The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (25 page)

‘We need to get you out while we still can,’ Jay said.

He crouched down to help Sophia up. It was easier said than done. By the time she was standing, teeth clenched, sweat was running into his eyes again. He blinked, shrugged on a pair of jeans and laced his boots. He needed more suitable clothing if he was going to get her out of here.

He shoved Sophia’s pistol into his jeans’ waistband and moved for the door. He checked outside. A tourist was moving directly toward their room. He was pale. Either he was careful to keep out of the sun or he’d just arrived. No hat. Inch-long blond hair and slightly flushed cheeks. He’d been running. His jeans had a slight bulge above the crotch. Either he liked to sit his dick upright for extra pleasure or he was packing a compact pistol. Either way, it wasn’t looking good.

Jay locked the door and edged Sophia backward.

The tourist stopped in front of the door. And then silence.

Jay lowered Sophia carefully onto the bed and searched the room. The only escape was through the door. He could hear the tourist raking the door jamb with a credit card. Then someone walked past. The tourist stopped. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said. ‘Where’s my keys?’

The passer-by remained silent and kept walking.

Jay peered through the fisheye. The tourist’s hands were free now. He took a few steps back. Jay knew what was coming. He unlocked the door silently, grasped the handle with one hand and reached for the desk with the other. All he could find was a kettle.

The tourist lunged forward, foot aimed for the door. Jay flung the door open and stepped away from the doorjamb. The tourist’s front leg flew past and hit the ground. He over-extended and almost did the splits in front of Jay. Jay brought the heel of his foot down on the tourist’s kneecap and heard the satisfying crunch of fractured bone. He brought the kettle around, striking the tourist in the face with a hollow thunk. He fell back, hitting his head on the concrete. He was out. Hopefully with more of a fractured skull than Sophia’s.

Then, through the window, Jay noticed two marines walking toward the room. At this rate, he’d never get Sophia out of here.

The tourist was sprawled in plain view. He couldn’t exactly pull him inside; the marines had already seen him. Jay remained hidden beside the doorway. He moved his pistol from the front of his jeans to the back while checking the room for anything else to use. The marines were twenty feet away, carrying aging M16s.

Jay stepped out, kettle in hand, and pointed at the tourist. ‘Anytime, anywhere, cocksucker!’ he yelled. He thought about spitting on him, but didn’t want to oversell it.

The marines were already intervening. ‘Hey, buddy, back away.’

Instead of stepping back into the room, Jay stepped over the tourist and out onto open ground. The marines moved around him, one on each side of the tourist.

‘What’s going on here?’ one of the marines said. ‘Put that down.’

Jay held up both hands, kettle still attached to one. ‘He started it, man! He started it. All in my face about this girl. Took a swing at me. I was just defending myself, I swear.’ He pointed to the tourist, startled. ‘Shit, I think he has a gun!’

The guy was conscious and rolling into one of the marines before Jay had finished his plan. The marine lowered his M16 to warn him off, but wasn’t quite fast enough. The tourist kicked his knee out and redirected the M16 toward Jay.

‘Crap.’ Jay dived to one side. By this point it was pretty clear the tourist was a fucking shocktrooper.

Rounds cracked in his wake, ricocheting off a thatched pavilion. The marine near Jay was on one knee. Jay rolled along the grass, removing his P99 mid-roll. When he came up, the nearby marine had his sights on him. Jay dropped him with two rounds and fell flat to aim at the shocktrooper and the other marine.

The shocktrooper was still controlling the M16. He fired again and rounds cracked past Jay’s head. Jay returned fire, but managed to only strike his hotel room window and the marine’s shoulder. The slide on his pistol—or Sophia’s to be precise—locked back. He was dry, and the shocktrooper had carefully shielded himself behind the injured marine.

The shocktrooper brandished his pistol. It was definitely a pistol, not his dick. Jay wasn’t sure which he preferred, but either way he was defenseless and in the open. The shocktrooper aimed—not at Jay but to one side—and fired. At an unknown target behind Jay.

Jay used the moment to sprint forward. He slid on one knee, scooped up the kettle on the way and brought the kettle around to the shocktrooper’s face. The shocktrooper had finished shooting and ducked. The kettle hit the marine instead.

