The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (37 page)

‘Drop it!’ she yelled at DC. ‘Go!’

He let the grenade drop at her feet, smoking pouring from it. Someone moved to the gap in the fence behind them. Sophia turned and snapped her boot into the man’s head with her good foot. The pressure on her weak foot almost made her collapse. The man tumbled back into the gap, blocking the way for everyone else.

Nasira was running toward the factory. Sophia broke into a sprint, DC taking her arm over his shoulder. With the rain and the wind, she could hardly see a thing. They followed Nasira, who circumvented the factory and headed for a chain-link fence further ahead. Denton and Chickenhead were already climbing it. The building on the other side was four stories high, and as Sophia and DC stumbled closer she noticed it was abandoned.

Once they hit the fence, Sophia used her upper body strength and her good leg to climb, leaving DC to climb on his own. Her lungs burned and her newly healed arm was screaming in protest. She reached the top and hurled herself over, then ran with DC to the left side of the building, following Nasira in through a door that Denton had breached, the door jamb splintered. Sophia searched for something to barricade the door with but the entire ground floor was bare.

She could hear the echoes of Denton’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs. She was soaked and exhausted but forced herself up the steps, DC behind her in case she fell. Her breathing was still fast and her ankle was on fire. She had to lean on the blistered wall as she made her way to the topmost level.

Denton was standing in the corner of the building, peering out a window at the chaos below.

‘Here they come,’ he said, taking his pistol into both hands.

Sophia looked out and saw a surge of people moving around the abandoned factory.

Chickenhead was on one knee at the top of the stairs, carbine aimed down them. He was tired too, one shoulder propped against the wall. DC and Nasira lingered on the top floor, pistols in hand but not quite sure what to do with them.

‘We’re sitting ducks,’ DC said. ‘And I’m almost out of rounds.’

‘Join the club,’ Nasira said.

‘We’re all running low, so if you have any better options, I’d love to hear them,’ Denton said.

Sophia shushed them. She leaned further out of the window, putting weight on her good leg. The crowd dispersed, moving past the building. She listened for the door downstairs but heard nothing. Even the rain and wind had died down. So much for the hurricane.

‘Chickenhead, any movement?’ she said.

He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Nothing. Are they here yet?’

Sophia leaned away from the window and exhaled slowly. ‘They’re gone.’

She relaxed her wet pistol grip and lowered herself to the dirty floor. Her ankle could rest now. Nasira joined her on the floor, face turned to the ceiling, her eyes closed. DC crouched against a wall, staring at a patch of cracked concrete between his feet.

‘Well, that was quite a party, ladies and gentlemen,’ Denton said, ‘but we really must be moving along now.’

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Sophia said.

Denton turned on his heel. He looked unsurprised at her reaction but handed her his phone. On it she could see a news feed of regional news. Among them, a news story that ran just thirty-four minutes ago.

CIA: Cyberattack caused multi-city blackout
.

Sophia shook her head as she read through the article. Alaska, New York and Nevada were mentioned. It was probably too soon for Miami to be picked up and included, or perhaps the hurricane would be blamed for that.

She handed the phone back. ‘Fine, until people realize all their electronics are permanently fried.’

‘They’ll likely change the story to a terrorist attack,’ Denton said.

‘At least this time when they blame me, they’ll be telling the truth for once,’ Sophia said.

‘All the EMPs were successful,’ Denton said. ‘You know I’m telling the truth now.’

‘For now.’

‘Look, this super-array isn’t just a single transmitter,’ he said. ‘It’s an entire array of transmitters. Eighty by sixty miles, right alongside Denver International.’

‘An airport?’

‘Parked next door to Cecilia’s home address. The Fifth Column OpCenter.’

‘The OpCenter’s under an airport?’ DC said. ‘I never would’ve guessed that.’

‘I wasn’t even sure it was real,’ Nasira said. ‘Until now.’

A chill worked up Sophia’s spine, dispersing across her arms and legs. She checked her watch. ‘We suspect the Seraphim launch time to be in twenty-five hours. That’s not for the backup transmitters at all, is it?’

