Game Changer (43 page)

70

As the mercenary led Quinn away from the cabin the
darkness became a living entity, enveloping and relentless. The man became
impatient as his prisoner’s pace slowed to a crawl, the lack of even starlight
forcing Quinn to pick his way forward like a blind man without a cane or guide
dog.

The merc finally shoved a penlight into Quinn’s hands,
which were cuffed tightly together with a zip-tie. “Use this,” he instructed,
backing up and continuing to keep a gun pointed at his prisoner’s back. “We
don’t have all night.”

The man Kovonov had assigned to take Quinn to an
offsite lab was wearing the latest night vision goggles, so advanced they were
no longer bulky but looked like goggles a swimmer might use, not to mention being
more effective than past models at turning the night into a neon green day.

“Stay close,” he told Quinn. “If we get separated by
more than two yards you’ll be killed. And not by me.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Just stay close.”

They continued walking through the woods, the night
air a perfect temperature. Quinn shined the penlight on the terrain in front of
him as he picked his way between trees and over aboveground roots that bulged
up from the dirt like giant worms. The buzz of insects and the hooting of an
owl punctuated the silence, and Quinn thought he could hear the faint rush of a
river from the direction they were heading.

 
“What’s your
name?” said Quinn after several minutes had gone by.

“Why? So we can become buddies?”

“So I don’t have to address you as
hey fuckhead
.”

The mercenary couldn’t help but smile. “I’m Daniel
Bell.”

Quinn wasn’t sure this was his real name, but it was
as good as any. “Thanks, Daniel. How much do you know about your boss? The man
you call 302?”

“I know he pays ridiculously well. That’s all I have
to know.”

 
“Actually,”
said Quinn, “you need to know more. I assume you aren’t aware that he’s about
to nuke San Francisco. In just under two hours it will be slag, and millions of
people will be dead.”
 

Bell laughed. “Sure they will. He’s going to nuke California
from his cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. Let me guess. He’ll be launching an ICBM
from his bedroom.”

“I know how it sounds. But it’s true. Why do you think
he wouldn’t let any of you in the room while he was talking with us? So you
wouldn’t know what he’s really doing. The device is already there, and he has a
guy who can set it off remotely. At midnight our time. But your boss knows
where to find this guy, so it isn’t too late to stop him.”

Quinn halted and turned to face the merc. “Help me,”
he pleaded. “Help save millions of lives. Help
yourself
. What do you think the US government will do to reward you
for saving
San Francisco
? I promise
you at least ten times what your boss is paying you. Not to mention you get to
save more lives than any man in history.”

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.”

Quinn did know. Kovonov was right. It was impossible
to miss. Radicalized Muslims cut off heads, burned people alive, and treated women
like vermin, even killing them for trying to go to school. But the UN
—
packed with Islamic
countries
—
spent
all of its time condemning
Israel
for
human rights violations, ignoring atrocities committed in Muslim nations
hundreds of times worse than any supposed Israeli offenses.

“So my plan goes forward,” shouted Kovonov with
absolute conviction. “And you can choose. You can tell the truth, and blame me.
Or you can let ISIS take the fall, and let this be a catalyst to eliminate a
threat you know has to be stopped before it destroys civilization.”

Quinn was fading fast. Given this turn of events, he
was now certain he had no chance to stop the nuke from detonating, no matter
what he did. His best bet was to try to at least save Rachel before he
collapsed. If he didn’t resolve this soon he and Regev were both dead, and
Rachel was lost.

“Okay, you win!” he shouted as the world continued to
spin around him. “You’re right. We can’t let Israel take the fall. But here are
your
choices. We can storm in and
fill you with holes, risking that Rachel will be hit in the crossfire. Or you can
leave her and your virus behind and exit through the back door. We give our
word we won’t follow.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. But it’s the truth. And if you want to
live it’s your only choice. We’re breaching in exactly one minute, regardless.”

A minute passed without a response.

It was now or never, Quinn decided. He could well be
walking into a curtain of bullets, but he had run out of options. He stumbled
through the door, expecting to be cut down like a weed, but no gunfire came.

Kovonov had left through the back door. Rachel was
still zip-tied to the chair, her mouth once again sealed with duct tape, but
very much healthy and alive. His eyes welled up with tears upon seeing her.

The Land Rover keys were still on the hook by the
door, and Quinn noted that the virus container was still on the table. Kovonov
had decided to trust that Quinn would honor his word if he stuck to the
bargain.

He cut Rachel loose as the last bit of adrenaline he
possessed shot into his depleted bloodstream, allowing him to remain conscious
for just a few minutes longer.