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TO AVOID TRIPPING ANY sensors in the fence, the marines used an extending contraption that resembled a stepladder, only wider across the top. With some grunting and swearing, four guys wrestled the bridge into place, stamped home a couple of power-driven stakes in the feet to hold the bottom steady, and called it done.
“Fire Team 2, with me,” Patrick ordered. “Fire Team 1, hold the back door open.”
The sergeant and four marines swarmed up and over the ladder. Millie and I followed when they signaled the all clear. In a loose formation we trotted to the garage, hopped the low wall, and continued across the open space inside. Our pounding feet seemed loud in the confines of the concrete parking structure.
On the far side, Patrick held up a clenched fist, and everyone stopped and sank to one knee. My head swam from the extra shots of high-octane adrenaline being pumped into my bloodstream. Sounds were clear yet oddly distant, and I had a hard time keeping my thoughts in a straight line.
“Talon 2,” Patrick murmured.
Private Perlmutter scuttled up next to his boss. Perlmutter had a strong Middle Eastern influence baked into his DNA. His dusky skin stretched over sharp, heavy facial bones and was accented by dark hair and eyebrows.
The sergeant said something low in the private’s ear, and the youngster bolted away as if shot from a cannon. He zigzagged across an open expanse of concrete and ornamental grass, jogged up the front steps and paused briefly at the front doors. A second later, he rolled to the side and covered his eyes. Light flashed at the center joint of the entry doors, followed by a mild pop. Smoke wreathed the lock before drifting away.
Perlmutter tugged the door open and disappeared inside.
“Move out,” Patrick growled. He bolted forward, and we followed, jogging with the marines in a diamond formation.
A scorch mark blackened the center mullion of the double doors, and the electric strike had melted to slag. The glass-paned door swung freely when Patrick jerked the handle. The six of us scuttled inside and split left and right. I paused by a planter containing a fake tropical tree.
PFC Benson crouched by the guard Jackson had injected with his weapon of miniaturized dope. Benson secured the man’s hands with zip ties and laid him out beside the desk before taking the guard’s chair. Glowing screens lit his face from the underside. His eyes flicked to Patrick, and the sergeant acknowledged with a thumbs-up gesture.
The interior looked exactly as it had in the drone’s eye view, except smaller. Something I’d missed earlier: above the reception desk hung an antique clock with a dial as large as a car tire, with ornate metal hands and a sepia face. The time was off. It read 11:55, with the second hand clunking its way through the bottom of the dial and laboring up the home stretch.
Tock.
Tock.
Tock.
Patrick touched Millie’s arm and murmured, “Objectives secure, ma’am. We have zero casualties and have encountered only light resistance. Fire Team 1 is holding the route of egress, and Lance Corporal Jackson and Private Benson will hold the lobby. The civilians Alex and John have the vehicles prepped and positioned for evac. We are on plan and on schedule. We are green to go, ma’am.”
“Let’s do it,” Millie ordered. “Lead the way, Sergeant.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.” He pointed at Charles and Perlmutter and issued terse orders. One man ghosted to the left interior door, the other drifted right. To Jackson, he said, “Lance Corporal, get us some eyes in the sky.”
Jackson fired up another toy from his box. I held the door open a crack at his direction, and a larger copy of the micro-drone—this one the size of a sparrow—buzzed through the gap and angled into the sky. I let the door swing closed and edged next to Millie.
“Where is everybody?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems... too easy.”
“This is the part where I say, ‘It’s quiet in here,’ and you say, ‘Too quiet.’”
Both interior doors were locked. Charles and Perlmutter, working in almost perfect synchronization, removed patches the size of Band-Aids from breast pockets and slapped them over the door strikes. Twin tabs were jerked, and both men spun to the side and faced away.
Pop! Pop!
Smoke and sparks spewed from the patches, then dissipated. When the PFCs tried the doors again, they swung open. Perlmutter and Charles vanished through the smoke while Patrick held up a fist, signaling us to hold fast.
We waited.
Tock.
Tock.
Tock.
The atmosphere was surreal.
When I played this scene in my head before we left Chicago, I envisioned blaring lights, sirens, automatic weapon fire, screams, death, destruction, and heart-pounding action. Instead, it was like we were visiting the dentist. Three-thirty in the morning, we were committing a vast number of major felonies, and nobody seemed to notice. Except the clock, which recorded each frame of our lives with a steady beat. Sounds were muted. Lights dim. All we needed was canned music over the internal speakers.
Tock.
Tock.
Almost midnight.
“That’s not freaky at all,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Three hundred or so slamming heartbeats later, a deep voice spoke in my ear. Millie jumped at the same instant—I wasn’t the only one with edgy nerves.
“Talon Actual, Talon 3.”
Patrick said, “Actual, go.”
“Control center 100 meters, left corridor. Copy?”
