Incursion

Chapter 9: Signal

Shadow Team left Haven shortly after 1800. This time I got into the passenger seat of a truck, beside Goliath. Angel and Archer took a second truck. We stuck together until we got to the interchange between 22x while Goliath and I turned and headed north via Stoney.

Much like Archer and Goliath’s luck during their recon operation of Peter Lougheed Centre, mine and Goliath’s luck didn’t hold long; we encountered a US Army checkpoint at the interchange between Stoney and Glenmore Trails. Goliath parked our truck by the east guardrail and shut off the engine.

“Aaaaaaannddd more walking,” he sighed melodramatically, glancing at me in exasperation. “You sure do give me the hardest jobs.”

I lifted my assault rifle from the floor of the front passenger seat, staring out the windshield of our truck at the floodlights covering the interchange about half a kilometre ahead of us.

“How many checkpoints like these did you see last time?” I asked him, ignoring the gripe.

“Along Stoney, you mean? There’s that one at Glenmore, and one in 16th.”

At least two checkpoints to bypass. This time though, he and I weren’t taking 16th Avenue off Stoney Trail, instead heading north further and taking the next interchange between Stoney and McKnight Boulevard, where we planned to exit the highway. The temperature outside was around five below with some added windchill, which wasn’t as cold as the last time, but it was going to be a lengthy walk regardless.

I opened the passenger side door and stepped out of the vehicle. The mildly cold evening air caressed my face gently as soon as I put my boots on the snow covered asphalt.

Goliath followed suit, carrying his own assault rifle. We retrieved our backpacks from the back seat, checked ourselves for gear and ammo, and hopped the east guardrail to take the scenic route in the fields where we’d be able to keep away from the checkpoint and stay hidden. By sticking to the brush and giving the Glenmore-Stoney interchange a wide berth, we were able to slip past without attracting attention.

Goliath and I kept moving north alongside Stoney Trail, passing Peigan-Stoney and eventually reaching 17th Avenue-Stoney, where the East Hills Strip Mall stood to the east of the interchange. I called for a break when we reached the mall, and the two of us temporarily took shelter inside the store nearest the highway: an empty McDonald’s fast food centre. The strip mall area appeared entirely deserted, which naturally made it a sensible place for Archer and Goliath – and now me and Goliath – to use it as a place to rest briefly.

Goliath stepped through the open entrance to the store and I followed after him. As soon as I stepped inside, I saw that the place was in mild disarray. Tables were strewn across what used to be clear aisles. Newspapers littered the floor in numerous places. Though the scent was faint closer to the entrance, I could smell spoiled food, probably in the kitchen further down the store. Since the power was still on in this part of the city, the store was lit as though it was open for business. I had to admit, coming into a McDonald’s and finding it entirely empty on a Saturday evening was a little sobering. Normally at this time of day there would be children playing at the indoor slides, and the parents would be chatting away by the tables as they watched their respective young ones from a distance. This place was supposed to be filled with chatter of adults and the laughter of children, but now it may as well have been a crypt. There was something somewhat disconcerting seeing a well-lit place with signs around me indicating it used to be lively but now stood empty and abandoned.

Goliath strode over to one of the bar stools close to the window by the entrance and removed his backpack. He placed it on a clean portion of the counter and took a relaxing breath. I removed my pack as well and placed it in a booth close to the window counter.

I unzipped my backpack and dug out a vanilla-flavoured wafer bar and a bottle of water. I tore open the wafer’s packaging and pushed out half of the bar, then bit into it and let the slightly sweet taste settle in my mouth for a moment.

My earpiece suddenly crackled and relayed a familiar voice to me.

“Archer here. Just making the hourly status update.”

I swallowed the piece of wafer I was chewing and tapped my earpiece to respond.

“Copy,” I replied, “Report.”

“We just made it to CFB Calgary. We’re maintaining our distance for now and posting up across Crowchild Trail. Got an hour to kill before the prisoner transfer.”

“Good. What do you see?”

