Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (50 page)

Hideo fell silent, glaring at her.

Jinjiro Nomura looked out through the door, smiling calmly as he

watched the rapid destruction of his son's twisted
dreams. All that Jinjiro had suffered in twelve months of cruel confinement was
now being dealt out in full to Hideo.

Guided by Jon, Peter flew the Black Hawk to the north end of the runway and
passed low over the two large cargo planes and the much smaller executive jet
parked there.

Again leaning out through the open door, Smith fired another series of
bursts right into their cockpits—smashing windows and flight controls. “I
don't want any survivors leaving this island until we can get Special Forces
units and decontamination teams here,” he explained. Randi handed him her
spare ammunition.

Now Peter took the helicopter higher, climbing steadily in a tight,
spi-raling circle while they searched for signs of Nomura's first drone. For
long minutes they anxiously hunted through the skies around them. Randi saw it
first—catching a tiny glint of gold-flecked light high above. “There it
is!” she cried, pointing out through the side door. “At our three
o'clock now. And it's heading due west!”

“Toward the States,” Smith realized.

Hideo smiled thinly. “For Washington, D.C.,
and its surrounding suburbs, to be precise.”

The helicopter clattered through another turn as Peter swung onto a parallel
course. He stared up through the forward windshield with a worried expression
on his face. “That damned thing is already devilishly high,” he
called. “It's probably flying at ten or twelve thousand feet and climbing
fast.”

“What's the service ceiling on this bird?” Smith asked, buckling
back into his seat.

“It tops out somewhere around nineteen thousand feet,” Peter
replied, frowning. “But the air will be very thin at that altitude. Perhaps too thin.”

“You're too late,” Hideo told them gleefully. His eyes gleamed in
triumph. "You cannot stop my Thanatos aircraft now! And there are
enough

nanophages aboard that plane to kill millions. You
may hold me captive, but I have already struck a blow against your greedy,
materialistic country that will live down through the centuries!"

The others ignored his ranting, entirely intent on catching the Thanatos flying
wing before it escaped above their reach.

Peter pulled the Black Hawk's nose up as steeply as he could, chasing that
distant fleeing speck. The helicopter soared higher, climbing fifteen hundred
feet higher with every passing minute. Everyone inside could feel the air
growing steadily colder and thinner.

By the time the UH-60 reached twelve thousand feet, their teeth were
chattering and it was becoming markedly more difficult to catch their breath.
The density of the air around them was now only a little over half the norm at
sea level. People could live and work and even ski at this altitude, but
usually with a much longer time to acclimate. Hypoxia, altitude sickness, was
now a serious danger.

The Thanatos drone was much closer now, but it was still above them
and climbing steadily. Its single enormous wing tilted occasionally as the onboard
flight controls adjusted for small changes in wind speed, direction, and
barometric pressure. Otherwise the aircraft held its course, flying doggedly on
toward its preordained target—the capital city of the United States.

Peter pushed the Black Hawk higher. His head and lungs ached, and he was
finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was doing. His
vision blurred slightly around the edges. He blinked hard, trying to get a
clearer view.

The altimeter crawled slowly through fourteen thousand feet. This far above the Earth's surface, the helicopter's rotors
provided far less lift. Their rate of climb and airspeed were both
rapidly diminishing. Fifteen thousand feet. And still
the giant aircraft hung above them, tantalizingly close, but well out of reach.

Another minute passed, a minute of increasing cold and exhaustion.

Again Peter glanced up through the forward windshield. Nothing.
The

Thanatos drone was gone. “Come on, you devil,” he growled.
“Stop playing silly buggers with me! Where have you got to now?”

And suddenly sunlight blazed on a huge wing surface below him, reflected
back by tens of thousands of mirror-bright solar cells.

“We've done it! We're above the beast!” Peter crowed. He coughed,
trying to draw more air into his straining lungs without hyperventilating.
“But you'll have to be quick, Jon. Very quick. I
can't hold us up here much longer!”

Nodding, Smith unbuckled his seat belt and again dropped onto his stomach by
the open door. Every piece of metal he touched was chilled so far below the
freezing point that it burned like fire. The outside air temperature was now
well below zero.

