Chapter 57: Chapter fifty-six

Present day

 

Dusk looked through the scope of a perfectly crafted sniper rifle for the first time in years and a small shudder of relief went through her. She hadn’t realized just how much she missed it.

She had missed the feel of the stock in her hands. Oliver had done a remarkable job of recreating her signature gun and she wondered how much he had spent on the weapon.

She had missed the feel of the ground under her belly. She lay atop a rocky outcropping almost two miles from the Program’s facility on the outskirts of Bryce Canyon National Park, watching Oblivion stalk through the shadows as night fell.

She had missed the smell of a gun when it’s been freshly cleaned and oiled. It added a tang to the air and overlaid the scent of pine trees and limestone all around her and the slight tinge of ozone from the lightning storm brewing overhead.

But most of all, she had missed the shooting. Her trigger-finger almost ached to take the first shot, but she had to wait for Oblivion to get into position. Some people might think it was unhealthy or somehow inappropriate to love shooting as much as Dusk did, though no one would dare say so to her face. But, to Dusk’s mind, it was normal to love things one is good at and, whatever else could be said of Dusk, it must be said that she was a very good shot.

Beside her, Liz was looking at an anemometer and rattling off any changes to wind speed and direction. Dusk didn’t need this, as she had long ago learned to estimate and calculate the effects of wind in her head, but it gave Liz something to do and kept her mind off the danger she was putting herself in. It was a small kindness, but it cost Dusk nothing to offer it.

Through her scope, Dusk could see Oblivion, now just less than a mile away. He was creeping towards the Program’s facility, a building not much larger than a house that they had decided must be just the top of an underground base. Being underground made sense as it made it easier to hide and harder to bomb.

When Oblivion was about a mile away from the building, he raised one hand in a signal to begin the attack, then he took off at a sprint. Based on his pace, Dusk had about four minutes to blind the cameras and take out any guards that might raise an alarm.

More than enough.

She turned her scope to the building and watched as guards patrolled the exterior. There were four in total, along with two cameras visible from where Dusk lay. She had no visual on the inside, as the walls were concrete and windowless, so Oblivion would have to take care of whatever lay inside on his own.

Dusk waited, controlling her breathing. If the guards stuck to their pattern, they should rotate around the building at any moment. They swapped positions every ten minutes for reasons that probably made a lot of sense in the mind of whoever had organized security, but which also meant she would be able to shoot all four without going to the other side of the building.

Sure enough, the two guards in front started moving clockwise around the building. Dusk lay there quietly, watching. Waiting for her moment.

One guard stepped in front of another and Dusk took her shot. The bullet whizzed through the night and both guards collapsed, their spinal columns severed.

Dusk took out the camera’s next, now that there was no one to hear them break. They would have caught the two guards dying, as there was no way Smythe would leave blind spots in his security, but there was nothing to be done about that. It wasn’t as if the feeds going dead wouldn’t alert them anyway. They couldn’t keep their enemy from knowing they were there, but they could deny them some information, so they did.

The next team of guards came around the corner from the other side of the building and one of them seemed to notice something was wrong. She was well trained and went for her radio immediately, but she still wasn’t nearly fast enough and Dusk’s next bullet caught her in the head. Her partner wasn’t as well trained and he spent his last moments gawking at his dead colleague before a bullet took him too.

“That’s all of them,” Dusk reported. “Time to go.”

She was on her feet and slinging her rifle over her shoulder before her words seemed to have registered with Liz, who scrambled to catch up. Dusk pulled back the camouflage cloth they had draped over a stolen jeep and got in the driver’s seat.

“Seatbelt,” she said as Liz got in the passenger side. She started the vehicle and slammed her foot on the gas.

 

 

Oblivion reached the building to find the outer guards dead and the cameras down. The security door was heavy-duty and the lock on it was bound to be nigh uncrackable. Not only that, but there would already a team of guards pointing their weapons at that very door.

Oblivion didn’t use the door.