“Looks like a convention out here,” Archer reported briskly over a light breeze rustling in the background, “Estimate fifty plus hostiles gathered mostly near the old air traffic control tower by the airstrip. Got about a dozen Humvees parked by the south gates. Lighter concentration of contacts outside of the Currie Barracks and the nearby buildings.”

“Roger that. Looks like the major’s intel is good.”

“We’re getting comfortable for now, scoping out an infil and exfil point.”

“Understood. What’s your plan?”

“Angel decided to infiltrate alone while I hang back and provide overwatch from the rooftops.”

I paused for a moment, recalling my conversation with the team XO prior to the op. Was it wise to have her head inside alone after what happened?

She gave me her word. That has to mean something. I have to trust her to stay focused, so I am. Whatever Christina may be, I do know she isn’t a fool. She knows as well as I do what we’re up against. She’s Shadow’s second-in-command – I know she’ll act like it.

“Copy that. How’s your view of the base from your position?” I asked Archer next.

“Optimal. I can see most of the base from this roof. There are some blind spots over by the cluster of buildings around the Currie Barracks, but the parking lot and all of the airstrip are clearly in view to me from here.”

“Roger that,” I said, then hesitated. After a second, I added, “Angel, are you there?”

Her response was immediate. “Affirmative.”

Her voice sounded normal – calm, a bit tense as it normally was while we were on an op. If our conversation from earlier today was on her mind, I couldn’t detect it in her tone.

“Are you sure about infiltrating solo?”

There was a noticeable pause.

“It’s better to have Archer up here calling out enemy positions to me when I’m down there, if I need them. Eyes on the outside. Besides, the enemy is less likely to detect one intruder than two.”

I told her that once. I didn’t really mind having my words turned on me, but I needed to be sure regardless.

“All right,” I said, thinking it wise not to argue over a team channel now, “You’d know your situation better than me. Just be careful in there.”

“Copy that, Knight.”

“How about you guys?” Archer’s voice came back on, “How are you two doing?”

“We’re not at the distress signal’s coordinates yet. Goliath and I are having a break at the East Hills Mall.”

“Understood. It is a bit of a walk, no?”

“It is. We’re doing fine, so don’t worry.”

“Copy. Talk later, then?”

“Right. Stay sharp, both of you.”

“Likewise. Archer out.”

The team channel went inactive. I lifted my wafer bar back up to my lips and took another bite.

“Don’t you ever regret not doing something?”

For some reason, Angel’s words from earlier echoed in my mind. At a glance, the question was normal enough to ask. But when I looked at her expressions and her body language, I got the feeling she wasn’t asking it casually. It was asked in such a way that made me think she was looking for an affirmation. Like she was looking for validation for… something. I’d read her file thoroughly before she joined us, but nothing on there mentioned anything that might hint at what ‘regrets’ Angel might have.

Everyone has regrets. Everyone. But…

I absently swallowed the wafer in my mouth and unscrewed the cap of the water bottle I had placed on the table. The last fragment of my wafer bar cracked and splintered into smaller pieces in its wrapper as I squeezed it in my grip.

Regrets? I’m no exception. I had – have – my own.

Regret isn’t something you can really quantify. When people talk about regrets like they’re scars they can count, they usually think of them in terms of bitter memories. Shards of the past that pain them to look at. You can’t put a number on regret. You can’t dump it in a beaker or put it on a weighing scale. It’s intangible, yet it has weight to it all the same. Because of this, each person has a different perceived ‘value’ they attach to the burden they carry. They can try to draw what it looks like for everyone to see, but no one else can appreciate the extent with which regret drags down the person carrying it. What might feel like a golf ball to others may well feel like a steel weight chained to the leg of the person who has to hold it. They can try to swim for the surface, but if the weight of their regret is too much it would pull them deeper and deeper into the abyss.

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d just tried?”

What did she mean by all that? What is she hiding?

“Do you even have anything like that to regret?”

I crushed the wafer bar in my fist, my stomach feeling hot. I didn’t feel like eating anything more. I took a quick swig of water then tossed the remains of my wafer bar back into my bag with the mostly full bottle of water.

