MiNRS (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leaks

I looked away from the
diggers in front of me and stole a nervous glance at the small box on my seat. It was a power core for a disrupter. I’d salvaged it from Jimmi’s digger and strapped a detonator cap to it with medical tape. It looked like a horribly wrapped birthday present.

I was going to use it to retaliate against the Landers. Not because we were angry, although we were, but because we needed to show them that we were willing to fight, even when we’d been fired at.

The detonator wasn’t powerful enough to do much damage on its own, but if I could throw this little bomb into the food silo, it would spoil all the food the Landers had stored.

I reached over and touched the tape, being careful not to arm the cap. The box rocked a little, then settled onto the leather. I looked back up at the rear of Therese’s digger. She had agreed to give digger driving a try after Jimmi’s ordeal, and she was a natural.

Finn was driving just ahead of her. Pavel was heading to the surface near the camp to keep watch.

My radio crackled. “You’re sure we’ll have enough food if we do this?” Therese asked nervously.

I sighed. We’d been over this point.

“Yes. If we ration even a little, we can last the Blackout.”

Finn came on the radio. “And I’ll bet this is exactly the sort of the attack the Landers
don’t
expect.”

“Yes,” I said, and silently hoped. “All right, we’re approaching the junction with the grinder cage. What do you do next, Finn?”

“Therese and I split off and head in different directions.”

“Good. Therese?”

“Then we make as much noise as we can. If the Landers are listening, we’ll act as decoys. How about you, rich boy?” Apparently, Fatima had spread around the nickname.

“Then I sneak up the middle and deliver our little present.”

“Good luck!” Finn said cheerily.

“Thanks. Now, radios off. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

There was a short buzz as the speakers turned off.

I ignored it. I shouldn’t have.

The moment we hit the junction, there was a huge flash and a thunderous boom.

Therese keened to the right in front of me as debris shot back over us and down the tunnel.

Finn’s voice came back at me, panicked. “I’ve been hit! There was a bomb!”

It was an ambush.

“Retreat!” I yelled, panicked.

Therese’s digger stalled, and I turned sharply to avoid a crash. I ignited my disrupter and flew into the rock, turning again sharply to try to come out next to Finn.

My digger burst through the wall. Finn was just in front of me, sitting in the cockpit of his digger. It had been ripped to shreds. He was alive, but everything around him was on fire. He was strapped in and struggling to get the belt off his shoulder. He saw me and looked over, his eyes wide with panic.

“Christopher, help!” he said, desperately clutching at the belt as the flames grew closer to the cockpit.

Something moved in the tunnel ahead of him. Landers, dressed in black overalls, were approaching, guns raised.

“Finn! Hurry!”

They opened fire. Finn gave a cry and slumped forward in his seat, dead. More bullets flew, turning everything in front of me into a fireball.

I slammed my digger in reverse and flew backward, flames following me down the hole. My disrupter reset. I ignited it and disappeared sideways back into the rock, trying to get as far away as fast as I could.

Tears filled my eyes. Finn had been so happy to be on a raid. He’d been so excited to lead the charge.

If only I’d gone first, maybe I could have fought off the Landers, maybe I could have protected him. I punched my steering wheel again and again.

Finn had been the cannon fodder, and I’d been sitting behind, protected. I listened for Therese on the radio, but there was nothing. I hoped she’d escaped. If she’d gone into the wall to the right, she would be fine. If she’d stopped to help Finn, she was dead or captured.

I slammed on the brakes.

The bomb wobbled against my leg.

I stared at it, then gritted my teeth. The bomb. The bomb! I gunned the engine, spun the steering wheel, and turned back.

I broke through the wall, only about twenty feet from the site of the ambush. My digger landed on the floor with
a crash and a thud. I spun and angled my nose back toward the wreckage. I pressed the detonator on the bomb.

Standing in a row, staring straight at me, was a row of Landers. Each was wearing a gas mask.

In a flash it hit me.

They knew.

They knew about the radioactive bomb.

They knew where we’d been heading.

They knew about our plan from start to finish.

And now they were going to kill me.

I was going to die.

The detonator began to blink red. I opened my cockpit and stood up. I threw the bomb just as the lead Lander raised his gun at me and prepared to fire.

