Half of the seats in the passenger cabin were empty as the hover-plane cleared the cloud bank. Davin Cross checked his watch. The local time was 7:15 in the morning, an hour late. A sign the pilot was scared to push the engines while crossing the Atlantic?
The plane shimmied as it descended into London. A bell chimed from the intercom. “Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. Just a spot of turbulence.” The reassurance offered little comfort. The pilot’s voice shook worse than his aircraft. “Please remain seated until we’ve completed our landing into Waterloo Station.”
Davin glanced out the window at the wing’s exposed power cell. The inside of the large, glass sphere crackled with brilliant blue tendrils of plasma energy.
An elderly woman two rows ahead of Davin leaned over to her husband and gripped his arm. “It’s supposed to look like that, right?”
Davin wanted to grab every one of them by their dress coats and shake sense into them. The plane’s power source wasn’t flawed, but their lives were endangered. The real threat had a name: Novaya Zvezda, and it was waiting for all of them in London.
• • •
The boarding terminal at Waterloo Station turned out more crowded than DC’s had been ten hours earlier. Davin saw a handful of steam trails evaporating into the sky in all directions. A train whistle sounded the warning of its imminent departure.
“We still use the old steam engines here in London.”
The woman’s voice behind him caught Davin off guard. He turned to see she looked about his age bedecked in purple pants, black boots, and a black corset over a white blouse. Fashion had followed suit when the world returned to the old modes of energy, back when nuclear and oil resources had passed their prime. The clothing styles had refused to change when plasma energy emerged.
“I’m sorry?” He tried not to stare, even though she was a very good-looking woman. He was meeting someone else.
“I said we still use the steam engines here.” She shifted her eyes in the direction of the smoke trails before looking back at him. “You are Davin Cross, right?”
With that one question, she graduated from “attractive scenery” to “person of extreme interest and possible threat.”
“Yes, I am. Who are you?”
She offered her hand. “TeAhna Meercroft.”
He hesitated but doubted the woman’s intentions were ill. If she’d wanted to kill him by a method as subtle as a handshake, she could have stabbed him with greater ease when she’d approached him from behind.
“Do I have to ask?”
“Your friend Stephen sent me.” Her brows furrowed. “He said to tell you that he still misses your mother’s chocolate wings?”
He laughed. Yes, Stephen had definitely sent her. His mother wasn’t the best cook on the planet, but she made buffalo wings better than anyone else, including a recipe for spicy, dark chocolate wings.
“He mentioned that you warned him to avoid London altogether if he couldn’t make it here before noon, which he couldn’t. His plane was grounded when its plasma drive failed its pre-flight inspection.” She pulled out her watch. “Should I worry that we’re left with less than four hours before that time?”
“Yes.” He pointed towards the main exit, or at least what the signs displayed in big yellow letters as the “Way Out.”
“I’ll get us a carriage.” She set a fast pace as she navigated the crowd. “Where are we going?”
His shoulder bag assaulted several people in the terminal as he struggled to keep up with her. “We need to get to a place called Nine Elms, the power plant.”
She stopped at the curb and waved down a horse-drawn carriage. “Nine Elms power plant,” she said and then told Davin once they’d climbed into the buggy. “You’re paying.”
“Got it.” He patted his breast pocket to reassure her. That’s when he noticed her studying him with a perplexed quirk to her eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”
“I’ve been in this trade for six years.” She avoided the word “spycraft” because of their public transportation. “Stephen said you were an analyst for the Agency.”
“Yeah, seven years.” He smiled at the slight advantage in time, but it was forced. He’d hoped for a field assignment, but the CIA apparently wanted him for his mind, not his body.
“You don’t look like most analysts.”
“Pale and physically unfit?”
She laughed. “Yes, quite.”
He knew the stereotype of his profession. Most of his co-workers in the counter-terrorism unit wore that description like a uniform. The young ones with dreams of being James Bond or Jason Bourne fought it, but he’d seen plenty of them resign to their fate. Davin could still run three miles in under nineteen minutes and took fencing lessons to keep in shape.
“Now, let’s get to the fox in your hunt.” She crossed her legs. “What drags an American analyst from the safety of his cubicle?”
The honest answer would be “ambition,” but odds favored she could smell that. “You ever hear of Novaya Zvezda?”
