Phantom zero, p.9
Phantom Zero, page 9
“That’s the Lower Grindelwald Glacier,” Penny explained. “The peak to the north where the enemy compound is located is the Finsteraarhorn. The mountain has long been considered to be among the most inaccessible peaks in the Alps. It was finally closed to the public two years ago after a team of four climbers fell to their deaths attempting to climb the east face.”
“Got it,” Maya said.
Trent whistled. “Wow. They have this place locked up tight.”
They did. The image showed seven drones patrolling the glacier, all armed with machine guns. A concrete fence surrounded the compound and was topped with machine gun emplacements and rocket launchers. Past that fence were pillboxes offering more machine gun coverage, and at the entrance to both of the two buildings, guards stood wearing thick body armor and carrying automatic rifles. Lucifer’s Gift wasn’t screwing around with their security.
“DoJ is kicking out warrants for the US companies involved in selling them that weaponry,” Todd said. “Several European and one African company were also involved. Interpol is coordinating European efforts to arrest the perpetrators while the various nuclear powers are focusing on depowering for the moment, lest Sir Lucifer attempt to rain brimstone down on the planet. The Swiss Military is going to form a perimeter around that subrange and make sure any nearby civilians are turned away, but there are five Swiss companies, three Swiss politicians, and four Swiss generals involved in helping Keller.”
“Meaning they don’t have units to spare to help us take that bunker.”
“Precisely,” Todd replied. “We’ll be sending Bolton and a team of SOG agents with you guys, but you’ll be on your own otherwise. It’s your job to stop Keller.”
“We’re going to need a lot of heavy weapons to breach that facility,” Trent said.
“It’s not just the weapons you need to worry about,” Penny said. “The weather in the range is often intense and extreme. It makes surveillance difficult. There’s a chance that communication between us will be sporadic, even if their jammers can’t affect microwave emissions in the cellular band.”
“We’re used to that,” Maya said. “No offense.”
“None taken. I just want to make sure you understand what you’re getting into.”
“We’ll send you in a Spooky,” Todd said. “Penny will use the modified microwave emitters to help it navigate, just like she did for your flights to Wyoming and New York. The plane will bombard the hell out of the place, then airdrop you after it’s softened the defenses. You’ll go in, clear the place out, stop Keller, and figure out how to restore radar, radio, and GPS to the world’s aircraft.”
“Spookies” were AC-130 gunships, quad-turboprop transports converted to carry a staggering array of firepower, including air-to-ground missiles and a one-hundred-five-millimeter howitzer cannon, the heaviest piece of artillery ever fitted to an aircraft.
“I like that plan,” Trent said. “We’ll just have to be careful not to blow up the main buildings. It would suck to destroy something and find out after the fact that it was what we needed to put everything back to normal.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Maya said. “We really just need that fence and those weapons emplacements out of the way. I’d rather not face all of that firepower.”
“We’ve done it before,” Trent pointed out.
“And I’ve driven drunk before,” Todd said. “Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it again.”
Penny turned fully around to stare at Trent. “You’ve never told me this story.”
“It was before we met,” Todd replied. “Specter, Talon, get to the airfield. The jet is ready to take you to Switzerland with your cold weather gear. The Spooky will meet you there. Penny, call Switzerland and bring them up to speed.”
“I will, but when I’m finished, you’re going to tell me about your little drunken escapade.”
“It was nothing. College bullshit. The point is not to do stuff like that.”
“I still want to hear the story.”
“After we save the world, yeah?”
Maya and Trent didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. They left the office and rushed to the airfield, eager to put a stop to the latest madman trying to remake the world in his image.
As they ran, Maya thought of Mischa, Sara stuck at home while Zero and Alan looked for a way to stop another madman, one whose goals were far narrower than Keller’s but just as dangerous to her family.
Both of them were running against the clock. Maya prayed that they would remain fleeter of foot than the demons chasing each of them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Spooky’s engines thrummed, sending a surprisingly gentle vibration through the cabin of the big gunship. Maya would have found it soothing if they weren’t on their way to assault one of the most heavily protected terrorist compounds she’d ever seen.
While also being proactive against the international conglomerate trying to kill her sisters. While also maybe sparing some time to figure out what the Dragons were up to since going dark after failing to capture Zero and deliver him to their leader.
Oh yeah, the Dragons too. That terrorist group was responsible for the last nuclear threat against the United States when they hijacked multiple container ships, turned them into drones, filled them with nuclear warheads, and aimed them at five different ports in the United States. The leader of that operation informed them that his boss had a vendetta against Zero and wouldn’t rest until she could torture and kill him personally. Several months after that, a massive Russian man almost captured Zero, only at the last second being driven off by Maya. They had gone quiet since then, but Maya knew they would be back eventually.
It was too much. It was always too much. No wonder they couldn’t get ahead. They barely had time to breathe.
“Too bad it’s so damned hot outside,” Bolton growled.
Trent chuckled politely at Bolton’s joke. The burly SOG agent frowned through the window at the snowcapped mountains below. “Why can’t terrorists build their compounds in tropical paradises?”
