An Armageddon Duology (21 page)

L
opez and Houston
entered the burning compound. Their forms wrapped in black, packs strapped to their backs, and pistols in their hands as they jogged cautiously among the scrap and human remains scattered before them. They paused over several bodies, checked them, and moved on toward the compound’s entrance.

With weapons raised they approached, stairs on either side leading to a loading platform in front of the enormous roll-up shutter door. Two bodies lay on each side of the stairway, blood pooling underneath them. Houston sprinted up the right-hand steps and examined the large locks barring entrance. Lopez continuously scanned around them with his weapon raised.

“Francisco, it’s no good!” she cried. “We’re going to have to blow it.”

“I counted fifteen. They can’t have had more, could they?”

Houston sprinted down the steps, unstrapping her pack. “I don’t know. Paranoid as all fuck, so I won’t put anything past them. We need the charges from your pack.”

Lopez slung his bag to the ground and removed several gray blocks with detonators. He handed them to Houston who returned to the door as he resumed his scanning. Placing the explosive on the locks, she set the charge and sprinted down the steps. They grabbed their bags and rounded the corner of the building, constantly alert for hostile movements or sounds. Houston raised a controller.

“Three, two, one...”

She pressed the bottom and a blast shook the building. After several seconds, they came back around the wall and ran to the loading platform. Twisted steel and smoke greeted them, as did an enormous hole in the shutter door the width of a small car.

Houston laughed. “Just meant to break the locks. I need a course on explosive yields.”

She removed a flashlight and they stepped into the building through the hole, careful to avoid the sharp and smoking edges. The air inside the place was stale, almost metallic tasting, the acrid smoke from the blast mingling with the stored smells of machines and dust. The echoing of their footsteps made it clear that the space was vast and open, but it was too dark to see much beyond the direct beam of the light, which only revealed the reflective hulls of large shapes.

Lopez led her arm. “Try the wall. Lights.”

Houston scanned the beam across the nearby wall and located a set of switches. Lopez faced away from her with his gun raised in anticipation. She flipped the switches together in one motion.

Ceiling-high bulbs winked to life with a buzz. Dim at first, the bulbs slowly waxed to full brightness, their combined numbers across the length of the warehouse causing the pair to squint as their eyes adjusted.

“Holy shit, Francisco.”

They stared down rows and rows of enormous bladed aircraft. The machines were variable, all devoid of a cockpit or other indication of a pilot’s chair. Some of the smaller units sported large cameras. The larger drones were outfitted with an array of cargo, all of it dangerous.

Lopez walked up to one of the larger ones, bulbous, metallic shapes strapped to its underside. “Bombs.”

“Looks like,” said Houston. “And those are aircraft sized machine guns on that one. Can you imagine the bullets?” She swung her gaze across the interior. “There’s got to be forty or fifty in here. It’s the drone motherlode.”

Lopez got to one knee and crossed himself. “At least it wasn’t for nothing.” Houston placed her hand on his shoulder.

“It had to be done,” she said, staring across the warehouse, seeming to see beyond it.

“It makes us as much murderers as them.”

“And the alternative?” She knelt down beside him. “We knew the moment we canvased this place that the drones were here. Stupid to put the place surrounded by hills, but it was muscled up. We weren’t going to be able to convert them to our cause. It was either more drone attacks or we fight this war.”

“Killing in war only makes it necessary, not moral.” He stood up, his composure returning. “It’s still killing, and we just left the biggest body count we ever have.”

She placed her hand on his face and looked into his eyes. “I know. I know it hurts you. And I know you do this only because you see that we had to. You’ll ask your God for forgiveness. And I know you’ll mean it. But, meanwhile, we need to bring in the cavalry.”

“FBI?”

“Yes. This changes everything.” She held up a plastic bag with several phones. “And we got these.”

“You don’t think they’d be stupid enough to leave a trail?”

Houston shook her head. “Not Fawkes, but he’s got an army now. You’re only as secure as your weakest link.” She looked back outside toward the carnage. “Lots of bodies. Lots of hires. Lots of potential weak links.” She pulled out her phone.

“How much time do we have?”

“I don’t think the local police or fire will be out here quickly. It’s the middle of nowhere, and these guys weren’t plugged into their systems with a burglar alarm. No, just the opposite. I bet this place is off the grid completely.” She punched a number. “I think our Intel 1 pals will be the first on the scene.”

A voice crackled on the other end.

