Jackson looked at the half of a bomb that hung in the air. “So we’re dead no matter who wins.”
There was no reply from Hammond, nor had she expected one.
Jackson nodded to herself. “All right then. There’s only one thing to do.” She tapped Dr. Hammond on the shoulder. “Get my isolation tank ready. I’m going over.”
“What are you going to do?” Hammond asked.
Jackson pointed at the bomb. “The only thing I can do. Defuse that thing.”
Colonel Mishenka leaned close to Dalton in order to be able to hear inside the noisy cargo bay of the AN-24 transport. Dalton relayed Hammond’s course of action.
“Short-circuit the field with a brain?” Mishenka asked.
Dalton nodded.
Mishenka laughed. “That is great. Simply great. You Americans have such a great sense of humor.”
“It’s not— ” Dalton began, but he paused as Mishenka put a hand on his arm.
“I know it is not a joke, but it is the Russian way to laugh when things are the worst. It is how we have survived much misery. Besides, before we worry about the psychic wall, first we have to get to it. We will deal with the psychic wall if we live long enough to get there.”
“What is your plan?” Dalton shouted. The Spetsnatz men were rigging parachutes on each other as the plane banked.
Mishenka pointed at the map. “We will parachute in the only place we can— here in this open field. Then work our way up the hill and then in. Not much of a plan, but it is the best I can do with such little notice.”
He stood and grabbed a parachute off the web cargo seat and held it out to Dalton. The sergeant major took it and slipped it over his shoulders. There were AK-74 folding-stock automatic weapons, and Mishenka indicated for him to take one, along with ammunition, grenades, a demolitions pack, and other weaponry.
Dalton checked his watch. Sixteen minutes.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Feteror formed himself in the real plane inside the hangar. He looked about. Leksi and his men waited by the generator with eighteen plastic cases holding nuclear weapons lined up. Vasilev was at the computer console. Barsk was gone.
That last fact started to truly register on Feteror. Why would Oma’s grandson have left? He knew the answer as soon as he considered it: She was double-crossing him. He laughed, the sound startling everyone in the hangar. She was double-crossing everyone.
But it did not matter. His revenge had begun. He only needed to complete it.
He was adapting, changing. The link back to Zivon was as strong as ever, and the computer was helping deal with this unusual situation with regard to the phased-displacement generator and the bombs. What else could he accomplish? Feteror wondered. Might he be able to actually direct more bombs while the one still was out there, not detonated? He saw no reason why not.
“Load the generator,” Feteror ordered.
The back ramp of the Antonov AN-24 was down, the wind swirling in the back, adding to the roar of the engines.
“One minute!” Colonel Mishenka yelled to Dalton and the Spetsnatz men lined up behind him. The Colonel knelt down, grabbing the hydraulic arm that lowered the ramp on his side.
Dalton went to the other side and assumed a similar position. He looked forward, blinking in the 130-knot wind that blew in his face.
The peak that held SD8 base was directly ahead. As he watched, there was a flash and a line of smoke streaked up into the sky.
“Missile launch!” one of the crewmen yelled. The man was seated on the center edge of the back ramp, a monkey harness around his body hooked to a floor bolt keeping him attached to the plane. He pointed a flare gun out the back and fired in the direction of the oncoming missile.
He continued firing as quickly as he could reload. It wasn’t high-tech, but it worked. At least for the first two missiles launched at the lead plane as the infrared seekers in their nose went after the hot flares.
“Stand by!” Mishenka yelled.
Dalton stood and shuffled closer to the edge of the platform.
“Go!” Mishenka stepped off on his side, Dalton on his.
Dalton tucked into a tight body position as his static line was pulled out. The chute snapped open. Dalton looked up, checking to make sure his canopy had deployed properly, and he saw a SAM-8 explode in the right engine of the second AN-24 cargo plane as the first jumpers exited.
The cargo plane’s right wing sheered off and the plane canted over. Dalton watched as desperate parachutists tried scrambling out of the open rear. A couple made it before the plane impacted with the ground, producing a large fireball.
Dalton turned his attention to his situation, forcing his feet and knees together, bending his knees slightly— as he’d been taught almost thirty years ago at Fort Benning by screaming Blackhats— and he prepared for his own impact with the ground.
His feet hit; he rolled and came to his feet. The wind was taking his chute upslope, so he cut lose the shoulder connects. The chute, minus his weight, took off. Forty meters away a machine gun chattered, stitching holes in the nylon.
There was a terrible scream. Dalton looked up. One of the last men out of his plane had hit the top of the psychic wall. He was still descending, but the man had both hands wrapped around his head. Even at this distance, Dalton could the blood gushing out of the man’s ears, nose, and mouth.
The scream ended just as the man hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. An automatic machine gun fired twenty rounds into the corpse. The man lay there, his parachute anchored by his body and flapping in the breeze.
Dalton watched as two Spetsnatz commandos slapped down a tripod, slid a tube onto the top, loaded a missile, and fired, all in less than ten seconds. The missile streaked right into the source of the firing that had shot up Dalton’s parachute. The small mound hiding the machine gun exploded.
Colonel Mishenka was yelling orders, but the men were well trained and needed little direction. Other Russian soldiers were opening their bundles, pulling equipment out.
Three men ran forward to the minefield warning signs and opened up a large satchel. They pointed a thick plastic tube upslope. There was a flash, then a thick line flew out of the end of the tube, soaring high through the air until it landed, a hundred meters away. One of the men pulled a fuse ignitor on the close end of the line, then all three dove for cover.
The cord of explosive detonated, blowing a five-foot-wide path through the minefield. The three men dashed into the path, made it ten meters, then were cut down by another automatic machine gun.
A rocket destroyed that bunker.
And the bloody process continued as Colonel Mishenka’s Spetsnatz worked their way up the hill, closer and closer to the shimmering psychic wall.
Dalton ran forward and threw a grenade at a bunker housing a machine gun that had just killed a soldier. He knelt and checked his watch. Nine minutes.
Zivon alerted Feteror to the attack, even as the computer battled the attackers with the automatic defense system. Leksi’s men were loading the third warhead into the generator.
“How soon will you be ready?” Feteror demanded of Vasilev.
The professor looked up at the demon. “You still have the second bomb in stasis in the virtual field. That’s affecting the computer. Slowing it down.”
Feteror frowned, dark ridges coming together on his demon face. “Can you fire the next one?”
Vasilev didn’t look up from his keyboard. “I am trying to get the program to accept the new mission.”
“How long?” Feteror demanded.