‘Sorry,’ Jay said.

He hurled the kettle at the shocktrooper as he ran. The shocktrooper booted a door open and charged into Damien’s room. Jay pried the M16 from the stunned marine’s grip and swept the barrel at the unseen threat to his rear—whoever the shocktrooper was shooting at. He couldn’t see anything, but rounds were cracking past. He switched to infrared just to be sure and was quick enough to catch a figure dashing from a different angle altogether—right past him—headlong into Damien’s room. He heard gunfire, then the distinct crack of bones.

M16 in both hands, he moved low and fast for Damien’s room.

Silence.

He took a wide arc before stepping inside. Someone was standing over a dead shocktrooper. He recognized her and lowered his rifle.

‘What the shit was that?’ he said.

Grace looked up. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Yeah, well I softened him up for you.’

Grace pushed past him, changing mags. ‘Where’s Sophia?’

‘My room, next door,’ Jay said.

She halted in the doorway to his room, Vector aimed. It was his turn to brush past her, to find Sophia sprawled on the floor. She was aiming an M16 unsteadily with one good hand. Both she and Grace lowered their weapons.

From the corner of his vision, Jay noticed the injured marine reaching for his radio. He aimed at the marine’s head.

‘Is that necessary?’ Damien said, approaching from the hotel reception, UMP in both hands.

Jay sighed loudly and snatched the radio from the marine. ‘Your lucky day,’ he said.

It was only now that he realized they had an audience. Faces were pressed against the reception windows, watching the chaos unfold on the hotel’s neatly manicured grass. The entire place was probably calling for help right now.

‘Sophia’s banged up pretty bad,’ Jay said. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Helping Grace,’ Damien said.

‘And mostly getting in the way,’ Grace said, appearing in the doorway and holding Sophia. ‘I could use some help now though.’ Her teeth were clenched and her breathing was shallow.

‘You’re injured,’ Jay said.

‘Just ribs,’ she said. ‘They’ll knit together in about four to six hours.’

Jay remembered she was a former shocktrooper bearing the same Axolotl Chimera vector as Damien, Sophia and himself. Accelerated healing came in handy, especially with their lifestyles.

‘We need wheels for Sophia,’ she said.

Jay pushed past her and found the G36C subcarbine under Damien’s bed. He was pleased to see the thirty-round magazine was mostly full. He walked outside, past reception, ignoring the gawking faces. As long they weren’t pointing weapons at him, he didn’t care. Across the road he saw a phalanx of dune buggies—all-terrain recreational vehicles with open chassis and fat tires. The lead instructor was giving tourists a lesson in handling the buggies; the only one not already sitting inside his vehicle.

That’ll do, Jay thought.

He approached the driver, subcarbine aimed. ‘I’m taking this,’ he said.

The driver stopped mid-sentence and shot his hands to the sky. Jay indicated with one hand for him to move onto the sidewalk, but he froze. Great. Jay shoved him aside.

Damien and Grace were helping Sophia across the road. Jay assisted with the traffic by pointing his subcarbine at approaching motorists. They drew to a panicked halt.

Grace carefully lowered Sophia into the passenger seat of the instructor’s buggy. She groaned in pain, which made the instructor retreat further across the sidewalk.

‘Are you coming?’ Grace said.

‘Where’s Nasira?’ Jay asked.

‘Last I saw her was in the hotel right next to Sophia’s team’s hotel, just south,’ Damien said.

‘My team’s hotel,’ Grace corrected him.

‘Any way we can track her location?’ Jay asked.

‘Freeman had the locator,’ Grace said. ‘Nasira’s probably trying to get to him now.’

‘He’s dead. She’s walking into a trap,’ Damien said.

‘Oh fuck,’ Jay said. He didn’t know what was worse, that Freeman was dead or that Nasira was about to be.

Sophia sat propped in the buggy, M16 at her side. She was ghastly pale and looked like she was about to vomit. Grace pulled something from Sophia’s hip pocket.

‘You’ll be dead too if you don’t get to the north end of the island,’ she said. ‘Here: coordinates for the sub RV.’

