The display screen was a chaotic mosaic of light and shadow, glaring spotlights, flashing lightning, the ghastly image of a severed head splashing through the gravel in one window, while a second window showed the spinning video captured by the dead man’s rolling helmet camera.
In another window, the berserker whirled to face an agent who bravely stood his ground, emptied his weapon into its chest on full automatic.
In the security room, a stunned voice in the group watching asked, “What kinda armor is that guy wearing?”
Then the berserker drove his fist through the agent’s chest, and as the man looked down bewildered by the phantom arm that pierced him, it visibly solidified and twisted, and the agent sagged without a sound, sliding lifeless to the rain-soaked ground as the solid arm changed back to smoke.
The group watched in horrified fascination. By now, all knew they were watching something beyond rational understanding.
Then the berserker turned to the final camera, to Ames. Started forward.
Matt heard a sharp intake of breath from Lomax, who pressed his earpiece. “Get outta there, Ricky! Go! Go! Go!”
But in the foreground of the AMES window, all saw the barrel of the agent’s weapon swing up and flash with fire as the berserker rushed closer, taking on form and substance. Several watching cried out, startled by the pale face that now emerged from darkness, glistening in the threads of rain made silver by the spotlight; by the staring eyes receding into hollows deeper than the death’s head holding them; by the inhuman mouth stretching open, impossibly wide, that lunged at the camera, which blinked to static, and then went blank.
The video screen abruptly jumped back to the feed from the first circling helicopter. The voice of the pilot crackled over the speaker. “What is that thing?! What is it?!”
The image shook, buffeted, as the second smaller helicopter dove into view, its side-mounted .50 caliber machine gun sending down a stream of fire. The fusillade passed through the lone dark figure standing in the midst of the four dead agents. Untouched, it looked up to track the helo’s passage, then—
Vanished.
“Where’d it go?” Lomax asked. He spun to Caparelli, to Matt. “Where the hell did it go?!”
Then the pilot cried out as the image from the first helicopter flared with orange light and the second helicopter fell past it, trailing flames.
“I didn’t see ground fire!” the pilot shouted. “There were no weapons fired! What are they—” Then he just screamed. The image pitched forward, and the ground rushed up and lightning flashed, and when the screen cleared, the video link was gone.
Cutting through the sudden babble of reaction in the room, Caparelli’s voice rang out. “Lomax. You have no choice. Evacuate. Get everyone out of range.”
“Range of what?!”
“The end of that tunnel, five hundred feet out from the foundation. That’s where those things will have their containment units.”
The DHS director was still struggling to process what had no business happening. Matt knew what that felt like.
“No,” Lomax said. “That thing in the clearing, that was more than three miles away!
“They must’ve left one unit there to be a sentry. I would’ve. But I guarantee there’re four more right up against the concrete barricade in that tunnel, only five hundred feet from here.”
Matt saw the gleam of battle in the big man’s eyes. “Tell me how I can kill them.”
“You can’t,” Arlo said, from beside Caparelli. “What you need to do is destroy their power source. The containment units.”
Now they were talking Lomax’s language. “Down there, in the tunnel—rifle-launched grenades. That should do it.”
Caparelli put a hand on the DHS director’s arm. “No, you still don’t get what these things are. I do.”
Matt knew what Caparelli was going to do next, and how dangerous that decision was. But it was the right one.
“Give me a team,” Caparelli said. “I’ll go to the clearing, take out the sentry, then get to the end of the tunnel and take out the rest of them. Your responsibility is to evacuate the people on-site and protect this man.” Caparelli pointed to Matt. “Arlo will stay to assist him.”
Lomax still looked unwilling to surrender lead position. “What can he do for us?”
“He can find Borodin, and Borodin controls those things. He’s got to have some way of communicating with them, tracking them, and if he does, we need it.”
Lomax was on-board. He began to bark orders. Matt and Arlo ran out, heading for the room on the third floor. Caparelli remained behind as Lomax had a team of hulking agents form around him. Matt looked back in time to catch Caparelli’s eye, just for a moment, and then he was gone.
* * *
Borodin welcomed the certainty of battle. Nothing else mattered now. Even if he himself died, he would still be the victor because of what he’d done.
Josiah Oliver sat on the eccentric patterned carpet before him, hands behind his back and tied to the king-size bed’s heavy, wooden frame. His captive.
He was, in the end, an ordinary man in a crumpled business suit, with a face more lined than it had been three years ago in Moscow. For now, he leaned back, breathing heavily through his mouth, blood trickling from his broken nose. Borodin had clubbed him before the man realized what was happening.
“Can you hear that siren?” The American’s voice shook with defiant rebellion, outrage. “That’s a fire. We need to leave the building.”
The clanging of the alarm in the hallway outside was bearable. In the small room, its shrill squeal was not. Its source was a small round device mounted high on one wall. Borodin shot it once. It sparked and fell silent.
“It’s not a fire. They’ve found your bodyguards.”
It had been so easy to approach them with a room-service cart bearing a silver tray, carafe of coffee, and plate of sweets. Borodin hadn’t bothered to risk smuggling a gun into the resort. But the Greenbrier’s kitchen had an excellent supply of knives, and Oliver’s guards an even better selection of weapons.