It landed at his feet, but he stepped over it, advancing to get close enough for an accurate shot. I jumped back down, closed my hatch, and slammed the digger into drive. The digger hurtled toward the lead Lander, who hesitated a second and sent his shot into the tunnel wall.

Suddenly there was a blast to our left, and Therese burst through the wall. She slammed into the Landers, sending them flying like rag dolls. The detonator went off, filling the tunnel with fumes and smoke.

Therese didn’t stop but drove right through the other wall, her disrupter slicing through at top speed.

“Follow me!” her voice crackled on the radio.

My disrupter was off, but I could follow. I quickly swerved to face the hole. I gunned the engine and darted inside.

Shots blasted the ceiling and the floor behind me, but they were firing blind, and I escaped undamaged.

As we flew deeper and deeper into the core, my mind was racing.

How could the Landers have known the plan?

They were clearly listening to our radios, and had tracked us in the tunnel. The buzz I’d heard had been a blip from their tracking device as they’d zeroed in on us. I flicked off my radio quickly.

But how did they know what frequency to listen to?

How did they know exactly which tunnel we’d be heading down? It wasn’t just that the landmine had been in exactly the right place; it was also the fact that a group of armed Landers had been waiting there, prepped for both diggers and radioactive bombs.

That wasn’t random chance, or an incredibly lucky guess.

And those weren’t things we’d talked about on the radio, so how could they know?

There were only two possibilities.

One, they were able to listen in on our planning meetings and knew exactly what we were going to do.

Or . . .

Two: someone had tipped them off.

For a moment I suspected Therese. It had been her first mission. She’d known the plans. But I discounted this quickly. I’d seen the look on her face when her digger swerved. That was fear you couldn’t fake. She could have left me for dead, too, but she’d risked her life to save me.

I flicked my radio back on.

“Therese, we need to stop.”

“No. We need to get back to camp!”

“They might be following us. If they can track us back to camp, they’ll kill everyone.”

Therese didn’t say anything, but I saw her digger begin to slow ahead of me.

“Let’s find a tunnel, cut through, and then talk. Radios off.”

We clicked our radios off.

A few minutes later Therese cut through the wall of a tunnel. It was unlit, which meant it was probably new and hadn’t been attached to the power grid yet. I figured that was a good thing. We’d see the lights from anyone else coming a mile away.

We turned off our diggers and got out. I flicked on my headlamp. I felt sick to my stomach, but I needed to focus.

“We need to make sure we can’t be tracked. Then we need to get back to camp.”

She nodded. We searched our diggers for any trace of tracking devices. I wasn’t even 100 percent sure what one would look like.

“It would have to be something small and that you could hide quickly. You’d need a lot of time and specialized tools to be able to put it inside the engine block or inside the hull.”

We pulled out the seats and ran our hands along the inside of the trunk and hood, anywhere that you could gain easy access.

“Christopher, if we do find something, then that means someone had to put it there.”

I nodded but just kept looking, convinced we’d find something, but we found nothing.

Therese gave a sigh of relief. I didn’t.

“Just because nobody booby-trapped our diggers, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a traitor.

“It could mean the Landers found a way to listen to us back at camp,” she said.

“But if that were the case, why not attack the camp? Or were they on their way and this attack was a distraction to keep
us
away?

“We’ve got to get back,” she said suddenly, panicked.
“If the Landers know where the camp is, they’ll be heading there now!”

Therese jumped back in her digger. I waved to her before she could close the lid.

“Let’s keep radio silence until we get close. And don’t mention anything about the attack. We need to keep everyone calm so we can move without panic.”

“What do I say about . . . Finn?”

“We’ll say he was brave. That he died in a cave-in as we were heading home. Until we know what’s going on, we need to lie.”

She gave me a nod, and we were off.

The quickest way for Landers to get to the camp was through the tunnels, starting from the storage depot. I assumed they’d have to attack on foot. The elevator had been the only way to get big machines belowground. They didn’t, as far as I knew, have any diggers. So it would take them a while to find the camp in the underground maze. Even if they could pinpoint where the camp was, they would need to keep turning down different tunnels until they got there.

But if I was wrong, we’d be sitting ducks.