“Former Russian military, radical offshoot of the Russian Refugee Confederation, out to avenge their homeland’s devastation from nuclear fallout.” She shrugged. “What of them? Last mention I heard was a year ago. They were picking up mercenary work to fund their cause.”
“There’s a reason you haven’t heard anything on them since. They found a sugar daddy.”
She blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Basically, they got a corporate sponsor.”
“I’d heard they’d disbanded.”
Davin’s gut clenched as tightly as his fist. He’d suffered through that same counterargument from his supervisor just yesterday. He’d been counting on Stephen being here to help him navigate through the hoops of working in the field. Instead, he feared TeAhna might abandon him before he’d even reached his enemy’s target.
“Novaya Zvezda’s leader has always known how to work the intelligence community,” he said.
“Really? I wasn’t aware anyone knew who led them.”
“Sergey Bondarenko,” he said. “Heard of him?”
She shook her head.
“Former Russian general. Made a name for himself during his country’s conflict with Kazakhstan back in 2048. Nuclear fallout finished the job for him but wiped out his homeland, too. Most of the damage he inflicted came from covert ops that didn’t require anyone to fire a single bullet.”
She held up a hand to cut off his history lesson. “Let’s get back to today’s fox.” She leaned away from him for a glance outside their carriage. “We’re ten minutes from Nine Elms, so favor the abridged version.”
Great. Ten minutes to figure out if he was breaking into this power plant alone.
“A little more than a year ago, one of Bondarenko’s right hand men took a job handling private security for Tolliver Rigney. Rigney’s father bought up most of the plutonium mines back when the world decided to abandon nuclear technology. He gambled the family fortune on people tiring of the antiquated power sources and returning to nuclear power. He didn’t bank on the development of plasma technology. Ate a bullet when Tolliver was sixteen.”
“Let me see if I can connect the dots.” She sported a cocky smile. “You think Rigney is funding these terrorists out of some mutual interest which involves undermining plasma technology. I’ve heard the notion that the rise in plasma energy failures—rolling blackouts, faulty plasma sphere gun ammunition, and plane crashes—is an elaborate smear campaign against the technology. My agency has written it off as whimsical conspiracy theories.”
“It’s no conspiracy theory.” He tried not to grit his teeth. “This is classic Bondarenko strategy. ‘Let your enemy undermine itself,’ is one of his idioms of war. The so-called experts who claim plasma tech is flawed are all funded by grants from Tolliver Rigney. Bondarenko also has his own ax to grind against the Plasma Energy Consortium. Before he went underground to form Novaya Zvezda, he denounced the consortium for undermining recovery efforts to clean up Russia’s contaminated soil.”
She didn’t say anything to that, offering nothing but a sideways glance at him.
“You look unconvinced,” he said.
“Why Nine Elms? I would have expected you to take us to Lancaster House.”
At least she was up on the current headlines. “The Energy Summit that starts today at noon?” He waited for her nod before he continued. “That’s why I’m positive Bondarenko will make his move here in London—today. Nine Elms operates on a massive plasma generator. If it blew up in the same fashion as the power systems in the recent plane crashes, it would take out all of London.”
That grabbed her attention. Pity his supervisor hadn’t seen it the same way.
“Lancaster House is just two miles from that power plant. The very experts arguing in favor of plasma technology’s survival would be killed by their own creation. The headlines alone would sink the industry.”
“And the plutonium mines Tolliver Rigney inherited would regain their value with a potential return to nuclear power.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Who do you think is sponsoring this summit?”
“Rigney?”
“He’s put his enemies exactly where he wants them.”
TeAhna tapped her teeth with her fingernail as she considered it. “You lack any physical evidence to support your theory, I assume, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“No, just facts that fit together, but if I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have come. I’m risking my career going into the field like this.” His supervisor had told him to go home and take a week off to get his head on straight. Hopping a plane to London would change that to something more permanent.
She pointed at him. “You’re trying to make your career, Davin. I’ve seen your type in my agency.”
“And you know Stephen trusts me, or he wouldn’t have asked you to help.” He just hoped she trusted Stephen as much his friend trusted him.
She tapped his leather bag, sitting on the floor of the carriage, with her foot. “Please tell me you have more in there than documents and a clean pair of underwear.”