Instead, he set a series of high-powered shaped charges on one of the walls, walked around the corner, and blew it in like it was made of Styrofoam instead of reinforced concrete.

He darted through the hole he had made to find no less than nine guards waiting for him. Most of them were stunned and/or bleeding from shrapnel, but one was still on his feet and swung his gun towards Oblivion.

Oblivion could tell by the gun he was using that he wouldn’t have anything like the calibre ammo it would take to pierce his suit, so he let the guard get a shot off. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the suit and the guard just had time to realize the danger he was in before Oblivion snapped his neck.

473.

Oblivion ensured that none of them would be trying anything any time soon. He couldn’t leave them mobile if Liz was going to be coming through, but he’d prefer not to kill them once they were down. He settled for the compromise of shooting out all of their kneecaps, which he decided was as merciful as he could afford to be when dealing with the Program.

With the guards taken care of, Oblivion turned his attention to a hatch in the floor that almost certainly led down to the facility proper. He could blow that too, he had brought enough explosives. But, depending on how Smythe had built the place, that might trigger a collapse of the top level of the facility without affecting the lower levels. He had no idea how far down the Program had built, or whether they had included dummy floors designed to collapse under bombing. He didn’t fancy the idea of trying to dig his way through rubble to get to the important parts far below.

Instead, he pulled the most important-looking of the guards over and asked him nicely for the combination.

A minute later, he had the hatch unlocked.

It swung open to reveal a M134 minigun pointing straight at him.

 

 

Liz could see why Dusk had told her to wear a seatbelt. The terrain was rocky and uneven and Dusk was flooring it like she was on a racetrack. They seemed to almost fly over the ground, bumping and jolting and sometimes leaving it altogether when Dusk hit an outcropping at high speed. Liz knew, or at least believed, that Dusk knew what she was doing, but it didn’t make the experience of being a passenger on such a ride any less terrifying. It felt like Dusk wanted to get to that base as fast as possible, and she wasn’t going to let little things like the conditions, or the laws of physics for that matter, slow her down.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Dusk seemed to be staring off after the thunder. It was hard to tell with the mask on, but from the tilt of her head, that’s what it looked like. Liz wondered whether she shouldn’t be focussed more on the insane driving she was doing.

The brakes screeched and dirt flew as Dusk brought the jeep to a stop.

“You’ve gotta go on foot from here,” Dusk said. “Get to the facility. Listen to Oblivion. Don’t die.”

Liz blinked at her. “You’re not coming?”

Dusk reached over and opened Liz’s door. “Go now!”

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Liz fumbled her seatbelt off and got out of the jeep, which immediately sped off. She started jogging the rest of the way to the building, wondering what all that was about.

There was a flash of lightning and Liz turned to see the sky before her lit up and the threat Dusk, with whatever night-vision tech was built into her mask, had seen first. There, like giant birds in the distance, three shapes were flying towards them.

Drones.

 

 

Dusk raced across the rocky, scrubby terrain with three UAV’s on her tail. She drove one-handed, using the other to reload her weapon with speciality ammo.

For about a minute, all three drones stayed locked on her, the jeep being by far the most visible target, but then one of them peeled off, heading towards where Dusk had dropped off Liz.

Dusk slammed on the breaks and wrenched the wheel, bringing the vehicle to a stop with the driver’s side window facing the drone.

She sighted down her rifle, calculating the drone’s speed and trajectory as well as the wind speed and altitude.

She breathed in, breathed out, and fired.

High above, the explosive round connected and the drone flew apart in a hail of parts.

But the shot had taken too long. The other two drones were closing in on her now. And they were coming from different directions. If she took the time to shoot one of them down, the other would have a chance to fire on her. Whatever these drones were armed with, Dusk was sure her suit wasn’t built to withstand it, so she needed to stop them getting a bead on her in the first place.

