The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (21 page)

‘Everyone OK?’ Grace said.

Damien couldn’t see below, but he did notice the elevator car rising to his level. ‘Who’s in the elevator?’

‘Shit!’ DC yelled.

Damien snapped his subcarbine to eye-level. No one stepped out on his side. Instead, two figures moved in the other direction, heading south. Peering through the airborne powder, Damien tried to make out who they were.

‘Grace, can you ID those two?’ he said.

‘Schlosser and someone sticking close to him,’ she said. ‘I can’t—’

Shots reverberated across the atrium, striking near Grace. Whoever it was, he took a moment to shoot at Grace. Damien adjusted his aim. He couldn’t open fire that close to Schlosser, and neither could Grace.

‘Dammit,’ Grace said. ‘Sophia, do you read?’

‘What happened?’ Sophia yelled.

‘Shocktrooper’s taking Schlosser south, level four,’ Grace said.

‘I’m on it!’ Jay said.

Damien moved through the cloud, sticking close to the shopfronts. He could make out two figures in the distance. Schlosser was lagging behind, the shocktrooper directly in front. Damien couldn’t get a shot from here. He pushed forward, watching in case the shocktrooper decided to send some rounds his way. Instead, the pair of them disappeared from the right-hand side. Into a shop or a passageway, Damien couldn’t be sure.

He started running to where he’d last seen them. Sophia was yelling commands into his ear, and so was Grace. Jay popped up at the top of the stairs, near where the pair had disappeared. Damien joined him moments later and pointed in the direction they’d gone. The sign showed male and female restrooms.

Jay took the lead, moving faster than Damien would’ve liked. He forced Jay to pause at the restrooms just to be sure. A gunshot echoed from ahead. Jay moved forward, pistol in hand. Damien kept a few paces behind.

They reached an open door, its lock destroyed. Damien could hear running footsteps ahead. He emerged first, subcarbine raised. The wind made him squint. They were on the rooftop of the shopping mall. Then he realized it wasn’t wind at all but downwash from a helicopter. He could hear the blades chopping the humid air just above, on his nine o’clock. He took the lead, sprinted for a corner, pressed himself against it. Jay was behind him, face and neck coated in sweat from running.

Damien checked the corner. Directly ahead, he could see the helicopter hovering in position. The shocktrooper was forcing a reluctant Schlosser inside. Two pairs of hands pulled him onboard. The shocktrooper turned and snapped off two rounds at Damien, then started running farther along the rooftop. The helicopter lifted off, Schlosser inside.

‘No fucking way,’ Jay said, running for the helicopter.

Someone inside it opened fire with a loud, resounding crack. Jay pounced behind an air-vent stack. Damien was happy to stay glued to his corner for the moment. The helicopter pitched and moved south, along the rooftop. Damien took the opportunity to break from cover and track the shocktrooper.

A ladder took him to a higher level, where he spotted the shocktrooper making good distance across a mammoth-sized curved roof made from sheet metal. Damien aimed his subcarbine, but the shocktrooper disappeared over the curve. All Damien could see were the condos simmering in the distant haze.

He checked his left. Jay was on the lower level, running after the helicopter. A roll of flexible ladder unraveled from its belly. Not for Jay, for the shocktrooper.

‘Jay! Damien!’ Sophia was screaming in his ear. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Schlosser’s in a helicopter bearing south,’ Damien breathed. ‘Jay’s in pursuit. Shocktrooper running for helicopter. South wing.’

‘Can you stop the helicopter?’ Sophia said.

‘How the hell am I meant to do that?’

He aimed his subcarbine at the helicopter. But he couldn’t shoot. One stray round could kill Schlosser. And shooting the helicopter down certainly would.

‘Can’t take the shot,’ he said.

‘Everyone, fourth level, south!’ Sophia yelled.

‘CT are on third,’ DC called out. ‘They’re right on us.’

‘Do I look like I give a shit?’ Sophia hit the elevator button. ‘I’m taking the elevator. You all get to the underground parking lot on the north wing. Find Benito some wheels.’ She tossed Nasira her set of auto tryout keys. ‘Two vehicles. Check if anyone has sealed us in.’

‘You got it,’ Nasira said, a little uncertainly.

Sophia stepped into the elevator. ‘Come on,’ she said, hitting the button repeatedly.

The doors closed. She used the wasted seconds to check the chamber on her newly acquired UMP and attached grenade launcher. She’d taken a fresh magazine and a vector ring grenade from the shocktrooper in the bank. Freeman was now carrying Big Dog’s L22 bullpup rifle.

