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Chapter 73 – Island …Alex managed not to gulp out loud. “Of course I remember you, Hermione. And if you think it’s a Code Red, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Let me see how fast I can get there, and I’ll call you back.”
Hermione said, “All right. I’ll be at this number for another two hours, at least.”
Alex hung up and dialed Jack. “Tera, if this is about why the Teramom is on the warpath …”
“Jack, stop it.” Maybe she sounded really serious, because he stopped. “Hermione Granger just called me. She thinks they have a Terawatt Code Red just off the coast of Ireland.”
Jack said, “Hang on a second and let me get Walter on the line, too.”
Walter’s voice piped up, “Yes, colonel?”
“Walter, how fast can we get Terawatt to Ireland?”
“Umm, let me see … Okay, availability’s good … Maintenance got done on schedule … Okay, with refueling and towing, we can have our Blackbird doing a touch-and-go at Camp Atron in … forty-seven minutes. And we can have her in Ireland three hours after that.”
Jack said, “Then let’s do it. Tera? Forty-seven minutes from now.”
She replied, “Thanks. I owe you one. Another one.”
He insisted, “I’ll count that against the several hundred I owe you.”
She hung up and called Hermione. “Terawatt here. I can be there in four hours.”
“Four hours? Are you going to steal an SR-71?” Hermione joked.
Alex admitted, “Colonel O’Neill is pulling a two-seater Blackbird for me.”
“What!?” Hermione squawked. “I can’t believe … No, come to think of it, I can. Your Colonel O’Neill seems to specialize in either making people want to work with him, or else making people want to punch him in the nose.”
“And there may be a few people who feel both ways at the same time.”
Hermione said, “When can I give you a briefing?”
Alex said, “First, call Colonel O’Neill and give him a destination, so he can arrange the flights. By then, I ought to be on my way to a pick-up point, and when I get there, I’ll call you. Once I’m on the Blackbird, I won’t have comms during the trip.”
Hermione tensely replied, “Fine. I just … I’ll brief you when you call back.”
Alex dived into her gym bag and changed into her Terawatt outfit. Then she made sure the gym bag was ready, just in case: the baggie of undies, the pair of pajamas, the dopp kit, the ‘disguise’ valise from Jack, the change of clothes she’d just dropped off, the stacks of energy bars … Oh, right, she needed the tablet and chargers, along with that converter for European voltages. She bundled that up and shoved that into the gym bag.
She flew downstairs and called out, “Mom? I’ve gotta go.”
Her mom came out of the home office and looked at her. “Oh, honey, you just got back. How are you going to get through school if you’re rushing off every day?”
She clenched her teeth. “Mom, if I don’t rush off ‘every day’, there may not be anything like schools left for people to go to.”
Her mom hugged her and tried not to burst into tears. “Be careful, honey. No … giant spiders this time, okay?”
She made a face. “If I never ever see another spider bigger than a garden spider, it’ll still be too soon.”
She flew into the kitchen and made herself four sandwiches, which she wolfed down with several glasses of milk. Then she grabbed her gym bag, went silvery, and puddled off to the secret exit in the garage.
In under a minute, she was flying up out of the dry creek and up to six or seven hundred feet in the air. She headed for Camp Atron. Once she got to the north-south runway and set herself up at the south end of the runway, about four hundred feet in the air, she glanced at the clock on her phone and called Hermione.
“Hi. It’s Terawatt. I have about twenty-six minutes before my pick-up.”
Hermione said, “Great. Okay, first off, the SIS has a lot of ‘cooperators’. Just regular people we’ve encountered in the past, who are willing to let us know when they see something they think falls into our bailiwick. There’s this young woman who’s dating Dr. David West, one of the top orthopedists in London. She knows about us, because her father is extremely rich and a few years ago, MI-5 had to stop an attempted kidnapping of her family by a South American crime family. So when two men came to Dr. West with a bizarre case, she managed to tag along and phone us with the intel before her father’s helicopter pilot flew her and the doctors to Petrie’s Island. A doctor out on the island has a corpse that has no cuts or anything, but the body has no bones left. And it was a normal, healthy man just hours earlier, when he went out to take a walk and probably hit the local pub. She called it in because she thought it sounded more like an SIS case than a normal medical case. My software immediately flagged it as a possible Code Yellow. I sent it up the line and notified the EU Terawatt liaison as a possible situation.
