by J D Lasica
He was on a roll now, rallying the troops to the cause. “Have you forgotten how the West has treated us over the centuries? They have occupied us. They have imposed their will and their values on our people. Now it’s our time to rule. To extinguish the vapid, empty consumer empire the Americans have built. To take civilization in new directions. Our direction.”
He hunched his shoulders forward, grabbed the mike with both hands. “If you had a weapon that could disarm your greatest enemies, would you not use it?”
Did Isaiah not fortell this in Scripture? Nations will be laid low, enemies will be utterly destroyed, the arrogancy of the proud will cease.
“Your Project Ezekiel document is beginning to make sense now.” Abdullin cracked open a 24-karat gold tin of rare white Beluga caviar and spooned it into a cold crystal glass. “When I first read it, it seemed to be the ramblings of a madman.”
Volkov knew visionaries were seen as madmen in their day. Ezekiel faced the same skeptical reception 2,600 years ago.
Volkov chose to be magnanimous. “I knew some of you would be skeptical. Which is why I put off this gathering until we were ready to launch. Only the Compact has the resources needed to execute Project Ezekiel to its full extent. My Lab and your men on the ground—together we can bring the soft West to its knees.”
He scanned the men’s faces again, one at a time. Just being in the same room with these six killers made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
What’s the best way to do this? I can’t impose my will on the others—at least not yet. Should I put it to a vote? No, absurd. I need them to assent while giving them the illusion they had a say in this.
“Do any of you want out?” Volkov knew eighty percent of people never opt out of anything. Human nature. He stared at the six billionaires one by one. “Does anyone not want to rule over one of the Seven Spheres?”
Zaven Kasparian raised his hand. Or did he? The Armenian looked up and extended his arm into the air. Then he leaped to his feet and snagged something out of the air just above his head, as if catching a fly.
“What is this?” Broz snapped.
Kasparian opened his palm and stared at it in disbelief. “It’s a drone.” Then he looked at the others. “We’re being spied on!”
30
Zug, Switzerland
Kaden dashed back to her room and changed into her winter outfit of jeans, black stretch boots, black mock turtleneck, and black stitch beanie. She opened the room safe and grabbed her Beretta M9 that she’d gotten through Swiss Customs.
She called Tosh and got him on the line for twenty seconds. He and Carlos were positioned outside the target estate with Bo en route. The team had infiltrated the mansion’s aging air ducts. They had a good read on everything happening inside. No sign of Savić at the residence.
She headed out of the room. Nico was waiting in the hallway.
“Figured you’d need backup,” he said.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Just want to make sure you have your priorities straight. The others are on mission. You’re going after a low-level thug for one reason. Revenge.”
“I’m going after a killer who deserves justice.”
Nico looked at her expression and saw she wasn’t about to change her mind. “Let’s go. Like it or not, I’m coming with you.”
“All right.”
They scoured old town. It was a small set of streets plus the lakefront promenade. If Savić was in one of the public spots, hotel lobbies, or restaurants, he’d be easy to spot. She sent Nico the shot of Savić that Bo had shared with her, and they separated, Nico taking the northern half of old town and Kaden the southern.
After forty-five minutes and no luck, they returned to the Theater Casino. The last bus was leaving for the Full Moon Skiing Gala at the fabled mountain peak Wildspitz. They snagged two of the last seats in the back. Up front, partygoers who had too much Champagne or schnapps sang songs from their home countries.
During the half-hour ride, she began to read the Project Ezekiel file that Amelia had sent to her phone. The document didn’t go into detail, but it sketched the outlines of an international conspiracy. This cabal was targeting major drinking supplies in the U.S. and Europe. The document predicted a surge in civil strife leading to the fall of Western governments. It listed the conspirators, though none of the names seemed familiar.
She felt drained and numb after reading it. Could this cabal really pull off a global operation like that? She had to stop them.