The elevator doors opened on the fourth level. Grace was waiting for her.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she said.

‘Getting your scientist back,’ Sophia said, pushing past her and breaking into a run.

‘Not without me.’

Grace ran alongside her, brandished a flashgun, then overtook her.

‘Show-off,’ Sophia muttered.

***

Damien sprinted up the curved roof after the shocktrooper. It was slippery on the ascent, and once he reached the apex he could see the shocktrooper sliding to the bottom. He ended in a roll and turned south for the helicopter. Damien blinked sweat from his eyes and ran forward, down the slope. It only took a few steps to accelerate, then he leaned back into it and glissaded down, faster and faster. Between the end of the slope and the edge of the mall rooftop, there was only a short space for him to land and recover. The faster he moved, the more everything blurred and shook around him. At this rate, he was pretty sure he was going to fly off the rooftop and right into the condos.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, he dropped his subcarbine, extended his arm and tucked his head under. The world bled strange, dizzy colors as he rolled through. His hands clamped on the edge of the rooftop. He stared down at the eighty-foot drop, catching his breath.

From the edge of his vision, he saw the shocktrooper cut ahead of Jay and leap onto the helicopter’s ladder. Jay was in close pursuit. The helicopter moved away from the rooftop.

‘Fuck, fuck, fucky fuck fuck,’ Jay yelled.

Damien watched him draw to a halt near the edge. There was no way he would jump.

‘It’s OK,’ Damien said.

But it wasn’t OK. As though Jay had read his mind, he took a running jump. Damien watched him claw through the air. His arms reached out for the flexible ladder as it fluttered from the rooftop.

***

Sophia ran the last stretch of the southeast wing, her lungs burning. She was on the ground floor, Grace ahead of her, cloaked, instructing her around the occasional CT placement. She expected to find a large contingent securing the main entrance, and that was coming right up.

‘I’ll clear it,’ Grace said between breaths.

Sophia kept running. She watched the automatic glass doors ahead of her part for their invisible guest: Grace. As she’d suspected, there were plenty of CT soldiers just outside. They jerked to attention as the doors opened, only to be blinded a second later by Grace’s flashgun.

Grace opened fire, taking them down one by one, then moving for cover while changing mags. ‘Helicopter above!’ she yelled.

The doors were closing. Sophia ran, then slid on both knees. The slippery marble carried her through the doors. She leaned back into her slide as Grace fired shots over her, striking more CT soldiers. Further out from the shopping mall, there were police vans, squad cars and officers.

Sophia looked up at the helicopter. It was hovering near the edge of the rooftop. Thirty feet below it, a glass canopy undulated across the facade of the shopping mall. She aimed her grenade launcher at the helicopter’s belly. Just below it, two figures clung to a flexible ladder.

‘Get off the ladder!’ Sophia yelled into her mic. ‘Jump!’

She only had one grenade. She squeezed the trigger. The grenade punched through the air, a perfectly vertical shot. The vortex ring grenade fired upward. The glass doors behind her crystallized. On the floor above, the glass facade exploded. And then the second floor, and the third and the fourth. The canopy turned completely white, fracturing. The grenade struck the belly of the helicopter and bounced harmlessly away. The glass inside the helicopter exploded almost at the same time the mall’s canopy completely disintegrated.

‘Damien, Jay, you can get off the—’

The glass doors behind her shattered, drowning out her words. She crouched with her chin to her chest as glass fragments tore past either side of her, and into her back and hair.

***

Jay’s grip on the ladder tore free. Air was crushed from his lungs, and he struggled to stay conscious, eyes open, as he hurtled through space. The helicopter grew smaller and smaller, pitching left. The shocktrooper who’d been climbing the ladder above him was nowhere to be seen.

Jay instinctively tucked his chin to his chest and curled into a ball. This wasn’t a vertical drop, so the usual rules of arching his back to protect his organs didn’t apply. He was flying backward at high speed, his muscles rigid in anticipation of the unknown. The rooftop came rushing up underneath his legs. He forced himself to breathe but his lungs burned in protest. He tried to relax his limbs as he landed on his upper back, rolled off and over his shoulder. Sky and concrete bled around him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. Pain blossomed over his body.

