Game changer, p.42
Game Changer, page 42
Daniel Bell shook his head in contempt. “That’s really the best story you can come up with?” he said, gesturing for Quinn to resume walking. “You should have told me my employer was an alien from the planet Jupiter. Now that I might have believed,” he finished, laughing at his own joke.
“You’re right. I could have made up a hundred stories more believable than this one. Why do you think I didn’t? Because this one is the truth!”
“Save your breath. There’s no way I’ll ever believe you.”
Quinn realized his efforts were futile. There was no chance he could convince this man to help him save San Francisco. But perhaps he could salvage a minor victory. “After midnight, you’ll learn I was telling the truth,” he said, his voice hollow. “You’ll learn you could have averted the most horrific event of all time but chose not to. When this happens, at least take out your boss. Promise me that you’ll kill him for committing this atrocity.”
“Sure,” replied Bell. “If San Francisco is vaporized exactly at midnight, I’ll take him out. Free of charge. Satisfied?”
“You think you’re humoring me. But just remember your promise.”
The sound of rushing water had become louder and louder as they proceeded and they finally reached the banks of a river. Bell led his prisoner to a ditch. Quinn trained his penlight on the open gravesite and made out a body that couldn’t have been there long, one that had belonged to Yosef Mizrahi.
“There is no lab, is there?” said Quinn. “I can’t say I’m surprised. So what, you’re just going to kill me now?”
“I’m afraid so,” said the merc, backing away a few more feet to stay out of range of a possible desperation attack. “My employer doesn’t seem to like you.”
“Shoot me, then,” said Quinn in resignation. “At least I won’t have to live to see the coming horror. Just remember your promise.”
“I will,” said Daniel Bell pleasantly, giving no indication that he was seconds away from gunning down a man in cold blood.
Quinn shut his eyes tightly and braced for the end, wondering if there really was an afterlife, and if there was anything more he could have done to prevent a cataclysmic event that was now unavoidable.
71
A deafening shot exploded throughout the woods. Quinn fell to his knees, surprised that the bullet that killed him had brought no pain in its wake.
He heard a thud behind him and his eyes shot open. He was still alive!
He pointed the penlight toward the sound. The mercenary who had called himself Daniel Bell had fallen to the dirt, a river of blood spurting from a gaping hole in his chest.
A man emerged from behind a tree holding an automatic pistol and wearing night vision goggles of his own. “Jesus, Kevin, how many times am I going to have to save your life?”
Quinn’s eyes widened. “Eyal?” he said in disbelief. “Eyal Regev?”
“I’m touched that you remember,” said the Israeli, producing a combat knife and cutting Quinn’s hands free.
“How are you here?”
“Rachel is critical to us. I knew you had Black Ops connections, and figured she might end up on Plum Island. After I confirmed this suspicion, I’ve been living in the Hamptons in case I was needed. I hired three mercenaries to stay close and on call.”
“And I’m guessing you’ve been watching us through Plum Island’s own security feeds.”
“Yes. The Mossad’s kept a close eye on this facility for years. How did you know?”
“Kovonov. He spied on us the same way.”
“I told Wortzman where you were, but he’s the only one,” said the Israeli as he began to frisk Bell’s corpse. “He agreed that until he could root out any moles in the Mossad, keeping Rachel’s whereabouts between the two of us would better ensure her safety.”
The Israeli handed Quinn the dead mercenary’s gun and night vision goggles and pocketed his cell phone for future intelligence gathering. “I have no idea how Kovonov learned you were alive,” he said. “Shocked the hell out of me when he moved on you. Sorry it took us so long to get here. We had to land the helicopter farther out than Kovonov and be more careful in our approach.”
“We?”
“I brought my guns for hire.”
Quinn nodded. “Well, for my money, your timing couldn’t have been better,” he said, sliding the goggles over his eyes. “Kovonov has Rachel in the cabin east of us. Just the two of them. She should be fine for at least the next few hours.” A haunted look came over his face. “And we’ve learned what Kovonov is up to.”
