The Vagabonds (The Code of War Book 4) Read online

  Packrat and Headcase moved to the elevator, leaving the Russian alone to stare at the blade sticking in the dummy’s head.

  “Not a bad throw—” he remarked, tossing one of the blades in his hand, “—but I’m better.” He threw the last knife at the dummy, striking it in the heart, before following after his teammates.

  * * *

  AS HE stared into the dark sky, Lieutenant Alistair ‘Brick’ Reynolds felt a shiver roll up his spine. The autumn night was cool and Brick had neglected to wear a jacket. Still, he felt a pang of excitement at the prospect of what would be arriving soon. After another moment of waiting, the sound of rotor blades echoed over the parade ground of the Cottage compound, nestled just outside of the community of Rosaryville, Maryland. Brick spotted the landing lights of the approaching twin-rotor Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter, making its way toward the Cottage.

  “That’s them!” Brick shouted to the small group of Peacemakers surrounding him, “Let’s get it unloaded as fast as possible. I want everything squared away in the R&D wing within five minutes!”

  The Cottage was located directly south of Joint Base Andrews, upon fifteen acres of land once owned by the Navy. Having fallen into disuse, the large tract was leased to the Army for a negligible sum, before being given to the Peacemakers as a base of operations. Since then, renovations had been performed almost nonstop on the outside compound, as well as the interior bunker system that traveled hundreds of feet into the ground. The central building—where the HQ got its namesake—operated as the command hub of the Peacemaker Unit, with the other surrounding buildings filling in as barracks, R&D, and medical facilities.

  The Chinook descended toward the gravel parade ground, well-lit with track lighting. With a gentle bump, it set down—lurching to a halt.

  Brick had to shout his next words in order to be heard over the thunderous twin rotors. “Alright, get moving!” Krieger, Headcase, Rourke and Packrat rushed toward the helo.

  The bird’s side door slid open, revealing a handsome looking man in his late thirties wearing a black linen casual suit. His dark hair was combed away from his face into a neat wave, complementing his smart look. His eyes were tiny compared to the unusually oblong shape of his face, but even in the artificial light of the landing area, they gleamed with intelligence. The man leapt off the helicopter, looking around the Peacemaker compound. He held a gunmetal Zero Halliburton briefcase handcuffed to his right hand.

  Brick marched up to introduce himself. “Good evening, my name is Lieutenant Alistair Reynolds. Doctor Cairncross, I presume?”

  The man did not respond to Brick. He seemed intrigued at the sight of the compound around him.

  Brick repeated himself. “Sir, are you Doct—”

  “Yes, Leftenant, my name is Doctor Arthur Cairncross. Forgive me if I don’t shake hands!” he gestured to the case cuffed to his appendage. The man spoke with a pronounced British accent, different to the colloquial dialect Brick spoke.

  “Could I get you to accompany me, Doctor? We’ll get that helicopter emptied and—”

  “Yes, of course, Leftenant, lead the way,” Cairncross said, interrupting Brick for the second time. Before he’d walked two feet, the Doctor stopped abruptly. “Oh, my manners!”

  Cairncross moved back to the helicopter, speaking something unintelligible to an unseen person on board. A moment later, another figure stepped to the edge of the aircraft—small and slender, with beautiful almond-round eyes.

  Brick saw Krieger’s face light up.

  “Orchid!” the Russian shouted over the din of the rotor blades.

  Kim ‘Orchid’ Yuanza stepped off the copter. Dressed in her Peacemaker blues, she saluted Brick. “Specialist Yuanza, reporting for duty, Lieutenant.”

  Brick returned the salute. While all members of the Peacemakers retained their ranks from their previous military branches, the title of Specialist was given to personnel lower than Sergeant, to accommodate the many different nationalities the Unit employed. For ease sake, all Peacemakers would be referred to by either their surname or unit Callsign.

  “Good to have you back, Orchid,” Brick replied. He was glad to see the small but powerful Indo-Japanese soldier.

