Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] (45 page)

Ibrahim had left his radio on transmit, as every member of Exodus was eager to hear what happened next.
“Rasheed, cover our exit. We are heading into the center. The launch pad is clear. No sign of life. He’s here somewhere. Carmen, check over there . . . Wait . . . What was that?”

My boot impacted the cell door. I smashed it as hard as I could, over and over, the impacts traveling up through the bones of my feet. “Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. Bob!” The lock was too heavy. Shen materialized at my side, having lifted a large ring of keys from the dead jailer. He started trying keys.
Oh, God, my brother is dead. “
Bob!
Bob!”

The ancient lock clicked open with an audible snap. I shoved it open and tore toward the body.

Ibrahim’s radio was sending the sound of nervous, heavy breathing, in the distance someone else on his team says something that sounded like
there’s something in the water.

I grabbed the arm of the dead man and pulled him over. He was a huge, bald Caucasian. The Exodus operatives raised their lights to help me see. I stared into the dead man’s face.

The radio transmitted the sound of splashing, then gunfire
.

I stared into the dead man’s face. Involuntary tears started to roll down my cheeks.

“Show yourself, demon!”
Ibrahim bellowed.

It wasn’t Bob. It was somebody else.

The radio was a cacophony of chaos. The noise from the silo was indescribable. Something had gone horribly wrong.

I sprang to my feet. “Let’s go.” I ordered. The three Exodus operatives were standing there, speechless as they listened to their command channel.

There was a sliding, metallic crashing noise from the end of the hall. Somebody had just slammed the main gate. I shined my light down the hallway. Anders stood on the other side of the now locked gate. “So long, Lorenzo.”

“Anders!
” I raised my rifle, but he moved swiftly around the corner. The muzzle of his AK appeared around the wall as he triggered a burst. I narrowly dodged back into the cell as bullets skipped around me.

“It’s nothing personal. We just needed your help, and now we don’t.”

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted, ignoring the screaming and shooting in my earpiece. It sounded like Ibrahim’s team was getting torn apart.

“We needed a way to take Jihan down. Then you showed up. We were afraid something like this would happen, but it was worth a shot.”

There was enough space between the walls and the cell doors that a thin man could squeeze in there and have cover. I leapt across the hall and slammed myself into the next doorway.

“You see, it’s not just about control of The Crossroads. Sure, that’s a plus,” Anders explained patiently. He must have realized that I was trying to get closer as he fired a few more rounds down the hallway to pin me down. “But it is bigger than that, way bigger. You have no idea what Project Blue is.”

“Why don’t you tell me before I kill you, then?”

Anders laughed, that traitorous bastard. “Sala Jihan knew about my part in Blue. Hell, I couldn’t have done it without him. He had to go. The Pale Man’s a loose end. See, when I figured Majestic fucked me, I decided to fuck them right back. Majestic didn’t have the balls to complete Project Blue, but I do.”

I jumped across to the next door. I could hear one of the Exodus operatives doing the same behind me. Anders fired another shot, but was answered by a pair of suppressed shots in response that sparked off the bars.

“Seeing your brother here was a surprise. I hadn’t seen Bob since he helped get me thrown out of the FBI, that self-righteous asshole. He had finally figured it all out, put all his paranoid conspiracy theories to work, and actually ended up with the truth. That’s why I had to grab him.”

Jihan never had Bob.

“Oh, just figuring it out now? Yeah. Sucks, don’t it? Hell, Bob was locked in the basement of the Exchange while you were there. I’ll tell you though, you showing up helped us. It enabled me to get Exodus to do our dirty work for us. That slave we killed back in town? I contacted him beforehand, told him that if he told you a story, I’d sneak him out of the country. We were afraid that the stories about Jihan were true. Personally, I thought they were bullshit, but I’ve seen stranger stuff. I mean, seriously, Majestic agents get to do some freaky shit, but we needed muscle, and that’s where Exodus came in.”

“Did you kill my brother?”

“Not yet. He’s my Lee Harvey Oswald. When he dies, it’ll be on the world news. Not that you’ll be around to see it, because it looks like Jihan is going to fuckin’ kill all of you. Too bad I couldn’t tie up that loose end, but I’ve got another contingency plan in place for him. Kat loses The Crossroads entirely, but Blue is going to get us something a whole lot better.”