Pavel was listening for any sign of movement near the surface. He’d never even hear Landers marching underneath.

I had a sickening thought. Maybe we’d brought a homing device back with the food we’d taken from the Landers. Maybe they’d wanted us to steal the food?

We’d used our storeroom as the meeting room. If they’d been listening in, they’d have known everything we’d been planning, all the raids and all the places where we’d moved our supplies and spare diggers. All the ways we could possibly escape them if they did attack.

But that didn’t make sense. We’d blown up a key elevator shaft after we’d stolen the food. Why would they let that happen?

I thought back to Coventry. Elena’s lecture on how far a real leader was prepared to go to win.

Had the Landers allowed us to win one small victory in order to win the war against us?

Or had someone else?

But if there was a spy, who could it be?

Finn was dead. If he’d been the traitor, he’d been a bad one.

Alek was starting to come around but was still practically in a walking coma.

Jimmi had barely left his bed for two days.

Pavel? Mandeep?

The other grinders?

I ran through all the probabilities, and two names
kept rising to the top of the list, the two living people who probably meant the most to me in the world: Fatima and Elena.

Elena was always questioning my decisions. She’d manipulated the last few meetings to get her way and had devised much of the strategy. She knew every bit of our plans down to the minutest detail.

Elena had been up top for days after the attacks. What if the Landers hadn’t overlooked her? What if they’d captured her and trained her, brainwashed her somehow?

What if she traded her life for the rest of our lives?

No. I wouldn’t believe it. Elena would never do that.

Could Fatima?

If I were a grinder, I’d feel no love lost for a corporation that used me like that.

Fatima knew the tunnels like the back of her hand. She’d be able to give pinpoint directions to every stage of an attack. She’d been in the digger with me, and she knew what radio frequency we’d been using.

No. I shook my head. That was also impossible.

It had to be the Landers. They must have hidden a monitor or bug inside the food we’d stolen. They must have. I’d go back to camp and look. There would be some evidence. I’d find the bug.

I floored the digger and sped back to camp.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Nothing

The Landers were not waiting
for me at the camp. I breathed a sigh of relief as I jumped out of my cockpit, trying to look as calm and collected as I could.

Therese had just pulled in before me and was still by her digger.

“We should get everyone ready to move,” I said. “Go plug in your digger and make sure it’s charged. Then go help Maria pack the sleeping stuff. Don’t tell anyone anything yet. I’ll get everyone ready.”

Therese nodded. “I’m on it.” She headed down the tunnel.

I did a quick walk around the camp.

Jimmi was in his bed in the infirmary, sleeping.

Alek was helping Mandeep organize the medical supplies for transport.

Fatima was sitting against the wall of the tunnel, reading. She stood up quickly and walked over to me. “You look wrecked. Did the raid go well?”

I shook my head. “Finn . . .” I choked up. “There was a cave-in. We got out, but he was crushed right in front of us.”

“A cave-in? In the tunnel? Where?”

I tried not to look at her. If she’d set up the ambush, or if she hadn’t, I was sure she’d know I was lying.

And if she was a traitor, I didn’t want her to see any suspicion in my eyes.

I looked at the ground and waved my hand indiscriminately in the direction of the tunnel. “Later. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

She took my hand and gave it a squeeze, but I just gave her a quick nod and walked away. “I need to go check on the supplies,” I said.

I didn’t look back. She didn’t follow.

There was no sign of Elena or her digger.

She’s just out for a walk, or she’s doing some repairs on her machine
, I told myself.
She’s working out some new strategy for our next attack and wants to be alone.

I walked into the supply room.

It was an odd feeling to hope to find evidence that your entire mission has been compromised, that you’d been sloppy when you’d brought something from an enemy camp straight into your own secret location. But that was what I was hoping for. I began combing through the crates and boxes we’d taken from the Landers.

I knew the bug would have to be something small and hidden but close enough to the surface of a container to pick up our voices. I tore open boxes, crates, cartons of dried goods.

Darcy walked in, clutching Friendly tightly. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just organizing the food into smaller bits. It makes it easier to move.”

“We have to move again?” She looked a little scared. I walked over and gave her a hug.

“Where’s Finn?” she said, looking around.