“Then Jimmy Marlowe came and told me he’d found Petrie’s Island supposedly had a satellite phone, which was out of order, even though it was at a high-tech research facility. A Dr. Phillips, who is supposed to be doing cancer research according to his grants, has a private research lab on the island with maybe half a dozen staff members. We can’t make contact with them, and the cable out to the island appears to be broken. Both of those happening at the same time is ridiculously unlikely, unless it’s deliberate.
“So we investigated the grants for this Dr. Phillips and found that his grant proposals have some suspicious flags, including the ugly fact that most of his ‘published papers’ were never published. Someone should have checked that. The granting agencies were either suborned or hoodwinked. That raised the situation to a Code Orange.”
Alex told her, “Given what we’ve seen in Pennsylvania and Arizona, I’d agree pretty strongly.”
Hermione went on, “MI-5 tasked a team to take a boat over and investigate. They had a sat phone with them, along with heavy weaponry. They called in when they reached the island where it’s closest to the laboratory. They missed their next check-in two hours later, and they haven’t made any check-ins since. That made it a Code Red, and if an amphibious team analogous to your Navy SEALs couldn’t handle whatever this is, I think that makes it a Terawatt situation.”
Alex could hear something else in Hermione’s voice. It sounded like more anxiety than she would have expected. Alex carefully asked, “What is it you’re not telling me?”
Hermione half-sobbed, “They’ve tasked another team. Ron and Harry are on it. They’ll be landing on the island in less than three hours.”
Alex thought about the Ron and Harry she knew from another dimension, and winced a little. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
She still had to cool her heels in mid-air until the SR-71 showed up. And then she had to match speeds to grab onto the canopy and ooze into the cockpit, which took her three tries. Like before, she was too slow the first time. But then she took off too soon the second time and then she couldn’t come back and match speeds, so she needed a third try to land her morph on the canopy and quickly ooze in through the Terawatt port.
She didn’t know if it was just bad luck, or if she let her worry about Hermione get to her, but it meant an extra five minutes or so before the Blackbird could take off for real, and she knew from what Hermione said that she might be cutting it pretty close already. She just stayed silvery and said, “Ireland, please.”
“You got it, Terawatt. Check that the port’s sealed. We’ll be at altitude in no time.”
And it was an awesome view. It was like sitting on the edge of space. The sky was black overhead, and even with the sun fiercely shining down on her, she could make out stars off at the edges of the blackness. They were so high the Earth curved underneath them. They moved so fast she could see the world moving under her. They curved up high into Canada and over Greenland before aiming at the British Isles.
But it was still taking hours. It would be night in Ireland long before she got there.
* * *
Harry Potter didn’t like the situation. It wasn’t his first mission for the SIS, and MI-6 had shared him with the MI-5 guys before. It wasn’t his first assignment where he got the job because someone else had already tried and failed. After all, his whole life had been like that part. And it certainly wasn’t as if this was the first time he had probably been given inadequate or completely wrong intelligence on the mission parameters. Hell, he’d been lied to since he was old enough to understand words. He could still see his aunt and uncle insisting his parents died in a car crash — although it wasn’t their fault that they had no way of knowing what had really happened. What had happened to his parents was still classified.
On the plus side, he had Ron along. Oh, Ron wasn’t perfect, but he was bloody loyal, and he’d risk his own neck if that was what it took to keep you safe. Harry still remembered the insane stunt Ron had survived when they were eleven, and that was just to give Harry a chance to stop the bad guys. Ron was also really good with boats and navigation, so if something happened to their pilot, they weren’t going to be stranded. In Ron’s family, activities like boating and horsemanship weren’t so much typical as they were mandatory. Ron was also a bloody good number four in polo, although his older brother Charlie had been a star number one player and got most of the attention for it.
