The Empowered, page 85
She held me close after I’d finished. The projection smelled like salt water. I wondered why I’d never noticed that before. “This is nuts,” she whispered. “You’re going to turn off RAMPART?”
I nodded. “It’s the only way.”
“And Alex and Keisha agree?” she asked, looking at me skeptically.
“Keisha’s less than wild about the idea, but she agreed.”
“And Alex?”
“This is even more his plan than mine,” I said. The other passengers filed out of the station, heading back to the bus. The driver was already back on board, revving the engine.
“Let me tell the others,” the projection pleaded. She looked so earnest.
“Sure, but we aren’t waiting,” I said.
Her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed. “Fine.” She vanished.
I took a deep breath and boarded the bus. I sat down next to Alex. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Still planning?” I asked him. “Sorry to interrupt.”
He must have noticed I was abrupt.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been going over the plan.”
He squeezed my arm. That sounded more like the Alex I knew and loved.
“No problem,” I said, and rested my head on his shoulder.
Keisha was awake. She shook her head, rolled away from us.
What had that been about? I wondered.
The bus pulled out of the station and drove toward I-5 and the border, three hours away.
19
Night had fallen by the time we reached Blaine. The bus was heading to Vancouver, but we got off at Blaine. We weren’t going to take any chances at the border crossing. They would ask to see our I.D.s and then they’d know who we were. Sure, we could have tried fake I.D.s, but even Keisha agreed that was too chancy. So, instead, we hoofed it out of town, and crashed in the forest for the night. The trees welcomed me with a low song of evening that warmed me despite the chill.
I’d forgotten how cold sleeping outside could be, especially in the woods.
I woke up, stiff, with a muscle cramp in my left thigh. It was still dark. My mouth tasted like old pine needles. The trees rumbled in their sleep.
Alex was already awake, standing beside a tree trunk, stretching. His back was to me. Keisha snored softly a few feet away, wrapped in her coat.
Pine needles glistened with dew. I gently touched one with my finger tip. I flashed on the roots stretching into the earth beneath us.
The world forest filled my mind. Roots a huge tangle beneath me.
“Mathilda,” a voice said in my mind. It sounded like Sprig, but that couldn’t be. We weren’t close to a node.
“Trust in yourself and your connection,” Sprig said softy.
“Where are you?” I replied in my mind.
“All around you,” she whispered.
I whirled around, but there was no sign of her.
“Trust yourself,” she repeated. Then she was silent.
Trust myself. The words echoed in my head. That was a big help.
I stretched and joined Alex. He still seemed preoccupied. That shouldn’t have been a big surprise, but it was morning. He stood in a yoga pose, eyes closed, palms together like he was praying. I waited for what felt like forever before interrupting, but finally it had gone on too long.
“Hey,” I said, leaning toward him. “You can’t do the yoga thing all day long.” Weird, I’d never seen him do yoga before. Another thing I didn’t know about when it came to Alex. The man had way more secrets than I’d ever realized.
“Didn’t know you were into yoga,” I said.
“My Support senior agent kept ragging about it,” he said. “I don’t do it often.”
“Winterfield was into yoga?” I said, surprised. “That definitely doesn’t sound like him.”
“Sorry, my other supervisor. Brannigan.”
I shook my head. “You Support types have a million bosses.”
He laughed. “You are so right.”
I reached for his hand, grasped it in mine.
“Listen, I love you,” I said.
“I love you,” he replied. “Too bad things are far from normal right now,” he said. “We don’t get any real time together.”
I laughed sadly. “Things are never normal. At least not around me. But yeah, things are weird right now.” I let go of him.
He nodded again. “My head has been on the mission.”
“Mine should be, too.” I paused. “This feels like a real long shot,” I said.
“We can do this.” Typical Sanchez confidence.
I hoped he was right, or else there would be hell to pay, and then some.
We ate a quick breakfast of protein bars, then spent the morning walking through the woods. We took another break around noon.
“Now that we’re across the border, we need to find transportation to the hangar,” Alex said.
Keisha looked around. “We’re across the border? When the hell did that happen?”
“Like we could tell out here in the woods,” I said.
She grimaced at me. “Your humor sucks even more than usual. Remind me again why we are out here in the back of beyond, when we could have taken your freaking Fairy road?
I put my hands on my hips. “Unreliable, remember?”
“Fortunately, there aren’t any border guards in the woods,” Alex said.
I hid a smirk. He was clearly working on diverting Keisha.
We got lucky an hour after lunch. Just as we reached a dirt road, Keisha grabbed my arm. “I’ve found a car,” she said.
I peered around. All I saw was a tangle of underbrush beneath the tall fir trees. “Where the hell is it?” I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
She gave me a nasty look, then strode over to a cluster of sword ferns. She yanked back the ferns, which screamed in protest.
I winced.
She pointed triumphantly at the little car hidden in the ferns. It looked old.
“That’s a Fiat,” Alex whispered. “Has to be fifteen years old, easy.” He laughed. “But, any port in a storm, right?”
I nodded.
