Feteror stopped and walked over to his grandfather, who was seated on the tree stump where he had always sat. Feteror thumped his chest. “I am not real either. None of this is. I am a monster. I’m supposed to be dead. You are dead. And I am going to join you soon— and bring those who did this to me on the journey. They will pay for what they inflicted on me. For betraying a loyal soldier.
“Like you said, Opa, the generals don’t care about the common man. They use us like a sponge until we are soiled and dirty and can work no longer, then they throw us away. They have betrayed the entire country. I gave everything, everything, for Mother Russia, and she kicked me in the face. You gave everything. Millions gave everything. And now criminals and bootlickers run the country. I am going to end that and make them all pay.”
Opa looked at him. “How can you do that if we are not real? Is this a dream? I do not understand.”
Feteror shook his head, knowing there was no way he could explain this to his grandfather. “Trust me, Opa. I will do all that I say.”
Opa frowned. “But why? I fought in the Great Patriotic War. I came home to you and my daughter, your mother. I raised you. I did not seek vengeance. What was done in the war was done for necessity. I still had my life to live.”
“I don’t have mine!” Feteror exploded.
Opa waved his hands around the glade. “But you have this!”
“It isn’t real!” Feteror screamed.
Opa reached out and touched Feteror’s arm. “There is good in everyone, grandson. You must— ” Opa began, but he was interrupted by the bright flash of General Rurik’s summons.
Despite his anxiety to get going, Feteror paused. He put a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “Opa, I have to go now. We will not meet like this again.”
Opa smiled, revealing his yellowed and stained teeth. “I do not understand what this place is or why I am here. I don’t understand why you feel you must do what you feel you must, but you are my grandson, so I will be with you in spirit. Good luck, Arkady. Godspeed.”
Feteror nodded, then flashed through the circuits to access his line to General Rurik. As he did so, his grandfather’s last words echoed in his mind. God? There was no God as far as Feteror was concerned. No God would allow what had been done to him to happen.
He spoke into his circuits. “Yes, General?”
“We found my youngest son, exactly where you said he would be.”
Feteror waited.
“Find my wife and other son,” Rurik ordered.
“I will.”
The door opened and Feteror was free. As he raced out the window into the virtual plane, he realized that if all went well, this would be the last time.
“We can’t beat Chyort in the virtual plane.” Dalton’s voice was firm.
“That makes Psychic Warrior worthless.” Hammond was shaking her head. “The whole purpose of this program was— ”
Dalton slapped his hand in the tabletop. “Look in the chambers. My people and yours are just empty shells, and the essence of those people is dead!”
Dalton watched the doctor with no sympathy. Her little world, her pet project, had fallen apart and failed. A black mark on her efficiency report. Dalton was more concerned with the bodies in the tanks and the twenty nuclear weapons heading toward the phased-displacement generator. And Chyort.
“As I said, I’ve already been in contact with the National Security Council,” Hammond said. “They’re using a satellite to search for the phased-displacement generator and to track down the nukes. They are also opening contact with the Russian government to offer support.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Dalton said. “Things are as screwed up on their end as they are on ours. The clock is ticking and by the time the official world reacts, it will be too late.”
“They’ll contact us as soon as they discover anything,” Hammond said.
Dalton stood. “Find where Raisor went. And where he is now.” He walked out without another word. He went to the dispensary and looked in on Barnes. The sergeant was sleeping, his body wrapped in blankets.
Dalton looked down at the younger man. He reached up and unpinned his own sergeant major’s insignia from his collar and put it on the small stand to the left of the bed. Then Dalton pulled his wedding band off his ring finger. He looked at the inscription on the inside for several seconds, then placed it next to the rank.
Dalton left the dispensary and went to the main chamber and up to the closest isolation tank. Captain Anderson’s body floated listlessly inside. The breathing fluid was moving slowly through the clear tubes, and the monitor said that the machine was keeping his heart going. But staring at the body inside the tube, the head covered with the TACPAD, Dalton felt little hope. Even if their psyches were recoverable, he knew that Chyort still waited on the virtual plane, ready to stop him from succeeding in any attempt to recover them.
Dalton stood for a long time, staring and thinking.
“I have a question.” The voice startled Dalton out of his morbid reverie.
Lieutenant Jackson had come up behind him unheard and unnoticed. She looked past him at Captain Anderson’s body.
“What’s your question?” Dalton asked.
“The story you told me— about the pilot who was brought in wounded while you were a POW and how you stayed up with him all night?”
“Yes?”
“What happened to him?”
Dalton sighed. “He died within a month. He just gave up.”
“But you didn’t, right?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Don’t give up now, Sergeant Major. We need you.”
Feteror popped into the GRU main conference room and maintained a silent presence for ten minutes. More than enough time to know that the Americans were now putting their cards on the table and talking to his government through the GRU, preparing a conventional response to the bombs’ being stolen.
Feteror had not expected such a quick reaction, but he also had not expected the assault at the ambush site by the Bright Gate personnel. He saw the Spetsnatz colonel sitting quietly at the conference table, listening to the various reports coming in.
Feteror came closer to the man. He knew him. Years ago, in Afghanistan. Then it had been Captain Mishenka, a ruthless and efficient leader of an elite hunter killer team. A fool to still be sitting here serving a new government when the old one had betrayed his fight in Afghanistan.
Despite Mishenka’s presence, Feteror’s own government acting alone did not worry him. By the time they discovered where the phased-displacement generator was, it would be too late. And the only way they would find the stolen nuclear weapons was when they exploded at their targets.
But the Americans— that was another story. They had capabilities that could pose a threat either acting on their own or helping the GRU. Feteror slid along the virtual plane, out of the room.
Inside the conference room, Colonel Mishenka shivered, looking up at the ceiling. He’d felt a cold draft down to the very marrow of his bones for just a second. His eyes narrowed, the deep lines etched at the sides indicating the years he had spent fighting in the brutal elements.
The chill was gone. He returned his focus to the briefer at the front of the room.
In orbit, 285 statute miles above the surface of the earth, thrusters on W a r fighter 1 fired, maneuvering the 850-pound satellite toward the target grid area. On board, doors slid open, revealing the hyperspectral imaging equipment bay. It was the most advanced spy satellite in the American inventory, launched just the previous year and capable of all-weather, all-condition viewing across a large number of frequency bands at extremely high resolution. Some of its imagers could even “see” through ceilings into bunkers and hangars by using certain bandlengths.