Enemy Agents (34 page)

39

Quarrel was freezing cold as the helicopter flew over the coniferous Yukon forest below. Quarrel and Hall were in the back of the chopper, with Meg in the pilot’s seat. The roar of the rotors was loud enough that they could only speak to each other through their headsets. Quarrel was holdings his arms around himself, trying to stay warm, but Hall was busy sorting through the gear he had brought.

“We’re getting close,” said Meg through her radio.

“OK. Don’t get too close,” said Hall. “They might shoot us down. Find a road or a clearing and land.” The trees below were sporadic, with many open spaces where Meg could have set the chopper down, but she saw that there were two roads nearby, intersecting near the TCPE location, and opted to settle the chopper down on the pavement.

Within a couple minutes, Meg had settled the helicopter down on a road south of the TCPE. As she killed the engine, Hall threw the door open and started to unpack. It was below freezing outside, but Jack didn’t seem to notice. “Grab that,” he said, pointing to a backpack. Hall took two packs for himself and jogged for the tree line at the side of the road. Quarrel noted that Jack was keeping his sidearm in his right hand, ready to fire at any moment, even as he carried two backpacks and had his assault rifle slung over his shoulder. The helicopter was loud, and Shark would know that they were close. Quarrel pulled out his own gun, grabbed the backpack and climbed out, ducking under the spinning blades. Meg hopped out too, and together they ran after Jack, into the forest.

Jack had already run up a small rise in the land, seeking high ground to survey the TCPE. Meg and Quarrel caught up after Jack found a spot he liked and lay down. The spruces that covered the landscape as far as Quarrel could see were spaced quite far apart, with several feet between trees, so the forest wasn’t great cover. Fortunately, the ground was already sprouting thick grass, so once they were able to lie down, Quarrel felt like they were well concealed. Jack already had his binoculars up to his face by the time Quarrel and Meg lay down next to him.

“How’s it look?” asked Quarrel.

“Well guarded,” said Hall, passing the binoculars.

Quarrel crawled to the edge of the hill and looked down and saw the TCPE for the first time. The facility was roughly square-shaped, encircled by four straight walls of concrete. The walls looked about ten-feet high, but then there was a chain-link fence on top of the wall, and that fence was topped with barbed wire. From this vantage point, it looked like the only way in was through a single gate that accessed the road. The gate was guarded by a team of eight armed GX men who looked like soldiers. Quarrel knew that these guys would be loyal GX contractors who Mercier or Shark had chosen specifically for this job. On one hand, it was good to see professionals like this, since they were guys you reason with, as opposed to a gang of criminal thugs who would just kill you outright. On the other hand, Jack Hall could take down criminals and thugs but up against professional soldiers, their little group was severely outmatched.

Inside the Teacup’s walls, there were two prominent features. One was the bunker, a chunky cement building with few windows, which housed the power supply, control room, and living quarters for the people who worked on the array. It would have been designed to hold soldiers if it had worked, but since it was deemed a failure, Quarrel reckoned the only people who had ever lived in that bunker were the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency construction team who built it. The bunker was in the southwest corner of the square complex, leaving most of the area open. In this open field was the other feature, the array of microwave emitters. These looked to Quarrel like huge antennae; hundreds of giant metal objects pointing at the sky. The emitters were laid out in concentric circles, with the tallest of the emitters on the outermost ring. The result was that the array looked a bit like a cup, and the bunker looked a bit like a handle, so the Teacup name wasn’t just a convenient acronym but actually represented the shape of the facility in an abstract way. Quarrel knew from the blueprints that each emitter could be angled and controlled by the consoles in the bunker, and that collectively they created a beam that was supposed to be strong enough to cook an area the size of half a football field.

“There are hundreds of those things,” Quarrel said. “There’s no way we have enough detonators to take them all out.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jack replied, “but we have more than enough to blow the control room to hell.”

In addition to the team guarding the gate, there were other hired killers patrolling the yard, and a handful were lingering around the bunker. There had to be twenty of them. Mercier had spared no expense.

“OK, but how are we supposed to get past all them?” asked Meg.

“Hell if I know,” growled Hall. “I figured it would just be Scarret and a handful of men, keeping the circle of people who knew about this thing small. Didn’t expect a goddamn platoon.”

Quarrel dug into his pack and pulled out a walkie-talkie. He flipped it on and started scrolling through frequencies. “What are you doing?” Meg asked.

“Finding their frequency,” he responded.

Hall took the binoculars back and studied the TCPE while Quarrel listened to static. It took a while, but eventually Quarrel caught a snippet of a voice and was able to dial in the right frequency.

“—landed to the south,” said one man.

“Well there’s no sign of ‘em. Probably circling north,” replied another.

At least they hadn’t been spotted yet.

Hall put the lens caps on his binoculars and set them down beside his pack. The second pack, he tossed toward Meg. “I think we can take them. I once had to take down a compound in Afghanistan that was a lot like this. Meg, can you shoot?”

As Jack was about to get rolling on some crazy plan where the three of them charge dozens of mercenaries and survive, Quarrel cut him off by pressing the transmit button on the walkie and joining the mercenaries’ conversation.

“Attention Globection contractors,” he began, “you can all go home.”

Hall’s eyes widened with shock, but he held his tongue.

“I repeat, you can all go home ASAP,” Quarrel continued, before letting go of the transmit button.

“What the hell are—” Hall started, but then a man’s voice came over the walkie.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the man.

