The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (27 page)

Kuala Lumpur simmered in a haze that clung to the streets like finely strewn cotton candy. On her wrought-iron balcony, Sophia sucked in a thick lungful and looked over at the Petronas towers in the distance, then down at the hilly street below. Only men walked alone here. She watched two standing opposite her safe house. One had a shaved head and wore insectile sunglasses and a navy jumpsuit winged with white stripes. Cigarette smoke wafted from his mouth. His companion was pudgy and slightly unshaven. He wore tiny round glasses and a sweat-dampened business shirt in pale blue. They weren’t intelligence and they definitely weren’t shocktroopers. She decided they were in the neighborhood for their own less than savory business. As long as they kept out of her way, they could do as they pleased.

She spotted DC and Chickenhead approaching from the northeast corner, plastic shopping bags in hands. They were dressed as tourists, in shorts and T-shirts, but didn’t act like it. They barely said a word as they walked up the hill. She watched them cross to her side of the street to avoid getting too close to the two men on their left.

She removed a small creased business card from her pocket and held it under the flame of her zippo. The pottery business was no more, and now the Akhana darknet code would also be no more. She’d committed the code to memory, and she’d promised Freeman she would destroy the card. Dropping it on the balcony floor, she watched it burn to ash.

She limped back inside the room; the fracture in her leg was still healing. The rest of her team had finished their assigned tasks and were collapsed under a wobbly ceiling fan. Damien was the only one on his feet, pacing.

‘Where’s Grace?’ he said.

‘She left,’ Sophia said.

‘When?’ he snapped.

‘About ten minutes ago.’

Grace had had an agreement with Freeman. She would help the Akhana secure the asset, then take the information she needed and move on. There was nothing more to be said, really. Sophia didn’t particularly trust Grace: she was too guarded, too closed off. But she had to admit Grace had more than pulled her weight in Manila and Boracay. An unspoken respect had emerged between them, which Sophia was careful not to confuse with friendship. She was glad to see Grace go, if only to relieve the stress on the team. Jay didn’t like her, Nasira was suspicious of her, Damien clearly still had feelings for her. Without Grace, things were simpler.

‘Which way did she go?’ Damien said.

Sophia gripped his shoulder with her good hand, holding him in place. ‘She’s gone.’

Damien stared at her, his hazel eyes dark. She felt his shoulders roll forward and his gaze drifted to the floor.

Chickenhead and DC reached the top of the stairs, slick with perspiration. Sophia left Damien to his own thoughts and approached them. DC looked exhausted.

‘That’s everything covered,’ he said to her.

Sophia cast her eyes across her group. Nasira sat on one of the crates in the center of the room sharpening her knife. Jay leaned against a cracked wall, arms folded.

‘For anyone who’s interested, the skipper hasn’t left yet,’ she said. ‘He’s leaving at 0800 tomorrow, bearing north for the nearest Shadow Akhana base. In Ho Chi Minh.’

‘Can’t we just take the sub to America?’ Jay said.

‘That would take weeks. We don’t have that much time.’

‘How much time do we have exactly?’ DC said.

‘According to Schlosser, two days from now. The same day Cecilia promised to roll out a new security program.’

‘Something tells me she’s not talking about pepper spray,’ Nasira said.

‘And you think this is Seraphim?’ Damien said.

‘It’s her pet project,’ Sophia said. ‘Whatever’s happening, it’s happening in two days.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Damien said. ‘I mean, really.’

‘We don’t need to have this discussion now,’ Sophia said. ‘As for our kit—’

‘No, I think we do.’ Damien looked around the group. ‘We all do.’

‘The Fifth Column killed people very close to us,’ Sophia said. ‘People we cared about very much. Including an asset who was extremely valuable to us.’

‘Turns out they weren’t interested in capturing Schlosser,’ Nasira said.

‘I know how Cecilia thinks,’ Sophia said. ‘She thinks this will crush me. And you. That’s how she’s trying to weaken us. By killing people we can’t protect.’ She paused. ‘And it does crush me. It really does.’

Nasira folded her arms. ‘You’re angry.’

‘How can I not be?’

‘Is that the right emotion to be riding in on?’ Nasira said.

‘I don’t have much left to lose right now,’ Sophia said. ‘None of us do. That makes us dangerous to them.’

‘Not if we wind up dead,’ Nasira said.

‘Speaking of dead,’ Jay said, ‘what’s our armory looking like?’

