Objekt 221 Page 4

  Ahab Everson nodded. He looked down at his watch and then up to the sky.

  “Full dark,” he said. “Shift change in 20. Get in position.”

  The other five men nodded and split up into their pre-arranged spots.

  * *

  Nineteen and a half minutes later, the door opened and the second sentry emerged from the low concrete building. It was not SOP, but he left the thick steel door open behind him. The two men were backlit as they talked but, more importantly, it rendered their night vision nearly useless. The man going off shift bummed a cigarette and they both stood and laughed—recounting stories of the day.

  “Now,” Ahab whispered into his throat mic.

  Pop, pop.

  Kill, kill.

  The two sentries dropped to the ground and the six Wraiths immediately moved in. The two men were dragged around the corner of the building and covered with a thermal blanket printed with jungle camouflage. When the dead men were stored away, all six soldiers stacked up alongside the door of the building. Willie Cole, call sign Salad, brought up a small wrist-mounted computer and started tapping away.

  “Connection established,” Salad said. He was looking at the LCD screen on the unit, rapidly pressing different commands. “Cameras are down.”

  Immediately after he said that, all six Wraiths entered the small concrete building.

  Even though they had read the intelligence reports, they were awe-struck.

  * *

  It was a missile silo. Built in 1972. Designed to lay waste to Cuba. Abandoned in 1987. Purchased by Allied Genetics in 2009. According to internal reports, the facility was referred to as “Frenchman’s Flat.”

  The Wraiths were hired to murder everyone in the facility and capture any research that was being done.

  “Countdown begins,” Salad said quietly. “Twelve minutes.” He sat down at the main security terminal in the corner of the room. At this time of night, Frenchman’s Flat was unmanned and security was performed by a combination of the sentries and automated systems.

  He immediately started tapping away at the keyboard in front of him, quietly and quickly unraveling various security features, allowing his team access to the entire facility.

  The heavy steel door slid shut with a muffled whump.

  Ahab Everson checked his wrist computer, as did the rest of his team. There was a line of 20 faces with red Xs over the two sentries killed at the front door. Eighteen more to go.

  He looked over the aluminum railing and then back to the rest of his team.

  “Alright,” he said. “Time to make dreams come true.”

  * *

  The squat building in the center of Port Radnovich was little more than a stair-head. The interior was spacious, but the single room was dominated by a hole in the middle of the floor, ringed by a circular staircase that ran loops 12 stories deep. There was one door, a security cubicle, and a freight elevator—which Salad had shut down after verifying it was empty.

  Commander Everson led the four other team members quickly and quietly down the stairs. Personal preferences aside, the Wraiths were equipped identically for this mission. They each wore Sig MPX SBR submachine guns across their chests and Sig M25 Navy handguns in thigh holsters. The other thigh was reserved for a combat knife with a proven military history popularized by the Marines—the Ka-Bar. Half of the men crept down the stairs holding their knives, the other half held the handguns. Cole would regularly call out system updates from his position on the top floor.

  The Wraiths only needed to worry about three floors, numbered in elevator opposite. The lowest floor of the facility, floor 12, was the server farm with two tech employees who were at this very moment, under siege from Salad Cole. Floor 8, at this time of the night, should be home to three researchers. Floor 2, the floor right beneath them, was residential. The rest of the researchers and four additional sentries would be on this floor. Hopefully, soundly asleep.

  The six men split up. Salad stayed on 1. One man took up station at the entrance of the residential quarters on 2. One man hid outside the research facility on 8. The remaining three Wraiths went all the way down to the server room on 12. The men on 1, 2, and 8 would simply stay on sentry as the killing started on the bottom floor and moved up. Anyone trying to escape would be taken down by Salad as they ran for the exit door.

  “Floor 12. Mark,” Ahab spoke softly into his throat mic.

  “All clear, sir,” came the response from Salad more than 100 feet—30 meters—above him.

  The commander nodded to the two soldiers who had taken up position outside of the server room. They slid a UV camera under the door and the image immediately popped up on their wrist computers.

  The three men looked at each other and shared a nod. A silent signal for, good to go.

  * *

  The server room was shockingly cold. And loud. The Wraiths had noticed the temperature change as they traveled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the facility’s singular vertical structure—possibly the reason why the residential quarters were near the top. The server room, however, was even colder than it should be. Just by looking at the three silent, black-clad soldiers, though, you’d be hard-pressed to see their discomfort.

  There were two men sitting on the north end of the server room. They were both hammering away at their respective keyboards, clearly frustrated by something. They were yelling at each other. They were likely encountering whatever problem Cole had cooked up for them from his access to the system. Additionally, they had to shout over the hum of the powerful HVAC units that cooled the massive computer towers. They were completely distracted and had no idea that the enemy soldiers had entered the room.

  Two of the Wraiths took position. They were under orders not to damage any of the equipment, so firepower was to be kept to a minimum in the server room as well as the research facility. They had each taken Ka-Bars in their right hands. In a practiced, synchronized move, the two soldiers slit the throats of the two server-men. They died in seconds, slumped forward in their chairs.