We got to work, and fifteen minutes later, the Fiat gleamed metal again. I repaired the tires, and the wiring. The Fiat was an electric car, so not a gas engine. It wasn’t nearly as hard as the truck had been. Still, we’d worked up a sweat by the time we were finished.
“That’ll do,” I said.
“Easy for you to say,” she gasped.
I gave her a bottle of water from my pack, and she drained it a long gulp.
“So, how do we charge the battery?” I asked.
Alex smiled. “Fortunately, I have just the tool. He pulled a power pack from his backpack, along with a cable.
A half hour later the Fiat was charged and ready to go.
We piled in, Alex behind the wheel, and me crammed in beside him, Keisha shoved in the back. We drove off down the dirt road, hitting every hole and bump.
I’d expected the hangar to be in a town, but we drove east, rather than north, up into the mountains. Alex stopped three times to check his data pad. He had a new doodad on it I didn’t recognize, a little metal parasol thing.
“Satellite transmitter. Gives me our location.”
He’d used something different when the two of us had first traveled through the Dark-Net to Great Persia. But it was all weird tech to me, anyway.
We reached an asphalt road and headed up into the mountains. Rain began falling, mixed with snowflakes.
“Shit. It’s snowing,” I said.
“So?” Keisha shook her head.
“That could make driving tough.”
“We’re fine,” Alex said. “Forecast doesn’t have the temperature dropping enough for it to stick at the elevation we’ll be traveling to.” He shrugged. “Optimal conditions. For now.”
We drove on, the only vehicle on the road.
“This seems awfully empty for a logging road,” Keisha said. “Haven’t seen a single truck.”
“This forest is closed to logging,” Alex said, not missing a beat. I was glad there wasn’t any logging, I could do without a tree screaming in my head. As it was, I had pulled my sense back inside just in case there was logging. I relaxed and stretched out. The trees murmured in my head.
Alex turned off onto a dirt road, drove for a mile and then parked at the edge of a meadow filled with old tree trunks. The granddaddy of all tree trunks loomed in the middle of the meadow.
“I don’t see a hangar,” I said.
“Must be invisible,” Keisha quipped, laughing at me.
I shrugged.
“Just hidden,” Alex said. He got out of the Fiat. Keisha and I got out as well. Being in that little car was like riding in old phone booth. I sucked in the crisp mountain air. The pines, the ferns, even the flowers, sang like a heavenly choir here. The snowcapped mountains loomed in the distance. Alex thumbed his data pad, with yet another doo-dad on it, this one a cone.
The cone began humming. The plant choir in my head suddenly became fearful moans. The moans became shrieks. I staggered, clutching at my head.
“Mat!” I dimly heard Keisha. She grabbed me and kept me from collapsing.
“Turn that off, asshole!” she yelled.
“Done,” Alex said.
I straightened up, rubbed my head. “What happened?”
“You tell me,” Keisha said, and squeezed my shoulder.
“The plants went crazy.” What the hell had Alex done?
“Are you all right?” he asked. Behind him a door yawned open in a huge tree stump. Red lights glowed inside, revealing a ladder running down.
“What was that?” I groaned. The door, lights and ladder were still there.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “That was the hangar system waking up, and the power coming on line.
“Power?”
He nodded. “Small nuclear reactor. Kept off line until we need it.”
Shit. I gestured at the mountains. “A nuclear reactor. For fuck’s sake, here in the wilderness.”
“It’s small, enough to power the jet and its stealth systems.”
“Wait, this reactor is aboard the jet.” I shook my head.
“It is.” He rubbed his head. “But, there’s a second one powering the hangar.”
“But why would that give the plants here a conniption fit?” I wondered.
“Both the plane and the hangar have some very special systems,” he said.
Keisha cocked her head. “How the hell do you know all this?” Her voice was thick with suspicion.
“What can I say,” Alex said, with a slight grin. “It’s a hidden Support asset. Come on, let’s get inside.” He headed off.
She gave me a disbelieving look. I shrugged. I’d been a mushroom for so long, I didn’t have a good sense of just how extensive Support’s assets were. Then again, Goldin had talked about not one but two hidden global networks in RAMPART and the Dark-Net, so why not a super-secret jet powered by a nuclear reactor in the back of beyond?
The air inside the shaft heading down was cool, and the rungs cold to our touch. This place hadn’t been used in a while. The red lighting was that emergency type. Alex descended quickly and I struggled to follow.
Keisha swore under her breath above me. I reached the bottom—we must have gone down like a hundred feet. At least. Who puts their hangar a hundred feet below the ground for God’s sake?
Alex had disappeared through an open hatch. Lights flicked on ahead of him, revealing a jet that was all curves. It was black—Support and the Hero Council loved black for their jets. Funny that, the Hero Council’s surveillance blimps were white, but their jets were always matte black.
This one reminded me of a bird. Long neck, narrow cockpit. It was big, too, bigger than the VTOL Raptors Support used.
“What kind of plane is this?” I craned my neck up at it as I followed Alex into the hangar. He went to a panel on one wall, flipped switches. Honest to god switches. More lights flicked on. A big power cable snaked from the plane to the wall. Was the plane’s reactor powering this place now?
On the far side of the hangar, lights glowed inside a windowed conference room. There were more doors along that wall.
