Rage

FORTY

The Monarch screamed through the night, a class of vehicle made for the rough terrain and speed. Driving with no lights, the engine adequately muffled, Raine could drive to the outskirts of the Capital with just the reflected moonlight to worry about-and the car’s black matte paint minimized that.

And, possibly because this was a route used by the Authority, no bandits appeared along the way to attempt to stop him.

He felt the chemical cocktail in his veins. His fatigue had vanished, though he knew you could only push a body so far. Drugs could mask when you’d reached that tipping point. Mistakes could be made. So as he drove, he reviewed the steps in the plan again and again.

He knew one thing: he didn’t have time to critique it. No. The time for evaluation of the whole plan was past, and he certainly hadn’t been any part of that. The only thing to do now was think on each component. Think of them as separate entities, separate challenges.

Self-contained exercises.

Get to A, take care of B, and then move on to C.

And on and on, until it was completed.

All the while being careful to not fall into the trap of thinking about when it was over. When you might be safe.

So he stayed with reviewing the individual pieces of the plan, keeping them in their separate boxes, never once letting himself attempt to answer the big question…

Will I survive this night?

The night progressed, and then he saw it, straddling the great gorge ahead, leading up to a higher plateau.

A goddamned aircraft carrier.

It was like something a Greek god had dropped from the sky.

The USS Gerald R. Ford was one of the country’s last carriers before the hammer fell. It had been state-of-the-art and named for a President whose biggest accomplishment was holding the country together when the shit hit the fan.

I wonder how much confidence that inspired in the sailors aboard her?

A road led up to the carrier, to where there’d be guards and electronic defenses.

But not the way he would gain entry.

The carrier’s nuclear reactor powered much of the Capital. Whatever insanity brought it here, left its hull battered and dented, had somehow left the reactors working fine.

The Capital might have backups. Generators. Elizabeth didn’t know how many, or how long they would take to kick in. But as best they could figure it, taking the carrier’s power out would bring down their defenses… if only for a short time.

Raine stopped the Monarch.

He had smeared some grease on his face back at the Resistance hideaway. He had on a black jacket, his pack also dark.

From here he’d be on foot. He grabbed his weapons and started moving.

Climbing down, Raine stumbled in the darkness, handholds slipping as rock crumpled.

He’d always hated the mountains. Whether because he was clumsy or just couldn’t get a good read for handholds and places to wedge his feet, he always felt out of his element on a mountain patrol. Here the rock was jagged, with razorlike slivers, slowing his progress even more.

Bad place to make a mistake.

Of course, this made the idea of trying to get in and out before dawn seemingly more impossible.

And was there any guarantee they wouldn’t drag Marshall out before morning? That he’d find an empty cell, the Resistance leader dead before telling the Authority butchers anything?

He forced himself to hurry, even though that made him tear his hands on the rock. Nothing deep-just bloody scrapes-but it still made him realize that his body had taken more abuse over these few days than all the combined tours of duty from the past.

At the bottom, he looked up to see whether any guards monitored the gorge floor.

But all he saw was the incredible flat bottom of the carrier hull.

He started walking to the other side. The drawing he had been shown appeared accurate, though the light was even more scant here, with the ship blocking the moon.

In one drawing the carrier had been lodged on the other side of the gorge at about the two-thirds mark. And there was a place in the hull where they dumped garbage out, whatever leftovers and junk were created by the garrison of Enforcers inside.

And how many Enforcers?

No intel on that.

Could be five. Ten. Twenty. A hundred.

He reached the other end of the gorge floor and started the difficult climb up.

He could see the opening in the hull. Though there didn’t seem to be any nearby rocky perch that would allow him simply to slide in, there was an outcrop close to the opening. He’d have to jump.

Shit.

Yet, he still felt awake, alert. Muscles responding well. He could do this.

He looked at the rock, calculating his move. He could throw the pack in. Might create too much noise, though. Worse, he might even lose it. And he had to remember that even though the hard drive was wrapped up, it was fragile.

No. He’d have to jump with the pack. Making life a little less easier.

He made his way cautiously to the rock, as close to the hull opening as he could get. A ship the size of a city was above him, and he was about sneak into it like a wharf rat.

Raine could now see a bit of the inside.

Dark. He stopped, listened. No talking. All quiet on the good ship Gerald R. Ford.

He edged out on the rock some more, as far as he could without falling off. He crouched.

Eyes locked on the opening.

The smooth metal. No visible handholds within this garbage chute of an opening.

No time like the present, he thought.

He leapt.

His midsection slammed into the floor of the opening, his feet dangling, pointing straight down to the gorge floor below. His palms were flat, hands pressed hard against the smooth metal.

