by Brandt Legg
But you can’t outrun a bullet.
The thought of getting shot terrified him more than it would an average person. A bullet entering his body would be the ultimate invasion of his personal space. The Astronaut could not stand to get injections, or even haircuts (he did them himself). In a strange way, he feared the bullet entering his body more than he did dying.
His heart racing, he silently convinced himself, Go on two. One. I must protect the data on my watch. Two. Don’t get shot, don’t get shot, don’t get shot!
He bolted. With the wall to his right, The Astronaut ran to the left. The pursuers had yet to fire shots. He had decided that was because they didn’t want to attract attention—at least not until they were sure they could hit him.
Picturing himself running through feathers, as if this might make him quieter, The Astronaut felt suddenly free in the open air, away from the cold, imposing wall.
Halfway there, he still hadn’t been spotted, and he was grateful for his dark clothing. Then he saw two vans stop on Constitution Avenue and heard orders given in Russian.
They cut me off. He wanted to cover his ears and scream. Get away. Leave me alone. Get away. Leave me alone! Get away . . .
Knowing he was about to run into the arms of his killers, instead he turned sharply right, the only choice he had, and ran for the trees of Constitution Gardens.
The land on which the fifty acre park sat had originally been submerged beneath the Potomac River, but had been dredged at the beginning of the 20th century by the Army Corps of Engineers. A memorial to the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence sat on a small island at the center of the Garden’s six acre lake.
The Astronaut had visited the Gardens often, and agreed with its nickname as being an “oasis” from the bustling city. He recalled that in 2003, a disgruntled tobacco farmer, claiming to have explosives, drove his tractor into the center of the lake. He had dug up part of the island, and kept the FBI and US Park Police at bay for two days before surrendering.
Maybe I can survive there.
At a bench on a heavily treed section of the trail, he stopped to listen. Just in case, he quickly wrote a text message and set it up to send to the two people who he thought might be able to stop the nightmare. He ended it with the words, “a great many people will surely die, but even more important, your actions will determine the fate of the world.”
Four
Chicago, Illinois - April 2nd - 12:57 am Central Time
Daniel Wallace heard the noise, but at first he didn’t react because he was in the middle of a dream that involved him riding some giant bull in a dangerous rodeo taking place on the moon. “No air,” he said in the nightmare as he fought the bucking animal, having no idea how he’d wound up in the ludicrous situation. He didn’t realize it was the creaking of their bedroom door, yet the sound brought him out of sleep just enough that an instant before the gloved hands went around his throat, he opened his eyes and saw the shadowy figure.
Panic struck. He kicked his legs as he felt the hands tightening around his neck, now actually living a nightmare.
His wife’s furious scream added another layer of terror. She had made the mistake of trying to grab the man attacking him instead of running. The last thing Daniel saw was the silhouette of another intruder, and he knew his wife was also about to die. His final thought was not of her, but rather his work. He had known it was a risk, but never believed it would cost him his life, and that of his wife. In that final split-second when he knew the fight was over, he wondered if the others had been targeted as well. What he did not waste time on was guessing who was behind the attacks. That he knew.
As the two black-clad operatives double-checked that the lifeless bodies of Daniel Wallace, a Nobel laureate scientist, and his wife, a well-liked professor at the University of Chicago, were in fact dead, they knew the third member of their hit squad was starting the fire. They quickly joined him. It would be more efficient with three.
That went well, the man in charge thought. No noise other than that annoying scream. Now the fire.
The men had come prepared with portable equipment that would incinerate the breaker box, then with strategic placement of stored solvents for a hobby, which neither Daniel or his wife actually had, the flames would quickly spread through the house and burn the bodies of the sleeping couple.
Not a perfect crime, the man thought. The authorities will eventually figure it out, but it will be too late. After tomorrow, the cause of death of these people will not matter.
They had parked their vehicle half a mile from the residence as to not arouse suspicion. The streets were nearly deserted at this hour. They turned onto South Central Avenue and headed out of Beverly, a lovely area with nice homes, one of which was now engulfed in flames.
Once they exited I-190 onto the West Kennedy Expressway, heading to O’Hare International Airport, the man in the passenger seat dialed a number from his burner phone, which he would destroy before they got on their flight.
Tolstoy looked at the clock before answering. It was just after 4 am eastern time. Tolstoy was neither a heavy sleeper, nor one to indulge in long sleeps, especially this close to ignition. “Yes?”
“Chicago. Completed,” the man said as they pulled into a rental car return area.
“Good,” Tolstoy said, not allowing himself a smile. Although pleased, there were still too many holes to plug, and little time to do it. “Next.”
“On our way,” the man said, checking the itinerary. Cambridge, he thought, but didn’t say out loud. Already contemplating the methods of eliminating the next problem on the list, he wanted to ask if the source of these leaks had been taken care of, but it was not his place. The call had already been too long. “Will report when completed.”
“Good,” Tolstoy said, ending the call.
