* * *
On a hill to the south a wide-angle video camera had been set up on orders from the CIA to send an image back to Bright Gate. The range area was supposed to be completely evacuated, but two officers from Fort Hood had stayed in the observation post, curious to see what the results of all the strange, high-level orders they had received would be. They had expected to see parachutes come out of the sky, perhaps carrying members of a Ranger battalion practicing a train takedown.
They were stunned when strange men appeared out of nothingness, firing with what looked like tubes in place of forearms and hands. Silhouettes splintered as small fireballs hit them.
Through his binoculars, one of the officers watched as a derelict tank was hit by a larger fireball that smashed through the front armor and exploded inside.
“Who the hell are these guys?” the officer asked his partner.
“What the hell are they?” the other officer asked in return as he focused in on one of the forms, seeing that the face was a featureless white mask.
* * *
It was going very well. Of course, Dalton reflected as he moved and fired, the silhouettes weren’t shooting back. That was perhaps the biggest concern he had. Despite Dr. Hammond’s assurances, he wasn’t absolutely confident that the avatars could sustain much damage or that they could be reconstituted as easily as she imagined. There was the issue of what had happened to Stith lurking in the back of his mind.
He did a forward roll behind a berm and fired, slicing a red silhouette in half. “Anderson?” he asked through Sybyl.
“We ’ve wiped the ORP out. No problem!” Anderson’s voice was excited, like a kid who had just won a big ball game.
Dalton didn’t blame him. It was intoxicating, being able to move and fire, to communicate instantly, to come in and out of reality. As he thought that, Dalton looked at a tank hulk fifty meters away. He faded out of the real, sped through the virtual, and popped into existence inside the tank. He “killed” all the crew, then “jumped” again to another position.
Without being asked, Sybyl was updating him on the position of the other members of the team, pushing the data through his consciousness without interfering with what he was doing. He could see that Anderson’s team was moving slowly in his direction, clearing out the terrain between them.
That was when the drones came in overhead. Three of them, flying in triangular formation, they were firing off flares to simulate weapons. Each was programmed with their flight route and had a wingspan of twenty feet. They were flying at two hundred miles an hour, low out of the setting sun.
Even as Dalton noted this unexpected development, he was getting the exact positions, directions, and speeds of the drones from Lieutenant Jackson. He swung up his tube and fired, as did Barnes. The drones were blasted out of the sky less than two seconds after they had been spotted.
“Behind you!” One of the RVers warned him.
Dalton spun, tube at the ready, but even before his avatar completed the turn, the RVer had shown him what was happening. A group of the blue silhouette targets had dropped their covering and were now red.
That lasted for less than a second as all six Special Forces men fired into the new targets.
Dalton paused. There were no more targets. The other members of his fireteam “jumped” to his position. Then Anderson’s team was there. He could see Raisor’s avatar floating to the north, watching, and he knew where the surprises had come from.
“Let’s go home,” Dalton ordered.
* * *
On the hillside, the two officers lowered their binoculars after watching the ten men’s arms shift into wings before they simply blinked out of existence.
“That couldn’t have been real,” one of the men whispered.
“Those targets are all destroyed,” the other noted. “That’s real.”
The first officer headed for the door of the bunker. “We weren’t supposed to be here. As far as I’m concerned, we didn’t see anything. We didn’t hear anything. We don’t know anything.”
* * *
“We wasted them!” Egan, the intelligence sergeant, was ecstatic as he toweled off the embryonic fluid.
Dalton didn’t say anything, letting the adrenaline flow run its course. The trial run had gone far better than he’d expected. He’d had to reevaluate his outlook on the upcoming mission and accept that Raisor was mostly right— they would have a tremendous advantage and they were the best force for this mission. Not only were they a potent fighting force once they arrived on target, but the ability to infiltrate and exfiltrate a foreign country through the virtual field was unparalleled in its possibilities. Dalton saw Raisor and Hammond by the master control console watching.
“You see how I hit that tank and the fireball went right through the armor!” Barnes was using his hands like a fighter pilot to show what had happened. “Then I ‘jumped’ about twenty meters to the left and hit the tank again. Unbelievable.”
“Just remember nobody was shooting back at you,” Dalton noted.
That brought a moment of silence.
“What exactly happens if we do get shot?” Trilly wanted to know.
“You slip back into the virtual world,” Dr. Hammond said, “and allow Sybyl to reconstitute you.”
“Far out!” Monroe yelled, raising his hand for a high five from Egan.
“You go on the real thing in six hours,” Raisor said. “I suggest you get some rest.”
As the team filed out, Dalton cornered Lieutenant Jackson. “What do you think?” he asked her.
“I think it was too easy,” Jackson said.
Dalton nodded. “Two things worry me. First, we still don’t really know what happens when the avatar gets shot or blown up or run over, or any of the other things that can happen to it.”
“And the second?” Jackson asked.
“Murphy’s law,” Dalton said succinctly. “Whatever can screw up will. I’m concerned about the Russian psychic capability. What if they are on top of this?” He could see the look in Jackson’s eyes and knew she was thinking the same thing. “What if this demon, this Chyort, shows up? Or if what happened to the first team happens to us?