Damien took the paper with the GPS coordinates scribbled on it. ‘How long do we have?’

‘That’s relative,’ Grace said. ‘Oh shit.’

Jay glared at her. ‘What’s oh shit?’

‘Freeman’s locator. The shocktroopers could have it now.’

‘Then they know where we all are,’ Damien said.

‘DC, do you read?’ Grace said into her mic.

It took a moment, but his voice crackled in response. ‘Yeah, we’re at the RV now.’

‘Turn off your receivers. The locators may be compromised,’ Grace said.

‘Got it,’ DC said. ‘Switching off.’

‘I’m going for Nasira,’ Jay said, subcarbine in both hands.

‘No,
we
are,’ Damien said, handing his receiver to a confused tourist.

Grace sighed. She pulled out her smartphone. ‘Here. Track her with this.’ She handed it to Damien but Jay grabbed it.

‘When you find her, get rid of her receiver,’ Grace added.

‘Thanks,’ Jay said.

Grace glared at him. ‘Don’t thank me.’ Her gaze flickered to Damien. ‘And don’t get killed.’

‘We’ll see you there,’ Damien said.

Grace dropped into the driver’s seat and hit the gas. The buggy took off, horn permanently blasting as she rammed motorcyclists out of her way.

Jay watched her disappear down the narrow winding street. There was a marine checkpoint setting up in the distance, further south. That ruled out a buggy ride.

‘You got around the marines and into that hotel, right?’ he said to Damien.

‘Next door, yeah.’

‘Show me.’

***

Sophia felt like she was floating, except when Grace bumped a trike or scraped alongside a car. The road narrowed out as they left the town behind, and became lined by shacks, trees and the occasional preoccupied dog. A warming sensation flowed down her spine and panic seemed to flitter away. In its place, a pain greater than her broken bones and skin. Freeman was gone. Benito was gone. Schlosser was gone. She couldn’t hold it all together any more. Too much. It flowed from her in racking, gasping sobs that filled her vision and clogged her nose. It seemed endless. She knew it would be endless.

She didn’t care if Grace saw her like this; she didn’t care about anything any more. At this point, she didn’t care if the shocktroopers caught up with them. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force it all out. But it kept coming. The pain wasn’t going away, it only grew deeper and darker; a rift inside that swallowed her completely. She paused to gasp for air, reminded herself that this was all real. This was happening. They were dead and there was nothing she could do about it. Her hands curled into fists, sticky with blood.

She turned to Grace. Her gaze was hard, searching ahead. Her stomach contracted and expanded in short, pained breaths. She was injured too. Sophia watched her swallow a pill.

‘Why are you helping me?’ she said. Her mouth felt like cotton wool.

Grace kept her focus on the road. ‘I can drop you off here if you prefer.’

Sophia blinked away more tears. Her legs felt numb. Everything felt numb and itchy.

‘Freeman’s dead,’ she said, her words trembling. ‘And Benito. They’re all—’

‘I know,’ Grace said. ‘Just shut up and save your energy.’

Sophia’s tears mixed with blood and snot and dripped from her jaw. She closed her eyes and let the cool air rush against her face. When she opened them again, they’d arrived at their destination. The road had simply ended and Grace was helping her out onto a crushed-shell beach, leaving her stolen M16 behind. Ahead, she could make out a fishing boat. Her vision wasn’t sharp enough to identify who was onboard, but one of the figures rushed along the rough sand to meet her.

‘Fucking hell,’ DC said. ‘How bad?’

‘Get her on the boat,’ Grace said.

‘Pain meds?’

‘Ten mil, fifteen minutes,’ Grace said.

They carried her over their shoulders. Sophia closed her eyes and made it all go away.

Jay walked into the penthouse, Damien’s hand on his back so they could stay together and know each other’s position without having to look. They stepped into the lounge at the same time, weapons aimed in opposite directions as they covered their corners.

Damien held Grace’s phone in the same hand resting on Jay’s back. He was using it to track Nasira’s GPS receiver. ‘One-seventy feet,’ he said.

Jay’s heart was doing double-time, he could feel it thrum in his ears. Dead marines lay sprawled before him, the carpet around them damp with dark blood. Damien remained glued to his back as they cleared the kitchen and moved onto the balcony.