“Yeah, I caught that during my surveillance,” said Regev. “An anti-religion virus. I never would have believed it.”
“More than that, Eyal. Much more. You guys didn’t happen to leave a Korean nuke in San Francisco, did you?”
“No!” said Regev in horror, understanding the implications immediately. “It can’t be!”
“It can be. Kovonov got the detonation codes. He’s orchestrated things so the blame goes to ISIS, to galvanize America into wiping them out. It goes off at midnight. We can still stop it, but we need Kovonov alive to do it.”
Regev waved his arms in a prearranged signal. Seconds later three men emerged from the woods, each having been completely concealed by the darkness and the trees, and joined Quinn and Regev by the open grave.
“The good news is that your pay just doubled,” began Regev, addressing his three hires. “The bad news is that we have a tough mission ahead of us. One that couldn’t be more important.”
He turned to Quinn. “We’re not sure how far out from the cabin you were when we began following you, but we didn’t see anyone else. How many men are protecting Kovonov?”
“Kovonov mentioned five, and this was my count also. The men who brought us from Plum Island and the guy you just killed. So now we’re down to four.”
“Good,” said Regev. “Our odds are excellent. Five of us. Four of them. And we’ll have plenty of cover and the element of surprise.”
“Can we still surprise them?” asked one of the mercenaries. “They’ll have heard the gunshot.”
“They were expecting that,” said Quinn. “With me as the target.” He gestured toward Bell’s body. “Assuming he was planning to fill in the grave when he was done, they won’t be expecting him back for a while.”
“But from now on,” said Regev, “we need to limit ourselves to silenced weapons. We should be able to take the rest of them out and get to the cabin without too much trouble. But here’s the tricky part. Once we do, we have two mission parameters that absolutely have to be met. The cabin contains one man and one woman. Dmitri Kovonov and Rachel Howard. First, we have to take Kovonov alive. Second, we have to do this while making sure he doesn’t kill Rachel Howard. Both are equally critical.”
“You think he’ll try to kill her as a last-ditch act?” said one of the mercs.
“Very possibly.”
“What if taking out Kovonov is the only way to save the woman?” asked the same man.
“Just make sure it doesn’t come to that!” barked Regev.
Realizing this wasn’t helpful he paused for a moment and then added, “Capture him alive without Rachel being harmed and your pay will be quadrupled.”
“That’s a generous incentive,” said the merc. “But what if it does come to that, despite our best efforts?”
Regev and Quinn exchanged pained glances. Quinn was falling in love with the Harvard neuroscientist and Regev was convinced she represented Israel’s best hope for avoiding a meltdown. But they had to prevent the nuclear device from being detonated. This was the coldest of equations, but the answer to this question was clear.
“Kovonov must remain alive,” spat Regev bitterly, disgusted by a universe that would force him to speak these words. “Even at the expense of Rachel Howard.”
72
“Are we ready to do this?” said Regev.
The four men with him made it clear that they were.
“Let’s make this count,” he said. “I’ll take point. Kevin, you take the rear. The rest of you fan out behind me, but not so far as to lose sight of anyone. Far enough apart that if one of us is spotted, we aren’t all spotted, but close enough that we don’t risk friendly fire.”
Regev paused in thought. “We’ll pick them off one by one. When all four are down we’ll regroup outside the front door of the cabin and I’ll give you further instructions.”
These orders were acknowledged and the group set off through the woods with Regev in the lead. The Israeli moved like this was an exercise he practiced twice a day. He glided silently through the woods like a panther, his night vision goggles replacing gleaming eyes, every bit as stealthy as this masterful predator.
When Regev got to within fifty yards of the cabin he identified the first of Kovonov’s mercenaries and fired a silenced round. Even though a silencer interfered with accuracy he managed a clean head shot and his target collapsed to the ground.
One down. Three more to go.
