Finn was a good actor. He presented his papers and joked with the guards. They exchanged pleasantries as if they had been best buds forever. The guard in the gatehouse questioned the order, and Finn responded with the perfect answer. He and his crew fixed the broken SUV on their way to the base and brought it back to the motor pool. The gatehouse guards checked the vehicles VIN, and it matched reports of an earlier request to pick up a broken-down asset on I-70. Finn told the guard they could cancel the tow rig.
The gatehouse guard returned the papers to Finn and opened the gate. Tessa let out a sigh of relief as they passed through the first gate. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but she doubted they would be until they arrived at their destination in Los Alamos. There would be plenty more encounters where they might end up exposed. Tessa just had to take them one and a time.
Finn pulled down the boulevard following the direction of H.I.V.E agents, flagging him into a nearby parking lot. They parked the SUV and unloaded their gear. Each of them had a black duffle bag filled with everything they needed to complete the mission. Each person’s bag fit their exact mission assignment. They all had different objectives.
Tessa hung her AR over her shoulder and carried her duffle into the lion’s den, keeping her head down and following the group into the main base within the airport. The team tried to surround her so no one passing could get a good look at her. Once they were inside, there was enough bustle; she wasn’t as concerned about being noticed. But Tessa kept her head down, anyway. There were cameras mounted everywhere, and H.I.V.E had facial recognition software. She needed to prevent her face from being captured on film.
Finn was astute to the technology within the base, and found a dead zone where they could all regroup once inside. Finn rummaged through his duffle to find their new papers. Just before entering the main terminal, they encountered the airport train station. At one time, this was a commuter train line, but H.I.V.E repurposed it to a commercial line that would meet up with the old Union Pacific tracks in central Denver. From there, the train would travel south to Santa Fe and on to Los Alamos.
Finn approached the train station terminal first with paperwork in hand. He conversed with the guards before waving over the group. There was a look of concern in his eyes, and he winked a warning to Tessa and Norine. Tessa got the sense this security checkpoint might prove challenging.
Inside the terminal, their team lined up for check-in. The automated facial recognition scanner would be their first hurdle. Most of the group was likely in the database flagged as hostiles and not H.I.V.E agents. The only one who would be unknown was Finn. He stepped up, and the computer scanned his face letting him through with no hits. Finn motioned Tessa to step us first. She had to trust that he knew what he was doing and had a plan for this nightmare scenario.
Tessa looked into the scanner, and after a few seconds, she saw a red-light flash in the monitor, but the screen distorted into static, and the control room bustled. The guards thumped on the monitors inside the control room, trying to correct the image. Finn scrambled their electronics before they could identify her.
The ranking security officer exited the control room and approached the group. Finn addressed the officer, “Is there a problem, sir?”
“Our equipment seems to be malfunctioning. You would think with all our resources; they could fix this blasted scanner.”
Finn laughed with the officer, “You get half-assed equipment too, huh? Just last week, I had a comm link fail mid-mission. Made it a bitch to coordinate an extraction. Put a whole lotta lives at risk.”
“Let’s see the papers, and maybe they’ll get things up and moving again.” The officer collected the papers and thumbed through them as he looked at the group and started noting faces. His gaze fell on Tessa and stopped. Her heart skipped a beat. This was it. They were done for.
Norine stepped forward to point out some details on the order papers, “You can see they scheduled us for departure at seven hundred sharp, and the orders come from high on the chain. I would hate to explain why we were late. But we can make a suggestion to our superior to replace your faulty equipment. It helps to have people in high places.” Norine winked at him and stepped away.
Tessa knew what Norine did. She used her mind manipulation power to persuade the security officer into letting them pass, and that’s what happened. He nodded to the gate guard to wave them through to the train. Tessa exhaled in a sigh of relief. She was glad to have Finn and Norine on her team and they proved handy in a tight spot. The rest of the group seemed relieved to get this far, but they couldn’t let their guard down. Security would be easier now that they were in, but that still didn’t mean someone wouldn’t recognize them on the train. They weren’t out of danger yet.
Finn escorted the group on board the train and set everyone up in a designated area. The train would carry materials from Denver to Los Alamos so they would guard the various train cars. They would divide into teams of two, meaning Tessa was paired with Norine to ensure no one