“Have you forgotten Tanzania?” Trent asked. “That was tropical, but it was the furthest thing from a paradise. Humid, hot, and mosquitoes the size of houseflies. I’ll take the cold any day.”
“Yeah? You had fun in Antarctica?” Bolton retorted.
“I did. Best vacation I ever had.”
“Well, I prefer my balls dropped, not tucked up into my ribs.”
Maya rolled her eyes and decided now was a good time to brief the team on the final assault plan. “Everyone listen up.”
Bolton, Trent, and the others immediately dropped their conversations and focused on her. The weight of all that responsibility weighed heavily on her. She rarely thought about her age, but it hit her viscerally that she was only twenty-three years old and already the field commander for the most elite direct action unit in the Western world. Every member of her team was older than she was, and except for Trent, they were significantly older and more experienced.
And right now, the safety of the world depended on her decision-making. She didn’t even have Zero here to help her through the tough problems. She’d proven herself as a capable leader and earned the loyalty of Bolton and the others, but sometimes she wondered if she had really earned that loyalty or if she’d only gotten lucky.
God, I hope I get this right.
She swallowed and said, “The compound below is heavily defended. We’re talking armed drone patrols, rocket launchers, machine gun emplacements, and very thick armor. Hence the gunship.”
“Another day in the life, in other words,” Bolton said.
“Yes,” Maya agreed. “The plan is for the gunship to obliterate the heavy weapons. It will try to target the drones too, but it probably won’t succeed.”
“How are we going to avoid being shot down?” Bolton asked.
“The pilot is going to fly a high-speed circuit,” Maya replied. “It might involve a more complicated pattern than the usual orbit depending on how capable the drones’ targeting systems are. It’s extremely unlikely that they’ll pose a threat to the aircraft, but they will pose a threat to us when we’re on the ground. We also know that they have armed guards inside of the facility. We’re not sure how many or how far into the mountain the facility extends.”
“Do we know where the target is?” Bolton asked.
He was referring to the equipment that had perpetrated the attack on air travel. They needed to fight their way to that equipment and secure it without destroying it. They also needed to hope that they could do so without Keller perpetrating some other attack in response to their assault.
In other words, they were placing all of their eggs into this very small basket. Maya really didn’t like that, but they didn’t have any other options.
“No,” Maya replied. “Once we get inside, Agent Talon and I will look for the target while you and your team protect us.”
Bolton shared a grim look with his team. They didn’t like that either.
“When we jump,” Maya continued, “we’ll likely be under drone attack. It’s probably going to be the most dangerous sequence of this operation. Your weapons have all been modified to handle the extreme conditions and loaded with high-powered armor piercing rounds, so when you jump, you will immediately pull your parachute cords, then defend yourselves with your rifles. Your goggles should help you identify targets in the dark.”
Bolton shared another grim look with his crew. Several of the team shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The biggest nightmare of any paratrooper, other than their chute not opening, was getting shot at while they were floating gently through the air, as complete a sitting duck as it was possible to be.
“We didn’t want to send our own drones to take care of the enemy’s drones?” Bolton asked.
Maya sighed. “Unfortunately, no. Penny’s team had to modify the CIA’s cell phone towers and modify this aircraft’s navigation and communications systems to allow it to fly through the signal disrupting air traffic. We weren’t able to modify drones in time.”
“Lovely.”
“The gunners are going to use the Spooky’s thirty-millimeter cannon to shoot the drones down,” Maya assured him. “By the time we land, the only threat should be the mercenaries on the ground. I’m just letting you all know that there’s a possibility it might be a little more difficult than that.
“Whatever it is, we can face it,” Bolton assured her. “I was just wondering.”
"Not a problem," Maya replied. "I encourage everyone to think outside the box. It just so happens that this box is a little tougher to break out of than most boxes are."
Bolton grinned, showing his teeth. “Oh, I’m pretty sure we’ll break it. I haven’t yet met an egg I couldn’t crack.”
Maya returned his smile. “Me either.”
“Cool,” Trent said. “So we have our orders. Thank you, Agent Spec—”
The plane lurched, so suddenly and violently that Maya feared they might have been struck by a missile. Her head snapped forward, the whiplash straining her neck and leaving her dizzy. She grabbed the wall to steady herself and waited for her head to clear.
“Report,” she said. Her tongue felt furry.
“Who are you asking?” Bolton said. “I don’t have a damned clue what happened.”
Trent, a little less affected than Maya and Bolton, called the jump master. "Master Sergeant, what happened?"
The master sergeant pounded on the cockpit door. “Captain, what’s going—”
The aircraft lurched again. Maya felt a sickening rush of weightlessness, then another jolt.
“What the fuck is going on?” Bolton snapped. “Who’s flying this damned thing?”
The aircraft pitched up, then violently downward. Maya realized what was happening, and her face blanched. The pilot’s voice came over the aircraft’s speakers. “They’re targeting the aircraft,” she said.
“Yeah, no shit,” Bolton replied into the intercom. “What are they firing at us, though?”
