Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone (13 page)

The heads bobbed. Harlequin could see terror in many of the faces, passion and determination in a few.
They’re eager at least.

‘You are going to make sure those barricades hold. There are millions of people in New York City. They are counting on
you
to give them the time they need to leave. The conventional forces can handle the goblins, rocs, and giants, but the
Gahe
are your problem. I know you haven’t had a chance to complete your training, but you joined the SOC to help, and now is when that help is needed. Huah?’

‘Huah, sir!’ The response was uneven. A few voices broke.

‘Everybody shot up with Dampener? There won’t be any Suppression out there unless you’re lucky enough to find one of the SOC operators. I can’t have folks going nova on me now. Remember that skill beats will. Stay safe and controlled, but above all, hold your positions.’

‘Huah, sir!’ Better, but still not what he’d like.

‘All right.’ He turned back to Hewitt. ‘All yours, Colonel.’ Hewitt nodded and began barking at them to get back in the helo. Harlequin accepted the clipboard from Knut. ‘All present and accounted for, sir.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant Major.’ Harlequin tried to let his tone reflect his gratitude. He couldn’t afford another enemy. ‘I really appreciate you covering my six here.’

If Knut was mollified, she gave no sign. She started to salute, stopped halfway, and jogged off to help Hewitt.

Harlequin turned to the other helo. The Chinook’s cavernous interior was easily big enough to hold fifty men. Instead, it held three. The first was a soldier kitted for war, carbine at the low ready. The second was a SOC Suppressor, arms folded, magical current steady and disciplined.

The third was Sarah Downer.

The young Elementalist’s hair had grown long enough to be tied into a nub of a ponytail. The extra weight she’d carried when Harlequin had first brought her in was long gone. Her body was lean, taught, tensed. An operator’s musculature. She was younger than Beamer, but she looked years older, already blossoming into a fierce beauty visible in spite of her evident exhaustion. She wore a one-piece orange prisoner’s jumpsuit, her wrists zip-cuffed behind her, her head fitted with an antispitting hood, complete with collar and ball gag. Her eyes were icy slits.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’ Harlequin shouted.

He stormed up the Chinook’s ramp, easing the hood off her head. ‘Seriously? A hood? How’s she supposed to spit on you when you’ve got her gagged? And why the hell is she gagged in the first place?’

The Suppressor shrugged. ‘SOP, sir. High-value detainee transfer.’ He produced a folded piece of paper from his cargo pant pocket. ‘I’ll need you to sign the hand receipt for her, sir.’

Harlequin yanked the paper out of the man’s hand and stuffed it in his own pocket while he drew out his pocket knife and began to cut through her zip cuffs. ‘She’s not property. She’s a person.’

‘Still need that signed, sir,’ the Suppressor said.

‘Nope,’ Harlequin said, ‘and if you don’t like it, you can stay here. I can sure as hell use you.’

The Suppressor paused, then shrugged again. ‘Suit yourself, sir,’ he said, then signaled to the crew chief as soon as Harlequin cleared the ramp with Downer. Harlequin felt her magical current spike briefly as the Suppression fell away. The rotors spun up, and the helo began to rise. Harlequin left Downer and flew up in front of the cockpit, blocking the helo’s ascent. ‘Get the fuck back down! Land this thing right now!’

The pilot gestured to him to wave off. Harlequin didn’t move. At last, the helo settled back down onto its landing gear, and Harlequin flew around to the open cargo bay where the soldier and Suppressor gaped at him. ‘Respectfully, sir,’ the Suppressor said, ‘don’t make me Suppress y . . .’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Harlequin said. ‘You try to take off without loading this bird full of refugees, and I will have you shot down. Do you fucking understand me?’

The Suppressor gaped. ‘Sir, we’re headed back to Virginia. We don’t have anywhere to house and care for refugees!’

‘Put ’em up on your damn couch! I don’t give a fuck. Anywhere is safer than here!’

‘Sir, I . . .’

‘I’m giving you an order. Now, you hold position while my people load you up. I swear to God, I will not let you depart without a full hold.’

The Suppressor threw up his hands and walked back toward the cockpit. Harlequin motioned to the soldiers tending the refugees, who began getting them up and over to the helo.

He returned to Downer, standing beside her while he watched the first refugees load into the helo and take seats on the Chinook’s long benches. The rotors spun back up and blasted them with dust, but the helo stayed grounded.

