‘Alpha Zero Two to Whiskey Six Five Zero,’ Nasira said. ‘We have a flock of birds getting a little too close. Reporting no sign of damage. I repeat, no sign of damage. We’ve got you nice and safe; proceed with your flight path, over.’
From where Sophia was hanging, it was impossible to place the explosives above the magnet as she’d planned to. Instead, she’d have to put them below. Only problem was, the surface curved under. Great. There was no choice now. She let go of the handles and placed her complete trust in the harness.
‘Whiskey Six Five Zero to Alpha Zero Two. Roger that,’ the pilot said. ‘Whiskey Six Five Zero out.’
Removing the explosive charge from the pouch on her chest, she held it against the plane’s exterior with one hand and engaged the magnets with the other. There was a dull smack as the magnets on the charge married to the hull. Now all she needed to do was get back in the helicopter. Alive, preferably.
Gripping the handle, she engaged the winch’s motor. Slowly, it began to reel her back into the helicopter. All she could do was hang on and try not to injure herself. Despite the thermals and arctic gear that covered her from head to toe, the cold air still managed to find its way in. Inside her mask, the howling wind was joined by her chattering teeth.
Cassandra and Renée helped her back into the helicopter. She tried to extricate her harness from the winch but her hands were too numb. Renée did it for her while Cassandra disengaged the magnetic grappling hook and slowly reeled it back inside.
Sophia found a safe corner to sit down, relieved to be on solid ground. Cassandra slid the door shut. Warmth, at last.
The sudden shift in temperature made Sophia’s fingertips burn. She removed her oxygen tank and mask, and all of her clothes, including the thermals. If she kept her thermals on while running around inside the facility, she’d end up passing out from heat exhaustion. She put on her para-aramid vest and strapped her helmet back on. Then she inserted a boron carbide plate onto the front and back of her vest. A bit of extra protection never hurt, she thought as she unzipped her left chest pocket and pulled out a worn iPod already cued up for the White Stripes’ ‘Little Cream Soda’. She plugged it into the speaker system they’d installed in the helicopter.
She was already on the encrypted channel, so she began speaking straight away. ‘Maintain our heading. When the time comes, we’ll give them five minutes to find their parachutes before we blow the charge.’
Nasira lit a cigarette. ‘How generous.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Sophia hit the play button. ‘Make it three.’
Chapter 28
Damien knocked on Jay’s door. Jay opened it, toothbrush shoved in his mouth and toothpaste oozing down his chin.
‘Hey,’ he said, inadvertently spitting toothpaste onto Damien’s T-shirt.
He turned away, leaving Damien to invite himself in. Which he did, six-pack of beer in one hand, limes in the other. Toothpaste was running down Jay’s neck; he disappeared into his en suite, spat a little too dramatically, washed his mouth.
When he returned, he said, ‘And to what do I owe this honor?’
As Damien ripped two bottles from the six-pack, he noticed a scrap of paper on Jay’s desk. There was an email address scribbled on it.
‘We’ve been put on standby tonight,’ Damien said. ‘You got the call, right?’
Jay went hunting for his bottle opener. ‘You think Denton knows she’s coming?’
Damien frowned. ‘What else could it be? Last time we were on standby was a year ago.’
Jay opened his beer for him. ‘And nothing happened.’
‘But this time—’
‘It’s different. I know.’ Jay opened his own beer, then snatched a lime from Damien’s other hand.
Damien snuck a quick look around the place. Clothes were strewn over the carpet and bed, but it wasn’t as messy as he’d expected. There was a television positioned ridiculously close to the bed. Everything else looked pretty much the same as his own place, just arranged in a different way. A less efficient way.
He picked up the scrap of paper; it was only half an email address. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, right,’ Jay said, cutting the lime with his tactical knife. ‘The PT instructor gave me her Twitter.’
‘Twitter?’ Damien said.
‘Yeah, I think it’s a porn site.’ Jay shoved a wedge of lime into Damien’s bottle. ‘Thejayunit.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s my Twitter.’ Jay grinned. ‘Good, huh?’
Damien blinked. ‘That was . . . the best you could come up with?’
