The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (31 page)

‘Yeah, excuse me?’ Damien said, rubbing his wrists. ‘I’m not familiar with those Tier 1 operator tactics.’

Jay glared at him. ‘On second thoughts, you can tie him back up.’

‘Seriously, that’s your plan?’ Damien said. ‘Getting caught?’

Jay didn’t reply, he was busy inspecting what seemed to be a printout of the UN headquarters from Google Maps’ satellite view. The headquarters was located in Midtown east, a thin rectangle on the coast that overlooked Queens. The center building, the general assembly building, stuck out because it had a glass dome. The tall building below it was the secretariat building, the same building he’d entered with Damien and Denton after the events at Desecheo Island last year. On the eastern coast, adjoining the secretariat building, was the conference building. In front of the secretariat building, he recognized the fountain. There was a building below that, on the south end of the property: a library. Like the general assembly, it looked to be only a few levels high. The northern half of the property was what caught Jay’s attention. Last he was there, it had still been under construction.

‘What’s that massive fuck-off building?’ he said.

Aviary glanced at the map. ‘That’s new. We suspect it’s currently for military use.’

Jay planted a finger on it. ‘That’s where I’d put the rations if I was the UN or whoever’s in charge there. It’s also hopefully where we’ll be taken into custody.’

‘Won’t they just throw you off to the cops?’ Calvin said.

‘Not if we get arrested
inside
the compound,’ Damien said. ‘Military, private contractors, even the UN, are authorized to arrest US citizens on US soil. If we’re inside, they’ll arrest us. At least temporarily.’ He turned to Jay. ‘This is a really dumb idea, by the way.’

Calvin shook his head. ‘We’re not in a state of emergency at this time.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Damien said. ‘The bill was passed years ago and it’s put through annually. They can arrest whoever they want now.’

‘Shit.’ Calvin scratched his head. ‘That’s heavy.’

‘And it’s also exactly what we need,’ Jay said. ‘Once we’re arrested and taken inside, we’re in the perfect position to take the rations. Dress up as smurfs—’

‘Smurfs?’ Aviary said.

‘UN soldiers,’ Damien explained.

‘Load the rations into a vehicle and leave,’ Jay said. ‘Simple.’

‘It’s never simple,’ Damien said. ‘But, yeah.’

‘Just tell us what you need and we’ll get it for you,’ Aviary said. ‘Other than the rations, obviously.’

‘If we’re going to be captured inside then we need to get inside,’ Jay said. ‘The only way to get inside is when the gates are open.’

‘We’ll have to wait until a vehicle enters or leaves,’ Damien said.

‘Which means we’ll need to be nearby and we’ll need a visual,’ Jay said. ‘A car accident, one runs into the other. Simple, easy. Stolen cars. When someone is at the gates ready to leave or enter, we have an accident right in front of them. Block their exit.’

‘That won’t block the gate,’ Grace said. ‘They can still close it.’

‘Unless you time it so the car is halfway through,’ Damien said.

Aviary frowned. ‘That’s extremely precise timing. You’d need to be ready and have the car nearby. There’s nowhere to park that close.’

‘We could park further away,’ Jay said. ‘There’s no traffic lights to screw up our timing.’

Aviary slumped in Damien’s chair. ‘The nearest place you could pull up is a block away.’

‘Or you drive blocks,’ Calvin suggested.

‘That’s fine if you do one or two,’ Grace said. ‘But how often do people go in and out the gates? You could be driving around for hours; you’d be noticed pretty quickly.’

‘Not at peak time,’ Jay said.

‘That will make the traffic hell,’ Aviary said. ‘You’d never make it around the block in time. Even if you were close.’

‘Fine,’ Jay said. ‘Motorcycles. Or how about bicycles?’

She shrugged. ‘Bicycles could work.’

‘One rides, one walks,’ Jay said. ‘The walker can be distracted, on his cell. Texting at the gate while a car approaches. Since he’s on location he can be the watcher, he’ll see the car and make his move. From a bus stop or whatever’s close.’

