The Last Oracle (38 page)

Kat’s hands began to tremble. She saw who manned the raft. She struggled to understand. It looked like Monk. But she had no memory of Monk ever being on a raft. Why would the girl draw such a thing?

Sasha must have sensed her distress. Her smile wilted to confusion. Her lips trembled, as though fearful she had done something wrong. She stared from Yuri to Kat. Tears glistened. She mumbled in Russian, apologetic and scared.

Yuri scooted closer and reassured her with the soft voice of a grandfather. Kat forced down her reaction—for the child’s sake. Still, her heart pounded. She remembered seeing Yuri stiffen when he saw the child’s earlier picture. At the time, for a split second, she had thought maybe he had recognized the face on the paper, but that was impossible.

McBride climbed out of his chair and approached the bed, plainly curious.

Kat ignored him. It was none of his business. Instead, her gaze fixed on Yuri. The man met her stare over the top of Sasha’s head. Like the child, he wore an apologetic expression.

Why would—

A muffled explosion rocked through the facility, echoing down from above. Alarm bells rang out. All eyes turned toward the ceiling, but Kat leaped to her feet. She was a fraction of a second too slow.

McBride lunged out and grabbed Dr. Lisa Cummings by her blond French braid. He pulled her toward him while he backpedaled to the wall. Kat Bryant grabbed for him but missed. He slammed back into the corner, out of direct sight line from the door and the window.

His other hand pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. He pressed a button on its side, and the top half flipped in his fingers, revealing a small barrel. He shoved it hard against Lisa’s throat, pointing it up toward her skull.

“Don’t move,” he whispered in her ear.

Cell phone guns had become the scourge of security forces. But the device Mapplethorpe had given him was state-of-the-art. He could even take calls on it. It had passed through the security search and scanner without a blip of concern. Chambered in .22-caliber rounds, there was unfortunately a limit to the weapon.

“I have five bullets!” he shouted to the stunned room. “I will kill the doctor first—then the child.”

A guard leveled a weapon at him, but he kept shielded behind Lisa’s body.

“Drop your gun!” he boomed at the man.

The guard kept his position, weapon never wavering.

“No one has to die!” McBride said. He nodded his head upward. “We only want the child. So put down your pistol!”

Kat straightened from her tumbled grab. She had come close to nabbing him. He would have to watch her closely. In turn, she eyed him, studying him like a book. Still, the woman motioned for the guard to lower his weapon.

“Drop it and kick it over here!” McBride ordered.

With another nod from Kat, the sidearm skittered over to his toes.

McBride’s mission was simple: to secure the child until Mapplethorpe and his forces arrived.

“All we have to do is wait!” he said. “So no sudden moves, no heroes.”

As the explosion rocked though the subterranean bunker, Painter instinctively turned to the wall monitor on his left. The large screen displayed a live feed from Sasha’s room.

Painter shot to his feet. His heart pounded, and his vision narrowed with fury. He brought up the sound with a blind punch to his keyboard.

“No sudden moves, no heroes!”

Sean rose on the other side of the desk. Gunfire echoed down to them. Painter brought up the camera feed from the top level of Sigma and displayed it on the screen behind his desk. He tore his eyes away from Lisa and checked the other monitor. Smoke filled the passageway. Helmeted figures in Kevlar vests and face masks ran low through the pall, rifles on their shoulders.

“I can’t believe the bastard’s goddamn nerve,” Sean said.

There was no need to guess who he meant.

Mapplethorpe.

“They’re going for the girl,” Sean growled out.

A bullhorn echoed from the topmost level of Sigma.
“EVERYONE DOWN ON THE FLOOR! ANY RESISTANCE WILL BE MET WITH DEADLY FORCE!”

Sean crossed to Painter. “There’s no way this is sanctioned. We would have been issued a stand-down order first. The bastard’s gone rogue.” Sean turned toward him. “You know what you have to do.”

