Blackout ck-3 Read online

  There was that word again. Luck.

  19

  Fiona ignored the big man’s dire pronouncement. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, her fists on her hips in a defiant pose.

  The man she knew as Hercules and Alexander Diotrophes-the man now calling himself Carutius-ignored her and turned his gaze to the woman that had guided Fiona and Sara into the exhibit hall. “Dr. Preston, I need you to take them out of here immediately.”

  The woman blinked at him and for a moment, seemingly on the verge of complying, but then Sara stepped forward. “Just a damn minute. Fiona asked you a question, and I think we all deserve an answer. I’ve heard a lot about you… Frankly, I think a lot of it is bullshit, but one thing I do know is that you’re a magnet for trouble.”

  A gleam that might have been humor flickered in the man’s eyes. “And here you are, Sara. Interesting.”

  “Are you following us?” Fiona asked.

  “Not everything in the world revolves around you, my dear. The fact of the matter is that your presence here is a complication, and one that I wish to immediately resolve. Thus…” He glanced at Dr. Preston again. “My insistence that you leave immediately.”

  “The pictures are singing to me,” Fiona blurted. “When I look at them…at the artwork here…it’s like I can hear voices.”

  Alexander’s brow creased as he pondered this, and Fiona realized that maybe the big man didn’t have all the answers after all. Then his visage hardened again. “This changes nothing. You need to leave. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even be in Paris, but there’s nothing to be done about that. Dr. Preston-Julia-please do as I asked. Escort them to the front gate and put them in a taxi. Get them out of here.”

  Julia shook her head, overcoming her paralysis. “I don’t think so. This is all too much. First you close the exhibit and give me some cock-and-bull story about radiometric dating. Now these two show up and this girl says…what? That she can hear the paintings singing to her? And you don’t even bat an eye? What the hell is going on here?”

  Alexander drew a deep breath, clearly struggling to control his anger. If he wanted, the big man could probably have scooped them all up under one mighty arm and bodily carried them out the door, but Fiona resolved that she wouldn’t be leaving any other way. It seemed that Sara and Julia were of the same mind, and Alexander evidently realized this. He faced Julia. “This young woman possesses a remarkable gift. She is quite possibly the last person alive with knowledge-albeit incomplete-of what might be the original language.”

  A flicker of skepticism crossed Julia’s face. She glanced at Fiona, but said nothing.

  “As you no doubt have learned in your own studies of anthropology, language and culture are learned behaviors, but at their heart, they represent the desire of our species to assign meaning to the physical universe. The same is true of art. In fact, artistic representations are the most basic form of communication; even before written language, people communicated with pictures. There are charcoal drawings on the walls of the Chauvet Cave made 30,000 years ago. We can’t know what words those ancient peoples used to speak with one another, but we have no difficulty understanding the message in those drawings. Art and language are therefore inextricably linked, so it comes as no surprise that Fiona here would grasp this connection in a way that remains hidden to the rest of us.”

  “But…singing to her?”

  Alexander turned his gaze to girl. “Do you literally hear singing?”

  “Not exactly,” Fiona equivocated. “It’s like that, but…I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  “When a person discerns a pattern, such as a mathematical regression,” Alexander said, “it changes their perspective. You start to see that pattern everywhere, without even trying. This is no different.”

  “That makes sense,” Sara said, directing her words to Fiona. “Your brain just doesn’t know how to interpret the message.”

  He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “That is the only answer I can give you. Now, will you leave?”

  Fiona felt Sara take her hand, gently but nonetheless insistently urging her to comply with the request. Julia still appeared troubled by all that had transpired and by the lack of any real answers, but likewise seemed eager to leave the big man’s daunting presence.

  “Just tell me this,” Fiona persisted. “Why now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This just started happening when I came in the museum. It’s been months since…” She nodded meaningfully toward Julia. “That thing happened, and nothing. But the minute I set foot in the museum, it started. And there’s something else. It only happens when I look at the original art. I don’t feel anything when I look at photographs of the art.”

  “From those? Nothing.” She pointed at the elaborate holograms of the Buddhas and shook her head. “But when I look at those-” Her finger moved to the display cases which seemed to contain only chunks of rock. “It’s like they’re screaming at me.”

  Alexander’s eyes widened, transforming his countenance into what, on any other man, would have been a mask of outright terror. He knelt before Fiona, the top of his head still slightly higher than her own, and gripped her shoulders in either hand. “Tell me, child. What are they saying?”

  20

  It took several minutes for King to get within fifty yards of the nearest Zodiac, but his cautious approach evidently worked. There was no indication that the Spetsnaz men were aware that anything was amiss. He risked another quick glance and saw three figures-two of them merely black silhouettes, but the third revealing uncovered pale skin, silvery hair, and a white formal shirt that were all in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness.

  King ducked back down, made a final course correction and opened the throttle wide. The noise of the engine revving at full power would carry across the water, alerting the commandoes to his approach, but at maximum speed, his boat would close the distance in a matter of seconds, hopefully before his foes realized the last boat no longer contained their comrades.