Aside from her team, she wasn’t sure who could she forward the file to. It seemed the top levels of the intelligence and law enforcement communities might be compromised. And she wasn’t in a position to authenticate the document. After all, she committed a felony by breaking into her grandfather’s digital vault. Not good, with another possible felony charge hanging over her head in Dallas.
Between that file and her inability to spot Savić, she was in a black mood by the time they arrived at Wildspitz. They did a quick reconnaissance of the après ski bar and the next-door base station. Didn’t pan out. They rented snowboards and the special LED jackets that all gala guests got to wear. Then they took the chairlift to the top of the mountain. Below them, tall poles with bright LED lights illuminated the slope.
“Remember the tricks we did at Snowmass?” Nico said on the lift. “We were killin’ it.”
“That was a pretty sick week.” She tried to force a smile. She and Nico used to do all kinds of borderline extreme sports together: rock climbing, free-diving, freestyle snowboarding. When they were nineteen, after they’d graduated from boot camp, she and Nico trekked to Aspen and tried out for the Winter X Games. “Too bad you flamed out early.”
“And as I remember,” Nico jabbed back, “you were still in the running until you twisted your ankle on your third Big Air run. That was an epic wipeout.”
At the top of the mountain, they hopped off the lift. Her fingers brushed the Beretta in her pocket as they did a walk-through of the alpine restaurant overlooking Wildspitz. The atmosphere inside was raucous and festive. Outside in the snowbanks, a couple was tossing an LED-lit football. But still no Savić sighting.
“What now?” Nico asked.
“If they’re coming for me,” she said, “I need to be seen. Let’s hit the slopes.”
She led the way to the top of the run and lifted her goggles for a better view. The air was thinner up here, and the scent of alpine trees infused her senses. It smelled like Christmas—never a fond memory for her. Above them, though, a light snow made it feel as if they’d been transported to a more innocent time and place. A band of clouds fussed about whether to let the full moon join the gala. Zug Valley stretched out below with the soft yellow glow of distant houses curling around the lake and moonlight playing on the mountaintops.
“Didn’t I tell you it was a heavenly sight?” Jacques Bouchard said. Somehow she’d missed him angling up from behind.
“You were right,” she agreed. “This may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Second most beautiful, in my opinion.”
She felt herself blush. “Jacques, this is Lawrence, my executive assistant.” She’d been eager to say those words, and Nico nodded like a good sport. “By the way, we’re looking for someone. Hard to miss. Six-four, swarthy, dark beard, three hundred pounds. Smells like a musk ox. Any chance you’ve seen him?”
“Thankfully, no. I’ll keep an eye out. That’s the expression, oui?”
“Oui!” Kaden pushed off and the guys followed. Nico and she were the only ones on the hill riding boards.
Jacques rode his skis to her right flank. All three of them were wearing the specially outfitted ski suits with thousands of tiny LEDs sewn into the gore-tex fabric. The lights were dancing over their torsos in patterns of cascading green, red, yellow, and blue. We look like we were beamed in from some futuristic Neon Ice Capades. All that’s missing is the soundtrack.
The slope led them
toward a wicked chute and she decided to take it big and fast. If she pulled it off, she’d be the talk of the hill. If she crashed and smashed, well, she’d go out in spectacular fashion.
She pulled away from the others, setting herself nice and low to gain maximum speed. She readied herself for her signature trick, the frontside 900 with tail grab, the showtime move that was her undoing at the X Games. The difference this time? She wanted to tear the heart out of her enemy, Dražen Savić. She was ready to meet death and kick its ass.
Kaden spotted a hill up ahead that could serve as her kicker. She held her edge all the way to the end of the takeoff. She hit it at a sweet angle with good speed and went into her arc with massive air. She rotated her body counterclockwise, opening her shoulders right from the get-go. After the first rotation she reached behind her and grabbed the board’s tail. After the five she let go and started thinking about her landing, so she started to lean forward on her way down, diving into her last 360. She felt inside of herself, in control by letting go of her fears and apprehensions. With these thousands of little lights pulsing across her body, she imagined that this is what pure energy must feel like. She nailed the landing and used the soft, deep powder of the mountain to glide to a halt.
