by Kyle Mills
It didn’t take long to realize that he had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Tiny jets of flame became visible throughout the clearing and he stared down in silence as they began to take to the air.
55
Northeastern Japan
Everybody get down!” Randi shouted, shoving the students off the digger as the low whistle from above grew louder. Max Wilson was standing frozen on top of the machine’s titanium shell, a bloom of colorful wires in one hand and a set of pliers in the other. She yanked his ankle, pulling his feet out from beneath him and following him to the ground.
The whistle was earsplitting now, and she had to shout to be heard. “Faces in the dirt! Hands on the backs of your heads!”
All but one complied, a panicked kid who barely looked eighteen. “Bruce! Get your ass—”
The impact was a hell of a lot closer than Randi had hoped. She buried her face in the grass and waited for the flames to wash over her, but nothing happened. After staying motionless for a full three-count, she pulled out her silenced Beretta and ran for the closest tree.
Eric Ivers appeared to her left, taking similar cover about ten yards away. He gave her an inquisitive look but all she could do was shrug. Vanya was a little farther ahead, moving methodically toward the impact site with an MP5 clutched in his hands.
“Reiji. Karen,” Randi said, activating her throat mike. “Are you all right?”
They’d returned from their supply run about an hour ago, and she had no idea where they were.
“We’re fine,” Karen responded after a few seconds. “Reiji and I are approaching from the south. Whatever it was, we think it landed in that little clearing where we first unloaded the digger.”
“Roger that. Vanya’s closing from the north and he’s about fifty meters out. Eric and I are covering him.”
“Understood.”
“Be careful, Karen. Remember that we aren’t sure what we’re dealing with here.”
Randi indicated that she was going to advance and Ivers gave her a nod before easing his Glock around the thick tree trunk. When she made it to cover, she waved him forward.
They continued to leapfrog like that, stopping every few seconds to listen to the silence and to see if they could make out anything through the trees. Vanya was nearing the edge of the clearing when Randi heard a quiet hissing that seemed to be originating just in front of him. It grew in volume as she poked her head around the tree, but the foliage was too dense for her to make out a source. What was visible, though, was some kind of artificial light flickering in the shadows.
She glanced over at Ivers, who knitted his brow and mouthed, Bottle rockets?
The truth was, she had no idea. But she suspected it wasn’t going to turn out to be anything as benign as fireworks.
“Vanya,” she said into her throat mike. “Stop where you are. There’s something I don’t li—”
The Eastern European suddenly broke cover, dropping his rifle as he raced toward them at a full sprint. She held her gun out in front of her, searching over the sites for a target, but he seemed to be running from a ghost. A moment later, though, she saw them. A swarm of thin contrails overtaking him from behind.
“Vanya! Drop!” she screamed.
He did as she ordered, throwing himself headfirst over a fallen log. Instead of all of them passing harmlessly overhead, though, a few changed trajectory. One slammed into the log with enough force to split it in the middle. Four more hit her man, thudding sickeningly into his body and splattering the leaves above him with blood.
“Pull back!” Randi shouted. “Karen! Reiji! Do you hear me? Get the hell away from the clearing!”
She and Ivers ran, weaving through the trees with the hissing sound trailing them. The projectiles were clearly guided, but there was no way to know by what method. She broke left, hoping that she could lead them away from Wilson and his students. Ivers appeared to have the same idea and broke right, trying to confuse the tiny machines.
Randi dodged behind a tree and heard the crunch of wood as one of them impacted the trunk. She dared a look back and saw at least three more flying in a loose formation, all clearly locked onto her.
Breaking cover, she leaped over a large boulder. On the other side, the ground seemed to disappear from beneath her and she found herself cartwheeling down the steep side of the canyon.
56
Northeastern Japan
Jon Smith paced back and forth across the tiny room, feeling the overwhelming urge to throw something. Unfortunately he hadn’t been left with anything heavy or breakable enough to give him any satisfaction.
Takahashi had departed an hour ago and taken the tablet with him. Before he did, though, they’d watched one of Randi’s men go down and her disappear over a boulder. He couldn’t be certain what happened after that, but having had experience with those projectiles, he could guess. The only reason he was alive was that the ones attacking him had been programmed to stay within the confines of Genjiro Ueda’s house.
The door began sliding open and Smith moved quickly toward it, standing in a position where he could lunge through and snap Takahashi’s neck before the soldier knew what was happening. He had no illusions that it would do much to save Randi or prevent the coming world war, but at least he’d have some revenge before they put a bullet in his head.
Instead of Takahashi, the stooped figure of Hideki Ito appeared. Smith looked past the scientist at the man standing against the corridor wall. Still the same one—taking in everything with black eyes and a hand in his jacket. The distance was only five yards but it might as well have been a mile.
The door slid closed after Ito passed through, and he moved close to Smith. “We have to talk.”
“About what?”
Ito pointed to the cameras looking down on them. “I’ve initiated a software upgrade to our security system. The cameras are rebooting. We have seven and a half minutes.”