Painter’s attention returned to Lisa. He saw the weapon pressed under her jaw, a tender neck he kissed each morning. But he slowly nodded. There was a fail-safe if Sigma was ever under attack by a hostile force.

But first he needed to get his people out of harm’s way. This war was between Painter and Mapplethorpe. He picked up the phone. “Brant.”

“Sir!” His aide’s voice was curt and ready.

“Sound Protocol Alpha.”

“Yes, sir.”

A new klaxon rang out, ordering all personnel to evacuate to the nearest emergency exit. Mapplethorpe just wanted a clear path to the child. To protect his people, Painter intended to provide that.

Sean headed to the door. “I’m going up. I’ll attempt to negotiate, but if I fail…”

“Understood.” Painter turned, pulled a drawer, and removed a Sig Sauer P220 pistol. “Take this.”

Sean shook his head. “Firepower isn’t going to get us out of this.”

His friend left. Painter gripped the pistol and studied the screen. He had one last duty to Sigma. He shifted to his computer and typed in the fail-safe code, then pressed his thumb to the fingerprint reader.

A red square appeared, layered over a blue schematic of the facility’s air-ventilation system. The default countdown was set at fifteen minutes. Painter doubled the time and synchronized it with his watch to go active at 0100. He stared between the door and the wall screen. He had a lot to accomplish in such a short time. Still…

Typing rapidly, Painter entered the final code to activate. The numbers started counting down.

With pistol in hand, he ran for the door.

7:05 A.M.
Southern Ural Mountains

As the sun first peeked over the surrounding mountains, Monk shoved with his pole and drove the raft deep into the reeds. The prow ground into a muddy bank. At long last, they’d made landfall, as soggy as that might be.

“Stay here,” he ordered the kids.

Using the pole, he tested for solid footing. Satisfied, he climbed off the raft, then turned and helped Pyotr and Kiska onto a hillock of grass nearby. Konstantin leaped on his own, as spry as ever, but the boy landed roughly. His exhaustion showed in the dark lines under his eyes and the tremble as he stood. Marta fared little better, lunging with both legs and landing in a knuckled crouch.

Monk waved them onward. The way remained muddy and sodden for another quarter mile, but slowly the ground rose out of the swamp and firmed underfoot. The forest shed the watery willows and stood taller with birches and spruces. Meadows opened, green with wild gentian and edelweiss.

They reached the top of a rise, and a clear view spread ahead of them.

A mile away, a small town, split by a silver-flowing creek, dotted the lower slope of the neighboring mountain. Monk studied the place. It appeared long deserted and abandoned. The derelict mix of stone and wooden buildings climbed the slopes around a switchbacking gravel road. An old mill neighbored the rocky creek. Its waterwheel lay fallen and broken across the stream like a bridge. Several other structures had collapsed in on themselves, and the place had a wild overgrown look to it, buried in high grasses and lush with juniper bushes and fir trees.

“It’s an old mining town,” Konstantin explained. The boy unfolded the map, to check their bearings. “No one lives there. Not safe.”

“How much farther until we reach the mine shaft?” Monk asked.

The boy measured with his thumb on the map, then pointed to the ramshackle collection of buildings. “Another half mile past the town. Not far.”

Konstantin glanced off to the right of the town. His expression soured. He didn’t have to say anything. Half hidden behind the shoulder of the mountain, a large greenish black body of water stretched off to the horizon.

Lake Karachay.

Monk checked his badge. It still registered a reddish hue. But to reach the town, they would have to head directly toward the lake, deeper into its radioactive shadow.

“How hot is that place?” Monk asked, nodding to the town.

Konstantin refolded the map and stood. “We should not stop for a picnic.”

Monk stared back at the boy, appreciating his attempt at levity. But neither of them laughed. Still, Monk hooked an arm around the boy as they marched ahead. He gave Konstantin a reassuring squeeze and earned a silly grin in response. A rare sight.

Pyotr and Kiska followed with Marta in tow.

They had made it this far.

There was no turning back.

