SubOrbital 7, page 19
“No favoritism for Mr. Big Shot,” one of them had said.
Would they keep him in some cell tonight, ignoring him while the Russians did their dirty work? They were supposed to give each prisoner one call, weren’t they? But who would he call, at this hour of the night? Would Chance answer this time?
Should I call Rowell back? No way. He’d sensed something off about the guy, and it was after talking to him that the Deep Bore carried out the viral attack on all things Harley Spencer.
A call to the press from the police station wouldn’t yield quick results. It’d be, “Crazy guy claiming to be Harley Spencer calling from the police station.” His lawyer wouldn’t be taking calls at that hour, either. No. The cops wouldn’t be his first go-to.
Harley’s mind was whirling. His stomach too. He felt sick and disoriented, cut off from everything he knew: the digital world, the internet world, the world’s armature of technology. How many times had he argued with people who claimed America was too dependent on electronics?
“Hard to argue with ’em now,” he muttered aloud, just to hear a friendly voice. If he could get over to Langley, to CIA headquarters. Talk to the duty agent. It wasn’t all that far. A few miles. He could flag down a cab. But no—they were all self-driving now and the cab’s computer always asked for a valid cash-card or phone transfer before driving anywhere.
Just head for Langley, he told himself. Think of something on the way. Maybe you’ll find someone who can help…
But Harley felt rooted to the spot. To either side were big square-edged concrete posts, topped with steel spheres, each post with a sign:
CHERRYWOOD ESTATES PRIVATE ROAD
Once he stepped out past those posts he was really on his own.
There were some scary-looking people camped out along the main road. Some of them were likely to be predatory. There were the cops—Harley was as afraid of them as of the street people. There were rumors of wild-dog packs. But his most powerful fear was undefined. Just the vast empty uncertainty of it all.
Harley glanced up at the sky. A few stars were visible. He was fully aware of the irony: he had a fixation on outer space, felt its allure, and yet he was afraid of wide-open spaces. Turning his gaze to outer space was an escape from the chaos of the human world.
Chaos. He had to face it sometime.
Harley stretched, took a couple of swipes at the world with his outstretched arms, then growled to himself, psyching up for the next step. Looking at the sky again, he thought of the damaged S-7 up there. Men and women of courage, US Army Rangers, struggling to survive against the odds.
Well then, he told himself. There’s more than one kind of courage.
“Fuck it,” he said.
Heart pounding, Harley Spencer stepped across the invisible barrier, and out into the street.
* * *
“Dean? Sandy Chance. You got a minute?”
Chance heard the usual slurping sound from the other end of the line. Rogers was probably sucking some thick coffee concoction through a straw.
“A minute is really all I got, Sandy,” the DIA agent said. “Video conference in two minutes. Something from the Chinese specialists. What’s up?”
“Thanks for sending the files over… I hope to have one for you pretty soon. I was wondering—”
“One for me about what?” Rogers interrupted.
“Not cleared to release that yet—just conjecture anyhow.” He wasn’t at all sure about Rowell. Didn’t want to give it to Rogers, who might go off half-cocked. “Was wondering if the guy you had, the one who wanted asylum—”
“Pfensky?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe, by now, he coughed up a name for that mole in SubOrbital.”
“Well—no.”
“So, you guys cut him loose? No deal with him?”
“Uhhh…”
Chance suspected there was something Rogers was loath to admit. A screwup.
“Yeah?”
“We had him in custody of the French police—he came to our people in Paris, see—and, uh, the French cops blew it. Pfensky went missing from his cell. His body turned up three days later in the Bois de Vincennes. Burn marks all over it. Bullet in the head. Never had the chance to give us a name. You got anything on the mole?”
“Not sure there is one, but there’s a certain—”
“Whoa, someone’s making crazy hand signals at me, I gotta get off the line. Conference. China. You get it.”
Rogers hung up.
* * *
“I’m done talking, Burkett,” Syrkin said, his voice grating between clenched teeth. He had one hand on Cha’s collar, holding him down. Cha had regained consciousness, but his hands were tied behind him with one of the heavy plastic straps used to secure the biosuits. Blood droplets floated up from Cha’s scalp wound, and Burkett could hear his raspy breathing.