I suppressed an urge to cry. “I’m . . . I’m not sure.” It was a horrible lie, but at that moment I didn’t know what else to say.

“He’s probably looking for Alek,” she said, shrugging.

It took an incredible effort to keep myself together. I tussled her hair. She pointed a finger at me and said in a very serious voice, “Take the chocolate bars.” Then she hugged Friendly and walked away.

I took a deep breath and got back to work, relentlessly pulling apart the boxes. I didn’t find a thing.

No bug.

That left only one explanation.

“Elena,” I said. I put my head in my hands, drained.

What was I going to do now?

Mandeep poked her head into the room. “Christopher, we’re ready.”

I stood, but my legs wobbled and my head swam as I approached the waiting group. They were clutching their meager belongings.

“Before we all get in the diggers, I need everyone to come and grab as much food as you can carry. I’ve separated it all into cans and dry goods.”

No one moved.

Jimmi asked the question on everyone’s minds. “Why are we leaving?”

“We are in danger.”

Now I hit them with more horrible news.

“Finn is dead.”

Darcy was the first to cry. Then Alek began to sway. Mandeep reached over and grabbed him before he could fall.

“How?” Pavel yelled.

“Did you screw up the raid?” Jimmi said.

Julio and Nazeem looked at Therese who bowed her head and said nothing.

Darcy’s howling grew louder. Maria, tears flowing, bent down and began to hug her, smoothing her hair.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “There was nothing we could do.”

“Was it Landers?” Maria said, holding Darcy tightly.

I caught Fatima’s eye. She was staring at me, still as stone.

“No,” I said. “It was a cave-in. There are more cracks nearby. I don’t think this location is safe anymore.”

Fatima scanned the ceiling and walls, frowning. I looked away.

“Let’s all calmly get the food stacked, and then we’ll get the diggers and move camp.”

“Where’s Elena?” asked Pavel.

I’d hoped no one would notice that. “She’s gone ahead. Scouting out the new area for us,” I lied. “Look, I have to go prep the diggers. Stack the food here outside the storeroom. It’ll be easier to pack the diggers here rather than carry everything back and forth.”

“Yeah, now that you took it all out of the boxes,” Pavel said with a huff.

I didn’t have time for an argument. I needed to make a couple of preparations before everyone came to get in their diggers.

“We need to move. So let’s hurry. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I made my way to the garage and leaned into my digger cockpit. The first thing I did was change the frequency setting on the radio. Then I did it to all the rest. I didn’t want Elena or the Landers to hear anything we might say.

As I finished the last digger, I heard footsteps rush up behind me and something hard smashed into my shoulder blade. I fell to the floor in searing pain, grabbing my arm.

I turned and put my other arm up to defend myself.

Fatima hovered over me, holding a large metal wrench.

“Traitor!” She prepared to slam the wrench down again.

“No!” I yelled. “I’m not a traitor!”

She held the wrench over me. “You lied about the cave-in. You lied about Elena. And now you are sabotaging the diggers so we can’t escape.”

I shook my head, which sent a whole different kind of pain down my arm. I winced. “No. I was changing the frequency settings on the radios.”

She lowered the wrench a bit and cocked her head. “And how is that less suspicious?”

I kept my hand between my face and the wrench but got up onto my knees. “There is a traitor,” I said. “She’s told the Landers what frequency we’ve been using.”

“They’ve been listening to us?”

I nodded. “When we’ve been close enough for them to hear. They’ve been tracking us. Finn didn’t die in a cave-in. We were ambushed.”

“You said she.”

“What?”

“You said the traitor is a she.”

Had I said that?

“You must have suspected me,” she said, not lowering the wrench. “I don’t blame you. It could make sense.” She stared into space, clearly running through the same variables I had considered earlier. Then she lowered the wrench.

“It’s not Elena,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why? Where is she?”

Fatima gave deep sigh. “I don’t know for certain.”

This was frustrating.

“Maybe the traitor is you, Fatima, and that’s how you know Elena is innocent?” I said, looking at the wrench and massaging my shoulder. “Maybe this is
your ploy to kill me and make it look like it was me.”

She shook her head and threw the wrench against the wall.

“It’s not me, Christopher. But if you’d like to set a trap to find out who it really is, I will help. But we’ve got to be fast.”