He opened the bag and pulled out his plasma sphere handgun, wrapped in grey cloak fabric. “I’m certified as a sharpshooter with it, too.”
“You ever use that while being shot at by an enemy?” She raised her hand to cut him off. “A real enemy, not part of some training exercise.”
“No.”
She clicked her tongue against her teeth in a sound of disapproval. “You will follow my lead then.”
At least she was still with him. He just hoped he wasn’t picking the wrong day in his life to play the lottery.
• • •
An ornate iron fence surrounded the entrance to the power plant at the end of Cringle Street. Most of the structure’s images Davin had studied during the past few weeks had been satellite photos. Except for the four smokestacks, none of which were smoking, the drab brickwork gave the facility a look more akin to a prison, complete with a guard house at the front gate.
TeAhna exited the carriage first. “Pay him,” she said without a backwards glance. She fumbled through her purse as if she expected him to come up short on cash.
Davin counted off the pounds, then followed TeAhna.
A large guard stepped out to meet her. He wore a tired, grey jacket which buttoned down the front, not that he was able to button it all the way. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. He stood on the opposite side of the fence as if the barrier granted him power.
“Can I help you two?” The guard’s eyes focused more on the top edge of TeAhna’s corset. What Davin assumed was a cockney accent grated against his ears. People actually spoke like that?
“We’re here to see the plant supervisor about an urgent matter.” TeAhna continued to dig through her purse, issuing a curse or two. Davin wondered what was so important that she was still rooting around for it.
“Sorry, no visitors allowed today.” He spared a glance towards Davin, but went back to TeAhna’s bosom.
“No, I have a letter from the supervisor somewhere in here.”
Davin did his best to cover his confusion. Letter? What was she talking about?
She pulled out a piece of paper and held it out for the guard. He had to reach through the fence to take it from her, and the instant he did, she removed her other hand from the purse. Davin caught a glimpse of her weapon’s black grip and golden gears. Two curved pieces shot out of the sides and wrapped around the guard’s wrist.
“What the—?” Before the guard could pull back, a loud sizzle sounded from the cuff. His entire body went rigid, convulsed, then collapsed.
“Are you insane?” Davin grabbed his gun from his bag, not even sure if he should aim it at her or the downed guard.
“That is not the real guard.”
“But how can you—?”
“The jacket doesn’t remotely fit; it clearly belongs to another man. That is a plasma sphere rifle, which no civilian guard would be permitted to carry in England, and that was the most pathetic attempt at feigning a British accent that I’ve ever heard.” She opened the gate, her gun drawn and went straight for the guard house. “Don’t touch him. I’ve set it to repeat the shock with any movement he makes. You’re of no use to me on the ground beside him.”
Davin kept several feet between him and the fake guard.
TeAhna entered the open door of the white guard house. “Poor man.”
Someone had shoved the real guard beneath a desk and stripped him to his undergarments. His face and chest were charred from plasma burns. “Shot at close range,” Davin said.
She knelt beside the real guard and checked for a pulse. “Must have set their guns to low power for that,” she said. Close range shots risked damage to the weapon being fired and even the shooter. “Perhaps fortune will favor us, and they’ll forget to reset their weapons to full power.”
“There’s a good chance they’ll leave them turned down.” Davin knelt beside the guard house, using it as cover between him and the main building. He turned one of the dials near the middle of his gun’s barrel. “They don’t want this place to explode before noon, so they’ll be cautious until they decide they’re out of options. We should do the same.”
“Valid point.” She adjusted the dial on her gun. He noticed it was an older model with plenty of scratches to the casings.
“You ever been inside this place?” he asked.
“No.” She ran across the courtyard to the nearest entrance.
Davin kept a few paces behind her. If anyone shot at them, he didn’t want to be close enough for one sphere to finish the job. He hoped the fact no one had attacked them yet was a sign they’d gone unnoticed. Then again, a shootout in the courtyard was guaranteed to draw attention, and the terrorists didn’t want that.
Steps led up to a pair of grey double doors. TeAhna held up a hand for him to wait. Her face tightened as she placed her ear closer to the door, listening for movement. The stress enhanced her natural beauty. Davin reminded himself to focus. There would be time to flirt later, but only if he kept his wits about him.
She gestured for him to follow and pushed the door open. The inner workings of the power plant drowned out what little noise the door’s hinges made.
