“That will not be a problem,” Feteror said.
“Where will you be sending the warhead?” Barsk asked.
“Do not concern yourself” Feteror said.
He noted that Barsk had his cell phone out. Feteror slipped into the virtual plane for a moment and reached out to the phone.
Colonel Mishenka climbed on board the helicopter waiting on the roof of GRU headquarters, his mind racing with what he had just learned. In the distance he could see the few skyscrapers that dotted the Moscow skyline. The fools below him were still scrambling, searching desperately for the bombs and the phased-displacement generator. They couldn’t accept that someone in SD8 was involved.
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.