‘No,’ Denton said. ‘They’ve been active for some time now. At least, until you fried them.’ His face creased with concern. ‘The super-array, on the other hand, draws too much power. The transmitter’s power station is being brought online as we speak. I imagine we just saw a test run at low capacity.’

‘
Low
capacity?’ Nasira said. ‘Motherfucker.’

Sophia shivered at the thought of full capacity. If Denton was to be believed, Cecilia’s fancy launch day and Schlosser’s supposed deadline—which, it seemed, were one and the same—was not for the transmitters at all. It was for the super-array in Denver.

‘Why do
you
want it stopped?’ she asked Denton.

She needed to know his angle, his agenda. Even his surface agenda could reveal his hidden one.

‘I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news,’ Denton said, his smile flashing teeth, ‘but I’m kind of a hero now.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Nasira said.

Sophia held her hand up to hush her.

‘Once the super-array powers up, everyone in this country will want my blood,’ Denton said. ‘Because they’ll be persuaded to.’

‘That won’t be hard,’ Nasira said.

Denton’s gaze shifted between her, Sophia and the others. ‘And yours too,’ he said.

‘You seem quite sure of this,’ DC said, stepping forward.

‘There is no stopping it,’ Denton said. ‘This is happening.’

Denton’s heart might as well be liquid-cooled, but Sophia could see he was scared. He needed her. And she needed him.

‘What do you propose?’ she said.

‘You’re not actually considering—’ Nasira began.

Sophia gave her an even stare. ‘I’ll consider all the options.’

‘I’m also curious,’ DC said.

‘Curious enough to get yourself killed?’ Nasira said.

‘You saw it out there,’ Sophia said to her. ‘The Fifth Column can’t have that control.’

‘I have the General’s fingerprint on silicon,’ Denton said. ‘I used it yesterday and had no problem gaining access to the Fifth Column’s substation in Fort Lauderdale.’ His face split into a satisfied grin. ‘Cecilia’s blind spot. While I was in the substation I took the liberty of downloading the blueprints for the OpCenter and the airport. Using a lower-ranking identity, of course.’

‘Can you use that fingerprint to gain access to the super-array?’ Sophia asked.

‘To the OpCenter, which operates the super-array directly. Cecilia seems to have overlooked the General’s security access—he’s still in the system as authorized personnel. The most authorized there is, actually.’

‘So how do you propose to destroy the super-array?’ Sophia said.

‘The OpCenter is shielded from electromagnetic pulses—one of the few bases on the planet that is,’ Denton said. ‘But it’s not shielded from the
inside
. You get EMPs into the OpCenter and you can fry the Seraphim super-array
and
OpCenter command.’ His smile grew. ‘Everything. Finished.’

‘Sounds a little too good to be true,’ Nasira said.

‘Except the getting in part,’ DC said. ‘You might have the access, but we’re talking about the most secure military installation on the planet. You’d have better luck fighting your way into NORAD.’

‘Who said we’re fighting our way in?’ Denton said.

‘Who said
we’re
doing anything?’ Nasira said.

‘I have the blueprints,’ Denton said. ‘There’s a service tunnel that links the airport to the OpCenter. There are several, actually, but this one has been disused since they began construction on the power station. It’s the perfect entry point because (a) it’s difficult to enter and (b) it’ll be overlooked by security.’ He seemed pleased with himself. ‘Especially with a diversion somewhere else. You wouldn’t even need real people, just explosives.’

‘You’d at least plant them at two obvious service tunnels,’ DC said. ‘Keep them busy while you slip in unnoticed.’

‘Fuck that. With some ingenuity you could just walk in through the main entrance,’ Nasira said. ‘Last thing they’d expect.’

Denton shook his head. ‘There is no main entrance. At least, not one you can access from the airport. All main entry points are via other Fifth Column bases, which are also underground. An Air Force base and NORAD. The service tunnels are only in place for emergency access.’