“We don’t know much about what we’re doing,” Dalton continued. “We really don’t know diddly about the Russian capability. What about this Dr. Vasilev? You said he worked in Moscow. Do you think you can find him?”
Jackson looked tired, black lines under her eyes, but she nodded. “I can give it a shot. He’s published in some journals that give some bio information. I can go to the Institute in Moscow and try to find him from there.”
“I’d really appreciate it,” Dalton said. “I know you need to rest, but— ”
Jackson held up her hand. “No problem. I’ll go back in.”
Dalton ran a hand through his goo-filled hair. “I’ll go with you.”
* * *
Feteror sensed a presence down the computer path he was on. A shadow where there shouldn’t be one. He paused, uncertain for the first time in a very long time. The shadow moved.
Feteror raced down a side path, his essence flowing through the circuitry, and he popped out behind the shadow. He froze, seeing his grandfather looking about in amazement at the hardware inside of the computer.
“Opa!” Feteror exclaimed.
The old man turned, a bright smile above his bushy gray beard. “Arkady!”
Feteror edged forward, uncertain. “How can you be here?”
Opa shrugged. “That is what I wanted to ask you. And where is here?” His frail arms waved about.
Feteror stepped forward. “But you aren’t real.”
Opa reached out and grabbed Feteror’s virtual arm. “Does that feel real?”
“But— ” Feteror shook his head. “How can this be?”
“How can you be?” Opa said. “I don’t know. I was asleep. And now I’m awake.”
“But I didn’t summon you,” Feteror said.
“Summon me? Summon me?” Opa glared at hi
s grandson.
“What happened to wake you?” Feteror asked.
The old man frowned. “Someone tried breaking in.” He looked about, confusion crossing his face once more. “But I was home. In the cottage. Someone was at the window. I woke and yelled. They ran. But this isn’t the cottage.”
Feteror nodded. Rurik’s prying had woken the old man. But what he didn’t understand— and knew the figure in front of him wouldn’t know either— was how his grandfather’s image had come “alive” and escaped its memory cell. This was something new and unprecedented.
Feteror checked the time. He knew that General Rurik would exhaust all the normal channels to try to find his wife and children. When they failed— and they would, given Oma’s and his own thoroughness— he would reluctantly turn to Feteror. He estimated he had a little while before the call came.
“Where is the cottage?” Opa asked.
Feteror reached out and took his grandfather by the arm. “I will take you home, Opa.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dalton’s lungs filled with liquid. His body spasmed, tired muscles fighting the foreign substance, then giving way.
The process went faster and shortly Dalton was back on the virtual plane. Jackson’s falcon avatar swooped past, over his left shoulder, startling him.
“Ready to go?” Jackson asked.
“Where’s the first point?” Dalton asked.
An image from Sybyl appeared in his mind as Hammond spoke. “You’ll be taking the polar route to Russia. Your first jump point will be in central Canada right above this lake.”
Dalton’s arms flowed into wings and he took flight, catching up to the falcon.
“First jump, ” Jackson said.
“First jump,” Dalton acknowledged.
He concentrated on the lake point in Canada. Everything went blank; he felt disoriented and then he was there, about five hundred meters above the water.
He looked around. Jackson was close by. Dalton felt awkward and huge next to her small, graceful form.
“Second point, ” Jackson projected.
It took them four points to get to Moscow. Dalton had no idea if that many were necessary— if they could have gotten there with one jump. He also had no idea how much time passed. Between some of the points the transition was not instantaneous. He felt as if he had flown a distance between some of them in the gray fog of the virtual plane.
He was grateful for Jackson’s presence, as he wasn’t sure he could have made it this far this quickly without her keeping him oriented.
“The Russian Physiological Psychology Institute is that building.” Jackson nosed down toward a large, square building, built of dark stone. Dalton followed. He paused as Jackson’s avatar blipped into the roof and disappeared, then he did the same. He was in an office. There were three men in uniform inside the room. Dalton staggered backward before he realized that he was still in the virtual plane and the men couldn’t see him.
“This is Dr. Vasilev’s office. ” Jackson paused. “I don’t know who they are. They have GRU tabs on their shoulder boards.”
“Seems like they’re looking for something,” Dalton noted.
That was an understatement, as the large desk was turned on its side, spilling papers. Two men dropped to their knees, searching both the papers and the underside of the desk. The third, obviously an officer of higher rank, watched the other two.
One of the men on his knees said something to the senior officer in Russian. The officer replied.
“Vasilev is missing, ” Jackson told Dalton. “They’re trying to find out what happened to him.”
“You understand Russian?” Dalton asked.
There was an amused tone to Jackson’s projection. “Yes. And so do you.”
Dalton didn’t have a chance to pursue that as the senior officer pulled a cellular phone out of a deep pocket of his greatcoat. He punched in and began talking. Dalton watched with interest as Jackson dissolved her falcon shape and became a small glowing sphere on the virtual plane. She floated over to the officer, enveloping the cell phone and the hand holding it.