I moved again. One more.

“And speaking of loose ends, your hot little woman and your dipshit sidekick? Yeah, Diego’s going to take care of them. We triangulated the radio signals they need to drive your little toy airplane. They’ll be dead soon too, just like you.”

I took a deep breath and jumped for the next doorway, but there were no more gunshots. I was close enough now that I could get a grenade through the bars and not just bounce it down the hallway back into us. I chucked it through the iron. The explosion came a moment later. It shook dust from the ceiling.

Sprinting the rest of the way, I slammed into the bars, shoving my muzzle through, but Anders was already gone down the stairs.

“Everybody okay?” I shouted. I got three quick yes answers.

The padlock was huge, and shooting it would’ve just hit us with lots of ricochets. “Breach it,” I ordered. Phillips moved up, pulling a block of explosive out of a pouch on his vest.

Ibrahim was on the radio again, except I was having a hard time understanding him. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. He was talking, in short, clipped sentences, apparently in Kurdish, obviously in a great deal of pain. He was tying up the command channel, whispering a prayer. I heard him commend his soul to Allah. There were a few more gun shots, then a loud crack.

A moment later, I could hear something else on the radio, a crunching noise, like bones being snapped. Finally another voice came on. I recognized it, and could picture the pale white flesh and solid black eyes. He had warned me not to come back here.

“Trespassers . . . ”
Sala Jihan muttered. Then the radio went dead.

“Jill. Reaper. Come in.”

No answer.

“If you can hear me. Get the hell out of there now. Diego’s coming to kill you.” I flipped back to the command line as I ran through the snow.

“Sword Two, on me. Move up on the pit,”
Fajkus ordered over the radio. There was a huge volume of gunfire coming from that direction now. My team was sprinting through the compound, heading toward the choppers.
“What the hell is going on down there? Somebody answer me!”

“Fajkus! Come in. This is Lorenzo. Anders is a traitor. Watch out.” I panted as I ran. I got no response. It was no surprise. The radio net was in complete disarray. Something very bad was happening at the missile silo.

“Oh God who art in heaven,”
somebody gasped.
“Hallowed be thy name . . .”

“Get off the fucking radio!”
Fajkus ordered.
“Somebody give me a sitrep.”

Then there was screaming. The praying stopped with a series of tearing noises, and that signal died.

“Fajkus. This is Nagano. Retreat. They’re all dead. We’ve got to—Aarrgghh—”
then that one was gone too.

I flipped back. “Jill! Reaper!” I tripped and sprawled face first into the slush. Rolling over, and bounding back to my feet, I had tripped over the body of an Exodus operative. It was dark, but it was obvious that he had died horribly, his chest torn open, white ribs sticking out.

“Lorenzo!”
Jill finally responded.

“You’ve got to get out of there. The Montalbans are coming to kill you.”

“I know. I just shot two of them, I think,”
she replied, sounding rather flustered.
“They showed up, but I had stuck out those claymores just like you showed me. I’m driving now. We’re both okay. I don’t know where we’re going though, I don’t think they’re following me, but I don’t know how they found us.”

“Tell Reaper that they’re triangulating off the radio signal he uses to fly the Little Bird. I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, still running. “Put Reaper on . . . Reaper? What do you see? What’s going on at the silo?”

“A counterattack. Exodus is getting slaughtered.”
Reaper didn’t sound very good. He sounded kind of confused and out of it.
“I . . . I don’t know.”

“What do you see?”

“Something . . . I don’t . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Come on man, focus, I’m going to be there in a second.”

“Don’t go there. Run, Lorenzo. Run away. Get out of there. Get on the chopper and fly away. Please.”
His voice was desperate, and . . . afraid? He was miles away staring at a video screen.

“What is it?” It was unlike Reaper to freak out like this. He was young, but he had seen a lot. He had never choked on me before in all the years we had been doing this together. “What’s going on?”

“Quit yelling at me!”
he cried.
“I don’t know what it is, okay? Just get away from it!”

“Damn it! Reaper, listen to me. Take down Little Bird. The Montalbans found you because of that signal. Take it down now!”