Frantically Jon blew on his hands, knowing that they were all in real danger
of losing fingers and other exposed patches of skin to frostbite. Then,
cradling the M4, he leaned out into the slipstream, feeling the wind tearing at
his hair and clothes.

He could make out the drone now. It was roughly two hundred feet below them.
The Black Hawk slowed, matching its speed to that of its prey.

Smith's eyes teared up in the frigid wind. He squeezed them shut and roughly
brushed away the tears before they froze. He peered through his sights. The
upper surface of the flying wing wavered slightly and then steadied up.

He squeezed the trigger.

Rounds slammed into the Thanatos drone, shattering hundreds of solar
cells. Fragments of glass and plastic swirled away and vanished astern. For a
moment the wing flexed alarmingly. It slid lower.

Jon held his breath. But then the giant machine's
onboard flight computers corrected for the sudden loss of power, revving its
propellers higher. The drone steadied up and began climbing again.

Smith swore quietly, already fumbling for a new magazine.

Amid the noise and cold and thin, scarcely breathable air, Randi fought to remain
conscious. The sharp, stabbing pain from her broken arm was merging now with a
terrible throbbing ache behind her temples. She gritted her teeth, feeling
nauseated. The pain in her head was now so intense that it seemed to send
little pulses of red light flashing into her eyes with every beat of her heart.

Her head fell forward.

And in that brief moment, Hideo Nomura attacked.

One hand batted aside her carbine. The other chopped down hard on Randi's
collarbone. It snapped like a dry twig.

With a muffled groan, she fell back against the seat and then flopped
forward again. Only the safety belt buckled at her waist kept her from sliding
onto the floor of the troop compartment.

Nomura snatched the M4 and held it to her head.

■

Smith glanced over his shoulder in surprise. He rolled over and sat up—and
then froze, taking in the changed situation in one appalled glance.

“Throw your weapon out the door,” Nomura ordered. His eyes glittered, as hard as ice and just as cold.
“Or I will blow this woman's brains across this compartment.”

Jon swallowed hard, staring at Randi. He could not see her face. “She's
dead already,” he said, desperately trying to buy time.

Nomura laughed. “Not yet,” he said. “Observe.” He
wrapped one hand in Randi's short blond hair and yanked her head back. She
moaned softly. Her eyes fluttered open briefly and then closed. The man who was
Lazarus released his grip contemptuously, allowing her head to flop forward
again. “You see?” he said. “Now do as I say!”

Defeated, Smith let the carbine fall out of his hands. The weapon whirled
away and disappeared.

“Very good,” Nomura told him cheerfully. "You learn obedience

quickly.“ He moved back, keeping Randi's
weapon carefully aimed at Jon's chest. His face grew harder. ”Now order
your pilot to fly away from my Thanatos drone."

Smith raised his voice. “Did you hear what the man wants you to do,
Peter?”

The Englishman looked back over his shoulder. His pale blue eyes were
expressionless. “I heard him,” he replied coolly. “It seems we
have no choice, Jon. At least not with the situation as it stands.”

“No,” Smith agreed. “Not as it stands,” he said,
putting the emphasis on the last word. He tilted his head slightly.

An almost imperceptible wink fluttered in Peter's left eye. He turned back
to the Black Hawk's controls.

Nomura laughed again. “You see, Father,” he said to Jinjiro.
“These Westerners are soft. They value their own lives above all
else.”

The old man said nothing. He sat stone-faced, cast again into despair by the
sudden reversal of fortune.

Smith sat near the helicopter's open door, waiting tensely for Peter to make
his move.

Abruptly the Englishman banked the helicopter hard right—almost tipping the
Black Hawk over on its side. Nomura toppled backward, thrown completely off his
feet. He crashed into the back wall of the troop compartment and then slid to
the floor. His finger, curled around the trigger of Randi's M4, tightened
involuntarily. Three rounds tore through the roof and ricocheted off the
spinning rotors.

As soon as the helicopter tilted, Smith threw himself forward, away from the
open door. He dived across the floor and slammed headlong into Nomura. He tore
the carbine out of Nomura's hands and tossed it away across the cabin. It
clattered somewhere among the seats, well out of reach.

The Black Hawk leveled out and began climbing again.

Snarling, Nomura kicked out at Jon, shoving him back. Both men

scrambled to their feet. Hideo attacked
first—striking out with his hands and feet in a maddened frenzy.