Harlequin turned back to her cuffs. He sliced through them, Binding his magic to conjure winds that blew back the rotor wash spilling over them.

‘I’m sorry about the cuffs,’ Harlequin said.
Poor kid must be terrified, confused. The Army has kicked her around, detained her. She must not know what to think. ‘
We’ll get you cleaned up, some water. Maybe you can grab a . . .’

The cuffs came away, and Downer pivoted on the balls of her feet, slamming her fist into Harlequin’s jaw. His head snapped to the side, the world spinning, his vision graying.When he found his bearings again, he was lying on the ground, Downer standing over him. She didn’t look terrified, or confused. She looked furious.

‘You want your ass-kicking standing up? Because I’m happy to give it to you lying down.’ She didn’t look young at all. She looked ferocious. She looked beautiful.

Harlequin shook his head.
Poor kid, indeed.
He waved off a soldier who came running to help and slowly got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. ‘Actually, I was hoping you’d save the asskicking for the enemy. I need your help here.’

‘You . . .’ She stuttered over the words. ‘You need. My. Help? Are you fucking serious?’

‘Yes, Sarah. Completely. Utterly.

‘Desperately,’ he finished. Her current spiked, and she hauled it back in, far more disciplined than any of the Novices. He knew better than to use his own magic around her. Downer could turn any magical energy into a sentient elemental bound to her will.

She took a step, and Harlequin raised his hands. ‘Please don’t hit me again.’

‘You deserve worse,’ she spit. ‘Where the hell am I?’

‘New York City,’ Harlequin said. ‘Lower Manhattan specifically. It’s being invaded.’

‘By who?’

‘Remember Scylla?’

‘She’s here? How the hell did she get here?’

‘She’s figured out how to . . . rot through the fabric between the planes. And she’s linked up with the
Gahe
.’

Harlequin felt her anger spike with her magic. ‘I’ve been rotting in a cell for God knows how long! And for what? I did everything you asked me to! I worked for you! I fucking
killed
for you! This is how you pay me back?’

Harlequin couldn’t deny the truth of her words. When Downer had first gone Selfer, he’d been the one who’d taken her down, spiriting her off to FOB Frontier, where her forbidden magic could be put to use in the SOC’s secret Probe Coven. With most Probes, it took some convincing to get them to toe the company line, but Downer’s youth made her impressionable, and her crush on him had been evident from the start.

He looked at the tension in her neck and shoulders. No crush now, that was certain.

A small group of soldiers rallied to him, standing in a wide circle, carbines ready. He waved them back.

They moved back a few more paces, watching warily.

He took a step, readying himself for another punch. ‘Sarah, that wasn’t me. I never wanted that for you.’

‘The fuck you didn’t! You stole my whole life!’

‘That’s bullshit, Sarah. You knew the law. You knew the consequences. Nobody stole your life. You fucking threw it away. If anything, I picked up the pieces and gave you something to work with. You didn’t have to run. You could have turned yourself in.’

‘The fuck I could have! You know what they do to Probes!’

‘Yes, Sarah, and now so do you. Is it really so bad?’

‘Yes,’ she seethed, ‘it is. Living a lie, having your life forfeit to cover up your government’s secrets, that’s really so bad. Being a slave isn’t a whole lot better than being dead.’

She was right, and he knew it. But the system, broken as it was, was still far better than the chaos that was the alternative. He remembered Grace, the bubbling ruin of humanity she’d left behind her as she walked the path to Scylla.

A giant bellowed, as if to accent the point, the refugees huddling together as its howl of rage echoed across the barricade wall.

‘Sarah,’ Harlequin said, ‘it’s a fucked-up system and a fucked-up situation, but it’s all we’ve got. People aren’t frightened for no reason. You were destroying a school. You had to answer for that. You came around, but that doesn’t change the fact that most Selfers out there haven’t.’
Grace hasn’t.
‘The Bloch Incident wasn’t a joke. The Burning Man massacre wasn’t a joke. People died, Sarah.
Lots
of people. That’s what we’re trying to stop. That’s why we’re so scared. Sometimes . . . sometimes, decent people get caught up in that. I don’t like it, but I understand it.’