His tumbling stabilized and he found himself sliding headfirst down a curved metal roof. He lifted his head so he wouldn’t get concussed and tried to spin himself around. He sprawled out, elbows scraping on metal. Pain shot through his nerves and skin. His vision was blurred, dark at the edges. He fought against it and reached an arm out. The friction hurled his body around. He rolled and slid feet first. The concrete surface of the rooftop rushed to meet him. His legs buckled on impact and he nearly smashed his skull directly into it. One arm worked quickly enough to throw him into a rough ball. He tumbled more times than he could count, bones banging against hard surfaces. He came to rest on his back, breathing fire from every muscle and bone. He reached up and ran a shaking hand through his scalp. It came away with no blood. Good. He craned his neck to check if any bones had been thrown out of place, but instead saw a shocktrooper approaching him, a Glock pistol in one hand.

Jay reached for the pistol in his jeans but it was no longer there.

The shocktrooper raised the pistol, lining the sights with Jay’s face. Then his head exploded.

Jay looked up to see Damien crouched on one knee atop the curved roof, subcarbine in both hands. Jay smiled and collapsed.

***

Sophia tracked the helicopter as it moved over the shattered canopy, descending in a slow, deathly spiral. It seemed to move directly toward her and at first she thought it was aiming for her, but as it wrestled through the air she knew it was out of control. She just hoped Schlosser survived the crash.

Grace pulled her to her feet. ‘Get clear!’ she yelled.

The only way to do that without running into police or military reinforcements was to move back inside the mall. It was the last place she wanted to go but there wasn’t much choice. As the helicopter plunged toward them, Sophia sprinted inside, Grace hot on her heels.

There was a deafening crash behind them. Sophia checked over her shoulder, expecting the helicopter to come through the main entrance, only to realize it had crashed into the Starbucks. It bulldozed through tables and chairs and tore the service counter into shards of timber and plastic. She ducked as a rotor blade sluiced past her head. Grace knocked her clear. From the edge of her vision, she watched the helicopter grind out of the Starbucks, across the polished floor and come to rest in the center. The side door was open and she could see one helicopter crew member strapped in beside Schlosser. The other crew member lay sprawled on the shopping mall floor, uniform damp with blood.

The crew member inside unbuckled and scrambled for a weapon. Sophia propped herself against a metal Starbucks chair and aimed her UMP through its holographic sight. She squeezed the trigger and punched a tight three-round burst through his head. Grace, lying a few feet away, dispatched the pilots with her Vector submachine gun.

Schlosser was alert, both hands gripping his harness, eyes unblinking and skin ashen. He was breathing and seemingly uninjured, so that was a good sign. Sophia lowered her UMP. She was a different story: her body burned and ached with so many lacerations, bruises and fractures that it felt like she was lying on red-hot coals. She placed her UMP on the marble floor and collapsed.

‘You are one crazy bitch,’ Grace said. ‘That’s a compliment.’

The parking lot looked like it hadn’t been used in a decade. Jay noticed that didn’t stop Damien from checking the whole perimeter before entering. They found Grace’s team tucked in close between cars ‘borrowed’ from the mall. Sophia was the first to see them. She stepped into view and waited as they approached.

‘Are you clean?’ she said.

Jay sniffed his armpits. ‘That’s relative.’

‘No tails,’ Damien said.

‘Injuries?’

‘Just the usual,’ Jay said. ‘When you’re thrown two hundred feet off a helicopter.’

Sophia winced. ‘Sorry about that. But you survived, right?’

She walked them back to the rest of the group. Everyone was silent, no doubt processing everything that had gone down in the last couple of hours. Freeman and Nasira were leaning against a shiny silver minivan, half-smoked cigarettes in hand. Freeman seemed more interested in his smartphone than Damien and Jay’s arrival. The minivan’s side door was open and Schlepper was sitting inside. He had one hand bandaged and looked a bit jittery. Opposite the minivan, another borrowed vehicle: a dusty white sedan. The driver’s side door was open and DC sat with one leg out. A screwdriver clamped with a wrench protruded from the car’s ignition. DC emptied a container of its last pill and tossed it in the footwell. Chickenhead sat in the back seat, staring vacantly out the window.

Jay had seen the shocktrooper shoot Big Dog outside the bank. He and Chickenhead had been pinned down on the other side and neither of them could do anything except watch Big Dog bleed out through his neck and die. Chickenhead had emptied both magazines at the shocktrooper, hitting nothing but air as he moved into the bank and made short work of Sophia. She was lucky to be alive.

Grace stood in Jay’s path, hands on her hips. She glanced between him and Damien.

‘I can’t tell if you’re angry or sad or what,’ Jay said. ‘Is that an Asian thing?’

