Price of Duty

by Dale Brown

  The knife clattered to the floor. Brad swept it away with his foot.

  Still holding the armlock, he shoved the gasping, barely conscious man down onto the concrete—pressing his face flat against the unyielding surface. He looked back over his shoulder in time to see Nadia Rozek rush in with her own rifle at the ready.

  She swung through a semicircle, checking to make sure all their enemies were dead or down. Then she turned back to Brad with a frown. “Charging in like that, on your own, was . . . most unwise.”

  “Well, yeah,” he agreed, unable to keep a shit-eating grin off his face. “But you’ve got to admit it worked.”

  Almost against her will, Nadia offered him a slight, crooked smile in return. “They say fortune favors the brave. Perhaps it also favors the foolhardy once in a very long while.” She nodded toward the wounded man he’d pinned. “You had better search that one for holdout weapons. I will cover him for you.”

  Nodding, Brad released the Russian’s arm and crouched down beside him. Briskly, he ran his hands over the prisoner’s shirt and pants, checking for a concealed pistol or other knives. Some of the sharp metal flakes embedded in the other man’s wounds snagged his fingers, drawing blood. “Cripes,” he muttered. “This guy’s a walking pincushion.”

  “Our medics can stitch him up,” Nadia said flatly. Her wry smile vanished, wiped away by memories of the carnage and cold-blooded murder they had witnessed tonight. The expression in her eyes was icy. “Which is more than this swine deserves.” Her finger tightened on the trigger. “In fact, maybe I should just put him out of his misery right now.”

  Uh-oh, Brad thought. Warily, he rose to his feet. “Much as I might agree in other circumstances, I kind of went to a lot of trouble to take this guy alive. Killing him now, before he can answer any questions . . . well, that seems like a waste.”

  Nadia exhaled sharply, almost as though she were waking up out of a nightmare. Her finger eased up on the trigger. She nodded tightly. “Yes. That is so. For now, we should call for backup and—”

  “Move aside,” an eerie, electronically synthesized voice interrupted. “Now.”

  Startled, Brad and Nadia swung around.

  With a shriek of torn metal, a tall, man-shaped combat robot ripped the fire door off its hinges. The door went sailing away into the darkness, landing somewhere in the parking lot with a crash. Then, bending low, the CID squeezed its way inside the machine shop. Bits of broken brick and cement block pattered down around it.

  Brad moved toward the machine with his hands out, palm first. “Hey, Dad,” he said, trying not to sound nervous. “It’s okay. We’ve got this.”

  “I said, move aside,” the CID snarled. It stalked forward.

  Brad gulped, staring up at the enormous machine as it loomed over him. “Dad, what the hell are you—”

  Abruptly, the CID swatted him aside with one casual blow, much like a man shooing away some annoying insect. Sent flying, Brad crashed into the wall and dropped to the floor. Pain, white-hot and rimmed with fire, flared through every part of his body. It was impossible to breathe. The room around him flickered weirdly and then went black.

  Coldly furious with the insolent fools who’d tried to obstruct him, Patrick McLanahan strode over to where the dazed prisoner lay bleeding on the concrete. He leaned over, grabbed the Russian with both hands, and then hoisted him high into the air. “Who are you?” he growled. “What’s your name? Your rank? Your unit? Who ordered this massacre?”

  Large, articulated metal fingers tightened their grip—drawing a gasp of pain from the man he held aloft.

  Though white-faced with terror, the Russian shook his head. “You cannot interrogate me this way,” he stammered. He hissed in agony as the powerful hands holding him squeezed harder. “As a prisoner, I have rights. I refuse to—”

  Patrick’s hands tightened convulsively, snapping the Russian’s spine and neck as though they were matchsticks. The man’s eyes bulged out. His mouth fell open. Then he shuddered once . . . and died.

  Enraged, Patrick tossed the corpse aside and turned away in disgust. His vision display showed a young woman cradling the body of the man he’d hurled out of his path only moments before.

  She looked up at him in sorrow. Tears ran down her face. “What have you done, General?” she asked in anguish.