  Off to the side of the aircraft, Cairncross was busy shouting to the Peacemakers as they began emptying the contents of the Chinook. Roughly a dozen hard plastic crates were offloaded and taken toward the R&D building of the Cottage, as per General Walsh’s orders. Cairncross fell in beside Brick, speaking more casually than the Peacemaker lieutenant was prepared for.

  “So, Leftenant, your accent—Bethnal? Whitechapel?”

  “No, ah, Bermondsey actually.”

  “Ah. I’m from Kensington myself. Played some football in Bermondsey in my high school days. How long have you been with this...odd bunch?”

  “A few years now. This way, Doctor.” Brick motioned toward the R&D building—a converted hanger due north of the main Cottage compound.

  “Has your General Walsh been alerted yet that we’ve arrived?”

  “The General’s most likely asleep by now, Doctor. We can brief him on your ‘project’ tomorrow. I’m sure you will want to take a rest before—”

  The doctor tapped the Halliburton, “The General wished to have this delivered to him the moment we landed. Please wake him, there’s a good chap.” Cairncross give Brick polite nod, then rushed over to shout at Headcase, who was struggling with one of the heavier crates. “No no! Don’t drop it! That’s worth more than what you’ll earn in a lifetime!”

  Krieger, who was carrying a case along with Packrat, moved to walk beside Brick. “He is, how do you say, eccentric, nyet?”

  Brick shook his head. “The word you’re looking for, my Russian friend, is wanker.”

  * * *

  RUBBING HIS sore arm, Brigadier General Walsh poured a cup of tea and passed it to his guest.

  “Can’t say I like this new implant, Doctor.”

  Putting away the small jet injector syringe, Cairncross smiled as he accepted the beverage, “Just a precaution from our friends at the CIA, General. You’re rather important to this Unit; a transponder inside your bloodstream is their way of protecting you.”

  They were sitting in General Walsh’s office, located on the ground floor of the Cottage command building. Tastefully decorated, it was the General’s private getaway to deal with the necessities of running an anti-PMC Unit.

  “Transponders,” Walsh groused as he sat across from the Doctor, “They may as well stick a leash up my ass.”

  Cairncross stirred three cubes of sugar into his tea, tested it, then added a fourth. “Well, everyone in the Unit will be getting one within the next week or so. The CIA just wanted you to be the first, General.”

  “Lucky me,” Walsh said before changing the subject, “From what Specialist Yuanza tells me, Doctor, we chose the best man to develop our new suit technology.”

  Cairncross grinned, “Well, it was you that gave me Kim Yuanza for the field tests. I must admit, General, that she’s a genuine article. The things that woman can do—I’ve never seen the like.”

  Walsh poured a cup of tea for himself. “I hope you can show me a demo of the suit before my Unit goes operational. Our budget increase has gummed up our schedule something awful.”

  “Of course General. But I know that’s not why you had me wake you so late in the evening.”

  Walsh set his tea cup down. “Of course. I suppose we should get to it, shouldn’t we?”

  The Halliburton case lay on the General’s desk. Walsh had removed Cairncross’s handcuffs with a simple electronic device from the boys in R&D. The size of a cigarette lighter, the device released the magnetic lock inside the cuffs in two seconds. Cairncross had a red mark on his wrist from having schlepped the case around for over thirty hours.

  Walsh turned the case toward him and opened it.

  Inside, sitting like a forgotten relic, was the computer disc called the Code of War.

  Walsh let out a breat
h as he looked at the object. Only the size of a credit card, the innocuous piece of technology held more power than any weapon in the Peacemaker’s arsenal.

  “So—” Walsh began, sitting back in his chair, “—what did that shiny new Japanese mainframe tell you that the CIA’s best couldn’t?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. I can only tell you, General, that whoever designed this, was a genius on a level far surpassing any known computer engineer on this earth. The technology in this disc, purely and simply, has not been invented yet. As best as I can see, there are something akin to two million separate layers of security to this device. During the two months this disc was in my possession, we managed to perhaps break through one of those layers of encryption. We crashed three mainframes from the malicious software just on that layer alone.”

