The Blood Code (A Super Agent Novel) (Entangled Edge)

by Misty Evans

  Best laid plans…

  He should have made something up about the code, instead of telling Ivanov the truth. But he hadn’t known Ivanov had a gene map of her blood. Ryan had figured he’d have to obtain one, and that would buy Anya— and Ryan— more time.

  The only thing Ryan could hope for was that the president wasn’t stupid. His fixation with genes and royalty made the truth the most effective weapon against him. Nuclear war or not, if Ivanov believed Anya was still worth something to him and the future royal dynasty of Russia, he’d think twice about killing her.

  At least that’s what Ryan had told himself. The reality was, in his light-headed state, he couldn’t come up with a more believable story.

  The lock on the command center door was computerized. Frustration had made him do stupid things, like shoot at the bulletproof glass, but logic had finally come through and stopped him from sending a bullet into the keypad on the wall. Breaking the lock meant using his brain, not his brawn.

  Sweat ran down his face as he stumbled into the old command center. The bulky monitors and antiquated keyboards called to him.

  The spot where he’d made love to Anya mocked him.

  Unhooking the nearest keyboard from its hard drive, he snugged it under his useless arm and turned to run back to the new GI 42. The sudden movement made the room swim and he lost his balance, knocking his bad shoulder into the wall. Good thing his arm was numb.

  Get to Anya.

  Before the bastard kills her.

  Ryan pushed through the doorway and ran as fast as he could through the old presidential quarters, bathroom, and into the subway. His legs wobbled under him, and at times, darkness crowded his vision. He blinked away his fatigue, pushed through the pain, forced his legs to keep moving.

  Get to Anya.

  His shoe slipped in something slick and wet on the tiled floor of the subway, and he skated off balance for several seconds before falling on his ass. The keyboard shot out from under his arm and skittered across the floor. For a second, he just sat there, black spots dancing in front of his eyes, body racked with pain where it wasn’t numb. He was so tired. If he could sit there for a minute—just one fucking minute—maybe he could recoup enough strength to get up again.

  Anya doesn’t have a minute. The world doesn’t have a minute.

  If Ivanov started a nuclear war, they were all going to die.

  On a basic human level, he cared about that. But if he was being honest with himself, the only person he cared about in that moment was the princess.

  His eyes closed for a second. Then forced them open. Slapped his face with his good hand. Rolled onto his side and started crawling toward the dropped keyboard.

  “Looking for this?”

  Certain he was delusional from loss of blood, Ryan blinked twice at the sight of Josh Devons and another man in front of him. They were dressed in dark blue coveralls with Russian name badges sewn on them.

  Devons held up the keyboard. He passed it to the other man and helped Ryan up. “Dude. You look like shit to the tenth.”

  He felt like shit to the nine hundredth. “What are you two doing here?”

  “Saving your ass from the looks of things.”

  The man next to Devons nodded. “John Quick, Team Pegasus.”

  Get to Anya. Get to Anya. “I have to get back. Anya…is…”

  He almost fainted. Devons caught him.

  Quick grabbed his other arm. “Where’s Natasha Radzoya?”

  “East.” He moved his head in the direction of Ivanov’s presidential bunker. He didn’t have the energy to explain, nor did he have time. He shrugged off the men’s steadying hands and grabbed the keyboard. “Follow me.”

  The keyboard safely under his arm once more, he pushed his legs into a run. Well, running was out of the question. It was more like a fast shuffle, but the rhythm worked with his mantra. Devons and Quick followed at his side, ready to catch him if he fell.

  Halfway there, an alarm went off, much like the one he and Anya had heard earlier in the old bunker. Lights in the tunnels flashed red, skittering and bouncing over the marble, stone, and metal. Ryan’s pulse stopped for a moment.

  This alarm, blaring like the Second Coming, meant only one thing.

  He was too late.

  Ivanov had declared war.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Devons called over the blaring.

  Ryan didn’t bother to answer, a new rush of adrenaline fueling his legs. When they arrived at the glass-walled command center and looked inside, Anya sat in a chair staring into space. She was covered with blood. Natasha was on the floor, dead by the looks of things. Quick swore under his breath.