  He froze in horror, suddenly seeing clearly for the first time in months. The woman was Nadia Rozek. And the man he’d struck down without a moment’s hesitation was his own son.

  An hour later, Patrick stood outside in the darkness, well away from the Polish soldiers, police, and emergency medical teams who were busy clearing away the dead and tending to the wounded. Another CID, this one piloted by Charlie Turlock, waited not far away.

  He winced. Charlie had followed him all the way out from Warsaw. But she started too far behind him and arrived too late.

  The lights of the ambulance carrying Brad away vanished in the distance.

  “The kid’s tough. He’ll be okay,” a voice said quietly.

  Patrick looked down at Whack Macomber. He swallowed hard. “I hope so. But this was my fault. I lost it. I got so focused on nailing that Russian son of a bitch that I lost my situational awareness.”

  “Situational awareness? That’s bullshit and you know it, General!” Macomber exploded. He continued coldly. “You lost a hell of a lot more than your grasp of the tactical position. You damned well slid over the edge into full-on kill-crazy. And not for the first time, either.”

  Patrick stiffened. “You’re way out of line, Major.”

  “No, I’m not,” the other man snapped. “Remember how you butchered those Chechens who mortared us at the base? You didn’t just take them out. You ripped them apart, limb from limb. Christ, General, their blood and guts were splattered all over that damned metal can you’re riding.”

  “I had to act fast,” Patrick said stubbornly. “Combat’s not pretty, Whack. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Macomber agreed. His expression hardened. “But I also know the difference between combat and wholesale slaughter. You crossed the line, General. And now you not only just killed a prisoner we urgently needed to interrogate . . . you beat the crap out of your own kid . . . without even recognizing him.”

  Patrick stayed silent, not sure how to respond to that.

  “I’ve seen the medical readouts from your CID,” Macomber continued. “You’ve been systematically screwing around with your brain chemistry, probably thinking you’re boosting your fighting efficiency. And maybe that’s so . . . but it’s also driving you insane.” His voice grew softer, but more urgent. “You’ve gotta face the facts, General. Riding that big metal machine full-time is keeping your physical body alive, but what’s that worth if it kills your humanity?”

  Patrick felt a sudden spike of anger. No one could know what he’d endured since he woke up inside one of Scion’s combat robots, trapped and unable to survive for more than a few hours outside the machine. Yes, he’d been rescued from death, but at a terrible price. He clenched his jaw. How dare Macomber criticize him? Without conscious thought, the fingers one of his huge metal hands curled into a fist.

  The other man looked straight up at him, apparently unfazed. “What’s your plan, General? Are you gonna smack me around too? The way you just did to Brad?”

  Patrick froze, suddenly aware of the murderous impulses flooding his mind. Memories of the things he’d done and been tempted to do in recent weeks rose in a dizzying, shameful cascade of gruesome images. Behaviors and ideas he had believed rational at the time stood revealed as nothing more than the expression of raw, uncontrolled rage and desire for revenge—no matter what the cost to himself or to those who relied on him. It was like awakening from a terrible nightmare, only to learn that he had not really been dreaming. He shivered, suddenly feeling cold despite the CID’s precisely calibrated environmental systems.

  Worst of all was the realization that this brief moment of moral clarity was likely to
be fleeting. He could no longer hide from the truth. Macomber was right. Life inside this machine, isolated from other people, was steadily robbing him of his essential humanity.

  He’d put this day of reckoning off for three long years. But maybe the problem with living on borrowed time was that the hidden costs kept piling up—climbing higher and higher until they were beyond any one man’s ability to pay. “It’s time, isn’t it, Major?” Patrick said slowly, unsteadily. “Time to pull the plug.”

  Macomber nodded sadly. “Yeah, General, it is,” he agreed. “You can’t ride that damned machine anymore. You’re putting too many other lives at risk.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  PEOPLES’ FRIENDSHIP PARK, MOSCOW

  THE NEXT DAY

  With his hands behind his back and his head bowed in thought, Igor Truznyev paced around the statue of Miguel de Cervantes given by Spain to the Soviet Union in exchange for a statue of the Russian literary genius Aleksandr Pushkin. Somehow, it seemed bitterly ironic to set a memorial to the author who’d created Don Quixote in the midst of a park extolling friendly relations among nations. After all, the so-called Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance was famed for acts of folly and mad illusions. Had some long-dead Soviet bureaucrat intended a discreet bit of subversive commentary by plopping this statue down here? Or, was the juxtaposition simply the product of official ignorance?