‘One-forty,’ he said, and pointed over Jay’s shoulder to the adjacent building’s balcony, positioned slightly below the one they were on. It was covered in glass fragments.

Jay could see through into the hall, the room’s door off its hinges. There was a body out there. He recognized it as Freeman’s.

‘She must be in that building,’ he said.

‘I saw her jump balconies,’ Damien said. ‘To here, and then she disappeared.’

‘She went back for Freeman,’ Jay said. He didn’t like her chances.

‘The marines are about to clear the building,’ Damien said. ‘We need to get in there now.’

Jay offered his hand and Damien placed the smartphone into it.

‘RV’s already programmed in,’ he said.

Jay noticed Damien was still barefoot. ‘You can’t jump onto that glass,’ he said, shoving the phone into his jeans.

‘I know. I’ll find some—’

‘Get on the roof and wait here.’ Jay tapped his ear. ‘I’ll grab Freeman’s radio.’

He gripped his subcarbine in one hand and leaped from the balcony railing. It was an easy jump down onto the adjacent balcony. He landed carefully, stepped over the glass and into the hotel room. He walked through, subcarbine sweeping the room. Moving through the doorway, he noticed the hall’s plaster walls were peppered with dints and bullet holes. He carefully stepped over a dead shocktrooper and blinked into infrared vision. Freeman was just ahead, lifeless eyes watching his every step. According to the smartphone, Nasira was just to the right of Freeman. Through infrared, Jay could make out a hint of warmth reflecting onto the wall inside another hotel room. He edged around carefully. He could hear breathing.

‘Nasira,’ he whispered.

No response. Just more breathing.

He edged closer and made out the tip of her boot.

‘It’s me, Jay,’ he said, switching out of infrared.

He pointed his subcarbine to the floor and stepped slowly into view. She stood just inside the doorframe, MP7 gripped a little too tightly and aimed directly at his head. She breathed in large, controlled gulps. Her face was flecked with blood, her hands coated in it. She was leaning against the wall. Between her feet, Jay saw a sprinkling of empty shell casings, an empty magazine and an earpiece. She’d obviously been busy.

‘Are you hurt?’ he said.

She shook her head slightly. ‘Not my blood.’ She reached into her pocket and switched off her radio.

‘We have to go,’ Jay whispered. ‘The marines will storm this place any minute.’

She just breathed, staring at him. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t leave without him,’ she said, lowering her MP7.

Jay nodded. ‘He’s gone, Nasira. We have to go.’

Her eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. ‘I can’t go back to her. Not without him.’ Her chin wrinkled as she tried to swallow. ‘I can’t.’

Jay reached down slowly and checked Freeman’s pockets. He found the smartphone and shoved it into his own pocket. He took Freeman’s radio, pinned the mic to the collar of his T-shirt, then carefully pried the earpiece from Freeman’s ear. He tried not to look into Freeman’s frozen stare as he did so.

He slipped the earpiece into his own ear. ‘Damien, you read?’

‘Loud and clear,’ Damien said.

‘I have Nasira,’ Jay said.

Grace’s voice cracked in his ear. ‘Get to the RV now!’

‘On it,’ Jay replied. He turned to Nasira. ‘They’re waiting for us.’

She shook her head, firmly this time. ‘No, they’re not.’

Jay could hear the distant voices of marines downstairs as they cleared the hotel level by level. He stepped into the doorway, directly in front of her, and crouched to collect the earpiece. He stood and carefully slipped it into her ear.

‘They need you,’ he said. His fingers lingered across her earlobe. ‘I need you.’

‘Hey!’ Damien called out.

Jay took a long step backward and moved into the hall. He was faced with a pair of shocktroopers pointing submachine guns at him from the penthouse balcony. Thanks, Damien, he thought. But Damien was standing behind them. He was getting their attention, not Jay’s. That amounted to suicide, Jay thought.

The shocktroopers turned, UMPs in hand. Before they could fire on Damien, he pointed something at them and there was a bright flash. Jay looked away just in time as Damien fired his flashgun. Something else Damien had
conveniently
forgotten to hand over after the operation.

