A New World: Reckoning (28 page)

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The telephone rings beside Gav’s bed. It’s not often that she’s disturbed while she’s getting her few hours of sleep. She opens her eyes, instantly alert but taking a moment to place her position. Stretching and yawning widely, she turns and wiggles toward the phone, picking it up on the third ring. She notes the incoming call is from the control center.

“Yes,” she states tersely into the mouthpiece.

“Nahmer, sorry to bother you,” the voice on the other end says.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” she asks, coming more awake and annoyed at the supervisor’s attempt to placate her.

“Well, we’ve been picking up squelches over the scanner for the last couple of hours. At first we didn’t think it was anything but, well, it seems like there is a certain repetition to them. They come and go but they’ve been coming more frequently in the last hour and there’s definitely a pattern to them,” the supervisor briefs.

Instantly awake, Gav throws her legs over the bed and sits rigidly upright. A surge of adrenaline electrifies her. Along with a sudden feeling of apprehension comes a feeling of foreboding…and fear.

“Have you called the security office? The reaction squad?”
Gav
asks.

“They are our next call, Nahmer, but I wanted to notify you first.”

“Can you patch through what you’re hearing?”

“One moment. We haven’t heard anything for a little bit.”

Gav waits and hears a faint hiss as the frequency is fed into her phone. At first there’s nothing as she strains to hear, then there’s a series of definite squelch breaks that come through clearly. Hearing them, another surge of adrenaline floods her system.

“You idiots, that’s communication and coming from nearby,” she says, flying off the bed and standing upright.

“Call the security office and reaction squad. Sound the alarm,” Gav says, knowing it may already be too late.

She quickly dons fatigues as a shrill alarm sounds throughout the facility. As she pulls the quick releases on her boots tight, a series of dull explosions vibrates the floor under her. Anger envelopes her, but then, that vanishes like a breath blowing out a candle. A deep calmness settles in its place. The blasts tell her that it’s too late. She can only hope the security forces can push their way through; but, in her thoughts, she knows that is doubtful. She knows who has entered the facility and, having been there before—only on the other side—the only thing she can do is wait for her guests to arrive.

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Lynn emerges into the large equipment bay on the run. She is momentarily taken aback by how vast the interior is. Humvees and Strykers are parked in neat rows to one side with a large expanse to the other for maneuvering the vehicles and for maintenance. The one thing she notes with satisfaction is the lack of anyone inside. With a fleeting glance to the side, she sees Horace deal with two guards that are posted in front of a steel door. The sight is lost as she enters a line of Humvees and dashes with the other teams down the column. The doors against the far wall that are her objective are in and out of sight as she runs by the vehicles. All eyes are focused on the doors, ready for an emergence of soldiers that would indicate that they’ve been spotted.

However, their luck holds as all of the teams arrive into positions across from the doors without incident, spread out, and take cover behind the vehicles. A line of Strykers are in the column behind her, some with .50 cal turrets and others with 105mm cannons.

Grabbing Mullins, she whispers, “I want you to take your team and start three of the fifty cal Strykers when we open fire. I want those guns online lending support. Concentrate on the three doors, but keep the others under observation.”

Mullins nods and gathers his team. They ease ramps down from three of the armored vehicles as Lynn sends Green Team, Drescoll’s old team now led by Jordan, to the doors to begin placing claymores. While the two remaining teams, hers and Cressman’s, stand guard, Lynn sees to the placement of the M-240s so that they have fields of fire down the hallways.

This is almost too smooth
, she thinks, watching the last of the claymores being placed.
I really hope the security forces are inside those doors. It would really suck for them to come streaming out from another unknown entrance
.

With that thought, she trots to the end of the vehicles to get a better picture of the interior. It’s dimly lit, but it’s not dark enough for NVGs to be used. Looking around, she doesn’t see any uncovered entrances other than the large hangar-like door leading out. Satisfied, she returns back to her position. Examining the hallways, it’s completely dark inside except for faint glimmers of light showing on the floors and walls, emanating from small windows inset into the numerous doors leading off the corridor.

She signals the others that they are in position and ready. Moments later, the air is filled with high-pitched sirens. It has begun. Steadying herself with a sigh, she leans against the hood of a Humvee and sights down one of the open halls.

She doesn’t have long to wait. Along the length of the halls, faint glimmers of light turn brighter as doors are flung open. She looks to Jordan, whose team is holding the claymore clackers, signaling for him to wait. Soldiers begin filling the darkened hall, many stumbling out of the doors donning vests and arranging their weapons.

“Now,” she yells to Jordan, her voice barely heard over the screaming siren.

Three rolling blasts shake the floor, drowning the sound of the alarm. Gray smoke pours from the open doorways completely blocking the view inside. Lynn senses more than hears Strykers behind her start up.

“Open fire,” Lynn shouts, her mouth dry from the adrenaline in her system.

Unseen and unheard bullets fly into and through the smoke still drifting out of the corridor through the top of the doorways. The three M-240s resting on the vehicles and the .50 cals behind soon join in the fray, lending their heavyweight fire to the suppressing fire of the teams.

