The Ghost Ships of Arizona

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hayden, Dahl and Kinimaka headed for Silicon Valley at a rapid rate of knots. Weapons were prepped on the way, teams armed. If the last assault was anything to go by, the one on Silicon Valley would be huge.

Even then, they couldn’t have guessed how huge.

Hayden leapt down from the still hovering chopper, taking care to step away from Kinimaka’s landing spot. They had put down at the side of the road — a two-way carriageway now crammed full of cop cars and black vans. Sunshine beat down hard at the asphalt, but even that had a hard time outshining the array of flashing lights. Hayden quickly sought out the man in charge.

“Hayden Jaye.” She shook hands with a tall, spare man wearing a flak jacket, her words almost torn away in the tumult.

“Jack. Jack Crews.”

“What do we have, Crews?”

After taking an extended look at her badge and then Kinimaka’s bulk and Dahl’s obvious European features he made the clear decision to cooperate. “Large group of mercenaries have stormed the Silicon Valley electrical facility. We’ve taken the area where they discarded their vehicles, without much incident to be honest. It’s almost as if they broke in without expecting to get out.”

Hayden scanned the skies. “Unless they have options on the way. Do you have an estimate as to their numbers?”

“At least forty. Possibly as many as seventy.”

Hayden turned to Dahl. “Thoughts?”

“These guys will have to wait.” The Swede motioned at the milling throng of authorities. “Doesn’t mean we have to.”

Hayden nodded.

Crews frowned. “Wait. What?”

“Worry not, my man.” Dahl grinned. “The less you know the better.”

“What the hell does that mean? And there’s no way I’m letting a Brit take the lead on this. What the hell is SPEAR anyway?”

Hayden made a show of blinking at all the questions as both Kinimaka and Dahl made a last check. Finally, Dahl addressed the agent.

“I’m not British, or English. Or even Australian. The best thing you could do is accept what’s about to happen. Oh, and look the other way.”

Hayden tapped his shoulder and they were away. Clumps of trees sat adjacent to the high metal fence that circuited the facility, offering a welcome area of cover. As they ducked under the overhanging boughs, Kinimaka took out a small pair of heavy duty clippers and set about the fence. A notorious fact was that security was mostly for display at electrical facilities around the US and the world, despite the numerous sniper and other armed attacks of recent years. Power companies, Hayden thought, clearly don’t make enough of a profit to afford better security for their staff and customers. Of course they didn’t.

Kinimaka clipped a hole and the three crouched down together to survey the interior. Similar to the San Jose plant, a large open-plan area was home to many electrical stations, transformers and pylons, with an office building sitting at the far side. Unlike the other plant this one was extensive and its machinery immense.

“This is a major facility,” Hayden said. “And if the mercs are following the same orders as San Jose they’ll have headed right for the control room.”

“So what do we do?” Kinimaka rumbled.

“Fifty mercs between us and them.” Dahl took an estimate. “What are we waiting for?”

He set off first, pushing through the gap with Hayden a step behind. Kinimaka grunted. “It’d be easier with a full team.”

Hayden agreed but said nothing. Not only was the separation of their family group personally incapacitating it made every operation that much more dangerous. Crucial decisions were made differently; outcomes changed. Dahl ran ahead of her, staying low and stopping behind a bank of machinery. Two more swift runs and they were within distance of the entrance doors. Hayden glanced back at the perimeter and the gaggle of cop cars parked there. Quickly, she radioed Crews.

“Any contact with the inside?”

“Yeah, one guy has a cellphone. He says most of the mercs are armed to the teeth, not afraid to use force and massing close to the central office. I’d say look out for guards though. All the civilians have been herded and barred inside their locker room.”

Hayden turned the radio off, relaying the news to her companions.

“No exfil?” Dahl asked.

“Not yet.”

“This feels like a last gasp scenario,” Dahl said about the last few days, sitting back on his haunches for a moment. “An entity throwing everything they have at something just to see how it turns out, maybe get a result.”

