CHAPTER 23

Anyone who puts his own conscience above the state is an anarchist.
-- Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle

6 February

The Lurker still followed him.

Haley raced through The Net as fast as he could issue commands. He understood now that the impression of being watched was not a mysterious, impossible case of telepathy. Running through the Moroccan bazaar that functioned as this week's central meeting zone, he saw the cause of his apprehension: the meticulous programmers of The Net had created such a scrupulously lifelike virtual world that polished objects reflected light and images. Haley had never paid much attention to the finer aspects of the illusion until this morning -- when he saw in a green glass fishing float the reflection of a figure standing behind him: the shadow of the Lurker.

In an instant Chad was off, flying out of the bazaar at 36,000,000 baud, the fastest his equipment could cycle the image over the fiber lines. The shadow followed him. All bets were off now. No more subterfuge. Whoever tracked his whereabouts on The Net no longer cared about stealth. He glanced backward to see that only a shadow followed him; that was a sure sign that the Lurker's presence was encrypted. He had seen shadows before in the more advanced experimental realms, but they always stayed on the sidelines.

Now one pursued him, presumably to frighten him, for there was no way Chad would do any work while being chased. He fumbled with one-way trapdoor functions to enter private sections of the system: the Pornorium, this month featuring an hareem out of a triple X-rated version of Burton; the Mad Scientist's Lounge wherein -- for educational and curio purposes only -- lab-coated, shock-haired researchers and their hunch-backed assistants worked this week on revivifying a virtual corpse; and the Wilderness Retreat, set up for one viewer, one vista. Chad emerged from the tent and zipped the flap shut, locking out all other users.

The shadow of the Lurker penetrated the tent like smoke through a veil.

Haley stood his ground. Pressing a stud on his outfit, he assumed the form of Horus, the mighty hawk-headed Egyptian sun god.

The shadow merely stood amid the desolate splendor of Destruction Bay, on the northern base of the Klondike's Saint Elias Mountains. Behind him lay Kluane Lake, deep blue beneath a sky scrubbed digitally free of any trace of worldwide pollution.

"Okay," Haley said through his flesh-rending beak. "I know you've been following me around for months. You may have gotten something interesting in the first few weeks before I realized what was going on, but I've isolated my system from The Net since then, and Sophia's endured no penetration, so you're just chasing shadows as immaterial as you. You're just trying to unnerve me and it won't work."

The shadow hung there amid the vegetation and the rocks. It flickered now and then, nearly imperceptibly. Haley suspected that whoever was behind the shadow was not connected via fiber line but by way of a satellite linkage. That could place them anywhere in the world.

He switched off his mic and spoke to Sophia's microphone mounted on the computer itself. "Sophia. Correlate those flickers on the shadow with satellite hand-offs. Try to intuit an origin for the signal."

"Sure, honey," the seductive voice responded.

Switching back on, he said, "Maybe you're just trying to waste my time. Or maybe I'm wasting yours."

The shadow remained unmoved. "You could be on automatic pilot, I suppose." Haley drifted toward it. "A genuine shadow, intended just to follow me around." He switched his glove to handshake mode, a way to identify another Net member with a touch. With a swift motion, he plunged his fingers toward the wraith.

Pain shot through his hand as the feedback servos in his glove suddenly constricted. They could not break his hand, but the pinch served as a potent warning that no data would be forthcoming by normal channels.

He shook his hand out, which sent all manner of conflicted commands to The Net. His point of view shot up Mount Kennedy, across to Mount Vancouver, and stomach-lurchingly downward into Yakutat Bay. After a brief ascent to the summit of Mount Seattle, he gave the finger signal for return to origin and stood once again before the tent.

The Lurker was gone.

Fingernails scratched at the inside of his tent. "Who is it?" he demanded.

"Joscelyn," came the muffled reply. She was the only one he had given an unlimited exemption to his Do Not Disturb default for such areas of The Net.

"Come on in."

The tent unzipped and the digital Joscelyn entered the great outdoors, dressed in an unnervingly sexy lederhosen getup with a blouse cut low in a manner the Swiss never intended.

"You just missed the Lurker," Haley muttered, losing Horus and restoring Tom Jefferson, this time in an 18th century hunting outfit.

She strode up to touch his shoulder, putting them in encrypted one-to-one communication. "How's the purchase going?"

"We have a single source for the thrust chambers as well as the fuel tubing," Haley said. "And an alloy fabricator in South Af..." He paused to gape at her. Her image flickered for an instant.

"Where are you?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual manner.

She gazed around her, then looked at the compass on her wrist. "Pretty far from here, actually. I'm in Florida, waiting for a pilot. A good one, too. How about you?"

"I'm assembling an excellent team. I'll tell you more in person. Gotta go now." He strode past her through the tent to make an orderly exit from The Net rather than just switching off.