A heaviness settled over me, threatening to pull me into that dark place people go when they really start to loathe themselves.

Enough. Stay focused. You can’t afford to be distracted.

I clipped my backpack securely to my torso again, then turned to Goliath.

“Break time’s over. Let’s move.”

He made a show of slowly tearing open the packaging of a granola bar he was holding, his face set in an ‘are-you-kidding-me’ sort of scowl.

“That’s cute, man.”

“You can munch and walk.”

I strode past him and waited for a minute outside the store for Goliath to join me. He had gobbled up half his granola bar by the time he stepped outside.

We left the strip mall and continued north alongside Stoney Trail.





About an hour later, Goliath and I took cover behind a school bus parked across 64th Street from the Father Scollen Catholic High School. Even from a distance, I could see that the site had activity.

From our positions, we were facing the northwest of the primary school. From here, I could see that the school was a fairly sized one-story building, with brown stone walls. A playground and a basketball court at the mouth of the U-shaped building, both covered in a fine layer of snow. A chain link fence about four feet high appeared to surround the school grounds, at least on the north side.

Just past the playground, I saw Humvees parked facing each other close to double doors on the building’s north face, between the building’s two prongs. Past the vehicles and by the double doors were about ten navy-clad hostiles casually standing guard over the area. Some were chatting by the Humvees, others by the double doors.

I lowered my binoculars and triple-checked my TACPAD. The pulsing yellow dot indicating an operative’s activated emergency beacon hadn’t moved since I discovered it this morning. These transponders were made to be easily concealed in clothing and small spaces and were accurate in announcing its whereabouts to receiving operatives, down to the twentieth of a kilometre. The only ways to deactivate an active C.O.S. emergency transponder were to manually do so via the agent’s TACPAD, deplete its battery, or physically destroy the device.

I zoomed in on my TACPAD’s tracker map. The blinking dot was situated in the building’s east fork, meaning the transponder itself was inside the building. However, inside or out, the presence of US Army on site did not bode well for us or whoever sent out the distress signal.

“How do we play this one, Knight?” Goliath whispered, crouched on the ground to my right behind the rear of the parked school bus. “Loud or quiet?”

“We don’t know if there are any more inside,” I replied, bringing my binoculars up to my eyes again to check the area a second time. “We’re going the quiet route.”

“Knight, come in,” said a voice in my right ear.

I recognized Archer’s ‘sniper voice’ instantly. I tapped my earpiece, retreating fully back into cover.

“This is Knight. Go ahead.”

“Be advised, three Army transport trucks are entering the base right now, accompanied by a lead and rear Humvee. Looks like they beefed up security ever since our ambush.”

“Copy that. How’s the infiltration?”

“Got eyes on Angel. She’s slipped through a small break in the eastern fence. She’s inside, just by the south gate.”

“Understood. Is she all right?”

“Affirmative. She’s… slipped behind some large garbage bins by the fence just now. Her stealth is holding.”

“All right. Goliath and I are on site at the school. Moderate enemy presence outside on the grounds. I’m going to find a way inside and find the beacon. I’ll keep you updated as necessary.”

“Roger that. Angel says she’s going radio silent for a few minutes. I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

Hopefully nothing does.

“All right. If there’s nothing else, next radio check is in one hour. Tell Angel to be careful.”

“Wilco.”

“Knight out.”

I glanced beside me at Goliath, who silently followed the conversation through his own earpiece.

“Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this: I’m going to circle west and try to find a way in over that side,” I told him, “Hopefully security will be lighter there or on the south. You circle east and scout the perimeter, then make your way back here. I’ll update you as necessary.”

“All right.” He flashed me a quick thumb up.

“If anything happens out here, I want to know about it. Keep your distance from the school and stay out of sight.”

“I got it.”

“All right, see you back here in a bit.”