  Silent.

  Fatal.

  * *

  Ahab and his two soldiers left the server room and traveled up the circular staircase to Floor 8 – Research. The three men met up with the soldier already in position outside the door of the lab. The man, James “Smooth Money” Racine looked back at Ahab and spoke softly.

  “Three men,” he said. “Two working together on the north end. One solo, southwest corner. No other movement.”

  The commander nodded and touched his earpiece.

  “Overwatch.”

  “Clear on 8, sir,” Salad spoke, staring intently at his surveillance monitors. “Intel is good.”

  Ahab Everson nodded again. He pointed at his two men from the server room mission and pointed toward the north end of the research area. He pointed to Smooth Money and indicated that he would take out the solitary man in the southwest. The three men nodded in unison.

  On the main floor, Salad pulled up his list of 20 workers—down to 18—and touched the images of the two men who lay slain in the bowels of Frenchman’s Flat. Two more red Xs. Sixteen workers.

  * *

  Compared to the server room, the research lab was a library. The soldiers could hear various computer fans kicking on and off and the random clink of metal on metal or glass on glass, but the ambient noise was virtually nonexistent. It was the same with discussion. Whereas the two server workers had been screaming at each other while fighting to resolve their computer problems, the three researchers went about their business in silence.

  Now, inside the large space, all Wraith verbal communication was halted. They, all three, knew their assignments. Rick “Ahab” Everson stayed back a few yards in from the door, totally concealed, as a failsafe: No one was coming in and no one was getting out.

  The three soldiers—Smooth Money, Twelve, and Bounce—silently made their way through the research lab, knives in hand. Just like the server room, they were under strict orders to no
t damage anything. The support team would be coming in as soon as the facility was clear of enemy personnel to take care of hard evidence. Little things, however, kept catching their attention. Even though they maintained strict focus on the task at hand, it was hard to ignore:

  Five giant glass bottles filled with liquids of various colors—the fifth liquid was bubbling with no apparent heat source.

  A dissected octopus, under glass, that turned out to be robotic.

  Several colorful posters warning about the spread of CX disease.

  Three laptops, linked together with heavy cables, which seemed to be running a virus outbreak simulation. A small line of masking tape ran along the top of one monitor. “The Event: Pandemic” was written on it in black ink.

  One large metal container that occupied a corner of the room. It was covered with caution symbols, radiation symbols, and skulls. It also had what appeared to be breathing holes cut into the top three inches. A strange machine sat to the side of the huge metal box, humming with power. Thick cables ran from the machine to the base of the container.

  Nevertheless, the team advanced on the three researchers.

  Twelve and Bounce rushed the two men who were working together, knives raised, in the same practiced synchronicity displayed in the server room. Smooth Money was creeping up behind the lone man—he was five feet away. With the three soldiers in position, Ahab called out the kill order—a whisper picked up by their high-definition throat mic.

  It looked like something out of a training manual. Throats slit from behind, left to right, at exactly the same moment. All three researchers went down in a heap. The three Wraiths wiped the blood off their knives on the dead men’s clothing as their commander entered the center of the room.

  He surveyed the same strange objects that his men had seen.

  Suddenly, there was a thump from inside the large metal cage.

  The three soldiers immediately raised their SMGs. Ahab raised his hand.

  “Leave it,” he said quietly into his throat mic. “Salad. What do we have on a possible biological under lock and key in the research lab?”

  “Looking, sir,” came the reply from their overwatch position. He was furiously tapping away at one computer while keeping an eye on the final stage of the mission on another. “Multiple references to Specimen NR-401G, but specific data is encrypted. I can get to it, if you’d like, sir.”

  “Negative, soldier. We leave it for support to deal with.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  * *

  With Salad still on the main floor, the five remaining black-clad insurgents grouped outside the sleeping quarters on the second floor. They knew there were nine sleeping workers and two sleeping security personnel. There were two sentries that were awake playing cards at a small table near the front of the room, illuminated by a small desk lamp.

  With the firefight restrictions removed for this final room, the five Wraiths held their Sig submachine guns at the ready. They were stacked up outside the main entrance—three on one side, two on the other. They waited for the all-clear signal from their overwatch, and when it came, they stormed the room.

  It was, as expected, a massacre.

  The two woke guards were the first to go down, followed by the two sleeping guards. After that, the five Wraiths moved through the sleeping quarters eliminating the nine scientists. After the first shots were fired, it quickly became chaos. With the main door locked, Salad crouched behind his security console with his weapon at the ready. He watched both the security monitors and the physical stair-head. No one was getting out of Frenchman’s Flat alive.

  The acrid smells of gunpowder and blood filled the enormous room as the five-man advance team stalked the sleeping quarters. They were taking a final look to ensure nothing had been missed. Two of the men grabbed souvenirs—one was a small, metal Hot Wheels car, the other was a stuffed animal, a pig that rested on a bedside table. The team left as a group, stepping over the dead bodies that littered the floor.

  * *

  “Tree House, this is Firefly, come in.”

