Psychic Warrior (17 page)

Two others ran up, grabbing his head and holding it still with all their strength as Feteror fought them with every once of energy he had left. The night had been too long, the damage too great. It was a lost battle.

The knife came forward. Feteror felt it touch his eyeball, and pain, far beyond anything he had felt so far, hit his brain like a spear splitting it straight through. He screamed, his battered and sliced body straining against the ropes, which brought even more pain and deepened the primeval essence to the shivering cry he let loose.

But still he could hear the sound of the helicopters so close, and machine-gunfire. And screams coming from others. And then there was only blessed darkness.

*****

The village was gone. They were back in the glade. Opa was crying, tears flowing down his weathered cheeks.

"Do you see now?" Feteror asked. "Why I must do this thing?"

Opa opened his mouth to say something, when the sky and glade disappeared along with the old man.

“Time to work." General Rurik's voice was harsh. There was a bright glaring light in Feteror's face. He knew that was a construct the programmers used to get his attention, feeding the input directly into his occipital lobe.

"What is it?" Feteror was disconcerted.

"We’ve lost contact with one of our surveillance units," Rurik said. "We want you to see what has happened."

"Why don't you send a plane?"

"Because it’s very far from the closest plane," Rurik said. "And more importantly, the surveillance team was watching where we used to be headquartered."

Feteror waited.

"We are inputting the coordinates."

Feteror read them as they came in. Information about the history of Department Eight had always been strictly withheld from him by Zivon on General Rurik's order, under the theory that knowledge was power and the less Feteror knew, the weaker he would be.

Feteror could have gotten this information from Oma, after she’d received the papers and CD from Colonel Seogky, but he hadn’t wanted her to know that he wasn't aware of the information contained in them. It had taken him four years to simply find out that the phased-displacement generator had been built, and that had only been because of a most fortunate meeting. The location of the generator had been something for which he had needed Oma and her organization. He had pointed her to the man in GRU records who would know that information. He could have taken it out of Vasilev, but the added fact that they would need the CD-ROM to program the computers to work the phased-displacement generator and Vasilev, the only survivor among those who had invented the machine, to properly operate the computers had precluded Feteror from pushing the old man too far, too soon. Vasilev would pay, but only after he made penance.

Feteror translated the grid coordinates as they came in. The far north!

"Find out why the surveillance unit has not reported in and come back immediately. You are to observe only."

"Why is there still a surveillance unit there?" Feteror asked.

"That is not your concern."

"Why was Department Eight moved from there to here?"

"That is also not your concern. Just do as you are tasked."

The tunnel beckoned and Feteror jumped. He felt the weightless feeling of flying as he roared into the virtual plane, assuming his winged-demon shape. It was what he felt comfortable in. Rurik and his minions thought they were so brilliant! The computer link only gave him more power, more information.

The body was basically humanoid, except larger, more powerful, and armed with sharp claws at the end of each hand. The wings were something he’d worked out with Zivon. He hadn’t liked the feeling of floating free or moving from place to place without a sense of spatial orientation. The wings gave him that, although it had taken him much time to get used to them. They gave him a solid way to control his orientation, direction, and speed. And they helped scare the piss out of anyone he appeared to on the real plane.

Feteror stretched his wings wider, moving faster, the virtual plane going by in a rush, his mind focused on the location he had been given.

The virtual plane was a strange place. There were times when even Feteror felt concern as he traversed it. It was a gray world, and moving through it was like moving in a vast mist, but references from the real world could be spotted poking through here and there if he made an effort to see. If there were no references, then Feteror would have to stop and come out of the virtual, into the real, and align himself. Sometimes he sensed other shadows, forms, moving in the fog.

Some he recognized psychics, real ones, plying their trade. Sometimes he knew they were Americans, from their Bright Gate operation. He knew the presence in the rail station had been a Bright Gater. How much the Americans knew he could not tell. He was also unsure exactly what their capabilities were. He knew they could remote view but he had picked up some different disturbances at times that indicated the Americans were doing something more advanced than just RVing. He had tried once to breach their facility in the state they called Colorado, but it was well protected from psychic probing.