“They’re attacking our navigation and flight control systems,” she replied.
“I thought those could only affect autopilots!” Trent said.
Before Maya could reply, the aircraft lurched again. Maya saw a wall of white pass just outside the window, and her blood froze. "We need to jump," she said. "Now."
Before anyone could answer, the plane banked sharply to the left. Maya’s stomach turned as they went upside down and pitched downward again.
“Brace for impact!” Bolton shouted.
Oh God, no, not—
Maya’s thought was interrupted by the hardest jolt so far. Her teeth clicked together, and her vision shuddered. Windows burst, and snow poured in, showering her with freezing shards of ice. The plane’s nose jumped up, then crashed down again. Its right wing hit the ground, and it spun violently that direction, sending a wave of dizziness through Maya.
Then it came to a stop. Maya remained where she was for several seconds, breathing heavily, before saying, “Okay. Is everyone all right?”
“I’m good,” Trent said.
“Good,” Bolton said.
One by one, his team sounded off, confirming that they were all right. The flight crew appeared a little more shaken up than the assault team, probably because they weren’t buckled into seats, but they sounded off too. They had survived the crash with no casualties.
Maya sighed with relief. “Wonderful. Everyone unhook yourselves. We’re going to get off the aircraft and see what we’re looking at.”
She reached up and unclipped her seatbelt. She landed hard on the ceiling below, grunting as she rolled over her shoulder and back up to her feet. The others did the same, most landing with a similar lack of grace. Trent was bleeding from his head, but when Maya looked at him, he pointed at a small cut just under his hairline. “I got nicked by glass. I’m okay.”
She nodded. “All right. Grab the gear, and let’s get out of here. Master sergeant, see if you can force the rear door open.”
The jumpmaster nodded. He was shaking a little, and the dilation in his pupils suggested a concussion. “Once you let us out, contact the Swiss Army for extraction,” she told him. She knocked on the cockpit door. “Pilots? Are you okay?”
“We’re alive,” the captain answered. “Banged up a little, but not too bad. Looks like we came down on another glacier.”
Maya frowned at the word another. “Do you know how far we are from the—”
The airplane jolted. Maya grabbed the wall to steady herself. A groaning noise sounded underneath them, followed by a series of small cracks.
Maya lifted her eyes to Trent. The alarm in his face told her everything she needed to know.
“Brace yourselves!” she called to the team. “We’re going—”
A loud crack reverberated through the aircraft, hard enough to rattle Maya’s teeth. The floor dropped away from her, and for a horrifying second, she floated in the aircraft’s cabin, completely weightless.
Then they crashed. Maya was flung into the floor—which was now the ceiling—and back down, rapidly enough that the impacts sounded like the rap-rap of an autocannon. She tasted blood in her mouth, but it was the sound that frightened her most, the screeching, grinding sound of the fuselage sliding over ice.
She looked through the windows and found that there was something even more frightening than that sound. She saw nothing through the window. Just a wall of white. The airplane pitched forward, the nose burying itself in the snow as the avalanche lifted the tail. She heard another crack and saw a fissure open in the fuselage twenty feet from the tail.
The airplane continued to pitch forward until it was pointed straight down. The team lost their footing, and bodies piled on top of Maya, crushing her to the bulkhead.
How long had they been falling? Surely, they had to stop soon.
A shriek pierced her ears. The tail of the airplane peeled forward and snow fell into the cabin, burying the team. The airplane continued to roll, and the snow stopped pouring into the cabin just before it drowned all of them.
The airplane jumped. There was another moment of weightlessness. Then they crashed hard. Maya’s head slammed into the bulkhead. Stars burst in her eyes, popping like fireworks at the edges of her vision. She opened her mouth, or she thought she did. Everything sounded far away now.
She closed her eyes, ignoring the fuzzy little voice in the back screaming at her not to. She was just tired. She needed to rest a little while. Then everything would be okay.
The dull roar in the back of her mind increased in volume, drowning everything else. It rose in pitch until it was a breathy shriek, then stopped abruptly.
Maya sighed and gave into the blackness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Sir? It’s done. The aircraft fell into the Unteraargletscher and caused an avalanche that caused it to descend another four hundred meters. It broke in two and is now at rest half-buried in the ice. I see no movement that would indicate survivors.”
Adrian took a deep breath and released it in a satisfied sigh. “Excellent. Please prepare the facility for combat.”
Gail’s brow furrowed. “Do you anticipate survivors?”
“I prefer to be thorough.”
Gail looked back at the screen. “Very well. I’ll prepare our defenses just in case.”
“Thank you, Gail.”
His defense commander left her chair and headed downstairs. The world only had twelve hours left. They would have to give in. They had no choice.
And Adrian would be magnanimous. He would forgive them. He would give them peace.
But before he gave them peace, they would give him justice. That was, after all, the point of all of this.
He got to his feet and looked through the glass front of his office at the defenders busily preparing themselves in case of another attack on the Ninth Circle. These people were loyal. They trusted him. They believed him.