Doffing his SkyPilot goggles, he gazed at his office and let out a slow, unsteady breath. His pulse raced and sweat dampened his brow.

"Sophia? Were the Lurker and Joscelyn ported through the same satellite links?"

"No. The first set of hand-overs indicate somewhere on the eastern seaboard. The second visitor was definitely from Florida or Georgia, though with only one hand-over to--"

"Thank you, Sophia. Could a single source access The Net through two different satellite paths to hide its origin?"

"Possibly."

Haley grunted. Whoever the Lurker was, it attempted to make him doubt even his allies. An east coast source certainly pointed toward the alphabet soup of snoopers concentrated about the District of Columbia. CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, and a dozen and more. Instilling paranoia was a standard destabilization technique in their portfolios.

He shut down the computer and headed to Grant's penthouse office.

* * *

Colonel Tuchapski worried about his own single brand of alphabet soup: GRU. Though the destruction of the Soviet Union liquidated much that was unsavory about the military security organization, its remaining members found a new endless enemy against which they could continue their employment. Nalevo, the left hand of Russian economics, the black market. Nalevo was a worthy enemy, for was it not the underground economy that brought the Kremlin to its knees, providing food when the government markets were bare, selling vodka in the midst of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol crusade, and importing Western clothing, music, and electronics right under the noses of corrupt officials?

Now, here on the outskirts of Novosibirsk, Col. Tuchapski was one of those corrupt officials, moving products out of the right hand of government control into a shadowland of left-hand use. Corruption for him, however, took the form of his adherence to an abandoned Russian goal: the conquest of the Cosmos.

Thirty SS-18's had so far been destroyed in this phase of INERT. Five of them were fakes comprising spare casings and loose parts. The genuine articles lay hidden in warehouses around the southern part of Siberia. Today he would acquire the sixth and final missile.

"Colonel Tuchapski?" The man entered the office bringing with him a flurry of snow and blowing ice. He wore a heavy wool overcoat of modern Western design topped off with a traditional hat of expensive beaver fur. It was an odd mixture of styles that managed to betray the integrity of both fashions.

"Yes?"

"Aleksander Baumhoff, Geh Er Uoh."

Tuchapski frowned. The man was one of the East German bastards that stayed with the Soviet Union after German reunification, then somehow remained in GRU after Soviet dissolution. Tuchapski usually admired loyalty, but this man obviously possessed no concept of motherland. Or fatherland, or whatever gender he used to anthropomorphize his nation, if he did at all.

"Good morning," the colonel said cheerlessly. "Would you like a glass of tea?"

"Coffee, if you have it."

"The coffee is mud."

Baumhoff smiled. He was a man of medium height, with the rounded, fleshy contours of well-fed Teutonic physique. More unnerving to Tuchapski, though, was his impression that the GRU man's smile was a happy one. He detested that, especially in a German.

"At least not frozen mud, yes?"

The colonel shrugged and poured the coffee into a cracked red mug, one of several still in active use around the base that bore the golden star of Soviet supremacy, tarnished though it was with age and neglect.

"Ho!" Baumhoff said, receiving the cup. "Collector's item!"

Vladimir inwardly fumed at the comment. He considered the mania seizing the West, in which any trinket from the former Union became a fashion accessory, to be nothing more than the tasteless humiliation of a conquered foe, vultures picking at the corpse of a fallen titan.

"What brings you to this cold place, Herr Baumhoff?" The foreign honorific was about as much insult as he dared allow.

The GRU man sipped at the acrid beverage, then smiled over the edge of the cup. "The UN inspectors contacted us concerning... irregularities in the demilitarization process here."

Tuchapski maintained his placid military composure. "Such as?"

Baumhoff sighed and wrapped his hands around the warm cup. "These people have been through several verification processes. SALT, START, INF, START II. Several of the more experienced have a certain intuitive feel for how a proper missile explosion should look. In at least three instances, they were... dissatisfied with the... quality of the detonations."

The other man shrugged. "It is cold here. Sub-zero temperatures play havoc with the explosives. Additionally, some of the plastique we use is over a quarter of a century old. Very unstable. Very unpredictable. Sometimes we have no explosion at all. Sometimes..." He flung his fingers lightly outward and mouthed a silent poof. "We lost a nearby truck last month when a burning piece of explosive hit the fuel tank then exploded from the shock of impact."

Baumhoff smiled and nodded his head. "You hear? Another mystery. No one saw that explosion, but the truck is reported destroyed. A large truck, also, as I understand it. The Kremlin is thinking perhaps enforcing INERT could be a little less expensive."

"So you are here as an accountant?"

Baumhoff lowered the cup. He no longer smiled. "I am here to take account."

* * *

For the first time since his military career began in Afghanistan, Vladimir Tuchapski considered that career at risk. Sudden disappearance was no longer a threat as it was in the past, but losing one's rank in the current economic climate was nearly as bad as death, there being no pensions or guaranteed employment. He knew the only place he would be able to work under such conditions: nalevo.

