He squeezed the trigger.
Rounds slammed into the Thanatos drone, shattering hundreds of solar cells. Fragments of glass and plastic swirled away and vanished astern. For a moment the wing flexed alarmingly. It slid lower.
Jon held his breath. But then the giant machine’s onboard flight computers corrected for the sudden loss of power, revving its propellers higher. The drone steadied up and began climbing again.
Smith swore quietly, already fumbling for a new magazine.
Amid the noise and cold and thin, scarcely breathable air, Randi fought to remain conscious. The sharp, stabbing pain from her broken arm was merging now with a terrible throbbing ache behind her temples. She gritted her teeth, feeling nauseated. The pain in her head was now so intense that it seemed to send little pulses of red light flashing into her eyes with every beat of her heart.
Her head fell forward.
And in that brief moment, Hideo Nomura attacked.
One hand batted aside her carbine. The other chopped down hard on Randi’s collarbone. It snapped like a dry twig.
With a muffled groan, she fell back against the seat and then flopped forward again. Only the safety belt buckled at her waist kept her from sliding onto the floor of the troop compartment.
Nomura snatched the M4 and held it to her head.
Smith glanced over his shoulder in surprise. He rolled over and sat up—and then froze, taking in the changed situation in one appalled glance.
“Throw your weapon out the door,” Nomura ordered. His eyes glittered, as hard as ice and just as cold. “Or I will blow this woman’s brains across this compartment.”
Jon swallowed hard, staring at Randi. He could not see her face. “She’s dead already,” he said, desperately trying to buy time.
Nomura laughed. “Not yet,” he said. “Observe.” He wrapped one hand in Randi’s short blond hair and yanked her head back. She moaned softly. Her eyes fluttered open briefly and then closed. The man who was Lazarus released his grip contemptuously, allowing her head to flop forward again. “You see?” he said. “Now do as I say!”
Defeated, Smith let the carbine fall out of his hands. The weapon whirled away and disappeared.
“Very good,” Nomura told him cheerfully. “You learn obedience quickly.” He moved back, keeping Randi’s weapon carefully aimed at Jon’s chest. His face grew harder. “Now order your pilot to fly away from my Thanatos drone.”
Smith raised his voice. “Did you hear what the man wants you to do, Peter?”
The Englishman looked back over his shoulder. His pale blue eyes were expressionless. “I heard him,” he replied coolly. “It seems we have no choice, Jon. At least not with the situation as it stands.”
“No,” Smith agreed. “Not as it stands,” he said, putting the emphasis on the last word. He tilted his head slightly.
An almost imperceptible wink fluttered in Peter’s left eye. He turned back to the Black Hawk’s controls.
Nomura laughed again. “You see, Father,” he said to Jinjiro. “These Westerners are soft. They value their own lives above all else.”
The old man said nothing. He sat stone-faced, cast again into despair by the sudden reversal of fortune.
Smith sat near the helicopter’s open door, waiting tensely for Peter to make his move.
Abruptly the Englishman banked the helicopter hard right—almost tipping the Black Hawk over on its side. Nomura toppled backward, thrown completely off his feet. He crashed into the back wall of the troop compartment and then slid to the floor. His finger, curled around the trigger of Randi’s M4, tightened involuntarily. Three rounds tore through the roof and ricocheted off the spinning rotors.
As soon as the helicopter tilted, Smith threw himself forward, away from the open door. He dived across the floor and slammed headlong into Nomura. He tore the carbine out of Nomura’s hands and tossed it away across the cabin. It clattered somewhere among the seats, well out of reach.
The Black Hawk leveled out and began climbing again.
Snarling, Nomura kicked out at Jon, shoving him back. Both men scrambled to their feet. Hideo attacked first—striking out with his hands and feet in a maddened frenzy.
Jon parried two blows with his forearms, shrugged a kick off his hip, ducked under a third strike, and then closed in. He grabbed Nomura by one arm, punched him hard in the face, and then hurled him across the row of seats.
The other man landed in a heap—right next to the open door. Though dazed, with blood streaming from a broken nose, he struggled to get back up.
Smith grabbed hold of a seat and roared, “Peter! Now! Reverse! Reverse!”