Sophia wasn’t going to sugar-coat it. ‘Minimal at best.’ She stepped forward and placed her P99 pistol on one of the crates. ‘Empty.’

DC put his Sig P329 subcompact pistol next to her P99. ‘I’m not letting you do this alone,’ he said. ‘Five rounds.’

She noticed his hands were shaking and wondered how long he’d been short on amphetamines. Must be at least three days.

She watched the rest of the group carefully, waiting to see who would speak next.

‘Fuck it, I ain’t going down without a fight,’ Nasira said, placing her MP7 on the crate. ‘And I sure as hell ain’t letting you walk into another war zone. Not without me.’

She removed the magazine on her P229, pried three rounds out, then put the magazine back into the pistol and rested it beside her MP7. She put the three rounds upright, beside Sophia’s P99.

‘Three for me, three for you,’ she said. ‘MP7 has one full mag.’

‘You might need a little more than that, guys,’ Jay said from the back wall.

‘What we need and what we have are two different things,’ Sophia said. ‘I’m not going to lie to you: I don’t know what sort of storm we’re riding into. And I understand if you walk away from this. That would be the smart thing to do. I’ve already asked enough.’

‘But there’s more, right?’ Chickenhead said.

Sophia shrugged. ‘I’m tired of running. If the bloodshed of the last sixty years has gone unnoticed by you, if you don’t care that the Fifth Column has a stranglehold over the whole goddamn world, then you don’t need to be here. But if you want to give it one last shot before Cecilia burns everything to a cinder—because, fuck it, what else do we have to lose—then throw in your hand.’

Chickenhead reached for his L22, which was resting in the corner. ‘When I have grandkids and they ask me about all the horrible things that happened at the turn of the twenty-first century, I want to be able to say that I saw what was really happening and I did something to stop it.’ He placed his L22 on the crates, barrel facing the window. ‘One mag.’

‘Is there anyone who is having second thoughts about this?’ Sophia said.

‘Pretty much all of us,’ Damien said.

‘You’re out?’ Sophia asked.

Damien paused, eyes on the weapons in the center. He shook his head. ‘I want to see this through.’

Jay was the last one left. Sophia wasn’t sure if he was in, even with Damien already in.

He pointed to her arm, currently in a sling. ‘That’s your shooting arm. Will you be good to go?’

‘It’s fine. I’m just keeping it out of action for now.’ She nodded at the beer in Jay’s hand. ‘And if you’re joining us, that’s your last beer. When we hit the ground, I need your body in ketosis not a hangover.’

‘Not like I have much else scheduled this week,’ Jay said.

‘You’re in?’ Sophia said.

Jay placed his beer on a crate and straightened up. ‘My chips are on the table. All in.’

Given their lack of resources and the odds, Sophia had expected someone to drop out. But no one had.

‘OK, that was a great pep talk,’ Jay said. ‘Now what toys have you brought us?’

Chickenhead dumped the contents of the plastic bags he and DC had been carrying on the floor. He looked up at Damien and Jay. ‘Sneakers size twelve and thirteen, right?’ Having left the overalls and sneakers on the submarine, the team had nothing to wear but jeans and flip-flops—and in Damien’s case, not even flip-flops. They needed proper clothes before they could go anywhere.

Jay began picking through the pile of stuff Chickenhead and DC had purchased. ‘Daypacks, sneakers, two satphones, cell chargers, US adapters, batteries, three night-vision goggles, two big pairs of fuck-off steel pliers, tinned food, bobby pins, penlights, pens, disposable razors, roll of garbage bags, hammocks, bandaids, electrical tape, paracord, aspirin, sleeping pills, US currency, cigarettes, lighters, lipstick—red, my favorite—nylon stockings, condoms.’ Jay shrugged. ‘Hey, we can have a good weekend in Vegas with all this.’

DC placed three GPS receivers on the crate. ‘We need to distribute these.’

Sophia added a smartphone to the pile. ‘This was Grace’s.’

Jay fished a smartphone out of his pocket. ‘I grabbed the other one,’ he said.

Sophia tried to suppress the image of Jay kneeling beside Freeman’s dead body and taking the cell from his pocket.

‘Body armor?’ Nasira asked.

‘Negative,’ DC said. ‘Would take our contact a week to get some in town here.’

‘So what’s the plan then?’ Damien said. ‘Last I heard the United States is a no-fly zone.’

‘According to FEMA, military and aid are exempt,’ Sophia said. ‘Which is why we’re hitching a ride on cargo planes. As of tonight, we are United Nations aid workers.’