Jay slipped some lime into his own bottle and licked his lips. ‘Yeah, jaymachine was taken years ago by some dude in Korea.’ He dropped himself onto the floor at the end of his bed. ‘Besides, it’s not like I can say anything cool. Operating procedures and all that.’
Damien sat beside him. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Jay was silent too. That was unusual in itself. He must be as on edge as Damien felt.
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ Damien said. ‘I mean, before all this.’
‘I have.’ Jay drank his beer, faster than usual.
Since he was letting it lie, Damien moved on. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’
Jay laughed, then fell silent again. ‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Jay shouldered him lightly. ‘You having second thoughts?’
‘No.’ The beer was making his fingers cold. He put it down. ‘I just don’t know how this is going to end.’
‘Yeah, me either,’ Jay said. ‘As long as we look out for each other. That’s what brothers do. And if we make it out alive—’
Damien raised his eyebrows at Jay’s dramatic pause.
‘I make pretty good nachos,’ Jay said. ‘Just saying.’
Damien smiled, but it faded quickly. They sat in silence for a moment longer. All the possibilities ran through his head, and most of them weren’t good.
Jay’s com beeped.
‘You should get that,’ Damien said.
Jay stood up. ‘Twenty bucks says Viagra.’
Damien licked his lips. ‘I’m betting Nigerian banking opportunity.’
Jay checked the com. ‘Nuts.’
‘What was it?’
Jay tossed the com to Damien. ‘What’s she trying to say? Is that a joke?’
Damien checked the com. The message read:
Would you rather have more than enough to get the job done or fall very short? It's totally up to you. Our methods are guaranteed to increase your size by 1–3". Reply YES to see how.
It was Sophia’s signal.
Damien grinned. ‘There’s no need to be ashamed.’
Jay snatched the com off him. ‘Don’t need it, thank you very much.’
‘You have your memory stick?’ Damien asked.
Jay nodded. ‘You?’
Damien tapped his jeans pocket. ‘Where we’re going, there’s no coming back, is there?’
Jay drank the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash can. ‘Yeah well, where we’re coming from, who’d want to go back?’
***
Denton stepped into the oval-shaped security control room, a sports bag in one hand. The room’s otherwise featureless walls were broken by an array of monitors that offered just a sample of the surveillance images transmitted from the 968 cameras strategically placed throughout the Desecheo Island facility. The cameras themselves were on timers controlled by six control-room operators. To Denton’s right, a temperature-controlled compartment held a petabyte array that faithfully recorded everything the cameras could see.
The security chief, a solid man in his late forties with flushed cheeks and ill-fitting glasses, said without looking up from the operator-manned computers, ‘Colonel, could you take a look at this?’
Denton tucked his sports bag under a desk and marched over to the monitor the chief was watching. The screen displayed a radar detection interface that showed the slightly askew, diamond-shaped Desecheo Island and the surrounding ocean up to a distance of fifty klicks, all contained in a circle as wide as the screen itself. Green writing filled the screen images’ corners and there was a column of data on the right-hand side. The only thing he could make sense of were the GPS coordinates of the facility at the bottom of the column, and below them the current time:
03:05 LOCAL
.
Inside the circle, a rectangle of yellow marked the dead center. Outside the rectangle, there was the occasional spurt of green.
Denton crossed his arms. ‘What am I looking at?’
The chief stabbed a fleshy finger at an already marked place on the grid. ‘Here’s where we lost contact with the cargo plane.’
‘What plane?’ Denton snapped.
‘A cargo plane that we lost contact with.’
Denton glared at the chief. ‘I presume we share the same suspicion?’
The man’s attention remained glued to the screen. ‘Uh, something shot it down, but we’re not picking anything up.’
Denton looked back at the screen. The chief’s finger had left a smudged fingerprint. Denton leaned in, but suppressed the urge to wipe it.
‘I’d make that about 600 meters from the facility,’ he said.
‘It’s 641 to be exact, Colonel.’
Denton nodded. ‘That appears to be correct.’
A yellow dot appeared onscreen—on the other side of the island—and then vanished. Denton stared at it, waiting for the mysterious aircraft to reappear. But it didn’t. For a second, he thought he’d imagined it.
‘What was that?’
His voice thundered through the room, making one of the operators jump from his chair.