Jay dropped into a crouch and aimed his subcarbine, catching one of the shocktroopers in the upper back. He collapsed to his knees and then to his face. Damien shot the other one at point-blank range to the face with his own UMP, then turned and finished off the one Jay had shot.

Mark II shocktroopers aren’t so tough after all, Jay thought.

Then he noticed another shocktrooper appear in the penthouse lounge behind Damien.

‘Behind you!’ he yelled.

The shocktrooper fired—not rounds but a vortex ring grenade. Damien was thrown clear of the penthouse balcony, straight through the adjacent balcony and into the hotel room Jay had entered through. He tumbled over the double beds and crashed unseen into a wall. Jay immediately laid down cover fire, only pausing when he heard boots coming closer. The marines were about to hit this level.

Nasira pulled at him roughly from behind. ‘Through here!’ she hissed.

He followed her as she sprinted through the hotel room—scorched black from an explosive—and out over the balcony. There was no railing so she just stepped off, landed effortlessly on the balcony below, then climbed over and jumped to the swimming pool area below that.

‘Marines are on this level!’ Jay said to Damien. ‘Get—’

Damien burst into the room behind him and fired a few rounds down the hall. ‘Yeah, I hadn’t noticed,’ he yelled.

Jay landed on the balcony below, losing grip on his subcarbine. It bounced off the balcony. Fuck it, he thought. He jumped off the side, giving Damien room to land in his wake. He didn’t see the subcarbine so he took off after Nasira, who was sprinting across a small bridge over a swimming pool. He checked over his shoulder, glad to see Damien ten paces behind him, UMP still in hand.

Nasira pushed through the crowd that had gathered, knocking five people onto their asses. Jay leaped over the space they’d created, kicking up sand as he weaved through palm trees. Nasira was moving directly toward a bunch of jet skiers who had paused near the shoreline to inspect the situation at the hotel. He watched as she pointed her MP7 and shouted at them. Compliant, they staggered off their jet skis. Nasira mounted one and rode it closer to the water’s edge. Jay sprinted across the wet sand and hurled himself onto the ski, arms around her stomach.

‘Go,’ he said between breaths.

She waited a moment, MP7 resting over the handrail, covering Damien as he carved a path through the water for his own jet ski. As soon as he mounted it, she took off with a sudden lurch. Jay hung on tight, watching their side for any pursuing shocktroopers. There was no one as yet. He hoped the marines had slowed them down.

Wiping the salt water from his eyes, he pulled out the smartphone and showed it to Nasira. It only took her a moment to memorize the RV coordinates before she pushed it back into his hands. He buried it in his jeans pocket.

Nasira had quickly moved the jet ski out to deeper waters—still calm and aquamarine—and was now whisking them at breakneck pace along the western coast of the island, over the northern tip and down to the eastern side, Damien in tow.

She elbowed him softly. He followed her arm as she pointed across the water. He could make out a spindly fishing boat in the distance, bubbling along the azure surface. That was the rest of them, he thought. Or what was left of them, anyway.

Something broke from the water. At first Jay thought it was a whale, but the formation was too rigid and precise. A cluster of vertical pipes glinted in the sun. They surged upward, followed by a gunmetal gray structure, flat and long. It took him a second to realize it was the sail of the nuclear submarine they’d traveled in across the South Pacific. The submarine looked like an oversized cigar, its rudder and sail protruding sharply. Water surged excitedly around it, expelled from the forward and aft tanks.

The fishing boat endured the choppy water next to it, crawling closer until it bumped against the sub’s port side.

Jay tightened his grip around Nasira as she rode a wave into the air, smacking back down hard enough that he almost banged heads with her. He wiped the salty water from his eyes, blinked, and looked over Nasira’s shoulder. He could see DC throwing a rope onto the bow of the submarine. Chickenhead was leaping onto the side. He reached the deck where it was flat and easier to walk, then looped the rope around a pair of knob-shaped protrusions.

Nasira slowed as she reached the sub’s bow, then abandoned the jet ski, climbing the slick curved surface with her MP7 in hand. She ran for the door on the port side of the sail, which opened as she approached.

Jay turned to Damien, who was idling alongside. ‘No one?’

