I turn to Tez. “What’s the deal with Ecuador?”
She looks at me with mild shock. “You don’t know? Oh, boy.”
“Fine!” I hear Valencia say. “Fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just please, don’t send me there.”
Bellamy closes the passport and puts it in her pocket. “Alright, let’s hear it.”
“Codes,” is all Valencia say at first. “I don’t know what kind of codes. They didn’t tell me. In fact, they didn’t tell me much of anything, I only know about codes because I overheard a couple of Chevko’s men talking about it when they brought me in to hire me.”
Bellamy looks skeptical at first, then she turns to assess the reactions from Tez and I, even though I know she’s only looking at a reflection.
Tez strokes her chin. “Didn’t you say the two Chevkos were planning to break into a nuclear missile site?”
“I did. And?”
She turns to look at me. “What’s the one thing the President knows that nobody else in the country does?” I shrug. “Nuclear launch codes.”
Tez hits a button to project her voice into the next room. “We got work to do, Bells.”
“Bells.” Ha.
That’s going in the vault for later.
Bellamy jumps up from the table and starts to leave, and Valencia yells to her.
“Wait! My passport! You’re going to change that, right? Back to Mexico?”
Bellamy chews her lip. “Right. Mexico. I’ll try to remember to do that when I have a moment. But in the meantime, you might want to lay low.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
We split up into two teams. Mastodon and Dweeble head off for the nuclear silo at Patuxent Refuge to warn them if it wasn’t too late—or help them thwart the intruders if it was.
Bellamy and I take the MeanWatch’s jet-copter called the MeanBird (Yup!) to Chevko’s place in New York to rescue Hanson.
Tez had insisted on going, considering we were down a man and she felt it was her duty to join us, but Bellamy’s protested that if anything happened to her we wouldn’t know how to use half the equipment at HQ, so she relented and stayed behind to hold down the fort.
We arrive in the city just after sunset, touching down in an empty parking lot a quarter of a mile from the high-rise. The air is cool and thick with the threat of an oncoming snowfall.
As we step off the chopper, Bellamy asks how I’m feeling.
“Determined,” I tell her.
She just stares at me. “He’s gonna be alright. We’ll make sure of it.”
She pulls me in for a hug, but I can barely get my arms around the bulk of equipment she’s wearing. “How are you feeling?”
She slaps her vest. “Like I could climb a mountain.”
The walk to Chevko’s building is brisk and focused. Neither of us says anything, and because it’s New York nobody seems to pay much attention to us.
But at some point, she splits off from me with a nod and a quick salute, and I’m on my own until I get into the building.
I take a deep breath, and call the elevator. It arrives, and I press the button for Chevko’s floor. The doors close, but the elevator doesn’t move.
“Yes?” It’s a man’s voice, but not Chevko’s.
“Donovan Burke,” I say. “He should be expecting me.”
There’s a few seconds of delay, and the elevator begins to climb.
When the doors open, Nadia is standing there to greet me.
“Come for a rematch?” she says.
“Just came to check on you after that nasty spill you took during the race. Oh, right, that was me. Can I come in?”
“I heard about that. I was hoping you weren’t hurt.”
“I’m sure you were hoping for much worse.”
She looks confused. “Wait, you think I had something to do with that? It was all my father’s idea, I promise. When he found out you were going to be racing, he—“
I step past her into the foyer. “Save your breath. He can explain it to me himself. Where is he?” Without the partygoers and the booze flowing through my veins, the place seems a lot less interesting. What was cool and eccentric then, now just looks cold and lacking personality.
“He’s in his study,” she says. “I can get him for you if you like. But I’ll be honest, he probably won’t be very happy to see you, considering he tried to have you killed.”
“Well, this is his chance,” I say.
“Ah, the Master of Two Worlds himself,” Chevko calls from the top of a glass staircase. He’s looking down at me with a grin on his face and a cocktail in his hand.
“Vodka, I presume?”
He lifts the glass. “Would you like to join me?”
I nod at Nadia as if to say thank you and good day, and ascend the staircase breezily. Filled with a confidence that I could only attribute to a deeply held belief that I was going to die anyway very soon, I actually pluck the glass from Chevko’s hand take a sip as if it were my own. “Don’t mind if I do.”
He seems surprised, but oddly charmed. “You look dashing tonight. Got a hot date?” He grins. “I would’ve gone with different shoes, though, were I you. Come, I have something interesting to show you.” I follow him down the hall, into a room in the corner of the building, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city to the southwest. There’s a sleek, modern desk in front of the window, with a high-end laptop sitting on it running a swirling screensaver.
I notice what I had been too distracted to notice last time we were here: the World Trade Center is still standing. The massive, seemingly-infinite twin towers dominate the skyline.
I see a reflection behind me in the glass, though, and my attention is snapped away from the view to the other corner of the room, to the slumped-over body still tied to the same chair as the last time I saw him.
“Hanson!” I shout and rush straight over to him. He’s still alive, thankfully, but in bad shape. He stirs a little when I touch him.