Denton pointed his comparably slender finger to where he’d seen the dot. ‘We had something right there. Then it disappeared.’ He turned to the nearest operator. ‘You, at workstation five. Play back the radar from the last few minutes. I want an analytical report in two minutes.’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ the operator said.
If Denton hadn’t been here to notice the yellow dot, it could’ve been a good half-hour before any of these numbskulls picked it up. He eyed the chief coldly. ‘Show me the cameras in the BlueGene lab. We’re expecting visitors.’
He knew how Sophia thought. The sudden disappearance of the dot was a distraction. She was hoping it would keep everyone busy while she snuck in from the other side of the island. Denton reached for his headset. He would allow her to get as far as the BlueGene lab. In fact, he was counting on it.
***
Sophia’s com guided her to Jay, courtesy of the virus he and Damien had released into the facility’s intranet. Not that she needed it. She spotted him striding the mostly vacant gray-walled corridor. Fluorescent tubes lit the corridor over-enthusiastically. He wore nothing over his combat vest, possibly to show off the definition in his arms. She imagined his muscles looked better through his eyes than they did through hers. His vest appeared to be bullet resistant to Type III. At least he was sensible.
She doubled her pace until she was beside him, her lab coat flapping behind her.
Jay played it smooth and matched her pace. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Where’s Damien?’
‘Catching up. As usual.’
‘That’s a pity. You two make a good couple.’
‘He’s my brother. Like a brother, anyway.’ Jay gave her a sideways glance. ‘I don’t look . . . you know. Do I?
Sophia allowed herself a small grin. ‘All I’m saying is your inflated masculinity must be overcompensating for something. Have Doctor Montoya release the nitrous oxide and then meet me at the vending machine west of the BlueGene lab. Alone. He’s our in-place defector.’
‘In-place defecator. Got it,’ Jay said.
‘Defector.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just said that.’ Jay ran a hand through his hair. ‘We did what you asked. I’m guessing it worked, yeah?’
‘Of course it did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here casting doubt on your sexual orientation.’
She showed him her com’s screen. On it, the control panel for the facility’s security cameras. Face recognition had been disabled, among other select features. She didn’t bother explaining anything else. He knew the drill.
‘Are you by yourself?’ he said.
‘Of course not. And neither are you. If you have cold feet, now’s the time to say so. From this point on, I require nothing less than your full commitment.’
‘I told you, I’m in.’ Jay drew to a halt at the elevators and removed a plastic tube of M&M’s Minis from his hip pocket. ‘M&M?’
She looked down at the tube. It was already half empty. ‘You have ten minutes,’ she said.
Chapter 29
Benito Montoya wore his lab coat over a white business shirt. Pinstriped lavender; clearly a special occasion. But not special enough for him to bother shaving, Sophia noticed. He looked more stressed than she felt. And she was feeling a metric ton of stress right now.
She approached the vending machine casually. When he saw her, there was a flicker of surprise, covered by his best attempt at boredom. As she closed on him, he greeted her as nonchalantly as he could manage, but his unease was hard to ignore.
She shook his hand. When he took it away, he noticed the double-sided sticky tape stuck to the bottom of her palm. She tore it off and folded it over itself to avoid smudging.
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be needing your fingerprints.’
‘Denton will be expecting you to sneak into the facility.’
‘He’ll be doing more than just expecting me,’ she said. ‘He’ll let me in, let me retrieve the Chimera vector code, then capture me. I wouldn’t expect any less. In ten minutes, meet us at the BlueGene lab.’
‘Right. And then what?’
‘If we’re the only ones standing, come on in.’
‘And if the Blue Berets are still awake?’
She winked at him. ‘If you did your job properly, they won’t be.’
***
The ceiling, walls and floor of the BlueGene lab were a bland white. Grids of fluorescent lights stung Sophia’s eyes. A Blue Beret lay sprawled before her, unmoving. She sniffed the air, then stepped over him. With Nasira covering everything outside her field of vision, she continued further into the lab, to find more than two dozen Blue Berets lying around in calm, relaxed positions. She counted them. Thirty to be exact. Benito had used the correct amount of nitrous oxide. As instructed. It was better than she’d hoped for. They were completely sedated.