I maneuvered over to the right side of the bus and made my way to the school while keeping out of the illumination cast by the streetlights along the sidewalk. Sticking to the front and side lawns of the residential properties across 64th Street to avoid walking in the light, I quickly crossed Templeby Crescent ahead and took cover behind another truck parked directly across 64th from a pair of doors built on the west side of the school.

Carefully keeping out of the reach of the nearest streetlights, I peered out from cover to survey the possible infiltration point. The area around the double doors was clear, and a quick glance down the remainder of 64th Street that framed the Father Scollen School revealed no nearby enemies.

I sprinted across the street, exposing myself in the light only for a couple of seconds, and stopped at the double doors. After once again checking to make sure the area around me was clear, I put a hand on the handle of the right half of the entrance and pulled. The door swung outwards easily, allowing me access to the inside of the building.

Once I was inside, I found myself in another eerie setting. The lights in the immediate hallway upon my entry were all on, but the corridor – extending over a hundred metres to comprise the width of the building – was empty and silent. Halfway down the hall was a T-junction where I could choose to turn right to head toward the south side of the school. I hadn’t even consciously decided where exactly to go however, when I noticed the blatant signs of a struggle having taken place in this building recently. The floor was littered with those common items one reasonably expects to see in a high school: pens, lined paper sheets, duotang folders, textbooks, and several discarded backpacks. What really drew my attention though, were numerous spent casings mingling with the everyday school objects laying on the floor.

I knelt down and picked one up off the top of an empty backpack, verifying that the shell used to be attached to a standard 5.56x45mm NATO bullet based on the headstamp.

Carefully setting the casing back down on the floor to avoid making even a small noise, I stood back up and began slowly stalking down the hall, sacrificing speed in favour of relative silence in my movements. I walked past every open and closed locker on the walls, every classroom on either side which were all closed. I kept my rifle’s muzzle up, panning my weapon over classroom door as I approached. The sheer lack of noise within the building was enough to make me feel uneasy; much like the McDonald’s from earlier, this was another place I seldom expected or imagined to be empty and still.

Before crossing the first T-junction that I saw the moment I entered the building, I hugged the corner and silently peeked around it. The hallway branching off from this one I was in was empty as well, though just as messy and telling of some encounter. Quickly examining my TACPAD again to make sure I was heading the right way to the beacon, I kept on this hallway, ignoring the possible right turn.

The sudden activation of my earpiece and the voice that came after made my heart jump a little in my chest, though my body didn’t. I froze in place and waited for the voice to finish.

“Goliath to Knight, do you copy?”

“Knight copies,” I murmured, keeping my voice as quiet as possible, “What have you got?”

“I’m currently scanning the east side of the building. Advise you not to exit through the east doors. There’s activity right outside. I’m seeing five plus hostiles out on the grounds.”

“Roger, thanks for the heads-up.”

I lifted my right foot off the floor to keep walking, but Goliath wasn’t done.

“Knight.”

“What is it?”

“These guys outside are loading body bags into a transport truck.”

I gently planted my foot back on the floor.

“Understood. Can you see how many there are?”

“Negative. Not unless I get closer. From here though, I see several on the ground just outside some double doors. Estimate… maybe a dozen. Could be more.”

Body bags? What the hell happened here?

“Roger that. Continue your sweep. I got in through the west entrance. I’ll use it as my exit if nothing changes. The school interior looks deserted. Quiet. But it looks like a fight took place here.”

“Would explain those bodies they’re hauling. Do you see any in there?”

“Negative. Not yet.”

This fact was admittedly unsettling – if a fight took place and there are bodies being moved outside, where were the bloodstains? It was blatantly obvious a firefight occurred in here thanks to the scattered shell casings around me, but where were the signs whoever was fighting the US Army was shot?

“I’m zeroing in on the source of the signal. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Be careful, Knight. I don’t like what I’m seeing or hearing.”

“Neither do I.”

I resumed quietly making my way down the hallway, stopping when I reached another T-junction that gave me the choice to turn left toward what looked like the cafeteria, or another hallway of classrooms to the right.

The right choice was impossible not to take.

