Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8)

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Hey,” he said. “You guys want to share? What’s going on? We were talking about your little secret in Virginia.”

  Catherine’s eyes flashed toward him for a moment, but then she spoke again in Russian. “He’s right. We should find out how much he knows. And how he learned about it.”

  The Russian waved a dismissive hand. “That doesn’t matter now. The only enemy that can stop us is time. Go to Volosgrad. We must have the Firebird.”

  “What about the spy?”

  Lynn flinched ever so slightly, but the reaction did not go unnoticed. The Russian turned and stared at her, studying her face intently for several long seconds. Then, he turned back to Catherine. “I will deal with Peter Machtchenko.”

  22

  The tunnels seemed to go on forever, endless miles of old brick and mildew. More than once, they were turned back by flooded passages, but Peter never lost his sense of direction. Bishop could do little more than follow along and hope that her father knew what he was doing. Whether it was his unerring navigational abilities or just plain luck, they eventually came to a narrow staircase, carved into the bedrock. It brought them up into a room cluttered with boxes and other forgotten detritus.

  Peter touched a finger to his lips, then crept through the room to another staircase, this one a rickety wooden construct. He ascended it and then eased open the door at the top. “It’s clear. Come on.”

  The door let out into a hallway in what looked like a rundown apartment building. “Where are we?”

  “The entrance to Ramenki Forty-Three. One of them anyway. Stalin built an entire city underneath the university. A shelter in which he and senior party officials could survive the nuclear war that was certain to come.” Peter chuckled softly. “Nothing fuels accomplishment like paranoia.”

  “How did you know about this entrance?”

  “I read about it on an urbex website. Urban explorers. Bored college students have been exploring the old tunnels for years, looking for new places to party. This is one of the few entrances that doesn’t just lead back to the main subway line. Even if they figure out that we made it into the Metro-Two network, they’ll assume that we’ll have to come back up in one of the Metro stations.”

  They emerged from the building on a mostly deserted residential street. A light dusting of snow was falling from the night sky, the chilly air making it powdery like ash. Bishop finally got her bearings when they reached Vernadskogo Prospekt, a main thoroughfare just to the south of Moscow State University.

  Peter pointed to a brightly lit yellow sign half a block away, a pair of golden arches that resembled the letter ‘M.’ It was a universal symbol—like the red octagon of a stop sign—that meant the same thing in almost every country on Earth. “Big Mac?”

  Bishop was incredulous. “You want to eat? What about King and mother?”

  “We need to get off the street. Figure out our next move. Might as well do it over food and hot coffee.”

  The prospect of coffee won her over, and Bishop waited until they were seated in the brightly lit plastic environment of the restaurant, savoring their repast, to address the more pressing issue. “King told us to go to Yekaterinburg.”

  Peter chewed a French fry thoughtfully. “Yes. You should head there. If your mother and Jack made it out, that’s where they’ll go.”

  She heard the implicit message in the statement. Peter did not intend to accompany her. “You think they were captured?”

  “No. I mean, anything is possible, but your mother is too canny to fall into a trap.”

  “Then why are you not coming with me?”

  Peter picked up another fry but just held it between thumb and forefinger, as if he could not decide what to do with it. “I have to talk to Vladimir.”

  “The Vladimir who set you up?”

  “That’s what I need to find out. If he did, then that is something we will discuss at great length. If he did not, he may be in great danger. Either way, I need to know if he is an ally or an enemy.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “He knows all about us, Asya. About your mother and me. If he has betrayed us, he will never stop looking.” He shrugged. “And there is the question of honor.”

  “You mean payback.”

  Peter smiled. “If you prefer.”

  “Then I will help you.”

  Peter shook his head. “No. You have your own mission. And I will be more effective by myself.”

  Bishop frowned. As much as she hated the idea of leaving him, everything he had said was true. He had escaped from the Lubyanka without any help from her. He’d navigated the passages of the underworld, where she would have been completely lost. She would just be a burden to him. And she did have a job to do. The team was waiting for her and King to arrive.

