Vanadium Dark Page 15

  Oh, it hurts. It hurts. Miguel, you stupid asshole, this is your fault.

  Incapable of doing anything but lying still and being broken, she heard a sharp kick from behind her.

  Then another.

  Another.

  Each one jolted, sending waves of agony pulsing through her shattered body.

  Finally, she twisted her head, guarding against the sudden pain of broken vertebrae, and looked at the back of the PTV.

  Anzor Khujadze was there, lying on his back, kicking away at the shatterproof glass.

  A single long crack had appeared in it, and he was doing his best to widen it.

  Each kick pounded home, and the crack gaped a few millimeters more.

  Oh god, he's not hurt at all. How can he still be so strong?

  Dazedly, she tried to reach for the CB radio. She couldn't reach it.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  She reached for the controls to release deterrents into the prisoner bay then she realized she did not know how to use any of them.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  Anzor's leg irons jangled, a counterpoint to the thump of the kick and the crunching of yielding glass. The thought gradually seeped through Tara's pain-smashed brain like water through a sponge: Anzor was trying to break free. And unless she did something, he would succeed. An extra-loud kick, and then a grunt of either pain or triumph. Tara hoped for pain.

  Miguel draped back in his seat, eyes wide open and seeing nothing. Whether he was unconscious or dead was anyone's guess.

  Move, Tara told her arm, trying to bully the nerves of her hand into action. Move. But nerves were not scared prisoners, shuffling along in chains. They could not understand or obey. Nerves either worked, or they didn't.

  Finally, a prison slipper crashed through the window, sending an entire broken section of glass swinging out of the way. A hand came through. Another hand. Then an entire torso. Anzor clambered through, guarding his knees against the jagged knife's edge of glass. He knew what he was looking for: Miguel's gun.

  Oh, no.

  Tara wasn't armed, but Miguel was. There was also a shotgun clipped under the dash, and an AR-15 in the roof rack. All totally useless without the muscles to use them.

  Anzor drew the SIG Sauer P226. As it left Miguel's leather holster, it made a sound like a slithering snake.

  Tara found herself talking before she was aware that she had anything to say. "Don't shoot me."

  Anzor's eyes met hers. Complete intransigence.

  "You should have been wearing a belly chain," she babbled weakly, knowing how stupid she sounded. "It's in the rules."

  Anzor took the safety off. "You were right. Breaking Monadnocks is one of the first things they teach in Special Forces training."

  The muzzle covered Tara's head. She felt saliva trickle down the side of her chin, and realized she was drooling in fear. She'd never had a gun pointed at her before.

  She would probably never have one pointed at her again.

  She saw inside the 9mm barrel. It looked as big as a maglev tunnel, a smooth dark bore that terminated in silencing steel.

  Incredibly, she heard Miguel speaking in ten-code. "Indianapolis, this is Unit Six. This is an eleven-ninety-nine. Repeat, eleven-ninety-nine. Khujadze has escaped... gun in his hand... initiate code ten."

  At some point in the past thirty seconds, he'd come awake. He hadn't been able to reach his gun, but he'd been able to bring the dangling CB radio to his mouth.

  "Please." His voice cracked. "Tell Joanne that I..."

  Anzor ruthlessly dispatched him with a double-tap to the head.

  ka-blam! ka-blam!

  The smell of gunpowder filled the air, and then Tara was back in the line of fire.

  She found she wasn't scared any more.

  Just sad, and weary.

  "You're a dead man," she told Anzor. "Vanadocams will find you, wherever you hide. Drones will hunt you down."

  ka-blam!

  A pulverizing force rippled through her body. She'd meant to say more, but she found that her tongue was working against a rising tide of blood coming back up her throat.

  It surged out from her torn jugular, cutting off her air, muffling and then silencing her speech. Finally, she gave up, her last sound expiring in the bloody tide.

  * * *

  After he was sure she was dead, Anzor stuffed the P226 into the waistband of his prison johnnies. That was dangerous. He'd heard of men shooting their genitals off.

