For good measure, Axel took the hammer and smashed it into Vasily’s left hand, breaking bones and tendons and leaving a broad blue contusion shaped like a star.
Vasily had urinated on himself and was shaking uncontrollably, his body losing out to the physical and emotional shock.
Axel asked again, with no change in his intonation. “What is the code?”
Vasily looked like he’d had enough. Desperation had entered his eyes, a will to live. He said it slowly, forcing the characters out. “Y429T1DN”
Axel relayed it via earbud and waited. Vasily grimaced and gritted his teeth, trying to regain control of himself.
“Confirmed,” his earbud responded. Axel pressed on the earbud and said, “Proceed with the operation.”
Axel checked the utility door and could see no museum patrons outside. Then he waited. He needed to give the ops team more time in case something came up.
Sixty seconds passed.
“What now?” Vasily gasped. “Am I to be a political prisoner? Many of my supporters—”
Axel shot Vasily in the temple, his silencer muffling the sound. They quickly wrapped his head in an absorbent towel, covered his body with debris and pushed it to the most discrete corner of the utility room.
Axel glimpsed at the museum room display through a crack in the utility room door. A couple was there, strolling through the medieval artwork. He waited until they had passed through, then looked up at Uvanovich. “You clear from here?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
Axel nodded and ventured back out into the museum. He walked casually but resolutely through the ancient rooms, back the way he had come in.
When he was outside in the wintry air, walking along the bridge toward his car, he pressed on his earbud. “Status.”
“All bogies disarmed, sir. Facility destruction is next.”
“Copy that. Proceed.”
Once he reached the parked Mercedes, Axel wasted no time navigating out of town. He drove down the country roads toward the extraction location, fast but not too fast. As the op began to wind down, he became partially hypnotized by the soft snows falling around him. He allowed himself to reflect.
Vasily’s New Bolotnikov group was a fanatical insurgency within the Russian military, hell-bent on creating a new order. They had plans to forge their place in history with the explosion of a nuclear bomb in a major population center in Europe, followed by the threat of future strikes to force the world to acquiesce to outrageous demands. Axel’s team had successfully averted a severe crisis and potentially saved many lives. By all accounts it had been a successful mission, and a worthy one as well.
Yet an elusive concern tugged at his conscience.
There had been weeks of intelligence gathering, planning and preparations, and the op was executed well. Yet these ops, no matter how much preparation was put into them, almost always had some hair on them—some unforeseen randomness that needed to be managed. But the intelligence, and the op itself, all seemed so neatly packed, like a controlled scenario you would go through in training, or an improvisation in the CIA simulation room.
And then there was the question of why Nadar Corporation? Their intelligence revealed the Russians were about to launch a similar covert op on Vasily’s splinter group. The Chinese were also in the know and ready to shoot down any missiles that left the facility silos, potentially averting catastrophe.
Why be the global vigilante if one didn’t need to be?
Axel knew he was simply a tool, a surgical military instrument. He knew, and respected, that soldiers were on a need-to-know basis only. And yet he felt there was more he did need to know. If he was to be the soldier Nadar Corporation wanted him to be, additional context was essential, especially because his employer was now a corporation backed by a solitary individual whose motivations weren’t spelled out in any policy document.
He would have to confront Bhavin about this in the coming days.
On a sharp turn he passed a wintry barn half-buried in snow. For a moment he thought he saw children playing there, throwing snowballs at one another. The children looked like Zach, Erin and Sasha. But it was nothing. Just shadows playing tricks on him. He would often succumb to images like these on ops. The visions didn’t scare him but rather comforted him. It was like his kids were there with him. And now when he remembered the op, he would remember seeing them in the snow. It might even be his strongest memory from the op, even though it never happened.
The road became narrower. After several more twists and turns, after night vanquished the day, he arrived at the extraction site. The helicopter was there, waiting for him, blades whirling. Uvanovich arrived within minutes and joined him in the helicopter.
Axel pressed a button on the Mercedes key fob provided by Nadar Corporation. The Mercedes would self-destruct in five minutes. Then he signaled to the pilot. They were quickly lifted into the air, accentuating the wisps of swirling snow in all directions.
The chopper hugged the faint wintery shadows of the land as it headed toward Finland, casting a powerful radar dispersion signal as it went.
THE BIKE TOWERS
Owen had never seen such a large expedition.
There were five major bike platforms. When fully assembled, these platforms had four seat-and-handlebar configurations jutting out of each side, but facing forward. Below the seats were pedal-and-gear assemblies for each rider. These weren’t the typical bulky hauling platforms one might see in the city though. They were of top quality, recently crafted with the best lightweight frame components, even detachable in sections for tight throughways.
There were also twenty-odd other riders scattered ahead and behind the flotilla of platforms, making the full expedition contingent about eighty Spokes.
Owen had been assigned to sit on one of the platform seats. He tried his best to pedal his gear assembly in sync with the more veteran mules, but he was competing against riders that did this for a living. These mules had chiseled calves, bulging thighs and seemingly limitless lung capacity. As the day wore on, he settled for giving occasional bursts of effort whenever he could muster the energy. Thankfully, the railroad folks had made it clear that Owen had been selected for his technical capabilities, not for his physical prowess.
The town of Culpepper had been welcoming. It was a small farming village to the northeast of Seeville, a common stopover for expeditions to the bike towers, and they were always ready for accommodating large expeditions. Owen ate with his platform team at a breakfast diner fashioned out of a refurbished Old World garage. A rotund lady, as sweaty as he was, served him an oversized brunch of greasy eggs and apple oatmeal, giving him much-needed energy for the rest of the journey.
After they left Culpepper, they saw fewer signs of life. They passed by one hovel built out of Old World scrap metal. A man with long scraggly hair ran out and tried to sell them everything from bike parts to underwear. They ignored the man and continued on. From that point on, all the Old World highway exchanges and turnoffs were overgrown and untrodden.
As they continued east the signs started appearing.
Bandit Territory–5 miles.
Bandit Territory–1 mile.
Entering Bandit Territory,
Frederick Bike Towers in 11 miles.
Stay on Marked Roads.
It was his first time in bandit lands. He didn’t know what to expect other than what he had heard in stories. The others didn’t look afraid, and the road hadn’t changed in any meaningful way, so he felt only mild trepidation at first.