Rasputin's Shadow

73

At first, it was like an electric pulse had danced across the inside of my skull, like a tiny Taser had reached in and tapped my eardrums and gone in deeper. Then I started to feel dizzy and I felt my eyes going in and out of focus.

Koschey had switched it on, and I was too close to it.

Sokolov’s makeshift protection wasn’t blocking it all out.

Koschey wasn’t shooting back, nor was he coming for me. I knew he was in no rush. He assumed I’d soon be under the effect of the device. It would make me mad with rage, irrationally aggressive. And in my crazed state, I wouldn’t be thinking tactically. I’d just break cover and rush him mindlessly-literally-and he’d be able to pick me off without even looking while the Hilton ballroom would be turning into a shooting gallery, with the president on the podium being the grand prize.

I had to focus. Concentrate. Try to block it out. But I couldn’t. It was the weirdest feeling. I could feel my consciousness draining away, Sokolov’s waves just choking it out of me.

In a matter of seconds, I’d be under its spell.

AT THE EDGE OF the Hilton’s ballroom, Aparo felt the discomfort in his ears as he clutched his helmet and watched the intense argument going on between Everett and Romita.

Reilly was right, he thought. It was happening.

He scanned left and right, his mind racing, desperate for a way to stop the inevitable. He knew Romita would be a hard-ass, knew Everett would have a tough time getting him to do what he needed to do-and even if he did, the odds were against them. The killer signal would still, in all likelihood, get through.

He needed something else and he needed it fast, otherwise he and everyone else around him would soon be dead.

He had to help Reilly. That was the only thing he could do. Help him take down Koschey.

He ran up the stairs and out the lobby and was about to radio Reilly to find out the quickest way there when he spotted something he’d missed.

A black Chevy Suburban, part of the presidential motorcade, just behind the two Cadillacs.

Not just any Suburban.

This one had two big collinear antennas mounted on its roof.

Aparo dashed toward it.

I COULD SENSE AN anger swelling up inside me, a primal anger at nothing specific, and yet everything at the same time. I was desperate to block it out, desperate to do anything to keep control of my senses, but I was helpless and could only wait for control over my mind to be ripped away from me.

I didn’t dare think of what might be happening in the ballroom.

I forced myself to focus on the situation again, my besieged mind racing for a solution. I couldn’t charge him, not given how good a shot he was, not given his tactical advantage. He was manning his fort, and I was a foot soldier looking to charge across the trenches. Never a winning strategy. I needed something else. Something to bridge that advantage gap.

I scanned around, seconds flying past.

The buses. Sitting there about thirty yards away from me.

There was a low wall separating the parking lot from the playground, around halfway to the buses. I figured I could break the journey in half by taking cover there.

I also heard some shots fired from beyond, along with a solitary shout. Then another. The microwaves were starting to have an effect.

It was time to stop thinking and just move.

I sprang to my feet and darted across the open asphalt, shooting for cover before slamming into the side of the wall and crouching low. I caught my breath and was about to cover the second leg when several bullets slammed into the wall around me. They weren’t coming from Koschey. Confused, I spun and raised my gun, panning across to where I thought they’d come from. And I saw Larisa coming up the driveway from the street, gun raised, advancing toward me-and still firing.

She was wearing her helmet, but it wasn’t doing its job. Sokolov’s hasty efforts in the chopper were obviously not keeping the signal out, not as well as mine was. Either that or she just wanted to kill me.

“What are you doing?” I yelled out.

She kept firing. A bullet scraped my arm, sending a jolt of pain up through my shoulder as she loosed two more shots.

I stared at Larisa, had her in my sights-something inside me wanted to kill her, right there and then. I wanted to blast her to bits, to empty my whole clip at her, and it took all the resolve and willpower I could muster to resist pulling the trigger. She had a blank expression, like she was in a daze. It had to be the signal, and I couldn’t just cut her down.

Worse, she would soon be in open ground and in Koschey’s sights.

I fired at her feet, hoping to stop her, to get her to stay behind the wall. But she didn’t react, didn’t go for cover. It was like she’d lost the ability to defend herself. Rage superseded everything else. All she could think of, all she was programmed to do at that moment, was to kill.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to kill the machine.

Repeating this thought over and over in my head and using it as a mantra to try to keep control over my consciousness, I raised my gun and emptied the clip toward Koschey as I dashed toward the nearest bus.

I kept mouthing it to myself as I pulled the driver’s door open and jumped in, hoping Larisa was still standing. More rounds drilled into the side of the bus, which told me that Koschey hadn’t hit her. I tucked my weapon into my waist and yanked the ignition wiring out from under the dashboard, immensely grateful for old-school buses and their antiquated, easily hot-wireable electrics.

Three seconds later, the big diesel engine in the back grumbled to life.

“Kill the machine. Kill the machine.” I was shouting it now.

I glanced out the side window. Koschey’s Dodge minivan was lined up almost directly behind me.

Now or never.

I slammed it into reverse and floored the pedal.

The big bus lurched backward and shot across the lot, its engine whining like a wounded beast. I made a couple of micro-adjustments with the steering wheel before bracing myself just as the yellow mammoth plowed into the minivan. It kept going, pushing it through the mesh fencing around the basketball court before crushing it against the side of the school building in an earsplitting crunch of metal against brick.

Then it all went quiet.