“Alexi…” Moving in close, very slowly, Burkett put his hands, palm facing palm, out in front of him. “Cuff me. I’ll take Carney’s place. You’ll still have Cha. Come on, Alexi. I’m a bigger fish than Carney.”
“No, Lieutenant,” Carney shouted, surprising Burkett. “Don’t do it. I’m okay!”
Syrkin turned to glance back at Carney. “Well, the little murderer has some balls!”
That moment of distraction gave Burkett the chance he needed. He couldn’t jump Syrkin—Ildeva had that pistol pointed at Burkett’s head. Instead, he lowered his hands and put them behind his back.
Which was the signal Dabiri would be waiting for. He’d been floating near the deck between Strickland and Faraday, his arms braced on the edges of the open hatch. He pulled forward, hard and fast—Burkett caught the motion from the corner of his eyes—flashing just over the deck between the two rows of seats, toward the back of the cabin.
Dabiri whisked into the narrow passage leading behind the cabin to the aft storage compartment. For a split second he might’ve been in Syrkin’s line of sight, despite Burkett deliberately posting himself in the way, but Syrkin was focused on Burkett. He pushed the pistol’s muzzle against Burkett’s forehead, hard enough so he floated back.
“You can die right now, or you can get out of the fucking way and get Mayweather in here,” Syrkin said. “Do you understand me or not?”
“You’ll exchange Cha for Mayweather?”
“No promises!” Syrkin barked. “Send Mayweather, or people die.”
“He’ll come, but how do I know you won’t kill him on sight?”
“I won’t kill him unless I have to. He’s going to order you to change course. We’re landing in a whole different part of the world.”
“I see.”
“You will see, my friend. You’re going to be a guest of Russia.”
“You’ve been a Russian agent all along.” He didn’t think so—but he was stalling to give Dabiri more time.
“You don’t believe that bullshit. I’m going to make a deal with them. Now fuck off!”
“I’m not a murderer…” Carney said. “It was an accident.”
“And did you say to Alexi that you are sorry?” Ildeva asked, kicking Carney in the head. It took all of Burkett’s willpower to hold himself back when he saw that. He forced himself to turn away, to push off, drifting slowly back toward Mayweather. Looking for every chance to give Dabiri a few more seconds.
“Lieutenant,” Dorman murmured, as he passed. “Maybe I could—”
Burkett shook his head. Other faces looked at him imploringly—every one of them wanting to do something.
“No,” he said. “There’s two guns and a submachine gun, and ours are in the weapons locker. Just hold hard.”
“So you’re not a murderer, Carney!” Syrkin yelled behind him, laughing bitterly as Burkett reached the flight deck. He glanced back toward the aft passage.
No sign of Tafir yet.
“Don’t whine to me with that idiotic term ‘friendly fire’!” Syrkin continued. “The CIA told you to kill him! They probably paid you! Murderer!”
“I was tensed up and I…”
“Shut up!”
Burkett caught a flash of motion at the far end of the passage. The hatch opening. Dabiri had gotten it done in record time.
“Okay, Captain,” Burkett murmured, as he came face to face with Mayweather. “We go slowly to the—” Then he heard a scream from the biosuit locker, and a gurgling shriek. A metallic thump.
Carney’s voice, extra high pitched.
“Syrkin! Don’t!”
Burkett hesitated for two seconds. Maybe he should rush them. But if he did…
Then Carney’s body, leaving a wake of blood in the air, came floating out of the biosuit locker. He was facedown but his eyes were staring at the ceiling, because his head was twisted around backward, blood from broken bone ends gushing from his torn neck. The handcuffs trailed from one wrist.
“Oh God,” Mayweather muttered.
“You see what happens!” Syrkin bellowed. “Cha is next—then I open up with the KV! We’ll see what nine-millimeter submachine-gun bullets will do in that cabin. I want Mayweather—now!”
“Tafir’s on the way, sir,” Burkett whispered.
Mayweather gave a slight nod, licked his lips. “Syrkin—hold on,” he said loudly. “I’m coming now!”