Behind me, Chevko is making himself a fresh drink at a little portable minibar. When he finishes, he turns to me and offers a toast.
“To the joining of worlds.”
I offer a counter toast. “To the best laid plans of mice and men.”
“Touché.” He takes a drink. “But which am I? The mouse or the man?”
Another voice spoke up from behind me. “I would not call myself a mouse.”
I turn and see the other Chevko walking into the room, in his Russian military uniform. The only thing out of place about it was the boots he was wearing—off-white rubber, thick-soles, with a silver band around the outside.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Bald Chevko says.
“Great minds,” his double says with a smirk.
“We meet again, Mr. Burke,” the Military Chevko says. “Like my shoes?”
“Not my style,” I say coolly. I’m not sure where they came from, but it seems clear what they do.
“Forgive the shoddy construction,” Bald Chevko says. “They were made in a great hurry using my finest high-speed fabricators.”
“You made another pair.”
Both Chevko’s laughed identically.
“Another? Mr. Burke, right now there’s a factory on the other side that’s churning out thousands of them. Enough for a whole army, in fact.”
Just like the prison. Using the portal technology to bring people over. Double your capacity. With the Meanwhile Shoes, Chevko could transport thousands of troops over here, all at once, and stage a coup.
I glare at Military Chevko. “So, that’s the plan, huh? You’re bringing the entire Russian Army over?”
He nods proudly.
“What about the nukes?”
Both of them look somewhat surprised to hear that I know about that part of the plan. But their surprise gives way to amusement.
“An unstable enemy is the easiest to overtake, and few things are more destabilizing than a nuclear attack. The United States will be too busy tending to
its own casualties to see us coming.”
“America is stronger than that. You really think you and your army can just walk in and take over? Good luck.”
Bald Chevko walks over to the computer on the desk and wakes it up. There’s a man on the screen with prominent cheekbones and a stern brow. “Two armies, actually,” Chevko says. “Good evening, President Vasiliev.”
The man on the screen says a greeting in Russian, and glares at me. “Who is this?”
Bald Chevko sets his drink down and withdraws a gun from the top desk drawer. “Oh, just a little mouse whose plans have gone awry. He’ll be gone shortly.”
“The Russian President,” I comment. “I thought you two didn’t see eye-to-eye these days.”
Chevko seems annoyed. “President Vasiliev and I have had our differences in the past, but he was willing to overlook them when I brought this plan to his attention.”
“So he’s supplying his army as well, I take it.”
“We will be unstoppable. The largest single military assault in the history of the world.”
“And you get to rule like the kings of Sparta.”
He smiles broadly, so utterly pleased with himself. “Indeed.”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but weren’t there only two kings at a time? There’s three of you. I’m only in Algebra I, so you might have to help me out with the math on this.”
Bald Chevko chortles. “Who ever said anything about Sparta?”
“I did,” Military Chevko fires a bullet right into his doppelgänger’s stomach. The bald man’s drink crashes to the ground, followed seconds later by his body. His face in frozen in shock as he clutches at his bloody stomach. Unable to speak, he just looks up at his betrayer with a thousand questions in his eyes. Blood gurgles from his mouth as he tries to speak.
And then he’s gone.
Military Chevko—the only Chevko left alive, now—walks across the room to the desk and nudges the body of his former partner with his foot. Then he turns to face me, the gun still pointed straight ahead.
It’s gotten dark outside, and in the reflection of the office windows I can see the slender form of Nadia Chevko clutching the doorframe. She’s only there for a moment, and then she disappears.
“She’ll come to know me as her father,” Chevko says. “I am the same man, after all. But now, little mouse, what do we do with you? You’ve come for your boyfriend here,” he says, tipping his head toward Hanson.
Despite his condition, Hanson actually pulls his head up and looks at me. There’s longing in his eyes, I’m pretty sure.
“My late brother here insisted on keeping young Agent Hanson alive, to ensure your cooperation until the entire mission was completed. But he’s gone now, and I’m not as paranoid as he was.”
He turns his body toward the corner, and I see movement behind him. At first glance it looks like a reflection but then I realize it’s outside.
It’s outside, forty-seven stories in the air, and I suddenly recognize what it is.
It’s the Big Teeth, bound and dangling from a rope, and swinging straight at the window.
He crashes through, shattering the glass and crashing into the desk. Chevko acts fast and jumps out of the way, and watches his henchman land on the floor in front of him.
He’s perfectly alive, but Bellamy did a bang-up job of tying him up.
Chevko goes over to him. “Horatio! What the hell happened to you?” But his Big Teeth Mouth is taped over, several layers thick.
“Are you listening to music on the job?”
Chevko plucks a pair of earbuds out of Teeth’s ears, and the sound coming from them is so loud I can hear it from across the room.
The sweet, sweet sounds of Tez reciting the Russian alphabet.
Chevko puts the earbuds to his own ears, just for a moment—but that’s all I need.
Feeling the weight of the TuneBox strapped to my arm, I jump backwards and watch as Chevko does the same, landing on his back on the floor. The earbuds fall out, but it doesn’t matter because I’m already on my way to him.