‘I’d say this qualifies as an emergency,’ Sophia said.

‘This is the point where I admit I grabbed a little something extra from the Fort Lauderdale substation,’ Denton said. ‘A flux compression generator. Weighs a ton, I had to move it in a van. It’s no Seraphim, but with the right kit it can blast a transient electromagnetic pulse five miles wide. Which, if I recall, is just enough to cover the entire airport. Nothing like a terrorist attack to cover your infiltration into the OpCenter.’

‘You came prepared,’ Sophia said.

‘So you’re in?’

She shook her head. ‘Not so fast. What’s stopping you eliminating us once it’s done?’

‘You’re not a threat to me,’ he said.

‘That’s hardly reassuring.’

‘You could be setting us up,’ Nasira said. ‘Not the first time.’

‘And it won’t be the last. But this is different.’ Denton’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m a one-man show. I don’t have the control or the connections to do that. Make no mistake, I’m not looking to become best pals, and I certainly don’t subscribe to the belief that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. But you sure as hell could be my ally.’

‘But why the hell would we?’ Nasira said.

‘Because it’s our only hope,’ he said.

‘And if we succeed?’ Sophia asked. ‘What then?’

‘Finality,’ Denton said. ‘The Fifth Column falls. And we move on. If anything, I should be more concerned about you tying up loose ends and disposing of
me
. You clearly have more . . . resources than I do.’

‘I don’t have a fingerprint for all occasions,’ Sophia said. ‘And I sure as hell don’t have a flux compression generator.’

‘And I don’t have a covert entry team of highly trained operatives and the former commander of the Blue Berets,’ Denton said.

‘I could kill you right now and take the fingerprint,’ Sophia said. ‘Why would you risk showing your face here?’

‘You could, but you don’t know where I parked the van holding the generator. And you also won’t have the blueprints to the OpCenter because I’m not carrying them. As much as I’d like to trust you, I need insurance. That’s why the blueprints are up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘If you kill me, you can’t get to them. And the time it would take to torture it out of me,’ he consulted his watch, ‘is time you don’t have.’

Sophia checked her own watch. ‘Twenty-six hours,’ she said.

‘Air travel will be too dangerous now,’ Denton said. ‘It will take the most part of a day to reach Denver by car. And that’s on shifts, no rest stops.’

She eyed Denton carefully. ‘Why are you so desperate to destroy the Seraphim?’

‘I promised you at the UN headquarters last year that I would clean up this mess,’ he said. ‘And that’s a promise I sure as hell intend to keep. Cecilia will use the Seraphim to tie up any loose ends, myself included. She’ll come for me eventually. And eventually I won’t have a way to stop her.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Nasira said.

‘You don’t have to,’ Sophia said. ‘If you don’t like it, you can walk away.’

The warehouse fell silent. Nasira shook her head and took a step back.

Sophia turned to Denton. ‘Under one condition.’

‘I’m all ears,’ he said.

‘In the unlikely event we encounter Cecilia, I’d like the honors.’

Denton raised an eyebrow just a fraction to show he was amused. ‘To kill her?’

‘In the unlikely event,’ Sophia said, ‘yes. Are there any conditions on your end that I should be aware of? Or that I shouldn’t be aware of?’

‘Just the one,’ he said. ‘That we encounter Cecilia.’

It took fifteen minutes for Damien, Jay, Grace, Aviary and the surviving two jaguar knights to reach their RV point. His gas mask stashed in his daypack, Damien’s natural night-vision was in full force now. He could see a minimum under the sliver of moonlight, but enough to notice Jay climb into the driver’s seat of one of the two 4WDs they’d left in the parking lot. They’d parked them a generous distance from the compound so they wouldn’t be affected by the electromagnetic pulse. But it was clear when Jay started the engine that they’d underestimated the pulse’s range.

‘It’s toast,’ he said in a low voice, closing the door slowly and quietly. ‘We’ll have to move out on foot.’

