Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (53 page)

He stopped talking as the agents,
most of them visibly shaking their heads, and a few of them making
obscene gestures, continued to move forward.

Gently, Naomi took the headset back.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“Now what?” Jack asked in a raspy
voice. All the spit in his mouth had dried up and he was clenching
his fists as the agents, no doubt some of whom he’d worked with
before, moved closer to the repair building.

“It’s not going to be pretty, Jack,”
Renee said shakily. “Tan was in charge of setting up the physical
security for this and the other sites we have.” She glanced up at
him. “He was a ruthless bastard.”

“Just get on with it,” Naomi
ordered. “None of us want to do this, but we can’t allow them to
get in. We’ve got to stay on-line until all the trucks are
accounted for. We’re also the last major genebank in case any of
the New Horizons seed does get out.” Folding her arms as if she
were suddenly chilled, she said, “Do it.”

Renee nodded, then started clicking
controls in another window on her workstation. On the map display
at the front of the room, a cloud of green icons bloomed across the
compound. Jack could see that many of them were out in the open and
assumed they were mines, but there were others that were clearly in
or on some of the trailers parked on the surface.

The result was instantaneous and
overwhelming. The video feeds of the compound were suddenly shaken
by dozens of near-simultaneous explosions as bounding
anti-personnel mines, often called “Bouncing Bettys,” were
triggered. Much worse were the booby-trapped trailers: they were
fitted with long strips of explosive with embedded ball bearings
that, when detonated, were like enormous Claymore mines. In an
instant, tens of thousands of small ball bearings scythed through
the ranks of the FBI agents.

“Christ,” Richards moaned as he
watched the cream of the Bureau massacred in a hail of metal. He
had no idea how many died in that first wave, but he was filled
with a painful mix of fierce pride and emotional agony as those who
survived refused to break and run, but continued to move
forward.

Proud and determined or not, they
couldn’t stand against the base’s defenses. In twos and threes, and
sometimes larger groups, they were mowed down by the thick barrier
of mines through which they had to move to get to their
objective.

Jack was numb as he watched the
carnage, noting absently that Naomi, Renee, and several others,
including some men, in the command center were crying. He knew that
defending the base was necessary and that people would die in the
process. But he also knew that there would be a special place
reserved for him in Hell for his part in this.

At last, the remaining agents
finally gave up valor for discretion and began to pull
back.

“Turn off the mines behind them,”
Jack said hoarsely. “Let them get out.”

“It’s already done,” Renee managed
as she tried to dry her tears on her sleeve.

They watched in
silence as the special agents retreated, the survivors heading out
through the front gate.
So
few
, Jack thought. He counted less than
thirty men and women still on their feet, and half of them appeared
to be wounded. He was only thankful that Renee hadn’t turned on any
of the audio pickups that he was sure were up on the surface. He
didn’t know what he would have done if he’d had to hear the screams
of the wounded and dying.

“We’re not out of it yet,” the young
man on one of the other consoles called out about five minutes
later. He was watching the display from the small air search radar
that was installed on top of the repair building, its housing
disguised as a battered exhaust fan cowling. “Looks like we have a
pair of fast movers inbound...” He managed to pick them up by
slaving a video camera to the radar track. The command center staff
was rewarded with a jittery view of what Jack identified as a pair
of F-15E Strike Eagles. “They’re going straight for the repair
building.”

“Don’t tell me you have SAMs?”
Richards asked. He was still pale and shaken.

Naomi shook her head. “No,” she
said, “we don’t have anything that sophisticated. We’d hoped to
never have to do what we’re doing now: our best defense was
secrecy.”

A hail of black objects separated
from the Eagles as they streaked overhead.

Down below the surface in the
command dome, Jack and the others felt and heard nothing, but the
video feeds and other information from the surface suddenly
disappeared from the displays. The repair shop, the mines, and
probably most of the trailers that still had any explosive strips
had just been wiped away.

“Damn,” Naomi whispered. Turning to
Jack, she said, “Do they have any bombs that can reach us down
here?”

“A BLU-109, maybe,” Ferris piped up
before Jack could say anything. “It’s a two-thousand pound bunker
buster bomb that might be able to penetrate the blast doors on the
silos and the portal, but I don’t think they have anything that can
reach us down here.”

“But if they can breach the surface
blast doors,” Naomi said worriedly, “they could destroy the silos.
If they do...”

Ferris shook his head and shrugged.
“I can only tell you what I know, girl,” he said
quietly.

“Do we have any eyes left topside?”
Jack asked.

“We’ve got the periscopic sensor
array and camera,” Renee confirmed. Clicking some controls on her
workstation, she said, “There...”

The video camera on the sensor mast
rose from its submerged storage sleeve and showed them a scene of
utter devastation: the repair shop was gone, blown into wreckage
that was strewn across the compound. And there, moving quickly
through the still-smoking remains of the building and vehicles,
were the surviving FBI agents.

“Persistent buggers,” Renee said,
her voice a mixture of admiration and fear.

“The good news is that we probably
won’t get bombed while they’re here,” Jack said. “The bad news is
that it looks like they’re heading straight for the air intake
opening.” The vent, hidden under a thick grate in the back corner
of the repair shop, had been covered with an armored manifold. But
the manifold had been blown open: one of the Eagle pilots had
gotten lucky with a bomb.

Naomi shook her head. “Even if they
can get through the surface vent, they won’t be able to get
inside,” she said. “The blast valves are closed, and they couldn’t
get through them without heavy explosives.”

“See those satchels a couple of
those guys are carrying,” Richards said, pointing to a pair of
agents who were clearly being protected by the others. “There’s
your heavy explosives.”