The Englishman complied, again throwing the Black Hawk into a steep bank, but this time sharply left. The helicopter tilted on its side, for a moment seeming to hang in space, high above the Atlantic Ocean, as it spun through a tight turn. The Thanatos drone came into view not more than fifty feet below them, still heading west on its programmed mission of mass murder.
Hideo Nomura made a desperate lunge and grabbed a seat strut. His legs dangled in mid-air, flailing, trying to find a foothold that did not exist.
Arms straining, he began to pull himself back inside the helicopter. With his teeth bared in a rictus grin, he looked up and saw his father staring down at him.
Jinjiro Nomura looked deep into the maddened eyes of the man who had once been his beloved son. “You misjudged these Americans,” he said softly. He sighed in sorrow. “Just as you have misjudged me.”
And with that, the old man leaned forward and kicked Hideo’s hands away from the seat strut.
Face fixed in horror, the younger Nomura slid out the door, his fingernails clawing wildly, seeking a hold anywhere on the smooth metal. Then, with a despairing wail, he fell away into thin air, tumbling toward the Thanatos drone as it flew past under the turning Black Hawk.
Still kicking and flailing with his arms and legs, the man who was Lazarus crashed onto the fragile surface of the enormous flying wing. The drone shuddered, rocked by the sudden impact. And then, overloaded and already damaged, the Thanatos aircraft simply snapped in half—folding up like the closing pages of a book. Propeller blades, avionics pods, and clusters of nanophage cylinders ripped loose in a growing cloud of debris.
Slowly at first, and then faster, the tangled wreckage spun around and around, plunging all the way down to the hungry and waiting waters of the vast and merciless sea.
Epilogue
Early November
The White House
Although it was still early in the afternoon, President Samuel Adams Castilla had abandoned the excited hustle and bustle around the Oval Office—preferring instead the quiet comfort and privacy of his den upstairs in the East Wing. This room was all his own, exempt from the whims of the fashionable designers who had redecorated the rest of the White House under orders from his wife. There were shelves full of well-read books, a large Navajo rug covering the polished hardwood floor, a big black leather sofa, a couple of recliners, and a big-screen television. Hung on the walls were prints of works by Fredric Remington and Georgia O’Keeffe together with photographs of the rugged mountains around Santa Fe.
Castilla glanced over his shoulder with a smile. His hand was poised over a bottle and a pair of glasses on the sideboard. “Care for a Scotch, Fred?”
Fred Klein grinned back at him from his place on the long sofa. “I certainly would, Mr. President.”
Castilla poured the drinks and carried them over. “This is the Caol Ila, Jinjiro’s favorite.”
“Very appropriate, Sam,” Klein said quietly. The head of Covert-One nodded toward the television. “He should be on any second now.”
“Yep. And I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Castilla said. He set down his Scotch and tapped a key on the TV remote. The screen lit up, showing the vast chamber of the UN General Assembly in New York. Jinjiro Nomura stood alone on the dais, looking out over the sea of delegates and cameras with perfect poise—although he knew his words
and his image were being beamed around the world to more than a billion people watching this live broadcast. His face was solemn, still bearing the deep marks of sorrow left by betrayal, a year’s imprisonment, and the death of his son.
“I stand before you today on behalf of the Lazarus Movement,” Jinjiro began. “A movement whose noble ideals and dedicated followers were betrayed by the malice of one man. This man, my own son Hideo, murdered my friends and colleagues and imprisoned me—destroying those of us who founded the Movement so that he could seize power in secret. Then, masquerading as Lazarus, he used our organization to conceal his own cruel and genocidal aims, aims utterly at odds with everything for which our Movement truly stands …”
Castilla and Klein listened in satisfied silence while the older Nomura carefully and precisely recounted the details of Hideo’s treachery, revealing both his secret creation of the nanophages and his plans to use them to destroy most of humanity so that he could make himself absolute master over the frightened survivors. Briefed earlier by Jinjiro, America’s allies had already begun returning to the fold—all expressing profound relief that their earlier suspicions had proved unfounded and anxious to repair their damaged relations with the U.S. before the truth became widely known. This UN speech was only the first part of a determined campaign to unveil the subversion of the Lazarus Movement and salvage America’s reputation.
