Dmitri gave his boss a worried look. First the colonel tearing his eyes out and dying in front of them, now this. “I hear no voice.”
Barsk held his hand up, silencing his bodyguard, straining to hear. Dmitri grabbed his arm and pointed at the snow to their left. A line was being drawn in it, but there was nothing visible that could be doing it.
The drawing turned into Cyrillic letters, rapidly appearing in the fresh white surface.
BETRAYAL
“What the hell does that mean?” Barsk asked as the first word was completed.
The invisible marker kept writing.
DMITRI
Barsk turned to his bodyguard. The man’s face had gone white. His mouth flopped open as he searched for words.
“You can’t— ” Dmitri began. He shook his head. “This is not possible. Words cannot appear in snow.”
“And men don’t rip their own eyeballs out,” Barsk noted.
GRU
Barsk reached for his pistol, but Dmitri was faster, dropping the suitcase in the snow and swinging the submachine gun up. The two other guards aimed their weapons at Dmitri.
“Don’t!” Dmitri yelled. “Tell them to back off” he ordered Barsk.
“Wait,” Barsk ordered the guards. He stared at the bodyguard. “It is true. The words are true.”
“You will find out how true when I take you in,” Dmitri said. “I’ve listened to— ” He paused as he and Barsk heard the sound of something moving in the snow to the right. They both turned. Footprints, large ones leaving the impression of clawed feet, appeared in the virgin snow. They were moving, circling in. But there was nothing there.
Dmitri fired a quick burst in the direction of the footprints. Now they both could sense more than see something moving, almost faster than their eyeballs could track, a hazy silhouette of something big, over seven feet tall, with two arms and two legs and what appeared to their disbelieving eyes to be wings on the back. It was on Dmitri before he could fire again. One of the arms flashed forward, into Dmitri’s gut.
Barsk could hear the skin rip. Dmitri screamed as his body was lifted into the air. The other arm of the shadow creature whirled down, and the two halves of Dmitri’s body flew in opposite directions. They fell into the snow, twenty feet apart, blood slowly staining the white.
Barsk had forgotten how to breathe. He stared up, the vague outline of the creature rippling, but still he could see through to what was behind it. Except for the eyes. Two bright red eyes, seven feet above the ground, glared at him.
Then it was gone, just as quickly. Barsk took a step back. He paused, still holding his breath, but nothing happened. He darted forward and scooped up the case Dmitri had dropped, then ran for the Mercedes, not caring how wet or torn up his boots got. He jumped into the backseat as the guards got into the front, one of them taking the wheel. The car skidded as the driver hit the accelerator too quickly, then the studded tires caught and the car raced for the park’s gate.
Behind, near the two bloody bodies, a whirlwind began to circle faster and faster, the unnatural wind blowing out the writing in the snow and the strange footprints, until all that was left were the two dead men. And then all was still.
Chapter Five
“What exactly do you want from my men?” Colonel Metter asked.
“We want your people to continue the Psychic Warrior project,” Raisor replied. “We need trained personnel from Trojan Warrior. People who once they go into the virtual world and then come out are capable of conducting military operations. As you know from your superiors, Colonel Metter, the Pentagon is very interested in this program and desires you give me your complete support.”
“I understand that, but you’ve just informed me that the last person to do this died,” Colonel Metter said.
“That problem has been corrected,” Dr. Hammond interjected. “It was a freak accident.”
“Doesn’t this RV stuff you’re talking about take a special person and specific training?”
“Yes,” Hammond said. “But as we discussed, the men on this list are ready due to their Trojan Warrior training. Also, we’ve simplified the procedure to a large extent and we have a very sophisticated computer that provides the vast majority of the support needed.”
“You also said at the beginning that there was an urgency to all this,” Metter said. “The Chief of Staff also told me the same thing when he called this morning. Perhaps you could tell us what is causing this urgency to implement Psychic Warrior?”
Raisor answered that. “We have a live mission that needs to be conducted in eight days. That is why we need your people right away.”
“What is the live mission?” Metter asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” Raisor said. “Only those actually participating have a need to know.”
“Eight days is not much time,” Metter said. “Can you train men to do this Psychic Warrior stuff in eight days?”
Raisor said, “We’re here because your men have years of training as Special Operations soldiers and they’ve been prepped to do this through their Trojan Warrior training. Dr. Hammond’s people will get them ‘over the fence’ into the virtual world. That is the big breakthrough and the part of the program that came from the medical side. We can tap directly into the brain and give it the extra help it needs to go over.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Metter said.
Raisor pulled a sheet of paper out of his briefcase. He slid it across the table to Colonel Metter. “That is my authorization to task you to support this mission. I’d love to stay here and answer questions, but time is of the essence. We have to get back, with the team, to our headquarters and begin training.” Raisor looked at his watch. “We have two helicopters due in at the airfield in an hour. We don’t have much time if your team”— he pointed at Captain Anderson— “is going to get their gear together.”
