Chris Mooney - World Without End

The woman was part of the Borg; she was dressed in black tactical combat clothing and carried the kind of submachine gun popular with the twentieth-century unit known as the Hostage Rescue Team, once a part of the now-defunct government agency called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But this Borg drone also had a peculiar night vision device mounted across her face.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Dixon. You're safe."

Pasha Romanov flipped up the night vision and turned on the tactical flashlight mounted under the stock of her HK submachine gun. A bright beam of white light lit up the dark basement. She shined the light in Major Dixon's eyes. They didn't register. He was in shock, lost in his own world.

Pasha shut the light off and slung the weapon behind her back. The entire house was dark from the small explosives device she had planted on the electrical box. After that, she had tossed a smoke canister through the window and then blew her way through the back door. The five men who had been guarding the house came running downstairs, and when they did, it wasn't hard to put them down.

Pasha's cell phone rang. She knew who was calling.

"Stephen?"

"Dixon is being held at 27 Park Place in Lynn," Conway said. He was yelling above the thumping blades of a helicopter.

"The house is guarded with a security system and " "I've got Dixon."

Pasha moved her light to the corner of the room.

"And the suit."

"How did you " "I can't get into it right now, I'm running out of time." The neighbors had heard the explosion; some of them had ventured out of their homes, wrapped in jackets, to investigate the commotion. No doubt the police had been summoned.

"Where's Raymond?"

"Running for his life. Forget him. Angel Eyes is here. I think he's going to make a run for the suit."

"He can't get it if he can't see it. You know the decryption code?"

"Ralph Wiggim. Meet me at 100 Summer Street, on the roof. A helicopter will pick us up and fly us out to Logan. We're going to take a private jet to Virginia. I've already made the arrangements."

"I'll see you there," Pasha said and hung up. She shoved the phone back into her jacket.

A wool blanket was on the floor. Pasha picked it up and wrapped it around Dixon, and then with both hands picked up his thin, shaking body, and threw him across her shoulder. He was light, no more than a hundred pounds. Grabbing his legs and holding them close to her chest, Pasha Romanov walked over and picked up the long suitcase that held the military suit and moved into the backyard. As she ran down the driveway, her van parked across the street, she heard the sound of police sirens building in the frigid evening air, coming closer.

Steve Conway crouched low in the alcove on the roof of the thirty-four-floor skyscraper on 100 Summer Street, uncomfortably high off the ground with the wind whipping around him like an angry storm, and watched Booker's helicopter fly away in the night sky full of stars, on its way to refuel. Far below and out of his view was the city of Boston, its downtown lights rising up and washing over the edges of the building's roof.

The wind roared and whistled, roared and whistled. Conway still wore the headset, the phone clipped to his belt. He had traded his bank clothes for something warmer: jeans, sneakers, a sweatshirt, and a dark blue Columbia ski jacket. He backed farther into the alcove, out of the wind, and rested his back against the wall. The door next to him, according to Booker, led to a room full of electrical equipment. Near the opposite end of the roof, where the helicopter had made a tricky and uncomfortable landing, and in full view, was a similar alcove with a door, this one leading to the stairwell on the thirty-fourth floor.

Once Pasha arrived, Conway would destroy the military suit dumping it inside an incinerator would probably be best and then they would fly to Logan where they would take a private jet that would fly them back to Virginia. One of Booker's men had made a copy of the CD recovered from the safety deposit box. That CD, along with the copy of Dixon's torture video, would be handed to the CIA Director himself. Let him clean up the fallout.

And he -will. It's going to be an ugly, dirty affair, it's going to be in the national spotlight. No matter which way you look at it, you've ruined your career.

It was true. The Agency wouldn't be so forgiving with his need to broadcast dirty laundry on television. Here, alone on the roof, Con-way accepted the sad fact that his career, the life he had built within the CIA, was over.

Booker's voice crackled on the earpiece: "Six mean looking dudes just entered the lobby."

Book and his men were watching the main entrance to the Summer Street building. The lobby layout a wide stretch of yellow and brown tile had three entrances: north, east and west, all with revolving glass doors.

The east and west entrances were locked; the only way inside was through the main entrance on Summer Street. Once you walked inside, you had to check in with the building security behind the ornate, marble desk. Booker had replaced the building's security guards with his own men.

"They belong to Angel Eyes?" Conway asked.

"No combat gear, no blinding rifles."

"Must be what's left of Cole's. The lobby lights dimmed?"

"They dimmed any more it would be dark The suit offered the optical illusion of invisibility; it didn't change the law of physics. If Pasha walked inside a well-lit lobby, she would be invisible, but her shadow would be thrown against the floor. It would be harder to see her shadows if the lobby was near dark.

"What about the entrances?" Conway asked.

"All clear. Looks like everyone's inside two dudes just went down.

Direct shots to the head."

Pasha. She was already inside the lobby.

"The rest are running into the lobby."

Beats of silence, the wind howling above him.

"Number three down. Four. We got gunfire," Booker said.

"Five and six are down."

"It's Pasha. She's here."

"Elevator door in bay one just chimed open, but I can't see anyone."

"She's on her way up. How long until the chopper makes it back here?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes tops."

But where was Angel Eyes?

He's got to be close.

If it came to it, Conway could destroy the suit quickly, right here on the roof. The Palm Pilot Cole had given him contained enough Semtex to blow the working military suit to bits.

Conway removed his Palm Pilot and called up the program just as Cole had instructed him. The timer was defaulted at two minutes. Should be more than enough. Press the lower button on the left and he would have a small bomb. Rip the computer from the suit, fasten the Palm Pilot to it using the roll of electrical tape inside his jacket, fling it into the air and watch as the computer, this goddamn piece of hardware that had cost so many lives, exploded into hundreds of fragments. He slipped the Palm back inside his coat pocket and waited.

Across the roof, the alcove door opened. Even in the dim light, Conway could clearly see the door swing all the way open and then shut. It looked like nobody had stepped outside. He kept staring, not wanting to blink, knowing what was about to come.

And it did. The black-clad figure of Pasha Romanov suddenly materialized out of thin air.

Conway moved out of the alcove. The wind gusted past him, howling, and knocked the headset down around his neck. His eyes watering from the cold air, he jogged over to her. Out of nowhere a gust of wind kicked him. He tripped and fell against the roof. He turned onto his back, the wind swirling around him, strong and howling. He thought he heard something, a thump-thump of helicopter blades, very faint. He looked around. He saw the dark sky.

And then the sky was gone.