This wasn’t just a hangar. This was another complex.
I shook my head. How many holes in the ground would I have to visit before I was done with my own personal underworld? It seemed endless, for fuck’s sake.
Keisha grabbed my arm while Alex concentrated on a green-lettered computer display, like something out of a museum.
“What the hell, Mat?” she whispered. “What gives with this place?”
“Support secret hangar.” I tried to sound easy about the whole thing, but it was bizarre as hell.
“Don’t bullshit me. You know this place shouldn’t be here. Nobody puts a hangar up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, especially not Support or the HC. Those dudes don’t need to hide.”
That last word sent a shiver down my spine. She was right. Fuck.
“Stay cool,” I said.
“Fat chance of that.”
I nodded. “Well, let’s both try.”
Alex had finished whatever it was he was doing and walked to the rear of the aircraft. There was a thunk, and then a ramp descended from the aircraft to stop right in front of Alex. He went on board.
“He sure knows his way around this place, doesn’t he?” Keisha asked.
He certainly did. How did he know all that? I mean, the man had one hell of memory, but this was deep, covert, way past ultraviolet secret stuff.
This seemed so far above his paygrade as a Support agent it was in orbit.
I nodded at the plane. “Let’s follow him.”
“You sure?” she asked. Keisha actually looked worried.
“Come on, I mean, I know this is crazy, but we’re going to fly it soon, so why worry.”
She made a face but followed. That was Keisha. Always ready to follow me. No matter what. I looked away. I didn’t deserve her. But, she was with me, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her down, especially not with Alex acting all Support-ish and everything.
The plane was even bigger up close. It was basically an airliner. I’d never flown until getting out of special corrections, and even then, it had been smaller aircraft than this.
The ramp led up to a blue-lit cargo bay where Alex busily examined crates. I saw an old-style dune buggy latched to the deck. My booted feet made muffled clumping sounds as I walked up the ramp. I stopped and peered at the ramp. It was made of some sort of rubberized stuff that dampened the sound of our feet. Weird.
There were handholds on the inside of the open rear door. Maybe for parachute jumping.
Alex finished checking the crates.
“You get your twinkies okay?” I asked.
He smiled. “Amusing.” Not exactly the cocky comeback I was used to with him. Still preoccupied going over his uber jet.
“This jet is something,” I said, looking around. You could have put a hundred people in here. They’d be close together, but you’d still have room for vehicles and equipment. At the far end of the cargo stairs led up to a lit space—an observation room.
I shook my head. “This plane lets you bring your own offices with it.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he scrutinized an electronics display at a wall panel. The display was in rich, full color, looking way more modern than the one down below.
I should have just let him work, but his distance was bugging the hell out of me, so I walked over, and put a hand on his arm.
“Hey,” I said.
He kept working.
I clenched my jaw. I should just let it lie. “Stop,” I said. “Please.”
He finally looked up. “Sorry.” He kissed me.
I blinked. “I wanted to talk.”
“Oh, sorry.” His eyes came into focus and he examined my face. I fidgeted. “Don’t mean to be distracted,” he said, just as I was really starting to get uncomfortable.
“Look, I know you have a lot on your mind, but I’m worried about you,” I said. I took a step away from him, turned around. “There’s such a thing as too much focus, Alex. You’re missing stuff.”
He frowned, staring at me for another long moment. “Listen, I care about you. I do. But we need to put that aside right now and do the mission. Afterwards, there’ll be time for us.” He smiled, cheeks dimpling, classic Alex, again.
“Sure,” I said. Despite his words, my shoulders were bunched and I wanted to punch something.
I forced a smile. “Is there something Keisha and I can do to help get ready? While you do your thing?”
He nodded, handed me a plastic card. “Use this to get into the hangar storeroom. Grab a jumpsuit for each of us, there’s several sizes, men and women.” He thought for a minute, nodded to himself. “Bring three more. Two for someone six foot, and another for someone just five foot.”
“For our reinforcements in Africa?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t they bring their own?” I asked.
“These are special jumpsuits,” he said, sounding all cryptic. “There’s also a pallet jack down there,” he went on. “You can bring up boxes 13-16. I’m going to the cockpit to get this ride ready to fly. The sooner the better.”
Keisha was at the top of the ramp, eyes wide, taking everything in. I stomped past her.
“Come on, let’s go get some gear,” I said, not looking back.
We swiped the card to get inside the rooms at the back of the hangar. We walked down a short corridor past the conference room to a big set of double doors. Swipe again. The doors slid open, and overhead fluorescents flickered on. Another room filled with all kinds of gear. Weapons racks with assault rifles, grenade launchers. There were big clamshell-style cargo boxes, numbered, lined up along one wall. A pallet jack sat in the middle of the room, with a flat carrying plate covering the prongs.
“Just like it was waiting for us,” I groused. “Let’s grab boxes 13-16,” I said. I pushed the pallet jack to the stack of boxes.
I grabbed number thirteen. It felt like it weighed a ton. I put it down. I grunted, lifted with my legs this time and put the box on the jack. “These things are heavier than they look,” I told Keisha.