‘What about the resistance?’ Aviary said, her voice ragged. ‘They helped us. You saw the CS gas canisters everywhere.’

‘We wait ten minutes then,’ Damien suggested.

‘We can’t,’ Grace said. ‘The army will expand their search and we’ll get caught in their net. We need to stay ahead, out of sight.’

‘Find a car that works,’ Jay said.

Aviary sniffed. ‘If we have to.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘About Calvin. And the others.’

‘I know,’ Aviary said. ‘That’s what happens.’

‘Leave the carbines here,’ Grace said, taking Aviary’s off her and lifting the strap over her head. ‘Pistols only. We can’t attract undue attention.’

‘What?’ Jay hissed. ‘I traded my MP7 for a stupid parachute. I don’t have anything else!’

‘It’s OK, neither do I,’ Damien said.

Jay glared at him. ‘It is in no way OK.’

Grace was suddenly in Jay’s face. ‘You want to bring a carbine? Fine. You can walk separately. Good luck not getting spotted by a civilian, tracked down and captured.’

Jay grumbled but let his carbine go. They started walking to the main road, but Grace soon corrected them, plotting a path through the forest. She was doing the right thing, picking the least populated terrain to traverse.

Damien dug into his daypack again, this time for his sock-wrapped phones. There were no new messages on the Nokia so he decided to bin in. He put his sock back on to avoid blisters, then powered the satphone up, relieved to see it in working order, not so relieved to see the battery almost dead. He texted Sophia’s satphone, entering the number from memory.

Success. We’re out. Did you make it?

He deleted the text and held onto the satphone tightly, but it didn’t vibrate. After a while, he slipped it back into his pocket.

Before he knew it, they were walking through a residential district. On either side, houses lay dormant. It was eerily silent. In one of the windows he saw light cast from a candle. At least someone had prepared for the worst, he thought. There was no point stealing a car here; if the houses were dead then the cars were likely to be as well. They needed to keep moving.

The satphone in Damien’s pocket vibrated. He recognized the number and answered it.

‘We made it,’ Sophia said.

He almost melted with relief.

‘Sophia’s team made it,’ he told Jay and the others. ‘Casualties?’

‘None,’ she said. ‘We had some … unexpected help.’

Damien halted in the middle of the dark street. Grace, Jay and Aviary collected around him, watching for movement. Jay was watching him, reading his reaction.

‘So … did we pull it off?’ Damien asked.

‘Yeah,’ Sophia said. ‘I have confirmation. Everything’s toast.’

But she was holding something back. Panic started to prickle inside him.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘Things just got a little more complicated,’ Sophia said.

‘I … I thought this was pretty complicated already.’

‘What is it?’ Jay said, frustrated that he could only hear Damien’s end of the conversation.

‘The ones we fried, they were the backups,’ Sophia said.

He knew she was deliberately not using key words like
Seraphim
or
transmitter
in case the Fifth Column had filters on satellite transmissions.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s … well, that’s interesting. No, that’s actually pretty shit.’

It was Grace’s turn to look concerned.

‘Yeah,’ Sophia said. ‘The main one is … it’s the size of a small city.’

Damien felt his mouth dry up. ‘Oh. Huh.’

‘It’s underground. And it’s shielded,’ she went on. ‘Look, I don’t expect anything from you guys. You’ve gone to hell and back for me. But I’m doing this.’

Damien found himself nodding. ‘I know.’

‘I can explain more in person,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘Denver.’

Damien swallowed. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Denton,’ she said.

He thought he’d misheard her for a moment. ‘Wait, he told you? You’ve seen him?’

‘He wants the same thing we want. He can’t do this without me and I can’t do it without him.’

‘Still, that’s crazy. Can you trust him?’

‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘I’ll get back to you with an RV.’

Damien lowered the satphone as she disconnected. Grace and Jay were waiting. Aviary looked uncertain. He repeated everything Sophia had just told him. Grace resumed walking again, forcing Damien and the other two to keep pace.

