Brett Battles: Exit 9

I.D. MINUS 41 DAYS

“This just came in.”

Matt Hamilton took the piece of paper from the communications specialist and looked at the message.

MO KO EB PT TI HU JN RN MU ER UG YS UC ZR JZ CZ CN EN TS LV NA HS CG GU HC DV DO MO JN OB HN GU PH OM UI BC WF CU OF SR HP OV JG GJ TL OK YS XT KV XD ML CA

“Have you decoded it?” he asked.

An uneasy nod.

“What?”

“It’s from Heron.”

Heron. Their deepest mole, tasked with only one job so as to preserve his cover. A fail-safe.

A second sheet of paper containing the translation was held out.

It’s a go. Sometime in the next seven weeks. Project Eden calls it Implementation Day.

Best location BB n of sixty-six. Sci fac.

The paper slipped from Matt’s hands and fell to the floor. “Dear God.”

I.D. MINUS 27 DAYS

The cold was unrelenting, its fierce bite intensified by the wind that sliced across the ice and snow. How anyone could ever choose to live above the Arctic Circle, Sawyer would never understand. Sure, the work done in most of the research stations that had been built this far north was important, but damn, the weather was brutal.

Of course, it didn’t help that he and Napoli were not ensconced inside a building, sucking down hot coffee, and being warmed by heated air. Instead, they were lying prone on top of a ridge, under the near constant night sky of the approaching Arctic winter, as they observed the Brule Institute Outpost.

This was the fourth instillation they’d checked in the last eleven days-one in northern Greenland, and the other two on individual islands in a winding line stretching into Canada. Their current location was Yanok Island, an otherwise uninhabited piece of rock roughly five miles in diameter.

Sawyer and Napoli had been there for twenty-two hours, arriving on a modified, cold-weather fishing boat. They had anchored in a cliff-ringed bay on the side of the island opposite the station. They climbed to the top with the help of an old land slide, and not too far from there they had found a cutout in a small hill-not quite a cave, more an overhang that had kept most of the ground underneath clear from snow. Using tarps and some other gear they’d brought along, they walled it off, and created a heated shelter, complete with two cots, a hot plate, and a two-way, encrypted radio.

So far, the only report they’d sent in was similar to the ones they’d been transmitting since their assignment began: No sign of unusual activity.

“Number seven just came outside,” Napoli said, looking through their tripod-mounted, night-vision binoculars. Over the course of their observations, they had given a number to each person from the outpost they’d seen, identifying them by some unique aspect of their gear-patches, color, type of boots.

Sawyer lifted his head a fraction of an inch as if he could see the man as easily as Napoli had, but at this distance in the darkness he had a hard time even identifying the main door.

Napoli moved the binoculars. “He’s heading up to the Gazebo.”

Like the numbers they’d given the people, they’d developed a shorthand to describe the facility. The Gazebo was a circular outbuilding, considerably smaller than the main structure. According to the specs they’d been given prior to arriving on the island, it served as the station’s warehouse.

Within the same group of papers was a description of the outpost’s purpose. The Brule Institute was a scientific research organization loosely associated with the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Their goal here was the same as those of most of the other places Sawyer and Napoli had checked-monitoring the effects of global warming on the arctic ice pack.

Napoli leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “He’s inside now.”

“You want me to take over for a while?” Sawyer asked.

“No. I’m still good.” Napoli looked back through the binoculars. “Could use one of those energy bars, though. As long as it’s not frozen solid.”

“I’m only here to serve you,” Sawyer said.

“Well, you’re doing a lousy job.”

With a sneer that couldn’t be seen under his mask, Sawyer crawled over to the pack to his left to grab a bar for his partner. As he opened the bag, he heard a thud. He looked back. Napoli and the binoculars were both lying in the snow.

“Nap?” he asked.

When there was no response, he moved back over.

“Hey, what have you been doing? Drinking on the job?”

Napoli was a bit of a clown sometimes, and Sawyer figured his friend was making a joke about the monotony of their assignment.

“Ha, ha. Funny,” he said, and pushed Napoli in the shoulder.

His friend’s head rolled to the side, and Sawyer saw the bullet hole just above Napoli’s left eye.

Immediately, he grabbed his gun, rolled to the left, then did a rapid, three-sixty scan of the area. About thirty yards away, two shadowy figures were running up the slope, the nearest pointing a rifle at Sawyer.

“On your feet! Hands in the air!” the man commanded.

Sawyer’s gun was in his hand by his hip. He made a slight adjustment to the barrel and pulled the trigger, knowing the bullet would find its mark. Without waiting for confirmation, he switched his aim to the farther man, and shot again. This one was trickier, the distance and angle both having to be compensated for, but he’d trained for moments like this. It was why he had been selected. Survival of at least one of his team was paramount to their mission.

Even as the nearer man was falling to the snow, the second bullet ripped through the side of his friend’s head.

Staying low, Sawyer checked the area again, his gun tracking with his gaze. He detected no movement. He grunted to his feet, grabbed the pack, and looked back at his friend one more time, knowing he’d have to leave him there. “Sorry, Nap.”

He hurried across the ice and snow to a shallow valley a quarter of a mile away. Parked there out of sight was the specially outfitted motorcycle he and Napoli had ridden across the island on.

He swung his leg over the seat, started it up, and took off along the same path in the snow they’d created on previous trips.

Though they observed no vehicles at the outpost, he knew there had to be some. Snowmobiles, most likely, perhaps even a larger snowcat that could carry more than a couple people. Whatever they had, he was certain they would be coming after him.

There was no question in his mind who these people were. This was not some academic research station, or even a disguised military facility. If it were either of those, Napoli would have still been alive. No, this was something else entirely. This was what he and Napoli had been sent to find.

He now had one job, and one job only. A job he must fulfill: get back to the radio and let the others know.

He weaved through several hills, then up onto a wide, flat section that he knew ran for about a mile. Unlike earlier, though, when he reached it, he found himself in a dense cloud that hung tightly to the ground. If it weren’t for their earlier tracks, he would have had to stop and wait until visibility increased. As it was, his eyes strained to keep the tracks in sight.

At the end of the plain, the road dipped down again, below cloud level. Immediately, he increased his speed, the snow flying up from under his metal-spiked tires and filling the air behind him. Their camp wasn’t far now, just a few more minutes at most. The question running through his mind was: should he just grab the radio and make for the boat? Or should he report in first, then get off the island?