‘Make Damien a tourist,’ Grace said. ‘Give him a camera, an excuse to do surveillance. Not so much pointing at the headquarters, though; don’t want to make the soldiers at the gates nervous. He can be busy taking a photo when he gets hit.’

‘Why do I have to be hit?’ Damien said. ‘I just got stabbed twice.’

‘We start a fight,’ Jay said. ‘You can hit me if it makes you feel better.’

‘We’ll need to move the fight inside the gates fast,’ Damien said. ‘One runs, the other chases. Throw a few punches inside. Soldiers will pull us away.’

‘Maybe I try to punch one of them in anger.’ Jay shrugged. ‘It happens. In the heat of the moment.’

‘We’ll both need to attack the soldiers,’ Damien said. ‘Not take them down, just swing at them. Get us arrested.’

Aviary looked puzzled. ‘And then what? How will you get out of that?’

Jay wiggled an eyebrow. ‘As long as we conceal our tools well, we can get out of anything.’

‘Do you want a protest, a riot out the front?’ Aviary offered enthusiastically.

Damien shook his head. ‘No, we won’t need that. Our fist fight should be enough to get us in, get us arrested. We take it from there.’

‘You do this under one condition,’ Grace said. ‘If things go south, we don’t hear from you, I’m coming in.’

Damien nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘Since when did you care?’ Jay said.

‘I never said I did,’ she said. ‘Just tell me how long you need before I come rescue you.’

‘What, by yourself?’ Calvin said.

‘She’s … persuasive,’ Jay said. ‘Also invisible.’

‘I can’t let you do that, sorry,’ Aviary said.

‘Do you want your rations?’ Grace said. ‘If things go bad, trust me, you’ll want me out there.’

Aviary looked uncertain. ‘We’ll see if it comes to that.’

‘Best if I come in at night,’ Grace said. ‘You should hit this in the evening.’

Jay checked his watch. ‘We don’t have much time. Can’t we do it now?’

‘You want me to infiltrate the UN headquarters crawling with UN soldiers in broad daylight?’ Grace said. ‘Even with my cloaking capabilities that’s a tall order.’

‘They’re not shocktroopers, just national guard rehatted as UN,’ Jay said. ‘And besides, we won’t need you. Right, Damien?’

‘Actually, they’re regular army and marines,’ Calvin said. ‘Most have done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

Grace frowned. ‘Fine. Go in daylight. I suppose I can handle that.’

‘We have an hour and a half before lunch,’ Jay said.

‘We don’t have time to eat,’ Damien said.

‘No, lunch is the time to catch them. We need a camera, a bike—I can totally steal that.’

‘And these,’ Damien said, turning to Grace and reaching behind her ear.

She pulled away. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking your bobby pins.’

‘How do you know where I keep them?’ she said, eyes narrowing.

‘Some things don’t change.’

Grace fumed while he plucked two bobby pins from her hair.

‘Do you need us for anything?’ one of the knights said.

Jay flexed his wounded hand. ‘No. Just don’t kill me with your sword.’

‘Are you really Jay?’ the knight said. ‘Heard you’re like a super soldier or something.’

‘Well, I don’t like to brag.’

‘He does,’ Damien said. ‘OK, let’s get this over with.’

Sophia’s T-shirt was drenched by the time they’d slipped away from the Antonovs unnoticed. Miami’s humidity was equally as oppressive as Kuala Lumpur’s. DC quickened his pace as they stepped from the elevator with Nasira and Chickenhead into the parking lot’s lower level.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, looking around for any surveillance.

Sophia removed the sling and extended her arm slowly. Pain trickled from her elbow, but it was in working order now. She checked her smartphone. DC’s and her own beacon were right there on the map, inside Miami International. She pressed Damien’s location to see where he was.
Location unavailable
. That wasn’t good. She tried Jay’s. It gave her the same message. She swiped up to New York and wasn’t pleased to find a lack of beacons on Manhattan and Long Island.