“Or that they just don’t care anymore.”

Dahl sighed. “There is that, too.”

Hayden reached the entrance without incident and glanced inside, surprised at the lack of guards. Her brain screamed at her to be careful, that this wasn’t right, but one quick flick of her eyes around the inside explained why.

“It’s laid out differently,” she said. “Pretty much one vast room full of machinery and it looks like they have guards perched on the gantries above, watching over. There’s no easy way in, guys.”

Dahl cursed. “Then we take the hard way. The civilians are safe inside the locker room. Let’s take this facility back.”

With that, the Swede flung open the door and charted the interior with nothing more than a quick glance. Raising his weapon he slipped inside, then flung grenades in two directions at once. Shots rang out. Dahl returned fire, racing fast around the inside perimeter of the open shell. Hayden tried to keep up, with Kinimaka at her back.

Explosions shook the structure. Twin gouts of flame rocketed toward the ceiling. One of the gantries shook as its foundation wobbled. Two snipers, clinging to its side, fell as the entire scaffold collapsed. Another metal stanchion rocked from the impact of the second explosion. A gunman fired at them even as his footing slipped, the shot striking a spot twenty feet above their heads. Dahl raced down the center of the vast room and tucked in underneath the central support beam. Mercenaries stationed above tried to lock him into their sights. Hayden and Kinimaka fell to one knee.

Firing, they picked two more guards off. Dahl hurled another grenade, this one exploding immediately as it struck another support beam. More gantries leaned and tipped. Cries of alarm went up. Hayden saw a knot of mercs squeezing through a far door that led to the building’s main office block.

She fired off three sharp shots, hoping to keep them pinned down. Kinimaka ran to shelter, then covered her as she ran to his side. Dahl held a grenade in each hand with his gun slung over his shoulder. To their left another gantry tumbled, the metalwork shearing down and crashing to the floor in a deadly splatter. A merc who survived the fall turned his weapon upon them.

Dahl dived away as Hayden picked the man off. As he rolled he threw one of the grenades toward the advancing force, then rolled back. The subsequent explosions shook foundations and rafters, and made the mercs dive for cover. Kinimaka stared upward, seeing the entire inner metal framework wobble.

“Umm… shit.”

Dahl wasn’t done, not by a long shot. Terror? He’d give these fuckers terror all right. Some were bought and paid and gave a fuck about the money, others did it for the depraved thrill. Then there were those who did it to make a difference… but none did it better than Torsten Dahl. Diving headlong beneath the array of gantries with bullets peppering the ground just inches from his every extremity, he rolled and hurled one last grenade. The bouncing bomb came up against another support member and instantly exploded.

The entire structure came down.

Dahl scrambled away. Kinimaka took hold of Hayden and flung her to a corner. A mercenary plummeted first, smashing hard into the ground beside Kinimaka’s feet, splattering his trousers with blood. The Hawaiian turned away, eyes fixed on Dahl and the far office.

The Swede was already up, dodging collapsing rafters and falling gantries. One metal walkway tumbled, end first, its spear-like edge impaling a merc who was lying injured. A metal box hit the floor and exploded, shards and sparks bursting like the Fourth of July. Dahl ducked and darted among it all, brushing sparks off a shoulder here, extracting a metal splinter there, and concentrated on the office with its emerging military force. The grenade he’d thrown earlier had sent them into disarray and they were even now still trying to reassemble.

Around the side of the building came Hayden and Kinimaka. A piece of framework swung against the wall behind them, shattering the plaster and block work. Kinimaka dealt with an errant merc, assessing that the injured man was mostly faking it and finishing the job Dahl had started.

The three soldiers came at the force of mercenaries hard, and from different directions. Dahl’s new MPX was on full-auto, his patience well and truly worn. Still firing he waded among the enemy, forcing Hayden and Kinimaka to switch to their Glocks for more accurate shots. Dahl fired with one hand and punched with the other. A man rebounded off his solid arm, nose bloody. Another fell underfoot and received a face full of Swedish boot. Reacting far faster than any of his opponents, the Swede cut a swathe through them.

