Out of Range: A Novel (25 page)

Chapter Forty-seven

C
harlie closed the cover on Byko’s computer.

As best he could tell, this machine contained the raw data Byko had used to construct his plans. Manifests, maps, names of men, locations of dead drops, lists of nuclear material weights and types . . .

Putting it all together, Charlie could see the outlines of Byko’s plan. The nuclear material had been shipped to nine different cities, then picked up by members of various cells and transported to other cities. The actual target cities.

The final targets seemed to be London, New York, Hanover, Chicago, Tokyo, Minneapolis, Vienna, Sydney and Copenhagen. It seemed an odd list. Hanover but not Berlin. Vienna but not Paris. Minneapolis but not L.A. or D.C.

He supposed that some of it had probably been happenstansical: maybe it had something to do with logistics or communications, or perhaps Byko had only been able to staff his terror cells in certain cities. Both Minneapolis and Hanover had a signifigant Muslim presence. But Vienna had almost none at all, while Paris had the largest, and perhaps unhappiest, Muslim population in any European city. There was no way to know, really. In any case, he needed to get this information to MI6 as soon as possible.

He didn’t have an email address for Hopkins, so he opted to send everything to his old friend Alan Marsh at the British Embassy with instructions to forward it. But when Charlie tried importing the files on to an email, he found that they were all blocked. They had been firewalled so that they could never be duplicated or sent out.

Could he just walk out of the room with the computer? No, he had to think that Hasan might have anticipated that. After all, the computer already had a lump of plastic explosives attached to the rear of the screen. It seemed entirely plausible that the individual charges might have some kind of tamper circuit built into them that would blow the whole room to smithereens when he tried to disconnect the computer from the detonation wire.

Then something struck him. Quickly, he called up all of the files that he’d already examined and began to take photos of them off the computer screen. This would take some time and Charlie felt agitated that the task was diverting him from finding Julie. But in his heart, he felt sure that this was what Julie would have wanted him to do. She’d risked her own life to put a stop to the madness. He had to honor that and follow her down the same path.

B
yko felt a wave of panic run through him. If anyone found that computer . . .

He took out his phone and dialed the number for General Tempkin, a powerful general in the Interior Ministry. Aleksi Tempkin was one of the few ethnic Russians who had remained in the country after the split from the Soviets and Byko didn’t trust any Russian as far as he could throw him. But the General had been on the payroll for many years and he knew nothing of Byko’s plans—which meant he had every reason to believe the big payouts would continue indefinitely.

“You shouldn’t be calling me directly,” the general greeted him.

Byko was in no mood for this. “Did anyone authorize a raid on the command center at the Vasilevsky Missile Complex?”

“Absolutely not.”

“
Any
one? Could the CIA or MI6 have hit it?”

“No. The President has made himself unavailable to the foreigners. No incursions have been authorized.”

“You will let me know if you hear otherwise,” Byko said firmly.

“Of course,” said the General.

Byko hung up the phone and exchanged a glance with Quinn.

“Let’s try the command center again,” Quinn said. “Maybe Hasan got hung up for some reason.”

Byko lifted the hard line himself this time and dialed.

C
harlie was snapping off the last few photos of the computer files when the hard line rang again. The first few times Charlie had declined to answer, but now that he was done, he thought there might be an upside. If this was Quinn calling—or better yet Byko—to check on what Hasan was doing, Charlie might just be able to leverage what he’d found here for Julie.

It was a chance but a chance worth taking.

He picked up the phone, but he didn’t say a word—he’d wait for whoever was at the other end of the line to reveal himself.

For a long moment, his adversary refused to speak as well.

Then finally, Byko caved. “Hasan?”

“Hasan’s dead,” Charlie replied. “So are the rest of your men down here. And I’ve had a pretty good look at your computer. Impressive things you’ve got planned, Alisher.”

There was a long pause. Charlie figured it was Byko trying to regain his composure.

“What do you want, Charlie?”

“I want my wife back,” Charlie said. “For that, you can have your computer.”

“How do you know I haven’t already killed her?”

“I think you would’ve left her here if you had.”

There was another pause. Byko apparently considering the trade.

“And where would you like to meet then? To make the exchange?”

“Somewhere public. I’m thinking the square at Kokand.” That was the nearest town of any size.

“Always with the squares,” Byko replied. “It seems that is our destiny.”