Around the corner, to the right of the junction, was an equally silent hallway. This one however, was hardly empty: from the T-junction to the end of the hallway were several bodies sprawled in various places and positions down the corridor. The one closest to me was that of a young student, fifteen or sixteen years of age by my guess, lying on her side with her back almost pressed against the lockers on the wall to my right. I confirmed that the hallway’s only standing occupant was me before I crouched down to examine the body. The student was wearing a red no-zip hoodie and faded blue jeans. A quick inspection revealed several gunshot wounds on her left thigh, stomach, right shoulder, and right arm. Her wide, dilated blue eyes seemed to stare at me dolefully as a dried stream of blood traced a rough line down her right cheek from her mouth, caking the floor underneath her head with dark red, congealed gore.

I checked two other bodies near the first one for cause of death, confirming that the next two were also killed by either blood loss incurred from bullet penetration, or from the bullets damaging internal organs and killing the victim near instantly.

Gently laying the third body’s head down on the floor, I glanced down the hallway. Several more bodies lay in various positions and places, all of them covered and sitting in blood.

Something caught my eye. About ten or so paces down the hall opposite the direction of the T-junction, there were some bloodstains that appeared to be smeared. The bloodstains seemed to trail further down the hall and led into a room to the left of the corridor.

I got to my feet and continued stalking down the hallway, maintaining a slow and deliberate pace. I made sure not to step on any of the bodies scattered throughout the hallway. Upon reaching the door the blood smear trailed into, I stopped to examine the door. It was closed like all the others I’d passed so far, but none of the others had distinct red smears leading through them.

I stood still in front of the door, trying to listen for any sounds coming from within. There weren’t any that I could hear. The only sounds I could hear were the buzzing of the overhead fluorescents and my own light breathing.

I lifted my sleeve to check my TACPAD. It looked as though I was nearly standing on top of the blinking yellow dot.

Looks like I’m in the right place.

I reached for the doorknob with my right hand. When my hand closed around it, I turned the knob slowly. It gave way without resistance, and with a slight sense of trepidation, I gradually pushed the door inwards.

As the door swung open, I lifted the muzzle of my G36C and trained the muzzle into the dark room. I pushed the door further inwards, letting it open nearly completely before replacing my right hand around the rifle’s underbarrel foregrip.

There was a much stronger iron smell in this room. Out in the hallway there was a distinct copper scent, especially around the bodies, but just one step inside the room was enough to overwhelm my nose with a similar smell, which seemed more concentrated in this case. There was also something else mixed in with the metallic scent in the air, too. It was something akin to ammonia, pungent and foul.

Through the light being cast through the doorway, I was able to make out the rough outline of a standard classroom several rows of desks and chairs dominating most of the room, a bookshelf on one corner of the room just ahead of the entrance, and a whiteboard at the far end of the room to my left. In the semidarkness, I saw three motionless dark shapes just in front of the whiteboard – more dense and darker than everything else within the room.

Snapping my sights in those shapes’ direction, I observed them for a few more seconds. They did not move or make any noise. They didn’t react to the light being cast into the room from outside.

I felt the nearby wall next to the door for a light switch, my fingers making contact with a tiny plastic lever. I flicked it upwards with a quick motion with my index finger, then quickly replaced my hand on the weapon as the lights came on. What I saw next made my breaths cease for a moment.

At the far end of the classroom, by the whiteboard and past the rows of desks, were three people sitting in individual chairs. Their arms appeared to be tied behind their chairs, and their ankles secured to the front legs. Even from across the room, it was plain to see that all of them were dead. What grabbed my attention wasn’t the fact that there were three corpses tied to the chairs they sat in, but rather the look and state of them.

