“I can’t,” he said.
“You can,” I said.
“Go ahead and kill me, Captain Ledger. I’ve already accepted that I’m dying today.”
“Yeah, well, hoorah for you. This isn’t about you making a grand sacrifice to usher in the Novyy Sovetskiy.”
He looked surprised for maybe half a second, then nodded. “She told me you were smart.”
“You mean Gadyuka?”
I couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes crinkled. He was smiling. “Very smart.”
“She’s dead,” I told him.
“Oh.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“A little. She seemed like the kind of person who would be hard to kill,” said Valen.
“Do you want to know how she died?”
He shook his head. “You’re trying to rattle me. But it’s a little late for that.” He gestured to the machine. “You see, I really can’t turn it off. That was a design requirement from Gadyuka. She was the only one who had the code. Did the person who killed her bother to ask? No. I can see it in your eyes. They didn’t, which means the code died with her.” He paused. “Do you know why Gadyuka had them build that into the machine? Because of me.”
He looked down at the gun, shook his head, and stepped away from me, walking over to the rows of green crystals.
“She said it was because of them. The Lemurian quartz. We were all afraid of the effect… which you’ve seen. If you spoke with Gadyuka then you know that the activated crystals drive people crazy. Murder. Suicide. Mass hysteria. You saw it in Washington. I’ve seen it many times. Gadyuka was afraid that the men working with me here — and I — would go crazy and damage it. So they built in safeguards, a locking mechanism that freezes the controls once they’re set. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.”
“Mr. Valen,” called a voice, “I… holy shit!”
Another pair of truckers had come back with an empty cart, and had seen the dead bodies on the floor. They went for their guns. I already had mine out. I shot them both and all Valen did was stand there and watch. I swapped out my magazines and pointed the barrel at him again.
“How far did you idiots think this through?” I asked. “You’re going to kill a hundred million or more people in America. Maybe half the population of Canada and a big chunk of Mexico. If this thing blows really big, then you have nuclear winter and then there’s famine everywhere. Including your New Soviet.”
“I know,” he said, and his eyes glistened. “God help me, I know.”
“So why do it? Is wrecking half the world really going to bring about the future you want?”
“Yes,” he said. “Prevailing winds will sweep the ash to parts of Europe, some of Africa, and across Asia. We’ve run the computer models a thousand times. Of all the superpowers, Russia will be the least damaged. When the skies clear and the snows melt, we will be the last powerful nation left standing. We will be able to control the smaller agricultural nations. Easily. We have a nuclear arsenal and they do not. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, and China will be crippled. They will need our help, and we will give it.”
“You mean you’ll sell them wheat and corn as long as they pay for it by becoming good little Communists.”
Valen shrugged. “The projections say that after a time of turmoil there will be one world. Fewer people, less of a strain on resources, and a strong central government. A world government.” He paused and again I saw his eyes crinkle. “You think I’m insane, of course.” He shrugged. “You’re probably right.”
I lowered my pistol and stepped closer. “How is it worth it? How is any of this worth it?”
Valen shook his head. “I love my country, Captain Ledger. I would do anything to save it.”
“Even this?”
Tears fell from his eyes. “If I could stop the machine, Captain, I would. I think. I… I don’t know. I drove all the way here from Washington, listening to the news as they counted the dead.” He stopped and shook his head like a dog trying to shake off fleas. “I went to church, you know.”
“You what?”
“I went to church. To ten of them, all through Washington. Every night before we turned on the machines, I went to church. I talked to the priests. I’m an atheist, Captain. I don’t believe in God. Not a Catholic God or any god. I only believe in my country, and yet… I went to church. I talked about sin and redemption. I asked the priests how the church reconciles the sin of killing with the Ten Commandments, with scripture. With Jesus. I couldn’t understand it, you see, and I wanted to. I wanted to know that I wasn’t going to hell.”
“You’re an atheist and you believe in hell?”
He laughed. “Maybe it proves I’m insane. I had to ask the questions, Captain, because I felt that I was confronting a crisis of faith. Not in God, but in my purpose. You see, my group, my party, does not accept that the Cold War ever ended. The war goes on. It is complex and hard to explain, but it persists.”
“The war is the war,” I said, and he looked surprised.
“Then you understand.”
“I understand devotion to country. I understand raising a gun to defend those you love.”
“And do you love your country?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Right or wrong? No matter which direction it takes?”
“I’m not on the policy level.”
He shook his head. “You have an opinion.”
“I’m sworn to protect my country, even when some of the people running it make the wrong call or do the wrong thing. When I want to affect policy, I go and vote. I don’t blow up half the world. And you want to talk about sin? Sure, the history books your new Communist Party will allow people to write about this will probably paint you as a hero. But you’re a monster. If this machine goes off then you will be the biggest monster in the history of the world. Nothing is worth that. No cause, no religion, no politics can ever justify this. Never. And I think you know it.”
He turned and looked at the machine. “When I came down here, Captain, I thought about what would happen if I could somehow switch it off. But I can’t. To do that would be to betray more than my party. It would mean betraying my people. It would mean aban doning them to greater hardship than they have ever known. Within a hundred years, Russia, as we know it now, will be gone. Bankrupt, torn apart, broken beyond repair. I can prevent that and help usher in an era of genuine abundance. America will fall, yes, and other nations will be hurt, but Russia will enter a golden age of prosperity.” He looked at me, tears streaming down his face. “How can I turn aside from that? What choice do I have left?”
“None, I guess,” I said as I raised my pistol.
And that’s when someone shot me in the back.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-ONE
Top Sims saw Tracy Cole fall.
He was reloading when the shot rang out and her cry rose like a tortured gull into the night. He pivoted and fired, catching the shooter in the upper chest, just above the line of his body armor. The man went down, but by then Top was running to where Cole had dropped. He went down on his knees, trying to see how bad it was.
Her face and throat were painted with black, which is the color blood looks through night vision. He felt for a pulse and found it, but it was too light and too fast. Then he saw the hole. It was in her upper right side, and it had to have been made by an armor-piercing round. It was big and red and had tunneled through her upper chest and out through her shoulder bone, doing dreadful damage.
“I got you,” he said as he tore open his pouch for sterile packing to stanch the blood flow. “I got you.”