Even though she couldn’t possibly know where she was going, TeAhna chose which turns in the hallway to take without a second wasted. He’d heard other field agents, the better ones, speak of this. Never focus on your doubt, just focus on the mission and move with certainty.
The hallway led to another set of metal doors, labeled with bold, black letters: Plasma Core. A low hum sounded from the other side.
TeAhna crouched by the doors and waved Davin closer. “I hear voices in there. Don’t recognize the language, but if I had to guess…” She quirked her brows.
“Russian,” he said.
Gun in her right hand, she held up her left. Two fingers, then three, and after another moment, four. Just great. At least two-to-one odds, and Davin wondered if he really counted as one.
TeAhna gestured with her hand, indicating her plan for how they should enter the next room. Davin nodded that he understood and prayed he hadn’t misinterpreted any of it.
She flung the door open, gun raised, and darted to the left, Davin to the right. His eyes took in the details like a list of notes for one of his research assignments: large plasma sphere core in center of room, multiple pipes attached to the core’s base like a circulatory system, three corpses on floor, five gunmen gathered in front of the sphere and three more working the gears on the far left of the room near a desk up against a large cluster of pipes.
TeAhna fired first. The opening shot nailed a short, broad-shouldered man near the sphere. His rifle clattered to the floor as the shockwave of her shot knocked down two of his comrades.
“Oh, hell.” Davin sprinted for the nearest cover he could see, praying the terrorists had their rifles still set low. If so, these pipes might survive a few shots before they burst.
He aimed low, going against all his training, fearful his shots might miss and hit the sphere, doing the terrorists’ work for them.
Waves of heat from near-misses chased Davin as he ran through the cover of the coolant pipes. If they’d been at full power, the spheres would have been close enough to singe him. One pipe didn’t survive the volley. Metal shrieked as it split open. Plasma fluid hissed out like liquid light.
Davin paced his shots, careful not to damage the pipes, but also to save his ammo and not overheat his gun. A lucky shot hit the rifle that TeAhna’s first victim had dropped. The weapon detonated, taking out two of the other terrorists. The others had already scattered.
Davin made it to the far side of the room, placing the massive plasma sphere between him and the exit. One of the Russians shouted orders, and two of the soldiers aimed their rifles at Davin. He ran, feeling safer as a moving target. A sphere to the Russian leader’s head, which Davin assumed TeAhna had fired, cooked the life out of him in a blink, his death cry cut short.
The two soldiers ran for cover. They divided their fire between where Davin had been and the direction of TeAhna’s shot.
Davin hid behind a large tank of what he assumed to be water. How many gunmen were left? How severe was the damage to the Plasma Core? Where was TeAhna?
Names and surveillance images filled his memory as he associated his working knowledge of Novaya Zvezda with the men he’d seen. The one with his head charred had been one of Bondarenko’s lieutenants in the Kazakhstan conflict. One of the two who’d just shot at Davin was a bald-headed, bearded mercenary named Dima Nikifor. He chastised himself. Did the names matter now? He needed something to help him survive this gunfight, not random intelligence trivia.
“Dima! Bondarenko has abandoned all of you!” Davin kept moving as his shouts went unanswered. “He knows our intelligence agencies have discovered your plans. Even if you get out of here, you’ll never make it beyond the blast radius!”
“Filthy, lying dog!” Dima’s voice, directly behind him, sent Davin diving for cover. Their guns fired, but neither hit the intended target. A third party’s plasma sphere nailed Dima in the chest.
Someone ran up on Davin to his left. He turned, gun aimed, but then pointed it safely at the ceiling as he realized it was TeAhna.
“Bloody idiot!” She grabbed his arm, pulled him to his feet and back behind cover.
He thought to explain his logic: Dima’s history indicating he’d once hunted down a fellow mercenary to kill him for bailing on him during a mission. There was also his family history. Dima harbored serious abandonment issues. TeAhna appeared certain he’d been nothing but stupid, and he wasn’t sure she was wrong.
“How many more?” he asked.
“At least two.”
They worked their way over to the desk, where the group of three men had been working when the gunfight started.
“Some kind of bomb?” TeAhna canted her head towards something attached to one of the pipes. Her eyes stayed focused on the room around her, though.