Metter didn’t touch the copy of the orders. “These are my men. My responsibility. I will do as I am ordered, but let me tell you both something.” A muscle in Metter’s jaw quivered. “You screw with my men and I will not simply stand by.”
“That’s very noble, Colonel,” Raisor said, his tone overly polite. “I assure you, we all want Psychic Warrior to succeed.”
For the first time, Dalton picked up a sense of sincerity in the agent’s tone, which he found as disturbing as the previous lack of emotion. Raisor cared about this mission, Dalton realized.
“Can you tell me what the real-world urgency is?” Metter asked.
“I am afraid not.”
Colonel Metter stood. “All right. Captain Anderson, Master Sergeant Trilly, get the men Sergeant Major Dalton selects and all their equipment together and move to the airfield.”
Anderson and Trilly saluted and walked out of the conference room to wait for Dalton in his office. Raisor began breaking down his slide projector with Hammond’s help.
Dalton walked out of the room with Metter. “Sir, I request permission to participate in this training and the mission to follow.”
Metter paused in the door separating his office from the sergeant major’s. “What about your wife?”
“Sir, it doesn’t look like her situation is going to change any time soon. She’s in the hospital and doesn’t need me at home like she used to, to take care of her,” Dalton said. “I’ve been here two years without going on a deployment, and I appreciate you allowing me that and your concern. But I think it’s time I earned my pay.”
“I don’t know,” Metter said. “I’d hate— ”
“Sir,” Dalton cut in, “I would rather be doing something than sitting here with too much time on my hands. Plus, if I don’t go, that knocks them down to only six men. I think they’re going to need every body they can get.”
Metter folded his arms. “You know something’s jumping for them to be tasking a team like this.”
Dalton nodded. “I don’t think they planned on bringing us in on Psychic Warrior for a while. Or even at all, g
iven they dropped the ball on it the last couple of years. Something real serious has caused their timetable to get moved up.”
Metter still had his arms folded, his eyes staring hard at the sergeant major. “I want you to come back from this.”
“I plan on it, sir.”
“Do you?” Metter didn’t wait for an answer. “All right. But you might be stepping on Trilly’s toes. That should be his team.”
“Trilly’s weak, sir, and this is a composite team. I think rank will have to prevail. I’ll work it out with Captain Anderson.”
Metter smiled. “Good. I don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about Raisor or Hammond, and I certainly don’t think either of them are going to be updating me on what’s happening with the team.”
Dalton knew there were many commanders who would just wave good-bye to the team and then drop the whole thing from their plate, focusing on things that were of more immediate concern.
Metter nodded. “All right. Go with them. Make sure they don’t get screwed. I’ll check on your wife.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A weapon!” Barsk threw the papers and CD-ROM disk down on the desk. “That is what you wanted. Not this. Seogky double-crossed us! This is nothing but old papers from the archives.”
The person across the desk reached out and picked up the papers and CD-ROM. The hand was old and wrinkled, the skin mottled with liver spots. A lace cuff covered the wrist, part of a rather old-fashioned dress the owner of the hand wore. She was a woman in her mid-seventies, almost the archetype of the stolid woman of the Soviet days, with a blocky body and gray hair pinned in a bun. She did not seem to fit the room she was in, a modern office with teak furniture and walls lined with bookcases. The large, bulletproof window behind her showed a view from the top floor of the tallest office building in Moscow. Steel shutters were adjusted inside the window, deflecting the evening light.
There had always been crime in Russia. Under the Communists, the top criminals had been in bed with the government, their actions controlled. A good case might be made that during the rule of Stalin, the worst criminal in the country’s history had been in charge of the government. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had been the government that had fallen out of the bed, leaving the Mafia holding the reins in a country whose populace was totally unprepared for a free market economy. The unbridled Russian Mafia stepped forward with a vengeance.
In the decade following the fall, the Mafia grew to the point where it rivaled the government for control of the country. The woman behind the desk had been at the very forefront of the growth. In fact, she knew that the Mafia was stronger than the government in many ways, especially with regard to the economy. The previous year, the country had imported a total of sixty billion dollars in Western goods; over half of that had been imported illegally by the Mafia. In Moscow, the murder rate was standing at approximately one hundred Mafia-related killings a day. No one was being arrested for these crimes.
The old woman knew the numbers. She read the Western papers that wrote stories about her country, because Russian papers were under the control of the Mafia and printed lies. She was one of the seven major chiefs in the Moscow Mafia. She had gotten where she was by being smart and by being farsighted. And that vision told her they were milking the cow to death. Even the Russian people, dulled as they were by centuries of oppression and hardship, could not bear up under the weight of such crime much longer. The last time it had gotten this bad, there had been a revolution in the midst of a world war and three quarters of a century of Communism. But there were other cows to be milked, beyond Russia’s borders, and that was where her sight was aimed.
The woman adjusted her bifocals as she scanned the documents that Barsk had gotten from Colonel Seogky.
“This is exactly what we wanted,” she said.
“But— ” Barsk was surprised. “But that talks of something old, decades old. I don’t— ”
“Do you think I would have sent you on a wild-goose chase?”