  Through the bulletproof walls, Ryan heard a faint, computerized female voice counting down in Russian from thirty.

  All the screens on the far walls showed nuclear silos around the outskirts of Moscow. Their steel doors were opening, launchers rising.

  “Holy fuck,” Devons said as he realized what was happening.

  With his left hand, Ryan tore off the outer covering of the door’s keypad. Breaking the code would take too long. He had to override it.

  He jammed the end of the keyboard’s cord into the USB outlet. Hit several keys and watched words file across the digital display.

  Inside the room, Ivanov’s head jerked up. Ryan met his gaze through the glass. The security system must have announced an intruder trying to override the lock.

  Dropping the keyboard to the floor, Ryan wiped blood off his hands and fell to his knees in front of it. “Come on, come on,” he pleaded with the keypad.

  A moment later, he felt a heavy gaze boring into him. The Russian president ignored Devons and Quick and stared down at Ryan with a smile, egging him on. Ivanov’s face was smeared with blood but Ryan couldn’t see any visible facial wound. Was it Anya’s blood?

  Logic told him yes. She’d fought the bastard. Where was that hellcat now when he needed her?

  Andreev’s gun—the one he’d relieved the dead man of—was in the small of Ryan’s back and fully loaded, but the minute he pressed the key to override the locking system and open the door, Ivanov would shoot him before he could pull the trigger.

  “You two armed?” he asked Devons and Quick.

  “We couldn’t get weapons into the subway, but we have these.” Devons drew a hammer from his coveralls. Quick drew a large, commercial-grade wrench.

  Better than nothing.

  Something happened inside the room. Ivanov looked over his shoulder at the screens on the wall. Ryan hit the last keystroke, and then paused a finger over the Russian word for Enter.

  This was it.

  Still distracted, Ivanov continued to look behind him, so Ryan drew the gun from his waistband and tapped the key with the end of the barrel.

  Whoosh.

  As the sliding door opened, Ryan raised the gun to fire at Ivanov, but the man was lying on the floor. Anya stood over him, chest heaving, and a fierce light in her eyes. The Russian flag, from pole to weighted bottom, was in her hand.

  She’d belted the president with his own flag.

  Tossing it on top of the unconscious man, she removed the gun from Ivanov’s hand and palmed it like a pro. Her left hand was dripping blood all over the floor. Ryan motioned at Devons to bandage her hand “We have to stop the launch. I rearranged the code when I read it to him, but he figured out what I was doing, snatched the file out of my hands, and entered it himself.”

  As if to punctuate her words, the computerized female voice came from the speakers overhead, still counting down in Russian, “Twenty.”

  Ryan staggered to his feet, stepped over the unconscious president, and hugged Anya to him as Devons secured his undershirt around her bleeding hand. He buried his nose in her hair, but she pulled back, grabbing his arm to steady him as she led him to the main computer. “Can you stop it?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Of course,” Ryan lied. They only had a few seconds before the whole wor
ld changed. He wanted to spend those last few seconds holding her. Telling her that he loved her.

  “Eighteen.”

  Instead, he had to save the world.

  And he had no flippin’ idea how to override an ICBM launch program. Where was Del when you needed a super geek?

  “Seventeen.”

  His left hand flew across the keys even before he fully sat down, looking for any way to get inside the program. Surprise, surprise, like most of the modern world, it ran on a Windows-based system. An extremely high-tech, highly encrypted system, running on layers of Russian passwords that consisted of code names and biometric scans.

  “Sixteen.”

  For the next few seconds, he worked at getting behind the program, finding some kind of administration log-in, password, or other config system he could override. The alarm continued to wail, lights continued to flash. The system continued to count down.

  “Twelve.”

  He started to admit he couldn’t do it, but when he looked up into Anya’s eyes—as well as Devons’s and Quick’s—and saw confidence shining in them, he swallowed the truth. They all believed in him. Believed he could pull off a miracle.