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Horace jumps as the alarm goes off, filling the large, open bay with its shrill noise. The sound tells her it’s time to go, having been given the word to or not. She heard the clicks denoting that Sergeant Connell was in position and ready. The next move was Horace’s anyway. With a nod to her team member by the keypad, she braces herself for the entry. She has an idea what the interior looks like having had Sergeant Connell brief her. The mag lock opens and she pushes the door inward, storming inside. With the alarm sounding, the time for stealth and quiet is gone, to be replaced by speed.

Inside, there is a flurry of activity among the rows of consoles. Technicians are running from one workstation to another. Some of those still seated have phones plastered to their ears. The rest are furiously hammering away on keyboards. Oddly, her entry toward the back of the room is unnoticed in the frenzy. She sweeps across the back, her M-4 aimed toward the interior. Four of her teammates follow with two remaining by the door to prevent anyone entering or leaving. The door closes, muting the sirens.

With Blue Team lined across the back, she bellows, “Everyone freeze! Don’t move an inch and, if you would be so kind, hang up your phones.”

Four technicians near the front bolt from their workstations toward a door situated near a corner on the far wall. The tiered room descends toward the front with each line of workstations a step lower than the ones behind. This layout is so a supervisor at the back can oversee the whole room, which gives Horace a commanding field of view. Before the four have taken two steps, Horace nods to her team members.

With Horace covering the rest of the room, the other three direct suppressed gunfire against the four attempting to make it to the door. Their clothing puffs from multiple bullet strikes, sending them headlong to the floor where they lie in a heap next to and over each other.

“Now, let’s try this again,” Horace states, as the three bring their weapons back into alignment, aimed at the rest of the technicians. “No…one…move!”

The last command wasn’t necessary as everyone in the room has frozen in their tracks.

“Okay, if everyone would be so kind to hang up their phones. No more words, just set them into their cradles. And then place your hands on the monitors in front of you.”

One of the technicians to the side continues talking with someone on the other end, his words unheard but, by his facial expressions, he is rushing to get his words spoken.

Horace lifts her carbine, centers her red dot, and pulls the trigger. A single round coughs out of the end of her barrel. The sub-sonic bullet streaks over terminals to crash into the side of the man’s head. A small spray of blood leaps into the air from the brute force of the impact. His head jerks to the side and he falls across his workstation looking as if he’s taking a nap, his hand still gripping the telephone handset. Several streams of blood, mixed with bone and tissue, run down the monitor screen in front of him.

Nodding to one of her teammates by the door, he strolls to the station. Removing the bloodied handset from the man’s grip, he places it on the cradle. There is the sound of multiple handsets being hurriedly placed in their respective cradles, and Horace notes everyone’s hands in sight on top of the monitors. She has control of this operations center but it’s a tentative one. What she does securely have is everyone’s attention.

Nodding to her other teammate by the door, she has him take out the overhead camera.

“Who’s in charge here?” Horace asks, bringing her carbine back to cover the entire room.

Several eyes dart to a man standing in the first row of workstations. The others in the room look from her, to her team standing watch, to the bodies on the floor in the front, their shirts darkened with blood, to the man lying in a widening red pool at his terminal.

“I…I am,” the man answers.

“Okay, you are now responsible for what happens to your people. You do what I say, when I say, and don’t cause any trouble, you all get to live. You don’t and…” Horace says, leaving the last part unsaid but nods toward the bodies.

The man hangs his head, understanding that, for him and his group, the fight is over before it really began. It’s not that they are fighters to being with, but the realization that they’ve lost hits him. He can only imagine what is going on inside the rest of the complex. Whatever it is, he and his staff will not be of any help.

“What is it you that want us to do?” the man asks, looking up.

“First, are any of you armed? With any kind of weapon? I don’t care if it’s a butter knife or a letter opener, I want to know,” Horace asks.

The man shakes his head.

“Know that we’re going to search you. If we find a weapon on anyone, they die along with the person next to them. So, let’s be sure of your answer. Is anyone armed?”

“No, we’re just support staff. We don’t have any weapons,” the man answers.

Turning to the teammate next to her, Horace has him go down to the far door the four were running for and wedge it closed. There are only eleven personnel remaining in the operations center but, with two doors and having to cover all of them, she feels spread thin.

She has the technicians line up against the wall and searches them. The supervisor is true to his word; not a one of them has a weapon. After removing a phone from a windowed conference room to the side of the main control room, she herds her captives into it, telling them not to talk with each other.

“Just so we’re clear. If there’s a word spoken between anybody, or if I think anyone is passing messages in any fashion, they’ll meet the same fate as those other unfortunate ones,” Horace tells the supervisor.

He nods his understanding and enters the conference room with the others.

“The operations center is under control,” Horace speaks into her radio.

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Sergeant Montore is jolted awake by the alarm blaring in the squad room. Only temporarily confused, he springs into action, jumping off his upper bunk to the left side so he doesn’t come slamming down on his bunkmate below. Dressing quickly, he grabs his carbine hanging from the bunk post, slams a mag in and checks that the safety is on. There’s a flurry of activity as the others of his squad are doing the same.

Fucking drills
, Montore thinks as the lieutenant enters from his room in the back, yelling for them to form up by the door.
At least it does break some of the monotony
.

Forming with his teammates, Montore has a fleeting thought that maybe this isn’t a drill knowing what happened to Bravo Company the other week. The lieutenant makes his way through the waiting squad to the door. Opening it, he waves them through, telling them to meet in the equipment bay to await further orders. The ones in front of Montore enter the hallway, some still donning their vests.