  The bow rose with the sudden acceleration and the boat once more seemed to skim across the river’s surface, bouncing a few inches into the air each time it encountered a ripple from the wake of the preceding Zodiacs. King kept his head down and watched the frothy line of whitewater thrown up by his prey spreading out in either direction from the source in an inverted V, using it to guide him onward. As he got closer, the V all but disappeared and the chop from the other boat’s wake hammered through the fiberglass hull.

  He gripped the ballistic knife in his right fist, and braced his feet against the back of the bench seat.

  Right about…now.

  There was a sickening crunch as the front end of King’s Zodiac collided with the stern of the other craft. Had he not been anticipating the crash, the sudden stop would have catapulted King headlong, but instead he absorbed the impact with his legs, bent his knees and kept his body low in the bilge space. The nose of King’s boat rode up and over the other boat’s engine cowling, and then with a lurch it tilted to the right. The Zodiac hung precariously from one side of the other boat, its outboard whining loudly as the exposed screws chopped only air.

  King launched into motion, rolled over the upraised gunwale of his boat and dropped down into the other.

  He caught a glimpse of a commando at the bow clutching frantically at the inflatable hull in an effort to avoid being thrown into the river. King pounced on the Spetsnaz operator, planting a knee in the man’s ribs. The commando’s breath left him in a whoosh, as did his ability to offer any resistance when King summarily heaved him over the side of the boat.

  King whirled, ready to meet the expected attack from the remaining Russian, but instead he found himself facing the silver-haired form of Graham Brown.

  In deciding to ram the escaping Zodiac, King had judged the possibility that he might injure or kill Brown as an acceptable risk; in fact, Brown’s fate was his single overriding concern. His
mission had been to bring Brown back alive, but killing him was certainly preferable to letting the Russians have him or otherwise allowing him to escape. Brown however seemed to have come through the collision unscathed, a fact that King found strangely unsatisfying.

  Brown squinted at him, trying to pierce the veil of darkness, and a look of recognition dawned. This wasn’t one of his hired guns come to rescue him but his mortal enemy.

  King saw Brown’s hand dart into the pocket of his jacket and pull out something that reflected glints of the distant city lights-not a pistol or any other weapon, but something with the potential to be just as dangerous.

  A cell phone. Not just any cell phone, but one of the quantum devices.

  As King scrambled toward Brown, the latter held the phone close to his face and pressed a button. The gambler’s face lit up in the glow of the device.

  King tried to snatch the phone away before Brown could press any more buttons, but even as he stretched out his left hand, something slammed into his chest, knocking him back into the bow.

  A dark shape had emerged from beneath the bulk of King’s Zodiac: the second Spetsnaz commando.

  King slashed at the man with the knife, but he was off balance, falling backward even as he tried to strike, and the man not only adroitly dodged the attack but managed a counterattack in the form of a rigid, open-handed chop to King’s forearm. King’s hand went instantly numb and his grip on the knife started to loosen. He clapped his free hand around his right fist, squeezing the deadened fingers tight, even as he reversed direction and tried to drive his attacker away with a backslash.

  Once again, the Spetsnaz effortlessly evaded the attack, then he seized King’s wrists, twisting the knife around so that its tip was poised directly above King’s face. King couldn’t actually see the blade in the darkness, but he knew from the position of his hands that the blade was mere inches away. Something hard struck King’s abdomen, not a directed blow but a heavy object-the man’s gun, dangling from a nylon web sling. King ignored the bruising impact and focused all his energy into resisting the insistent pressure driving the knifepoint toward his eye. His opponent was powerful, with gravity working in the Spetsnaz’s favor. The man put his full weight behind the attack, forcing the knife closer by degrees. A desperate survival instinct gave King the strength to forestall the attack but little else. The Spetsnaz had all the advantages.

  And then King felt the man’s fingers moving, creeping toward the stud on the hilt.

  21

  Mobile device detected. Do you wish to synch? Y/N

  Graham Brown felt a moment of uncertainty.

  He was only peripherally aware of the life and death struggle going on a few feet away. It didn’t really matter which man survived-King or his mysterious abductor-since both intended the same fate for him. He might not get another chance to do this.

  He thought about Pradesh’s earlier exhortation and recalled his own counter-argument. The probability of success would be drastically diminished if he did this. All his carefully laid plans were contingent upon the quantum devices being utilized in a specific manner. A deviation would have unpredictable results.

  But wasn’t that the true nature of gambling? Wasn’t that the very thing that had motivated him to embrace this plan in the first place? Bold risks, uncertain outcomes…a final grand game of chance that would put his unique abilities to the ultimate test.

  King had been more right that he would ever know. Brown had indeed won the game, won every game. He had played so expertly that there was no longer any satisfaction at all in the victory.

  Maybe it’s better this way, he thought, and tapped the “Y” on the screen.

  22

  Endgame HQ, Pinckney New Hampshire-2027 UTC/ 1527 Local

  Lewis Aleman jiggled the empty can of Red Bull energy drink, shaking the last few drops of the beverage into his mouth, and tossed the aluminum container into a wastebasket where it rattled hollowly off several other discards.