Dusk took off in the jeep again, driving perpendicular to the approach of the drones and forcing them to adjust. She could only keep an eye on the drone to her left as she drove, but they were executing a pincer manoeuvre, so she had to trust that they were accelerating at roughly the same speed. She found what she needed in the form of a large rock and steered towards it at the best speed she could manage. She reached it before the drones reached her and she was afforded a moment of privacy as she passed behind the rock. While the drone-pilots’ vision was obscured, Dusk opened the jeep door and hurled herself out of the vehicle.

She hit the ground hard, but her suit was well-reinforced and her form was perfect and she managed to turn the fall into a roll, coming up to her feet and searching for the drone that had been on her right.

It was closer than she had expected, but it was still heading for the jeep. Whoever was flying the thing hadn’t seen her escape.

Moments later the drone released what could have only been a hellfire missile, reducing the jeep to shrapnel while Dusk took cover behind the rock.

With the jeep destroyed, the drones turned off back towards the Program’s facility. Dusk had led them a few miles away, but that meant little when they could fly at over seventy miles an hour. Dusk hadn’t bought enough time to be sure Oblivion and Liz would be in the facility proper and out of the reach of the drones’ missiles.

But, then again, she didn’t need to. She just needed to buy herself enough time to shoot them down.

And that’s exactly what she did, taking two perfect shots and dropping the drones from the air with explosive shells.

With that done, she stood up and slung her weapon over her shoulder. It was time to get back to Oblivion and finish this once and for all.

But, before she did, and because she was a professional, she checked the sky in all directions, just in case one drone was late to the party. But it wasn’t so much that any drones were late, as that the first three had been early, and Dusk’s night-vision now revealed six more UAVs flying towards her from three different directions.

Well, that ruled out getting to the facility any time soon, as six drones was more than enough to hold even Dusk’s attention. Oblivion and Liz would just have to manage on their own for the time being, as Dusk would be too busy trying not to get killed.

“Brilliant,” she said, unslinging her weapon. “Just brilliant.”

 

 

The minigun opened fire, but Oblivion was already moving. Bullets ripped up through the floor as the minigun pivoted, tearing into the walls and ceiling and chewing through concrete. Oblivion’s suit wouldn’t stand up to that, and he wasn’t faster than a bullet. But, then again, he didn’t have to be. He just had to be faster than the person pointing the gun, and that wasn’t very difficult.

Oblivion darted across the room, slipping away from the stream of death pouring from the minigun. It was remote operated, which meant he couldn’t just kill the shooter, and it was recessed far enough below that he couldn’t get a clear shot at it anyway. It was a clever trap.

But not clever enough.

Oblivion ran across the room with a torrent of metal following him. One of the guards, still crippled on the floor, was in the way and bullets tore through his body, shredding him instantly. But Oblivion stayed a step ahead, kicked off the wall, leapt to one side, and ran back across the area the minigun had already fired on. The gun turned, but it was too late; Oblivion saw what he was looking for.

A hole, made by the bullets of the minigun coming up through the floor, that gave him a clear view of the automated weapon below.

Oblivion pointed the pistol he had taken from the guard and fired as he moved, once, twice, three times, adjusting the angle of the shots to compensate for his movement.

Over the roar of the minigun, Oblivion could just hear the sound of metal striking metal. Then that roar died down to a whine as the weapon tried to function with bullets in places they weren’t meant to go.

Oblivion took the opportunity to slip through the hatch and destroy the minigun by hand, not wanting to leave even a broken weapon in the hands of his opponents.

Liz came through the hole in the wall, surveyed the destruction within and opened her mouth as if to say something, though no words came.

“This is part of why we wear masks,” Oblivion said. “It makes it less obvious when we can’t think of something to say.”

Liz let out a weak laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Are you ready for the dangerous part?”

Liz gestured around her at the rubble, the wounded guards, and the bullet holes in the floor, walls, and ceiling. “This isn’t the dangerous part?”

Oblivion shook his head. “This was just the warm-up. The real danger is down there.”

Liz swallowed. “Okay, let’s do it.”

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