Captain Mayweather took a deep breath and his eyes got cold. He pushed out from the flight deck, drifting toward the biosuit locker. Blood was a red gelatinous floating amoebic form outside the locker, a cloud of viscous dark red that would spread out and touch everyone.
Burkett started after Mayweather. “I’m going to get Lieutenant Carney’s body out of there,” he called. Morbidly thinking that Carney was turning out to be useful after all.
Syrkin didn’t object—the blood was spreading out, getting in his way.
“Do it fast! Get your ass in here, Mayweather!”
Burkett caught a ceiling ring, changed direction, and reached into the cloud of blood, its smell filling his nostrils. He grabbed the dead man’s limp arm and tugged him toward the aft storage, as if he were going to put the body there—but in fact he was blocking Syrkin’s view.
Dabiri was in the combat suit, edging up to the biosuit locker.
Now, Burkett thought, how do we get Cha out alive—Tafir will have to be fast. Glancing back at the entrance to the locker he saw Cha’s face, looking up under the rising cloud of blood—his face red with his own blood. Cha gathered himself and pushed off, hard, with his legs, against something behind him. He rocketed out of the locker door, tearing loose from Syrkin’s grip, bound hands behind him, his head down.
He struck a chair with his shoulder a meter from the locker and grunted, spun with the impact, and Syrkin fired the handgun.
The bullet missed Cha, ricocheted madly in the cabin. There came a reverberating clang like a big high-pitched bell being rung five times in a single second, almost too fast to follow. Burkett listened for a scream of pain or the sound of an oxygen pipe bursting.
It didn’t come, but there was another sound, coming from the locker. Was that Syrkin putting a fresh clip into a gun?
* * *
Stupid, Ashley thought. Waking up at 4:30 in the morning. Drinking a whole bottle of wine by herself.
I never do that. And—I did that.
She hadn’t drunk that much in fifteen years, because she knew that a lot of alcohol late at night screwed with her sleep. The few times she’d done it, back in the day, she’d woken in the wee hours, halfway to dawn, with a horrible, buzzing, utterly undesirable lucidity. This time she’d been drinking while watching some old movies, trying to get her mind off Art.
Oh yeah, another glass of Cabernet will help.
Only it didn’t.
She sat up, fully awake, remembering. Seeing him in her mind’s eye, her husband gasping as the oxygen ran out in the damaged ship…
Ashley’s head throbbed and her stomach was turning flip-flops, and she wanted so badly to be asleep. To not think about what Art might be going through right now. To not wonder if he was even alive.
She hadn’t awakened beside him for months. The separation had seemed the only way to really make her point. To show him how serious she was. It had left her lonely and frustrated and unsure what to do next. For the umpteenth time, she remembered their parting that morning. She shouldn’t have talked to him that way, right before he was going out to put his life on the line.
Don’t torture yourself, she thought. Nothing wrong with wanting my husband home, after all his years of service. After all those bullet scars. Nate needs him. We both need him here.
Now she might well never see him again.
I should be ready for that, she thought. But I’m not.
It had come close to happening more than once in the last ten years. And the medals—she should be proud of his medals, but she’d come to hate the sight of them. Every medal meant he’d carried out some outrageous act of bravery; he’d put himself in harm’s way yet again.
“Art…” she murmured. “Arthur Burkett…”
Ashley let out a long, resigned breath. No way was she getting back to sleep, so she got up, put on her bathrobe, and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
Nate padded in as she was filling the pot with water. He was hugging himself against the early chill.
“Mommy?”
“Hey, Private Nate. What you up for?”
“I heard you. I can’t sleep very good.”
“Me neither. You want to have some cereal? We could watch Moonman cartoons.”
His smile was like turning on another light in the room.
NINETEEN
Clanking, muttering sounds from the biosuit locker. Burkett heard Syrkin talking to himself in Bulgarian, and English. Something about justice.
Dammit, Dabiri…
He looked across the cabin to Cha—Rod was treating him in a sheltered corner.
Then Syrkin shouted, “I’m giving you ninety seconds, Burkett, in case the shooting damaged the atmosphere feed, but just ninety seconds! I want Mayweather—here.”
