They had tried to call General Rurik, the commander, but the base was shut down to all outside communications and had missed its last contact. That in itself had Mishenka convinced that what the American Green Beret had told him was true— someone in Department Eight had gone over to the other side. And Mishenka had a very a good idea who that person was— he had been truly startled and shocked to learn the identity of the man behind Chyort: Major Arkady Feteror.
Mishenka remembered Feteror from Afghanistan. A brilliant and ruthless warrior. A man who took only the hardest missions. But Feteror was supposed to have died. Mishenka remembered hearing that they had found the major’s body in a village, torn to pieces. What had these GRU people done to him?
There wasn’t the slightest doubt in Mishenka’s mind that Feteror was behind all this trouble, the last report on General Rurik’s son being found notwithstanding. Feteror would use a boy like a pawn with not the slightest twinge of conscience. The Feteror that Mishenka remembered would gut a child as easily as another man would give a piece of candy. A most formidable foe.
The helicopter shuddered and headed toward the airfield where a jet was waiting. Mishenka hoped only one thing— that this American Special Forces man who was coming was up to facing down Feteror or the psychic cyborg— the term the briefer had used— that Feteror had been made into— and had a plan to stop this madness.
* * *
“We’re two hours out from the grid you gave us,” Major Orrick said. He pointed on a chart. “It’s here.”
Dalton nodded. He spoke into the boom mike. “Jackson?”
“Yes?”
“Any change?”
“Nothing has occurred.”
“Raisor?”
“Nothing there either.”
“Notify me if anything happens.”
“I will.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry.”
Dalton leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes in weariness. “What for this time?”
“For the men of your team.”
“Let’s just do this right.”
“I’ve been looking over the information Sybyl gathered from the battle. I think we’ve learned some things about this Chyort.”
Dalton opened his eyes. “Like what?”
Hammond’s voice came over the radio. “The Russian projection— the Chyort avatar— is different from what we are doing here.”
“No shit,” Dalton said. “How?”
“The interface is purer than what Sybyl can accomplish through Psychic Warrior. Our TACPAD is efficient, but ultimately there is a degradation in power and focus. Sybyl doesn’t read that degradation in Chyort. The interface of human and machine seems to be almost perfect.”
“How do you think they are able to do that?”
“I asked Sybyl that,” Hammond said. “The computer thinks they have created a cyborg.”
“Come again?”
“Chyort appears to be the result of a human brain being directly wired into a computer full-time.”
“Can that be done?” Dalton asked.
“We could do it here”— Hammond almost sounded jealous— “except that the process would not be reversible and that would cross an ethical line we aren’t even allowed to contemplate.”
It all clicked for Dalton then, what Chyort was doing and why. “They’ve created their own Frankenstein and it’s turned on them.”
* * *
“Warhead loaded and armed,” Leksi said.
“Setting?” Feteror asked.
“Two kiloton as directed. Ten-second delay from phase displacement.”
Enough to cause absolute devastation in an area about three kilometers wide and collateral damage for five times that distance. More importantly, the EMP— electromagnetic pulse— emitted by the explosion would fry every electric device within fifty kilometers.
Feteror turned, claws grating on the concrete floor. “The program?”
Vasilev’s face looked even more haggard in the dim glow of the computer screen. “In phase. Ready to phase bomb into virtual.”
“Power,” Feteror ordered.
One of Leksi’s men threw a switch. The entire hangar hummed as the power lines going into the phased-displacement generator fed it the energy it needed.
Barsk edged closer to Vasilev. “You are sure this will work?” He had given up trying to dial out to reach Oma. The phone wasn’t working.
“I am sure of nothing except that I will die shortly,” Vasilev said, “and this will all finally be over.”
Feteror was preoccupied. “A speedy and painless death is what you are working for.”
Vasilev shook his head. “No. That is not why I am doing this. I am working for atonement. To pay for what I have done. To pay for trying to play God.”
Feteror focused his red eyes on the gleaming metal tube. The warhead rested in the top chamber. There was no vent here. If the warhead failed to project and detonated— well, there would not be much left for the authorities to find.
Feteror lifted a large, scaly arm. He began to slide over the line into the virtual plane. He stretched his self out, toward the generator. He could sense the bomb inside, flickering on the edge of the virtual plane also. He dropped his arm and snapped entirely into the virtual plane at the same moment as Vasilev hit the final control to send the bomb over.
The bomb was there, totally in the virtual plane. He could see the red digital clock counting down on the control face of the timer Leksi’s armament man had attached. Ten seconds.
Vasilev knew where he wanted the bomb to go, and he had planned the path many times. There were two jumps. He focused on the bomb and the first jump point. The bomb disappeared. The timer was frozen in the virtual plane and Feteror knew it would only start once he deposited it on target and it passed through to the real.
Feteror raced northwest, following the bomb’s path. He jumped, saw the bomb, projected the second and final jump point, and the bomb was gone.