  The team!

  “I should call Deep Blue. King might have already made contact.”

  Peter considered this for a moment. “You have a secure line of communication with him?”

  She took out her mobile phone and regarded it like it was a hand grenade. Acting on King’s instructions, she had not brought along one of Deep Blue’s fancy quantum communicators, a decision she now regretted. But there was no reason to believe the Russian intelligence service had her number. “I think so.”

  At a nod from Peter, she dialed Lewis Aleman’s number. The call seemed to take forever to connect, but when it finally rang through, Deep Blue answered immediately. “Bishop. Is everything all right?”

  She thought he sounded unusually anxious. “I think so. Have you heard from King?”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “We were separated.” She decided it was probably best not to go into details, just in case someone was eavesdropping.

  “Things here have gotten a little…sticky. We could really use your help. If it’s not already too late.”

  Bishop did not like the sound of that. She looked at Peter, frowned and then said, “I’ll be there soon.”

  “Yesterday would be good.”

  She ended the call and turned again to her father. “They need me.”

  He nodded.

  “You will come to Yekaterinburg when you are finished?” she pressed.

  “If I can. Depending on what I find out from Vladimir, I might have to go dark again, at least for a while. But I will find a way to get a message to you first.” He reached across the table and gripped her hand. “I’ll be fine, Asya. I know what I’m doing.”

  23

  Ural Mountains, Russia

  “It worked,” Knight shouted. In his left eye, in magnification mode, he could see a jagged line spreading across the slope, connecting the dots where his bullets had weakened the ice sheet. A low rumble heralded the onset of the avalanche. He lowered the rifle and turned to the others. “We should be going.”

  Even as he said it, he realized that it was already too late. The first wave of primate monsters—Russian yetis, or whatever they were—had already reached Queen and Rook. They wouldn’t be able to break contact for even a moment. The avalanche was going to hit them along with the attacking horde of yetis, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it from happening.

  But maybe he could survive it.

  He twisted the toes of his ski boots, popping them out of the quick-release bindings, and then raised his rifle to help fend off the yeti attack. He figured he would have time for only one shot.

  Rook was still on his feet, acquiring targets and firing like an automaton. Queen, however, was in trouble. One of the beasts had tackled her to the ground, and despite her best efforts to fight it off, she was badly overmatched by the hulking monster. Knight sighted on the back of the creature’s head and fired, killing it instantly. The dead yeti slumped over Queen’s diminutive form, pinning her down.

  And then the avalanche was upon them.

  The first thing Knight felt was the blast of wind driven ahead of the slide. Loose snow particles swarmed around him, creating a blinding whiteout t
hat concealed the larger pieces of ice that he knew were coming next. As soon as he felt the cascading snow strike his legs, he leaned into it. He started moving his arms in a clawing motion, as if he might somehow climb to the top of the onrushing mass. In a way, that was exactly what he was trying to do. Even when the slide slammed into him with enough force to knock the wind out of him, sweeping him off his feet, he kept at it. The avalanche spun him around, but the constant swimming-motion kept him from being completely buried. After a few seconds of brutal punishment, the energy of the slide dissipated. He was left buried up to his waist in chunks of ice and clumped snow.

  He immediately began digging at the snow around him, kicking his legs to loosen the snow’s grip on him. After a few seconds, he was able to squirm out of the hole. He took a moment to catch his breath, and then another to take stock of his situation.

  No injuries. He still had his pack and an unused SIG P228 in a shoulder holster under his jacket, but his skis and the rifle were gone, buried somewhere under the snow. The sacrifice of the skis had been unavoidable. If he had been wearing them when the avalanche hit, he would not have been able to stay mostly above the slide. He reached up to the side of his head and found the earpiece to his comm unit. It was askew under his polar fleece cap, but still in working order.