Did I really just do that? She slowed to let Nico and Jacques catch up. A half-dozen guests along the edges of the slope yelled their appreciation, some lifting bottles of Swiss beer.
“A frontside nine!” Nico pumped his fists.
“That was amazing!” Jacques said, looking like he might swoon.
A shot rang out from somewhere. She spotted a bearlike figure a hundred yards up the hill, taking aim with his rifle’s scope for a second shot.
“Move!” she commanded.
She got her wish. She’d smoked out Dražen Savić. Except he had the higher ground, superior line of sight, and a better weapon.
31
Samana Cay
Alex Wyatt took Bailey Finnerty’s hand and led her twenty feet back up the shoreline away from the invisible perimeter. “You’re geofenced.”
Bailey shook her tangle of dark hair. “What’s that?”
“It means you’re confined to a certain geographical area—you’re not allowed past a certain boundary. Usually geofencing is used for something more innocuous. Like keeping track of a child who strays from his parents at the county fair.”
“And they shock him?”
“No. It’s for the parents to see his location on their phone. But in your case, it means you get an electric shock when you leave the permitted area.”
Collared goats or sheep get a little zap when they wander from the herd. But Bailey looked to be in severe physical pain when she crossed the boundary.
Bailey’s eyes were downcast, her expression dour. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Alex was surprised by the question.
“Did they chip you?”
“No.” He remembered when he did after arriving. “I mean, yeah, I volunteered to get chipped. Just to open my room door and stuff like that.”
Cripes! He now realized what a major mistake he’d made.
He held up and inspected his right palm. There below the surface of his skin between his right thumb and index finger was the tiny metallic transponder that was implanted during his first hour on Samana Cay.
“If I had to guess, something tells me we’re both being tracked,” she said.
“Follow me. There must be a way out of this nightmare.”
He led her back the way they came, across the watery edge of the beach. They retrieved their footwear and climbed the long stone walkway that rose past the grassy knoll and up to the ridge that extended the length of Fantasy Live Resort.
They paused outside the Deep Dream Lounge. “Wait here,” he said. “If we’re lucky, no one was monitoring us. We’ll say you lost your contact lenses.”
She nodded and sat on the wooden bench facing the ocean. Pleasure vessels skimmed the water a half mile from shore, taking in the last minutes of sunshine. He turned and entered the lounge.
Across the room, Evelyn and Maurice were chatting, seated in their familiar four-seat arrangement. They smiled as he approached.
“Andrew!” Flirty Evelyn said. “Pull up a seat. How are you enjoying the simulations?”
“Never mind that,” Maurice said in a conspiratorial tone. “What about Rachel? Have you … taken advantage yet?”
“Guys.” No time for chitchat. “I have an emergency. Can I borrow your phone? My battery died.”
“Oh, an emergency, huh?” Maurice looked skeptical. “I get it. You had a taste of Fantasy Live and now you want your woman to dress up for cosplay. Let me guess. A ninja warrior? Wonder Woman?”
Evelyn took out her phone and handed it over.
“I asked for Starbuck from Battlestar, but you?” Maurice went on. “I know! Daenerys Targaryen, Game of Thrones.”
“Bingo!” Alex said to shut him up. He dialed Alice Wong at Axom.
“I knew it!” Maurice looked triumphant.
Come on, come on, pick up! Voicemail. Damn!
“Alice, it’s me.” He lowered his voice and moved out of earshot of Evelyn and Maurice. “I have an emergency here. A young woman, Bailey Finnerty, says she was kidnapped. Check the database. Was she one of the Disappeared—“
A woman’s hand plucked the phone from his grip. He looked up, startled.
“Oh, Andrew. We’re so disappointed in you.” Rachel hovered above him, flanked by two burly security guards.