Five
Washington DC - April 2nd - 2:58 am - Eastern Time
With no chance to still make it to the road, The Astronaut wove in between trees and shadows inside Constitution Gardens, hoping to avoid using the “cyanide pill” app on his phone. It would permanently erase all its data instantly, but leave the phone itself working for sixty minutes.
However, when he came to a giant willow tree at the edge of the lake, he realized his mistake. The water would trap him. He heard more shouts—accented English, Russian, and un-accented English.
I can’t make Constitution Avenue . . .
The Astronaut ran as fast as he could around the lake, his feet crunching loudly on the pea-gravel path. Back out in the open, he sprinted toward the reflecting pool.
Having no idea how many were after him, he still clung to hope. It’s dark, I might slip through. If he’d known they had already been to his apartment, he might have felt worse, but ultimately it wouldn’t have mattered. He was never going back there again anyway, even if he survived the night.
Running along the reflecting pool, he realized the openness made him an easy target. There’s a lot of ground for them to cover. His eyes, well-adjusted to the darkness, darted around. They still seem to be searching . . . somehow they haven’t seen me. He saw men among the trees of the Gardens and more still around the Vietnam Memorial.
I might make it.
He debated for an instant whether to head to the higher ground at the Washington Monument, but it was too far. He pushed ahead toward the Lincoln Memorial until two silhouettes appeared behind him, and knew his chances of survival had just plummeted. Even distracted and scared, his extraordinary mind calculated the odds. He had a 4.8693 chance of living through the next seven minutes. The odds increased a little bit in the two minutes, eight seconds after that, and increased substantially after twelve minutes, nine seconds.
It’s not good, he thought, tapping his phone to send the texts he’d written in the Gardens, then taking a deep breath before initiating the cyanide pill to wipe its data. He looked down at his wrist at an elaborate, custom smart watch made by a friend. It wasn’t the sentimental asp
ect that now concerned him, it was the urgent contents in the watch’s memory.
I have to hide the watch. It’s the final clue I can leave behind. If I’m gone, it may help them stop it . . .
He worked hard to calm his thoughts. The idea of being “gone” made him dizzy. The Astronaut wondered if it could even be stopped in time. If he’d known that one of the scientists on the list was already dead, he’d have known it was lost.
He frantically scoured the area for anywhere to hide the watch. Tired and as scared as he’d ever been in his life, The Astronaut tried to imagine other ways they might kill him. If he had to die, he just wanted it to happen in some manner that didn’t involve touching, or knives, or bullets, or anything entering his body.
Since he was running across what was essentially an open field, there was nowhere to hide the watch. Get to the Lincoln Memorial, find a hiding place. He didn’t care about anything but the watch. The watch, and how he was going to die.
Maybe being dropped from an airplane without a parachute, or made to jump off a high building would be the best method, he wondered. That way the impact will take all the feeling and no one would touch me. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything high enough around other than the Washington Monument, but he was running in the opposite direction.
“Washington Monument,” he whispered to himself. “Five hundred fifty-five feet, five inches tall . . . Four-Fives . . . ” An ironic twist, he thought, but then realized it was fifty-five feet wide at its base. “So really six fives.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the giant monolith rising from the mall.
“More than thirty-six thousand stones used to construct the Washington Monument,” he muttered, repeating it several times. “Eight hundred ninety-seven steps inside the structure, too many steps. Eight-ninety-seven, eight-ninety-seven . . . ” Numbers were safe, and he suddenly considered switching course and running to the Monument. He knew it weighed an estimated 100,000 tons, and that it had been the world’s tallest building when completed, eclipsing the then tallest, the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, and that a few years later the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Monument for the crown. Perhaps what fascinated him the most about the obelisk had nothing to do with numbers, rather that no mortar was used between the huge marble blocks in the Monument’s construction, meaning it was held together with gravity and friction alone.
“More than thirty-six thousand stones held together by gravity. Gravity, no mortar.” He looked at it again, almost stumbling. I will be okay if I can just get to the top of the monument. But he didn’t change course. He kept heading toward the Lincoln Memorial. “Safe at the top. Five hundred fifty-five feet and five inches. I will be safe.”
Six
Another part of the world
A sick feeling welled in the stomach of the diplomat with the red tie. His mouth was dry, his hands cold. However, he concentrated on making sure the terror surging through his body was not revealed on his face. He knew the plan, but now that it was less than forty-eight hours from actually happening, he had to admit his government was crazy enough to do it.
“It is perhaps more risky than you imagine.”
The gray-haired man scoffed. “When you say risk, you act as though there is no risk in the present state of things. Imagine if the United States had not developed the atomic bomb first. The geopolitical landscape would be entirely different today. This is the new atomic bomb. We have gotten there first; it will change everything.”
“Surely we could just announce it? Make it known?”
“No, they would catch up in a year, maybe less. And just as the Americans demonstrated the true might and awesome destructive force of their bombs on the Japanese, we must demonstrate ours.”