  His lips thinned in irritation. If Sergei Tarzarov’s choice of a setting for this clandestine meeting was meant as a humorous commentary on their present situation, it struck him as one in very poor taste—especially under the circumstances. He checked his watch. Where was the man, anyway? It wasn’t like him to be late for a rendezvous, even one he hadn’t sought himself.

  The high-pitched noise of a yapping dog drew Truznyev’s attention to an old pensioner hobbling along a nearby path. The elderly man, stooped over and twisted by arthritis and age, was being yanked along by a tiny, long-haired terrier that seemed to want to poke its small black nose into every snowbank or mound of dead leaves.

  “Podchinyat’sya, Mischa,” the old man snapped. “Obey!” He shortened the leash, tugging the little dog back to his side. Turning off the path, he shuffled closer to the Cervantes statue. “Well, Igor?” he demanded. “What is so urgent? It was not easy to slip away from the Kremlin today.”

  Truznyev shook his head in disbelief. He knew that Tarzarov enjoyed practicing the art of disguise as a means of throwing potential tails off his scent, but this was a first. “A dog?” he asked. “You brought a dog with you to a secret meeting?”

  The older man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Why not? Two men talking together in the midst of a field shouts ‘conspiracy’ to the whole world. But a man walking his dog and meeting a friend? What could be more commonplace . . . and boring?”

  “Perhaps,” Truznyev allowed, still frowning. “But make sure you keep the beast away from my shoes. They were handmade for me by Cleverley’s in London.”

  “And thus astonishingly expensive, I suppose?” Tarzarov sniffed.

  “Of course.”

  Gryzlov’s chief of staff shook his head with a sly smile. “Some might find your spending habits excessively ostentatious, Igor.”

  “At least I pay my own bills and with my own money,” Truznyev retorted. “While your lunatic protégé piles up debts that will be paid by all Russians—in blood, in prestige, and in treasure.”

  “Gennadiy is not mad,” Tarzarov said. “He is undoubtedly aggressive, and perhaps more prone to rely on luck than I think wise. But that is a far cry from insanity.”

  “You think so?” the bigger man said heatedly. “Hitting the Poles and their allies with cyberweapons made some sense. It offered gains at comparatively little cost.” He scowled. “But attempting to assassinate the Polish president? And murdering nearly two hundred people, many of them important Chinese businessmen, simply as a means of baiting the trap? That was pure madness! Especially since his ridiculous scheme failed so miserably.”

  Tarzarov said nothing. His face showed no emotion one way or the other.

  “You know that I’m right, Sergei,” Truznyev pressed. “This harebrained failure puts us all in peril—you, like the rest of those in Gryzlov’s inner circle, most of all.” He waved a hand at their surroundings. “How do you suppose the world will react when it learns Russia was responsible for this atrocity? Everything we have gained over the past few years is now at risk!”

  “There is no proof we were involved,” Tarzarov said mildly.

  “How so?”

  “The Spetsnaz team was sanitized before it infiltrated Polish territory,” the older man explained. “Their records no longer exist.”

  “Their military records, you mean?” Truznyev asked.

  Tarzarov shook his head. “All of their records, Igor.” He shrugged again. “Effectively, Major Berezin and the three others who were killed at the crash site were never born. They never lived. They are nothing—not even the ghost of a memory.”

  “And their families?” Truznyev shot back. “What about them? You can fiddle with paperwork and databases all you like, but their parents, siblings, wives, and children can each tell a different tale if they talk to the wrong people.”

  The older man’s eyes were hooded, impossible to read. “Their families have been . . . cautioned,” he said. “Besides, they are under constant observation.”

  “Meaning what?” Truznyev snapped.

  “Should any of them forget their duty to the state . . . well, accidents happen,” Tarzarov replied smoothly. Seeing the slightly appalled look on the other man’s face, he offered a crooked smile. “As you yourself pointed out, Igor, the stakes are high. And extraordinary dangers require extraordinary responses, do they not?”