Jon parried two blows with his forearms, shrugged a kick off his hip, ducked
under a third strike, and then closed in. He grabbed Nomura by one arm, punched
him hard in the face, and then hurled him across the row of seats.

The other man landed in a heap—right next to the open door. Though dazed,
with blood streaming from a broken nose, he struggled to get back up.

Smith grabbed hold of a seat and roared, “Peter! Now! Reverse!
Reverse!”

The Englishman complied, again throwing the Black Hawk into a steep bank, but
this time sharply left. The helicopter tilted on its side, for a moment seeming
to hang in space, high above the Atlantic Ocean,
as it spun through a tight turn. The Thanatos drone came into view not
more than fifty feet below them, still heading west on its programmed mission
of mass murder.

Hideo Nomura made a desperate lunge and grabbed a seat strut. His legs
dangled in mid-air, flailing, trying to find a foothold that did not exist.

Arms straining, he began to pull himself back inside the helicopter. With
his teeth bared in a rictus grin, he looked up and saw his father staring down
at him.

Jinjiro Nomura looked deep into the maddened eyes of the man who had once
been his beloved son. “You misjudged these Americans,” he said
softly. He sighed in sorrow. “Just as you have misjudged
me.”

And with that, the old man leaned forward and kicked Hideo's hands away from
the seat strut.

Face fixed in horror, the younger Nomura slid out the door, his fingernails
clawing wildly, seeking a hold anywhere on the smooth metal. Then, with a
despairing wail, he fell away into thin air, tumbling toward the Thanatos drone
as it flew past under the turning Black Hawk.

Still kicking and flailing with his arms and legs, the man who was Lazarus
crashed onto the fragile surface of the enormous flying wing. The drone
shuddered, rocked by the sudden impact. And then, overloaded and already
damaged, the Thanatos aircraft simply snapped in half-folding up like
the closing pages of a book. Propeller blades, avionics pods, and clusters of
nanophage cylinders ripped loose in a growing cloud of debris.

Slowly at first, and then faster, the tangled wreckage spun around and
around, plunging all the way down to the hungry and waiting waters of the vast
and merciless sea.

Epilogue

Early November The
White House

Although it was still early in the afternoon, President Samuel Adams
Castilla had abandoned the excited hustle and bustle around the Oval
Office—preferring instead the quiet comfort and privacy of his den upstairs in
the East Wing. This room was all his own, exempt from the whims of the
fashionable designers who had redecorated the rest of the White House under orders
from his wife. There were shelves full of well-read books, a large Navajo rug
covering the polished hardwood floor, a big black leather sofa, a couple of
recliners, and a big-screen television. Hung on the walls were prints of works
by Fredric Remington and Georgia O'Keeffe together with photographs of the
rugged mountains around Santa Fe.

Castilla glanced over his shoulder with a smile. His hand was poised over a
bottle and a pair of glasses on the sideboard. “Care for a Scotch,
Fred?”

Fred Klein grinned back at him from his place on the long sofa. “I
certainly would, Mr. President.”

Castilla poured the drinks and carried them over. “This is the Caol
Ila, Jinjiro's favorite.”

“Very appropriate, Sam,” Klein said quietly. The head of
Covert-One nodded toward the television. “He should be on any second
now.”

“Yep. And I wouldn't miss this for the
world,” Castilla said. He set down his Scotch and tapped a key on the TV
remote. The screen lit up, showing the vast chamber of the UN General Assembly
in New York.
Jin-jiro Nomura stood alone on the dais, looking out over the sea of delegates
and cameras with perfect poise—although he knew his words and his image were
being beamed around the world to more than a billion people watching this live
broadcast. His face was solemn, still bearing the deep marks of sorrow left by
betrayal, a year's imprisonment, and the death of his son.

“I stand before you today on behalf of the Lazarus Movement,”
Jinjiro began. “A movement whose noble ideals and
dedicated followers were betrayed by the malice of one man. This man, my
own son Hideo, murdered my friends and colleagues and imprisoned me—destroying
those of us who founded the Movement so that he could seize power in secret.
Then, masquerading as Lazarus, he used our organization to conceal his own
cruel and genocidal aims, aims utterly at odds with everything for which our
Movement truly stands . . .”