The Zodiac: LEO Log 3 - Airfield

[xp-changeling.livejournal.com]

Kevin and Nina follow the phone to the airfield, and find a very puzzling prize



Despite Scarlotti's directions, without Domino's hack on his phone's GPS, they never would have found the airfield. It was a sagging affair, the long poorly made asphalt runway was cracked and pitted; sunbaked and sprouting fistful clusters of dry grass from between the splits. The hangar had been made from cinder blocks and sheets of tin, halfway fallen in at the back. The DC2 that had been described stood just outside the hangar, fuselage streaked with long red fingers of rust. It stood slightly lopsidedly, ajar from the rotting rubber of its landing gears.

"Wow. You take me to the nicest places, Syd," Dom said, dust rising in plumes as she hopped out of the Jeep and onto the sunbaked earth. "Between this and the shitty bar where everyone wanted to kill us I'm totally turned on." She slid her phone back into her pocket, then checked her sidearm. Just because it looked deserted didn't mean there weren't more asbestos mutants waiting in the woodwork.

"You said that you liked hot asphalt and ancient vinyl seats." Kevin's gun was out as soon as he cleared the jeep. Over the trip, he'd gotten stronger as his body adjusted to the damage it had taken. It wasn't a healing factor per say, but over the last few years, he'd discovered that given time and energy, anything that didn't drop him could usually be handled quickly. "I guess packing the bottle of champagne might have been a bit pre-mature."

He started to approach the plane, circling it slowly. The ancient ladder was still propped against the open door, and the tiny windows were pock marked from dust storms and bullet holes; likely a target for bored hunters and militia.

Dom directed her attention to the hangar as Kevin checked out the plane, tensed and ready to react at the first sign of trouble. They hadn't seen any suspicious cars behind them on the trip but in this day and age you didn't need to be tailing someone in order to follow where they went. Satellites were great - until they were suddenly being used against you.

"C'mon, gimme the all clear," she muttered, edging close to the gap in the wall caused by a fallen sheet of corrugated metal, now pitted and rusty at her feet. The air was heavy and still all around them.

Kevin finally closed to the door, gingerly stepping up the corroded ladder to check the inside of the plane.

"Clear!" He said finally, calling out to Dom.

A little of the tension went out of Dom's shoulders, though she continued to edge into the hangar, gun steady in her hands as she moved. Though the light streamed in the gap the rest of the building was dark and she wished she had thought to bring a flashlight along. Still, she didn't have the prickle at the back of her neck that usually meant someone was lurking in the shadows waiting to turn her into a bullet-riddled mess, so that at least was good.

She was just about to call all clear from inside when a sound floated over the air - a faint buzzing that seemed to grow a little louder with each passing second. "D'you hear that?" she shouted, praying that it was just a figment of her imagination.

"Yeah." Kevin moved in a deliberate circle, scanning the skies and the ground around them. "I don't see anything. Is it coming from inside the hangar?"

"Dunno, I can't see anything in here either. Except - hang on, yeah, the server's here. We should load it up and get out of here ASAP."

Kevin followed her into the decaying building, where the server sat under a tarp. It had an independent power supply which was keeping it on stand by mode. It was an old server, perhaps from the early nineties. Beside it were stacked metal cans which Kevin instantly recognized.

"Huh. Here's something interesting." He opened up one of the cans and pulled out a blue transparent sheet which was densely filled. "Microfiche." He blinked a few times as his eyes changed and he scanned the page. "Looks like coded merchant shipping transcripts. Old Soviet code... hasn't been decrypted. This doesn't make sense."

"Microfiche? Seriously? Man, when are our enemies going to get with the digital age?"

"That's the point, Nina. These things are old... thirty-five year old undecrypted merchant info. For an intelligence standpoint, it's total worth, maybe, is pennies from someone who had a historical interest in the ciphers of the Soviet Union." Kevin shook his head. "They hired an experienced mercenary team to retrieve a bunch of intel, which they killed them over, for something I wouldn't offer the price of a coffee for from a source for the whole haul."

Dom frowned, then rolled her eyes. "Well, we've paid a lot more than coffee prices for this, so we'd better load it up anyway. Maybe Kane has a hard-on for old-timey data storage solutions, who knows."

"Ours is not to reason why?" Kevin said, as he started to pull the boxes towards the entrance to the hangar. He paused there for a moment. "I think we might be in trouble."

Another jeep was approaching, kicking up a cloud of dust as it neared the hangar.

"Aw, crud." Dom's sidearm was out in an instant and she dropped the can she had been lugging towards the gap in the wall. "Bets on it being an ice cream truck? I could really do with a double-dip cone right about now." She sized up the distance of the other car from the hangar, the speed it was travelling at, the amount of stuff they had to load. Then she cursed. "We're not gonna get all of this in in time. What's our priority here?"

"As far as I can tell, It's all worthless." Kevin said, stuffing the sheets in his hands into his pocket. The jeep turned sideways and another dust trail started from it, coming directly in on them. "Shit, that sniper is setting up. Let's get what we can to the-" Kevin was cut off at the crack of a rifle and their jeep jumped at the impact of the round. The front started hissing steam.

"Ok, new plan. Do you want to die first or go after me?"

"How about none of the above?" Another bullet pelted the ground not far from their feet. "Fuck. Okay. They obviously want this stuff, otherwise why wait for us to lead them here? So if we can't have it... why should they?"