Besides Ron, and Barry their boat pilot, he had the MI-5 crew. Reg Sanders was ex-SAS, and Harry knew from experience he was tough as nails. Harry hadn’t met Mike and Thom before, but if Reg said they were topnotch, that was good enough for Harry.
Still, an MI-5 crew had landed here less than twenty-four hours ago, and hadn’t made their second check-in. They hadn’t had time to make an emergency sat phone call, either. That usually meant something supremely nasty. Harry had seen the ‘overwhelming enemy forces’ version of that, as well as the ‘deadly traps’ version and the ‘ferocious attack animals’ version. But this was supposed to be a quaint Irish island, not the personal dacha of a high-ranking ex-KGB gunrunner, or the highly-fortified retreat of an Iranian terrorist.
Mike was on point as they moved down the coastline. Their boat had put in about two hundred yards north of their present position, and they were moving stealthily to the position the first boat was supposed to be. They were tasked with first finding out what had happened to Team One, and then finding out what was going on at Phillips Laboratories. Harry rather suspected they would turn out to be the same task. That was the way these things tended to work.
The first team’s boat was a Zodiac. Fast, functional, effective, and incredibly uncomfortable when you were rocketing through freezing waters in the dead of night. It was pulled up on the shoreline with the motor properly raised. Reg signaled Mike to halt his forward progress while Reg and Thom did a recon of the terrain, in case there were fireteams just waiting to put a few rounds through someone looking into the disappearance of Team One.
It took about ten minutes for Reg and Thom to work their way through the rocky terrain and ensure that there weren’t any lurking forces in strong defensive positions. Reg gave Harry and Ron the signal to move up into supporting positions, and then he gave Mike the signal to check the boat.
Mike moved carefully and took a quick peek, pointing his weapon into the boat at the same time in case of a threat.
He was supposed to move back, but he just stood there staring into the boat.
Reg signaled for Mike to move, but he didn’t. Harry moved up to support, and he took a quick look.
He had a sudden urge to vomit. He had seen some pretty hideous sights in his life, starting back when he was eleven, but he had never seen anything like this. It looked like a man who had no bones left in his body. It looked like a rubbery, impossible mass of unsupported flesh. And whatever had done this to the guy had done it so quickly that the man hadn’t had the time to call for help on the sat phone, which was still folded up in its case.
And what was the point of developing a weapon like that? It couldn’t possibly be as fast or as accurate as a bullet. Could it be some sort of chemical warfare weapon? If so, how could it possibly work?
Harry went right to the comms, even though Reg preferred going with hand signals. “Boatman down. Cause unknown. Method unknown. Op mode unknown. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Everyone needs to see this, because this is what the rest of Team One may look like right now.”
After Reg and Thom both looked and cursed like sailors, Ron slipped over and took a look. “Bloody hell.”
Reg muttered, “Should’ve known the pureblood would swear like a girl.”
Harry defended his friend. “Not here and not now, Reg. This is well beyond our tasking. We need to radio in a report right now.”
Mike was carrying the sat phone. He and Ron set it up. Then Reg made the call. “Iron One to Gold. Iron One to Gold. Come in.”
“Gold three here.”
“Iron one. Team Lead is on island. Lead boat in place. Lead five in boat dead, looking like someone walked off with every bone in his body and left the rest completely intact. There’s not a sign of any wound or injury or even any blood, and not a sign that he had the time to take any countermeasures or try to call out. However it was done, they also didn’t put any guard on the boat.”
“Gold three to Iron one. Will notify Gold one. Continue mission. Reset check-in to thirty minutes from … now.”
“Roger that. Iron one, over and out.”
Harry glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes. In thirty minutes, a mission could go from ‘standard op’ to ‘utter disaster’ and back again. And then straight to ‘much worse disaster’. He had seen it happen.
Reg moved them forward, this time with Thom on point.
They worked their way through the rocky shoreline and up onto the thin soils of the flat part of the island. They moved as silently as they could manage through the trees, aiming for the old house that was supposed to be the base for Phillips Laboratories, as well as Dr. Phillips’ home.