  Rick “Ahab” Everson had collected his team and all six Wraiths were huddled around the command console on the top floor of the facility. Per protocol, he was calling in his support team as a signal that the area was clear and prepped for stage two.

  “This is Tree House. Go ahead, Firefly,” came the response over the secure channel.

  “Backyard is empty. Needs to be cleaned, over.”

  Salad and Twelve looked at each other and rolled their eyes. You never got used to goofy mission lingo.

  “Copy that, Firefly. Tree House out.”

  Ahab turned to his team.

  “Alright, men,” he said, absently checking his combat gear to make sure everything was secured. “That just leaves the easy part. Wraiths, mount up.”

  And, with that, the advance team exited the building and jogged to their waiting extraction point…never to cross paths with the support team.

  Chapter Five

  The Wayback Machine

  “QUANTUM SPIRES?” Damon Butcher was carefully examining a digital computer readout on one monitor while feverishly manipulating the touchscreen of another computer monitor only a foot to his right.

  “An inverted quantum spire, actually,” Miles Lofton replied. “Basically a modified Sheffield Vortex.” He paused to look at the readout that had caught Butcher’s eye. “At least that’s where the algorithm started. With Sheffield. We had to make certain adjustments. But it gave us a great head start.”

  “Wow.” Butcher leaned back and exhaled deeply. “You guys did some amazing work in what looks like a relatively short amount of time.”

  Miles looked proud. His team couldn’t take all the credit for the success of Allied Genetics, but they played a significant role.

  Seemingly, for the first time, Damon looked around the room. Miles noticed this and started his speech where he had originally deviated.

  “Before you suffered a cataclysmic attention opportunity, I was explaining about the launching pad,” Miles said. Damon stood up and looked around the room, very possibly seeing it for the first time.

  It was a large room, nearly a 15-meter square footprint. It sloped downward, away from the huge glass doors. There were 18 computer workstations angled in semi-concentric circles pointing toward the bottom of the room. The far wall was lined with huge monitors. They were nearly all inert, save for the top right which displayed the current day/time and the top left which displayed the current weather with four columns of detail. Damon noted, absently, that both screens were split in half, diagonally, and seemed to show vastly different numbers.

  The floor in front of the monitors—nearly a quarter of the square footage of the room—was striking. The floor tiling was completed in stainless steel. It was an octagonal shape and each side was punctuated by a two-meter-tall antenna. This area was known as the launching pad and could very nearly fill the space of a typical residential bedroom.

  “Graviton dissonance,” Miles Lofton said.

  “Huh? What’s that?” Damon said, turning to look at his former classmate. He had been staring at the launching pad, mentally analyzing every element in great detail.

  “That bigger pillar over there,” Miles said, indicating the pillar with a lift of his chin. “It generates a graviton dissonance that acts as our anchor to the Earth’s magnetic core.” He paused for effect. “You had brought it up earlier. How do we make sure that when we appear 100 million years in the past, we don’t go flying off into space? Graviton dissonance.”

  Damon was nodding as Miles was speaking. In truth, his attention was fractured. He thought they had been on the cutting edge at Precision Robotics. This, however, was tech he had never dreamed of.

  The room was buzzing with energy. Workers were filtering in through the giant glass doors at the head of the area and the huge monitors were coming to life. Miles put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Usually there’s a ramp
-up process,” Miles said. “A transition period. But, I think you’d rather run before you can walk. We have an excursion planned in about four hours. How would you like to join us?”

  The only answer Damon had evaporated as his mouth hung agape.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Lofton smiled.

  * *

  It’s been a long day, Miles had said, steering Damon back toward the door of the staging area. This gentleman will show you to your room. Be back here in four hours.

  There was an entire floor of an entire wing devoted to residential needs. A couple cafeterias. A couple shops. Several laundromats. And enough rooms to dwarf a large apartment complex. Damon’s room was actually four rooms. It was similar to a suite at a mid-level American hotel. Bedroom. Sitting room. Kitchenette. Plus a bathroom.

  Damon unpacked his clothes, sprawled out on his bed, and tried to relax.

  In a completely different wing, on a completely different floor, Britta Vragi was on the phone. She was watching the security footage from the unidentified predator on her computer with the sound off.

  “Yeah,” she said. “In four hours. The research team.”

  She was silent for a moment then nodded her head as if the person on the other end of the line could actually see her.

  “Right. Strictly observational. They have no specific checklist.” She paused, listening to the person on the other end. “Absolutely. And, Carter, Miles just informed me that they’ll be taking the new guy with them.”

  She clicked the small icon on the bottom of her video player that started the action over at the beginning.

  “Exactly. Let’s get alpha team spun up first thing in the morning. I want another crack at this unknown.”

  She hung up her handset and leaned forward.

  “Unreal,” she said to the office, watching the massacre unfold before her.

  * *

  The four hours passed poorly for Damon Butcher. He took a nap. Fitfully. Tossing and turning. He turned on the streaming TV service. He read a magazine. He read a binder of dense calculations. Finally, he took a shower and got dressed in a fresh outfit.