He’d given General Rurik the information about the Mafia in order to move the timetable of everything up, so that whatever the Americans might plan would occur too late. But now he knew they also knew the timetable was sooner rather than later.

Feteror sensed he was over Siberia. He could feel the vast emptiness of that land reflected around him. He couldn’t explain how he knew where he was; he just knew it. It was one of the strange aspects of the virtual plane. Often the emotion of an area was what passed through to him, not the physical realities. Feteror oriented himself and continued his flight.

He had no idea how quickly he moved. Sometimes he arrived at a place "instantaneously" in real time, yet it seemed like it took an hour on the virtual plane. Other times, going to the same place, real time had elapsed. There was no way to tell. He’d asked the scientists, and their mumbo-jumbo answers had told him they didn't have a clue why that was. He knew they didn't even really know why he was able to do what he did.

Feeling he was in the right place and sensing death- something he was very familiar with—below, Feteror halted and focused so that he could see the real world. The island appeared below. Feteror could see the Cub transport plane parked on the edge of the runway. He swooped around in a large circle, going lower. He could see the backhoe and lines going from it into a hole in the side of a mountain.

Claws on the end of his feet splayed, Feteror landed right next to the hole. He bared his fangs in a grin as a couple of the mercenaries looked around, sensing something, not sure what it was, only that they felt danger in the air around them like a faint scent at the edge of their consciousness. Feteror could clearly sense their fear, like a wild dog near its prey.

Feteror was still in the virtual plane, the demon shape only something he felt, not something that was really there with the soldiers, but he knew the line between the two worlds was not solid and fixed.

He folded his wings and walked forward, into the hole. The ropes disappeared into a large elevator shaft. He looked down. There was a glint of light on steel far below. The phased-displacement generator.

"Careful, you pigs!"

Feteror looked at the man who stood on the other side of the shaft opening. Leksi. Feteror had seen the man before. And next to him the boy-man who had taken the papers from Colonel Seogky. Who was so stupid he had not listened when Feteror had whispered in his mind that his bodyguard was a double agent. Feteror remembered the name: Barsk, Oma's flesh and blood.

Feteror blinked as an image of his grandfather passed across his mind.

"Even pressure on both cables!" Leksi was yelling.

Feteror threw himself back, spreading his wings wide and hovering. He felt a strong desire to gain solid form, to match his power against Leksi. To rip the man to pieces, to make him bleed and suffer.

But there was not enough power coming from Zivon. Only the beckoning signal to return from Rurik. And he needed Leksi for now.

Feteror tightened his wings and dove into the shaft. He landed on top of the generator. Looking beyond, he could see the skeletons and devastation in the control center. He could feel spirits floating about. Feteror stepped back in surprise. He’d felt spirits before, but always very distantly, but these came at him. He "saw" nothing, but he knew they were all around him. Four men, long dead, who whispered to him of revenge, of pain and suffering. He felt an immediate affinity for their suffering. He promised them he would avenge their pain.

Feteror pivoted over on one wing and flew out of the cave, up into the virtual sky.

*****

Vasilev screamed as he scrambled away from the demon that pursued him. Its red eyes speared him with their malice, and he could hear the creature's claws against the floor. He scuttled sideways, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the monster.

It had halted and Vasilev did too. He breathed deeply, then almost smiled. This was just a bad dream. All he had to do was waken and the nightmare would be over. He would be home in bed, ready to wake up and go to the university for another day of teaching.

He opened his eyes and blinked. It was dark.

Then he saw the eyes and knew the nightmare was real. The demon came forward once more. Vasilev ran away, so hard that when the chain reached its end, the collar around his neck snapped him back so badly, he tore muscles in his neck and he flopped back onto the concrete like a rag doll.

"Please, please," Vasilev pleaded as the creature leaned over him. He swore he could smell its fetid breath. "Mercy!" Vasilev begged.

"You gave no mercy on October Revolution Island," the creature hissed.

Vasilev's eyes widened in shock. How did this thing know of that? Those thoughts were brutally interrupted as a claw ripped up his right side, parting flesh with one smooth stroke.