  But he didn't use his genitals much, anyway.

  It was shady and cool in the metal tomb. Outside the wreck, he heard the hum of a passing car. He would have to hope that nobody looked down into the ditch.

  Crawling gingerly on his hands and knees across a ragged minefield of broken glass and bleeding meat, he tried to open the driver’s door. It refused to budge. He tried the shotgun door. Nothing. The sensation of crawling across still-warm corpses was disturbing.

  Evidently, the latches on the doors had been reduced to twisted metal. There was no opening them.

  He'd killed his guards, but he was still their prisoner still.

  Just as he was getting ready to shoot the hinges off the door and risk a ricochet, an idea came to him.

  He searched underneath the passenger seat, and was immediately vindicated.

  Tools.

  The Jaws of Life.

  Within minutes, he'd used the hydraulic tool to cut away a section of metal. He spent another few minutes cutting through his leg-irons with a hacksaw. He looted the pockets of the slain escort detail and found some cash. He pushed his way through the flap, feeling like he'd undergone a second birth—out of the old world and into the new.

  These were his first steps outside the control of the penal system in ten years.

  He took some deep breaths, collected himself.

  He had no illusions about what would happen to him.

  Even now, a Vanadocam eye was probably staring at him. An Elephant Handler would be referring his location to whatever agency was most expedient. He would either be arrested again or shot dead by a flying UAV.

  But what of that?

  There was no better option. His choices were two: die a free man or die in prison.

  The US government had just created an unguided missile of destruction in Anzor Khujadze. They'd backed him against a wall, and put a gun in his hand.

  And they could only kill him once.

  He dragged the body of the fat Latino guard through the hole he'd carved in the PTV. He needed to widen it a little to accommodate the man's bulk. He undressed him and put on his clothes.

  The fit was terrible. He had to tighten the belt to its last notch before his pants would stay up. There was brain matter drying on his left shoulder. He wiped as much of it off as possible, put the holster on his belt and the gun in the holster. He pulled down the brim of the cap to partially obscure his features and climbed out of the ditch.

  Being on his own was a shock. You were never alone in prison.

  Likewise, the steep ascent winded him. He was used to flat, machine-graded concrete surfaces.

  At the crest of the ditch, he simply stood and waved his hands until an SUV pulled over.

  A sunburned man got out and walked toward him, a friendly smile on his face. "Hey, man. Need some... " He caught sight of the totaled PTV in the ditch, and of the naked man lying on the ground, his head blown apart like a piñata. "...help?"

  The final word was spoken at half the volume of the rest.

  Anzor drew with his left hand, aiming the gun at the man's chest. "I need you to give me a ride to town."

  The Pentagon

  Viktor was still seething over Gideon Heidelman when Joyce spoke.

  "Oh, shit."

  He took the goggles off and looked over her shoulder. A black entry had popped up in her inbox, and he felt his stomach contract.

  Black was a bad color.

  The worst color.

  A category one
. Highest priority.

  "Oh, goddamn... just, goddamn. Sir, look at this. It's from the Indiana State Police."

  She sent the case to his inbox.

  He had dealt with three cat-1s in his entire career as a Handler. Two had proven to be false alarms. The third had been a major terrorist attempt on US soil that had ended in four deaths, thirty-five injured, and sixteen skinheads railroaded straight to ATX.

  He read the case details, and his blood turned to ice.

  ANZOR KHUJADZE ESCAPED FROM CUSTODY AT 1300 HOURS TODAY, SOMEWHERE ON OR NEAR INTERSTATE 70. TWO GUARDS PRESUMED DEAD. HIS RECAPTURE IS AN URGENT PRIORITY.

  Viktor punched in the supplied coordinates. He wasn't sure what to feel about this.

  Was he taking part in the manhunt for an innocent man?

  On his other computer, he accessed a database available to public servants with a security clearance. After a minute or two, he found the approximate time Anzor's escort detail left Fort Leavenworth.