“I’m not so worried about them
getting in,” Jack said darkly. “I’m more worried about what might
get out.” He looked at the others. “Remember what we have trapped
in the intake chamber.”

“What?” Richards said, looking from
Jack to Naomi and back.

“God,” Naomi said, the blood
draining from her face. “We can’t let them get near it!”

“Near what, dammit?” Richards
shouted angrily.

“What we think is now a harvester,
or becoming one,” Naomi explained. “It killed one of my people and
our test animals. We think it went into the air intake tunnel, and
we barricaded it in by welding steel plate over the tunnel mouth.
As long as the blast valves are intact, it can’t get
out...”

“But if those guys manage to blow
them open,” Richards finished for her, understanding now, “if the
blast doesn’t kill the thing it could take the place of one of
them, just like it did Ray Clement.”

“We’ve got to stop them,” Jack said.
“We’ve got to go topside and fight them off.”

“Jack, no!” Naomi exclaimed. “I
won’t allow it!”

Turning to her, Jack said, “The only
alternative is to tear down the plating covering up the intake
tunnel so we can go in and kill...whatever is in there.” He nodded
his head toward the ceiling. “I’d rather take my chances fighting a
kind of opponent I understand.”

“Let’s just get this done,” Richards
growled. “Anybody have a weapon and some body armor?”

***

“My God,” President Curtis said into
the silence of the White House Situation Room. “This is a
disaster.”

The Predator drone orbiting over the
EDS base had shown the massacre of the FBI assault team in high
definition video detail on the room’s main display screen. No one
in the room, with the exception of the senior military officers who
were all veterans of both Gulf Wars, had ever seen such
carnage.

The FBI SAC for the raid had been in
an orbiting Blackhawk, and had been given the authority to call in
an air strike as a last resort. No one had expected the “last
resort” to be necessary in the first few minutes of the operation.
And the air strike hadn’t even touched the Titan base
itself.

Seeing that there might be a way
into the base through a hole blown in some sort of vent, the SAC,
shaken though he was, ordered a team in to take advantage of the
situation.

“If this doesn’t work,” Curtis said,
“I want something ready that will.” He turned and looked directly
at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Daniel
Coleridge, United States Marine Corps.

“If this,” Coleridge nodded at the
video display showing the agents now clustering around the hole
blown in the massive vent, “doesn’t work, we can use the BLU-109
penetrator bomb. It’s a two thousand pound weapon that was designed
to deal with hardened underground structures. We think it will
penetrate the blast doors on the surface, but–”

“General,” Curtis said quietly,
cutting off what the older man was going to say, “we’ve known each
other long enough that there’s no need for bullshit.” The old
Marine’s expression hardened. “I don’t want to hear the word
‘should.’ All I want to know is, will it work or won’t
it?”

“We don’t know, sir,” Coleridge said
flatly. “One weapon won’t be enough: the facility is huge, and even
if the weapon was able to penetrate, we’d need at least two dozen
to make sure we destroyed all the major structures.” He paused.
“But there’s a good chance we’ll have to drop a lot more. My people
have been studying that Titan base from what they could turn up in
the short time we’ve had since I gave the original warning order.
It’s amazingly tough and would take a lot of punishment. But if we
drop enough of these bombs, we’ll eventually kill everyone down
there. That I can guarantee.”

Clement, who had been sitting
quietly behind Ridley, suddenly snatched the secure smart phone
attached to his belt as it began to vibrate. Looking at it for a
moment, he gasped, then leaned forward and whispered something in
Ridley’s ear. She snapped her head around to look at him, her eyes
wide with shock. Then she turned to Curtis and said, “Mr.
President, may I have a word. In private.”

Curtis frowned, but from the look on
her face and the tone of her request, he suspected that whatever
she had to say – and what the senior agent with her had said – had
something to do with The Others.

“Very well,” Curtis said quietly.
“I’ll be back shortly. Keep an eye on this debacle.” He nodded
toward the screen at the head of the room.

Ridley and Clement, trailed by two
Secret Service agents, followed Curtis to one of the complex’s
smaller conference rooms. “I’m fine, guys,” he told the Secret
Service men after ushering Ridley and Clement into the room. “Just
wait outside, if you would, please.”

Nodding, but clearly unhappy, the
two agents took up positions on either side of the door as Curtis
closed it behind him.

“What is it?” Curtis asked
Ridley.

“He has a message for us,” she said,
her eyes fixed on the big man who’d accompanied her to the meeting.
She had mentioned his name earlier, but Curtis couldn’t remember
it. “He told me that he’s one of them. One of The
Others.”

“Jesus,” Curtis breathed. Kempf was
the only one of their kind that he had ever been in contact
with.

“Yes, Mr. President,” the creature
who mimicked Ray Clement said, inclining its head. “Do you require
additional proof?” It extended its right hand, which quickly
lengthened into the slender finger-like digits, porcelain smooth
and white, as the Kempf creature had been when she had revealed
herself to him years ago.

“I believe you,” he said, unable to
keep the awe from his voice. “But...why are you here? Why
now?”

“Mr. President,” the Clement-thing
said urgently, its hand returning to its state of human mimicry,
“we are very...concerned about the situation. You do not know this,
but the situation is far worse than you or your people suspect.” It
nodded toward the video display where the FBI men were still
working on getting through the surface vent. “Just a moment ago,
there in the other conference room, I learned that the Earth
Defense Society has been conducting genetic experiments at this
base.” It paused. “They have perfected a genetic weapon that could
damage or destroy this planet’s biosphere. If the containment of
this weapon is breached by these bombs you plan to use, if it is
released into the atmosphere, it would spell disaster for your
species.” It offered him a pitying look. “Our kind is highly
adaptable and would survive, but humans and all creatures like you
would not.”