The pain was like acid. He screamed once more.

"You will not have death until you atone," the creature said.

"I am sorry!" Vasilev whimpered.

"Atonement requires action." The creature drew back, leaving Vasilev holding his bleeding side.

"I am sorry," Vasilev whispered as the demon once more disappeared.

Dalton refused the shot from Dr. Hammond. He’d always been able to sleep when he needed to. He’d slept on many an aircraft, fully rigged with 48 pounds of parachute, 140 pounds of rucksack attached to the rig dangling between his knees on the cargo bay floor, helmet pulled down over his eyes, weapon tied off to his right shoulder, while men threw up around him from the turbulence of a low-level-flight infiltration. Sleep when you could was a lesson that had been beaten into him from too many missions when he hadn't been able to.

"Sergeant Major!"

Dalton was alert in an instant, rolling to the side away from the voice, hand reaching behind his back, pulling out his nine-millimeter pistol, before his eyes focused on Lieutenant Jackson's face. The RVer looked exhausted.

Dalton took a deep breath. "What?"

Jackson looked to her left and right. "I have to talk to you."

“Talk," Dalton said, lowering the hammer on the gun and putting it back in its holster.

"I'm Army," Jackson said. "Most of these people are CIA or NSA. But there's a couple of us from the service here. We were part of the original Grill Flame operation. And we were good, so they kept us when they switched over to Bright Gate."

"What's your point, ma'am?"

"You can't trust Raisor."

Dalton leaned back on his bunk "You woke me to tell me that?"

"Did he tell you what happened to the first team?"

"The first team?" Dalton swung his feet over to the floor on the same side that Jackson was crouched. "Dr. Hammond said someone died when there was an equipment malfunction. She didn't say anything about a team."

"Dr. Hammond doesn't know diddly," Jackson said vehemently. "She'll lie when Raisor tells her to, but a lot of the time she talks out her ass because she doesn't understand a lot of what she's working with. Hell, no one does. At least we admit it. She has to act like she knows more than she does because her ego won't allow her to admit her ignorance. They've sold a whole pile of crap to the Oversight Committee and the Pentagon. You don't think they'd be bringing you and your men in unless they were desperate, do you?"

"I figured that," Dalton said.

Jackson nodded. "Raisor put together the first Psychic Warrior team using NSA and CIA operatives. They tried to keep us RVers in the dark but since we were both using the same facilities here, it was kind of hard to do. Plus we'd run a lot of the early tests for Psychic Warrior, gathering the data Hammond needed to make the next step. But obviously Raisor wanted to keep it in house, so he brought his own people in to make up the first team."

Dalton waited. He knew he'd been lied to; now he was beginning to get an idea of the extent. "What happened to the first team? Are they dead?"

"We don't know," Jackson said.

Dalton raised his eyebrows. "What do you mean by that?"

"Their bodies are still in their isolation tanks, in a room off the main experimental chamber. The machines are keeping them in stasis at the reduced-functioning status. So they're alive, I suppose. As alive as any of us when we go into those damn tanks."

"What happened to them?"

"No one knows. I don't know exactly, but I have an idea. I told Hammond but she thinks it's bull. I believe she thinks that because what I told her scared her."

"What about Raisor?"

"I think Raisor believes me. He's weird."

"What's your theory?"

"There are bodies in the isolation tanks, but there are no people in there, if you know what I mean. Heck, Sergeant Major, I went looking for them. I went out on the virtual plane to see if I could find them." She paused, her eyes withdrawing.

"And?" Dalton prompted.

"And I think I found the team. What was left of them. Their psyches. Worn out as if they'd died of starvation. They were all dead there."

"Wait a second." Dalton held up his hand. "You're talking about a thing that's not real in a place that doesn't exist."

"Oh, you know it exists," Jackson said. "Or you will once Sybyl passes you over. It's as real as this room."

"If this avatar is a construct, how can remains of the psyche exist? Wouldn't it just disappear?"

"I don't know," Jackson said. "I'm just telling you what I found. I don't pretend to understand this stuff like Hammond does."

"But . . . how could their avatars have starved as you put it?"