The officer completed the call. Jackson came back to
Dalton’s position, re-forming to her avatar on the virtual plane. “Let’s go,” she said.
“Where?” Dalton asked.
“He just called his higher headquarters to say their search has turned up nothing and they have no idea where Vasilev is. We ’re going to that headquarters to see what else they know.”
“How do you know where that headquarters is?” Dalton asked.
“I went into the cell phone’s memory. The address was listed there inside of the encryption lock. It’s a trick I’ve learned while doing this,” Jackson said. “Here’s the site.”
Dalton received the image.
“The phone he called is inside this room,” Jackson told him. “It’s not far away. Let’s go.”
He flashed out of the room behind Jackson.
When he came to a halt, he was in a conference room, hovering directly above a large wood table. Startled, he pushed himself over to a corner of the room, joining Jackson.
“They can’t see you,” Jackson reminded him, the edge of laughter in her tone.
“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Dalton said.
A GRU officer was at a lectern, speaking quickly in Russian.
“Can you understand him?” Dalton asked.
“Yes,” Jackson said. “As I told you earlier, you can too, if you ask Sybyl to do the translation for you. It’s practically instantaneous.”
“Another thing no one’s told me about,” Dalton said.
“It’s hard to get you up to speed on everything in a couple of days,” Jackson noted. “I’ve been remote viewing for six years and there’s still so much I don’t know about it. So many capabilities I haven’t even thought of, never mind tested.”
“Sybyl?” Dalton prompted.
The voice of the Russian faded for a brief moment, then
Dalton could hear him in English, through the medium of Sybyl. It was disorienting— as pretty much everything else that had happened so far had been— to watch the man’s lips move, but hear words that didn’t exactly correlate with the movements.
“We must assume there is a connection between the attack on October Revolution Island and Dr. Vasilev’s disappearance,” the officer said. “The phased-displacement generator is missing. Without Vasilev’s expertise, the weapon would be practically useless. With his expertise— ” The officer paused, the words sinking in.
“What is a phased-displacement generator?” Dalton asked Jackson.
“A hypothetical weapon,” Jackson responded. A mechanical device that integrates a space inside of it into the virtual plane, and then is capable with psychic help of sending a mass through the v-plane to any location on the planet. There were intelligence reports years ago that the Soviets were trying to develop such a weapon.”
“Doesn’t sound very hypothetical to these guys,” Dalton noted.
“The generator is no good without nuclear warheads,” one of the officers at the table noted.
“Not necessarily,” the officer at the lectern said. “The phased-displacement generator projects mass. The possibilities for its use are limitless. Whoever has it can project a biological agent directly into the aqueduct for a major city and cause an epidemic. They can project a conventional explosive to exactly the right location to cause a tremendous disaster. Say a pound of C-4 into the American space shuttle’s fuel tank when it launches?”
“If this weapon is so damn effective, why was it left lying in that godforsaken place?”
Dalton focused on the man who had said that. His uniform was different— camouflaged fatigues, a blue beret tucked in his belt. His face was hard, the eyes cold: a killer. Dalton recognized the insignia of the Spetsnatz on the beret.
“Colonel Mishenka,” the man at the end of the table with the four stars of an Army general on his collar acknowledged th
e Spetsnatz officer. “The weapon was abandoned because it malfunctioned, killing everyone involved in the project.”
Mishenka fingered a folder. “This Vasilev wasn’t killed, General Bolodenka.”
“Almost everyone,” Bolodenka clarified. “Vasilev barely escaped. The information he gave us indicated that the risks involved in a weapon such as the phased-displacement generator would not be worth taking.” The general indicated for the briefer to continue.
“The generator requires computers in order to operate. Another key to the phased-displacement generator is that it will require a tremendous amount of energy. This will limit where whoever has it can set up. They would have to tap directly into a major power line, and the draw would clearly show up. I’ve already alerted those who would be affected to keep an eye out.”
“That’s if they stay inside our borders,” General Bolodenka noted.
“The Mafia is most powerful inside our borders, so I will assume that is where they will operate,” Mishenka noted. “How do you know this thing— this generator— works?”
General Bolodenka swiveled in his heavy leather chair. “Because in its last field testing, the phased-displacement generator destroyed an American nuclear submarine in 1963 just before it malfunctioned, killing all those who were running the test and also destroying what I understand were some critical biological components.”
“Critical biological components?” Mishenka repeated.
“The generator required the mind power of psychically attuned individuals to operate,” the briefer said.
“Then that’s another parameter that whoever has it will need for it to operate, correct?” Mishenka asked.
“Correct.”
“Perhaps, then,” Mishenka mused, “the good doctor is involved with this. Wouldn’t he have access to such people at his Institute?”
“We’re checking into that,” General Bolodenka said.
“You said that this generator required computers,” Mishenka said.
“That is correct.”
“And the computers need a special program?” Mishenka prompted.
The briefer glanced at the general, who nodded for him to speak.
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