Free Cold Barrel Zero by Matthew Quirk

detectors’ range. He led them in a staggered pattern like a lightning bolt. They took cover beside a storage shed with a view of the main house.
    Hayes surveyed the buildings. He switched his goggles over from infrared to thermal. The night went from a world of green contours to a full rainbow of heat signatures. “Transformer at two o’clock. One hundred meters,” he said, then turned his attention to the main building.
    The blinds were down, but he caught three ghosts as they passed in front of an open window on the first floor of the house. He counted off the sentries posted at the main doors, on the roof, at each corner. He saw six. Best to assume a dozen, and six to eight more in the building based on the number of vehicles outside.
    As Moret readied a charge, Hayes scanned again. He saw a faint red patch in his goggles, next to what looked like a diesel tank, a hundred and fifty or two hundred meters to their left. It was either the largest hot-water heater ever made or a generator. Backup power. “We have to get the genny too.” He lit it with his IR laser.
    Speed navigated the detectors and led Moret to the transformer. She planted a small charge against the bushings around the main wires to the compound. The detonator was on an RF switch. Speed’s light glowed through their goggles as he traced the invisible maze to the generator, and Moret planted a second explosive.
    They returned to the squad.
    “Are we going to wait for the guards to go off?” Moret asked.
    “No,” Hayes said. “We can’t risk any more time here. We’ll just have to hit hard. Ready to black them out?” Moret armed the detonator remote and handed it to him.
    They all crouched, prepared to sprint.
    “What’s your boy’s name again?” Speed asked.
    “Tom Byrne,” Hayes said.
    “Will he give us any trouble?”
    Hayes remembered Byrne stabbing him in the chest, picking up an M249 machine gun, and vaulting over a wall toward enemy fire.
    “Maybe,” Hayes said, and he put his thumb on the detonator. “He was never very good about taking orders.”

Chapter 11
    HALL AND I rode in the back of the Tahoe while his driver navigated to the end of the peninsula then pulled up to a security checkpoint. The guard spoke with the driver, then waved us onto the base. There was a second chain-link fence after thirty feet. As we passed through the inner gate, I could see the red-tile roof of the main house through a break in the fog. We rolled down the driveway.
    A lighthouse stood in the distance to our left, and beside us was a storage yard full of rusting model ships, a whole fleet of carriers, destroyers, and frigates, dozens of them, four to twelve feet long.
    We parked in front of a Spanish-style mansion at land’s end. Hall led me to the front door as two members of his security team followed behind me. I paused on the stoop and took a look around but could see only the stucco facade and faint lights glowing through the fog in the distance. The guards behind me stiffened.
    “What is this place?” I asked Hall.
    “A safe house,” said a voice behind me. A man stood, silhouetted in the door frame, then stepped into the glow of the porch light. “The E Ring decided we need to be babysat until we can round up the soldiers who came after you today.”
    “Thomas, this is Colonel Riggs,” Hall said.
    He was solidly built, a bear, though it seemed middle age had softened him a little around the jaw. He had deep creases beside his eyes and a look so direct it made me want to take a step back.
    “Tom Byrne.” I reached my hand out toward his right.
    “Doesn’t work,” he said and offered his left. I took it and felt the embarrassment showing in my face.
    “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. I’m used to it. Come in.” He entered the house, limping slightly on his right leg, before I could say another word. I turned and watched the fog pull back along the twin fences high on the hill above us. I thought I saw movement.
    “What’s up?”