Charlie looked at his watch. “Tonight. Eleven o’clock sharp.”

“Agreed,” said Byko, almost too affably.

“I’ll need to hear her voice, Alisher.”

“You don’t trust me, Charlie?”

“Put her on.”

There was some rustling, then a groggy female voice. “Wha—?”

“Say hello,” Byko coaxed.

“Go fuck yourself,” Julie said wearily.

Charlie heard Byko laugh, then the sound of his wife being taken away. She sounded out of it, but she was most definitely alive.

“We have a deal then?” Charlie asked.

“We do.”

And with that, Byko hung up.

For a moment, Charlie felt a surge of elation. She was alive. She was alive and he would be with her in less than an hour. But then it occurred to him that there was something too easy about all of this. And how could Byko be assured that Charlie wouldn’t just call MI6 and relay the information verbally? The answer was—he couldn’t.

Charlie looked at Byko’s computer. At all of the explosives attached to it.

What if Byko had a backup plan? A detonator switch that could be activated remotely? What if Byko was merely stalling Charlie until Quinn got it ready?

Charlie bolted out of the room.

Chapter Forty-eight

C
harlie sprinted through the maze of passageways.

“Salim!” he called. “We have to get out of here! Run! Run toward the air lock!”

The basic layout of the command center was simple enough. But navigating the corridors at a full gallop was easier said than done. Some of the passageways doubled back or shifted direction unaccountably. And—if Charlie was right about what Byko was up to—there was no time for mistakes.

As Charlie turned a corner, Salim darted out of one of the nearby passageways.

“We have to get out of here!” Charlie shouted. “Follow me!”

And then Charlie led him right into a dead end.

“Shit!” Charlie muttered and doubled back through a narrow opening into one of the main corridors. Charlie could see the air-lock door. But it was a long way—half a football field at least.

“Faster!” Charlie shouted.

As they neared the massive door, Charlie felt a shock smash through him, as though he’d been hit with a hammer. Then a great resounding boom.

Charlie kept running, but couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder. For a moment or two, there was nothing. Then, at the far end of the corridor, he spotted it. A wave of fire rolling toward them like some inanimate beast.

They were only a few feet from the door and everything seemed to slip into slow motion.

“Hurry, Salim!”

The oncoming fireball roared and crackled like a thousand blowtorches.

Charlie turned the handle on the air-lock door, but it was heavy and tight and slow to open.

They weren’t going to make it.

And then suddenly Charlie had the door open.

“Go!” Charlie screamed.

Salim dove past him and crashed to the floor. Charlie followed, fighting to shut the door before the fireball devoured them. The great hinges groaned as the heavy door slowly but inexorably closed. Just inches before the door met the jam, the fireball hit with an all-consuming crash. A thin curtain of flame ripped through the gap, singing the air in front of Charlie’s face.

Then the door slammed shut with a deep bell-like clang, and the flame was gone, replaced by a thin pall of smoke that wavered, ghostlike, in the air before finally disappearing into nothingness.

Salim winced and reached for his leg, gasping in pain.

Charlie bent to him. “Let me see.”

“It’s nothing,” Salim snapped, swiping away Charlie’s hand.

Charlie assessed the kid. He was brave and stubborn. “Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk. Where are we going?”

Charlie looked around. They were in a vast, high-ceilinged concrete bunker, the extent of the thing so immense that it dwarfed all human scale. There were lights here and there—but in this vast structure, they were like candles in a forest at night, barely beating back the darkness.

“What is this place?” Salim asked.

“It’s a missile silo,” Charlie answered and began walking toward the other side.

At the far end of the huge concrete space, he saw two thin lines, their dull sheen barely visible in the murky light.

Moving toward it, he thought he smelled something like diesel and as his eyes started to adjust to the darkness, he realized that those steel lines disappeared into a large hole in the wall.

“It’s a tunnel,” Charlie said. “They’re on a train.”

Chapter Forty-nine

J
ulie! Julie!”

She was sure it was Charlie’s voice, but then again, how could it be . . . ?

Julie felt as though her mind was being dragged from some half-waking, half-sleeping state in which dreams interpenetrated reality, but that voice—Charlie—it had to be a dream.

Because they had killed him.

She forced herself to open her eyes and found that she was slumped on a hard bench inside an immense room, her body aching, her face sore, her wrists raw. At first she imagined she was inside a cathedral, the ceiling was that high, the space that vast. But then she realized the entire structure was built of rough concrete—she was in some kind of underground bunker. It was so large, in fact, that it had room for a small train of flatcars with automobiles chained to their beds.