He studied it, a square device with three chemicals in glass cylinders. Two chemicals were clear, the third resembled liquefied gold. He didn’t recognize the design, but the way the gears clicked in their patient rotations hinted at a countdown to something.
“Most likely.” They’d placed it on the main coolant pipe. As he looked around, he saw more on the pipes feeding into the sphere. The plasma would overheat like the rounds fired from his gun until it reached ignition temperature. No more sphere; no more London.
TeAhna grabbed him by the arm. “Move!”
A shot blasted through the air where they’d been standing, burned through the wall and kept going. They’d reset their guns. At that power level, the heat from a near-miss could kill them just as easily as a bull’s-eye.
Davin spotted the gunman ducking around the far side of the massive sphere core. They fired after him, but not close enough to take him down.
“Go left,” TeAhna said. “We’ll surround him.”
“What about the other one?”
“Just keep your eyes—”
A plasma sphere burst through her chest. The blast hurled her across the room. Davin ran and fired blindly in the direction of TeAhna’s killer. The smell of her cooked blood invaded his nostrils. His heart pounded in his chest, terrified he might die seconds behind her. Even as he hid behind the nearest junction of pipes, he saw the body of TeAhna’s killer splayed on the floor—killed by a lucky shot.
Just one more, and he was home free. All the doubts he’d harbored about his ability to work in the field bubbled to the surface. TeAhna was dead because of him, and if the remaining terrorist in here didn’t kill him, then he’d die with the rest of London.
“Dammit!” He clenched his free hand into a fist, fingernails digging into his palm. The pain steadied him.
“Your friends are dead!” Davin’s voice boomed through the core room. He fought down the quaver in his voice, thinking back to how the pilot had sounded when he’d landed here less than an hour ago. He had to do better and poured all his anger into his words. “You’ve wasted your time! These bombs will never detonate! Even if you kill me, I already have a squad en route to disable them.”
To his surprise, the lone Russian answered. “And you are a fool!” His voice echoed in the large space, making it impossible to identify where he was. “Even if I fail, your scientists will die!”
They had a back-up plan. Davin’s mind raced through the data, trying to anticipate their scheme, but he squashed those thoughts. Survival came first.
“To hell with this.”
Davin ran back to the bomb on the main pipe. A magnetic plate on the base of the device kept it in place. Would removing it cause it to detonate? He looked over at the desk and saw a clipboard. The back was metal. He slid the clipboard between the bomb and the pipe, his eyes darting over the room for any sign of attack.
He picked up TeAhna’s gun, avoiding her vacant stare, and slid her weapon through his belt in case he needed the extra fire power. His opponent didn’t come here to die. If he had, then he would have shot the power core’s sphere by now and completed his mission kamikaze-style.
Davin set the bomb next to the double doors, the only exit that he’d seen. Time to play his gamble.
He turned the dial on his gun to full power. When he made his move, he needed to convince this guy it was time to run from the crazy American.
Davin sent several shots to the far side of the sphere, hoping to drive the Russian out the other side. His foe returned fire, but the counterattack landed nowhere near Davin. This guy was just as panicked as Davin was. The realization bolstered his confidence.
He took cover in a corner near the front of the room, giving him a clear line of sight for the doors and the bomb. Footfalls echoed, moving fast.
The glow of the sphere cast long shadows throughout the room. Davin saw the terrorist’s silhouette fall on the double doors and shot at the bomb he’d planted there. The chemicals in the explosive ignited, sending fire and gold-hued smoke outwards. A wave of hot air punched into Davin’s body and slammed him back against the wall.
He shook his head, restoring his senses enough to get to his feet. He peeked around the pipes to see the body of the last terrorist on the floor. The metal clip from the clipboard was buried between his eyes. Davin hoped the explosion didn’t damage the equipment in here. That would be just his luck to kill all the terrorists and then finish the job for them.
Then he remembered what the terrorist had said. This wasn’t finished. Bondarenko had a back-up plan.
• • •
Before leaving the power plant, Davin collected the bombs and tossed them into the Thames. He pulled his watch from his pocket, which had somehow survived being jarred in the gunfight. It was almost eleven o’clock. He needed to reach Lancaster House on the other side of the river.