He pointed at the top of the barricade, where another Fornax Novice flew clumsily, sheeting down lightning over the T-walls. He landed on top of a plastic water buffalo they’d rigged for gravity feed, doubled over, and vomited, shivering from fear. ‘That’s all I’ve got to turn back this tide. I need you.’

Downer was quiet. Harlequin was about to speak again when she finally said, ‘On the flight over here, I heard the crew talking. They don’t like you very much.’

Harlequin nodded. ‘They wouldn’t. While you were locked up, I went . . . a little rogue myself, I guess.’

‘You? You’re the one who always told me to get in the manual. Christ, I believed all that.’

‘It’s still true, Sarah, but even I have my limits. The system’s not perfect, but the ideals behind it are. They’re what I swore to defend. When the system and the ideals are at odds, I know where my allegiance lies.’ His own words echoed back to him. The thought had plagued him since he’d defied his president and saved the FOB.
Who are you? What are you doing?
And here he stood, answering his own question.

Downer didn’t notice. ‘Then why aren’t you in jail?’

Harlequin thought of the irony of his situation and shrugged, amazed at how simple the answer was. ‘There’s more than one system, Sarah. The public’s got a system, too, and theirs covers a lot more people than the government’s does. Our system, in the end, is made to serve theirs. What I did went public, and folks generally approve. I’m sure the president would like to see me right next to you in a cell, but he no longer has a choice.’

Downer’s eyes widened. ‘What did you do?’

‘I’ll tell you all about it. But, first, I need you to make me an army of elementals.’

‘I didn’t agree to help you.’

Harlequin shook his head. ‘There isn’t time, Sarah.’ He pointed to the line of T-walls, the steady stream of rounds coming from the defenders, the amateur bursts of barely controlled magic from the Fornax Novices. ‘It’s getting worse out there every second.’

‘So what if I don’t . . .’ Downer was cut off by a shrieking rumble, the whining of jet turbines streaking overhead. Harlequin turned to see two low-flying aircraft shoot across the sky, gone so quickly he could almost believe he had imagined them if not for the contrails in their wake. An instant later he heard the low-throaty buzz of their 30mm cannons, the resounding echo of exploding glass and concrete.

He used his magic then, heedless of what Downer would do with it, raising himself high enough above the barricade wall to see the chaos the aircraft were unleashing below.

The line of Broadway was a slurry of tattered flesh and chewed concrete, fragments of goblins, giants, and rocs alike sprawling in the smoking wreckage. Here and there, Harlequin could make out other bodies. Civilians caught in the mess. He shuddered, wondering if the SOF teams still moving out there had been forewarned. Sharp, Archer.

A higher, fainter whine echoed above the cloud cover, and tracer fire showered down at a steep angle, sweeping the path the low-flying A-10s had just cleared. Somewhere overhead, one of the huge AC-130 Specter gunships was circling, lining up its massive cannon.

He knew where it was heading.

The A-10s circled back, banked sharply over Battery Park, and headed up toward Wall Street.

Harlequin toggled his commlink. ‘Cormack! Get me through to Gatanas right now! There are civilians down there!’

Cormack’s response was grainy. ‘McGuire radioed in about thirty seconds ago, sir.’
Making sure I had no time to object. ‘
They say the strike zone is clear.’

‘The strike zone is
not
clear, damn it!’

‘They’re going to take out the enemy HQ. They say she’s in there, they’ve got solid intel.’

Harlequin had been in the Army long enough to know exactly what ‘solid intel’ meant. ‘Scylla’s not an idiot! That’s exactly what she wants! Get those airframes waved off!’

There was a pause. ‘I’ll let them know, sir.’

But it was too late. The stutter of the cannons sounded louder, the A-10s and the Specter directing the full fury of their fire at the soaring tower of the Trump Building. The huge structure vibrated, the green sheen of the bronze peak scintillating as it shed the corrosion built over decades. Chunks of concrete exploded from the surface. Flame blossomed across the building as gas jets blew, electrical infrastructure caught fire.

The A-10s banked out of the way of the Specter’s cascade of fire, letting loose their Mavericks, the missiles flashing across the sky so quickly that they left glowing imprints in Harlequin’s vision. The thundering explosion shook the landscape. Harlequin could see every living creature, soldier, goblin, giant, even
Gahe
crouch at the resounding boom. All around Wall Street, there was screaming as masonry collapsed on top of the living, a huge plume of dust arcing skyward.