Chapter 16 - SMOKE AND BALLISTICS
The transmission ended with a sharp click. On the other end of the line, three miles away at the temporary field coordination center established inside an unmarked communications trailer, a man cursed in low, furious tones.
Director Nathan Cross was sixty-two years old, with silver hair cropped close to a skull mapped with old scars. He had spent his entire adult life inside the classified black budget corridors of the Pentagon. To him, human beings were assets, liabilities, or collateral damage.
"She’s armed," Cross said to the tactical commander standing beside him. "She killed Davis and Ortiz in the culvert."
The commander, a burly veteran with dead eyes named Vance, checked his biometric monitor. "Davis’s heart monitor flatlined thirty seconds ago. How did she engage them in total thermal blackout?"
"Because she’s Operative Zero-Nine," Cross snarled, slamming his fist onto the stainless-steel console. "She doesn't rely on thermal sensors! She was our primary prototype for ambient ballistic mapping! She can calculate a firing solution from the echo of a dropped pin!"
Cross turned toward the digital satellite map of Fort Guernsey. "Bring the helicopter up. Thermal searchlights along the entire wash. If she gets into the civilian sector in Cheyenne, the entire Blackwood archive will leak to the Senate committee. Deploy the perimeter claymores along the highway. Burn the entire sector if you have to."
Meanwhile, at the exit of the drainage conduit, Claire and Sergeant Miller emerged into the biting night air of the Wyoming badlands. A dry, howling wind blew off the Laramie Mountains, whipping dust and dead sagebrush across the rocky expanse.
Miller racked her shotgun, her eyes darting across the empty hills. "Where do we go? The main gate is cut off. The communications trailer is probably sitting on the north access road."
"We don't run, Sergeant," Claire said, adjusting the straps of the captured tactical rig. "You can't outrun a high-altitude surveillance drone in open desert. The moment we cross the ridge, an armed Reaper or a scout helicopter will turn us into grease."
"Then what’s the plan?"
"We take their communications hub," Claire said, pointing toward a faint flashing radio mast two miles to the northwest, perched atop an old abandoned granite quarry. "They’re routing all their jamming signals through an air-transportable terminal. If we destroy the jammer, Fort Guernsey’s automated alert network goes live. The state police and the National Guard Quick Reaction Force will be here in eight minutes."
"And if we don't?"
May you like
Claire looked down at the carbine in her hands, her hazel eyes reflecting the cold starlight. "Then nobody ever learns what happened to the quiet girl who couldn't miss."
***