Once he made it to the main road, he flagged down a cab. The horse-drawn coach’s driver had to repeat his question asking where Davin wanted to go. His ears were ringing from the bomb.
As the driver sped him to Lancaster House, Davin emptied the ammunition from TeAhna’s gun. His fingers shook as he loaded the plasma spheres, which resembled small capsules in their dormant state, into the clip of his weapon.
“Keep it together.” He repeated those words to himself, a desperate mantra.
His mind’s eye went back to TeAhna’s body. He’d put her in harm’s way, but he couldn’t think on that. He needed to figure out what he was riding into. Only minutes separated him from Lancaster House and another possible gunfight.
Rigney had funded the energy summit. His private security, headed by one of Bondarenko’s men, would be in control of the site. Bondarenko wouldn’t sacrifice his men, though. Novaya Zvezda was not so large in numbers that he could afford that kind of chess play. The security would most likely be local, civilians hired just for this event. Davin could exploit that.
The driver pounded on the roof of the carriage. They’d stopped.
Davin looked out the window. They were on the Mall. He saw Buckingham Palace at the end of the road, just beyond a tall fountain adorned with golden angels. Several other buildings lined the street, mostly obscured by trees and tourists.
“Which is Lancaster House?” he asked as he paid the cabbie. The gent pointed to a beige stone structure with a vibrant green lawn to his right.
Delegates for the summit were already filing through the front gate. He forced his way to the front of the line.
Three guards were working the gate. One wore a set of x-ray goggles with mirror lenses that hid his eyes. He pointed at Davin, the goggles having discovered his sidearm. A tall guard in a black suit and tie put himself in Davin’s path. Davin noticed the butt of a handgun in a shoulder holster as the guard’s black jacket shifted. “Sir, you’ll need to surrender your weapon.” There was no mistaking the authentic British accent for this one. That confirmed Davin’s theory about the local security.
“I’m Agent Meercroft.” Davin adopted a subtle accent similar to the one TeAhna had sported. He’d once heard the Southern accent was the closest to the British and hoped that would help him pass for a local.
For good measure, Davin flashed the badge he’d lifted from TeAhna’s purse. Thankfully, the identification hadn’t included a photograph. “I need to speak with the head of your security.” He kept his voice low but firm. “There’s an imminent threat to the summit.”
The guard studied the silver badge. Davin struggled to maintain his composure as he waited to see if this guard believed his charade. The guard’s eyes widened as he whispered, “MI-6?”
“I need to speak with your superior,” Davin said, “now.”
“Yes, sir. Follow me.”
Davin kept a step behind the guard and fought back the nervousness that demanded he engage in small talk. He wasn’t sure he could maintain the fake accent for very long.
“I’m Constantine,” the guard said as he led Davin across the lawn which was occupied by the summit’s delegation, a parade of well-dressed men and women. More guards were posted at the doors to the building. They were also armed with handguns, the traditional bullets and gunpowder variety, unlike Davin’s plasma sphere design.
“Wait here, please,” Constantine said, then whispered to one of the other guards. “He’s MI-6.”
Davin maintained his silence while he waited. This location gave him an ideal position to observe everyone on the lawn and within the drawing room. He’d done his homework on Novaya Zvezda before coming to London, but he didn’t recognize any members of the terrorist group in the crowd. His stomach, empty save for a tight-fisted knot of nerves, distracted him.
Constantine returned with an even taller man who was bald.
“I’m Captain Tennant. What’s this business about then?”
Davin reminded himself to use the fake accent but not to overdo it. “Less than an hour ago, our agents stopped a group of terrorists from setting off an explosion at the Nine Elms power station. We believe they’ve planted a bomb here, too.”
“I already have a three-man team searching Lancaster House. They started their last sweep a few minutes ago.” He shrugged. “We’ve found nothing out of sorts, thus far.”
“Does this building have a back-up generator?” Davin considered this during the ride here. Killing the scientists with a bomb wouldn’t undermine plasma technology, merely turn them into martyrs, but if a plasma-powered generator were to “malfunction” and explode, that would do the trick.
“I believe so.” Captain Tennant turned to Constantine.
“Yes, sir, in the basement.”
“Excellent.” The captain smiled at Davin as if this should somehow satisfy the matter. “Our team is down there now.”
“Your team? Who picked these men?” Davin tried to conceal his disdain. The captain reminded him of his boss.
