass burst outward. Flames arced upward to paint the night sky. The SOC Kiowa circled the building as the Pyromancer continued his strike until the entire floor burned brightly.

Britton shuddered. If the kids weren’t burned alive, they’d have the choice of fleeing downstairs, under the guns of the police snipers, or out to the roof, where the Kiowas waited.

“Reel her back a bit,” Harlequin’s voice came over the comm-link, amused. “We want to give them a chance to surrender. Okay, Support! It’s your big day! Let’s get on that roof. There’s one egress. Think you can cover that?”

Britton pushed the rotors as hard as he dared. He cleared the roof sides with inches to spare and felt his bones jar as the helicopter made a textbook hard landing. The four assaulters leapt off—Goodman and Dawes covering the entrance. Young and Hertzog were already coating the roof with foam to keep the fire from spreading. The rotor wash peeled the tar paper back, sending the thick gravel beneath skittering across the rooftop.

The metal door flew open, and the boy and girl from the video raced out, coughing and beating at their smoldering hair.

“Contact front!” Young called, then screamed at the kids to get down.

Britton pulled hard on the collective, adjusting the rotor pitch to get the Kiowa airborne. The girl broke from the doorway, reaching out toward the helicopter. The dancing gravel shuddered, spun, and coalesced into a humanoid shape, the stone stretching and flowing together into a man-shaped stone creature, eight feet tall. The tar paper lowered as the gravel beneath drew up into the giant form, its huge shoulders reflecting the flickering firelight from veins of quartz. The rock elemental gripped one of the helicopter skids with a gravelly fist, yanking down hard. There was a roar, a whine of metal, and the Kiowa lurched to one side. Britton heard successive bangs as the rotors collided with the rooftop, breaking into pieces. The helo’s body grounded against the roof, shielding the team from the splintering blades, which sounded against its metal cabin with sharp reports.