Feteror jumped again. He was exactly where he wanted to be. The bomb appeared right in front of him in the virtual plane. He reached out and wrapped his claws around it. He moved in three smaller jumps to the exact position, high over a tall roof with the X of a helipad directly below.
The target. The bomb slid through the wall between the virtual and real. The timer clicked to nine.
Feteror jumped twenty kilometers away to the south. He slid into the real plane, hovering in the air a thousand feet above the ground, and looked back in the direction he had come from.
A tremendous flash lit up the early morning sky.
Feteror knew that in that second, GRU headquarters was nothing but a smoking hole in the earth: ground zero.
* * *
Colonel Mishenka was only twelve kilometers from the epicenter; the helicopter he was on was in final approach to land at the military airfield. He heard the startled yells of the pilots and caught the flash as it washed over the helicopter.
The fireball and shock wave were next, rolling out from ground zero. The pilots were shouting, stunned by the sudden loss of all electrical equipment on board the aircraft, flying by the seats of their pants, bringing the chopper down as quickly as they dared, seeing the wave of fire that was coming toward them.
Mishenka watched the approaching wave dispassionately through the Plexiglas window on the side of the cargo bay. It would either dissipate or kill them.
The chopper slammed into the edge of the runway, the shocks on the wheels absorbing only part of the impact. Mishenka was thrown against his seatbelt, which he rapidly unbuckled. He threw open the side door and stepped outside, facing directly into the wave.
But he already knew it was losing power. He’d seen films of nuclear blasts before, and this one wasn’t big. Somewhere under five kilotons, his mind calculated. By the time the wave hit him, it was like a strong, warm wind.
Mishenka also knew with that wind was a very unhealthy dosage of strontium 90, cesium 137, iodine 131, and carbon 14, the makeup of a n
uclear weapon’s fallout having been drummed into him during the many training sessions he had gone through. He also knew that the pills in his antiradiation kit were placebos, designed to allow the soldier to keep fighting until he became incapacitated.
He looked at the runway. A Mig-1.42, the cutting edge of Russian aerospace technology, was waiting as he had ordered. It was shaped like a dart, with two large engines, each below a tall vertical tail. He could see the cockpit was open and the pilot was yelling at a ground crew man. Colonel Mishenka walked across the concrete runway to the plane.
The pilot looked down. “We cannot fly! No circuits. No radio. Nothing.”
“Do the engines work?” Mishenka asked.
The pilot stared at him. “Yes, but— ”
“If the engines work, you can fly, correct?”
“But I will have no instrumentation, Colonel!”
“Your compass works, correct?”
“My ball compass, yes, but my navigational computer is completely fried.”
Mishenka held up his briefcase. “I have a map. We can fly low and navigate by watching the ground beneath us. I also have a shielded satellite phone in here, so we will have communications.”
The pilot shook his head. “Flying low. It will be very dangerous, Colonel. Perhaps we should wait until— ” He stopped as Mishenka laughed. “What is it?”
“Dangerous?” Mishenka spread his arms wide. “Did you see that nuclear explosion?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you understand?” Mishenka didn’t wait for an answer. “We are all dead if we stay here. It will just take a day or two. So I would much rather die flying into a mountain than wasting away.” He pointed at the small packet on the man’s right shoulder. “Have you taken your pill?”
The pilot was still struggling to understand the impact of what he had just been told. He could only shake his head.
“Take your pill,” Mishenka said. “You’ll feel better and you’ll be all right as long as we get out of here in time.”
The pilot ripped open the packet and pulled out the pill, gulping it down without the benefit of water. He grabbed the inset ladder and flipped it down. “Let’s be on our way.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Dalton received word of the nuclear explosion outside of Moscow as the SR-75 crossed the north pole. He leaned back, uncomfortable in the hard jump seat, and closed his eyes. Lieutenant Jackson was tapped into the secure intelligence network and the extent of the devastation was still being assessed, but there was no doubt thousands were dead.
‘Jackson?”
“Yes?”
“Where is GRU headquarters in relation to the blast site?”
“Seismic readers have fixed the epicenter,” Jackson said. “GRU headquarters would roughly be right where they have triangulated the center of the blast.”
“Try to get in contact with Colonel Mishenka.”
“I have been trying to. There is no answer.”
Dalton ran a hand across his forehead. “Great.”
* * *
Oma listened to the sirens racing to the southwest. The mushroom cloud had loomed high in the sky for minutes after the explosion, then slowly dissipated. She had stared out her armored windows at it, before finally picking up the phone. She tried Barsk’s cell phone but she got no reply. She called on the secure fax line, overriding the fax signal when it came on, until someone on the other end picked it up. She told the man to get her grandson.
“Barsk!” she yelled when he finally answered.
“Yes, Oma? I have been trying to get a hold of you, but my phone has not been working. I think— ”
Oma cut him off. “What the hell have you done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“A nuclear weapon just exploded outside Moscow!”
There was no immediate answer.