“Angel? This is Mary. We hit the jackpot. Tell John and the others to get to the address we sent you. And bring fire and a cleanup crew. And body bags. Lots of body bags.”

H
ours later an army
of police cars, FBI vehicles, SWAT vans, and emergency response crews were stationed around the smoldering scene. Spotlights were trained around the compound, and forensics teams darted around the bodies like fireflies with their flashlights and cameras.

Cohen slowly exited one of the black Crown Victorias. She hopped beside the door, removing a pair of crutches, and then proceeded to swing herself toward the stairways. Refusing the aid of several agents and police, she forced her way clumsily up the steps and into the warehouse.

Inside, a group of men stood marveling at the building’s inventory. Flashbulbs exploded around them, documenting the scene.

“John. Frank. Sorry I’m late.”

Savas turned around and the lines of his mouth tightened. It was hard to see her like this. The bruises had only begun to leave her face, the hideous black and green fading to a sickening yellow, scabs slowly being absorbed, hair lost from her left side where stitches ran over her scalp like laces on a game ball. Cohen limped toward them, her breath ragged, her eyes fatigued, yet a light burning within them.

“You didn’t miss anything,” said Savas, taking her arm. She relented and let him help her. “Or rather, we all missed the same thing. Hell of a fireworks display. And just look what Pandora’s box has inside it.”

Cohen whistled. “And no one noticed that someone was piling up large drone orders like this?”

Miller shook his head. “It didn’t look that way on paper. Our two shadows tracked it all down, like tributaries piling into a big river. Then they came here and did this,” he said, gesturing outside. “Who did you say those folks were?”

“I didn’t,” said Savas.

“Mmmm.”

“We’ve counted twenty-five of the largest models,” said Savas, “most equipped to bomb or shoot anything to smithereens. The rest are reconnaissance setups, smaller models with different imaging equipment ranging from cameras to infrared, audio—you name it.”

“The bodies outside?”

Savas nodded. “Need to confirm, but facial recognition from snapshots IDed two of them. Former contractors that worked in the Middle East, one ex-army.”

“More mercenaries,” growled Miller. “Fifteen of them, it seems. Your ghosts are better than Jason Bourne.”

“Moving on,” said Savas. “We’ll ID all we can and see what we can find from it.”

“Meanwhile, we’ve put a dent in their attack plans,” said Cohen.

“I hope so.”

“What do you mean?”

Savas sighed. “Fawkes used a bunch of shell companies, crisscrossing aliased orders to stock this place. It was to hide his tracks, hide this place from prying eyes. But I’m starting to think that he’s not the kind of guy to put all his eggs in one basket.”

Miller looked gravely at him. “You think he has more drones.”

“I know he does.”

Savas didn’t want to believe his own words. He needed a win, the kind of win that would let him believe he had declawed this nebulous monster. But the truth was too obvious.

Cohen changed tact. “You said there was a call from Gabriel?”

“Yes. They have a bag of phones. You can guess from where. Angel’s on it now, but it’s beyond her resources. I’m going to go long on this and bring in Simon.”

“Fred Simon of CIA?” she asked. “We haven’t contacted him since—” She caught herself. “Not for a while.”

Miller smiled. “Who’s he?”

“Someone who might can help,” said Savas. “We might also need the NSA to work those phones.”

“More Watchmen?” asked Cohen.

He nodded to her and stared at Miller a moment. “Why don’t you fill in Frank a bit on the group while I get this show wrapped up here. I think the usefulness of certain secrets has diminished greatly given the current circumstances.”

“About damn time,” whispered Miller under his breath.

Savas smiled wanly. “Be careful what you ask for, Frank. Ignorance can be bliss.”

S
avas and Cohen
sat in the back of one of the old Crown Vics as it sped toward Manhattan on I-80. The sun arced over the factories and former swamplands, pouring a bronze coating over the buildings and waterways. Savas found it increasingly difficult to keep track of the days, one rolling into another on minimal sleep and maximal stress. But now, finally, there were some real breaks in the case.

They had insisted that the car be swept for digital technology, and screened their drivers, allowing only those who agreed to leave their smartphones and similar equipment behind. There was no point in spending the time to explain why. The turn to Luddites had hampered them severely, however, as the attempt to establish a conference call with Fred Simon had demonstrated. They had tried to have two phones on speaker, Lightfoote on Cohen’s phone, Simon on Savas’ cheap model. But it had proved unworkable, the sound quality rendering much of the dialogue incomprehensible. They had settled on speaking to Simon alone.

