10:14 A.M.
UNITED STATES FEDERAL RESERVE
1135 SIXTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
Tacoma’s earbud chimed and he tapped his ear.
“Rob, this is CENCOM, I have ‘Igor’ for you,” said the operator.
“Put him through,” said Tacoma, holding up on Forty-fourth Street.
There were a few beeps, then Igor came on the line:
“Rob,” said Igor in his thick Russian voice. “I don’t have time to explain. I need you to go to a building on Sixth Avenue.”
“What’s the address?” said Tacoma.
“1135 Sixth Avenue,” said Igor, “between Forty-third and Forty-fourth.”
Tacoma turned and ran back west on Forty-fourth Street and cut down at Sixth Avenue. He saw the skyscraper. Though simple in its appearance, its black steel rectangular structure loomed—walls of reflective blue glass hovering above the street below.
“Why?” said Tacoma.
“That’s the location of the Federal Reserve,” said Igor. “They’re inside and are attempting to wipe out the Fed.”
Tacoma crossed and came at the entrance from the side of the building. He held a suppressed AR-15. He paused at the corner of the building and glanced inside the lobby. There wasn’t any movement. He made out three or four bodies on the floor of the lobby. The lobby area was hard to delineate through a window. It was filled with walls of interior windows and mirrors, intended to obfuscate the view from outside.
He watched for almost a minute and saw no movement.
“Where am I going?” said Tacoma.
“Floor twenty-five,” said Igor.
A shadow crossed in a reflection somewhere on the far side of the lobby. He moved the fire selector on the AR-15 to full auto.
Tacoma walked stiffly down the street as if just a lost pedestrian. At the entrance to the building, he came to a set of double doors. He pulled back on the left door with his left hand as his right arm swung the AR-15 into the door opening. But there was no one.
He found a dead security guard and took his ID. He went to the elevators and inserted the ID into a slot, then hit “25.” The doors shut. Tacoma changed out mags on the rifle, then removed his P226 from the holster at his waist. He ejected the mag on the P226 and slammed a fresh one in, yanking back, loading the chamber. He holstered it just as the doors opened on the twenty-fifth floor.
It was a strange setting, austere, lit in an iridescent warm white glow, the strangest, eeriest thing he’d ever seen. In one direction was a wall. In the other direction was a field of light. He stepped closer. Behind the wall of light was a windowless tunnel. The tunnel was bathed in a strobe-like yellow light. At the end of the tunnel, fifty feet away, he could see a room. Though somewhat obscured by the field of light, he could see a man seated at a table.
Four waist-high digital screens stood at the opening to the tunnel. Tacoma began his sprint into the tunnel, eyeing the door at the end of the corridor.
“STOP! For the love of God, stop!”
He heard Igor’s voice just as he started into the tunnel, then pulled up. As Tacoma got close, the tunnel light gradually brightened, with blue fluorescent spotlights illuminating the inside of the fifty-foot-long tunnel from a hundred different pinpoints. Another series of light streams shot out in follicles of orange, brightening the space even more. The two sprays of color streams, one orange, the other blue, glowed in a precise pattern across the tunnel, interwoven, like a hand intersecting with another hand, the fingers intertwined.
Tacoma stopped at the last moment, finding one of the screens with his free arm to keep him from going forward.
“What the hell is it?” said Tacoma.
“A security perimeter,” said Igor. “You touch it and you’re dead. This is America’s last defense. It is virtually impenetrable, unless you have the thumbprints and the eyeballs of the four governors.”
“Well, Igor, I don’t have them,” said Tacoma.
He turned to move back away from the tunnel but unintentionally swept the suppressor of the rifle and the barrel out into the tunnel entrance. The metal and steel were suddenly incinerated, just inches from where Tacoma stood, with barely a noise.
“Jesus,” said Tacoma. “What is it?” he asked Igor.
“It’s called an iodine sheet field,” said Igor.
“A what?” said Tacoma.
“A force field,” said Igor. “Four thousand degrees. You shouldn’t try and go across. It’s hot enough to incinerate a missile. Imagine going to the sun for a few seconds.”
Tacoma gulped.
“Got it,” Tacoma said.
Tacoma looked at the ruined weapon. He hurled it into the tunnel, where it made just a brief burst of orange crackling light and disappeared.
“Wow,” said Tacoma, eyeing the iridescent corridor. “So, any thoughts?”
“Yes,” said Igor. “How fast are you, Rob?”