He’d left their bodies where they fell, then quickly shoved the stunned Oliver through a connecting door, gun to his head. There were hundreds of rooms in this hotel, and the general knew there was only one way he could be found before his mission was completed.
But this time he was ready for her. The spectral woman.
“How much do you want?” Oliver asked, his American sense of entitlement undamaged by his capture.
Borodin leaned in close to the mirror above the hotel room’s narrow desk. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then I can protect you. Make sure you get out.” Oliver’s prideful voice told the general that his captive still did not understand his true position in this hierarchy of retribution and death.
Borodin started pulling at the thin layer of silicon skin that had so effectively created his distinctive port wine stain. The technology of facial recognition was based on computers mapping each individual’s unique geometry. But distort that geometry with blocks of contrasting color around the eyes and cheeks, and the technology failed, every time. In a country whose people had such faith in their machines, it had been a simple matter to take the place of a resort worker who was recognized only by a pattern on his skin. After all, if a machine found nothing suspicious about him, why should anyone doubt his identity? Borodin ripped off the birthmark, rubbed away the adhesive. Turned back to his prisoner.
“Now do you understand?” he asked.
Oliver’s face paled.
“I thought you would,” Borodin said.
“What … what are you going to do?”
“To you? Nothing. But for all these people whose safety is in your hands. Your president. The British prime minister. All the great leaders, their ministers, their families … I’ll do to them what you did to my son. And the world will know all the blood and horror and despair is because of you!”
“What happened to your son was an accident!”
“So the police report said.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“So you say.”
“You can’t do this!”
Borodin just stared at the man.
Oliver’s face reddened. He spat out blood in defiance. “Then what are you waiting for?!”
“Company. Or should I call them witnesses?”
* * *
Matt sat back in the guest room’s striped chintz armchair. He forced himself to breathe slowly, wondered what Norma Chu would say about his blood pressure now.
Arlo gave him the Projection Mask. Matt hesitated before slipping it on. “Look, if one of those things gets in here, you run.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s not let one of those things get in here.”
There was no time to argue. The fire alarm began to sound, an effective way to get everyone out of their rooms. Arlo handed him earplugs. Matt put on the mask.
He stared at the lights, fell into the rhythm, said the general’s name, pictured him as if he could see him.
And like that, he could.
* * *
Borodin felt the garish room grow colder. It was a subtle sensation, but one he had come to recognize.
He turned, spread his arms in greeting. “Welcome. Don’t be shy.”
“Who’re you talking to?” his captive said.
Borodin ignored him, looked all around until he saw a pale shadow where none should be. “Which one are you?” he asked.
The shadow blurred, a presence more than anything real.
“It doesn’t matter,” Borodin said. He pulled out his phone. The number was already programmed. He waited for the call to go through, heard the click, then gave the order.
“Now.”
The presence had moved to Oliver’s side, but Borodin’s captive wasn’t sensitive to it, couldn’t see it.
“What have you done?” Oliver said.
Borodin slipped the phone back into a pocket on his white jacket. Oliver would have his answer soon enough.
The muffled thud of the first explosion rumbled through the room. The lights flickered. Outside in the hallway, the fire alarm stuttered. Then the second explosion followed, then the third. That’s when the lights went out and the alarm fell silent.
The orange glow of a battery-powered emergency light spilled out from the bathroom. Borodin went to the hallway door, stood close, held up a hand to silence Oliver’s questions and demands.
He felt the chill of the presence beside him.
“Listen,” Borodin said.
It only took a few seconds longer.
Then the screams began.
* * *
The dull thump of the first explosion shook the DHS security office.
“Give me an answer!” Lomax shouted. He was tracking developments on a large map showing the resort’s color-coded evacuation zones. Agents connected by radios to colleagues directing the crowds scrawled rapid updates on the map showing locations where buses and other vehicles were being deployed to relocate the summit attendees—all according to established contingency procedures. Video screens displayed security-camera views of groups forming outside the white-columned main hotel. So far, all was orderly.
“Whatever that was, it cut the power lines,” a technician called out. “The switchover to on-site generators is—” His words disappeared in the rumble of the second explosion, louder than the first.
The lights failed, outside and in.
Now the security office was awash in the glow of dozens of computer screens and video monitors, all running on backup battery sources. Emergency lights shone from wall-mounted fixtures.
Several of the security-cam screens switched to display exterior views of a fire raging in a small building a quarter mile away from the main hotel.
Lomax swore. The backup generators had just been destroyed. “How’d anyone get explosives on site?”
“They can’t have,” an agent close to Lomax said. “We’ve been using dogs to check every building for weeks. Nothing could’ve been pre-positioned.”
Agent Zaglada spoke quietly. “Maybe that wasn’t explosives. We all saw what that thing did to the helicopters.”
Lomax touched his earpiece. “Caparelli, Big Chief. What’s your position?”
Next to a blank screen, Caparelli’s voice came on speaker. “Starting our descent. On the ground in one.”