“They’re independent contractors, hired separately by Mr. Rigney’s private security.”
That set off alarms in Davin’s head, even if the captain didn’t find it odd.
“Are any of them a white male, five-foot-eleven, with blue eyes and a scar running down his left cheek like this?” He traced a line with his fingertip down his own face, nose to the back of his jaw. One rumor suggested Bondarenko got the scar from a landmine. Another blamed it on a Moscow prostitute.
“Yes, that would be Mr. Clark. He’s in charge of their team. Why?”
“His name,” Davin caught himself about to slip out of the accent, cleared his throat and continued, “is Sergey Bondarenko. He’s a known terrorist and most likely sabotaging the back-up generator to explode.”
“Sir, should we alert the palace?” Constantine asked. At least one of these guards was connecting the dots.
The captain rubbed his scalp as if he might squeeze his thoughts out more quickly. “Bloody hell, please tell me the Union Flag is flying.”
“Sorry, sir, it’s the Royal Standard.”
“Curse it! The King couldn’t be in Windsor today?” Sweat rolled down the captain’s brow. That’s when it occurred to Davin that Rigney probably hadn’t hired the best security for this event. He had to take control somehow.
“Captain, if you want to notify the Palace Guard, then I could take a few of your men to search for Bondarenko.”
The captain shifted his gaze from Davin to his officers. “Very well. Yes, I’ll alert the palace. Find those men, and detain them.”
The captain marched out the door. Davin was tempted to tell him he might want to run but thought better of it. The task of notifying the Palace Guard kept him out of the way, and the void left Davin an opening to take charge.
He turned to Constantine. “Lead me to the backup generator.”
“Yes, sir.” He slapped one of the other guards on the shoulder. He was a slender man with a bushy beard. “Come on, Simmons.”
Constantine led them to a side room which appeared to have been converted into a temporary security office complete with the bitter scent of coffee. They went through another door to the basement stairs.
The lower level was lighted better than Davin expected. Unlike all the work to preserve the classic décor of the upstairs, the basement had been treated to a modern, utilitarian makeover. Light grey walls helped spread the light. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling reducing what little headroom existed to a claustrophobic level.
Constantine turned to the right. “End of the corridor.”
Davin let the two guards go first. Bondarenko might realize Davin wasn’t with the security detail and get suspicious. This close to the big boom, these terrorists wouldn’t play things subtle.
Davin tapped Constantine on the shoulder and whispered. “Just tell them there’s a suspicious briefcase in the conference room and that Captain Tennant wants it checked. If they don’t fall for it, they won’t hesitate to kill us. They make any suspicious moves, we shoot to kill.”
“Good advice,” Simmons said.
They reached the end of the corridor. Constantine nodded to let them know he was opening the door.
Green light from the generator spilled out as the door slid open. Three men stood around the device, a slender tube with a small sphere in each end and cables running from it up into the pipes along the ceiling.
One of the three men stood tall and looked from Constantine to Simmons. “Is there a problem?” The voice was deep, layered with the rumble born from years of smoke and hard-living, which made it difficult to conceal the Russian accent: Bondarenko.
Davin fought the urge to go for his gun. It would have been easier to come in guns blazing, but the small chance Davin might be wrong had rendered that option unacceptable. He kept his hands free, but ready to reach for his gun at the first hint that this would go south. Things went downhill fast.
Simmons drew his gun and fired, but not at the terrorists. The bullet went straight into Constantine’s temple. Then Simmons turned for a shot at Davin and shouted, “He’s MI-6!”
Everyone’s guns came out. Unlike Simmons, Bondarenko and his men were packing plasma sphere guns. TeAhna’s earlier question echoed in Davin’s thoughts as he took aim and fired. You ever use that while being shot at by an enemy?
The temperature in the cramped space spiked as the energized spheres burned through the air. Chunks of debris exploded from the walls and floor. The blasts deafened Davin, drowning out all else with an ephemeral note that wouldn’t stop.
As fast as the volley began, it ended, and it took Davin’s mind a moment to process all that happened in that brief exchange. Their bodies littered the floor. Simmons’ unblinking eyes stared at nothing. Davin’s first shot had sliced straight through his heart. He should have realized Bondarenko would place one of his men among the hired detail.