Jay was laughing. ‘There is no way, no fucking way, I’m working with that slimy son of a bitch, Denton.’

‘She’s not expecting us to help,’ Damien said.

‘Wait,’ Jay said. ‘She didn’t ask?’

Damien hesitated. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Ha,’ Jay said. ‘So we’re done then.’

‘I guess so.’

‘No,’ Jay said, pointing in front of them. ‘I’m talking about the squadron that just surrounded us.’

Damien turned to see armed men moving along the street toward them, vehicles with headlights off crawling slowly at their backs. They’d already seen Damien and his group. With their rifles aimed, they stepped forward in two split groups. The man in the center, robed in an overcoat, strode boldly toward them, rifle aimed at the ground. His face sharpened under the moonlight.

‘Thought you could use a hand,’ Abraham said.

***

Sophia had taken her sleeping shift in the hire car with Chickenhead and Nasira, while DC drove the van and Denton rested up in the back. After their quick pit stop for gas, she’d swapped with DC while Denton took the wheel. She had a few questions.

‘Project Genesis,’ she said. ‘Was it real?’

Denton glanced over at her from the driver’s seat. ‘Sure.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘As real as anything in this world.’

‘It was the precursor to Project GATE, wasn’t it?’

Denton nodded. ‘Something like that.’

‘I shouldn’t care,’ Sophia said. ‘But—’

‘But you do. It’s the only reason you’re riding in the same car as me.’

‘How long have you been doing this for?’ she asked. ‘How long have you been with the Fifth Column?’

Denton cleared his throat. ‘For longer than I care to remember. The programming of soldiers, the enhancement of their abilities in one way or another, for better or worse—it goes back a long way. And for as long as it’s been around, so have I. And my father before me.’

‘Your father worked for the Fifth Column? Is that how you got in?’

‘Not quite. He worked for various groups at various times during the Second World War,’ Denton said. ‘The Fifth Column didn’t have a name then. The people who ran the world were loosely knit with crossover interests. They were connected but not cohesive by any means. Nothing like today.’

Sophia had forgotten that behind the veneer of the Chimera vectors Denton was almost ninety years old.

‘You worked with your father?’ she asked.

Denton shrugged. ‘I was his assistant for a time, attached from the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that, I went from fighting Nazis to helping them.’ He glanced at Sophia with a look of resignation. ‘Once you’re in the black, it’s all the same really.’

‘What did you do?’ Sophia asked. ‘In the black.’

Denton exhaled slowly. The question seemed to depress him. ‘What the Nazis didn’t realize was we weren’t helping them, they were helping us. All the little bits that came together decades later in Project GATE—the quest for human enhancement, perfection, whatever you kids call it. It’s always been of great interest to the military and intelligence brass.’

‘Regular soldiers just weren’t doing it, huh.’

‘Not like you’d think,’ he said. ‘After the war, we found between eighty and eighty-five percent of Allied soldiers had never fired their weapons at an exposed enemy in combat.’ He glanced at Sophia then returned his attention to the road. ‘Not because they were poor marksmen. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They either didn’t shoot or they shot into the air, or somewhere else. Anywhere but at the Axis soldiers.’

‘That surprises you, doesn’t it?’ Sophia said.

Denton smiled. ‘Not as much as you’d think. They weren’t Project GATE operatives, that’s for sure.’

‘You mean they were human?’ Sophia snapped. ‘Not bloodthirsty automatons with stripped-out brains and cauterized souls?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ Denton said. ‘They were real people, willing to stand up for a cause, even to die for it, bullshit bullshit bullshit, blah blah blah.’

‘But not so willing to kill other people,’ Sophia said.

‘No. So we sought ways to override the values and belief systems our soldiers had absorbed—from their families, their schools, their communities.
Operant conditioning.
We reprogrammed their human software to override the characteristics that were … inconvenient in a combat environment.’

Sophia rolled her eyes. ‘The resistance that humans have to killing their own?’

‘Something like that,’ Denton said. ‘We started using psychological manipulation. New training programs to brutalize their minds, to habituate them to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex. That became the seed for Project GATE.’