The diplomat looked startled. “I understood the blame would fall on the US, and this would appear as some kind of accident that they inflicted upon themselves.”
The gray-haired man smiled. “Yes. The first reaction, the early conclusions, to further erode confidence in their government.” He paused and looked again at the hammer and sickle sculpture on the far wall. “You must recognize this as the most brilliant strategic offensive the world has ever seen. It’s a shame, really, that we won’t get immediate credit. Perhaps one day history will reveal the boldness of this strike.”
“I hope not.”
“They will know,” he whispered. “Somehow, they will know.”
“If we’re caught, it will lead to war,” the diplomat warned again. “The worst war.”
The gray-haired man laughed. “If we get caught, it will mean that Washington DC was destroyed, and our new weapon changes everything. Believe me, no one will be in a hurry for war, not with us.”
The diplomat nodded, realizing that his arguments would do nothing but jeopardize his career.
“It is brilliant, because we win either way,” the gray-haired man continued. “If someone else gets blamed, we win, because the damage has been inflicted and we got away with it. If we get blamed, the world will fear us again—this time forever.”
Washington, DC
Although she was a registered diplomat, Katiya Popov never went to the Russian Embassy on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. Her credentials looked nothing like her. The thirty-two year old Russian beauty could have passed for a blonde-haired college student. Depicted on her passport and other official photos, Popov resembled a woman closer to her mother’s age. That was by design. She had many identities, many aliases. She preferred not to be seen, and never properly identified.
Since the Russian Embassy was under constant surveillance, she had no desire to be anywhere near the building.
She also didn’t particularly care for Boris Nemtsov Plaza, a section of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the embassy named in honor of the opposition activist and vocal critic of the Russian President. Nemtsov was murdered by assassins as he walked across a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015. It annoyed her that some hot-shot US Senator pushed for the memorial to serve as “an enduring reminder to Vladimir Putin, and those who support him, that they cannot use murder and intimidation to suppress dissent.”
But she used them for that every single day.
Popov was not a real diplomat. She was an agent with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), conducting most of her business from a fancy K Street bakery and coffee shop. Her offices and small staff of operatives were reached through an “employees only” door in the back. Its four am to midnight hours provided good cover for their comings and goings.
Stairs led to another floor where she maintained a small flat. However, she mostly stayed in hotels paid for by the ill-gotten gains of Russian hacking operations. She did whatever necessary, wherever necessary.
Popov rarely took time off, particularly these days with so many projects underway and so close to fruition. She believed in her work: “I do it for fun.” Her father had been in the KGB, a man who had animatedly pontificated dangerous and adventurous stories. The world was simpler then. Much of the action was in Washington and a few world capitals, maybe the occasional hotspot in the Middle East, Central or South America, wherever.
Now things were different.
In one of the bakery’s back rooms, Popov clicked her mouse. In a few hours, somebody was going to die in California. She checked the list of targets on her screen. Next, she reviewed a summary of ongoing cyber-attacks. Another monitor brought up the whereabouts of scientists, people they were watching, technologies traded, patents being bought and/or infringed. She juggled it all in her mind, always cognizant of how each event, every move, would affect the ultimate end game . . . and in the meantime, what they meant to Blackout.
Her father knew how many people he’d killed. He had done it personally, and not as often as an American spy movie audience would have imagined. His daughter, though in the same business, albeit now much more sophisticated, could never quantify a number like that. She had been responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths. She changed the world as often as she ch
anged her bed linens. Yet even with those facts, and all that she had done, what she did in the next forty-eight hours was going to make everything else seem as if she and her father had never been born.
Seven
Miami, Florida - April 2nd - 3:04 am - Eastern Time
Wen rolled over, sensing Chase was awake. “What’s wrong?” she asked, touching the Glock 19 pistol under her pillow.
Chase, used to even the faintest sound waking her, had tried not to stir too much, knowing she needed to sleep. “Sorry. I don’t know,” he admitted. “A dream woke me. I don’t really remember what it was about . . . something agitating.”
Wen wasn’t surprised. Chase regularly had disturbing dreams—people after them, or him letting people down. It wasn’t unusual, given their lifestyle. Ever since the billionaire had given up his old life and gone on the run with her, they’d fallen deeper and deeper into an international web of espionage and conspiracies. “Want to talk?” She instinctively scanned the hotel room, lit only by the glow from a digital clock and a few indicator lights from the flatscreen tv on the wall.
Chase sighed. “I just wonder sometimes what we’re doing all this for. We risk our lives constantly. Why? Are we really making a difference?”
“Of course we are. I could give you a list. In fact, The Astronaut actually keeps a list. He has all the stats on the people we’ve saved, the difference we’ve made. You know we’ve been effective. Think about some of the things we have done . . . some pretty big things.”
“Yeah.” He turned on his side, softened his gaze on her muscled, svelte body, clad only in the thin sheet.
She touched his stubbly cheek. “So what’s this all about?”