  At 20x speed, he followed it down the highway, skipping ahead several hours to the indicated time.

  Motion-tracking engaged, he zoomed in through a window.

  He'd never seen Anzor Khujadze before. His name was famous everywhere, but no patriotic-minded news organisation had shared his picture.

  He proved to be a stocky, short, Eastern European man of middle years with a pencil-thin mustache and a prison-issue haircut. From time to time, he turned his head and spoke to whoever was driving the PTV.

  They'd secured him with plastic cuffs. Dumb move.

  Viktor watched as Anzor tightened the Monadnocks as much as possible with his teeth, then, faking a yawn, he raised his arms and slammed his hands down on his stomach, flaring his elbows out like chicken wings.

  The cuffs broke, and nobody up front would have noticed.

  From there, things played out predictably. Anzor sat quietly for a while, probably waiting for a window of opportunity to cause mischief.

  If Anzor was being moved to an ultramax security hellhole, Viktor thought he was probably justified. They couldn't legally make his life any worse than it already was. Might as well fuck with them back. Good on you, friend. He was shocked that he'd just had that thought.

  When it came, the ending came swiftly.

  The PTV turned into a country road. Viktor knew this without even looking around. The Vanadocam quality sharply declined, as it never would on a major interstate.

  He could tell by the way the quality remained steady that it was matching the interstate almost swerve for swerve. It would have progressively degraded if it had been going away from civilization. And past a certain point, Vanadocam coverage would have ceased. Viktor would be left watching a sizzling gray mist in his viewscreen. Terra incognita. Here, there be dragons.

  There were still people in America who enjoyed a bit of freedom, folks way out in the holler could go about their day without being spied on. Not for long, though. Coverage was getting better all the time.

  Anzor rolled the car.

  It took six replays for Viktor to work out exactly how he'd done it. Then he saw the sliding compartment, and it clicked.

  He grabbed goddamn steering wheel.

  What he'd been hoping to accomplish by this was anyone guess. Trash the car? Add several extra hours to his journey while a replacement vehicle was located? Ruin his guards' day? Kill himself?

  At any rate, the sudden move paid dividends.

  The PTV was wrecked in a ditch. Both guards were badly injured—and badly dead, once Anzor broke through the divide and got his hands on a gun.

  Damn.

  He watched Anzor cut his way out of the wreck, steal clothes, and flag down a car. Now he had wheels. He was off to a good start.

  But a good start was no different to a bad start when Vanadocams got involved.

  Viktor held the axe, ready to let it fall across the man’s neck.

  But I won't.

  And just like that, with his first act of rebellion, a strange power surged through his body. Was this what freedom felt like?

  I'll let him get away. Fuck surveillance, and fuck Project Elephant. Ride like the wind, Anzor Khudajze.

  He composed an email for his secretary to encrypt and send.

  Sirs,

  I regret to inform you that I was unable to locate Anzor Khujadze. I followed him for more than a hundred miles out of Kansas City. Vanadocam coverage degraded until the car was lost from view. I have no idea what's happening inside the several-hundred-mile blank spot between there and Indianapolis. I would assume he's hijacked a vehicle already, and I cannot trace where he's gone.

  Vanadocam coverage throughout rural America continues to be unsatisfactory. This case now extends beyond my abilities.

  Yours,

  - Viktor Kertesz

  "Send this email for me, Joyce."

  "So you've found him?"

  "No, I haven't."

  Joyce looked shocked. "How couldn't you have found him? A man wearing prison clothes in the middle of nowhere. How did he get away?"

  Viktor thought of telling her to shut up, but he realized he might come to regret it. Joyce was not on his side, but neither was she entirely on Secretary Wilson's from what he could see. He wanted to keep things that way.

  "I need Vanadocam density of at least a thousand per square meter. If it drops below that level, I get distorted, blurry, polygon people, useless for police work. Missouri has some of the worst coverage in America, and I can't see anything along that stretch. It all looks like a blur. And Anzor escaped right in that blind spot."