“One hundred meters, left corridor, aye. Break. Talon 4, Talon Actual.”
“Four, go.”
“Recover and fall back to the lobby. Hold position with One and Two.”
“Recover and fall back to lobby, aye. Hold with One and Two, aye.”
Patrick tapped his ear and said to us, “This way.”
We followed the wide-shouldered marine through the left-hand door at a trot. The ugly beast of a clock chimed a single ding as I passed it.
Midnight.
Beyond the lobby door lay a bland hallway, lined with a collection of offices, conference rooms, a break room, and toilets. For a government facility, I was deeply disappointed. Where were the chains? The iron maidens? The desiccated bodies of tax-evaders hanging by hooks?
A door opened behind me, and I spun around. A beefy guy in a black suit wandered out of the restroom with a magazine flimsy in hand. His eyes popped wide the instant he spotted us. The agent’s hand swept down and came up with a pistol.
“Drop it!” Patrick’s voice pounded my earbud and my eardrum at the same time. “Now!”
The wafer-thin magazine fluttered loose as the Homeland agent cupped his shooting hand to brace it. A low-pitched chatter rattled behind me. The guard’s head shattered, and he slumped to the floor like a split sack of kidney beans.
“Holy fucksticks, dude!” At my feet, the dark-suited Homeland agent sprawled like he wanted to make a snow angel in the floor. Blackish-red blood puddled the tile around his head, and a handgun lay at his fingertips. He was thirty years old, tops.
“I didn’t even hear shooting,” I said.
“Suppressor.” Patrick’s voice came drifting past me.
Millie sucked in a deep breath and gripped my arm. “They... Joe, don’t forget they fired first. At the Drake. Remember Goldie.” Her face had gone creamy pale, and her eyes were wet. It sounded more like something she was saying to reassure herself.
“Yeah.” Well, if she could handle it, I could too. I swallowed the queasiness and led her away from the body and into the nerve center of the server farm.
A perfect circle of workstations ringed the room, probably ten in all, with eight screens in dormant mode. PFC Perlmutter held his rifle on two dweebs pressed against the right wall. They both appeared to be dispensed from the geek pharmacy. Nerd Tablets, for daily use. To prevent computer dysfunction. See a Level II Tech if you experience downtime lasting more than four hours.
Directly opposite the door, the screen at the twelve o’clock position was active, as was the one at the nine o’clock position to my left.
“All secure,” Perlmutter reported.
“Confirmed. Restrain the civilians,” said Patrick. To us, “You have ten minutes, Eagle. We will maintain security.”
“Roger, aye aye, sir.” I pointed to the open workstation on my left. “I’ll take this one.”
She signaled agreement and marched to the unit directly across from the door while Perlmutter zip-tied the nerds and questioned them about the number of guards on duty. Terse masculine voices chattered in my ear as the sergeant confirmed status with his scattered troops. I tuned them out and set to work.
I had a simple job: load the massacre video to as many external sources as possible. News—blog news, not network news—social media sites, and download servers. In other words, vomit the thing all over the Net.
While I was doing this, Millie did the same thing with the cabinet meeting recording.
The input layout of the workstation was more advanced and had more gizmos and doodads than ones I had used before, but the premise remained the same. I touched holographic controls and opened Google. I had a list of thirty sites and had to get through them all in the time allowed, so I had to prioritize.
“Let’s see,” I said to myself. “Start with Mark Scourge’s site...”
The background noise faded as I focused on entering data and syncing the video player with the workstation’s input field. Not that there was a lot of chatter; aside from an occasional laconic report by the marines or sniffles from the control room geeks, sounds were rare. Quiet intensified. At one point, I imagined I could hear the ticking of the lobby clock as it struggled from one second to the next—tock... tock... tock—but in the end convinced myself it was only an echo in my head.
The air conditioner was set to nut-freezing. I clamped my fingers under my crossed arms to keep them from turning into icicles, and my nose started running. Despite the temperature, a bead of sweat tickled the side of my neck.
Every minute, Patrick called out the time remaining. I had made it through ten sites when his monotone “Six minutes” came through my earbud and from the sergeant himself. He knelt by the door and watched the corridor. Perlmutter kept a close eye on the techs, in case they broke out in some fighting style they learned from Call of Duty: The New Millennium. Millie pattered away at her server, shoulders hunched. I had an unnerving urge to go rub the tension out of them for her.
Great timing, asshole. Secret mission and you want to give your new boss a back rub.
Did she really mean all that bullshit about wanting me to help? To get things organized and jobs done? It seemed farfetched—
“Talon Actual, Talon 1!” Something in Jackson’s voice sent a tingling down the back of my neck.
“Actual, go,” Patrick radioed.
“Convoy of numerous emergency vehicles, converging this pos. Repeat, beaucoup bogies, flashing lights and sirens, inbound this pos.”