  “Eleven.”

  “Get away from that computer!”

  Anya whirled around, and Ryan saw Ivanov was on his feet, staggering toward them.

  “Ten.”

  What did Conrad always say? When the shit gets too deep, pull the plug.

  Unfortunately, pulling the computer’s plug wasn’t that simple. And now Ivanov was once again getting in the way.

  “Nine.”

  Devons raised his hammer, but Anya stayed his arm, looked at Ryan. “You stop the launch. I’ll take care of Ivanov.”

  The hellcat was back. She raised the gun and pointed Ivanov’s own weapon at his head. “You killed my parents. You killed my grandmother.”

  “Eight.”

  Windows was the easiest software in the world to hack for passwords. Ryan found the start menu, clicked shutdown. Miracle of miracles a window popped up and asked him what he wanted to do. Shut down or restart.

  “Seven.”

  Ivanov stopped in his tracks. Egomaniac that he was, he was smart enough to save his own skin. “I did what I had to for Russia.”

  “Six.”

  Ryan hit restart. The system balked. He hit the F8 key. Windows took him to a safe mode startup screen.

  Anya fingered the trigger on the gun. “Russia, my ass. You did this for yourself.”

  “Five.”

  Control panel. User accounts.

  Come on, come on.

  Ryan searched the passwords.

  “Four.”

  There was no termination password, and he didn’t have time to type in all the different passwords to find one that would override the system.

  “Three.”

  Pull the plug. But how? Blow up the computer? Remove the motherboard? He grabbed the CPU. Screws held the protective plates in place.

  “Two.”

  “How do we stop the launch?” Anya demanded from Ivanov. A lump had appeared on the side of his head above his ear. “Tell us!”

  “You can’t stop it.”

  A dozen nuclear missiles sat locked and loaded for launch. Anya huffed out a heavy sigh, face scrunched in frustration.

  “One.”

  The screen in front of Ryan went to black. A DOS screen appeared. A screen with one directive. One beautiful Russian directive, asking if he wanted to abort.

  Someone—probably the original programmer, Peter Radzoya—had had the good sense to give the president an out in case he changed his mind.

  Ryan typed DA. YES. Windows took over again. A new screen appeared.

  Stunned, he could only stare at the words as he mentally translated them.

  Bio-scanner confirmation needed. Twenty seconds to launch.

  The counter flipped to twenty. The disembodied female voice started a new countdown.

  Damn it. Ryan slapped the desktop.

  Anya’s gaze darted between him, Ivanov, and the screens on the far wall. “What happened? Did you stop it?”

  The computer clock continued counting down. “Not yet. The bio-scanner wants confirmation to abort.”

  “What kind of confirmation?”

  “Fingerprints? Retina? I don’t know.”

  Anya kept the gun trained on Ivanov as she scooted backward toward the bio-scanner. An outline of a hand was lit on the glass. She wiped her uninjured hand on her pants, laid it on the scanner, and used the gun to depress a button. The scanner made noises and began working.

  It only took a few seconds for it to process, but nothing changed on the screen in front of him. There was only six seconds until launch. “It didn’t work.”

  “Damn it.” She looked at her hand. “Does it need my genetic code, rather than my fingerprints?”

  Ivanov chuckled in that condescending manner he had. “I’m the only one who can stop the launch.” He waggled his fingers at them. “And I will never stop it.”

  Ivanov’s fingerprints? Ryan doubted it would be that easy, but he was the president.

  Anya laughed, a hysterical laugh full of frustration. “Of course. It’s your fingerprints that it needs.” Her hand firmed on the gun. “Put your hand on that scanner.”

  The Russian president flipped her the bird.

  Anya stilled. Narrowed her eyes.

  “Aim for his stomach,” Ryan advised. “Bigger target. Plus the bio-scanner reads for a pulse along with the fingerprint. Kill him and it won’t work.”

  Without so much as blinking, she did as he instructed. She pulled the trigger.

