Thorn left Ling where he lay. Feeling the full effect of the last few days, he strode straight for the house, intent to finish things before the adrenaline within subsided, the sum total of his injuries caught up with him. Streaked with blood and soil he walked forward, carrying the empty .44 in his hand. As a gun it was now no longer useful, but as a bludgeon it still carried a great deal of value.
For several moments Nio stood and watched him walk away before snapping to life and jogging after him. He caught up just shy of the front steps and whispered, “Where the hell is everybody?”
“I don’t think there is anybody else,” Thorn said without glancing over. “I’m guessing they figured Ling was protection enough.”
Nio offered a half smile at the mention of Ling, following Thorn up the front steps.
“Ling was right, you know,” Nio said. “I didn’t think you’d shoot him. I took you for the fight-it-out-to-the-death sort.”
Thorn moved to the far side of the stairwell, pausing as he looked through the front windows lining the porch. Many of the lights were on inside the house, though nobody seemed to be moving about. “Just win. That’s all that matters.”
Moving back to the front door, Thorn gave a quick glance over the hinges for signs of traps before trying the handle.
To his surprise, it turned easily in his hand.
“They must not have planned on anybody making it this far,” Nio muttered.
“Or they figured if someone did, what good would a deadbolt do?” Thorn replied, raising the .44 and easing sideways through the door.
His feet sank down into a plush rug lying atop hardwood flooring, an elegant staircase rising upward. Over two dozen stairs in height, it went to the second floor before stretching wide to either side
“Where to?” Nio whispered.
Thorn surveyed the foyer. “The man’s in a wheelchair, I’m guessing he didn’t go up.”
The night before his office had been on the second floor, though that was at a primary residence that had been carefully cultivated to serve as a lair. If the guards Turner had interrogated earlier were to be believed, this home was a recent acquisition, free from the personal touches someone like Gold would require.
“Let’s start to the right,” Thorn said. “Closer to the garage for a quick escape.”
Leaving the foyer behind, they stepped into a wide hallway with dark wood floors and crown molded ceilings. High-backed chairs and expensive tables were positioned along either side, landscape paintings hanging from the walls.
Every few feet, the wall was punctuated by a heavy oak door, all of them standing open with light streaming out into the hallway. One at a time they made their way through them, Thorn entering with his empty weapon, Nio standing at the doorway to cover the rear.
This pattern continued through over a half dozen rooms before encountering two consecutive doors standing closed. Light threw itself out from beneath them both, though no sound could be heard from within.
Thorn stood back and examined them for a moment, his rear pressed against the opposite wall. “One room, two doors.”
“Yeah,” Nio said, his voice low as he ran his tongue over dry lips.
“Trade me guns,” Thorn said, extending the handle of his weapon by his side. Nio took it and thrust the Glock into his hand, Thorn never once looking over.
Out of pure habit, Thorn checked the slide and made sure the safety was off, his hands operating without visual assistance. Staring at the heavy wooden door, he didn’t trust that a kick would be enough to get him inside, most likely only leaving him with further injury.
The thought of lowering his shoulder and slamming his broken ribs into it didn’t seem appealing, though he had no further options.
Stepping forward into the middle of the hall, he bounced on the balls of his feet, ready to hurtle himself forward.
“It’s open. Come on in.”
The voice reverberated through the hallway, sounding mechanized and automated through the intercom system. Dropping flat onto his feet, Thorn cast his gaze up toward the ceiling. In the crown molding along the hallway, barely perceptible, were a series of tiny black circles.
“Fiber-optic cameras,” Thorn said. “He’s been watching us the whole time.”
Behind him he could hear Nio muttering as Thorn stepped forward and opened the door, the Glock extended in front of him. One inch at a time he moved in, clearing the space behind the door and making sure he wasn’t stepping into a trap before proceeding.
The room was dominated by a large wooden table, electronics of all assortments arranged atop it. On the far two walls were banks of monitors, one covered with newscasts, the other featuring camera feeds encompassing the grounds, all muted into silence.
In the center of the space sat a single man in a wheelchair bearing a strong resemblance to Yuri Chekov. Thick white hair covered his head and he was dressed in a blue suit with a gray and blue tie, a matching blanket covering the lower half of his body.