There was a roiling motion in the cloud of blood.
Then a bellow of rage from Syrkin as Dabiri in the Telos combat suit plunged through the red haze and into the locker. Syrkin fired the sidearm, and Burkett intensely hoped the combat suit’s armor could take a round at point-blank range. That was the risk Dabiri was willing to take.
“Lieutenant!” Des Andrews called out. “Can we—”
“Hold on!” Burkett responded, tugging a ring to come to the bulkhead by the locker door. He heard sounds of a struggle, and several thumps—and then the racket of a submachine gun, a short burst: thunder and then a hailstorm…
A scream. A gurgling cry of despair.
“Tafir—” Burkett called, on his headset.
“I’m here, sir. I think they’re both dead. Ricochets, and it’s a real mess. We’ve lost some biosuits for sure and I can’t see for the blood in the air.”
“You sure Syrkin’s dead? You disarm him?”
“I have the weapon, sir. Most of his head’s missing. So…”
Burkett waved away some of the cloud of blood and looked into the locker. He could see the two bodies, Ildeva and Syrkin, floating, arms akimbo.
“He was trying to hit me with the SMG—I think I broke his jaw while he was doing it. He squeezed off a long burst. Ricochets were contained in here and it was like…”
His voice trailed off and Burkett nodded, even though Dabiri couldn’t see him. The two men were cut to pieces. The CIA wouldn’t be pleased about losing Ildeva.
“You okay, Corporal?”
“Yes sir.” Tafir’s voice over the headset. “Armor held up. Bruised is all. Maybe a cracked rib.” Burkett caught sight of him as he wiped blood off his visor with a gloved hand. “Can’t see much in here but… I don’t think there’s a hull breach, anything like that.”
“You have anything against being a sergeant, Corporal Dabiri?”
“Me sir?”
“You’re going to be one as soon as we get back, if I have anything to say about it.”
“Can you make it a general?”
“Shut up and go see Rodriguez.” Wiping blood from his eyes, Burkett turned to the other Rangers. “All Army personnel unbuckle for emergency clean-up!” He paused to cough up some of Carney’s blood. “Ike, turn on the air filters, full bore! Dorman, hustle out the industrial vac. Megan, Andrews, help me with these bodies.”
All the time he could scarcely breathe, thanks to the spreading cloud of blood. Mayweather drifted up beside him. Burkett had never seen him look so grim. Almost deathly.
“Lieutenant, I want you to write a report to go with mine. You say exactly what happened. This is my responsibility. I’m the damned fool who said to go ahead and put that gangster with Syrkin. I just…” He shook his head. “I mean—Syrkin was a Ranger.”
“I understand,” Burkett said. “I didn’t believe Syrkin would turn, either. When he was getting kind of squirrely, Rod was wondering about traumatic brain injury. From the head wound when he was grazed. Hard to diagnose. Maybe that’s what happened. Add in an officer killing his brother, and the Ildeva influence… I don’t see it as something you could have anticipated. You had so much on your plate…”
“Thanks for the thought, Art, but I don’t need any excuses. Let’s get cleaned up.” Mayweather turned away, his face a picture of mourning—not just for Ken Carney, but for the honor of the squadron.
* * *
“So, this isn’t your self-driver?” Harley asked.
“Actually, the title is all fuzzy now,” Bowman said. His words were mushy, thanks to his having lost half his teeth. He sat in the front seat, the passenger side of the Toyota pickup. Harley sat in back, behind the empty driver’s seat, watching the eerie motions of the untouched steering wheel. “The police just sort of laugh at it. I convinced them that I’m getting the title, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of the patrolmen, so…”
It was just after dawn and there were few cars on the access road leading to the CIA headquarters at Langley. Harley and Bowman—a bearded, glint-eyed, gap-toothed homeless man in a stained jogging suit he’d met on the avenue—were trundling along in a rattletrap crash-damaged self-driving electric pickup truck. Some human driver had T-boned it at some point, making it almost V-shaped, and it had to be driven in slants within its lane, angling this way and that, to get down the road. It was averaging twenty-five miles an hour.