Smith looked up at a clock on the wall and took note of the time before stepping back to examine the man. He was sweating where his ravaged skin would allow, creating a glistening patchwork across his face. “You have my attention.”
“What I built was never meant as an offensive weapon. My expectation was that the general would publicly demonstrate its capabilities in some nonlethal way. That it would make us safe from our enemies and perhaps even be a positive contribution to society.”
“But instead he’s going to use it to exterminate the Chinese.”
“It’s…” Ito’s voice faltered. “Is ironic the correct word? My technology is useful because it can be carefully targeted. Certain materials, certain locations. We could destroy China’s entire military capability without harming a single human being. But he’s going to use it in a way that’s completely indiscriminate. He’ll kill everyone. Civilians, women. Even children.”
Was Ito just running on at the mouth to try to assuage his guilt or was he there to suggest some kind of action? Smith glanced up at the dead cameras, painfully aware that the clock was ticking.
“Can he be stopped?”
“The prime minister is flying to China today, and he’s ordered Takahashi to go with him. Both Sanetomi and President Yandong have made it clear that they will find a way to come to terms. That this situation will be de-escalated.”
“But Takahashi doesn’t want that.”
“No. He’s ordered me to finish making the weapons, and when I’m done he plans to deploy them.”
“I assume you’re here because you don’t want that blood on your hands, Doctor. Do you have a course of action in mind?”
Ito reached beneath his smock and pulled out a screwdriver made of what looked like carbon fiber.
Smith almost laughed when the scientist held it out to him. He’d hoped for something a bit more clever from the man who had cracked molecular manufacturing.
Ito obviously sensed his disappointment. “As I’m sure you’re aware from your investigation of Fukushima, we have sterilization protocols
in place that are similar to what you use in your lab at Fort Detrick.”
“Radiation,” Smith said.
Ito gave a short nod.
“And as the lead researcher, do you have the ability to unilaterally initiate sterilization?”
“Yes. However, this is Takahashi’s facility. The procedure takes time to implement, and he has the ability to override.”
“Will he?”
“I guarantee it. I’ve seen how twisted the man has become. He will never allow his weapon to be destroyed.”
“So what are you proposing?”
“If we can access one of the server rooms, there is a chance that I can block his attempt to shut down the sterilization protocol.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Because I don’t have access to those particular servers without his express permission.”
“And that’s where I come in.”
“Yes.”
Smith looked down at the screwdriver in the scientist’s hand. “There’s a problem with your plan.”
“What?”
“On my best day, I couldn’t close the distance to that guard before he gets his gun out. And believe me when I tell you that this isn’t my best day.”
“But we have to—”
“What we have to do is deal with reality, Doctor. I have a lot of ground to cover and the guard just has to move his gun a few inches. It’s not going to happen.”
Ito started to panic. “There’s no time! The cameras are going to come back online in only a few minutes. You have to help me!”
“Calm down, Doctor. I will help you, but there’s going to have to be a minor change in plan. When you leave here, does the guard follow you or do you follow him?”
Ito’s bloodshot eyes darted back and forth as he tried to remember. “He follows me.”
“Okay. Fine,” Smith said, trying to keep his tone soothing. “Do the guards wear body armor?”
“I don’t think so. No. I’ve never seen it.”
“Good. Then you’re going to walk out of here like you always do. And when you get close”—Smith touched a place on his upper stomach—“put that screwdriver right here.”
“What?” Ito said, eyes widening. “You want—”
“Listen to me!” Smith said, raising his voice enough to silence the man. “You need to drive it upward and to your right. Toward his heart.”
“But—”
“He has no reason to expect this,” Smith said. “But when you do it, he’s going to try to get his gun out and he’ll probably try to grab you. Stay right up against him. Be calm and don’t give him room to maneuver. In two seconds it’ll be over.”
“No,” Ito said. “I…I cannot do this.”
“You’re either going to have the figurative blood of millions of innocent people on your hands or the literal blood of one trained killer. As moral dilemmas go, that one seems pretty straightforward.”
“But…but I’m a scientist. An old man. What if he kills me?”
“Then all your worries will be over, won’t they?”
The scientist wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his lab coat and then, surprisingly, turned and pressed his hand against the palm reader next to the door.
His gait was a little too fast and stiff, but it didn’t matter. The guard’s eyes were locked on his American prisoner as they had been every time before.
Smith just stood there watching, calculating the odds that Ito would just keep on walking at about 99 percent. Again, though, the scientist surprised him.
He struck just as the door started to slide shut, pressing himself up against the man and pinning him to the wall. Smith rushed the door and grabbed its edge, but the mechanism was too powerful. The last thing he saw was the guard wrapping a hand around Ito’s fragile neck.
His heart was pounding far harder than it would have been if he’d taken the man himself, nearly audible in the silence that had descended on the room. There had been no gunshot, but what did that mean? Had Ito managed to hold on? Were the two men lying dead on the floor, one with a screwdriver beneath his rib cage and the other with a broken spine?