And then it all flooded back. She was with Byko and his gang of thugs. And this was part of the same network of underground structures that Byko had been hopscotching through all day.

Byko’s lieutenant—the sadist—was playing traffic cop in the murky light of the cavernous space, shouting and swearing at his men as they backed a number of large SUVs off the train. Julie winced as the voices and engine noises and ringing chains echoed loudly in the bunker. She had a crashing headache and with the headache came a deeper pain, the pain of regret and guilt.
“Julie! Julie!”
The voice from her dream was still echoing in her head. The dream grew sharper now as she recalled more details—someone holding the phone, someone restraining her, Charlie’s voice shouting her name from the tiny speaker. She could hear the desperation in his dream voice, a desperation that was all her doing.
She’d
brought him here,
she’d
caused his pain,
she’d
exposed him to danger. In the end, she’d killed him.

And she wept, wishing she could have died in his place.

Then she spotted Byko. Immediately the weeping ceased and her sadness hardened into outrage. As usual, Byko was impeccably dressed. It seemed a little absurd to her. Here they were at the back of beyond and he looked like he’d just walked out of an Italian tailor’s shop, wearing a distinctive white linen suit and white shoes. He was speaking with another man, a man she had never seen before. They were so similar in height and build that she might have mistaken him for Byko except for the fact that the man was dressed in traditional Uzbek garb.

Byko handed the man a suitcase then walked up to the top of the ramp leading to the surface, several of his bodyguards in tow. As he walked out the door, the surface was suddenly flooded with powerful lights.

Julie looked around furtively. For the first time since she’d been captured in L.A., nobody was watching her.

As she stood on tottering legs, she realized that she was wrong. A pair of eyes was tracking her from the open passenger door of one of the Cadillacs. It took her a moment to fill in the detail in the dim light, but then she saw that the watcher was a very attractive young woman staring at her without expression. She was dressed no differently from Julie—jeans and a conservative white blouse—but Julie had spent enough time in this part of the world to recognize the type. Despite her youth and beauty, her face showed her to be without expectations or hope. A prostitute, probably a heroin addict, kept in Byko’s orbit as a virtual slave.

Julie met the young woman’s gaze and put her finger over her lips. The young woman stared at her for a moment, then looked away with drugged-out incuriosity. Julie peered around and saw a half-open door set into the nearby wall. Maybe she could get to it and slip away unseen.

But before she’d gone twenty feet, she felt a powerful hand close violently around her upper arm. It was one of Quinn’s mercenaries.

He propelled her roughly across the concrete in the opposite direction from the door.

“Where are you taking me?” Julie asked, stumbling toward the far side of the bunker.

The mercenary said nothing and soon they reached an old Soviet military truck.

“Don’t move,” he warned as he yanked back the canvas tarp over the tailgate.

Julie’s eye caught Byko again. He was bawling orders at his guards as the man in traditional dress stepped away from him and began disrobing.

“What are you waiting for?” someone else barked.

Julie looked toward the sound of the voice. It was Quinn, bounding toward her, yelling at her chaperone. “Get her ass in the truck!”

The hulk lifted Julie and threw her over the tailgate into the truck like a rag doll. As she rolled over, wincing from the pain, the canvas tarp descended, leaving her alone in the darkness.

Outside the truck she heard the convoy of Cadillacs and Mercedes drive by, then roar up the ramp to the surface. There was some brief shouting, barely discernible at this distance, then the sound of the convoy fading away.

Why is Byko still keeping me alive?
she wondered.

She couldn’t begin to imagine. She had begged Byko to kill her—back at the compound—after she’d heard that they’d murdered Charlie.

She realized now how foolishly melodramatic and selfish she had been. If there was anything that was demanded by Charlie’s sacrifice, it was that she find a way to get out of this. Death would be too easy, a cop-out. She needed to live. To get back to Meagan and Ollie, to labor every day to make it up to them. To be able to explain to them what had happened, and how heroic their father was. How he had flown across the world, facing down killers whose numbers, arms and resources dwarfed anything that he could bring to bear . . .

Charlie had come for her. And had gone down fighting. She couldn’t allow guilt or grief or pain or exhaustion to overwhelm her.

Somehow, some way, she would escape.