"Loss of power from Sybyl. They got cut off."

"How?"

"I don't know. Like I said, whenever Psychic Warrior was operating, we were locked down."

Dalton considered what she had just told him. What mission had the first team been on? Or had they been lost in training and that explained Raisor's reaction to what had happened to Stith?

"There's something else I think you should know," Jackson said.

"What?"

"There's something, or someone, else over there," Jackson said.

"Who?"

"Chyort," the lieutenant whispered.

"What?"

"The devil. I translated it using Sybyl. Chyort is the Russian word for 'devil.' The CIA picked up reports about such a thing several times but they dismissed it. I don't."

Dalton bit back his reaction. He could tell the lieutenant wasn't making this up. That she believed what she was saying.

"Not the devil like most people think of him," Jackson said, then she paused, as if hearing her own words. "Well, maybe I'm wrong there. Maybe it is the devil like most people think of him. But whatever you might think, I'm telling you there is someone else in the virtual world."

"Any idea who?" Dalton asked.

"Most likely the Russians," Jackson said. "We know they've been working with remote viewing longer than we have. And I heard rumors when I first got to Grill Flame from some of the old hands that the Russians had gone way beyond what we had been doing. That they had taken psychic warfare very seriously a long time ago and have been putting a lot of resources into it.

"Also, we get blocked when we try to see into certain places in Russia. It seems pretty logical to me that if the Russians know enough to block us psychically, then they know enough to RV. You can't have an antidote without a poison."

"So this devil is a Russian avatar?"

"I think so. I met him earlier today. When I went on the recon to check out the nuke warheads shipment. He was there. In the same room at the railhead. I couldn't see him and I don't think he saw me, but he was there. I felt him. And I know he felt me."

"Does Raisor know this?"

"I told him. He didn't seem that interested. The CIA reports are unsubstantiated according to him. And he chooses to disbelieve reports we give him that he doesn't want to hear."

"But this means the Russians probably know about the planned attack," Dalton said.

"There's a high probability of that," Jackson said. "I've read numerous unclassified reports of the strong Russian interest in remote viewing and psychic phenomena. In fact…" She paused, but Dalton indicated for her to continue. "In fact, there's some evidence that the Russians were trying to tap into psychic weapons a long time ago. In 1958 there was a tremendous explosion of undetermined origins just north of Chelyabinsk in the central Soviet Union that devastated a large amount of countryside. The CIA formally reported it as a nuclear mishap, but there was quite a bit of speculation that it was caused when some sort of psychic weapon misfired.

"There's a scientist, a Dr. Vasilev, at the Moscow Institute of Physiological Psychology, who has written several papers that, if you read between the lines, indicate strong Russian experimentation in psychic weapons. I think this Chyort, this devil, may be the latest generation of such a weapon."

The lieutenant shivered and Dalton put an arm on her shoulder. He could feel the shaking, something he’d felt before from soldiers who had been pushed too far and couldn't handle it anymore. Combat stress.

Jackson leaned her head into his arm, her voice no longer that of the woman, but the girl who’d been scared. "I don't know what this thing is. I met the devil today and now he knows me. And he'll get me next time I go over there."

"Listen to me," Dalton said in a low voice. "Listen to me. I know you're afraid and it's okay to be afraid. Because you got something to be afraid of and you just had something real bad happen.

"When I was—“ Dalton paused—“let’s just say in a very bad place, being held captive. They brought in another prisoner one afternoon. They carried him down the corridor past my cell, and I could see that he was in bad shape. Been beaten pretty badly by the villagers."

Dalton heard Jackson sniffle. He kept speaking.

"They put him in the cell next to me. I heard him crying that night. Hell, I remember crying my first night after I came to."

Jackson looked up at the sergeant major in surprise.

Dalton smiled. "Anyone who wasn't scared or didn't feel afraid in such a situation would have to be nuts. I've met a few guys who weren't afraid in combat, who actually enjoyed it. They were sociopaths. And those guys scared the piss out of me.

"Anyway, I reached through the bars and called to him. I got him to put his hand out and I held it. All night long. Because the thing we're afraid of more than anything else is being alone."