Barsk straightened. “No, Oma.” The word was the Russian familiar for grandmother, and the woman behind the highly polished desk was indeed related in that way to Barsk. But she was called that by all in her inner circle, a sign of respect in the Russian matriarchal society; and in the dark and brutal world of the Russian Mafia, it was a word spoken with deep respect and fear.
Oma held the papers up. “Do you think that whatever killed Colonel Seogky would have done so if these were worthless? Or given up Dmitri to you?”
Barsk shook his head. “No, Oma.”
Oma sighed. “Grandson, I have tried to teach you, but you are thickheaded. You must understand that where there is smoke, there is fire. None of those things would have happened if these papers were not very important. The GRU turned Dmitri and there was a reason for that.”
“You knew about Dmitri?” Barsk asked.
Oma looked over the rim of her glasses. “Of course. But he was your responsibility.”
“He could have killed me!” Barsk objected.
“He could have. It was a risk but I felt it was a good learning point for you. One cannot learn from words. Experience is the best teacher. If one does not survive the experience, then that is also best.”
Barsk bowed his head to hide his anger. “Yes, Oma.”
She turned to a specific page. “This is what we want. The phased-displacement generator.”
“What is it, Oma?”
“Part of a very powerful weapon in the right hands.”
“Part of?” Dmitri asked.
Oma put the papers down on the desk. “What do you think it was that attacked Seogky and killed Dmitri?”
Barsk swallowed. “I don’t know, Oma.”
The old woman smiled, revealing steel-capped teeth, ruining the matronly image. “You’ve thought about it on the drive back here. Tell me your best guess.”
“A devil— a Chyort as Seogky said— such as my mother used to tell me about,” Barsk said.
“A Chyort?” Oma did not laugh. “Your mother was a good woman but prone to flights of fancy. I kept her well insulated from the real world. However, you are not far off.” She tapped the papers with a finger. “These give information about the location of a piece of a weapon that will give us power beyond anything you can imagine. I want you to prepare a mission to the site listed in these papers and recover the phased-displacement generator.”
Barsk had already been reprimanded once. He knew better than to risk twice, even though he knew the difficulty in executing what she had just ordered. “Yes, Oma.”
“This is very important, Barsk,” Oma said. “I will give you more than enough support to accomplish this.”
“Yes, Oma.”
“I will send Leksi with you. Listen to him.”
Barsk’s jaw tightened. Leksi was his grandmother’s chief assassin. A man with no soul. Barsk had seen and dealt much death, but every time he was in Leksi’s presence he felt a chill in his heart. “Yes, Oma.”
She interlaced her fingers on her lap as she sat back in the deeply padded leather chair. “Barsk, you must understand some things. You thought you were going after information that would lead you to nuclear weapons, did you not?”
Barsk hesitated, then nodded.
“Nuclear weapons are another piece of the puzzle we need, but Leksi is in charge of doing that and he is close to achieving it,” Oma said. “I anticipate, if all goes well, having nuclear warheads under my control shortly.”
Barsk kept his face expressionless, although his stomach was churning at the implications. “Yes, Oma.”
“The problem here in Russia has never been getting the nuclear bombs. There are many left over from the Cold War. The problem has been, what is the point in having them if you cannot do anything with them? There have been thousands of nuclear weapons here in Russia. Have the Americans ever been truly afraid of them? During the Cold War, yes, but not recently. Because the biggest bomb in the wo
rld here in Russia is not a threat. But the smallest bomb, in the United States, that is a threat, yes?”
“Yes, Oma.”
“That is what you are looking for. A means for us to be able to use the bombs once we have them. Do you understand?”
Barsk shook his head. “No.”
Oma smiled. “Good. You are learning. Just do as I ask.”
“This phased-displacement generator,” Barsk said. “It can fire a nuclear bomb to America?”
Oma shook her head. “Not by itself. But it is a necessary piece.”
“But how?”
“That is beyond you.” She slid the papers and CD across to him. “Have you wondered how I knew to contact Seogky and how I knew he had access to these highly classified papers?”
Barsk shook his head. “No, Oma.”
“You lie.” The words were said lightly, with an edge of humor. Oma smiled. “You’ve thought about it and you assumed my information came in the usual way. From a spy, from a paid informant.” She leaned forward. “But this information did not come to me in the usual way.”
“How did you find out, Oma?”
“Why, from the Chyort you met in the park, of course.”
Chapter Six
In all directions, white-coated mountains covered the countryside below the helicopter. Seated in the cargo bay of the Blackhawk, Dalton leaned back and took in the sights, every now and then spotting a ski slope he’d visited over the course of the last few years.
He had not only skied the mountains they were flying over, he had spent many days and nights traversing them. Part of the Trojan Warrior program had consisted of long, overland movements to put some of the theories they had learned to the test. Dalton had participated in the training for two reasons— one was the same reason he was on board this chopper: to make sure the men were taken care of. The other was because the limited information they had received beforehand about the content of the training had interested him.
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