On the other side he paused, sending a fast glance into the office itself. Men wearing backpacks and sidearms were bending over computer consoles, tapping away, and even as Dahl watched they straightened and signaled that they were done.

“I really don’t think so.”

At that moment a blow staggered him, making his ears ring. Dahl turned to see a fleshy mountain at his side, slobbering and sweating profusely with the effort of wearing weapons and body armor. The stench of body odor was almost as deadly as a lead projectile.

Dahl smashed the barrel of his gun across the man’s nose, drawing blood, breaking cartilage, but gaining only a slack grin for his effort. His opponent’s arms opened wide, hoping for a hug. Dahl jammed the business end of his rifle into the enormous belly and fired, seeing no other way out. Even then the beast barely flinched, lumbering on. It was only when Dahl squeezed off the fourth shot that he started to falter.

Dahl skipped aside. Jelly-man descended to the floor with a flop and a crash that put the gantry collapse to shame.

But the distraction had allowed the office mercs to exit and start moving toward the back of the vast room. For once, the rest of their team acted in unison and shielded their retreat. Hayden and Kinimaka ducked behind fallen machinery, suddenly under heavier fire, and Dahl barely made it to the open office door before bullets started rattling around his heels. Hayden saw him duck inside even as the glass all around him shattered.

“Only friggin’ thing these guys’re good at is laying down covering fire,” Kinimaka growled.

“But how are they planning to escape?” Hayden said.

“They’re not,” Dahl’s voice came over the comms. “At least not all of them. It’s much easier for one or two men to escape whilst the main force remains.”

“But why would they even consider that? I mean, jail?”

“Far as we know they haven’t killed anyone. Ten years or less and they’ll be out and millions of dollars richer, I bet.”

“You’re saying the payoff is worth the stretch?”

“Most career criminals consider those odds first.”

Hayden flinched as a burst of gunfire rattled all around her. Dahl was keeping an eye on the mercs from inside the office.

“Some are leaving by the fire exit at the back. Radio it in.”

Hayden thumbed the mic, changing channel and informed Crews.

Kinimaka thrust his gun out blindly and let loose a salvo. Grunts attested to the foolishness of the mercenaries yet again, having grown complacent in the last few minutes. Hayden saw the facility’s locker room door crack open and waved furiously at the emerging man to get back inside.

“They’ve taken big losses,” Dahl said. “But they still won. That’s the second grid facility they have infiltrated. Hayden, America is under attack. We’re at war.”

Hayden stayed low, nodding to herself as she came to a similar conclusion. “I have to call Robert Price.” She fished out another cellphone.

Kinimaka stared. “Is it even worth it? The new Secretary of Defense hasn’t exactly been a constant ally so far.”

“I have to, Mano. It’s protocol. And he hasn’t hindered us either.”

The Secretary answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

Hayden explained the situation as succinctly as she could, ignoring the occasional volley of gunfire designed to keep her pinned down. “It’s a major attack, sir. The grid is under increasing danger. Z-boxes are in play. We need military help.”

As Price asked questions she couldn’t help but flick her mind back to when the traitor General Stone had practically accused Price of being in bed with the enemy. A while back now, and nothing further had happened, but Hayden would never forget it. Price ended up stating he would “come back to her”.

Jonathan Gates would have taken her at her word.

“I’ll be here, sir,” she said, signing off a little sarcastically because she knew he couldn’t possibly understand the irony. Kinimaka fired blindly again and Dahl discharged several rounds from the office.

The mercs were all clustered around the fire exit door. As Hayden chanced a look she realized most of them had now vanished.

“They’re aiding somebody’s escape,” she said, moving fast and firing hard. “Come on!”

But Dahl’s frustrated voice put it all into perspective. “They’ve already gone.”