Many an advancing army had been beaten when a retreating foe turned and struck them down in the midst of their foolish bravado.
Quinn rolled to his feet at the crescendo of Zamora’s tattered cries. He picked up the helmet and threw it underhanded as he moved, catching Blessington center chest. It didn’t cause any damage, but surprised him, giving Quinn a precious second to focus on the other man.
A half step out, Quinn pulled up short, stepping sideways as if trying to avoid a confrontation. The Chechen, taking this for weakness, struck out with a powerful right hook. Instead of meeting the punch, Quinn let it sail by, grabbing it across the top, drawing against his center, then reversing directions to turn the wrist back on itself. In Japanese martial arts it was called kote-gaeshi.
Quinn kept his own circles tight and powerful as he spun, but extended the man’s arm, not only snapping the fragile wrist bones but destroying his elbow and shoulder joints as well. Screaming in pain, the Chechen clutched the damage with his good hand. Quinn grabbed him around the chest, turning to face a maniacal Blessington, the wooden rod raised high over his head like a sword.
Quinn’s hand slipped the pistol from the Chechen’s belt as he let the man fall. He shot without aiming, putting two slugs in Blessington’s belly as he tried to bring the wooden staff down on Quinn’s head. The Brit stood blinking for a long moment, slumping against the heavy stick like a cane before toppling forward, his open mouth blowing soft puffs of fesh fesh away as he drew his last breaths.
Quinn used his pocketknife to cut Zamora’s hands free, keeping an eye on the wounded Chechen.
“Are you okay?” Quinn said, tossing him the blade so he could cut loose his own feet.
“I’m fine,” Zamora said, blinking to clear his head. He tested tender feet before standing. “Thankfully, nothing is broken… ” He gave Quinn a long quizzical look before turning toward the glaring Chechen, who lay just ten feet away.
The Chechen peered up at Quinn with brooding eyes. “You think you know this man, but you do not.”
Zamora was on him in an instant, striking over and over. Quinn kept the blade of his ZT folder extremely sharp. That, combined with Zamora’s white-hot desire for revenge, gave the Chechen no chance for survival.
Zamora’s face was covered in blood when he looked up. “We should get out of here,” he said, wiping his face with a rag from inside his riding jacket. “Frankly I’m surprised the ASO hasn’t sent someone looking for us since our bikes have been stopped so long.”
Without the illegal communication Quinn could not have known about the accident or the fact that Zamora’s IriTrak was malfunctioning, so he didn’t mention it. Instead he nodded at the bodies, feigning shock.
“I’m not in too much of a hurry to get caught out here with these guys. What was that all about anyway?” He shrugged and picked up his bike. He breathed a sigh of relief when it started on the first try.
Zamora was already snapping the camlocks on his riding boots. “Trust me,” he said. “You do not want to know.”
The IriTrak on Quinn’s KTM began to speak, rescuing him.
“Contestant 172, please report your status.” The voice was thickly French.
“Good to go,” Quinn responded. “Just took a wrong turn. Moving now.”
“Acknowledged,” the race official said, ending the transmission.
A little more time bought, they dragged the bodies into the deep fesh fesh, making sure they were well covered in the event of a flyover. Quinn made certain the IriTrak on Blessington’s bike was disconnected before burying it in fesh fesh as well. The Chechen must have had a vehicle nearby, but it was nowhere to be seen and there was no time to worry about it.
Zamora’s Yamaha started with a little coaxing.
“There must be something wrong with my GPS.” The Venezuelan sat on his bike beside Quinn. “I am left to wonder why you followed me if your GPS was functional.”
Quinn shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easier to follow a pro than it is to lead. Why do you think Geroux and Caine trade wins each day? One does all the work of the leader while the other sits back only to shoot ahead fresh at the end — putting him in the lead for the next day and repeating the cycle.”
Zamora nodded. “And you hoped to follow me until the end so you could beat me?”
“It’s a tactic.”
“Well.” Zamora winked, lowering his goggles. “I am fortunate you came along. But sometime in the not too distant future, you may regret your decision to save my life.”
Quinn watched as the man raced away, covering him in a rooster-tail shower of sand. He regretted his decision already.
CHAPTER 37
Pollard didn’t know if it was the oppressive heat or the fact that he sat three feet away from the remnants of a nuclear bomb, but he had never sweated so much in his life. His plywood hut kept off the daily rain showers but proved more of an oven than shelter. Though sweat ran down his back and stung his eyes, the humidity was so high that none of it evaporated to help cool him. At first he’d shucked off his loose cotton shirt but found he worried too much about malaria-bearing mosquitos without it.
Still on his bunk, he let his head loll sideways to study the device. It occurred to him that the shielding had degraded to the point that he was being irradiated as he sat there, but found that he didn’t care. He doubted that he’d come out of this alive anyway. The point was to figure out a way to save his wife and son — and to do that, it looked as though he was going to have to rebuild a bomb that was well past its prime.
The trunk stood on its side with the lid hinged open like a door. The thing Zamora called Baba Yaga was nothing special to look at. A metal cylinder ran diagonally from one end of the box to the other, a length of about four feet. As big around as his leg, the cylinder housed the high-explosive charge as well as the “bullet” and “target,” two pieces of plutonium that would be rammed together by the charge to achieve critical mass.
Theoretically, the metal tube was shielded enough to protect someone carrying the device from errant radiation. The rat’s nest of wires leading from an ancient battery was white with corrosion. It could have been from the atmosphere or leaking acid, but radiation was highly corrosive to electronics. Without a Geiger counter, there was no way to tell which had caused the decay. So far the capacitors looked intact, though there was something about their array that he still couldn’t quite put a finger on.
Pollard sat up to look at the bomb more closely. There was a sinister beauty about the thing — like some kind of poisonous spider. Zamora was insane. There was absolutely no doubt about that. But he was smart enough to pick the right scientist for this job.
Baba Yaga, as the name implied, was an old hag. Built by the Soviets in 1970, she had seen better days. Her battery — last replaced in 1986—was toast, some of the wiring was corroded beyond repair, and she very likely leaked radiation like Chernobyl. Apart from the physical danger posed to Pollard — and anyone else who spent any time near the device — such leakage was also highly corrosive to the fragile electronics. But plutonium had a half-life of roughly eighty million years. That component, at least, was still good to go. If the explosive charge in the initial “gun” portion of the bomb remained viable, there was a slight possibility he might be able to fix the rest.
Old as she was, it was the very age of this device that made her so appealing. In an effort to help ward off the risk of rogue generals with their finger on the launch button, the United States had shared their own Permissive Action Link technology with the Soviets sometime around 1971—two months after Baba Yaga was born.