She scanned the parking lot. A ten-year-old Honda Civic was the oldest car she could see. Older Hondas and Toyotas were the easiest cars to steal, but this one wasn’t quite old enough. Still, she had to work with what she had. She moved toward it, taking a ring of auto tryout keys from her daypack.

‘Keep watch,’ she said to Nasira and Chickenhead.

They split up and moved around the parking lot. She picked a key from her tryout set and inserted it into the driver’s side door. It was an acceptable match and the door opened. The car’s alarm started wailing. She popped the hood and DC worked quickly to disconnect the battery.

Sophia got into the driver’s seat, found the alarm under the dash and cut the power cable. ‘Power,’ she said.

DC connected the car battery again. ‘On,’ he said.

Like most cars manufactured in the last decade, the Civic was protected by transponder immobilizers. Without the one-of-a-kind RFID inside the owner’s key fob, the engine wouldn’t start. These systems were widely considered to be unbreakable, but Sophia knew otherwise. She inserted the same tryout key into the ignition with one hand and seized the emergency brake between the two seats with the other.

‘What are you doing?’ DC said, watching from outside. He was probably expecting her to whip out a screwdriver or a laptop to circumvent the RFID.

‘You know those cheat codes for video games?’ she said. ‘Like that.’

She pushed and pulled the brake while rotating the key at prescribed times between the on and start positions. The engine hummed to life.

DC stared in disbelief. ‘Huh.’

She closed her door and reversed the car. DC signaled the others to fall in. Once he was in the passenger seat beside her, she handed him her smartphone so he could direct them to the Seraphim transmitter, then cranked the air-con.

‘I’m guessing without tolls?’ DC said.

‘Yeah.’ Sophia drove the Honda out of the parking lot. The sun made her squint. She checked the glove box, pleased to find a pair of smudged Ray-Bans. She wiped them with her soaked T-shirt and slipped them on.

‘Twelve miles, twenty minutes in current traffic,’ DC said. ‘South down Forty-second, east along Dixie Highway, straight out onto the causeway. Easy.’

‘How does it look?’

She’d already surveyed the transmitter on Google Maps before they’d boarded the Antonovs but she wanted his opinion.

‘It’s isolated. On a barrier island, just north of a water treatment plant.’

‘Any ideas on how we get inside?’ Nasira said.

Sophia had a couple, but she reserved them until they’d done their recon. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, checking her mirrors for surveillance.

Just to be sure, she conducted an aggressive SDR—surveillance detection route—before taking the causeway, more or less driving in a circle to weed out any tails. Suspicious vehicles would be easy to spot once they were on the causeway. Then again, if it was the Fifth Column surveilling her they’d have a team of twenty and she’d never see the same car twice.

‘I can’t see Damien or Jay on this,’ DC said.

‘I know.’ She didn’t need to look at him to know he was concerned.

‘Where the fuck are they then?’ Nasira said.

Sophia drove the Honda onto the causeway, which took them over a shimmering blue bay from the mainland to the island. The bay was dotted with windsurfers and yachts.

‘Last I saw they weren’t far off the coast,’ she said. ‘Their receivers could have been taken, switched off.’

‘Destroyed,’ Nasira said.

‘Or somewhere they can’t get a fix on the satellites,’ DC said.

‘We’ll just have to keep an eye on it,’ Sophia said. ‘If we don’t hear from them in twenty-four hours, we’re on our own.’

‘And what does that mean?’ Chickenhead said.

‘It means we take down all the transmitters ourselves,’ Sophia said. ‘EMP every one of them.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Nasira said. ‘I hope we get enough time to pull that off.’

‘We’ll have to make sure we do,’ Sophia said.

She hoped Damien and Jay would appear on that map soon. Their chances of taking all the transmitters out by themselves wasn’t high.

