Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) (4 page)

“Just remember to let go as soon as we’re clear of the pod.”

The thought of dying after both of their parachutes tangled up together did not help improve Sheridan’s shaky nerves.

The pod’s engines kicked into overdrive slowing the capsule.

“Stand by!” yelled Cole as he smashed his hand onto a big red button by the escape hatch. With a bang, the door blew clear off the pod.
 

Sheridan saw the next few seconds pass by in slow motion. First, Cole reached over and placed both hands on the open door, looked down, and then stepped out into the dark. Sheridan felt himself being pulled along. Right away, in the minus one hundred Celsius temperature, the heaters built into his suit and helmet turned on. He saw the world below him lit up by countless city lights. He didn’t recall when he let go of Cole’s belt, but he found himself freefalling down toward the ground. On his HUD, he could see a red dot moving along his faceplate. It was Cole’s transponder showing him the way. Sheridan brought his arms and his legs up to slow his fall. His speedometer told him that he was falling at a rate of fourteen-hundred kilometers an hour. At that moment, he was traveling faster than the speed of sound. As they dropped lower, the air acted like friction and began to slow their descent until they were only falling at two hundred kilometers an hour.

“Opening my chute in three-two-one,” announced Cole.

Sheridan waited until he heard “one” and pulled his ripcord. With a pop, his rectangular steerable parachute opened. Within seconds, his fall had dropped to eight meters a second.
 

“I see you on my display,” said Cole. “You’re about three kilometers back from me.”

Sheridan glanced down at his readings and saw the same. “Roger that, I’ll steer toward you.” He reached up and pulled on the chute’s steering toggles and made his way over to Cole. He noticed they were traveling due north and had already crossed the border into Russia. For the next thirty minutes, carried along by a strong wind, they sailed to their landing zone.

Below them, the ground was covered in a light frost making it easier to see in the dark. Both men slowed their descent and landed within fifty meters of one another.
 

Considering where they had started from, Sheridan was more than impressed with Cole’s calculations. He removed his helmet and felt the cold night air on his face. He looked over at his colleague. “Not bad. I didn’t know you could do calculations as complicated as that.”

“Next time you can do the math. My head still hurts,” shot back Cole. “Come on, let’s ditch the suits and the gear and find us a lift into Irkutsk.”

“What about the Super-T?” asked Sheridan alluding to the world wide web of mag-lev trains. Built below ground, they interconnected at most major city terminals. Sheridan and Tarina had taken one from the Academy to Paris and back again during one of their rare weekends off together.

Cole shook his head. “We can’t risk taking mass transit until we’ve got all of the stuff we need from Bodrov. Our faces would be recorded on one of the security cameras at the train terminal. Also, if we use our credit cards, the opposition will know precisely where we are and be able to track us that way. From now on it’s old school. We’re going to bum lifts and use gold to pay for a little discretion from anyone we may deal with.”

“Where the hell did you get gold from?”

“I kept some from the job we did on the smuggler’s colony. I knew it would come in handy one day.”

Sheridan shook his head at his friend’s ingenuity. He quickly stripped off his jump clothing and jammed it into a garbage bin at the back of a closed fast food restaurant. They took off their rank insignia from their uniform collars and disposed of them as well.

“I doubt there are going to be many transports out on the roads this late at night,” said Sheridan as he looked over at the bright city lights of Irkutsk

“Well, then, I guess we might as well start walking.”

With their hands jammed in their pockets to keep them warm, Sheridan and Cole began to walk down the middle of the road hoping that someone would come along, or it was going to be a long night.

Twenty minutes into their walk, they spotted an eight-wheeled vehicle parked on the side of the road with its hood up. A man with a flashlight was busy working away on something.

Cole tapped Sheridan on the arm and said, “Let me handle this.” He walked at the vehicle whistling a tune to let the driver know that there was someone out there in the dark. Experience had taught Cole that many people, especially those who lived in the countryside, tended to be armed. He was right to be cautious when the man turned to face Cole with an old military pistol in his hand. The gunman had a scraggly gray beard on his round face and looked to be in his late sixties.

Cole stopped, smiled, and slowly raised his hands. “Whoa, there stranger, we mean you no harm. Can you speak English?”

The man eyed Cole with suspicion in his eyes. “Yes, I was in the army. I speak English good. Who is you?” asked the man in halting English.

“My name is Smith and my friend’s name is Jones,” replied Cole, motioning for Sheridan to move over beside him so the man with the gun could see him.

The man spat on the ground. “I know made-up names when I hear them. Why are you in uniform? Are you deserters?”

Cole shook his head. “We’re lost.”

“Bah, a terrible lie. But I don’t care; I didn’t like the army either.” The man lowered his gun. “What do you want?”

Cole and Sheridan lowered their arms. Cole stepped forward and slowly reached into a pocket on his jacket so he wouldn’t startle the driver. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to the man.

Sheridan could see the man’s lips moving as he read the note.

“How much gold?” asked the man.

Cole smiled and showed the driver a small gold bar. “One now and one later if you help us.”

The man stared at the bar. His eyes were fixed on the gold glimmering in the light of his flashlight. “Okay, I help. But my truck is not working.”

Cole put the gold away and moved over beside the vehicle. “Mind if I take a look?”

The man shrugged and stepped aside.

Right away, Cole shook his head. The engine compartment looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years. “Do you have any tools?” he asked the driver.

The man nodded and hurried to grab his tools from the back of his truck.

“What was written on the note?” Sheridan asked Cole.

“I had a young Russian-speaking lady on the
Sydney
translate a message for me. It basically says give me a hand and I’ll give you some gold.”

The driver returned with a grease-stained canvas bag full of tools and gave it to Cole.
 