“Dammit,” Millie cursed. “We must have tripped a silent alarm somewhere.”
“Or somebody didn’t check in when they should.” Patrick regarded the two techs for a long moment, possibly considering how quickly he could extract the information. Or how to use them as human shields? “All right, ma’am, it’s time to unass the AO.”
“Agreed,” Millie said. “I’m done anyway.” She left her workstation, and with a few key strokes, I did the same.
“Talon 1, Actual,” Patrick barked.
“Talon 1, go.”
“Set charges at the gate, fall back to front lobby, regroup with Talon 2 and 4, hold position. Await further.”
“Aye aye. Bogies are rolling hot, ETA five mikes.”
“Roger that. Haul ass.”
“Aye-fucking-aye, boss.” Talon 1 sounded more than a little breathless, as if he were talking and running at the same time.
“All right, people, listen up.” A glacier couldn’t have been colder, or more formidable, than Staff Sergeant Patrick. I was glad he was on our side. “Homeland QRF will be here in five minutes. I suspect the alarm we tripped contained a video stream, so they know they have armed intruders. They’re bringing the house. We will exit the building through the back door, follow the walkway to the east—left as you exit—and enter the parking garage at maximum speed, with suppressing fire being laid down. From there, we will cross the garage at the lower level, same as the entry, protected from incoming fire. Team One will cut the fence to speed our egress. We won’t bother with the scaling ladder. The escape vehicles will be there, waiting. Understand?”
We nodded, and Patrick flicked a glance at Perlmutter. “On point, Marine. Eagle to follow, then Feather. I will bring up the rear.”
“Aye aye,” belted out the lean, dark-eyed Perlmutter. He flashed through the door and pivoted left. Disappeared.
I swallowed something mean and hairy that wanted to come right back up. Millie stood beside me as we waited for Patrick to give us the signal.
“Go,” the sergeant ordered.
I exited first with Millie crowding right behind me. Perlmutter paused at the end of the hall, by another security door. He slapped an exploding Band-Aid to the latch, and it burned through the lock in a puff of smoke. Behind me, a flash of heat and boom shook the hallway. Sergeant Patrick had dragged the two techs into the hall. Smoke billowed from the control room.
“Thermite grenade,” he answered my raised eyebrow. “Control room is slagged. Move.”
We rushed to follow Perlmutter, who had disappeared into the next room. I peeked inside, and the marine beckoned me onward. It was the server room. Rack after rack of stacked servers, humming and whirring and clucking to themselves.
The radio crackled in my ear. “Talon Actual, Talon 1.”
“Actual, go,” Patrick radioed.
“Two tangoes have dismounted vehicles, are at the barrier. All Talon elements in the lobby.”
“Roger. Hold position.”
“Holding.”
I glanced at Millie and indicated the racks of servers. “Did we bring any more thermite thingies? We could fuck over the Homeland people pretty hard.”
“Who’s a revolutionary now?”
I laughed. “Bomb-Throwing Joe, that’s me.”
Patrick came up behind us. “We don’t have very long before—”
A low boom shook the building.
“—they try and open the gate.”
“That would be Homeland cops blowing up,” I surmised. “Correct?”
The sergeant bared his teeth in a feral grin. “See how they like that shit for a change.”
We hurried along the outside row of servers, following Perlmutter’s crouched shuffle-run. He held his weapon at the shoulder, and his cheek pressed against the stock, flicking the weapon to point down any opening we passed before returning it forward.
An exit sign glowed above the door at the end of the row. Perlmutter paused, waited for a go-ahead from his sergeant, and shoved the emergency exit handle. The alarm went off the second he shoved through, screaming a falsetto note of anger. Millie pushed past me when I hesitated before crossing the threshold. If there was a line of gun-toting Revivants on the other side, I’d rather find out before going through. Millie was made of sterner stuff, apparently.
Nothing blew up, so I shoved out past the closing door and found Perlmutter, kneeling at the far corner of the building, peering around the edge.
“Talon 1, Actual,” Patrick growled. When the back door swung shut, the screaming alarm diminished in volume.
“Talon 1, go.”
“Report. Any contact?”
“Negative, Actual. Two tangoes down at the gate, appear Kilo-India-Alpha. Estimated twenty-plus tangoes are dismounted and fanning out across my front, inside the fence. They are advancing in overwatch. Be advised, they will have us flanked in one, maybe two mikes.”
“Withdraw through the back of the building, post haste, Talon 1. Repeat, all elements to withdraw through the rear exit.”
The marine repeated his instructions.
“Did he say twenty-plus?” I hissed.
Millie nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s a lot of guys. Hey, did you know my code name was Feather? What’s that about?”
“The first choice was Bird Shit.”
“Oh,” I said. “Feather’s good.”