Jaunt (31 page)

The observation anteroom groaned under the mounting pressure; each warhead seemed to drag on longer, and all of Constantine’s firm prodding couldn’t shave off the few seconds Beta had lost along the way.

Dark Horse stole another glance to his chrono: 00:09:58:92. “Dammit.”

Gilmour thought he heard the one phrase none of the Temporal Retrieve team wanted to hear.

De Lis turned to Dark Horse and said again, “So, do we pull him out, Colonel?

Abort?”

Fighting every instinct to overreact and advocate a quick mission kill, Gilmour clenched his jaw and pushed his way to Dark Horse. “Pulling him out now is only going to worsen our circumstances, sir! I strongly suggest allowing Constantine to do his job and get that man out of there with the
Strela
s compromised.”

Dark Horse rubbed his eyes, showing for the first time in public the rising stress this posting had forced upon him. He glanced at his chrono a third time. “They’ve been at it for over ten minutes now, barely finishing off two warheads. I’d say it’s painfully apparent that the illegal has almost no chance of meeting the deadline.”

Surpassing the scheduled deadline automatically killed the mission, no matter what the current status was. No amount of pleading from Gilmour or Constantine could save a mission after that.

“Colonel,” Gilmour persisted, “abort this facility once, and kiss it goodbye! The very least we could do is get as many warheads decommissioned before the deadline, maybe increase our chances for a successful end to the mission without pulling up our stakes outright here.” Gilmour narrowed his eyes, his pupils meeting the colonel’s. Deep down, the special agent felt, Dark Horse knew he had to be right.

All attention was on Dark Horse, who, in spite of de Lis’ theoretical studies lab command, was ultimately calling all the shots for the government. Swallowing hard, he nodded his head, which must have creaked terribly inside, paining him.

Gilmour didn’t give Dark Horse’s say another thought. Turning back to Constantine, his every sinew was consumed with Constantine completing his task and getting Beta out of that blasted neutronic factory.

“I know we’ve reached the deadline, but dammit, Colonel, we’ve only got three left!”

Constantine shouted to the walls, which echoed his every syllable in the gallery. “We can get it done!”

De Lis shook his head, then glanced to Dark Horse. The lieutenant colonel toggled the intercom switch on the anteroom’s computer panel. “Not now, Agent. Not now. Report to U5-29.”

A tremendous crack reverberated from the gallery’s walls, making Gilmour flinch. Sneaking a look at the monitor, he saw Constantine storm out. Panning his eyes a meter or two, Gilmour caught sight of an abandoned holobook on the gallery’s floor, presumably launched by Constantine.

Moments later, Constantine slammed the door behind him. U5-29 and its inhabitants shuddered under his black cloud as he strode past everyone, even Gilmour and McKean.

De Lis and the senior staff seated themselves, holobooks in hand, at the conference table, with lamps lit for the briefing. De Lis stroked his chin, allowing Constantine to stew for a moment in the room’s corner. After an acceptable pause he ordered, “Have a seat, Agent Constantine.”

Constantine pursed his lips and grudgingly pulled out a chair backwards, then seated himself so that the chairback supported his disinterested elbow and chin.

“I feel it necessary to remind ourselves,” de Lis began, “that we have definitive orders here from the Defense Department. Breaking those orders, stretching those orders, is not why we were given this mandate. Understood?”

“Understood, Doctor,” Gilmour and McKean chimed, followed by a grunt only from Constantine.

“Good. Now, if I’m remembering correctly...” de Lis paused to pick up his holobook. Scrolling down the page, he found the DoD’s timetable. “...We have one hour, nineteen minutes before Agent McKean’s Gamma shift. Now, gentlemen, this is not a briefing in our usual sense...the need to stress the automatic kill is our top priority. Nothing short of full compliance will be acceptable. We cannot—I repeat, cannot have dissent over this. Too much is at risk here for us to go gallivanting around when a mission goes astray. Is that understood?” The question was directed generally at the agents, but de Lis’ eyes shot straight to Constantine.