  “You should probably switch to water,” Deep Blue advised from his position at an adjoining workstation. “Any more of that stuff and you’ll give yourself an aneurism.”

  “I’d rather switch to Sam Adams,” Aleman meant it only in jest. He wouldn’t dream of consuming alcohol in the middle of an operation, with an agent in the field. “Why hasn’t he checked in?”

  “It could take a while for him to isolate Brown.” Deep Blue’s reply lacked confidence, and Aleman knew his superior wasn’t any more satisfied with the explanation than he was.

  “He could be in trouble.”

  “King’s a big boy.”

  As if to punctuate the discussion, Aleman’s computer monitor blinked awake as did the large plasma screen on the wall. Aleman sat up straight. “His phone is active. He’s checking in.”

  To his dismay however, the screen displayed the words:

  Login failed. Please enter a valid access code (2 ^ attempts remaining).

  “What the hell?” Something was wrong. He glanced at Deep Blue who looked equally concerned.

  “King’s phone uses biometric security,” Deep Blue said, the question implicit.

  Aleman nodded. The device, his own design, needed only a thumbprint scan-very useful for both preventing unauthorized use and rapid access in the field. There was no password or access code. Then, as lines of machine language began filling the screen, Aleman realized what he was seeing.

  “That’s not King’s phone,” he gasped. “We’re being hacked.”

  Override accepted.

  Impossible. No one in the world could hack through the layers of firewall protection he had built to protect the Chess Team mainframe. Even with the power of a device like the supercomputer used by the NSA’s Echelon program, such an attack would have taken hours…days even.

  Aleman was up and moving in a heartbeat, dashing across the room to a console that contained only a single, red button. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he slammed his palm down on the killswitch.

  Lines of code continued to flash across the plasma screen. The hacker had anticipated this action and evidently disabled the killswitch remotely. That left only one option…if it wasn’t already too late. He pivoted and headed for the door.

  “Aleman,” Deep Blue barked. “What in God’s name is happening?”

  “Someone is in our system.”

  “Shut it down!”

  “I can’t. They’ve locked me out of the hardware.”

  “Then pull the goddamn plug.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do.” His profound respect for Chess Team’s leader compelled the tech expert to delay a moment longer. “But the only way to do that is to destroy the mainframe. A couple incendiary grenades should do the trick. But we’ll be completely cut off.”

  Deep Blue’s eyes widened as the gravity of this revelation hit home. Chess Team’s effectiveness owed no small part to their access to information and instantaneous communication. The fire suppression system would probably prevent the destruction of the entire facility-probably-but immolating the computer mainframe would be a severe blow in the long term. In the short term, it would mean hanging King out to dry. But what choice was there?

  “Do it.”

  23

  Paris-2027 UTC

  Bandar Pradesh straightened in his chair as the message on the display monitor changed. The tenth and final quantum device had been activated and was synching. A progress bar indicated that the process was nearly complete. It was taking longer than the others had, but the difference would be measured only in seconds. The quantum network was, without question, the fastest and most powerful computer on the planet. With nine nodes already active, its stutter-logic artificial intelligence could almost instantly adapt to any security protocols. The time lag was almost certainly due to the volume of information the system was downloading from the parallel network, which evidently was larger than any of the others had been.

  He sighed in relief. Brown’s reluctance to simply act
ivate the tenth device hadn’t been merely an aggravation. It had threatened the success of Pradesh’s true agenda. He had been tempted to simply take the device and perform the final synchronization himself, but doing so might have tipped his hand at the most critical moment. In the end, he had decided to tolerate Brown’s dismissal, awaiting a better opportunity to act.

  He’d heard some loud noises earlier-gunshots? — no doubt Brown dealing with a captive, but he’d thought better of leaving the safety of the control room. Now he was glad for his restraint.

  The progress bar jumped to 100 %. The device was now synchronized and the network was active.

  Adrenaline stirred in his veins and with trembling fingers, he tapped a command into the prompt:

  ›››Awakening. exe

  24

  King wrenched his head sideways and let the Spetsnaz drive the point of the blade down. The knife pierced through the air where his face had been an instant earlier and punched deep into the fiberglass deck. Almost simultaneously, the Russian’s finger depressed the release stud on the hilt.

  The knife handle went cold in King’s grasp as the compressed carbon dioxide charge expanded inside the tube, but because the blade wasn’t going anywhere, the blast instead blew the hilt, along with the four hands gripping it, straight up like a piston into the Russian’s face.

  Even as the Spetsnaz winced from the impact, King released his grip on the hilt and fumbled for the heavy object that had pounded him earlier-the Russian’s gun. His fingers found the cool metal frame and recognized it instantly-an Israeli-produced Uzi 9-millimeter machine pistol, outfitted with a noise suppressor. His hand curled around the grip, depressing the safety mechanism, and in a single decisive motion, he jabbed the extended barrel up into the Russian’s abdomen and pulled the trigger.