  “This is Knight,” he said, only now aware that his teeth were chattering. “Queen. Rook. You there?”

  There was an answer but it was not from his teammates. “Knight,” Deep Blue said. “Thank God.”

  “Blue, where are the others? Do you see them?”

  “Negative. There was too much blowing snow when the avalanche hit. They must have been buried.”

  Knight stared out across the newly altered landscape, looking for anything that might mark their location. He saw a few dark spots—yeti limbs protruding from the snow—but there was no sign of Queen or Rook. Still, he did not give way to despair. Most avalanche victims didn’t die from the initial impact. The real killer was suffocation. Rook and Queen were under there somewhere, and he had only a few minutes to find them.

  “Backscatter!” Deep Blue said, the shout so loud in Knight’s ear that he winced. “You can use backscatter vision to see through the snow.”

  Knight nodded and blinked slowly to activate the X-ray mode in his new artificial eye. The effect was unbelievably eerie. The snow vanished completely, making it seem that he was hovering in mid-air. Solid objects, which looked like three-dimensional shadows, were floating just below him, as if suspended in the ether. He saw skeletons—dozens of them—some still moving, struggling to get free of the invisible grave in which they had been prematurely interred. The resolution of the backscatter image wasn’t fine enough to allow him to differentiate primate bone structure from human—but their size alone was indication enough. He kept looking, scanning back and forth as he headed toward the approximate location where he had last seen Rook and Queen.

  He spotted a ski—probably one of his own—two or three feet below, but he did not attempt to retrieve it. A few steps further along, he saw two more skis close together, and then saw the skeletal shape still attached to them.

  “I found Rook!”

  He knelt above the shape and began digging furiously, scooping out snow by the armful until Rook’s motionless form was finally revealed. As soon as his shivering face was uncovered, Rook’s eyelids fluttered open. He looked up at Knight and managed to gasp a single word. “Queen?”

  Knight continued removing snow. “Not yet.”

  “Find her.”

  “Two of us will have a better chance of doing that.” He gripped Rook’s arm and pulled him to a semi-upright position.

  “I’m fine,” Rook insisted. He shook free of Knight’s grip and struggled to his feet.

  That was good enough for Knight. He resumed sweeping the area with backscatter vision, immediately spotting one of Rook’s pistols. The metal weapon was easily the most substantial thing he had seen since beginning the search. He tried to remember how close Rook had been to Queen before the avalanche. He began walking a spiral pattern away from the place where he had found Rook.

  He soon spotted a ski, almost certainly one of Queen’s, but it was attached to nothing. He found a ski pole, and then another ski, this one protruding out from beneath an enormous skeletal silhouette.

  Too big to be Queen. Dead yeti.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when a spectral black limb began moving beneath the snow.

  “Not dead yeti,” he muttered and kept going.

  “Queen!” Rook was on hands and knees, digging at the snow. Knight had no idea what had prompted him to look in that spot. Nothing was visible there. Knight turned away and kept looking. He found a small pistol, almost certainly Queen’s, and two more yeti skeletons, neither of which showed any signs of life.

  But where was Queen?

  “Blue, is there any way to track Queen’s comms? Can we triangulate the signal?”

  Deep Blue didn’t even have to think about the question. “Negative. The quantum ansible doesn’t work like a radio.”

  “There’s got to be something we haven’t tried. She’s running out of time.”

  There was a short pause and then Deep Blue’s voice came back. “Okay, no promises, but I’m going to send a high-frequency tone over the comm. You and Rook will need to switch yours off. You should be able to hear it, even under a few feet of snow.”

  “That’s more like it. Shutting down now.” He took the earpiece out and deactivated it, then turned to make sure Rook had gotten the message as well. He took a deep breath, held it and closed his eyes, listening for the high pitched tone that would reveal Queen’s whereabouts.

  At first, he heard nothing. Then, after a few seconds, he thought he heard the tone, but the more he strained to locate it, the less certain he became that his ears weren’t playing tricks on him. He resumed his backscatter survey, hoping that the combination of search techniques would increase the chances of finding Queen.

