The Last Oracle (2008) sf-5

by James Rollins

  And though the place seemed deserted now, Monk had found plenty of evidence of past activity: fresh tailings dumped into shafts, shiny new gear leaning on walls, even an abandoned ice chest half filled with water and floating cans of beer.

  Konstantin trailed with his sister, while Pyotr remained glued to Monk's hip.

  The child's eyes were huge upon the dark passages. Monk felt the fever of his terror as Pyotr clutched to him. It wasn't the cramped spaces that scared him, but the darkness. Monk had occasionally clicked the lamp off to search for any telltale evidence of light.

  At those moments, Pyotr would wrap tight to him.

  Marta also closed upon the boy, protective, but even the chimpanzee trembled in those moments of pitch darkness, as if she shared Pyotr's terror.

  Monk reached the bottom of the chute. It dumped into another long passageway with a railway track and an idle conveyor belt. As he searched for boot prints, he noted a slight graying to the darkness at the end of the tunnel. He crouched, pulled Pyotr to his side in the crook of his stumped arm, and clicked off his flashlight.

  Darkness dropped over them like a shroud. But at the far end of the passage, a faint glow was evident.

  Konstantin moved next to Monk.

  No more light, Monk whispered and passed the boy the darkened flashlight. If he was wrong about the place being deserted, he didn't want to announce their approach with a blaze of light.

  Monk swung up the rifle he had confiscated from the dead Russian sniper.

  Quietly now, he warned.

  Monk edged down the tunnel. He walked on the ends of the railroad ties, avoiding the crunch of the gravel bed. The children followed in his footsteps. Marta balanced along one of the rails. As they continued, Monk strained for any voices, any sign of habitation. All he heard was an echoing drip of water. It was a noise that had grown louder the deeper they descended. Monk was all too conscious of the neighboring presence of Lake Karachay.

  He also became aware of a growing odor, a mix of oil, grease, and diesel smoke.

  But as they reached the bend, Monk's keen nose detected another scent under the industrial smells. It was fetid, organic, foul.

  Cautiously rounding the turn, Monk discovered the passage ended in a central cavern, blasted out of the rock. It was only a hundredth the size of Chelyabinsk

  88, but it still rose three stories high and stretched half the size of a football field.

  Most of the floor was covered in parked equipment and piles of construction material: coiled conduit, stacks of wooden beams, a half-dismantled column of scaffolding, piles of rock. Off to one side rose a tall drill rig, mounted on the back of a truck. The place looked as if it had been hurriedly evacuated.

  There was no order to it, like someone packing a moving van in a hurry, just dumping things haphazardly.

  At least they'd left the lights on.

  Several sodium lamps glowed at the opposite side of the room.

  Careful, Monk said. He motioned the children to hang back, to be ready to bolt and hide among the debris if necessary.

  Monk crept forward, staying low, rifle ready at his shoulder. He zigzagged across the space, holding his breath, cautious of his footing. Reaching the far side, he discovered a tall set of steel blast doors, sealed and reflecting the lamplight. They looked newer than the mine works. To the right stood a small shack, about the size of a tollbooth. Through its open door, Monk spotted a few dark monitors, a keyboard, and rows of switches.

  Nobody was here.

  Monk noted the tremble in his rifle. He was wired and edgy. He took a deep settling breath. The fetid reek was much stronger. Off to the left, Monk noted black oil pooled beyond a stack of equipment. He crept out and peeked around the corner.

  Not oil. Blood.

  He found the source of the smell. A tumble of bodies draped the back wall, tangled in a heap, outfitted in mining gear or white laboratory coats. Blood and gore spattered the walls behind them.

  Death by firing squad.

  Someone had been cleaning house.

  Behind him, Konstantin appeared, creeping out into the open. Monk returned, shook his head, and pointed to the computer shack. He didn't want the children to see the slaughter. He motioned to Pyotr and Kiska to remain where they were.