The causeway reached the island. On her right, she saw a strip of beach cluttered with people and dogs. On her left, a fish market and marina. It seemed an unlikely place to install a weapon of such insidious purpose.

‘Left up ahead,’ DC said.

The beach disappeared, replaced by thick forest and wetland. DC directed them right at a fork in the road. She breathed deeply and relaxed, focused. They needed to recon the transmitter and figure out their best approach.

‘OK, there’s nowhere to pull over on the left road so we’ll go around here,’ DC said. ‘There’s a small beach, probably some cars parked there.’

She knew what he was thinking. They couldn’t just pull up short of the transmitter on the side of the road. They needed somewhere to park that wouldn’t attract attention.

The road ended at the beach, the parking spaces empty of cars.

‘So much for parked cars,’ Chickenhead said from the back seat.

That wasn’t the only thing that concerned Sophia. She pulled into a parking spot marked with faded yellow paint and stepped out onto the sand-swept asphalt. A heavy wind rustled spindly palm trees and power lines. The beach was flat and open. Opposite their Honda was a cuboid public restroom and a grassy park that ran adjacent to the beach, sprinkled with park benches and thatched roofs. The shoreline was starting to thicken with waves. In the distance, she could see dark gray clouds churning in from the Bahamas. It wasn’t sunny enough for sunglasses any more, but she kept them on to shield against the wind.

‘This isn’t hurricane season, is it?’ she said.

‘Hell, no,’ Nasira said. ‘That’s six months ago.’

‘It’s high tide,’ Sophia said.

‘The Akhana elders did say the weather was getting crazy,’ DC said.

Chickenhead brushed windswept hair from his face. ‘No wonder they were blaming Seraphim.’

Sophia’s smartphone didn’t have a SIM card—she didn’t want to make it too easy for the Fifth Column to track them—so there were no means to check for hurricane warnings except by staring at the clouds. She hadn’t thought to check the weather before leaving Kuala Lumpur. And after Hurricane Sandy had almost drowned her in the Manhattan Akhana base, she wasn’t thrilled about getting caught in another one. But it didn’t change the plan. They had less than two days to stop the Seraphim transmitters, hurricane or no hurricane.

‘Maybe it’ll rip out the transmitter for us,’ Chickenhead said.

DC shook his head. ‘They’re built to withstand a category five. That bad boy isn’t going anywhere.’

Sophia handed her GPS receiver to Nasira. ‘We wait until dark. Two teams. One pair of night-vision goggles each. The person without goggles will be on lookout while the person with is on observation. I’ll take the south and east side with DC; you take the north and west. After that, if we need to purchase or organize anything we only have a few hours to do so. We enter the installation at 0300.’

‘And how do we do that?’ Chickenhead said.

‘We won’t know until we can do a proper three-sixty of the place,’ Sophia said. ‘Until then, we just lay low and hope those clouds aren’t the early signs of a hurricane.’

***

Jay watched as Damien dropped his duffel bag at his feet, their parachute packs inside. He didn’t like this plan much. Firstly because he’d had to return to Kevin in Chinatown and bargain for his parachute back—a hard bargain he’d only managed by coughing up Nasira’s MP7 and magazine. Secondly because he really, really didn’t like jumping off or out of high places.

Damien ripped off his work overalls and cap. Jay followed suit, even though he’d neglected to wear a cap because hat hair was an unacceptable compromise. They were both wearing their harnesses underneath. Jay placed his toolbox on the ground—he’d been carrying it mostly for show—and took out a screwdriver and two pairs of goggles. He handed a set to Damien. When James Bond freefell to steal a bad guy’s parachute, he looked cooler without goggles. But in real freefall, you couldn’t see a damn thing without them.

Jay’s plan, although perfect in theory, hadn’t worked out so well. He and Damien had started a fight outside the UN headquarters right at the moment when the gate opened to let an employee out. Damien was on foot and Jay crashed into him while riding a bicycle. It was spectacularly executed. They’d immediately taken their road rage inside the gate, where they were subdued by somewhat bemused UN soldiers. Much to Jay’s surprise, the UN soldiers just threw them out on the street. So it was Damien’s Plan B now.