While being careful not to lose any of his precarious purchase, he slid first one hand, then the other, to the side, searching for something to grab. At first he felt nothing, and still dangling, getting into the carrier had turned even harder than it first seemed.

But then he felt an edge. He closed his left hand on it, and now in one great effort worked to pull and kick himself in. Wriggling, he slid into the aircraft carrier.

No alarms, no guards.

Sloppy damn security, he thought.

He started making his way forward to the generator then, and the cable feeds that led into the fortress beyond the carrier.

Raine knew he didn’t have time to move slowly; he had to get through the maze of hallways as fast as he could.

He opened his pack. The muzzle of his M16 stuck out.

Time to take it in his hands.

If he met anyone, he would just have to deal with it fast.

As if on cue, when he turned the corner he walked into a pair of Enforcers, their helmets off, talking.

They didn’t look all that intimidating with their robotic head gear off. But their weapons-they looked powerful.

They both did a double take seeing him.

Guess they don’t get too many visitors down here.

Noise or not, he had no choice. He started firing, and the two Enforcers fell to the ground.

Now he began a steady jog, taking care not to go so fast as to slip into oxygen debt.

As Raine ran, he heard alarms go off. Had cameras picked him up? Were the bodies found? Whatever it was, they knew he was here.

Not something he didn’t expect.

Ahead, four Enforcers started marching in his direction. Two stopped, took aim, and started laying down covering fire while the other two raced ahead.

Damn.

It was always a shitty procedure to field-test a weapon during an operation. In this case, he had no choice.

He reached up for one of the darts and, using the same stance he took with his wingstick, threw it.

It hit one of the front runners, who stopped as if someone applied the brakes. He reached up to his neck. His partner kept coming. Raine crouched down to the side, making himself as small a target as possible, blindly firing his machine gun. While still sending out a spray of bullets, he fingered the mind dart control device, and as soon as his fingers touched it, it must have sent a signal to the nanotrites now flooding the Enforcer’s body.

He could hear more Enforcers arriving, creating a wall of shooters, filling the corridor with smoke and sending bullets flying all around him like a swarm of wasps.

Raine slid his thumb on the controller, and the dart forced the Enforcer to turn around. Another slide, and the puppet moved toward his Authority buddies.

They recognized that something was wrong, and a few began targeting him.

Amazingly-the bullets did nothing.

Or, rather, they didn’t stop him. The guy walked on, and then-in an increased state of agitation-both his hands went to his neck, then to his head, like a human marionette.

He would keep moving on his own; Raine didn’t have to do anything more with him, so he dropped the control device. He took time to aim his rifle at the lone Enforcer still running madly toward him.

Points for bravery… none for strategy.

He riddled the guy with bullets, not knowing where the armor was greatest.

As that guy fell, the Enforcer with the mind dart reached the wall of shooters.

With perfect timing, he exploded, a human bomb of blood and bone-the bone shredded into deadly shrapnel, the nanotrites themselves apparently explosive.

When the pinkish fog cleared, nobody was shooting, nobody was moving. And the way to the cable room, to where the ship’s power fed into the Capital, lay ahead.

“Thanks, Kvasir…”

Raine stood up and resumed his jog.

In the generator room he spotted the massive two-foot-wide cables that carried power from the belly of the ship, out through what had to be a hangar deck opening, and on into the fortress city.

He remembered what Portman had told him about the explosives he carried, the homemade grenades.

“Pull the pin, and toss it. Fifteen seconds. Tops.”

Not much confidence about the devices’ timing from Portman. He would just have to hope the big man knew what he was talking about.

Raine went to where the cables led out-then separated-heading in different directions. He scrambled on top of the giant cables, using them as if they were a bridge leading out to the city’s perimeter.

Would two of the grenades be enough?

He’d probably get only one shot at this.

He looked up. A small device hovered above the area, a red light at the front.

Surveillance.

They know I’m here, and they will know I’m coming.

Let’s hope they think this is just about sabotage.

Raine walked across the cable bridge, joining up with the other end of the road that led across the flight deck of the carrier.

He got two grenades out.

He brought his hands close together so he could pull out both pins at the same time, a tricky, fumbling move.

Not one I’ve done before, he thought.

He pulled the pins, and, without counting, tossed them into the cable room.

One landed in the crack between the two cables, the other rolled to the floor, feet away.

Close enough?

Raine turned and started running. Barely watching where he was going…

The two explosions, within seconds of each other, showed that at least the grenades worked.

He had barely gotten off the ship.

And still running, he risked looking ahead.

The Capital.

A massive structure, like nothing he had seen in the world before. Newly built.

And he also saw that parts of it had turned dark.

Did I do enough damage? Did I buy enough fucking time?

He caught himself. A… to B… to C.

He was on to the next part of the mission.

That one lay ahead.

Inside the Capital.

And that’s all he let himself think about.