“I am an agent of the Canadian government, and every last one of you is committing treason against the United States by being here. Your company is working against your country, and any man who does not leave immediately will be charged with terrorism, murder, and high treason. If you fire that weapon, you will all be facing the death penalty.

“Your employer, Hugo Zoeli, was actually a known terrorist named Martin Mercier. Mercier has already been executed for his crimes. Globection no longer exists. You will not be paid, you will not be rewarded. Leave now and you might escape charges, or stay at your posts and die by lethal injection.”

He let go of the button again, waiting for someone to respond, but there was nothing.

“You expect that to work?” Hall asked.

“They’re not a bunch of evil henchmen. A lot of those guys are former soldiers just following orders.”

They watched as the guards at the gate talked to each other. One man seemed to be visibly angry, and another threw his rifle to the ground. They yelled at each other. Finally, radio silence was broken by a familiar voice.

“He’s lying,” said Shark Scarret’s raspy, cigar-ravaged voice. “We are here to protect America’s secret weapon from the terrorist traitor, Jack Hall. Every man who leaves his post will answer to me.”

Quarrel raised his own walkie. “I’m not Jack Hall. My name is Christopher Quarrel. Don’t believe me? Call GX headquarters in New York. Try to get Zoelion the phone. I bet the FBI answers your call. Or call up the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and ask about me. You are all being lied to. Peter Scarret is here t
o
us
e
the weapon, not to protect it.” Quarrel turned off the walkie and tucked it into a pocket on his pack.

“Oh, great plan,” said Jack, watching as the guard at the gate picked up his rifle.

“Hey, it was worth a shot. They already knew we landed nearby, but now they have a reason to desert this place and let us in. Even if they all stay put, we haven’t lost anything for trying.”

“Yeah, I like the idea of talking better than the idea of charging in there and getting shot to death,” added Meg.

“You notice anything about those emitters?” asked Hall.

“Like what?” she asked. “They all seem pretty well preserved for being almost thirty years old.”

“What I notice is that there are no nerds like you out there working on them. When Thorpe called he said the satellite reflector is open and ready. So if they’re not prepping that array, then it must already be prepped. So I’d say we have the next couple minutes to shut that thing down or a lot of lives and America’s economy are about to get cooked.”

Meg nodded and said nothing.

“So,” Hall continued, “when I propose that we assault that place and take those guards down, I don’t say it because I want to die; I say it because we have no choice. This is what it’s like in the field. You can’t solve anything with a goddamn conference call.”

“OK,” she said. “I get it. And I can shoot, if I have to. I’m a good shot.”

“Wait,” said Quarrel, who was still facing toward the TCPE facility. A Hummer had driven out from behind the bunker and was at the gate. After a discussion with the driver, the gate guards let the Hummer leave. It got on the road, headed west, and took off at high speed. A few of the gate guards watched the Hummer go, and then all eight of them ran toward the bunker. They disappeared behind the building, and a moment later another large SUV pulled out, headed for the road, and took off west.

“They’re leaving,” said Quarrel. “The guards are all leaving.”

Hall and Meg watched in rapt silence as another two vehicles left down the road, and after five minutes, the facility looked empty.

“They left,” said Meg. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“Or they want us to walk into a trap,” said Hall.

“Then we’d better walk into it quick,” said Quarrel, “so we’ll have time to plant some bombs before they get back.”

Hall grunted approval, and the three of them picked up their packs and started down the hill toward the facility. Hall and Quarrel holstered their side arms and readied their rifles. Meg only had the handgun. As they jogged, Hall offered advice on how to plant the bombs. Meg already knew all this, since she was the weapons expert, but Quarrel was glad to hear it.

“In your pack, you have two components. One is the plastic explosive, the stuff that looks like putty. Put a golf-ball sized clump on every computer or electrical panel you see. The other component is the detonator. You switch each one to the on position and stab it into the putty, and make sure it’s secured in place by both prongs. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll plant mine on support structures to bring the building down. We each have a remote trigger, so if I don’t make it, you can still blow this place,” said Hall. “And one more thing. Those detonators are small explosives. Make sure you only turn them on as you plant them. If any of the detonators in your pack are turned on when you push the button, you’ll blow your own ass off.”

“Got it,” said Quarrel. As they ran, with adrenalin flowing in his veins, he barely felt the weight of his pack, although his was unusually attuned to the feel of the gun in his hand. He understood the weight and texture of the rifle more now than he had ever felt another weapon. He knew that he was going to go in there to kill at least one man—Shark—and it was the first time in his life he’d had time to think about killing beforehand. He thumbed the safety off as they reached the east-west road in front of the facility and headed for the gate.

Once they were inside the walls, Hall headed for the building, checking inside the door before waving for Quarrel and Meg to follow him inside.

While he waited for Hall’s all-clear, Quarrel tried to ignore the fact that the emitters were quietly humming.

#

Jack slipped into the bunker first, checked that the hallway was clear, then opened the door for Meg and Quarrel to join him. He looked to Quarrel once all three were inside.

“Do you know where the control room is?” he asked.

Quarrel had seen the blueprint for this bunker, so he would have the best idea of the layout. “Downstairs,” he said, “it’s underground.”

“Then that’s where Shark will be. That’s where I’m going. You clear the upper level. Plant bombs wherever you find electrical or computer systems. And we don’t know how many guards they had. I don’t want them sneaking up behind me so make sure this place is empty.”

Quarrel nodded, said, “That thing outside was ready to fire. Be quick.” Then Quarrel raised his weapon and took off around the corner.