Regev began to advance toward the cabin once again when he heard screams behind him. He whirled around to witness all hell breaking loose.
Bright ropes of laser light seared the night sky, their origin unclear, and skewered the three mercenaries multiple times. Two were killed instantly by tunnels that were burned straight through their bodies, the diameter of quarters. The third had been severely wounded and tried to run from this unseen enemy, but he managed only a few steps before a blinding laser pierced his chest and he fell to the hard soil.
All three had been killed in seconds.
Quinn, watching this carnage from the rear, rushed forward to take cover behind a tree when one of the beams found him, boring a large hole through his left arm. His instinct was to run to get out of danger, but as he began to move Regev launched his body at him and he was driven backward, away from the cabin.
So much blood poured from his limp arm that he was already growing weak as Regev quickly rolled off of him and pulled them both behind a cluster of trees.
“Shit!” whispered the Israeli, still out of breath from sprinting to tackle Quinn. He reached into one pocket and removed a full aerosol can of wound sealant, along with a sterile package that contained a combination of wound dressing and bandage, and went to work on his American friend to staunch the flow of blood.
“He’s deployed Lase-Net,” said Regev, speaking rapidly and barely loud enough for Quinn to hear. “A tech our learning enhanced scientists just perfected. It’s a set of self-installing drones the size of your hand that contain advanced AI. Release dozens of these around a perimeter you want protected and they disperse into trees. They scan for human heat signatures. When they find one in range they check if it’s friend or foe. If foe, they laser it to death.”
“How do they know the difference?” whispered Quinn as Regev continued to administer first aid.
“One way is to set the system to recognize friendly phones.”
Quinn thought about this for a moment. “Which is why you were immune,” he whispered. “You had Bell’s phone with you.”
Regev nodded. “The system can be set to ignore someone moving in close conjunction with a friendly, in case you want to escort a prisoner through the kill zone. If the prisoner tries to escape, he gets fried.”
Quinn realized this explained Bell’s warning not to get more than two yards ahead of him. He vaguely recalled the US was working on something similar, but it was a number of years from being realized. Once again, Israel had eaten America’s lunch technologically.
The reason Regev had tackled him was now clear. When the Israeli had realized what was happening, and that Quinn was the only one who hadn’t entered the laser kill zone, he had raced back to make sure he stayed out of range.
“What now?” whispered Quinn. “Now we’re outnumbered, three against two. Or maybe three against one and a half,” he added, nodding toward his injured arm.
“Wait here,” said Regev under his breath. “These mercs won’t venture beyond the laser perimeter and give up their advantage. I’ll take one out and bring you back his phone as soon as I can, so we’re both immune.”
Regev unscrewed the silencer from his gun, since surprise was no longer an option, and disappeared without another word, as catlike as ever. Less than a minute later gunfire could be heard in random locations as Regev fired, moved quickly to another location, and fired again, trying to confuse his foes about his position and giving them a sense they were up against a greater force than they actually were.
This strategy was working beautifully as far as Quinn could tell. Regev seemed to be in five places at once. Shoot, move, shoot, move—he circled around and doubled back like a deft boxer in a two-acre ring.
Five minutes later he returned, hopping on one leg and using trees to steady himself. He had successfully downed one of the mercs, but one of the other two had gotten the drop on him while he was retrieving the fallen soldier’s phone for Quinn. His advanced body armor had protected his torso but he had been hit twice in the right leg, and much of this limb now looked like hamburger.
Regev tossed a phone to his American partner.
“How many down?” whispered Quinn as he pocketed the phone and joined the Israeli.
“Just one, I’m afraid.”
“Can you apply wound sealant and bandages on your own?”
“Yes,” whispered Regev. “Go!” he added, knowing that since he was now the more injured their roles had reversed.