  “Here!” Rook shouted. “She’s here.”

  He had scrambled over to the exact spot where Knight had found Queen’s skis and the still living—or at least still moving—yeti buried under the snow. “Rook, she’s not…” He stopped, not because he heard the tone, but because from a different angle, he could see that there were two skeletal forms beneath the snow. The larger yeti had blocked his view of the smaller human form underneath. The movement he had seen had been Queen, pinned underneath the yeti that he had shot in the instant before the avalanche swept over them.

  He ran to Rook’s side and began furiously scooping away clumps of snow and ice. In seconds they had uncovered the dead yeti. Wisps of steam were rising off its still warm body.

  “We’re coming!” Rook shouted. “Hang on!”

  Knight grabbed a double-handful of shaggy hair, but when he tried to pull, it slipped from his grasp. The thing was prodigious, a literal 800-pound gorilla, or ape at least. He kept digging, trying to get under the creature for more leverage.

  Queen’s hand shot up from the snow, clutching the air. Knight could hear the tone now, a shrill pitch that set his teeth on edge, and less distinctly, muffled shouting.

  He pulled the comm unit from his pocket and turned it on. Even though it was held at arm’s length, the eardrum piercing tone made him wince. “Blue, we found her. Turn it off.”

  The comm instantly went silent, and Queen’s hand curled into a fist with the thumb raised.

  Rook got both hands underneath the yeti, and with a feral howl to rival anything the creature might have uttered when alive, he tried to lift it off Queen. The thing’s weight immediately caused him to sink deeper into the snow, cancelling out most of the gains he was making. But it was just enough for Knight to grab hold of Queen’s free hand and pull. Her head and shoulders emerged, and then, she erupted from the icy grave like a jack-in-the-box, landing atop Knight.

  “Hey, she’s mine. Get your own.” Rook’s quip sounded half-hearted, as if he wa
s trying to use humor to cover the emotional rollercoaster of almost losing her.

  Knight would have been content to simply lie back on the snow and rest, but he knew the ordeal was far from over. They were bruised and exhausted, soaked through with perspiration and melted snow, and the temperature would soon plunge well below zero. Rook and Queen, who had both been completely buried, were already looking a little blue.

  “I need to keep you guys warm while I pitch the tent.”

  Rook’s chattering teeth managed a weak grin. “Cut open the tauntaun. Stick us inside.”

  Knight wasn’t sure if Rook was making an obscure joke or babbling in the grip of hypothermic delirium. “Only as a last resort.”

  He slid his pack from his shoulders and dug into one of the pouches, producing a handful of chemical hand-warmers. He activated them all, stuffing them underneath his teammates’ ski clothes, where the warmers would at least keep their core temperature from dropping.

  He then took the tent from the pack, unfurling it with a snapping motion so it settled onto the snow like a blanket. He unzipped the entrance and then turned back to the others. “Get in there. Now.”

  The tent, even in its unraised state, would act like a bivvy sack, insulating the freezing couple, while Knight finished setting it up. Queen and Rook crawled inside without comment. The two human-shaped lumps looked like dead bodies at an accident scene, covered up to hide the grisly scene from curious passers-by.

  “Get those wet clothes off and keep each other warm,” he shouted. “If you don’t I’ll have to get naked and join you.”

  Rook managed a weak retort. “Not the threesome I was hoping for.”

  With his backscatter vision, Knight saw Queen punch Rook in the gut. Hard. Then they both started shedding clothes.

  That’s enough of that, he thought, blinking back to normal mode so he could focus on assembling the tent. The shock-corded fiberglass rods came together easily, but he couldn’t seem to make them fit in the metal grommets at the corners of the tent. The cold was taking its toll on him as well. It took him nearly two minutes to raise the tent—two minutes in which the sun dipped behind the mountains and the air became noticeably colder.