“So you’re the young man that’s been giving me fits?”
Thorn glanced around the room, the old man very much alone and unarmed. He lowered the Glock and said, “And you must be Gold.”
Surprise flickered behind Gold’s eyes, an indiscernible look crossing his face. “You have no idea what you’ve stumbled onto here.”
Nio entered the room and took up a post just inside the door, though Gold didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence.
Thorn moved to his left and glanced out the window before returning his gaze to Gold. “Kind of light on security tonight, aren’t you?”
“I had Ling,” Gold said matter-of-factly. “I never thought I’d need any more protection than that. Turns out I was wrong.”
”Have a good view?” Nio asked
Gold nodded, his attention still on Thorn. “I saw what happened. Have to admit, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Only for those of you that deserve to die,” Thorn said, putting his back to the wall and staring at Gold.
“I deserve to die?” Gold asked. “That’s mighty strong. You don’t even know me.”
Drawing in a deep breath through his nose, Thorn recalled everything he’d learned in the preceding days. “Bern Gold. Reclusive billionaire with property holdings in Boston, Cape Cod, and who knows how many other places around the world. Savvy, ruthless business man with a bottom line that would make most small countries salivate.”
“Very impressive,” Gold conceded. “Though, in fact, you know nothing at all.”
“Bern Gold,” Thorn repeated. “AKA Anton Chekov, son of Russian diplomat Dmitri Chekov, disappeared in Germany in 1942. Presumed dead by all, you were captured by the German SS and stashed away in Kaiserwald, ugly stepsister to the real concentration camps of the war.”
Any hint of mirth fled from Gold’s face as he threw back the blanket covering his lowering half. Beneath it, he had not bothered with the slacks to match his suit, a pair of gnarled and shriveled legs covered only by gym shorts visible. “Does this look like the work of an ugly stepsister?”
Thorn shook his head. “Looks like the kind of thing that would turn a man angry and bitter.”
Gold swallowed hard and raised his hand to his mouth. He removed a porcelain crown, leaving a broken and stained front tooth behind, a gap between it and its neighbor visible. “Every single day I look at this tooth and it reminds me of the moment my life changed forever. It reminds me of the death of the only girl I would ever love and of the monstrosities that were done to me.”
“The only monstrosity I see here is your plan to murder millions of innocent people because you’re still carrying a grudge.”
Anger twisted Gold’s face for a full moment before slowly fading away, a small smile replacing it. He reached onto the table behind him and grabbed a small silver box, placing it atop his lap. “Do you know what this is?”
“One of your homemade Vaporizers.”
The old man nodded. “And do you know what is behind me?”
/>
“Should I?”
“You should. Boston was only to be the first step. In less than a minute, I am going to press a button that will ignite thousands of these all over the world.”
“And you think we’re just going to stand here and let that happen?” Thorn asked.
“Frankly, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it.”
Thorn opened his mouth to respond, but before any words escaped, a tall man in a Hawaiian shirt stepped from behind the bank of monitors with a shotgun at his hip. Without pause, he raised it to his shoulder and fired.
The sound of the shot was deafening in the tiny room as the blast caught Nio square in the chest, launching him into Thorn. The force knocked Thorn to his stomach, sending the Glock clattering across the floor.
“Nio!” Thorn yelled, his ears ringing as he scrambled toward the gun.
“I told you you couldn’t stop me,” Gold taunted, his wheelchair creaking as he turned to face forward, beginning to peck away at his controls.
The man in the floral shirt racked the gun and circled around the enormous table, raising it back to his shoulder. He first leveled it on Nio, who lay motionless on the floor, a pool of blood expanding around him.
Thinking better of it, he turned his attention to Thorn.
A second blast tore through the room, chewing up a swath of floor less than two feet from Thorn as he grabbed up the Glock and rolled to the other side of the table.
As he moved, he could feel the heat rising from the blast, particles of wood slapping against his legs.
The man walked around the opposite side of the table, again working the heavy slide of the shotgun. Lying flat on his side, Thorn peered beneath the table, making out the undercarriage of Gold’s wheelchair. Holding the gun two inches above the floor, he counted off seconds in his head, listening to footsteps, waiting for the light between the two wheels to disappear.
