“I have to confer with others,” Abd al-Bari said.
“Please do.” Oma’s voice chilled the room. “But I need an answer in twenty-four hours.”
Chapter Eighteen
A dreary rain was falling, turning the ground around the railhead into mud. Colonel Verochka, head of nuclear security for the GRU, watched from the interior of the BMD armored vehicle through a bullet-proof portal on the side. Led by two T-72 tanks, four BMDs rolled through the mud, their treads giving firm traction. The armored personnel carriers were followed by two more T-72s. Overhead, above the sound of the rain falling on the metal and the roars of the armored vehicles, Verochka could hear the sound of helicopter blades. She knew that four MI-28 Havoc gunships, the most advanced helicopter in the Russian inventory, were flying cover.
The four BMDs slid next to a heavily armored railcar hooked to two oil-burning engines. As dozens of infantrymen, weapons at the ready, spread out around the train, the back doors on the lead BMD swung open. Two men carried a plastic container out, up a concrete ramp and in through the heavy metal doors on the side of the car. Four more bombs were off-loaded, then the next BMD moved up and the process was repeated.
Colonel Verochka waited until all twenty warheads were loaded and the train was secured. Then she ordered the driver of the BMD to head to the nearby airfield. She sat down in one of the web chairs along the inner wall of the APC. Between her knees a metal briefcase was secured.
A steel chain ran from the case to a titanium cuff around her left wrist.
Overhead, two of the Havocs flew cover as they approached the airfield.
“Goddamn those Russian sons of bitches!” Raisor exclaimed. “We thought they might have had something to do with the Thresher going down!”
“We?” Dalton was bone-tired, and there was less than four hours before they had to go. But Raisor had demanded a complete report on what they had discovered on their reconnaissance mission. “You weren’t even born when the Thresher sunk.”
“The CIA suspected Soviet involvement in the sinking at the time,” Raisor said.
“That really doesn’t matter right now,” Dalton said. “The important thing is we now know there’s more to this theft of nuclear weapons than it appeared. If these Mafia people have the phased-displacement generator, and they have Vasilev, and the programming code, and they can get the bombs, we’ve got a big problem on our hands.”
“They still need remote viewers to aim the weapon,” Jackson noted.
“If they’re gathering all the other pieces,” Dalton said, “I’m sure they have a handle on that too.”
Raisor checked the digital clock overhanging the room. “We don’t have much time.”
“If you can get an idea where Vasilev is or what happened to this generator,” Dalton said to Raisor, “it would help.”
‘Just concern yourself with your mission,” Raisor said.
“I’m trying to do that,” Dalton said, “but nobody seems to have a clue what is really happening.”
“We know the warheads are going to get stolen in four hours,” Raisor said. “That’s all we need to know.”
“Dr. Hammond,” Dalton said, giving up on the CIA man.
Hammond had a cup of coffee in her hand. “Yes?”
Dalton noted that the hand holding the cup was shaking very slightly. “What if you wanted to destroy an avatar? How would you do it?”
“On the virtual plane or in the real?” Hammond asked.
“Either one.”
Hammond took a deep drink from her mug, then put it down. “I’ve thought about it and I’ve had Sybyl put some time into it. But I really can’t tell you. The key thing to remember is that the avatar is a projection. Even when it coalesces into the real world and transfers power into matter, it is still a projection. So what you want to know is sort of like asking how one would destroy an image on screen in a movie.”
“Where am I then, when I’m on the other side?” Dalton asked.
Hammond looked at him quizzically for a few seconds, then realized what he meant. “We have to assume that despite traveling on the virtual plane, the essence of who you are remains with the body.”
“I don’t buy that,” Dalton said. “When I’ve been out there, I’ve been out there.”
“You’re asking where the mind exists,” Hammond said, “and that’s something that’s more philosophical than— ”
Dalton cut her off. “I’m asking where the soul exists,” he said, slamming his fist into his own chest. Then he pointed at his head. “This only takes you so far, then something else takes over. I want to know if we’re putting that something else out there.”
“I don’t know,” Hammond said. “I don’t think so, but…”
“What do we do if we come up against an enemy avatar during our mission.”
“What enemy avatar?” Raisor asked. He gave a hard look to Jackson. “Has she been filling your head about her devil?”
“It’s a possibility,” Dalton said. “General Bolodenka said that SD8, which deals with the same thing you at Bright Gate deal with, has come up with a new-generation weapon, something beyond the phased-displacement generator. I think they may have developed a similar ability to Psychic Warrior, and I think we need to be as prepared as we can be for the possibility we might run into something.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Hammond said. “We really have no experience in this area.”
A thought occurred to Dalton. “What if something happens to Sybyl while we’re out in the virtual plane?”
“We have a backup computer that we can put on-line,” Hammond said.
“And while you’re waiting to go on-line, what happens to us?” Dalton demanded.
“The switchover is automatic.”
“But if there is a time gap?”
Hammond put her hands in the air, more from frustration than anything else. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you so worried?” Raisor asked.
“Because we think this Russian avatar, Chyort, knows about the nuke takedown. And we might trip over each other trying to stop it.”
“If your goals are the same, then there shouldn’t be a problem,” Raisor said.
“But if they aren’t?” Dalton didn’t wait for an answer. “Remember, this Chyort probably works for the agency that killed every man on board the Thresher. Even if our goals are the same, we’re still on opposite sides, as you pointed out to me when you justified not giving the Russians your intelligence about the takedown.”
“Why not focus on your mission, Sergeant Major?” Raisor suggested.
“What about the first Psychic Warrior team?” Dalton asked. “Are they dead?”
Silence filled the room. Finally Raisor stood up. “Come with me, Sergeant Major. I want to show you something.”
“Agent Raisor— ” Hammond began, but the look he gave her froze the next words in her mouth.
Dalton followed as Raisor headed to the side of the control room, to a door that Dalton had never seen opened yet. Raisor punched in a code on the small pad next to it and the metal slid to the side.
“Come on,” Raisor said, waving Dalton in.
The door slid shut behind them. The room was almost a duplicate of the control room, full of ten tubes. And inside nine of them were bodies, floating in the green fluid. Six men, three women.
“That’s the first Psychic Warrior team,” Raisor said. “My team.”
“Are they alive?” Dalton could see small placards on the front of each tube listing the name of the occupant.
“The bodies are,” Raisor said. “The minds, or soul, or whatever you want to call the essence of a person, that we don’t know about. Hammond thinks they’re dead. The government thinks they’re dead. We were supposed to pull the plug on the bodies a week and a half ago.”