Everyone was silent. Even Jay seemed impressed.

‘How’d you swing that?’ he said.

‘The World Food Programme’s aviation service doesn’t actually own or directly operate aircraft,’ DC said. ‘It’s chartered out.’

‘It’s chartered to a contact of ours,’ Sophia said. ‘The WFP are shipping ready-to-use supplementary food to the US at 2200 hours tonight. Two Antonov cargo aircraft will fly to New York and two to Miami. We split into two teams. Team A goes to New York, Team B to Miami.’

Jay held his hand up. ‘Can I vote Miami? I mean, I never really got that suntan.’

‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘You’re Team A.’

‘As long as A stands for awesome,’ Jay grumbled.

‘Team A is Jay and Damien,’ Sophia said. ‘Team B is DC, Nasira, Chickenhead and myself.’

‘How come we get the small team?’ Jay said.

‘Your ego counts as two,’ Nasira said.

Damien was counting on his fingers. ‘Three,’ he said. ‘Your ego counts as—’

Jay batted Damien’s fingers away. ‘Shut up.’

‘There are four Seraphim transmitters in America,’ Sophia said. ‘Team B, my team, will be responsible for the transmitter in Miami. Team A has it a little easier.’ She paused. ‘Well, New York’s kind of hairy right now, so I won’t say easier.’ She ignored Jay rolling his eyes. ‘But we have assets there and some of them may still be in place.’

‘
Some
of them?’ Jay said.

‘Your first transmitter isn’t too far. It’s concealed beneath a decommissioned air force base on Long Island. From there, you’ll need to make your way to Fort Greely in Alaska.’

Jay did a double take. ‘What? That’s fucking miles away.’

‘Four thousand to be exact,’ DC said. ‘You won’t be able to make it by car. But your identities should hold up at airports.’

‘It all depends on how discreet you are in New York,’ Sophia said.

‘I don’t like that depending part,’ Damien said, shooting Jay a sidelong glance.

‘Hey, when was that facial recognition meant to kick in?’ Jay said. ‘One, two years?’

‘2015,’ Damien said.

‘Let’s hope they’re still working on it,’ Sophia said.

‘How much time do we have?’ Jay asked.

‘Like I said, two days. We’re jumping back through timezones so it’s still two days when we arrive.’

‘And do we have a, uh, plan for infil and exfil on these locations?’ Damien said.

‘No, but you’ll have fifteen hours to think it over on the ride there,’ DC said.

‘You also need to get as much sleep as possible,’ Sophia added.

She knew that on these cargo planes sleep was pretty much impossible, which was why she’d added a small mountain of Ambien to today’s shopping list.

‘Damien, take a GPS receiver; Jay, smartphone,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a smartphone; DC, receiver.’

DC handed her the third receiver. ‘You take a receiver and a smartphone,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

Sophia took the receiver and reluctantly pocketed it. ‘Fine. DC, you take a satphone. Damien, the other one’s yours. You’ve stored the phone numbers, right? We won’t be putting SIM cards into the smartphones so the satphone’s your only point of contact. Keep it charged and don’t lose it.’

Jay nodded. ‘Copy that.’

‘Once you reach land, recon the base at night, get some sleep during the day. That should be easy since at that stage your sleeping patterns will be reversed. We stay low and we only move at night.’

‘Where’s
your
next stop?’ Jay said.

‘The fourth transmitter’s in Nevada,’ Sophia said.

‘As soon as we hit the first transmitter, the Fifth Column—Cecilia—will know you’re in town,’ DC said to Sophia. ‘There’s nothing stopping her from slapping your face on every watch list and television channel across the country. You won’t be able to get ten miles near an airport.’

‘Your faces are still safe,’ she said. ‘You can fly across, recon the base, while I take ground transportation. Might take a couple days. Even if I don’t get there, at least you can go ahead without me.’

‘That’s one fucking tight schedule,’ Nasira said.

‘Actually, it might not be necessary,’ Sophia said. ‘The transmitters—what’s their frequency band? I mean, what can they operate on?’

She tried to remember Adamicz’s notes and what Freeman had told her, but no one had mentioned the limits of the frequency.

DC cleared his throat. ‘As low as one hertz right up to 2300 megahertz.’

An idea started forming in her head. ‘How large are the capacitor banks installed at these transmitters? Are they high voltage?’

‘You’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’ DC said.

Jay looked confused. ‘What is she suggesting? Seriously, I have no idea.’