Mishenka punched in the number he had been given by the American. It was answered immediately.
“Dalton here.”
“This is Colonel Mishenka.”
“I was afraid you’d been caught in the explosion,” Dalton said.
“The stakes have been raised,” Mishenka said. “Not only has GRU headquarters been taken out, but SD8 is totally isolated now.”
“Our enemy is very smart,” Dalton said.
“I know who it is— or who it was— and he is indeed very smart. And ruthless.”
“Taking out a couple of square miles of Moscow goes beyond ruthless.”
“Let us hope that is the limit this goes to.”
“What do you mean?” Dalton asked.
Mishenka quickly filled him in on the reaction of the Russian military.
“Goddamn,” was Dalton’s summation.
“We have to secure the nuclear weapons and this phased-displacement generator,” Mishenka said. “Who knows where the next target will be.”
“As I told you,” Dalton said, “we have to destroy Chyort in order to be able to find and then get to the generator and bombs.”
“What is your plan?”
“Are your men moving?”
“I have a company of Spetsnatz at the closest airfield to SD8. My time to that location is twenty-five minutes.”
“I’m forty-five minutes out,” Dalton said.
“I’ll alert them that you’re coming,” Mishenka said. “And once we are there?”
“We go in and take the station out.”
“Hell of a plan,” Mishenka said. “I have the defense setup for the station and it will not be that easy.”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” Dalton said. “I said we were going to do it.”
Mishenka smiled inside his oxygen mask. “Very good. I will see you shortly.”
“As you now know, what I told you was true,” Oma said.
“I grant that you have proved you have the nuclear warheads,” Abd al-Bari said matter-of-factly, “but you have not proved your capability to put them anywhere. You could have driven that one in a truck to Moscow.”
“I just want to insure that you will pay the balance,” Oma said. “I am putting everything on the line.”
“You do what we agreed, the balance will be there,” Abd al-Bari said.
“Good.” Oma put the phone down. She stood and looked about her office. She knew it was the last time she would be here. There was nothing in it she wanted. She had prepared long for this moment. She went to the door and walked out without a backward glance.
“Where is Barsk?” Feteror hissed at Leksi.
The navy commando shrugged. He could care less where the boy was.
“Let me see that,” Feteror demanded.
Leksi stared at the demon for a few seconds before holding the fax out.
Feteror leaned over, blood-red eyes close to the writing. He laughed as he saw the targets, the sound causing those in the hangar to wince. “Beautiful! The beginning of the end for everyone.”
He pointed a claw at the generator. “Load another warhead. We have some other business to take care of before we proceed with your master’s list.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Lieutenant Jackson and Dr. Hammond were alone in the control chamber— other than the bodies in the isolation tubes. Hammond was having Sybyl run through various projections about a possible connection to the lost psyches— if they still existed on the virtual plane. So far they had come up with nothing. She was also continuing the search for Raisor.
Jackson was monitoring communications between Sybyl and Sergeant Major Dalton while keeping an eye on the small television set to the side of the master control panel. CNN was broadcasting the first reports of the nuclear explosion outside of Moscow. Confusion seemed to be the common denominator in all the reports, with the source of the bomb being the most speculated-upon aspect.
“That’s strange,” Dr. Hammond suddenly said.
“What is?” Jackson asked.
“I’m picking up something through Sybyl. Something on the virtual— ” She paused, staring at her readouts.
A loud screech ripped through the room, echoing off the walls, the sound piling on top of itself. Red warning lights flashed, pulsing, adding to the confusion. Jackson looked up in shock as in the center of the room, above the isolation tanks, a small black sphere appeared, the surface pulsating, glistening, straining to expand.
Hammond’s panicked voice punched through the noise.
“The psychic wall has been breached. I’m reverting all power to interior containment.”
“Oh my God!” Jackson whispered as she checked the infrared scanner. It showed a nuclear bomb hanging in the center of the room in the virtual plane. She looked up. A square inch of the top tip of the bomb appeared in the real plane. Then another inch.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Sybyl’s holding it, but I don’t know how long she can keep it contained.” Lieutenant Jackson’s voice was on the edge of hysteria, but her training and discipline were holding. Dalton had heard radio calls like this before— from an A-Camp being overrun in Vietnam; from the trapped Delta Force soldiers in Mogadishu; from pilots shot down in the Gulf War calling for rescue as Iraqis closed in.
“But Sybyl is holding, right?”
“If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t be talking. The bomb must be on some sort of timer that is on hold until it clears into real space.”
“Can you clear out of there?” Dalton asked.
Jackson gave a wild laugh. “To go out we’d have to shut down the psychic wall. If Sybyl turns off the wall, we’d be destroyed instantly. We’re caught between two walls. The bomb is inside the outer wall, but Sybyl used the backup containment program to stop it before it came into the real plane inside. The psychic wall and the containment program work off the same system. Turn one off you turn the other off.”
Dalton looked at Major Orrick “How long?” he mouthed.
Orrick flicked his ten fingers at Dalton. Ten minutes.
“How long can the wall hold?” Dalton asked.
“Dr. Hammond is putting every bit of power she can into the computer. But we have no idea. Every time Sybyl ups the containment, it seems like the other side ups too. Jesus, Sergeant Major, the damn nuke is just hanging there above our heads, slowly coming into reality. It’s about a fifth in now. It comes all the way in, we’re done for. I don’t want to put any extra pressure on you or anything, Sergeant Major, but could you hurry the hell up!”
Feteror had put the bomb into Bright Gate without much trouble. The outer virtual wall had been relatively easy to pierce. But that damn computer had reacted with startling speed. The bomb had been caught in a virtual containment field.
He’d left the bomb there, operating off the program from the phased-displacement generator. It was going into the real world, much slower than Feteror would have liked, but it would get there eventually.
“Two minutes out,” Colonel Searl announced over the intercom. “Slowing to recon speed.”
“Extending surveillance pod,” Major Orrick said. He looked up at Dalton. “We have to slow down or else we’d rip the surveillance pod right off. We’re down to about two thousand miles an hour right now.” He leaned forward and placed his eyes into a set of eyepieces that had cycled up from the console. “We’ll get a good shot across the spectrum. Someone’s farting down there, we’ll pick it up.”
Dalton waited. He looked down, noted that his left foot was tapping impatiently against the wall of the recon room and forced it to stop.