  Konstantin joined Monk as he strode toward the blast doors. I've been here before, the boy said. We're allowed to ride the train sometimes. These are the substation controls.

  Show me, Monk said.

  Konstantin had already highlighted what General-Major Savina Martov was planning, nicknamed Operation Saturn. It lay beyond these doors.

  The two crammed into the shack, and Konstantin studied the substation's controls, his eyes flickering over the Cyrillic lettering. Monk could almost hear his mind flying at speeds beyond normal mentation. After a moment of study, his hands flew over the board, flipping switches with deft assuredness, as if he'd done this a thousand times before.

  As he worked, Monk asked, How did you learn about Operation Saturn?

  Konstantin glanced to him with a wincing look of embarrassment. My skill is rapid calculation and derivative analysis. I work often in the Warren's computer laboratory. He shrugged.

  Monk understood. You could turn a boy into a savant but he was still a boy: curious, mischievous, pushing boundaries.

  You hacked into her files.

  He shrugged again. A week ago, Sasha Pyotr's sister she drew me a picture. Gave it to me in the middle of the night. When we were all woken by one of Pyotr's nightmares.

  What picture?

  The train here, with many children on board, all dead and burning. It also showed the mining site just past the blast doors here. So so the next day, I broke into the files about the operation. I learned what was planned and when it was scheduled to happen. I didn't know what to do. Whom to trust. Sasha left with Dr. Raev for America, so I talked to Pyotr. Konstantin shook his head. I don't know how Pyotr knew maybe he doesn't even know it's sometimes like that.

  Konstantin stared up at Monk for understanding.

  Though he didn't completely, Monk still nodded. What did Pyotr know? he pressed.

  He is a strong empath. He sensed you would help us. He even knew your name.

  Said his sister whispered it to him in a dream. They are very strange, those two, very powerful.

  Monk heard a trace of fear in the boy's voice.

  Konstantin even glanced warily back toward Pyotr, then set back to work. So we came for you.

  With a final flick of a switch, a row of monitors glowed to life across the top of the control board. They showed black-and-white images, views from different angles of a small cavern, rigged with scaffolding. On the floor was bolted a large steel iris.

  The heart of Operation Saturn.

  Motion drew Monk's eye to the centermost screen. It showed a train rested outside the mining site. Open ore cars were loaded with children. Some had climbed out and stood around in confusion. Others appeared to be laughing and playing.

  Konstantin clutched Monk's sleeve. They they're already here.

  Savina sat in the brightly lit control station, flanked by two technicians. They were running final diagnostics on two computers. The station was in a converted subbasement bunker beneath one of the abandoned apartment buildings. There were no windows. Their eyes on the world came from seven LCD screens wired into the walls. They displayed video feed from the cameras in the tunnel and at the operation site.

  She stared at the parked train for another breath, then stood up, unable to remain seated. She felt a familiar crick in her back. She had failed to take her steroid injection, too busy with all the final preparations. She turned away from the view of the train. Not because it hurt to look which it did but because anxiety ran through her.

  She checked her wristwatch. It was more than half past eleven o'clock, and she had still not heard from Nicolas. She exited the control room, so the others did not see her wring her hands. It was a weak matronly gesture, and she forced
herself to stop. She headed to the stairs and climbed toward the level above.

  Not with any destination in mind, only to keep moving.

  From her contacts in the intelligence community, she had already heard the rumblings of an accident at Chernobyl. A radiation leak. Dead bodies. The place was being evacuated. And if Nicolas had been successful, such a mass departure was too late. Perhaps her son had been caught up in the resultant chaos and had been unable to report to her yet. Her operation was set to commence in another forty-five minutes, once she heard confirmation from

  Nicolas.

  As she climbed the stairs, she imagined him gloating in his success, possibly even enjoying a secret tryst with little Elena. It would not be unlike Nicolas to celebrate first and attend to business afterward. Anger tempered her anxiety.