‘And did it work?’ Sophia asked.

‘Not overnight. But we improved it, we redesigned it, we made it better. In the Korean War, fifty-five percent of our soldiers were ready to pump hot lead into enemy flesh. In Vietnam, the willingness to slaughter was almost complete.’ Denton’s eyes flashed under passing streetlights. ‘Ninety-five percent of soldiers fired with the intent to kill.’

‘You remodeled Western military,’ Sophia said. ‘I hope you put that in your resumé.’

‘The resumé Cecilia blacklisted? Yeah, sure,’ Denton said. ‘By the turn of the century, we’d attained near perfection. Our training conditioned the soldier to act reflexively to stimuli, which maximized the soldier’s lethality. It achieved this by bypassing their moral autonomy. It was a welcome breakthrough. Our soldiers were conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions, and to kill without making the conscious decision to do so.’

‘Temporal psychopaths,’ Sophia said.

Denton laughed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Before the Iraq war, we’d been toying around with propranolol. I call it the “mourning-after pill”. As in,
mourning
not
morning
.’

‘Yeah, I get it,’ she said. ‘Sort of a psychological kevlar.’

‘Adamicz’s programming in Project Genesis was our next breakthrough. Unfortunately, it was brittle, and even later in Project GATE it was sometimes breakable—you being a case in point.’

He cleared his throat again. She knew he was getting to something.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ she said.

‘Cecilia has plans. Beyond this. Beyond the Seraphim transmitters. I mean,’ he drummed the steering wheel, searching for the words, ‘they work hand in hand, but this is just one part of the advanced warfighter program.
Her
advanced warfighter program now.’

Sophia wet her lips. ‘What is she doing? I want to know.’

‘No, you don’t, trust me. She’s bypassing the whole operating system thing that Adamicz developed. Completely. She’s just shutting it off.’

‘Shutting what off?’ Sophia said. ‘What are these—zombie soldiers?’

Denton laughed. ‘No. She calls it the anti-Chimera vector. She proposed it to me not long before she pulled her disappearing act a couple of years back. Our soldiers had physical armor; she suggested a mental armor.’

‘She wants to switch off their … conscience?’ Sophia asked.

‘Short-circuit it,’ Denton said, ‘so it may as well not exist. Right now she’s flipped the switch on three battalions, and one of them is stationed at the OpCenter itself.’

‘Flipped a switch,’ Sophia said. She thought of Grace questioning Schlosser in the Philippines.

‘There’s a failsafe though,’ Denton said. ‘This is Cecilia we’re talking about. This bitch has an escape hatch for everything. That’s her strength, but—’

‘Also her weakness,’ Sophia said. ‘What does it do?’

‘It’s a kill switch. She developed it during the shocktrooper program. You can fire off the coded signal using a Seraphim transmitter. It’s not just for altering your moods. It can switch on a gene. A suicide gene. One that codes for deadly amino acid primes or something like that. Switch it on and your number’s up.’

‘And she can do this to all of these soldiers?’ Sophia said.

‘All of these soldiers
and
shocktroopers.’

‘Holy shit.’

Denton grinned. ‘You’re thinking of hitting the switch, aren’t you?’

‘That would be committing mass murder,’ Sophia said. She eyed him carefully. ‘Again.’

‘At least this time it would be your call. You’ve said it yourself before. Psychopaths aren’t human. These soldiers are psychopaths. It is a permanent and inseparable condition.’

‘But this is different,’ Sophia said. ‘They
were
human, once.’

Denton shrugged. ‘So are zombies. If they were real. In a zombie invasion, you’d be the first to pop a few heads.’

From the corner of her vision, she saw Denton smile at his own analogy. She ignored it. ‘Why is Cecilia doing this?’ she said. ‘What’s her endgame?’

His smile faded. ‘Cecilia needs soldiers without guilt or regret because that’s the only kind of soldier who would consider turning on their own people, their own country.’