“It’s a wonder this thing moves at all,” bemoaned Cole. “The rechargeable gel-pack batteries are at least twenty years old and the wiring looks like someone just threw it all together and hoped for the best.”

“Can you fix it?” asked Sheridan, knowing precious little about the workings of a transport’s engine.

Cole smiled. “Of course I can. It’ll take me perhaps half an hour to rewire the batteries and clean off the connections. After that, this thing will work like she should . . . for an antique.”

True to his word, just over thirty minutes later the vehicle, with a loud splutter from its aged engine, started up. Sheridan and Cole jumped up into the cab with the driver. Cole handed the man one gold bar and another slip of paper with an address written on it.

The driver read the note, nodded, placed the truck’s engine in gear, and drove off.

Two hours later the truck pulled over at a rest stop on the side of the road. Sheridan looked around and saw nothing but woods. He asked Cole, “Are you sure this is the place?”

Cole winked. “Positive.” He turned and looked at the driver. “Thanks and here is the other gold bar.”

The man smiled at the two small golden bars in his hands.

Cole nudged his friend. “Time to go.”

They climbed out of the truck and stood on the side of the road watching as the vehicle drove off into the night.

Sheridan looked around at the thick woods lining the roadway. “Unless your friend has an underground bunker hidden out here in these woods, I’d have to say that your directions are a little off.”
 

“Ye of little faith,” responded Cole. “Bribing people into helping us is one thing, trusting them is another. I had us deliberately dropped off at the wrong location just in case our greedy old army buddy decides to sell us out to the authorities.”

Sheridan should have seen that one coming. There was a lot about Cole’s past that he didn’t know about. When they were done, he intended to have a long chat with his friend about his life before joining the Corps.

“Come on,” said Cole as he began to stroll down the road. “Bodrov only lives a couple of klicks away. I hope he has some good nosh in his kitchen that he wants to part with, I’m starving.”

Chapter 4

Admiral Takeshi Oshiro sat back in his comfortable blue leather chair and rubbed his tired eyes. It was only mid-afternoon, but the admiral was already feeling tired. Due to the mounting pressure of his job, he had not slept or eaten well in the past few months. His average workday now lasted well over eighteen hours a day. Although he was in his early sixties with snow-white hair and a neatly trimmed beard, he still managed to keep his body in good shape, exercising every day instead of eating over the lunch hour.

His aide, Rear Admiral Sean Parker, sat across from him holding a tablet in his hands. Parker was a thin man with black hair and gray eyes. He had been Oshiro’s aide for the past two years and knew getting to the point, especially when the news was bad, was always appreciated. “Sir, the report from Eris is not good. Colonel Valens has reported that everyone there is dead. We’ll probably never learn what happened as the installation’s computers and security monitoring devices were all erased. Unfortunately, whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

“Does he suspect Kurgan saboteurs?”

“Sir, he’s not sure. As of now there’s not enough evidence to say who is responsible.”

Oshiro’s voice grew serious. “Are all of the biological agents accounted for?”

“No, sir. One is missing. Colonel Valens said that the assailants took something called the Alpha Virus. I checked the database before coming in here but could find nothing in our files relating to the virus.”

“And you won’t. The information is classified.” Oshiro sat there for a moment contemplating the ramifications of a virus designed to exterminate life on a mass scale, in the hands of their enemy or some radical terror group. He could never understand why people thought it necessary to build biological weapons of mass destruction when the arsenal at the disposal of the federation president was already powerful enough to destroy billions of people several times over. “What is Valens’ next move?”

“His team is busy sifting through the remains of the freighter that was destroyed near Eris. He’s hoping to find something there that may give him a clue as to who is behind all of this.”

Oshiro nodded. It was a longshot but what else could they do. His next step would be to inform the commander of the ADF of Valens’ findings. “Sean, when we’re done here, please contact General Sadir’s aide and let him know that I need to speak with the general right away.”

Parker knew Oshiro better than he knew himself. “I’ve already set one up at fourteen thirty, sir.”

Oshiro smiled. “I should have known you’d be one step ahead of me. Let’s look at the other issues of the day. Has the captain of the
Sydney
been able to find Captain Sheridan and Master Sergeant Cole on board his ship?”
 

“No, sir. He feels they must have been in the escape pod that malfunctioned during the docking at Tranquility Station and came down inside Northern Mongolia. Shall I order a search for them to commence forthwith?”

Oshiro nodded. He doubted they would be found until they wanted to be. In a highly charged environment where you can’t tell friend from foe, they had done precisely what he would have done in their place and gone to ground. “Who spoke with the
Sydney
?”

“I had Captain Ramo from the personnel branch make the call, sir. As far as the
Sydney
is concerned, we’re looking for a couple of men who have gone AWOL.”

For now the ruse is working
, thought Oshiro. He cleared his mind of Sheridan and Cole. It wouldn’t help to worry about them. They would get in touch with him when they needed to, of that he had no doubt.
 

Parker handed over the tablet he had in his hand. “Sir, you asked to be shown the latest operational reports from the fleets when they arrived.”

Oshiro took the device and skimmed over the tabulated figures. The losses in manpower and materials were bad, but not as bad as it had been in previous months. Without knowing the Kurgans’ overall strength, he had no way of knowing if they were winning, losing, or just breaking even with these figures. What troubled him the most was the loss of yet another carrier. Before the war, it took on average three years to build a single fighter carrier. With civilian and military crews working twenty-four seven, carriers were now being completed in just under three months’ time. An eternity, as far as Oshiro was concerned. However, the recent modification of several deep-space supertankers into fighter carriers had cut the time down significantly and was helping to offset the growing losses.