Lomax gave him a quick update on the loss of power. “Rest of those things could be here already, so move smartly.”
“Copy that,” Caparelli confirmed.
Talk ceased in the security room as over the speaker came the sound of a helicopter’s roar, fast breathing, running, then shouts and two quick explosions.
“We’re on the ground, doorway cleared with grenades, heading in. No sign of intruder.”
“Can we get video?” Lomax called to a technician.
Before she could answer, the crack of gunshots rang out—not from the speaker, but from the back of the security office.
In a swift reflexive action, Lomax had his weapon out as he and three other armed agents ran in the direction of the shots, but even before they could reach the corner cubicle with the full suite of security-camera monitors, he knew what he’d find.
A guard bleeding out on the floor, and Major Kalnikova missing.
* * *
Matt was a presence in a hotel guest room with Borodin, saw the general staring at him and pulling out a phone.
Matt didn’t hear what the general said, but understood it was an order, calling for destruction. The lights flickered and Matt saw a man on the floor, tied to the bed frame. Matt had never seen him before, but knew his name just as he had known the general’s intent. Josiah Oliver. The lights went out, leaving only a weak orange glow from an emergency light in the bathroom.
“You want to see this,” Laura said. She was by the bed, looking down at the nightstand. She, too, was a presence, and Matt felt no surprise that she was here with him again.
He didn’t move, but then was beside her. He followed her gaze, looked down.
The number of the room was on the phone: 525.
“Now you know,” she said.
Matt reached out to her, almost a compulsion, but she pulled away.
Matt was aware of the general approaching, eyes going from Laura to him, aware of both.
“Laura—can you keep him here? The way you stopped the men in my apartment.”
“Do you want me to?”
Matt was puzzled by the question. “Yes! I’ll come back with Lomax!”
She blurred, fell back into nothingness, and then the floral-patterned bedspread rose up as if something moved beneath it.
Matt saw the general back away from the bed, and then—
—Matt jumped up from the chair, tugging off the Projection Mask to find the third-floor room almost blacked out, lit only by the glow of Arlo’s equipment and the emergency light in the bathroom.
“Borodin’s in Room 525! We have to tell Lomax!”
But Arlo looked uncertain, and it only took an instant to realize why.
Out in the hall, a man was shouting, pounding on the door because—“It’s coming for me! It’s—” The shout became a rising wail of pain, abruptly cut off.
Matt and Arlo stared at the door.
A shadow grew from it, like a spreading stain.
* * *
Borodin backed away as the bedspread rose up. His first reaction was to laugh because it was so like a children’s story: the ghost revealed as nothing more than a prankster in a sheet. But then the bedspread snapped out like a whip and wrapped around him, pinning his arms and knocking him over.
He struggled on the carpeted floor but couldn’t do anything except squirm. He felt a sharp blow to his side—a kick. Then another. Then his breath exploded from him as he felt someone jump on his back, landing knees first. He lay gasping, barely able to draw in enough air through the heavy fabric pressed against his face. He thought of Misha. Saw his terrified eye looking up as the last of the dirt flowed over him. Borodin cried out as he reexperienced what his son had felt. He tensed for another kick, another crushing blow.
But nothing came.
He began to roll, untwisting from the bedspread, freed one arm, then his head, saw only Oliver staring at him in shock.
The room’s temperature was back to normal. The presences he had sensed, both of them, were gone.
He didn’t waste time wondering why.
* * *
In the third-floor room, the shadow took shape in front of the closed door, became a young soldier in black, standing silently, eyes set on Matt and Arlo.
Matt edged away from the researcher, putting distance between them. “Whichever one of us makes it,” he said, “it’s Room 525. Lomax has to know.”
From the corner of his vision he saw Arlo nod nervously.
The dark soldier stepped forward, began to raise his hands, eyes receding into black pools as it—
Stepped back again because Laura was in front of it.
For a moment, they faced each other, unmoving. Then, the soldier stretched up and coiled into a dark tendril that lanced down and into her.
She exploded into mist and the soldier re-formed, came for Matt, and then froze as Laura, whole again, grabbed it from behind, and this time her hands became skeletal talons that tore inside the soldier’s chest.
The soldier twisted, spun, and vanished, leaving Laura as she had been in her car, broken and bloody. “Go,” she said. “While there’s time.”
Matt grabbed Arlo, pulled him ahead, past Laura as she seemed to pulse from corpse to living being and back again.
Matt opened the door to the hallway, froze as he saw the gory remains of the man who had tried to escape the berserker. But there was no time for the luxury of disgust. He stepped carefully over the glistening shreds of bloody flesh, guiding Arlo, who was still too stunned to speak.
Matt took one last look into the room. Two shadowed figures spun in the half-light as the raging silent fight began again. He caught one glimpse of Laura as she had been, whole and alive, and then she was a blood-smeared skeletal creature that matched the soldier’s frenzy.
He fought the sudden drive he felt to return to her, to fight at her side. But the berserker was Laura’s fight. To end it, Matt knew he would have to face an enemy of his own: Borodin.
He ran for the security office to join the raging battle.