Damien shook his head. ‘No pursuers.’

‘Not for long,’ Jay said, noticing a figure in the distance, running across the sand. He pointed so Damien could see. ‘Shocktrooper?’

Damien remained silent. He didn’t know.

‘Keep an eye in that direction,’ Jay said. ‘If he gets any closer, yell out.’

He crawled up the submarine. It was as slippery as soap and he almost fell back into the water. When he reached the deck, Chickenhead and DC were already carrying Sophia on a makeshift stretcher along the port side and into the sail, using the railing bolted to the sail for extra balance.

Sophia saw him and stretched out her hand. ‘Jay.’

‘Yeah, we’re here,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

Her eyes were glazed. She was whacked out on morphine.

‘I need you back,’ she said.

He gave her a grim smile. ‘We never left.’

Chickenhead and DC moved carefully alongside the port of the sail, each with one hand on the stretcher and the other on the handrail to keep themselves from slipping. They balanced the edge of the stretcher on rail to keep Sophia from tipping over. It was then Jay noticed movement behind the sail, on the sub’s stern. Quick, furious movement. Cloaked.

He started for it. ‘Hey!’

Behind DC, there was movement. DC saw it too and reached for his tachi sword, unsheathing it halfway. He was just in time to catch a knife slicing toward his neck. With one hand on his tachi, DC quickly snatched the stretcher with his other hand, stopping Sophia from toppling overboard.

Jay blinked into infrared. A shocktrooper was standing behind DC, knife-hand hard up against DC’s half-brandished tachi. The knife gleamed in the sunlight. In the shocktrooper’s other hand, a pistol, leveled.

‘He’s armed!’ Jay yelled.

DC released his tachi so it slipped back down into his saya, and swung his elbow outward, knocking the pistol off aim. The shocktrooper fired. Jay hit the deck. There was no room to get past Chickenhead, the stretcher and DC, so he ran around the sail. As he reached the other side, DC’s tachi was out again and cutting toward the shocktrooper’s torso. The shocktrooper was no longer cloaked. He dived under the blade, into the water between the submarine and the fishing boat.

Grace, still on the fishing boat, was tracking the shocktrooper as he swam under the submarine. Damien was firing his UMP from the jet ski. Everything was going to shit.

 ‘Get Sophia inside!’ Grace yelled.

DC and Chickenhead shuttled the stretcher through the sub’s entrance, leaving Jay with just enough room to cross back to the bow. He checked the beach. Clear. The north coast of the island where they’d come from. Clear. The water around them. Through the infrared spectrum, he saw four bodies swimming toward him, surrounding the submarine.

‘Fuckgiraffes!’ he yelled.

DC was back outside, tachi gleaming beside him. ‘What now?’

‘Damien,’ Jay said, ‘get the fucking fuck up here!’

He ran across the deck and slid over to Damien, extended a hand and started hauling him up. As he did so, a cloaked shocktrooper rippled from the water in front of him. The shocktrooper moved with brilliant speed onto the deck and aimed his pistol at Jay’s head from a safe, accurate distance.

DC’s tachi was silent as it sliced through the arm, hesitating slightly as it struck bone. The pistol clattered down the side of the submarine and into the water. The shocktrooper—minus a forearm—kicked DC in his side. Jay watched DC fly across the submarine and into the water. Goddamn exoskeletons.

Jay grunted as he got Damien onto the deck. He cast one last glance back at the water, still in infrared vision. Three shocktroopers were closing fast on DC, who was unarmed and hilariously outmatched.

Damien fired a burst from his UMP and hit nothing. The shocktrooper on deck, still cloaked, moved for him.

‘Where is he?’ Damien yelled.

‘On your ten, incoming,’ Jay said.

Damien adjusted his aim according to Jay’s directions and fired another burst. Jay scooped up DC’s tachi and brought it over his shoulder in a downward strike. The shocktrooper broke from his advance and rolled to one side, uncloaked.

Jay was back to back with Damien. Two shocktroopers dived toward one side of the submarine, and a third crawled up the other side of the sub.

‘Tell me you have rounds in that peashooter,’ Jay said.

‘If that’s a euphemism …’ Damien said.