Below, Peter Sterling, the head of UNAOC… the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee… exited the main UN building and headed for his car waiting at the curb on First Avenue. His patrician face was lined with the stress of the past weeks, but he walked with a bounce, his mood lightened by recent inroads he’d made on the Security Council. He almost had them convinced that the UN should take a tougher stand on all interactions with the guardians, the Airlia on Mars, and all other factions involved with the aliens. While the isolationist movement was gaining ground in the General Assembly, Sterling hoped to sway the Security Council to pass a resolution to allow UN-sanctioned forces to try to track down The Mission, to completely isolate Easter Island, and to resume digging at the destroyed American research facility at Dulce, New Mexico to discover what had been down there.
The Remington trigger was set at 2.5 pounds pull. The sniper drew in a long, shallow breath and held it. The reticles were centered on target, leading very slightly to account for the target’s pace. His mind was in rhythm with his heartbeat, and in the space before the next beat, he smoothly pulled back on the trigger.
Sterling’s mind was focused on how to get the Russian on his committee, Boris Ivanoc, the number-two man, to be more enthusiastic in getting his Security Council member to vote for the resolution, when the .50-caliber bullet made that the last thought he would ever have.
The half-inch-wide bullet splintered through skull on the right side of Sterling’s head, plowed through the brain, and took the entire left side of the head with it as it exited, splattering the sidewalk beyond for twenty feet with blood, brain, and fragmented pieces of bone.
The sniper had no doubt the target was dead. But he wasn’t working on the rules he had been trained on. The fact that something overrode years of repetitive training echoed somewhere in the back of his brain, like a leaf blowing in the wind, but he couldn’t grab on to it.
He pulled the bolt back, placing another round in the chamber, and aimed. Two cops were moving tentatively toward the body, everyone else having scattered. The sniper centered the reticles on what remained of the target’s head. He didn’t bother to wait between heartbeats… the target was stationary and at a range where he would hit one hundred times out of one hundred. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet smashed into the remains of the head and effectively finished decapitating Sterling. The two cops dove for cover, screaming into their handheld radios for backup.
The sniper removed the butt plate from over his shoulder and put the rifle down on the desk almost reverently. He walked over to the window. People were pointing up, having a general idea of where the shots had originated from due to the loud report of the .50-caliber weapon. He climbed up onto the windowsill in clear view of those below and teetered there for a second.
He paused as a memory fought through the alien conditioning. He remembered visiting the United Nations as a child, on a school trip to New York City. He tried to pull up more of the memory, but a black curtain slid down over that part of his mind.
He stepped out into space. He felt no fear as he fell the fifteen stories. The impact of the pavement brought an instant of release from the conditioning, the horror of what he had done, of what had been done to him. Then he died.
CHAPTER 18
Turcotte had the MP-5 tucked inside of the long coat that Yakov had given him. He was pressed back in the shadows under the Moskvorestkiy Bridge, which spanned the Moskva River near the walls of the Kremlin. Katyenka was farther down Kremlevskaya Naberezhnaya, hiding in the vegetation on the slope that came down from the walls of the Kremlin to the river, while Yakov was in the open, waiting for Lyoncheka.
Turcotte had almost called in Billam’s team for support, but he knew doing that would take them away from being able to support Duncan, and he had just received word from her of the assassination of Sterling prior to leaving the hotel they were staying at. Until he absolutely needed the team, he wanted to leave it untasked.
At the appointed time, a figure appeared, down the walkway from the north, from the direction of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. Turcotte slipped the submachine gun’s safety off. He could hear intermittent traffic going across the bridge, but otherwise all was quiet.
Yakov turned to face the newcomer, arms out from his side.
“Good evening, comrade,” Yakov greeted Lyoncheka.
“Whoever you have covering you,” Lyoncheka said, “bring them into the open. Now.”
Yakov signaled for Turcotte to come out.
Lyoncheka turned, hand snaking inside his coat, only to have Yakov’s massive paw grab his arm. “Easy, comrade. He’s a friend.”
Lyoncheka shook his head. “There are no friends.” He peered as Turcotte came up to them. “And an American… you are the one who destroyed the alien fleet.”
It was a statement, not a question, so Turcotte remained silent.
“I will have to trust that since you did that,” Lyoncheka said, “you are not working for either of the alien groups or the Watchers.”
“That is good,” Yakov agreed. “What do you have for us?”
“Come with me.” Lyoncheka pointed to the west, where the walls of the Kremlin loomed. “I will show you what you want to see.”
They began walking along the river, the sounds of their boots echoing off the Kremlin walls.
Yakov paused. “There is someone else here. Another friend.”
“You have too many friends for the business you are in.” Lyoncheka’s voice revealed his anger and fear. “Where and who?”
Yakov signaled, and Katyenka appeared out of the darkness.
Lyoncheka shook his head as he recognized her. “She’s GRU! This is too much. I promised to help you”… he tapped Yakov on the chest… “not a committee.”
“We’re in this together.”
“No, I’m not,” Lyoncheka argued.
Turcotte curled his finger around the trigger of the MP-5, but he didn’t pull the gun out. He waited for Yakov to defuse the situation.
“Comrade, you have come this far,” Yakov said. “Sooner or later, you are going to have to take a stand against these aliens and their minions. Take one now. Stratzyda will be over the United States in less than twelve hours.”
Lyoncheka spit. “On your head be it. There is no time for games. Come.” He clambered up the slope toward the Kremlin. They reached the large wall that surrounded the compound and Lyoncheka turned west, the other three following.
When he reached a portal through the wall blocked by a steel gate, Lyoncheka pulled out a plastic card. “We have modernized from the locks and chains that used to secure the compound.” He slid the card into a small opening, then punched in a sequence of numbers on a numeric keypad.
The gate slid open and he led them in. A second steel gate blocked the way into the Kremlin proper, but Lyoncheka turned to the left where another keypad was located. He slid another card through that, entered a new code, and the stones rumbled back, revealing a descending stairway.
“Come, quickly,” Lyoncheka urged them.
They crowded down the stairs to a landing. The stones shut behind them. The only illumination came from a couple of flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Turcotte tightened his grip on the gun, fearing an ambush in the confined space. The only other apparent exit was a solid steel door at the end of the landing.
Lyoncheka leaned over a new security device next to the door. Turcotte recognized it as a retinal scanner, the top of the line in identity checking. Lyoncheka waited as the laser scanned across his eyes, then the door opened, revealing a descending corridor. “Come.”