  Walsh grunted, taking a sip of tea. He wasn’t thirsty, but needed the caffeine, “We could have told you that, Doctor. If there’s nothing to gain here, why did you have my people equip that elaborate setup in the R&D wing? All those mainframes don’t come cheap.”

  The British scientist’s lips parted into a slightly devious smile, “Those are for a new project I have in mind, General. This disc can be of use to us, but it would require some…rather unusual programming. I just need a week of time and a lot of luck. I promise that the rewards could be more than ample.”

  Walsh raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening…”

  OUTSIDE NEAR the perimeter of the eastern section of the Cottage, Peacemaker guardsman Al Reimer walked his nightly patrol. Clutching his Remington ACR assault rifle, he scanned the electrified fence with his night-vision goggles for the umpteenth time that night. Standing ten feet high and slicing straight through the dense forest that separated the civilian town of Rosaryville from the Cottage, the electric fence was the first line of defense for the Peacemaker compound. Any intruders would first have to work their way through the dense forest, where the techs inside the Command building would be instantly alerted to their presence thanks to an interweaving web of motion sensors. After that, if they could somehow climb the fifteen-foot fence and not fry their balls with 10,000 volts of electricity, they would have to contend with an interlinking system of automated guard turrets situated in the trees and on the ground.

  Guardsmen Reimer stifled a yawn and stamped his feet—trying to keep out the chill autumn air. He’d been alternating this shift with other Peacemakers for the past several months and had never seen a soul—if he didn’t count that deer he saw a week ago.

  He checked his watch.

  11:00 PM.

  Another hour and his shift would be up.

  Thank Christ.

  As much as Reimer was glad for the opportunity to serve in a Unit commanded by the legendary soldier Jackson Walsh, he had to admit he’d been underwhelmed with the scope of his duties thus far with the Peacemakers. He only recently transferred from the Army to this team of anti-PMC cowboys and had hoped to see some combat by now.

  Nope.

  Another night, another boring watch. It seemed like all the exciting missions were reserved for those half-dozen founding members of the team.

  Still, Reimer took his job seriously. He was a professional and would perform his job to his utmost ability.

  The earpiece comlink he wore chirped in his ear. “Peacemaker Alpha Two, report status.”

  Reimer pressed a hand to the comlink and was about to answer when a snap behind him caused the Peacemaker to turn in alarm, weapon raised. From behind a tree, a small squirrel rushed across the ground, disappearing into the night. He lowered the gun, grinning to himself.

  You’ve still got it, Reimer thought to himself. That little bastard would have been history any other day.

  The comlink repeated the last command, “Report status Peacemaker—”

  “This is Alpha Two. Reporting no contacts, over.”

  “Copy that Alpha Two. Stay frosty, over.”

  Frosty. Reimer smiled as he breathed in the frigid night air. The boys in the surveillance room had a hell of a sense of humor. He slung his weapon and turned to follow his patrol route—

  —and was face to face with a dark figure running pell-mell toward him.

  Clad head to toe in a night-black suit, eyes covered with a set of red bug-eyed goggles, the figure lunged like a leopard toward Reimer. The Peacemaker didn’t even have time to ready his weapon before the intruder slammed him in the stomach full-tilt with a brutal flying knee. All the air in Reimer’s body belched out from his lungs at once and he collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. He fumbled madly to bring his assault rifle to bear, but his enemy was quicker. A fast chop knocked the weapon into the darkness of the forest. Before the Peacemaker could manage another move against this foe, a stunning strike to his temple dropped him to the ground like a bag of hammers.

  He lay there senseless, but still alive. With no air in his lungs to speak, he could only babble like a sick child.

  Then, he saw the intruder stand over him—man or woman, he couldn’t tell. The enemy reminded him more of a ninja from a comic book, as it wore a pair of Asian style swords on its back. The intruder reached down and plucked the headset from Reimer’s ears and placed it over its black balaclava. That done, the intruder drew a tiny syringe from its belt. Reimer barely had a second to resist before a painful jab in his thigh sent him into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  WITH THE guard on his way to dreamland, thanks to a lovely cocktail of sodium thiopental, the intruder stood up, surveying the area. It had been tricky as all hell to get through the surrounding forest and its sea of motion trackers. The suit the intruder wore contained a special coating that blocked microwave and acoustic fields emitted by tracking devices. Hopefully, it would be possible to reach the compound’s Command building before any alarms could be sounded.