‘No, it merely infers my superior aptitude.’ She looked at Damien. ‘The important thing is we got who we came here for.’

‘Yeah, Schlepper here is a real popular guy,’ Jay said.

‘Schlosser,’ Grace said. ‘The Fifth Column went to great lengths to prevent us from securing him.’

‘Yeah, I noticed,’ Jay said.

‘They must’ve deployed every goddamn shocktrooper in South-East Asia,’ Sophia said. ‘I’ve never seen that many before. Mark I, Mark II, I don’t even know.’

‘We lost Big Dog,’ DC said. He winced as though he was chewing something bitter. ‘Shouldn’t have happened.’

‘We’re lucky any of us made it out at all,’ Nasira said, flicking her cigarette. ‘That was all kinds of fucked.’

‘What’s your plan now?’ Sophia said.

Jay realized she was staring at him. He shrugged. ‘Take a ferry to an island. Airports will have our faces in an hour or two, so that’s not an option.’

‘Do you have accessible funds?’ Freeman asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jay said. ‘We’re good for now.’

‘So what’s
your
plan?’ Damien said.

Sophia looked at Grace, then said, ‘The less you know, the better.’

‘It’s fine,’ Grace said. ‘We’ll head back to base, debrief, get our facts straight on Seraphim and figure out what the Fifth Column have their hands in.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ Sophia said. ‘We couldn’t have done this without you.’

Damien nodded. ‘I’m sorry about Big Dog,’ he said, handing over Sophia’s P99.

She checked the magazine and laughed when she found it empty. The chamber still held a round though. Jay handed over Nasira’s P229, which he’d lost and found again on the mall rooftop. Freeman passed Damien his Glock 21.

‘Isn’t this from one of your guys back at the base?’ Damien said.

‘You might need it more than he will,’ Freeman said.

Damien thanked him and and wedged the Glock into his jeans. ‘I think we’ll lay low for a bit then,’ he said.

‘Preferably on a nice beach,’ Jay said.

Grace glared at Damien. ‘I thought you were sick of looking over your shoulder.’

‘Guess you only stick your neck out so far,’ Nasira said at the same time to Jay.

He felt himself bristle with anger, but was cut off by Sophia.

‘Nasira, that’s enough,’ she said. ‘You can always come back,’ she told Jay. ‘If you ever change your minds.’

Jay found himself without words. He felt just like he had after Desecheo Island: glad to be done with this, glad to be done with Sophia. It was exhausting and crushing to have done so much and have so little to show for it except surviving by the skin of his teeth. He shouldn’t have survived the shocktrooper ambush, but he had.

‘You should probably get going,’ Grace said, her voice decidedly softer. ‘In this traffic, it’ll take you an hour to get across town.’

Damien cleared his throat. ‘Yeah. Oh, before I forget.’

He took his GPS receiver from his pocket, which reminded Jay to do the same. They handed them to Freeman, who tossed them into the minivan.

Jay noticed Grace’s gaze linger on Damien before she turned to the others.

‘Has everyone except Freeman binned their phones?’ she asked.

‘Freeman, bin your SIM card and remove the battery,’ she said. ‘I'll do the same.’

They all responded with slow, lethargic nods.

Jay guessed that was it then. He shook DC’s hand. ‘Take care of them,’ he said.

DC snorted. ‘They’ll take care of me.’

Walking back to the newly stolen car with Damien, Jay was glad they’d disentangled themselves. Anything that involved the Fifth Column meant trouble, and that was exactly what they’d got today. Still, he did feel a little guilty dropping out now. He hoped the others didn’t think he was chickening out when things got rough. He liked it rough—he grinned at his own joke—but their idea of stopping the Fifth Column was like prodding a lion with a stick. It was suicidal.

Damien was silent. Jay knew he would be thinking of Grace. He’d seen the way she looked at Damien and knew she didn’t want him to go—not that Jay would ever mention that—but she probably had more important things weighing on her mind. Just as they had more important things weighing on theirs. Right now they had to focus on what was best for them. It was something he usually wasn’t very good at.

Jay dropped into the driver’s seat. Damien slipped in beside him, blinked and reached for the subcarbine in the footwell. He checked the fire selector was on safe before putting his seatbelt on. Jay still had his daypack so they could conceal the subcarbine inside it. He’d checked the mag earlier, it had twenty-five rounds plus one in the chamber.

Damien pulled out the Glock and handed it to Jay. Checking the magazine, Jay was happy to discover it was full. He tucked it under his right leg and started the engine.

‘I need coffee,’ he said. ‘This whole sober thing isn’t working out.’