  She finally reached the floor above the control station. It had been converted into a domicile for the technicians: bedrooms, exercise space, and a central communal area full of sofas and dining tables. The only occupants at the moment were ten children. She knew each by name.

  They turned to stare at her, their heads swiveling all at once, like a flock of birds turning in midflight. Savina felt a flicker of apprehension, a recognition of the foreignness of their minds. The Omega subjects were savants so talented that their skills crossed the threshold of the physical to a realm where Savina could not travel.

  Boris, a thirteen-year-old with eyes so blue they appeared frosted, seemed almost to be studying her. His talent was an eidetic memory coupled with a retention that frightened. He even remembered his own birth.

  Why were we not allowed to go with the others? he asked.

  More heads nodded.

  Savina swallowed before answering. There is another path for all of you. Do you have your bags packed?

  They just stared. No answer was necessary. Of course their bags were packed. The question displayed the level of her own nervousness. Before her lay the power that would fuel the Motherland into a new era. And deep down, Savina knew such a power remained beyond her full comprehension.

  We will be leaving in an hour, Savina said.

  Those ten pairs of blue eyes stared back at her.

  Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned as one of the technicians joined her.

  General-Major, he said, we're having some glitch with the blast doors on the other side of the tunnel. If you could advise us how to proceed.

  She nodded, glad to focus her mind upon a problem.

  She followed the technician back to the staircase. Still, she felt those ten pairs of eyes tracking her, cold and dispassionate, icy in their regard. To escape their judgment, she hurried down the stairs.

  Open the doors! Monk called to Konstantin.

  From inside the control station, the boy nodded. Electric motors sounded, and large steel gears began rolling the blast doors out of the way, splitting down the middle.

  Konstantin came running over to him, out of breath. Five minutes, the boy warned.

  Monk understood. Konstantin had sent the tunnel's digital camera system into a diagnostic shutdown and reboot. The clever kid had engineered a five-minute blackout. They had that long to evacuate the children from the train before the cameras were back online.

  There was little else he could do. The master control station lay at the other end of the tunnel. Once the subterfuge was detected, the other station would kill the power to Konstantin's shack.

  They had only this one shot.

  As the doors parted, Monk squeezed through, followed by Konstantin. Marta also loped after them. The old chimpanzee wheezed with exhaustion, but she didn't slow, even passing Monk.

  The old girl knew they had to hurry.

  A hundred yards away, the train rested on the tracks.

  Monk ran toward it, hopping a bit on his wounded leg. Konstantin called out in

  Russian, yelling at them to get off the train and out the blast door. The boy waved both his arms.

  Just clear the train, Monk said. I must get moving as quickly as possible.

  Monk jangled alongside the train as he ran. He carried two assault rifles over his shoulders, each with sixty-round magazines. Konstantin had already given him a lesson on the manual drive mechanism for the train. It wasn't much.

  Get in the front cab, shove the lever up.

  Reaching the train, Monk trotted along one side, Konstantin along the other.

  Everyone off the train! Monk shouted. Out the doors!

  Konstantin echoed his orders in Russian.

  Still, chaos ruled for a full half minute. Children yelled or cried. Hands grabbed at him, milling and jostling. But the kids were also well trained to follow orders. Slowly the tide shifted, and the children began to drift down the tunnel toward the doors.

  No longer crowded underfoot, Monk reached the last car, a covered cab. He leaped through the open door and went to the front end. A small driver's seat was flanked by a green and red stick. Green for go. Red for the brakes. A small dashboard displayed gauges and voltage readings.

  Monk did not have time for finesse. He leaned out the window. Konstantin!

  The boy's voice echoed to him. Clear! Go!

  Good enough.

  Monk shoved the green lever forward. Electricity popped, casting a few sparks into the darkness ahead. The train lurched forward, then began to roll off down the tunnel.

  Four minutes.

  He had to get this train to the other end of the tunnel before the camera system rebooted. It was up to Konstantin to herd the children out of the tunnel and close the blast doors. Monk had instructed the boy how to jam the gears so that the doors would remain closed.