  The intruder dragged the limp body of the sleeping guard out of the open and shoved it against a tree. The man’s head nodded forward, out like a light.

  Then, like a panther in the dark, the intruder bolted across the forest floor, toward the lights of the Peacemaker compound ahead.

  * * *

  “So this new suit…is it like Danny’s or what?” asked Krieger as he let out a yawn.

  It was near quarter after eleven and he was getting tired. In front of him, Orchid was helping the Peacemaker techs open the dozen or so crates set around the R&D facility of the Cottage. Everyone looked tired, but Brick had ordered for the contents of Cairncross’ many crates to be emptied before midnight. Krieger was already looking for a way to slink off and avoid this bit of duty. Brick had taken his leave a few minutes ago to join the General and the stuck-up British doctor. That left the Russian, Rourke and Headcase to help Orchid unload her new toy.

  Orchid pulled forth what looked like an arm gauntlet from one of the crates. “Not quite like Danny’s suit, Krieger. The Whisper armor Doctor Yune designed was merely a prototype, not even meant for field deployment. Doctor Cairncross’s developments in the field of biotechnology and computer engineering allowed him to upgrade many of the original suit’s basic functions. Telemetry, user interface, muscle tensile strength—everything has been improved.”

  Beside the young Japanese Peacemaker, Headcase leaned against a table, watching intently. The young woman was eager to get to know the team she would soon be handling in the field.

  “So this doctor—” Headcase began.

  “Cairncross.” Orchid interrupted.

  “Cairncross,” Headcase corrected herself, “What’s he getting for helping the Peacemakers?”

  Krieger noted a bit of hesitation from Orchid before she answered, “The good doctor has made some…enemies over his career. In Olympus, especially. He is the world’s absolute foremost leader in his field of mechanical engineering. Two months ago, while we were testing the suit in Indonesia, Olympus tried to kidnap him—” The Japanese soldier smiled coldly, “—but they failed. Ever since then, he’s been a bit paranoid that they will try again.
General Walsh made the offer for him to join the Peacemakers as head of R&D. I know you all think he’s a little annoying, and I don’t think this place is big enough for his ego, but trust me—he is a genius.”

  Krieger crossed his beefy arms, “Oh just what we need—another stick-in-ass Brit to make my life miserable.”

  “You make yourself miserable, Krieger,” said Rourke, rummaging through one of the crates.

  “No, other people make myself miserable,” Krieger said, smirking.

  Rourke shook his head, reaching back into the crate. After a few seconds, he pulled forth what resembled a long combat blade. “What the hell is this?”

  Orchid reached over and snatched the weapon from the former SEAL’s hand. “What’s it look like? It’s a sword.”

  Rourke frowned. “Not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s called an Electrolysis blade.” Orchid unsheathed the strange weapon. Everyone moved in for a closer look. As Orchid held the sword, she thumbed a small switch near the hilt of the weapon. A blast of blue energy sparked across the sword, surprising the onlookers, who immediately backed off. The spark vanished, but the sword seemed to audibly hum with power. Orchid’s stern expression changed to one of amusement, “The battery in the hilt charges the weapon with an electric current, forcing a massive bolt of energy into whatever target it hits. A good strike with this is enough to force 30,000 volts of electricity into anyone or anything unlucky to get in its path.”

  Rourke stared at the weapon, dumbfounded, “A bit overkill, don’t you think?”

  Orchid raised an eyebrow. She glanced around the room, her eyes landing on a metal chair beside Headcase. The Japanese warrior thrust the blade out in a forward slash. It carved a magnificent blue arch through the air and sliced directly through the chair, exploding it in a shower of sparks. Everyone in the room jumped.

  Rourke’s eyes were wide now, “God damn!”