It was windy on the hotel rooftop, he noticed with growing uncertainty as he slipped his parachute pack’s straps up his legs and over his shoulders. The tower they were standing on overlooked the north end of the UN headquarters. The depths of New York glistened on his right, the water on his left. He breathed deeply and shrugged his daypack on over his chest, tightened the straps. The daypack contained everything a hardcore protester required: a large anti-UN banner, black spraypaint, handkerchiefs, rope, water and fair trade raw chocolate bars. The satphone, but definitely no weapons. Jay hadn’t brought his pouch full of goodies, but he had his emergency sachet inside his jeans.

‘You have your emergency kit?’ he asked.

‘In my pants,’ Damien said. ‘I’m good to go. Unless they take my pants off. You?’

Jay smiled. ‘Usually I’m good to go
after
my pants are off.’

Damien ignored him and checked his straps and rigs. Once he was done, Jay checked his. They’d already repacked and checked them once beforehand, but Jay was happy to do it again. They each carried knives—well, Damien had the knife on his multitool—in case their parachutes tangled, although Jay doubted they’d have time to get the knives out, let alone cut the lines.

Damien dug into his pocket and produced two of Grace’s bobby pins. He slipped one deep into his hair where no one could see it.

‘New fashion trend?’ Jay said.

Damien offered him the other one. ‘In case they take your pants.’ He winked.

Jay scowled and shoved the bobby pin under his hair, making sure it was secure.

Damien walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Jay didn’t follow. Instead he flexed his fists and stretched his legs. None of it was necessary, but he did it anyway.

‘Ready?’ Damien said, returning to Jay.

‘Don’t ask me that again,’ Jay said.

Damien adjusted his goggles and took a long run-up. He ran to the edge, leaped off and disappeared, leaving Jay alone on the rooftop.

‘Fuck,’ Jay said.

He slapped his hands together and cricked his neck. ‘OK, let’s do this.’

Four hundred feet. Six seconds to land.

One second to clear the building.

Three seconds for the parachute to open.

Two seconds to check canopy and see if he was going to die or not.

‘Go,’ he said.

He stood there a moment, then forced himself to move. He ran the same length as Damien, the wind rushing through his hair, battering his eardrums. He reached the edge, stepped up and jumped off. The world seemed distant below him. He fell into a stable freefall position, limbs spread, head up, back slightly arched. The momentum from his run-up cleared him from the face of the hotel tower. He didn’t have the luxury of waiting much longer. He pulled the drogue at the bottom of the container, deploying the pilot chute. The street below, grinding with shiny cars and hard pavement, rushed to meet him. He knew the main canopy had bloomed, its cells filling with air, because his body jerked suddenly under its lift. He looked up to check that it was completely inflated and there were no tangled lines. He’d never been so relieved in his life to see an inflated parachute.

His descent slowed to a survivable pace. People below stopped on the sidewalk, pointing and watching him. Heart still racing, he spotted Damien angling over the UN fence, his canopy fully intact. Jay followed him, tugging on the right toggle to line himself up. His parachute pulled him over the fence and over the treetops beyond. He was back in international territory.

Ahead, Damien was pulling in for a precise landing in a grass clearing not too far from their fist fight and conveniently alongside the mystery building they’d seen on Calvin’s map. The treetops brushed underfoot and Jay approached the clearing. He could make out four smurfs already moving toward Damien as he landed. His parachute collapsed in his wake.

Jay pulled both toggles and dropped himself down. He flared to a stop before Damien and broke into a run. The UN soldiers were moving toward him. This time, there were a lot of them. And they were angry.

He ripped his banner from the daypack, let it unravel in the breeze and yelled, ‘Protect Amer—’

Two UN soldiers tackled him to the ground.