  The president’s body jerked, and he stumbled backward several feet before toppling to the floor. Blood oozed from his stomach and he cried out, clutching at the wound and rolling over. He came up on his hands and knees, but went down again when Devons kicked him. Quick grabbed one arm and Devons grabbed the other. Together, they pulled Ivanov across the floor to the scanner.

  Muscling him around wasn’t easy. He fought them until Ryan knocked him in the head with the butt of his gun. Anya raised his arm, and Quick and Devons shoved on his body until they managed to get his hand on the scanner to read his fingerprints.

  The scanner hummed to life, read what it needed. Asked for a retinal scan.

  They all exchanged a frustrated glance. Quick grabbed Ivanov by his short hair, Devons helped Ryan haul the man’s face up to the scanner. A red line moved from top to bottom.

  “Did it work?” Quick yelled over the alarms.

  Ryan let Ivanov’s body slump to the ground, the last of his own strength giving out. He stumbled to the chair, missed grabbing the back of it, and went down.

  But not before he saw the screen.

  Launch aborted.

  The female voice stopped in mid-count. The alarm died away.

  “Ryan!” Anya was by his side in an instant, her cool hands on his face. He smiled up at her as black shadows encroached on the edges of his vision.

  She returned his smile, even though her brows scrunched together in concern. “Did you learn that at the CIA? How to stop a nuclear missile launch?”

  “YouTube.”

  Her brows smoothed out and she laughed.

  The shadows grew bigger. The numbness in his chest began to spread. “Don’t talk about what happened here to anyone but Conrad Flynn, okay? Nobody but him.”

  She brushed some hair from his forehead. “Conrad Flynn?”

  “Solomon. Don’t talk to anyone else, but tell him everything.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry. I’ll get you to a doctor. I’ll fix this…” She glanced around at Devons and Quick, and did one of those deep intakes of breath. “I’ll fix everything.”

  Before he could tell her he loved her, she kissed his lips.

  Soft, warm, and the sweetest lips he’d ever kissed, he closed his eyes.

  Anya was okay.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’
t die.

  Anya watched Ryan’s chest rise and fall. He was breathing. Shallow, but steady.

  Always steady. Even unconscious, he was a rock of steadfast reassurance.

  “Okay, Ryan Jones, or whatever your real name is, I’ll make you a deal. You keep breathing, and I’ll get us out of here.”

  She nodded at him as if he’d answered her. He was breathing, but he looked like hell. He was too pale for her liking, and his skin was cold.

  The men who’d come back with Ryan tried to move her out of the way. She refused to let go of him.

  The one that looked like a football player patted her shoulder and winked. She remembered him from the cabin in the woods. “Nice job. You did good. Great, actually. No wonder Smitty went off the reservation for you.”

  Smitty? Another name to add to her list. “Can you help him?”

  “I can.” The other man detached her hand from Ryan’s with a gentle touch. “My name’s John Quick. I’ve had emergency medical training. We need to stop his bleeding and find something to cover him with to conserve his body heat. Think you can find a blanket?”

  Anya stood and looked around. Her hand was still bleeding profusely, and she needed to rewrap it. She walked over and snatched up the Russian flag lying on the ground, ripped it from the pole. It was too silky and satiny to absorb blood, but it would work as a blanket. She pushed Quick out of the way so she could drape it over Ryan.

  He and the football player exchanged a glance that said she was losing it, but she didn’t care. She bent down and tucked the flag around Ryan’s lifeless body. “Now what?”

  Mr. Football drew her aside. “You’re going into shock. We need to look after your hand and warm you up, too.”

  Shock. She’d been in shock mentally since this all began. Grabbing the other flag, she jerked it off the pole, and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Just worry about Ryan, okay?”

  Quick used a chair to elevate Ryan’s feet. “Find something new to bandage your hand and stop the bleeding.”

  Anya’s hat lay on the floor where it had fallen earlier. She took Ivanov’s dirk from his belt, cut off the earflaps and chin straps. Then she went to work fashioning a padded tourniquet around her hand. A low buzzing set up shop in her ears, either a phantom echo from the alarm or she was going to faint.