I kick his gun across the floor and grab the headphones as I jump on top of his chest.
Just like I visualized doing it, I quickly stick them back into his ears before he realizes what’s going on, and he reaches up to stop me.
But with the earbuds in, his muscle impulses are under my control, and I’m holding the earbuds in, so he presses on my hands harder, which makes my hands push harder, and it starts a feedback loop that I honestly worry is going to seriously damage his eardrums for life.
He’s screaming in agony and confusion, but I literally can’t stop because my hands are pinned under his.
Suddenly I’m knocked onto the floor by a powerful kick, and I see it came from Teeth. He’s not entirely free of his bindings, but he’s managed to get his feet lose and now he’s standing up, eyeing me like a linebacker. He looks silly with his hands still tied against his body, but silly doesn’t mean not-dangerous.
He charges at me and I dive out of the way.
Chevko is up again, but he’s too dazed to do much at the moment.
Teeth turns around and comes at me again, and I lean into him and throw him over my shoulder onto the floor. He lands right next to Chevko’s gun, and when I lunge for it he kicks it away.
“Hey! Stop that!”
I scramble to chase after the gun, but he trips me and I slam to the floor. Somehow he gets up before I do, and as I’m pulling up to my feet he kicks me from behind and sends me into the other wall of windows.
I feel the glass bow and rattle as I hit it, and I catch a glimpse of the street hundreds of feet below.
I see Chevko searching for his gun, and get up to rush over to it before him.
He dives for it, but he’s older and slower than me. I don’t dive, though.
I slide.
I slide feet-first and kick the gun out of his reach, and it skims across the floor and flies out the open window, out into the night sky.
I do kind of feel bad for anybody it might land on...but that’s the price of high-stakes espionage, right?
“You idiot!” Chevko says with a laugh. “You just got rid of any chance you had of beating me!”
He lets Teeth, still bound and gagged, start towards me, backing me up into the other windows.
But when Teeth looks up suddenly, I have a good idea of what he sees, so I drop down to the floor.
Just in time, as the window shatters and Bellamy swings in over my head, kicking him right in the chest and sending him flying across the room. He crashes into the wall head first and doesn’t move.
But Chevko’s got a good spot, and he thinks fast. He grabs Bellamy almost in mid-air, before she’s had a chance to unhook herself from her line connected to the roof.
She’s facedown underneath him. He grabs the rope slack and pulls it around her neck, yanking it hard and tight. Bellamy’s face starts turning red.
“Don—!“ she struggles to call my name. “H-h-help...”
Chevko’s too big for me to overpower him.
The headphones have gotten lost in the previous struggle, possibly tossed out the window at some point.
I only have one option.
I reach out and grab the gun that’s strapped to Bellamy’s leg, which Chevko didn’t notice.
Chevko only gets a glance at me before I pull the trigger and a red hole opens in his side. He stops pulling on the rope, and slowly rolls over on the floor.
Dead.
Bellamy pushes herself onto her knees, rubbing her throat. “Thanks.”
I can’t respond. I’m looking at Chevko’s dead body.
The one I made, I mean.
Bellamy’s watch chirps and she lifts it. “Go ahead.”
It’s Mastodon’s voice. “We were too late. Everyone was dead and we were outgunned. We made it out alive but we were too late.”
“Mast, what do you mean ‘too late?’ What do you mean exactly?”
But we didn’t
have to wait for his answer.
Off in the distant I suddenly made out a line of white and gold light slowly heading skyward.
“The nuke.”
Bellamy pounds her fist on the floor. “Dammit!”
“I’m sorry,” Mast says weakly. “I’m...I’m sorry.”
We watch the streak of smoke and flame rising for a few more seconds, but I don’t want to sit around and watch my home get obliterated.
Chevko still has the knockoff portal boots on. I look at them, and a plan begins to form.
In fact, it may have only been partially formed by the time I acted on it.
I tug the boots off. While I’m lacing them onto my own feet, I look at Hanson. He’s breathing but unconscious.
“Take care of him. I’ll see you back home.”
“What are you doing?” Bellamy seems panicked. There’s no time to explain the plan.
What I was doing was saving the day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The shattered desk left behind a large metal frame that’s lying on the floor, covered in broken glass.
I grab it.
I activate the shoes, and run straight at the office door, holding the frame to one side.
I hear the buzz,
see the glow,
and the last thing I hear as I run through the door
is Bellamy shouting “Wait, sto—!” and a quick crackle of lightning
and then the whole building disappears around me
AND I’M FALLING IN mid-air, 500 feet above New York City.
THE AIR IS BITING AND whips past me.
I TAP MY HEEL TO MY toe, twice, to activate the shoes again
AT THE SAME TIME I bring the metal frame around in front of me
and I fall through it
and land on solid flooring.
The building is back, and just as I had hoped, I’m now one floor down from where I was.
In the presence of Nadia Chevko’s prized Rocket Racer collection.
Donovan Meanwhile: Kings of Sparta Page 16