Quinn cut through the trees, his left arm hanging uselessly by his side. He paused to wait out a brief bout of dizziness brought on by loss of blood, which had been slowed considerably but not completely stemmed, and then continued. As he did so he picked up the faintest sound of movement to his right as one of the remaining mercs attempted to outflank him, and caught the neon green image of the man ducking behind a tree.
Quinn rushed away from the cabin and to his left, putting a number of trees between him and his adversary. He circled back silently and threw a pebble to the right of his quarry, a tactic as old as time yet almost always effective. The mercenary instinctively swiveled toward the sound and as he did so Quinn emerged from behind a tree and put a bullet into his head.
He was rushing back to Regev, who was just completing his self-administered first aid, when the last mercenary emerged from a tree behind the Israeli.
“Eyal, dive!” screamed Quinn frantically.
Regev used his good leg to launch himself five feet to the left, crashing into the hard soil as a shot missed him by inches. Quinn rolled, firing three times as he did. Only one of the shots hit the target, but it did so with deadly effectiveness.
He raced to the fallen merc, kicked his gun away, and then checked for a pulse.
“He’s gone,” said Quinn. “That’s all of them.”
He held out his right hand to pull Regev up. “I guess we’re even now.”
“Even?” rasped Regev weakly, managing the faintest of smiles to go along with his feigned outrage. “I saved you three times. You saved me once.”
“Well, if you want to get technical about it,” said Quinn wryly as he finished pulling Regev to a standing position.
The Israeli may have managed to seal and bandage his wounds while Quinn was gone, but he was in bad shape. “Put your arm around me and use me as a crutch,” said Quinn. “On my left so I can still shoot.”
The Israeli did as he was instructed and Quinn pulled him along to the cabin, the dizziness returning. He whispered his plan to Regev as they moved. He led the Israeli to the front window and left him there to use it as a crutch while he returned to the front door, approaching from the side.
Quinn drew in a deep breath and signaled to Regev. The moment the Israeli acknowledged the signal he shot through the lock and dived away from the door, an instant before a volley of automatic fire emerged from the cabin that would have turned him into a sieve if he had remained where he was. A moment later Regev shot the window, shattering it, and dropped to the ground as a volley of bullets was sent his way, also.
“Come in here and Rachel Howard is dead!” shouted Kovonov after all gunfire had ceased. As Quinn had hoped, when Kovonov realized there were at least two men outside, men who had somehow defeated both his laser perimeter and mercenaries, he had given up trying to fight his way out.
The Israeli had pulled himself to a sitting position but he looked to be on the verge of losing consciousness. Quinn didn’t think he would last much longer, which was a big problem.
“Your plan has failed!” shouted Quinn with all of his strength. “Tell us where to find your puppet in time to stop him.”
“That’s never going to happen!” shouted Kovonov. “No matter what.”
“There are four of us out here who know you’re responsible,” said Quinn. “So you’ve failed. Millions will die, but you’ll be blamed. Not ISIS.”
With his last vestiges of energy, trying to sound strong, Regev shouted two sentences. The first was in Hebrew, but then realizing it might be important for Quinn to know what he was saying, he switched over to English. “Tell us how to stop this, leave Rachel in peace, and we’ll let you escape.”
“Agent Regev?” said Kovonov in shock. “Is that really you?”
Kovonov laughed. “You’re out there with agents of the Mossad, Agent Quinn?” he said derisively, his tone now suggesting he felt he had regained the upper hand. “Do you really think your new friends are going to tell the world an Israeli was behind this?”
Quinn glanced over at Regev who now appeared to have finally lost consciousness.
“Why not?” shouted Quinn. “Israel won’t be blamed. We’ll make sure they know you were acting alone. That you had become insane.”
Kovonov laughed. “You can’t really be that naive. Israel gets blamed for all the ills of the world. We’ve saved you from six nuclear detonations, but that won’t matter. Even knowing I went rogue, Israel will get blamed, and Davinroy will let it happen. Scapegoating Israel has become an international sport. You aren’t even Jewish, Quinn, but surely you must know this is true.”