"Unless you brought a bag of C4, I don't know how we stop it before that woman gets here." Kevin was taking careful aim from the doorway, firing at the streak that was closing on their location.

"C'mon, where's your positive thinking?" Dom was glancing around, her mind racing as she weighed up their options. They were, quite frankly, shit.

Oh well.

"Cover me!" With that shouted instruction she took off towards the Jeep, wrenching open the door and throwing herself behind the wheel while her heart thudded rapidly. The engine protested loudly when she turned the key but after several choice words decided to turn over and the vehicle groaned its way towards the hangar as Dom ducked behind the dash. The ground was littered with old parts and potholes; between that and the juddering engine (and the impending death) it was far from the most comfortable twenty feet she had ever travelled, but at least she got there in one piece. She nosed the Jeep as close to the hole in the wall as she could and then slithered out, keeping the vehicle between herself and the sniper as she got to work exposing the fuel line.

Kevin moved behind her, firing quick bursts as the woman got closer.

"Oh good. I thought blowing ourselves up was our best option." He said, almost manically. A shot went past him, close enough that the transit of the high velocity round stirred his hair. It slammed into the door at the back of the hanger, smashing it open. Kevin ducked back, looking through the door.

"You have to be fucking kidding me..." Through the door, he could see the fuselage of an old prop plane.

Dom worked furiously, all her attention on the fuel line and the knife she was using to sever it and then on the lighter she fished out of her pocket. The petrol sloshed out of the line in a spreading pool across the pitted tarmac, filling the muggy air with acrid fumes. It felt odd ignoring the impending mutant who was surely intent on ripping their legs off, not to mention not flinching from the sniper's attacks, but she couldn't spare the attention off her task.

And besides, that was what Syd was there for. Her partner, the guy who had her back. Despite the fact that they couldn't have been more oddly matched than if Hollywood was trying to make a sitcom out of it she knew she could rely on him not to throw her to the dogs if the shit hit the fan.

Or however that saying went.

"Okay, I'd suggest we get out of here, fast. Think we can snag two first-class tickets on Shitastic Airlines over there?"

"Well, on the off chance it has fuel and will still fly, sure." It was time to go. The woman was close enough that he could see the angry determination on her face. Kevin's steady fire had forced her to juke and cut her advance to avoid it, but he was only buying seconds. 'Here! You're a better shot anyway."

He reversed both guns, putting them in her hands as they both ran through the concrete hanger towards the back door.

Fire travelled quickly. Faster than the mutant on their tail and certainly faster than Dom and Kevin, who felt the heat flare up on their backs as the gasoline puddle caught. They only had a small grace period before the Jeep's fuel tank went - Dom hoped it was long enough to distract their pursuers, though she still twisted to fire off a few rounds through the licking flames. She had no idea whether they hit, but she heard an angry shout echo after them - somebody wasn't happy with the state they had left the building in.

They had just cleared the door when the tank caught. A heavy whump sound was followed by a scream of tortured metal as the jeep exploded. Both stumbled but kept running. It had been a long time since Kevin had piloted a plane, but fortunately the beater looked about as old as he was. He cleared the props of their canvas, waving Dom to pull the blocks off of the landing gear wheels.

As she scrambled to grab them her foot slid out from under her in a skitter of gravel; she felt the bite of pavement against her palms and shin at the same time as she heard the bullet ping against the metal above her head. Breathless, she pushed off the ground and kicked the blocks from the wheels, thumping her now-stinging fist against the plane as behind them the fire crackled and roared.

"This sniper is really starting to piss me off..." Kevin muttered as he pulled himself into the cockpit. There was no time for a proper rundown as a bullet transited through the window over his head. He hit the starter, almost cheering as the props started turning.

"Nina, get in here!" He yelled, already pushing forward with the stick, getting the plane moving on its wheels. Fortunately, the whole area was flat scrub. He could use the dirt road to take off, keeping as much of the hanger between the plane and their attackers as possible.

In terms of feats attempted jumping into a moving plane while being shot at perhaps wasn't as impressive as jumping out of a plane, but it was a damn sight harder. Dom grabbed hold of one of the wing struts and tried to swing herself into the open door, only succeeding on her second try and nearly getting a faceful of dirt in the process. "Okay," she muttered as she slumped onto the sun-baked seat, "I want a rum and coke to start, and then for my meal I'll have the vegetarian option..."

"Good choice. I didn't like the look of the fish..." Kevin yanked back on the stick hard as the prop bit the air. The plane shuddered and came off its wheels. He arced up quickly and banked, painfully aware that they were still in range of the rifle for a few more seconds. Behind them, the burning hanger was being doused as a figure used their jeep's hood to shovel dirt on to the flames, quelling them. A bullet ripped through the wings, but missed the flap and the engine. Kevin dodged right and opened up the throttle, finally putting them out of range.

Dom groaned as she hauled herself into a sitting position, twisting a moment later to look at the rapidly-disappearing site. "Well. That went great. You want to break it to Kane or do I get that pleasure?"

"I think you should. He's got a soft spot for you." Kevin reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled microfiches. "Mind you, we didn't come away entirely empty-handed."

"Oh good. Something to wipe our asses with before we get back to civilisation. The world's most wanted obsolete technology. I'm sure Kane'll be thrilled."