Half a mile away, Borsakov watched his targets vanish over a ridgeline. With a silent curse directed at the man who led the children, he knelt beside the beached raft used by the others and slipped his rifle from his shoulder. Before he continued, his weapon needed to be cleaned. After the long swim and slog through the swamp, his rifle was caked with mud and full of water. He broke the weapon down and carefully inspected each section: barrel, bolt assembly, magazine. He rinsed and dried all the parts thoroughly. Satisfied, he reassembled the rifle. The familiar routine returned him to a calm, determined status.

Once done, he stood up and shouldered his weapon.

Having lost his radio, Borsakov was on his own, the only survivor from the airboat crash. The pilot’s arm had been severed by the fan. Another soldier’s head had been caved in, struck by the edge of the flipping boat. The last had been found floating facedown, drowned.

Only Borsakov remained, though he bore a long jagged cut down his calf, sliced to the bone. He had used one of his dead men’s shirts to wrap and bind the injury. He would need medical attention to prevent losing his leg to infection from the muddy water.

But first he had a job to do.

Failure was not an option.

Limping on his bad leg, Borsakov set off after his prey.

16

September 7, 8:11 A.M.
Pripyat, Ukraine

“Wake up!”

Gray heard the words, but his brain took another moment to decipher them. A stinging slap cut through his grogginess. Light filled his head then dissolved into watery images.

Luca leaned over him and shook Gray’s shoulders.

Coughing, Gray pushed the man back and rose to an elbow. He stared around the room. He was in a bare cement cell with peeling, blistered paint and a rusted red door. Light came from a single barred window high up on the wall. Beneath the window, Kowalski sat on a moldy thin mattress, his head hanging between his knees, groaning with nausea.

Gray took a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and recalled what had happened. He remembered a hard climb out of the canyon at gunpoint, a short helicopter ride, then a cargo plane on a rain-swept airstrip. He fingered a bruise on his neck. Once aboard the plane, they’d been drugged.

Gray had no idea where they’d been taken.

“Elizabeth…Rosauro…?” he asked hoarsely.

Luca shook his head. He slumped against the wall and sank to his bottom. “I don’t know where they are. Maybe another cell.”

“Any idea where
we
are?”

Luca shrugged. Kowalski groaned.

Gray gained his feet, waited for the world to stop spinning, then stepped toward the window. It was too high to reach on his own.

Kowalski lifted his head, noted where Gray was staring. “Pierce, you’ve got to be kidding.”

“Get up,” he ordered. “Help me.”

Kowalski held his stomach but rose to his feet. He clenched his fingers together into a stirrup. “What do you think I am? Your personal ladder?”

“Ladders complain a lot less.”

Gray mounted the man’s grip, reached to the lower lip of the window, and with Kowalski’s help, he chinned up to the bars. He gazed across a strange landscape. A town, half consumed by forest, spread outward. The place looked dilapidated and shell-shocked. Roofs were covered in moss or collapsed, windows shattered into broken fangs, fire escapes dripped with icicles of rust, and weeds and bushes sprouted out of cracked asphalt. Across the street, a faded billboard advertised some sort of fair, depicting a Ferris wheel and carnival rides. In the foreground, a stylized version of a strappingly robust family headed toward the amusements.

Across the city, Gray spotted the same Ferris wheel from the billboard outlined against the barren sky. A lonely relic of former glory. Gray’s limbs grew leaden at the sight. He knew where he was. The abandoned amusement ride had become emblematic for the city.

“Chernobyl,” he mumbled and dropped back down to the floor.

But why had they been brought here?

Gray recalled the pathologist’s report on Dr. Polk’s body. The radiation signature suggested the professor had been poisoned here. Though further testing by Malcolm Jennings had clouded this assessment.

What was going on?

Over the next ten minutes, Gray searched the entire cell and tested the door. Though rusted, it remained secure. Gray heard sounds of someone out there: a shuffle of foot, a soft cough. Most likely a guard. He must have heard them talking and radioed his superiors because shortly thereafter a tromping of boots approached the door.