All three chorused, “Understood.”

De Lis slapped his hands down on the table and rose. “Good. I sure as hell hope this is the final time I have to give this speech.”

With a round of claps to his back and hooting, McKean exited from the gallery at a new record time and met the senior staff and his partners in U5-1.

“All right, Neil!” Waters cheered, perhaps applauding the loudest of all the theoretical studies group.

Gilmour and Constantine cut through the gathering throng and took turns shaking McKean’s hand. “If I’d have known you were going to upstage us, Keanie,” Constantine quipped, “I’d never let you out of your quarters this morning!”

“A job well done, Agent McKean,” de Lis hailed, a smile cracking his recently dour demeanor. “Truly marvelous.”

Dark Horse nodded, satisfied, then silenced the mild celebration with a downward gesture of his hands. “Beautiful work, Agents. At the risk of being a spoilsport, everybody here should allow the agents to get some shuteye before tomorrow’s shifts. As much as today’s triumphs are good for our spirits, we have to remember it’s an ongoing war from now on. Nothing is for granted.” Shaking the hands of the three agents once more, Dark Horse looked to the assembled and finished, “Tomorrow, let’s kick their asses so hard they’d wished they’d never heard the word
Strela
!”

A red bulb over the sliding doors signaled the elevator had reached the lower depths of the new facility. Gilmour memorized the surroundings as the Delta illegal took him from cramped quarters above to the bustling underbelly of the Irkutsk military/industrial complex. Judging by the native elements, Irkutsk’s denizens could just as easily fill in at any of the Vegas strip spots; the work was equally dirty and certainly unmentionable to the unacquainted.

Proceeding down a dim corridor that would have put the submarine
Hesperus
to shame, Gilmour and Delta found a
Strela
assembly point on the sublevel. Row upon row of warhead fuselages sat on an assembly line, pre-capitation, all waiting for the final installment of explosive mechanisms before being loaded for transport. An automated crane containing two workers hovered over each
Strela
, giving the men topside access while they performed the nosecone connections. After each nosecone was secured, the assembly line’s track moved a meter down the line, bringing the delicate warheads to a loading car. From Gilmour’s view, each car appeared capable of ferrying about four warheads at once. The key would be to commandeer one of the cars before it hit the loading dock.

“All right, Delta, a little shift in plans here. Hope your skills are up to the task,”

Gilmour said, scoping out the cars crossing the bay. “Here’s where your credentials come into play.”

After giving Delta a quick tactical plan, Gilmour had the man do a quick swing pass of the bay. He then walked near the assembly line cautiously, but with deliberate steps, perpetrating his cover, until the pair were past the crane and free to intercept an approaching car.

Gilmour did another scan of the bay with his eyes. “Follow my instructions to the letter. Tell him we’re needing a lift to the loading bay...I don’t care what you have to say.”

The gallery image jumped as Delta picked up his pace and flagged down the nearing car. Once stopped, the car’s driver acknowledged a response in Russian that almost passed Gilmour while he lip-read. Delta’s hands clasped the car’s side and hopped into the tiny vehicle, again making the holograph jump. Several moments passed while the driver facilitated the delivery of the
Strela
warheads into the rear of the car.

Once the car was full, the worker drove off down the corridor, taking Gilmour on a dizzying ride. Looking at the speedometer, they were going only a few KPH, but compared to the slower pace of human leg power, it was lightspeed to the gallery’s holographic systems. The trip lasted less than three minutes, the pair soon arriving at some type of subterreanean transport dock at the end of the corridor, after first passing through a rather porous security checkpoint. A subway train waited on the tracks while men fed the warheads into a port hatch, putting each of the weapons into round slots on the car’s interior floor.

“Delta,” Gilmour commanded, “try to get a closer look at the
Strela
s.”

Delta stepped off the small car and walked around the station dock, gradually closing in on the subway car. Gilmour did a quick tally of the warheads between Delta’s successive swings.