The moment it blinked out Thorn squeezed the trigger, the bullet ripping into the man’s ankle, a cry of pain sounding out. A moment later his heavy frame crashed to the floor, Thorn putting three more rounds into him, each one slamming into center mass.
Scrambling to all fours, he crawled around the side of the table and came up on a knee, holding the Glock out in front of him. He peered around the corner and saw the man lying on the floor, rings of blood staining his Hawaiian shirt.
The shotgun lay beside him as he stared with open eyes at the ceiling.
Keeping the gun poised in front of him, Thorn rose and stared at Gold. “Turn the transmitter off.”
Gold stared back at him. “So you killed my old friend Jasper. Do you really think that’s enough to make me have a sudden change of heart?”
Thorn drew the hammer back on the gun. “Turn it off now.”
“Kill me,” Gold said. “This project is far more important than I alone could ever be.”
Shifting at the waist, Thorn rotated toward the control panel and fired the remainder of his clip. Sparks flew as chunks of metal controls spewed backwards.
To his surprise, the system kept running. Only the clicking sound of a firing pin striking air greeted his ears.
Gold broke into a throaty laugh, throwing his head back in bitter amusement. “See, boy, this is destiny. It is going to happen whether you want it to or not.”
Thorn stared from the gun to Gold. “Those things can’t detonate without the transmitter telling them to.”
“Right you are,” Gold said, humor still edging his voice.
Pushing off his back foot, Thorn rushed forward and grabbed the side of Gold’s wheelchair, jerking it upward, dumping the man to the ground. Lifting the chair high above his head, he slammed it down onto the control panel one time after another.
All amusement fled from Gold as he watched in horror, screaming for Thorn to stop.
Paying him no mind, Thorn pounded away, going until both the electronics and the wheelchair were nothing but twisted heaps of metal.
By the time he was done he could barely breath, panting as he turned to face Gold.
Lying on the floor, the man had propped himself up on one hand, the other outstretched as anguish filled his face. “Why? Why when I was so close?”
Thorn didn’t bother to respond. He left the pathetic old man in a crumpled ball on the floor and shifted his attention to Nio, pulling his phone from his pocket as he dropped to a knee.
Already Nio’s eyes were shut, blood seeping from the gaping wound in his chest. A circle the size of a basketball had ballooned on the floor behind him, barely a hint of a pulse present.
“Backup is six minutes out and closing,” Ingram said, snapping the line up on the first ring.
“We’ve got a civilian down,” Thorn said. “Send a life flight. Now.”
Thorn ended the call without waiting for a response. Again he took stock of Nio before him, guilt and rage both building within.
It would still be several minutes at best before help arrived, minutes that his friend didn’t have.
Malevolence on his face, Thorn turned to look at Gold, the old man still fighting to drag himself across the floor. He watched the feeble effort for several moments, feeling the wrath grow inside him, before pushing himself to his feet and walking across to the rubble of the control panel.
“What?” Gold asked from the floor, watching him move. “What else can you possibly destroy now?”
Shoving aside the twisted remains of the wheelchair and the broken circuitry of the unit, Thorn found what he was looking for.
At the bottom of the mess, dented but not destroyed, was the Vaporizer.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing with that?” Gold asked. “You just destroyed my detonator, you idiot!”
Thorn ignored him, sliding the knife from his back pocket and using it to wrench the top of the box free. Removing the panel behind the transmitter, he sliced through the plastic casing of the two input wires and twisted them around one another.
The red light shifted to green atop the Vaporizer as a low humming filled the room. A soft rumbling could be heard in the base of the box as Thorn set it in the middle of the table, far from the outstretched reach of Gold.
“You can’t do this!” Gold yelled. “You can’t do this to me!”
Dropping to a knee, Thorn placed a hand behind Nio’s neck and knees and lifted him from the floor. A small wheeze slid from Nio as Thorn hefted him up, already heading for the door.
Behind him on the floor he left Gold, secure in the knowledge that Liberation Day was successful in taking at least one victim.
Chapter Sixty-Five