The door slid back again and Ito stood in front of it, his face frozen into a distorted mask.
“Well done,” Smith said as he brushed by the scientist and crouched next to the body. The screwdriver was still lodged in it and he retrieved the tool, wiping the blood off and stashing it in one of the pockets of the jumpsuit he’d been provided.
Unfortunately, there was no equally practical place to store the man’s Glock. In the end, Smith had to unzip the front of the jumpsuit and stuff it in the waistband of his boxer shorts. Not exactly at his fingertips but it would have to do.
“Dr. Ito,” he said, standing and putting a hand on the still-dazed scientist’s shoulder. “The server room. Where is it? We don’t have much time before the cameras come back online.”
57
Northeastern Japan
The layout of the facility was predictably simple—nothing more than a set of wide corridors carved from the earth, most of which emanated from a massive central cavern. Individual shafts occasionally split off, leading to storage areas. Some were filled with fifty-gallon drums containing nuclear waste, but most were empty. Others had been hijacked by Takahashi’s organization and were guarded by the familiar composite doors.
Smith and Ito moved along at an excruciatingly casual pace, with Smith’s head bowed submissively. Just another worker on his way to make some trivial repair for management.
Of course, that cover story would bear precisely no scrutiny at all but his dark complexion and black hair would be enough to dampen the interest of anyone more than twenty paces away. Thankfully, no one had come anywhere near that close so far.
They crossed the main artery leading to the loading area and Smith subtly shifted his gaze to the massive blast doors and the smaller adjacent door dedicated to pedestrian traffic. Two men were standing guard in front of the exits, both with compact assault rifles hanging across their chests.
Ito ducked into another corridor and Smith felt himself relax a bit when they left the guards’ line of sight. The passage dead-ended into a door after about another fifty yards, and Ito stopped to speak to a camera bolted above it.
Smith didn’t understand anything that was said, but they’d settled on a story about a problem with the rebooting of the security system. Specifically, a couple of physical connections that weren’t responding. Not exactly a stroke of genius, but reasonably credible and it went a long way toward explaining why Ito was accompanied by a large man with a screwdriver.
Smith kept his head down, trying to relax. They had one chance at this and he couldn’t afford to blow it. According to Ito, there was one systems administrator and one security man inside. What the scientist couldn’t tell him was which of those men would come to the door. It was precisely these kinds of operational unknowns that Smith spent his life trying to avoid.
After an endless thirty seconds of back and forth, the door finally slid aside. Ito glanced back at him and gave a gruff order before walking inside. Smith followed along obediently, head still bowed, but eyes straining upward.
The room was as described, no more than twenty feet square with walls mostly hidden by computer equipment. There was a single desk with a terminal on it to the right and two rolling chairs—only one of which was currently occupied.
The tech was a young man with an artificial reddish tint to his hair and the air of having downed a few too many espressos that morning. He was talking a mile a minute, gesturing maniacally toward his screen as Ito approached and put a hand on the back of his chair.
The security man was lifting his wrist to his face, undoubtedly to report the unusual situation into a radio microphone secured there. Smith backed toward him slowly, pretending to watch Ito, but really focused on the guard.
The angle of Smith’s body would make it hard to for the man to get a clear view of his face, but this wasn’t jus
t some rent-a-cop. He wasn’t going to be fooled for more than a few seconds.
It turned out to be even less than that. The man’s left hand suddenly stopped rising toward his mouth and his right went for a gun in an exposed shoulder holster.
Smith spun, going for the man’s throat with the screwdriver but knowing there was no way in hell he’d connect. At the last moment he let his knees collapse and redirected the blade to the man’s upper thigh. It sank halfway to the hilt but the guard barely seemed to notice, smoothly wrapping his hand around the grip of a Sig Sauer P226.
Smith ignored the shouts coming from behind him, forced to rely on the dying scientist to handle the computer tech. The gun was nearly free now and Smith lunged, slamming his shoulder into the man’s elbow with the full force of his 180-pound frame. The pain flared in his injured back, but the impact had its intended effect—the gun was rammed back into its holster.
The screwdriver had hit the guard’s femur and was stuck there. Smith tried to get hold of it again as the man drew back a hand to drive down into the crouched American’s neck. He didn’t fully compensate for the weakness in his thigh, though, and the brief hesitation was all Smith needed. He leaped upward, slamming the back of his head into the man’s chin. He staggered to the side as Smith used his superior weight to drive him toward the wall and buckle his injured leg. He put his hand over the man’s face and shoved downward as they fell, ramming the back of his head into the flagstone floor. The give was noticeable as his skull collapsed.
Smith grabbed the Sig Sauer and spun to see the computer tech trying to escape through the door. Ito had his arms wrapped around the younger man from behind and while it wasn’t a particularly powerful effort, it was enough to keep the tech’s hand from making firm contact with the palm reader.