Boots crunched across the ice as the small cluster of personnel and inspectors trudged to the missile destruction site. It was three in the afternoon and not yet dark, though the heavy, low clouds washed all color from the landscape. The frigid air burned Tuchapski's nostrils. He enjoyed the harsh assault, as he enjoyed the vast grey expanse of the slate skies touching the snow-ash tundra all around him.

The UN team consisted of eight observers from Security Council nations, four of them missile scientists, four of them demolition experts. While Russian troops prepared the missile for destruction, the UN team observed every step of the process.

Tuchapski and his accomplices worked with great caution in stealing the missiles. They could not salvage an entire SS-18 at once, but instead picked components from each of the two dozen rockets destroyed since hatching their scheme. This time, under the noses of UN observers, they were after the rocket motor.

Tuchapski's men made certain that the mounting bolts had been cut away from the inside, leaving the engine in position, though precariously so, and the outside untouched. Timing would be crucial.

In the stinging cold, the UN representatives gave the most cursory of inspections to the missile. They had seen so many demolitions so many times before that the repetitive task numbed their minds as thoroughly as the Siberian winter chilled their bones. The SS-18 lay in sections on a cheap iron support frame that would be sacrificed along with the rocket. Surrounding its perimeter, a long, thick snake of grey putty formed an oblong loop along the bottom, almost as if the weapon had been mounted on a wad of modeling clay. Four wires extended from the plastique, running five hundred meters to the blockhouse.

A few degrees colder, Tuchapski mused, and wires could become superconductors.

The UN inspectors each raised a hand to indicate assent to the procedure. Baumhoff watched with interest as everyone trudged away from the blast zone without a word.

The demolition area lay in a shallow depression about one hundred meters in diameter. Their boots sought traction in the snow as they climbed out, and Tuchapski gave a quick final glance backward before ushering the group toward the blockhouse.

His men worked swiftly. As soon as the UN team passed the point where they could no longer see the missile, six men rushed in, heads down, maneuvering a low, wide dolly toward the rear of the SS-18. On the dolly lay pieces of an old rocket motor, which they dumped beside the demolition stand. Muscles tearing with the effort, they rapidly slid the good engine out of its housing and onto the transport. A steel cable ran up the eastern side of the depression to a hidden winch.

Heading toward the blockhouse, Vladimir calmly watched the inspectors -- and most of all Baumhoff -- with his peripheral vision. None of them looked back, though Baumhoff glanced at the colonel now and then.

The blockhouse was just that: a square bunker with walls of meter thick reinforced concrete and a roof about half that thickness. It housed the simple-but-effective controls for the detonator, a vented outhouse, mercifully indoors, a radio, and a dented old samovar in which water stood hot and ready for the crowd of frozen men and women.

Tuchapski kept a mental count of the time. At the moment they reached the door of the blockhouse, his men were winching the engine up the side of the pit. When he walked over to the samovar and began to draw glasses of water for their tea, they ought to have been over the edge, struggling to guide the slippery burden down the shallow incline toward the waiting truck.

"To peace and disarmament!" he said, raising the tall glass. The others muttered the oft-repeated toast in limpid tones and sipped at the hot drinks. At that moment, the truck would be slowly clattering away from the site with its precious burden. He smiled toward the head demolition expert. She nodded back, rubbing her hands together for warmth.

Reaching toward the simple detonator, she threw the first switch to arm the system. It warmed up slowly. As soon as the green light on the black, crinkle-finish box glowed, she could depress the detonation button, an impressive, overly large red protuberance surmounted with the word detonator in Cyrillic.

By the time the explosion would take place, the colonel's men and their precious cargo would be out of the danger zone and on their way to a warehouse.

The light glowed green. The demolitionist pressed the button while gazing through the bunker periscope to observe her handiwork.

At that moment, however, the six men and the rocket motor were not motoring toward safety as planned; they stood at the edge of the depression pulling at the steel cable in an effort to raise the engine without the aid of the winch, which lay on its side in the snow, motor smoking, victim of a corroded central shaft that shattered on startup in the sub-zero temperature.

One of the men took a precious instant to glance at his wristwatch timer.

"Too long!" he shouted. "Run!"

A dozen boots clambered up the icy embankment while the pristine engine slid back toward the blast zone.

The grey twilight flared to a dazzling orange-white. The six men felt only the pressure of the blast at their backs, then nothing, as shrapnel from the explosion riddled their bodies, punching through layer after layer of coat, sweaters, and shirts to penetrate flesh, muscle, organs, and bone. The shock wave tore apart the two men closest to the missile. Another was crushed by a large, smoking chunk of debris. The rest merely fell forward into their own entrails and lifeblood where they steamed for a moment before freezing solid.