I drew my weapon and pulled the helmet off my head. Waited for a second.

No buzzing, no internal Taser sensation. Nothing.

I scrambled around to the back of the bus. The minivan was all mangled up and accordioned against the side of the building. The front section was crushed right in past the front seats.

Koschey wasn’t in there.

I heard a rustle behind me and spun to face it, but before I made it around, I heard three quick, successive rounds that whipped the air and shattered the serenity of the empty school grounds.

Koschey collapsed onto the asphalt of the basketball court. Farther back, at the edge of the open ground, Larisa was standing in full shooting stance, her gun still held tight in front of her in a straight-armed, two-fisted grip.

I leveled my gun at her, unsure as to whether she had fully regained her senses. I wouldn’t get a chance to fire if she took the first shot-she seemed to be a decent enough shot to take me down with her first pull. But she didn’t fire. She just lowered her gun and walked over to me, her face scrunched up with confusion.

“What happened?” she asked.

I smiled. “You saved my life,” I told her.

“But… what about…?” She was staring at the wound on my arm, still foggy-brained but wondering, like maybe some part of her memory had registered that.

“It’s over,” I told her.

I sucked in a deep breath. Larisa took off her helmet.

We wandered over to where Koschey had fallen. He was dead, two to the chest and one to the head. Larisa was definitely a good shot, and Koschey’s soul-if he ever had one-was taking the slow train to an eternal sentence at a Siberian gulag.

“Nick,” I said into my comms mike. “It’s done. Koschey’s dead. We’re clear.”

Nothing came back.

“Nick. Come in.” Nothing. “Everett? Anyone?”

Nothing.

I looked at Larisa. She seemed as spooked as I was.

I had a really bad feeling about this.

We stood there for a minute, in silence. Wondering about what had happened. I tried to raise them again, but the radio was still dead.

Then I heard loud footfalls coming our way. I tensed up, swung my gun up and aimed it at the edge of the wall, waiting to see who was going to show up. They couldn’t still be under the machine’s effect now that it was in pieces. But for a split second, I found myself wondering if its effects lingered even after it was turned off.

Then I saw Aparo appear from behind the corner, rushing toward us, with Everett close behind. They had their guns out.

I leveled my gun at them-then Aparo shouted, “Sean, whoa, it’s us. It’s us.”

I hesitated, then brought my gun down.

“What happened, man?” he asked as he reached us and took in the crashed bus and the squashed minivan.

I said, “He’s dead. It’s over.”

He slapped me on the back. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece, buddy.” Then he smiled at Larisa. “You too.” Then he added, with a grin, “Even more so.”

I swallowed hard, then I asked, “What about POTUS? Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Aparo confirmed, laconic as always. “Confused, but fine. They’ve got him locked down in some storage room in the basement.”

I breathed out with relief and for the first time in days, I felt my entire body unclench itself.

“What about everyone else?”

Everett said, “We had some punch-ups and four agents outside took bullets to their vests, but they’re okay.”

Which, if true, was a much better outcome than I expected. “So the signal didn’t make it into the ballroom?”

“Oh, it did,” Aparo said. “We heard the shots over our comms and we felt it all right, but before anyone inside was affected enough to pull any weapon, I came up with a Buck Rogers trick of my own.”

I was lost. “Come again?”

“The electronic countermeasures van,” Aparo said, beaming. “I don’t know if it did the trick or not, but I got them to switch on every jammer they had full-blast when it all started to go weird.”

I smiled with relief and nodded to myself, feeling exhausted. A key component of the presidential motorcade was a Chevy Suburban that was used to counter any remotely controlled attack. It had powerful barrage jamming equipment on board that was designed to kill any kind of phone, radio, or electromagnetic signal in order to block any remotely controlled bomb threat.

“And Sokolov?” I asked.

“He’s fine. The guys in the command unit didn’t really feel anything. Might have something to do with the amount of electronics they have in there,” Aparo said.

“I’m guessing we’re all staring down the barrel of a weeklong debrief, at best.” Everett chortled.

“I can’t wait,” I told him, pulling my earbud out.

There was something I needed to check.

“Give me a sec,” I said. Then I glanced at Larisa. She understood.

I headed back to the crushed minivan. Larisa followed.

It was battered beyond recognition. Front to back, it couldn’t have been more than six feet long. I walked around to the back of it, which had slammed into the brick wall. Among the twisted debris, I could see various electrical components, all busted up. Like someone had chucked a stereo from a fifth-floor window.

Still, I didn’t want to take any chances.

I pulled back a couple of bent panels and climbed into the wreckage. I found three components that didn’t look completely damaged. They were the size of stereo amps. I also found the laptop, closer to what used to be the front of the minivan. It didn’t look as badly broken as the rest. A small travel case was also relatively unscathed. I pulled it out and opened it. I found some clothing and men’s grooming items inside it. I also found a hidden compartment in which Koschey had stashed several passports and credit cards as well as a decent bundle of hundred-dollar bills.

I set the three components down on the asphalt, then I looked around until I found a more-or-less whole brick that had come off the wall.

I looked at Larisa. “You okay with this?”

She studied me, then nodded. “Seems like the reasonable thing to do.”

I raised my arm and battered them with the brick until they were unrecognizable. Then I tossed the components back into the wreck.

I picked up the laptop. “I’ll need to dispose of this properly.”

“What about Sokolov?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Might need your help on that.”