  With an effort, Truznyev recovered his poise. There were moments when he forgot how cold-blooded and vicious the old Kremlin insider could be if he thought it necessary. It was a useful reminder that he was not the only ruthless player in this game. “It is easy enough, I suppose, to contemplate killing defenseless old men and women and children,” he said cuttingly. “But there is still evidence outside your control. Evidence that will enrage Beijing and the rest of the world when it is analyzed and published.”

  “You refer to the black boxes from the jetliner?” Tarzarov asked.

  Truznyev nodded.

  “I have been assured they will show only a series of unexplained faults in various systems aboard the aircraft,” the older man said, though he sounded a bit less certain now. “Nothing that can be linked conclusively to us.”

  “Nothing except for the remarkable coincidence that these random ‘faults’ caused the 777 to crash precisely where a team of trained assassins lay in wait,” Truznyev said with heavy sarcasm.

  Tarzarov eyed him narrowly. “Supposition is not proof, Igor. As you, of all people, should know.”

  For a moment, Truznyev felt cold. What did the other man mean by that? Was he growing suspicious about the true causes of last year’s war with Poland? If so, he was in more danger than he had realized. Or was it just a stab in the dark by a man who knew full well that secrets, many of them deadly and disreputable, were Truznyev’s stock-in-trade?

  “For now, Beijing is turning most of its diplomatic wrath on Warsaw,” Tarzarov went on. “After all, it is clear that Wilk’s government was fully willing to shoot down the Kalmar Airlines flight with so many of its nationals aboard—even though it was unclear whether they were still alive or not.”

  “That won’t last,” Truznyev said tightly. “President Zhou and his government are not fools.”

  “Probably not,” the older man agreed. “But I cannot say the prospect of Beijing’s anger greatly dismays Gennadiy. After all, according to the evidence you provided, the Chinese were responsible for luring us into war with Poland in the first place. When set next to the losses we suffered in men and matériel, the deaths of a few score of their business executives are nothing.”

  Truznyev fell silent f
or a moment. This was dangerous ground. He was the one who had ordered faked evidence of the PRC’s involvement planted to hide his own role in the terrorist campaign Gryzlov had originally blamed on Warsaw. Perhaps he should back off and pretend to accept the defenses Tarzarov offered for his protégé’s reckless actions. Then he reconsidered. You’re riding on the tiger’s back, Igor, he thought. Keep a firm grip, or you’ll be eaten.

  Gryzlov had blundered badly by trying to kill Piotr Wilk so clumsily and with so much collateral damage. And for all of Tarzarov’s bluster, he could tell the older man knew it too. Maybe this was the moment to demonstrate that their most precious secrets were not as safe as they dreamed. And, at the same time, to continue the process of sowing discord between Gryzlov and his long-suffering adviser. Three years ago, Tarzarov had allied himself with the younger man. This was another opportunity to make the old Kremlin power broker wonder if he’d tied himself to a loser after all.

  “You dance past the true state of affairs with remarkable grace, Sergei,” he said caustically. “I congratulate you.”

  Tarzarov flushed angrily.

  “But we are old comrades, you and I,” Truznyev went on. “So I feel compelled to ask what the president plans to do next. Now that his impatience and carelessness have made such a mess, will Gennadiy cut his losses like any sensible man and call off this covert war? Before it escalates out of control? Or will he push on obsessively, demanding still more wondrous cyberweapons from Koshkin’s army of komp’yutershchiks locked away in the Urals? In that secret mountain complex he’s dubbed ‘Perun’s Aerie’?”

  Visibly shocked, Tarzarov stared back at him. “Where did you hear that name?”

  Ah, so Akulov and Ivchenko were right, Truznyev thought. The look on the older man’s face was confirmation enough. He smiled. “You forget who you are dealing with, Sergei, as does your new master. Remember, I ran our nation’s intelligence services for years. Did you really believe the movement of so much sophisticated equipment, including a supercomputer and a nuclear reactor, would not leave behind traces my people and I could uncover?”