“Iron one, iron three. Noise up ahead.”
“Iron three, iron one. What kind of noise?”
“Iron three, dunno. Never heard anything like it in my life.”
“Iron one, proceed with caution.”
Then Harry heard it. The sound was eerie. It wasn’t like any sound a human would make. It was like … It was like a theremin and a synthesizer had a giant baby, and the baby was trying to peel off its rubber panties. All right, he didn’t have a decent description. But if it wasn’t connected to what had happened to the boatman, Harry was going to be very surprised.
Harry moved forward, his silenced submachine gun at the ready. The silencer was over a foot long and it wouldn’t completely silence the weapon, but it was pretty effective. Instead of sounding like someone was emptying a magazine from a machine gun, the sound would be more like standing near a microwave while popcorn popped.
He didn’t know who was there, or what they were using, but he was fully prepared to use the weapons he had. He didn’t like killing, but he was a killer. There was no getting around it. If he hadn’t been so upset about doing it, they probably would have slapped a ‘sociopath’ label on him. After all, his first kill was at age eleven. It was self-defense, and he was trying to stop a madman from doing something drastic, but he was definitely responsible for the death of a teacher. His second kill was at age twelve, trying to save Ron’s little sister from someone even worse. It was little wonder the SIS was angling to place him in the Double Oh series, just like his dad had been.
It was dark as hell out here with no electric lights until they got to Phillips’ lab, but his eyes had adjusted. His eyesight was one of his real advantages, just like his reflexes.
And that was why he spotted it when something like a heavy rope swished through the air at Thom’s neck. The end of it wrapped around Thom’s neck, and he began to scream in agony.
Harry sprinted at his best speed for Thom, before most of the rest of the team had even reacted. He had his Fairbairn out and flashing through the air to cut that rope in half.
His combat knife with its razor-sharp edge hit the ‘rope’ and bounced off. And that was when he saw that it wasn’t a rope. It was some sort of tendril or tentacle, and it was a part of a sickly-colored monstrosity that was like nothing that he’d ever seen or heard of. It looked like a two-hundred pound boulder covered in scaly grayish-green armor that was shaped like a towel draping over the boulder.
He leapt back and pulled his weapon up. He put five rounds into it from less than six feet away. And the slugs did nothing. By then, Thom had stopped screaming, but someone else was screaming just like Thom had a few moments earlier. The thing let go of Thom, who sank to the ground like a boneless pile of mush.
The thing shifted its position slightly and moved toward Harry in a scuttling motion that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
He took a step backward, now fully aware of what had happened to the boatman and all of Team One. It was just what was going to happen to all of Team Two.
There were sounds behind him, too. He jumped back out of the way of that obviously-lethal tentacle, and looked behind him. Reg was down, and one of the things had a tentacle wrapped around his arm. He wasn’t moving anymore. Two other things had cut off Harry’s retreat.
Ron stepped too far forward, until he was within reach of one of Harry’s pursuers. Then Ron emptied a magazine into the thing.
The only effect he got was attracting the thing’s attention. Its tentacle whipped around toward Ron.
Ron leapt backward and retreated a couple of yards before stopping. The thing came after him, as did its partner. Harry had just enough room to skirt the things and rejoin Ron and Mike.
Mike was cursing furiously, but managed to stop swearing long enough to listen as Harry said, “We’ve got to retreat to a safe point where we can call this in. If we can’t find a spot where we’ll be safe for at least three minutes, we move to the shoreline and take the zodiac around to our boat. Maybe, if we’re lucky, your pilot’s still alive, too.”
Ron looked dreadfully affronted at the idea of treating the zodiac’s boatman so casually, but he kept his mouth shut. Harry knew Ron might argue against a plan he didn’t like if they were in private, but he was too loyal to argue with Harry in front of strangers.
They turned and moved back toward the shoreline. They hardly managed to get a hundred feet through the woods when Harry heard that sound again. Only louder. And coming from everywhere in front of them. He’d lost a lot of his night vision from firing at that thing and seeing Ron unload a magazine at the other one. So he announced, “Flare.”