“I’m counting at least forty
Strela
s in this car alone. Damn, how many of these things do they have?” Gilmour again watched the dockworkers load the warheads onto the subway car. Counting the empty slots reserved for the last
Strela
s, this load would be one of the last; there wouldn’t be a better time than now to hit this many warheads.

“Delta, get yourself aboard this subway car. I’ve another change in plans.”

Delta surveyed the car, then walked to the engine at the head car. Grappling a handhold, Delta scampered aboard through an unlocked door and hid in a auxiliary compartment not far from the car’s rear. Before Delta closed the door, Gilmour noted the engine car’s exit/entrance to the cargo car was within sprinting distance.

For now, all the pair could do was wait for the subway car to get underway to perform the most dangerous part of the mission.

“That’s it. Let’s go!”

Delta’s hand found the lock and cracked the door open, permitting enough light to glimpse the corridor. Satisfied all was well, Delta stepped out and headed for the car’s aft exit, a sliver of a door apparently designed for children and adults with shoulders less than thirty-five centimeters to pass through. Removing a lockpick, Delta broke open the door’s lock and wriggled his way past, briefly balancing himself on the connection arm between the two cars. Flashes of the subway tube’s lights around the speeding cars gave Gilmour glances of the tracks barreling under them, reminding him just how fast the cars were actually speeding, even if he didn’t want to know.

One jump later, Delta had grabbed a hold of the cargo car and pulled himself onto its slim segment of the connection arm. Quick work with the lockpick pried open the entrance, and Delta and Gilmour entered the darkened car. After locking the door, Delta switched on a helmet lamp. Dozens of shiny
Strela
warheads scattered the light back at them, casting the car’s ceiling and walls with shimmering silver.

What was just a dark cavern seconds ago had suddenly metamorphosized into a forest of machines, each with the capability of obliterating this tube and the ground around it for hundreds of meters; being present with that much power was quite humbling and—

dare Gilmour think of it—damned horrifying.

Refusing to dwell upon it, Gilmour and Delta went to work fast, knowing by far this was the mission posing the least threat of interruption by the Confederation, and therefore the greatest fruit.

It was laborious work; the warheads were crammed together in a tight area, forcing Delta to be a contortionist to perform the recoding. Gilmour was able to give Delta new reprogramming shortcuts thanks to the agent’s prior experience, but the sheer quantity, and the relatively uneven surface flooring, made for a horrendous experience. Gilmour hoped the train ride was long; he estimated the reprogramming time to run over by thirty to thirty-five percent. In other words, a long night.

By the second hour, Delta had moved to the back section of the car; progress, if it could be called that. Gilmour noticed signs of Delta’s nearing exhaustion; repeated mistakes and the continual dropping of equipment started to rankle the agent.

A burst of energy shook the gallery holograph, breaking Delta’s attention away from the present warhead. Gilmour was floored by the dizzying perspective.
What the hell
—

Given a brief respite from the haphazard swings, Gilmour saw the car’s normal rocking become spasms, building to a series of pulses until slowing to a quiet roll. From all appearances, the car was braking, coming to a halt. Was the car already at its stop, or something else?

Delta instinctively shut off his lamplight, reverting the car to darkness.

“Stay down, don’t move!”

After a moment spent absorbing the blackness of the car for signs of movement, Gilmour said again, “Do you hear anything? Men outside, doors sliding?”

Delta extended two fingers in the dim light, answering, “no.”

Gilmour was literally stuck in the dark, waiting for signs of confirmation from Delta. Damnable holographic interface’s only pitfall was the lack of sound, one of the IIA’s most significant allies in field work. Sans eyes, the second best tools were one’s ears, visceral equipment harder to fool, making them therefore more reliable in compromising situations.

“Talk to me...what’s going down?”

Delta didn’t comply, still crouching low behind a pair of warheads. Periodic swings of Delta’s corneal implants gave an incomplete survey for Gilmour to follow the best he could. Seconds of tantalizing torture gave way to minutes, as he waited in mounting frustration at his lack of access to the mission site. Finally, Delta stood—against Gilmour’s warnings—and crept over to the car’s entrance.