I approached the three bodies. When I was close, I was able to make out the finer details. The bodies on the left and middle were men, while the last was a woman. All three of them were completely nude, baring the full extent of the states they were in. The men were covered in cuts and slashes, made presumably by the same straight-edged blade. The cuts themselves appeared to be superficial individually, but each one of them looked too neat and deliberate. Each wound that covered the men’s arms, torsos, and legs were roughly the same in terms of length and depth. None of them appeared to be situated in places like the crook of the elbow or the inside of the wrists, and I could tell right away the absence of cuts in those more vulnerable areas of the human body was no accident. There were so many yet none of them were fatal by themselves. The dried blood all over these two men appeared almost equally distributed over their bodies, and the drop patterns of blood under their chairs meant they succumbed to an excruciatingly slow and long bout of blood loss.

The woman was a different story. She didn’t bear any of the distinctive cuts that the two men did, but upon close inspection I saw fairly faint but adequately noticeable dark marks enveloping the expanse of her throat. At a couple of places, tiny pinprick wounds had erupted on the skin of her neck. Small indentations were visible on all sides, as though fingernails had dug hard into her skin at one point. Her most obvious injury appeared to be a gunshot wound to her abdomen, which was curiously covered in bandages that wrapped around the lower half of her torso. Some of the blood from the wound had stained through the bandages, but the application of first aid appeared proper and adequate from what I could tell. I was no forensics expert or coroner, but to me it looked as if this woman had sustained the injury to her abdomen, then was patched up shortly before she received the marks to her neck. Her cause of death certainly wasn’t blood loss.

I glanced from one body to the next. All of them were roughly in their mid- to late-twenties and looked reasonably fit. I took a step back from the three unnamed bodies, then lifted my right sleeve again to check my TACPAD.

The blue dot on the map indicating my current position and the pulsing yellow one were overlapping each other perfectly.

I lifted my eyes and scanned the whiteboard ledge and the teacher’s desk to the side for any small devices that might be the source of the distress signal I was still receiving. At a glance, I couldn’t see it. Those transponders were made to evade detection, so I wasn’t surprised not to find one.

I strode over to the first man and lifted his face up to the light. His dilated pupils stared dully upwards as I used my TACPAD to snap an image of his face. These three individuals’ unique and elaborate injuries told me their identities bore looking into.

I took a picture of the second man’s face, then moved toward the woman to do the same. When I began to lift her face, something small came tumbling out of her open mouth, bouncing off her thigh and clattering to the floor.

Temporarily letting go of the woman’s forehead, I bent down and examined the object that fell.

It was a jet black device the size and shape of a pill. A tiny, blinking yellow light sat roughly on the centre of the device. I recognized it after a second.

I carried an identical device in my backpack.

My mind seemed to create a whirlwind fuelled by all sorts of speculation, both plausible and outlandish. This couldn’t be right. The implications of having found this thing placed inside the woman’s mouth hit me all at once:

First, these three were the source and activators of the distress signal.

Second, they got themselves into a mess they couldn’t get out of.

Third, whoever left them here like this had to have seen the transponder and put it in the woman’s mouth on purpose.

Why? If they recognized what the device was, it’d make sense to destroy it. Unless…

I picked up the transponder, turning it between my thumb and index finger.

What happened here? How can one C.O.S. team not only be cornered, but be the victim of something like this?

Come to think of it…

I glanced briefly at the three deceased operatives in their chairs. Two men, one woman. All Sector teams are comprised of four members. I glanced around the classroom.

One of them was missing.

I went back to each body and one by one slid their eyelids closed, then bowed their heads. Under normal circumstances, it was prudent to cut them loose from their chairs and give them a dignified burial, but I couldn’t do that here.

I had just done what I could for the woman when my earpiece suddenly activated.

“Knight! Knight, are you there? Do you copy? Knight!”

Turning a little away from the dead, I tapped my earpiece. “I copy, Archer. What’s the matter?”

“The whole base is on alert! The guards are converging on the barracks!”

This made my blood run cold.

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I saw flashes of gunfire through the top floor windows of the Currie Barracks, then the whole base woke up like a hornet’s nest.”

I glanced sharply at the deceased woman in the chair, the sight of her injuries only just now filling me with something akin to dread.

“Is Angel—?”

“She headed inside the same building a few minutes ago. I can’t get through to her comms. She isn’t responding.”