SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Knight felt the need to get deeper inside the building than King, and faster. He knew it wasn’t necessary to compensate for his injuries with his actions, but being sneaky and fast was something he had done even before the loss of his eye.

Pawn didn’t need him to explain the plan. They had become like one human in two bodies over the last few weeks. She would anticipate his moves, learning his style and his intentions from simple gestures. Pawn was fast enough to anticipate what he would do, and to keep up with him.

He grasped the door to the tower, and tugged on it. It opened a little stiffly, as if it, too, had been oiled, but grit from the blowing storm had still found its way into the frame and the iron hinges. Pawn covered his entrance, then they leap-frogged positions into the unlit stone stairwell. Knight pulled the door closed after them, plunging them into darkness.

“Blue, do you copy?” Knight asked.

“Crystal clear,” came Aleman’s reply.

“We’re inside the southwest tower. What’s the temp in here?”

Their suits, which Aleman had appropriated for them on the black market, had temperature sensors inside and out, allowing Aleman to monitor their bodies in the frigid climate, but also so they would know if the temperature outside the suit warmed up enough for them to remove it.

“Ten above,” Aleman said after a brief pause. “It’ll be chilly, but you can remove the helmets.”

“‘Bout damn time,” Pawn groaned, slipping the helmet off over her head.

Knight did the same, and instantly he heard the roaring of the wind outside the thick wooden door. The sound was somewhat muted, so he was able to listen for sounds in the darkened stairwell. Convinced they were alone, he donned an AN/PVS-14A night vision monocular, and Pawn did the same. The devices were strapped over their heads, amplifying the available light. In this case, there wasn’t any ambient light, so Knight activated an extremely dim LED at the sole of his boots. The light was so slight and diffuse that an unaided human eye could see it, but not be able to pinpoint its exact location. That wouldn’t help them much while in the confines of the tight stairwell, but once they were down at ground level, the space would open up, and they would be able to hide in the darkness. Also, at the first sign of contact, Knight could douse the dim light, switching it to a pulse mode. It allowed both he and Pawn to see the walls and the steps of the twisting spiral stone passage, and he quickly descended, looking for tripwires or other security devices as he went. So far, he was disappointed in the security, but terrorists weren’t known for their adherence to norms, and he supposed with the remote location and the climate, they really wouldn’t need too much to dissuade visitors.

“There should at least be a guard dog, or something,” Knight said softly, over the open comms.

“Perimeter report,” King asked.

“All clear, Boss,” Rook said.

“Nothing,” Bishop added.

“We’re approaching the ground level,” Knight said.

“Warmer inside, but still no tangos,” Pawn said. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“Agreed…” King said, and then he lapsed into silence. Knight could tell from the way he had said it that he was considering calling the operation off. It wouldn’t have been the first time King had done so, and he tended to be the most cautious of the team now. Knight continued down the steps, waiting for the call.

It didn’t come.

Oddly, neither did the ground floor.

The stairs kept circling down, and Knight was sure they had descended close to sixty feet now. The ground level would have been at forty.

“These stairs keep going down, King. We’re investigating.”

“Roger,” King said. “I’m checking the main floor, but it looks deserted here, too.”

As Knight and Pawn descended, they noticed the shades of green in their monocles brightening. Knight switched off his boot LED and found he could still see. “Light source,” he whispered, speaking only to Pawn. She made a soft grunting noise he knew to be an acknowledgment.

After a few more steps, the stairway opened up onto a catwalk in a dimly lit, wide open space. The lights were far below, but bright enough that Knight removed the monocular entirely. They stayed in the shadows of the doorway, stowing the assistive devices, before Knight belly-crawled to the edge of the metal catwalk, and peered down into the chamber forty feet below him.

“Shit. King,” he whispered on the team network. “This looks like a bio-weapons lab. All bright white walls and glass down here. We’re forty feet below the surface level. I’m seeing large glass vats with nuclear green liquid and bio-hazard symbols on them. A few people milling around in white lab coats.”

“Deep Blue?” King asked, irritation audible in his voice.

“Everything we have says it’s a simple terrorist command center. I have no intel on labs or chemical weapons.”