  Konstantin also had one other task.

  Monk had confiscated a pair of the miners' radios. Once Monk reached the far doors, he would signal Konstantin to open them. If all went according to plan,

  Monk would have the advantage of surprise and two fully loaded assault rifles.

  While likely a suicide mission, what choice did he have? The children were safe for the moment, but if Operation Saturn succeeded, how many millions more would die? Monk had no choice but to storm the master control station, guns blazing.

  Initially, he had considered sabotaging the mine site, but Konstantin had paled at that suggestion. The charges fifty of them were primed with radio detonators.

  Even if he could scale the half kilometer of shaft in four minutes to reach them, any mishandling of the explosives risked setting them off.

  So the matter was settled.

  With a rattle of wheels, the train sailed down the dark tunnel, lit by occasional bare bulbs. The front cab also had a single headlamp, which cast a glow ahead of him. As the train trundled faster and faster, Monk noted kilometer markers on the wall. According to Konstantin, the tunnel ran four kilometers long.

  Monk found himself holding his breath, counting off a full minute in his head.

  Along the right side, he saw the number 2 stenciled into the wall.

  Halfway there.

  At best, he would have less than thirty seconds to spare.

  Not great, but not bad.

  Then the lights went out, as if the hand of God had clapped.

  Under Monk, the train sighed, as if echoing his despair. Without electricity, the train rolled to a stop in the pitch darkness.

  Behind him, from the back of the train, a child screamed in raw terror. Monk's body clenched. He knew that voice.

  Pyotr.

  Savina stared at the bank of darkened monitors in the control station. She shook her head. Minutes before, one of the technicians had summoned her down here, worried about a glitch in the system, something to do with the blast doors at the far end of the tunnel. By the time she'd got down here, the cameras were off-line, running a diagnostic subroutine.

  No one had ordered it.

  Suspicions hardened her veins. Something was wrong. Rather than sit idle, she took a preemptive move and cut all power to the tunnel.

  M. C. three thirty-seven, Savi
na said. There's a substation over at the mining complex.

  One of the technicians, an electrical engineer, nodded to her.

  And as I recall, there's a camera built into the control shack over there. To allow you to communicate with technicians on the other side.

  The man nodded again then his eyes widened. It's on a system independent from the tunnel.

  It was a precaution engineered in case of breakdowns like now, leaving the two stations still able to communicate.

  Bring up that camera. She tapped one of the monitors.

  The engineer typed rapidly at his computer. A few moments later, the screen snapped to life in grainy black-and-white. The camera was small and utilitarian, angled above the control board of the shack to give a good view of the operator on that side.

  Savina leaned closer. Out the shack's open door, the camera caught a milling of children in the cavern beyond. Many children. The ones who had boarded the train.

  Savina struggled to comprehend, when a taller boy stepped into view of the camera. He was tall, dark-haired, with a long, angular face. Her fingers tightened. She knew that boy.

  Konstantin.

  What was going on?

  With all that had happened this morning, she'd had no time to follow up on

  Lieutenant Borsakov's hunt for the American and the three children. She watched

  Konstantin wave an arm and call silently to the crowd of children. Borsakov had obviously failed.

  But what were they doing over there?

  She searched the crowd, looking for the American and the other two children. She sought one child in particular, the one she wanted back.

  Pyotr screamed as the blackness smothered him. His eyelids stretched wide searching for any light, Marta held him in her strong arms. The two had used the confusion at the other end of the tunnel to sneak aboard the last car and hide.

  Pyotr knew he had to stay with the man.

  But the darkness

  Pyotr gasped, drowning in the black sea. He rocked and rocked while Marta tried to hold him. It was his nightmare come true. He'd had the same dream often: where his shadow rose up and consumed him, smothered him until there was only darkness. The only way to defend against it was to set himself on fire, to burn like a torch against that darkness then he would wake screaming.