The gunfire that followed that fatal shot to Simmons took out the two with Bondarenko. Davin had dropped to the floor. He wasn’t sure if he’d done it on purpose or fallen.
He stared down the barrel of his gun and met the hard stare of Bondarenko’s blue eyes. The Russian general’s body shook. One of the plasma spheres had seared off his left hand.
“MI-6?” Bondarenko’s voice lacked the quaver of his body.
“CIA, actually.” Davin kept his gun aimed at Bondarenko.
A weak laugh, laced with blood, coughed its way over Bondarenko’s lips. He spoke in his native tongue, which Davin recognized after a moment. “You’re just a boy. How fitting.”
The Russian crawled towards the generator.
“Don’t move,” Davin said.
“Or you will kill me?” He laughed again, more blood spilling onto his chest. “The future has been trying to kill me all my life. This world does not favor warriors who harbor love for what is past.”
Bondarenko reached towards the generator. Davin saw an explosive, a twin of those planted at Nine Elms, attached to the device.
“I said don’t move!”
Bondarenko glared at him. “I choose my end. Not you, boy.”
He reached for the bomb. Davin fired. The plasma sphere struck the center of his chest. The old man slid back several feet from the generator. His body jerked a few times and then relaxed with a low hiss from the hole in his chest.
• • •
The twenty-four hours that followed were occupied with a hospital visit and many opportunities for Davin to recount his tale to MI-6. He didn’t try to lie, despite the more incriminating portions of his story. He’d impersonated an MI-6 agent, defied direct orders from his supervisor and smuggled a firearm into a foreign country. Spies and their governments could forgive many things, but they never granted amnesty to liars.
After the Brits decided they didn’t have any business with Davin, they delivered him to the U.S. Embassy. Once there, he was placed in a chair outside a big, wooden office door with a pair of guards who didn’t place any value on conversation. The silence made the half hour he spent there last even longer.
“Mr. Cross?” A man wearing a black dress coat, vest and tie, stood in the open doorway. “I’m Ambassador Morgan. Would you join me?”
“Ambassador” was a fancy way of saying he was an Agency field director, a common practice among all spy agencies.
Davin hobbled his way into the office. A near-miss from the gunfight inside Lancaster House had burned his calf. Morgan waved off the guards before closing the door. Davin hoped that was a good sign.
Morgan pointed Davin to a less-than-comfortable chair in front of his desk. “You’ve had a busy few days, haven’t you?”
“Are they going to be my last in the CIA?” Davin asked.
“No, they won’t.” Morgan smiled. “I’ve been asked to extend the president’s gratitude for your actions.”
“I noticed the Brits are covering up what happened.” The morning paper didn’t mention the shooting at Lancaster House or the attempt to destroy the Nine Elms power plant.
“The president and Britain’s prime minister agreed to it,” Morgan said.
“People need to know that plasma technology isn’t flawed. They need to know the truth.”
“What people need is progress,” the ambassador said. “In the past, society became complacent with energy from limited and dangerous resources. People need to strive for more. These terrorists might have harbored ill intentions, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use their actions to do something positive. We need to push for better methods of fueling our technology.”
“Nice sales pitch.” Davin recognized policy-speak when he heard it. “Write that one yourself?”
“No, the Secretary of State’s office gets that byline.”
“So people won’t be told.” His pride stung more than anything else. “What does that mean for me?”
Morgan smiled at Davin from behind his desk. “It means no parades for you—sorry, but you will be rewarded. The CIA is assembling a special counter-terrorism task force called Delphi which will have our analysts and field agents working closer than ever.”
Analysts. They were sending him back to a cubicle.
“Mr. Cross, we need someone in Delphi who can speak both languages, someone who can do the analysis and lead in the field.”
“Me?” Dear Lord, did he hear that right? Not only were they freeing him from his desk at Langley, but they were promoting him!
“Unless you’ve decided field work isn’t for you.”
Davin had waited seven years for this opportunity. He knew he might one day forget why he’d wanted it, but he’d never free his thoughts of TeAhna Meercroft. The scent of her burned blood and the pained expression she wore into death were painted onto the canvas of his memories.
She died to give him this chance.
“When do I start?”
“Crossfire” was originally published by Flying Island Press as part of their FlagShip Special Steampunk Issue in October 2011.