The CIA agent’s voice was energized. “Our mutual contact at the NSA has managed to make rapid progress. All the calls and texts from the numbers you gave were grabbed over the last week. There wasn’t much to go on. They were careful, but not careful enough. Two of the phones had sent text messages to the same number. I don’t think it was because they were brothers and contacting mom.”

“What was that number?” asked Savas.

“An unregistered phone. Likely a burner. But we don’t need a name to track it.”

“GPS?”

“No. They weren’t that careless. But with enough activity, we can triangulate from the cell towers. They didn’t check the fine print on this model. It checks with the home company a lot for service performance. Pinging back on an hourly basis. They might as well be flashing a light.”

Savas sat up in the seat. He turned to Cohen. “Do you think it could be Fawkes?”

“I doubt it, John.” She swept the crutches from between them and leaned them against the window. “You never know, but my guess is a mid-level operator. But he could lead us to the boss.”

The speaker crackled. “My thoughts exactly.”

Savas nodded. “So where is this phone?”

“Long Island Sound near Glen Cove.”

“In the water? They ditched it?”

“Unlikely,” said Simon. “It’s moving. Speed and direction consistent with a maritime vessel following the coastline.”

Savas and Cohen exchanged glances as she spoke. “Well, that isn’t likely for some low-level grunt. Maybe we have something interesting.”

“Want real-time footage?”

“Are you serious?”

“Soon as we had the coordinates, we dispatched a chopper.”

“An agency chopper in the US? Where from?”

“Need-to-know basis, John.”

“I thought the CIA didn’t operate within US borders.”

“Clinton said it best: it all depends on the definitions of words like ‘is’ or ‘operate’.”

“Mmm-hmmm. You bet your ass I want footage, but we’re pre-smartphone era here, Fred. When the AI in our car tried to kill us, we decided to go Amish.”

Simon barked a laugh. “I understand. NSA has found a way to firewall the damn worm. Slowing them the hell down to fence everything off, but they’ve got server farms now with serious prophylactics. I’m watching real time. It’s a nice boat.”

“I bet it is.”

“With a bunch of folks on it. Hard to make out high-res detail—the bird is at a distance and altitude that won’t give it away. But I can tell you they aren’t milling about socially. Positioned strategically.”

“Bodyguards,” said Cohen.

“Who needs a ship full of muscle?” chipped Simon.

Savas felt the adrenaline kick in. “Fawkes.” He turned to Cohen. “We need a rapid response team. They’ll lose that phone or the owner soon.”

She nodded. “That means air. We’re out of choppers. Too busy flying the VIPs out of the city still.”

“Dammit!”

Simon cut in. “Well, remember those contractors that the CIA doesn’t hire under aliases for work inside the country? Well, why have one chopper when you can have three for ten times the price? The fact that they don’t exist creates some budget magic.”

“You’ve got a spare bird?”

“Already routed toward you.”

Savas punched the seat in front of him, startling the driver. “I owe you big, Fred.”

“Don’t think so, John. I’ve got a ways to go on that other debt I owe you. Speaking of which, how are my kids?”

“They’re good. Spooking my team with their ninja-assassin program. Even Frank was impressed. But they’re delivering big time.” He glanced at Cohen. “We’re a bit busted up and we’ve got a full plate of hackers in the City. I think I know who I’d send for a rendezvous with the boat.”

“I agree,” said Simon, “but we’re pushing them. They’re human, whatever they seem to accomplish.”

Savas sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. “I know, Fred. But right now we all need to be a little superhuman. There’s a monster to fight. I don’t have the manpower to do this. Maybe Frank, but he’s one. And there are some important people we need to question as of several hours ago.”

“I’m with you. Tell them the chopper’s been loaded with some useful gear. But getting on that boat and surviving isn’t going to be as easy as the warehouse.”

“Easy. Right. I’ll tell them. I’m glad you’re with us, Fred.”

“I’m not the only one, John. The Watchmen still have some kick left. Until soon.”

The connection was closed. Savas dialed and held the phone to his ear.

“Yeah, Mary? This is John. That bag of phones? Well, they might have bagged some big game. The guards called a number. Fred Simon traced it. It’s zipping along the Long Island Sound as we talk. We need you two to intercept a boat.”

A muffled voice sounded through the other end. Savas nodded.

“Not to worry. Give me your current position. We’ve got that covered.”