His two remaining teammates scrunched up their eyes, and Harry fired the modified flare pistol he often carried. Sometimes you needed light. Sometimes you needed fire. Sometimes you needed something more. He usually carried a cut-down flare pistol with a special load Hermione had gotten one of the SIS armorers to make: a ‘flare’ that fired what was really a small thermite bomb. He fired the first shot into the air.
The entire forest was suddenly lit up with a viciously-bright white light that slowly drifted downward. Harry almost wished he hadn’t looked, because there was an army of the things spread out before them. Things were coming at them from every direction in front of them, and more things were coming up on their flanks and their rear.
Harry pulled out a second ‘flare’ and peeled off the tab on the front before slapping it into the chamber of the flaregun. Peeling off the tab destroyed the parachute, so it would fire more like a projectile, and then burn through anything it hit. Hermione was dangerously creative. She had been for as long as he’d known her.
Harry fired the thermite charge, and it hit the closest thing dead on. If he had shot any normal creature, even a rhino, with a thermite charge, it would have been screaming in agony by now. The thing just kept coming, making that horrific, unnatural squealing noise.
Ron said, “Grenades.” Harry pulled out one, and Mike pulled out another. “Pins. Release on three, then throw toward the back of the crowd. One, two, three!”
Harry pulled the pin, let the spoon go flying, and hurled the grenade. He saw Ron’s and Mike’s go flying as well. Ron counted off, “Two, three … Drop!”
They dropped flat, covering their ears and squeezing their eyes closed, while opening their mouths. The grenades went off nearly together, sending blasts of metal shards everywhere. Harry kipped up to his feet and checked the damage.
Trees near the blast were damaged. Shrubs near the blast were annihilated. The creatures seemed to be hardly bothered.
The things closed in on their position. Ron told them, “Okay, the group behind us is spread out a lot thinner. I’ll tackle one and you two sprint past me toward the labs. Maybe you can make it to a defensive position.”
Harry gritted his teeth. One of them had to make the sacrifice, or all three of them would be dead in seconds. And even if Ron’s idea worked, that still didn’t mean Harry and Mike would last even five more minutes out here with what seemed like scores of the things.
But Ron had made enough sacrifices. And Ron had a family to go home to, and Hermione, too. Harry knew he wasn’t going to let Ron make this particular sacrifice. Not after seeing and hearing the agony of Thom’s and Reg’s deaths.
He opened his mouth to say so, when a bloody miracle dropped into their laps.
* * *
Alex was still probably flying at around two hundred miles an hour when she saw the flare. Well, she was pretty sure it was a flare. From as high up as she was, she could see pretty much the entire island, so she knew where the town was, because of the lights. But the flare meant trouble, so she headed straight for it.
She had oozed out of the Blackbird at forty thousand feet, which was a little rough on her pilot, but it let him drop her off and still get to the British air force base he was heading for before he ran out of jet fuel, since he hadn’t stopped in New York or Greenland for a refuel, and he hadn’t slowed down for a mid-air refuel either. Then she had flown down toward the island, which would have been just awesomely fun if she wasn’t so worried about Hermione’s friends.
The second flare looked like it went into the ground, which was probably a bad sign. And the loud bangs sounded like someone was setting off explosives. She didn’t know what kind, but she knew it wasn’t a kid with fireworks.
By then she was slowing down and heading for the treeline, and she was getting close enough to see three guys in black camo gear who were surrounded by … Squeaky lumps?
The lumps were closing in on the men, and there were a lot more of them on the east side, so she tried to clear a path for the guys starting on the west side. She hurled a lightning bolt at one of the things and hit it dead on. Then she blasted two more that were close to it.
And the things were still waving those icky-looking tentacle things that reminded her way too much of that really dirty Japanese manga she caught Robyn reading that one time. The one with the schoolgirls in crazy-short skirts and the tentacle-monsters. Ick.
They didn’t even have a burn mark or anything. Great, so they were electricity-proof. The guys had guns and explosives and couldn’t get away, so scratch the whole ‘shoot your way out’ deal. That didn’t leave her with a lot of options.