Jackson pulled back slightly and Dalton took his arm off her shoulders. "This devil doesn't scare you as much as the thought of facing him alone. But that isn't going to happen. Next time you meet this Chyort, this devil, you won't be alone. We'll be there with you."

Jackson stood up.

"Okay?" Dalton asked.

Jackson nodded, her eyes red.

"Get some rest," Dalton said. "I'd take one of Hammond's shots if I was you."

Dalton watched her walk away. Jackson reminded him in a way of Marie. He tried to pinpoint what the semblance was, then realized there was nothing in particular except that Jackson had needed him.

He sat in the dark of the bunkroom, his mind not on the upcoming mission, but on the past. The first time he had been under fire. The day that had torn him away from Marie for five long months.

*****

"He must keep this bandage on for three days."

Master Sergeant Jimmy Dalton listened as the interpreter relayed his instructions to the mother. Dalton spoke some Pashtun, not fluently, but well enough so that he could have given the information himself, but he’d learned that it went over better coming from the interpreter. It was scary enough for these people to come with their medical problems. The concept of one of the foreigners speaking their language was something that took a while for most to assimilate and accept, and Dalton's priority was his patient's health, not immediate cultural acceptance. He knew the latter would require time and patience, and he was going to be here for a year, so he was prepared to take it slow.

Dalton was in full battle dress, encumbered by body armor. He was leading a MEDCAP team to this small village near the Pakistan border, trying to wins hearts and minds while the Taliban were more than willing to lop off heads to control their bodies. He had three other SF soldiers and a half-dozen Afghani militia in his small patrol.

"You should all leave," the woman told the interpreter as she bundled her son up.

The interpreter glanced at Dalton, knowing he had heard. "Why is that?"

The woman swept her hand at the steep mountainside. "Many, many from the south. They will kill all of you."

“Tell her she's welcome and thanks,” Dalton told the interpreter. He circled his fist over his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dalton sent out flankers and the patrol quickly hit the trail leaving the village nestled in an isolated village. He didn’t like the tactical scenario, with steep, high ground to either side, but he hadn’t picked the mission, which was a soldier’s bane.

As they entered the narrow canyon that was the only means of ingress or egress to the village, Dalton held up a fist, halting the small patrol. His back felt like there was an army of small ants climbing up it, and he reached back to brush them off, when he realized that the feeling was inside his head, not actually on his skin.

The first RPG hit ten meters to his left.

“Cover, contact right!” Dalton shouted.

The next RPG came two seconds later. From above and to the left. Dalton had a moment’s awareness of the deadliness of the trap they’d sprung when the rocket propelled grenade exploded on the very boulder he’d been heading for to take cover behind.

That was the last memory he had until he woke up in the cave. Rusting bars kept him corralled along one side of the cavern. There were a half dozen such cages lining the wall. All the others were empty which told Dalton either the rest of his patrol had made it out safely or they were all dead. His gear was gone, leaving only his fatigue pants, minus belt, and his t-shirt.

It was dark, barely enough light coming the entrance to see.

A Taliban sat five feet in front of the cage, slowly sharpening a scimitar. When he saw Dalton was awake, he smiled.

*****

Dalton looked down. His hands were clenching the edge of the bed, his knuckles white. He forced his fingers to let go. Slowly he let go of the memories of Afghanistan. He cleared his mind and passed into an uneasy slumber.

*****

Feteror's demon avatar slowly materialized as he stalked down the empty corridor. The dull glow of the dim night lighting in the building rippled through his form, the sound of his claws on the tile floor a low clicking noise echoing into silence. He paused at a door. He reached down. It was locked.

His form disappeared as he reentered the virtual plane and flowed through the thick steel, coming out the other side and reforming on the real plane. The room was lit with the glow of a dozen screensaver programs. Feteror went to the center console. He reached out a long claw and carefully tapped on the keyboard, accessing the program he wanted.

It had taken him two months to get the code word he needed to enter the GRU classified database. Two months of hovering unseen on the virtual plane in the background at various GRU sites, waiting for someone to log on in front of him.