“What the hell, Andrew?” Maurice said.
Rachel handed Evelyn her phone back. “No more calls tonight.”
Rachel led Alex out the front door into a waiting car. From the back seat, he could see Bailey being escorted down the pathway past the Fantasy Theater to the farthest end of the campus.
One of the security guards got in the back seat next to him while the other got in the driver’s seat, started the engine, and began driving. Rachel sat in the front passenger’s seat. After a minute, she turned around.
“Alex, Alex. Whatever are we going to do with you?”
32
Zug, Switzerland
Kaden tore down the mountain. “Hit it!” she yelled to Nico and Jacques. Nico nodded and took off to her left. Jacques hesitated, no doubt wondering why a sniper would be firing at them, so she added, “Now, dammit!” That did the trick. He followed Nico’s lead.
Her instinct was to head down the slope in a random pattern. But she remembered what her instructor said at boot camp. The advent of modern weapons has outpaced our evolutionary instincts for survival. Use a zigzag technique and you might have a slightly greater chance of getting hit by a shot. The faster you can get out of range or behind cover, the safer you’ll be.
She looked back and saw Savić following, rifle strapped to his back, skiing fast for a big man. Too fast.
To her left, the ski lift snaked overhead and a wall of orange matting sealed them off from any escape route. To her right, a stand of snow-covered pines offered a faint hope, but the sprint across the deep snow would mean Savić could pick them off with no trouble.
She looked to her rear left and yelled, “Nico!” She unzipped her LED ski jacket. They were far easier targets while wearing these outfits that screamed, Bullseye! She grabbed her Beretta from the pocket with her right hand and struggled to remove the jacket with her left hand. Finally she got it half off, exchanged the handgun to her left hand, ripped off the jacket, and flung the jacket behind her. Nico followed suit, only with more finesse since he wasn’t carrying a gun.
Jacques still had a shocked expression on his face, crouching low to avoid any more shots. She looked at him and Nico. I can’t be responsible for anyone else dying.
A sharp snap of frozen air jolted her chest. An idea took shape. She fumbled in her pants pocket and finally found her earpiece. “Amelia, stop what you’re doing and give me your full attention.”
“Yes, Kaden.”
“Pe
rsonality mode off. Don’t ask why.” I need data, not a pep talk.
“Switching to default mode.”
“I need night vision. Now!”
“Night vision enabled.”
Immediately her field of vision looked radically different. She was using the new state-of-the-art night photography algorithms pioneered by Google for its smartphones, a step up from the garish green night vision technology still used by the U.S. military. The snowbanks were now better defined and she could see details in the shadows of the trees. Everything looked saturated and high contrast, as if she were snowboarding through a comic strip. But the LED lights glaring down from the slopes overhead bleached out the terrain.
She needed a change of scenery.
She slowed to make sure Nico and Jacques saw her signal to continue down the slope. Over the next ridge, she saw her chance. She took a hard right and plunged into the darkness down a side trail. She looked over her left shoulder and saw their surprised faces, but Nico and Jacques stuck to the main trail.
“Diamond trail, maximum level of difficulty,” Default Amelia informed her. On her smart lenses, the AI began feeding her elevation, ambient wind speed, and temperature readouts as she sped down the steep trail that plunged into the darkness. No LED lights here. The snow began falling more heavily and the full moon gave up behind a thicket of dark clouds.
She glanced back and saw Savić leave the main run and follow her down the side trail.
She felt the familiar grip of her Beretta M9 in her hand. She turned and fired twice at the figure barreling down the hillside. Missed. Not surprising, given that she was firing behind her in the dark of night at a moving target while she was speeding down a steep slope at 47 mph. She wasn’t sure how Savić was keeping up. Must have night-vision glasses.
She returned her focus to the trail in front of her. It was a winding black diamond run, the most difficult trail on Wildspitz and one she’d never taken before, much less in the dead of night. She knew if she made one slip-up and fell, she would be one dead girl.