“I don’t know,” said Billy. “They cut into the game.”

Ruggierio glanced at the TV. On the screen was a special report from Boston harbor.

“Turn it up,” he said as he stepped closer to the TV. An aerial view of the harbor showed a swarm of law enforcement boats, their red and blue lights bright.

“… while it’s difficult to see, the area they seem to be focusing in on is Revere, just across the water from the city of Boston. Again, a terror plot is apparently being investigated on this, the evening before the July Fourth weekend…”

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

Ruggierio reached for the phone and dialed 911.

95

EVOLUTION TOWER

MOSCOW

The elevator came suddenly into the open air, more than thirty floors in the sky. The wind ripped across the steel heights, stinging Malnikov with driving horizontal rain. The cage groaned loudly as it climbed.

Malnikov looked down through the yellow grate. Moscow was a different city, a darker city, dense with whole pockets of black, and lights diffused by rain.

Malnikov registered a puddle of crimson at the edge of the cage. Blood from Cloud, now washing away as rain hit it from above.

The sound of gunshot cut through the air, joined by the loud clang of the slug striking steel near his head. Malnikov ducked just as another bullet was fired, then felt his shoulder being kicked hard and back. He let himself fall to the floor as more bullets hit the rising cage.

A floor above, the elevator came to a loud stop.

Malnikov looked at his shoulder. Blood oozed through a hole in his jacket.

He crawled to the edge of the cage, trying to peer down to the floor below. But just as his head came to the edge, another shot rang out. It hit the steel of the elevator floor. A small dent appeared just beneath his chin.

“Did that hurt, Alexei?” yelled Cloud.

Malnikov lay on his back, staring up at the black and gray clouds. His breathing was becoming difficult, as if he’d just run sprints. He unzipped his coat and pulled it away from his shoulder. Blood was everywhere. His first impression—that the bullet was in his shoulder—was wrong. A black hole sat just a few inches above his nipple. With every labored breath, a fresh wave of blood gushed out.

“I need the elevator,” said Cloud. “Do you mind bleeding to death somewhere else?”

Still on his back, Malnikov reached up and lowered the latch to the cage door. He kicked the door open. Slowly, with a painful moan, he turned over onto his side and climbed to his knees against the back wall of the cage. He got into a crouching position, then stuck the muzzle of the gun to the edge of the cage and aimed down at where the shots had come from. Malnikov fired as fast as his finger could flex, then charged through the open door of the cage.

*   *   *

Dewey moved back to the cabin, cutting to the weapons rack. He took out a pair of night optics and pulled them down over his eyes, then flipped them on. He put on a weapons vest, then grabbed a body harness and quickly put it on. He scanned the row of firearms, choosing a Desert Eagle .50AE and sticking it in the vest holster atop his left chest. Then he grabbed a KSVK 12.7 anti-materiél sniper rifle.

Another gust of wind slammed the chopper, kicking it left and down.

Stihl turned from the cockpit.

“We’re coming in hot,” he said. “Strap in.”

Dewey hooked himself to the harness rail in the middle of the cabin.

He stepped to the cockpit, the cord automatically releasing line as he moved. He looked out the front window. In the distance, Evolution Tower looked like a pair of steel ribbons spiking into the sky. The unfinished floors made the top appear as if it were disintegrating.

“Give me a perimeter,” said Dewey. “Let’s see what we can see before we get in there. It’d be nice if we could surprise that little bastard.”

Calmly, Stihl reached to the right side of his helmet, feeling blindly for a small button, then pressing it as, directly in front of him, through the rain-splattered helicopter windshield, the unfinished, wildly curving steel spires of Evolution Tower arose through the mist in sporadic halogen yellow.

After the button was pressed, a black, specially designed glass visor slid down from the top of his helmet and covered his eyes. The visual became like a video game; the building snapped into a three-dimensional digital grid. Isobars of green, red, and yellow against black, in geometric patterns, filled the screen.

Stihl reached to his left, grabbing what looked like a glove. He pulled it on, then repeated the gesture with his other hand. The gloves suddenly went from being black to white, completely lit up, as if his hands were covered in some sort of glow-in-the-dark material. Stihl then began what looked like he was gesturing to himself, as the controls of the chopper became part of an advanced exoskeletal driving and weapons computer controlled by his hand movements, and the chopper responded, cutting abruptly left into the chasm between the unfinished skyscraper and a neighboring seventy-three-story office tower.

Stihl saw glimmers of heat on a high floor. He made an almost imperceptible movement with his left pinkie. The digital camera zoomed close, enlarging the green holographs. Another image flashed in the upper right part of Stihl’s visor. Two floors were visible, the separating concrete slashing horizontal. On the higher floor, a man was crouched inside the elevator cage. On the lower floor, another man was limping toward a set of stairs near the side of the building. He was clutching a weapon, trained at the floor above as he climbed the stairs.

Stihl then saw red flashes of gunfire coming from the elevator, aimed at the floor below.

He flicked his finger again, engaging the cabin speaker system.

“We have a firefight,” he said. “Better get up here.”

Stihl flicked his thumb, and the windshield of the chopper abruptly transformed into the same digital screen he was seeing inside his helmet, like a large television screen. The rain was gone. The two figures looked like ghosts against a black backdrop.

Dewey moved to Stihl’s right, studying the scene.

“Can you get a closer shot?” asked Dewey.

They watched as the gunman in the elevator kicked open the side of the cabin, then charged into the blackness, just as, at the other side of the same floor, another man climbed slowly up the stairs.

“Who’s who?” asked Dewey.

“I don’t know.”

The screen showed the man running across the empty floor, sprinting, his path leading directly toward the man now climbing the stairs.

“That’s Alexei,” said Stihl.

“Which one?”

“The one running,” said Stihl. “He’s running right into him. He’s going to get killed.”

“Take me in.”

“I’m going to level the guy on the stairs,” said Stihl, suddenly engaging the weapons command.

“No, you’re not,” said Dewey. “Take me in.”

Dewey stepped back into the cabin.

“He’s going to die if I don’t—”

Stihl’s words were abruptly cut off as, inside his visor—and across the front screen—a blinding white light hit the left side of the view. He knew, in his bones, what it was.

“Hold on!” he screamed.

A ferocious torrent of wind shear, funneled like a tornado up into the valley between the skyscrapers, slammed like a wall of steel into the helicopter. They were kicked back and to the right, so hard that Stihl’s helmet went flying from his head, struck the ceiling, and tumbled to the floor.

The chopper was jacked instantly sideways, its rotors vertical, as Stihl fought—using the exoskeletal gloves—to right them before they smashed into the building.

96

LONG ISLAND SOUND

OFF THE COAST OF STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

Faqir steered a mile offshore, keeping the lights of the coastline in view, tiny yellow and white lights, from homes along the shore, a typical American evening.