“Did you use the generator? Did you fire a nuclear weapon?”
“It was Chyort, Oma. He said he had to take care of something. Test the weapon.”
“You let him activate the generator?”
“Let him! How would I stop him?”
Oma realized the futility of the conversation. “Put Leksi on.”
There was a short pause, then a gruff “Yes?”
“Do you have control of the situation?”
“No. Barsk is letting this monster run crazy.”
Oma rubbed her forehead. “All right. Listen to me. I am sending you a target list by the secure fax. I want you to make sure Vasilev targets all the sites listed in order. Is that clear?”
“Clear.”
“Put Barsk back on.”
“Yes?” Her grandson’s voice was petulant. Oma was tempted to simply hang up, but she knew she could not do that.
“Barsk, listen very carefully. I am sending a target list to Leksi. He will insure that it is carried out. I want you to leave there. Get as far away as possible as quickly as you can and meet me at my lake house.”
“But, Oma!” Barsk protested. “This is my responsibility here. I am in charge. If you do not trust me to accomplish this, then what— ”
“Shut up!” Oma yelled into the phone, silencing her grandson. “Do what I say or I wipe my hands of you.”
“Yes, Oma.”
She turned the phone off. Then she went to her desk and picked up the list Abd al-Bari had sent her. She went back to the fax and punched in the number for the fax in the hangar. When the tone screeched, she fed the target list in.
She watched as it disappeared into the machine, then reappeared in the feed tray. She took it back to her desk and sat down. She fed the list into the shredder.
Then she picked up the phone and punched in the number for the NATO representative.
* * *
Colonel Mishenka finally got the satellite radio working ten minutes after they were airborne. It took him another five minutes to punch through the jumbled calls of the Russian military reacting in shock to the nuclear detonation. The fact that since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the attempted coup against the President, the GRU had increased its stranglehold on the control of intelligence and the communications capability of the entire military, meant that destruction of GRU headquarters virtually decapitated the Russian military’s ability to act.
Listening to the confused chatter, Mishenka was aware that there were many officers who were convinced the nuclear attack had been a surgical strike by the Americans— a prelude to an all-out attack. Missile forces were going on alert and the strategic bomber forces were opening their hangars and unlocking the vaults on nuclear weapons that had been mothballed years ago.
The old ways died hard, and the only ones— other than the President’s office— who had known about SD8, Chyort, and the American cooperation in tracking down the twenty nuclear weapons, were all glowing ash in the Moscow countryside.
Mishenka punched in the number he had been given by the American. It was answered immediately.
“Dalton here.”
“This is Colonel Mishenka.”
“I was afraid you’d been caught in the explosion,” Dalton said.
“The stakes have been raised,” Mishenka said. “Not only has GRU headquarters been taken out, but SD8 is totally isolated now.”
“Our enemy is very smart,” Dalton said.
“I know who it is— or who it was— and he is indeed very smart. And ruthless.”
“Taking out a couple of square miles of Moscow goes beyond ruthless.”
“Let us hope that is the limit this goes to.”
“What do you mean?” Dalton asked.
Mishenka quickly filled him in on the reaction of the Russian military.
“Goddamn,” was Dalton’s summation.
“We have to secure the nuclear weapons and this phased-displacement generator,” Mishenka said. “Who knows where the next target will be.”
“As I told you,” Dalton said, “we have to destroy Chyort in order to be able to find and then get to
the generator and bombs.”
“What is your plan?”
“Are your men moving?”
“I have a company of Spetsnatz at the closest airfield to SD8. My time to that location is twenty-five minutes.”
“I’m forty-five minutes out,” Dalton said.
“I’ll alert them that you’re coming,” Mishenka said. “And once we are there?”
“We go in and take the station out.”
“Hell of a plan,” Mishenka said. “I have the defense setup for the station and it will not be that easy.”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” Dalton said. “I said we were going to do it.”
Mishenka smiled inside his oxygen mask. “Very good. I will see you shortly.”
* * *
“As you now know, what I told you was true,” Oma said.
“I grant that you have proved you have the nuclear warheads,” Abd al-Bari said matter-of-factly, “but you have not proved your capability to put them anywhere. You could have driven that one in a truck to Moscow.”
“I just want to insure that you will pay the balance,” Oma said. “I am putting everything on the line.”
“You do what we agreed, the balance will be there,” Abd al-Bari said.
“Good.” Oma put the phone down. She stood and looked about her office. She knew it was the last time she would be here. There was nothing in it she wanted. She had prepared long for this moment. She went to the door and walked out without a backward glance.
* * *
“Where is Barsk?” Feteror hissed at Leksi.
The navy commando shrugged. He could care less where the boy was.
“Let me see that,” Feteror demanded.
Leksi stared at the demon for a few seconds before holding the fax out.
Feteror leaned over, blood-red eyes close to the writing. He laughed as he saw the targets, the sound causing those in the hangar to wince. “Beautiful! The beginning of the end for everyone.”
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