Tuchapski knew none of this as he sipped his tea with the others, secretly relishing the knowledge that he would soon have enough equipment for a cosmic endeavor that would stun the world and awaken the sleepy oafs that peopled the Kremlin.

"Shall we inspect the damage?" the GRU agent said.

The colonel stared at Baumhoff. "We must let the noxious cloud dissipate first."

Baumhoff edged the UN woman aside to peer through the periscope. "I see only some smoke from fire. There is a brisk wind blow--"

"Very well," Tuchapski said curtly. "We go."

Within a hundred meters of the site, Tuchapski realized that something had gone horribly wrong. Dark forms littered the left edge of the snowy depression. Even in the growing darkness the crimson stain of blood leapt out with stomach-churning vividness. He realized what had happened long before the others could comprehend. They raced toward the smoking pit to gape at the carnage. All except Tuchapski.

Baumhoff was the first to turn his head from the horrific sight. He saw the smashed dolly and the twisted remains of the rocket engine. Fumbling inside his overcoat, he reached for his concealed Makarov 9mm pistol while simultaneously struggling to work his index finger out of the slot cut into the glove for the purpose of trigger-work.

Auto-pistol out, he completed his turn to stare at the barrels of Col. Tuchapski's decidedly non-regulation pair of Ithaca M1911A1 .45's gripped in white, gloveless hands.

The twin pistols spoke out of turn, one shot penetrating Baumhoff's throat with explosive force, the other disappearing into his overcoat and pushing outward the heavy fabric on the other side. The GRU agent stared sightlessly at Tuchapski with the dying expression of a man who could not comprehend how all his dreams and plans could end in a single instant. It was a visage of such uncomprehending disappointment that the colonel endured a momentary twinge of compassion before suppressing it beneath an icy contempt and an equally cold dedication to his task.

The UN observers stared in horror only a moment before making a break in all directions. They could not run fast enough.

The Colt .45 clones in Vladimir's hands held sixteen rounds fully loaded. Down to fourteen, he knew that he would have to be deliberate in his targets in order to slaughter the remaining dozen lives. He fired at the two women first, in an effort to spare them the pain of seeing their compatriots die. Both fell from single shots to their chests.

He spun toward one brave fool who attempted to rush him and blew his skull apart with a left-handed shot. Something burned inside him now, a battle-fever he had not encountered since a firefight against the moujeheddin on the outskirts of Kabul. His forehead pounded, his hands glowed pink with supple warmth in defiance of frigid nightfall.

He lunged forward, racing after his shrieking prey, laughing with every shot that downed a victim. Three with his right pistol, two with his left. Two at once from left and right combined. One of his targets, the slender Pakistani running in a random, evasive manner, required an annoying three shots to dispatch. The shots rang out hollowly, incapable of echoing anywhere on the tundra. Dark puddles of blood smeared across the snow, sinking into it and freezing solid like the fossilized record of an ancient conflict.

Two more still lived. He gazed about. One man -- the British member of the team -- cowered behind the cooling wreckage. A shot from the right pistol dispatched him with a hammer blow to the upper spine. The slide on the .45 locked back, the magazine completely empty. He pocketed the heavy automatic and transferred the other to his right hand.

Footsteps crunched across the snow. A truck door slammed. Vladimir scrambled out of the pit to see the other American inspector furiously monkeying with the ignition on the truck the colonel's men would have used to haul away the engine.

Tuchapski pounded toward the truck, his lungs searing with each intake of super-cooled air. The furious heat departed his body and soul almost as fast as it had come upon him. With time to ponder his deed, he almost regretted this final killing if for no other reason than it was indeed the last.

His bare left hand gripped the truck door handle, where the sweat of his exertion promptly froze, firmly adhering his skin to the painted metal. He paid no attention to the burning pain, but leveled his pistol at the American.

The engine caught and the truck lurched forward. The pistol shot punched up through the truck roof and the slide locked open.

He swore and reached through the side window to pistol whip the driver. The American blocked his blow and floored the accelerator.

The Russian's frozen grip held tightly to the handle and he swung his arm again, this time hitting the driver's laryngeal cartilage.

With a curse directed toward both god and devil, Tuchapski tore his fingers from the door handle, leaving behind a good deal of grey, frozen skin, and jumped from the uncontrolled truck. He rolled in the snow, coming to a stop when he slammed against a concealed rock. The truck, bouncing wildly onward, also hit a rock and tipped lazily over, still in gear with tires spinning.

Tuchapski rose, searched for his other pistol, and pocketed it. Then he sat down in the snow to take a deep breath while slipping his gloves back over his cold, stiff, bloodied hands.

He knew that he would have to rig a second explosion after gathering all the bodies to the center of the demolition pit. It would take several hours in the dark and cold. He would do it, though. It would buy him some time.

Time enough to escape.


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