***

Sophia watched Jay and Damien drive off. At least they’d look out for each other, which was more than could be said for her. Big Dog was dead, and Freeman and Benito had come inches from death. This was Grace’s operation, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. At Desecheo Island, Nasira had been the only surviving member of her team, not counting the additional members, Benito and Damien and Jay. And before that, Adamicz. And before that, her parents. Her whole life was a long line of people dying because she couldn’t protect them. Not even from herself.

‘OK, people, we’re moving back north,’ Grace said. She turned to Freeman. ‘Have you made contact?’

Freeman shook his head. ‘I’m not getting anything.’

‘Range?’ Nasira suggested.

‘Can’t be. Signal’s strong,’ Freeman said. ‘We had contact just this morning.’

A bunch of worst-case scenarios tightened inside Sophia’s stomach. She climbed out of the minivan. ‘I saw those IP cameras on base. Can you access the NVR remotely?’

The internet protocol cameras didn’t store their footage locally but instead fed it to a network video recorder. Hopefully Freeman could still access it.

Freeman’s big fingers worked the touchscreen. ‘Logging in now.’

Sophia peered over his shoulder as the web browser loaded the video feed. It was black.

‘Dark room?’ Nasira said, peering over his other shoulder.

‘It has infrared,’ Freeman said. ‘The feed’s not working.’

‘Telephone line’s cut,’ Sophia said. ‘Is the footage stored online somewhere?’

‘Yeah,’ Freeman said, fingers working. ‘Last twenty-four hours.’ He paused. ‘Last file was modified thirty-four minutes ago.’

‘Stream it,’ Sophia said.

The web browser loaded again. This time the video wasn’t black. The camera showed the inside of a café. Sophia recognized the balcony outside. And she recognized the body on the floor with the colorful scarf. Sara. She closed her eyes and stepped away.

Freeman punched the side of the minivan. He dropped the phone. Nasira caught it. Grace took it from her and inspected the streaming video. She met Sophia’s gaze.

‘Looks like Blue Berets in the background,’ Grace said. ‘Rounding up civilians.’

‘They’ll probably blame the massacre on me,’ Sophia said.

Grace’s grip on the phone tightened. Her jaw worked. It was the closest Sophia had seen her get to expressing emotion. She turned away as soon as she noticed Sophia watching her.

Tears were rolling down Freeman’s cheeks. His large frame hunkered against the minivan. Sophia had never seen him cry before. She felt tears welling in her eyes but suppressed them.

‘I don’t know how they …’ Freeman wiped his nose with a tanned forearm. ‘How did they find the base?’

‘Where’s your nearest safe house?’ Grace said.

‘How did they find the base?’ Freeman repeated.

Grace gripped his arms. ‘Listen to me. We need a safe house. Is there one in this country?’

Freeman sniffed loudly, clearing his nose of snot. ‘Closest is Malaysia.’

‘Nothing here?’ Grace said.

‘I have a mate who runs a hotel on an island south of here,’ Freeman said. ‘I could call him.’

‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘We don’t call. We go there and you meet him in person, somewhere no one can see.’

Grace nodded. ‘We can hide there until things cool down, then get out on our false passports.’

She opened the smartphone and walked away from the vehicles, toward a rubbish bin. Sophia went after her, watching as she took the phone apart and removed the SIM card.

‘This op didn’t go exactly how I planned it,’ Grace said.

‘We have Schlosser, alive,’ Sophia said.

Grace snapped the SIM card in half. ‘That counts for something.’

‘Freeman’s lucky to have you,’ Sophia said.

Grace tossed both the phone and the SIM card into the bin. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not stealing your limelight,’ she said. ‘This op was planned before you showed up. I was his only play. I’m not part of the Akhana.’

‘You spent time in the mountains with them,’ Sophia said. ‘So you’re just a drop-in? Passing through, free hospitality?’

‘Let’s make this clear,’ Grace said. ‘I don’t owe anybody anything. Once we reach a safe house and we extract what information Schlosser knows, I’m out.’

Sophia shook her head. ‘That doesn’t add up. Why take on this op and then split afterward if you don’t owe anyone anything?’

Grace leaned in and spoke softly. ‘For the information. Whatever’s in that man’s head.’ She indicated Schlosser, sitting inside the minivan. ‘What you do with that information is your concern. What I do with it is my concern.’

‘Does Freeman know this?’

Grace swallowed. ‘He understands the arrangement. I’m not looking for a promotion. I’m looking for answers.’