“Okay. Okay. Okay,”
he stammered.
“Here’s Jill.”

“Honey, I’ll be in touch. Just keep driving.”

“Be careful, Lorenzo.”
The line clicked off.

Then the choppers were in view. The four of us tore toward them at a full run, our breath leaving clouds of steam hanging behind us. The one working chopper’s blades were turning fast, only seconds from lifting off. There were a shockingly small number of people milling around near the choppers, and most of them were spread out in a skirmish line between the Halo and the pit, muzzle flashes indicating that they were firing against the silo.

Suddenly the chopper was airborne, blowing snow everywhere in a giant tornado. As I got closer, I could see a figure standing in the open door of the Halo helicopter. I only recognized that it was Svetlana by the big sniper rifle in her bandaged hands. She turned and shouted angrily back into the chopper’s interior, then turned around and gestured for them to go back down to pick up the other survivors.

There was a muzzle flash from inside the chopper, and Svetlana dropped from the back door of the helicopter and plummeted about twenty feet to the ground. She actually landed on her feet, but her legs immediately crumpled, broken beneath her.

“No!”
screamed Phillips as we charged onward.

The rear of the chopper swiveled toward us as it continued to rise, tracers strobing from the door gun down into the Exodus wounded as Anders murdered everyone he could. A lone figure stood in the door, braced against a strut, her blond hair billowing in the turbulent wind around her. Katarina waved.

“Kat!” I shouted as I raised my gun and opened fire at the retreating chopper, but it was moving too quick. “Damn it!” That was our way out.

“Where’s the chopper going?”
Fajkus shouted across the radio.
“Wait, what the hell is tha—”
His radio cut out suddenly.

“Attention, Exodus. This is Katarina. Our business arrangement has, sadly, come to an end.”

We’re screwed.

My team reached the remaining members of Exodus at the LZ. There were only a handful left, and all of them appeared to be injured. Anders had shredded the skirmish line with the chopper’s door gun, and there were screams from the dying. Shen and Phillips tried to help them while Roland attended to Svetlana, who was moaning in the snow, a jagged chunk of bone sticking out the side of her pants.

“Fajkus! This is Lorenzo. Come in.” There was only static on the line. I realized that all of the gunfire from the silo had ceased, and with the chopper getting further away, the compound was gradually quieting. After so much commotion, it was rather disconcerting. I glanced around. “Who’s in charge?”

The shell-shocked Exodus survivors looked at each other, trying to ascertain who was the senior member still standing.

“I believe that would be me.” A deep voice from the direction of the silo. I turned my flashlight on the approaching figures. One large man had a second smaller man over his shoulders in a fireman carry. I recognized them immediately.

“Antoine,” I said, glad to see it was somebody I could count on. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Fajkus is unconscious,” the tall African grunted as he gently lowered the other man to the ground. Fajkus’s parka was covered in blood and torn open in several places. “Everyone else is dead.”

“We have to get out of here,” I said tersely.

“Agreed,” he glanced upward. “Why did the helicopter leave? Why did it fire on us?”

“Long story,” I replied, looking over the carnage. Exodus had been exposed. “Fucking Anders. We can grab some vehicles and head for town.”

“Negative,” Antoine shook his head. “Reinforcements from the mines are blocking the road. They will be here soon.” What went unsaid was that whoever had just killed most of Exodus in the last few minutes was still in the compound with us.

I scanned the compound. Flames were billowing upward from a dozen points and the air tasted like burning rubber and diesel. “Okay, we take the back way out, the way my team came in. We rope down to the valley floor, and then hoof it up the canyon.”

Antoine glanced around at the many wounded, both of us already knowing that many of them were not going to make it. The Plan C escape route was a worst-case scenario even if you were healthy, let alone carrying a bunch of injured. He raised his voice so that everyone could hear. “Exodus, my brothers. Move quickly. Take ammunition from the dead and the other Halo. Everyone that can walk, help those that cannot. Follow Lorenzo. He will show us the way out.”

“Brother,” Shen said. I jumped, adrenaline-soaked nerves expecting another one of those silent, hooded freaks to have shown up, but Shen was just talking to Antoine. The two men embraced. “I’m glad to see you made it.”