  She swung her chair to face him, and the corner of her mouth went crooked in a little smile. "Sir, with respect, that doesn't pass the smell test."

  He glared daggers at her. "What do you mean? Why doesn't it pass the smell test?"

  "You've solved dozens of cases in Missouri. Don't argue with me, or I'll bring them up and make you look ridiculous."

  “In major cities, yes."

  "And in isolated hamlets. And in farmland a hundred hectares across. And in places on lakes that you can only reach by boat."

  He sighed and shrugged. "You don't understand, Joyce. It's unpredictable. Sometimes, there's a prevailing wind that blows Vanadocams away. Sometimes there's static in the air, and lots of Vanadocams short out. I might have had coverage in Missouri tomorrow, but that doesn't mean I have coverage today."

  She clearly didn't believe him. He didn't care.

  Viktor knew what would likely come next: angry phone calls from the DOD and Missouri police, all of them asking the same questions. How could you...? How did you...? Why are we paying you...?

  He wondered if Anzor's escape would be widely reported. He thought it unlikely. Nobody knew what the guy looked like, and it would create a panic, especially after it was learned that the vaunted Vanadocam network had failed.

  He also knew Gideon Heidelman would clock back on tomorrow, and no doubt, things would restart from square one. Gideon would have no trouble finding Anzor Khujadze, and then Viktor's failure would look especially bad.

  Viktor couldn't tell what would happen next. He'd definitely get in trouble. He'd probably get sacked. He might even get arrested himself on a charge of treason.

  But he'd bought Anzor Khujadze a bit of time, which was something. I wish you well, Anzor.

  Then he realized that he could do more than wish Anzor well. He could help.

  It would have to wait until his caseload thinned, until he could spent uninterrupted blocks of time tracking the movement of America's most wanted.

  And it would have to be today.

  Once Gideon entered the game, all bets were off.

  I-70, Missouri, & The Pentagon

  Spitting in the devil's face, Anzor took the woman's phone with him.

  A risky move, yet probably a necessary one. The phone was possibly geotracked, for all it mattered. Drones were probably speeding on their way right now. You didn't need geotracking to find someone in this day and age.
>
  But a phone was power. Against the mighty inventory of communications and surveillance arrayed against him, he had a small chunk of its arsenal with which fight back.

  In his car ride to Indianapolis, he played with it and deactivated any application that looked as though it might remember his location. He knew that any call from it could be triangulated.

  “Is this a joke?” His driver had asked, several hours ago.

  “Yeah, and every joke needs an audience. That's where you come in. You don't have to laugh, but I'd appreciate if it if you played along with the gag.”

  Anzor brushed the SIG Sauer P226 against the back of the man's neck, watching the fine hairs rearrange themselves as he stiffened in fear.

  How much damage could he do with this gun?

  He'd wasted the numb-nuts in the PTV with three shots. If he remembered correctly, the P226's magazine held fifteen rounds. So twelve shots remained.

  No, eleven.

  Had to allow a shot for himself in case they caught him. Straight through his head.

  He felt the phone vibrate in his pocket.

  Wondering, he holstered the P226 and got out the phone.

  ONE NEW VOICE MESSAGE.

  He brought it up and put it to his ear.

  tap tap tap scratch tap-scraatch tap-scraatch tap tap tap tap scraatch tap.

  The guy in the driver's seat looked around at him. Anzor pointed the P226 at him again. “Eyes on the road, genius.”

  He had no idea of what to make of the odd message. It was from a private number.

  He put the phone back in his pocket and had just taken his hand away when he felt it vibrate again.

  “What the fuck... ”

  Another message.

  tap tap tap scratch tap-scraatch tap-scraatch tap tap tap tap scraatch tap

  What was this?

  As he was about to take it away from his ear, a third message came in. The phone buzzed like an electronic wasp.

  tap tap tap scratch tap-scraatch tap-scraatch tap tap tap tap scraatch tap

  Was it some sort of code? Like Morse?

  Absently, his brain turned the message into dots and dashes.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.”