Both men knew it would take time and a great deal of effort, but they were also sure the wounds left by Hideo Nomura’s vicious deceptions would heal. A few isolated fanatics might cling to their belief in America’s guilt, but most would accept the truth—swayed by the calm conviction and powerful presence of the last surviving founder of the Lazarus Movement and by the release of documents captured inside Nomura’s secret Azores labs. The Movement itself was already crumbling, rocked by the first revelations of its leader’s lies and murderous plans. Whatever survived would only do so by returning to Jinjiro’s original vision of a force for peaceful change and environmental reform.
Castilla felt himself beginning to relax for the first time in weeks. America and the whole world had had an incredibly narrow escape. He sighed and saw Fred Klein looking at him.
“It’s over, Sam,” the other man told him quietly.
Castilla nodded. “I know.” He raised his glass. “To Colonel Smith and the others.”
“To them all,” Klein echoed, raising his own glass. “Slainte.”
The Mall, Washington, D.C.
A crisp, rain-washed autumn breeze rustled through the leaves still clinging to the trees lining the Mall. Sunlight slanted through branches, dappling the grass with moving patterns of red- and gold-tinged shadows.
Jon Smith walked through the shadows toward a woman standing pensively near a bench. Her short golden hair gleamed in the afternoon light. Despite the thick cast encasing her left arm and shoulder, she still appeared slender and graceful.
“Waiting for me?” he called softly.
Randi Russell turned toward him. A slight smile creased her lips. “If you’re the guy who left a message on my answering machine suggesting dinner, I guess so,” she said tartly. “Otherwise, I’ll be eating alone.”
Smith grinned. Some things would never change. “How’s the arm?” he asked.
“Not bad,” she told him. “The doctors tell me this hunk of plaster can come off in a few more weeks. Once that’s done, and the collarbone heals, a little more rehab should clear me for field duty. Frankly, I can’t wait. I’m not cut out for sitting behind a desk.”
He nodded. “Are things at Langley still in a mess?”
Randi shrugged carefully. “The situation seems to be calming down. The files our people snagged in the Azores have pretty well nailed everyone involved in TOCSIN. You heard that Hanson is resigning?”
Smith nodded again. The director of the CIA had not been directly involved in Burke and Pierson’s illegal operation. But no one could doubt that his failures of judgment and his willingness to turn a blind eye were partly responsible. David Hanson’s resignation “for personal reasons” was purely a face-saving alternative to being fired.
“Have you heard anything from Peter?” Randi asked in turn.
“I had a call from him last week,” Smith told her. “He’s back in retirement at his place in the Sierras. For good this time, he claims.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you believe him?”
He laughed. “Not really. I can’t imagine Peter Howell sitting idle on his front porch for very long.”
She looked across at Jon through slightly narrowed eyes. “What about you? Still playing spook for the Joint Chiefs? Or was it Army Intelligence this time?”
“I’m back at Fort Detrick, in my old post at USAMRIID,” Smith told her.
“Back to the infectious diseases grind?” Randi asked.
He shook his head. “Not exactly. We’re developing a program to monitor potentially hazardous nanotech R&D around the world.”
She stared at him.
“We stopped Nomura,” Smith told her quietly. “But now the genie’s out of the bottle. Someone else out there may try something similar—or equally destructive—someday.”
Randi shivered. “I’d hate to imagine that.”
He nodded somberly. “At least this time we know what to look for. Manufacturing biologically active nanodevices requires biochemical substances in large quantities—and those are substances we can track.”
She sighed. “Maybe we should just do what the Lazarus Movement wanted in the first place. Ban nanotech completely.”
Smith shook his head. “And lose out on all the potential benefits? Like curing cancer? Or wiping out pollution?” He shrugged. “It’s like any other advanced technology, Randi. Nothing more. How we use it—for good or ill—is up to us.”
“Now there’s the scientist in you talking,” she said drily.
“It’s what I am,” Smith said quietly. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“Right,” Randi replied with a wry grin. She relented. “Okay, Dr. Smith, you promised me dinner. Are you going to honor your promise?”
He sketched a bow and offered her his arm. “Never let it be said that I’m not a man of my word, Ms. Russell. Dinner is on me.”
Together, Jon and Randi turned and walked back toward his waiting car. Above them, the last clouds were drifting away, leaving behind a clear blue sky.
Robert Ludlum, Robert Ludlum's the Lazarus Vendetta
(Series: Covert-One # 5)
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