Razer

Part Two

Jeff gritted his teeth, felt the muscle behind his eye twitch. 'I don't care what it takes, Corporal. You get me Strategic Air Command on the line, now!'

He kept the phone close to his ear, his eyes glued to the Thunderbird Five feed that showed where the transponder of Tracy 2 had passed over the border to Berezhnia and disappeared into the Blind Zone. Jeff glanced up, caught the look in Gordon's eyes.

Shit.

He returned his attention to Tracy 2's last known fix. Over the connection he heard a series of clicks as his call was transferred several levels through the Pentagon.

I swear, Jeff thought as his blood pressure climbed its way towards the roof, if I hear that whiney Corporal's voice on the line one more time, I am going to explode!

Scott slid from the cockpit, landed sure-footed on the surface of the ice-hardened field.

'I demand,' he said as Brains landed on the packed earth beside him, 'to know under what authority you have diverted a civilian aircraft into military airspace.'

The was no response from the heavily-suited pilots. No change in posture. No indication that Scott's words had been heard at all.

'I repeat,' he said, taking a step towards the nearest pilot, eyes fixed firmly on the reflective visor of the battered helmet, 'under what authority – '

'Stop.'

Scott froze at the word, risked a glance back at Brains.

'Sit.'

'Sit?' Scott returned his gaze to the visor, saw only his own face reflected there.

'Sit!' the order came again, the accent thick.

Scott shook his head. 'I don't know what you mean – Christ!' The second pilot circled around behind him, aimed the sole of his boot at the back of Scott's thigh and brought him crashing to his knees on the frozen earth.

'Sit,' repeated the officer, aiming his weapon towards Brains.

Brains lowered himself carefully to his knees as the second pilot walked back around to face them. The pilot slipped a hand into his flight suit, took out a mobile device and snapped their photographs, one by one.

'Scott,' Brains said.

'I know.' Scott watched as the pilot busied himself transmitting the images.

The minute those photographs were received, they were dead men.

'I understand, General, but my son has been unlawfully diverted from civilian airspace into a military zone in an act of what can only be termed aggression, and – '

'What do you want us to do, Mr Tracy?' It was the third time General Martin Foster had asked this question.

Jeff removed his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 'Let me explain again, General.'

'No. Let me explain, one more time. We have been in contact with the Russian Air Transport Authority and there is no record of your son or his aircraft ever having been in Russia – '

'Not true. Flight plans were logged and – '

' – and there are no records with the Air Transport Authority of any such flight plans, nor of a mayday being transmitted or received.'

'General.' Jeff fought to keep his voice level. 'Despite what the authorities are telling you, my son, my chief research associate and my damned aircraft have disappeared into Berezhni territory, and I want to know what you are going to do about it!'

'Sir. You are asking me to end a hard-won ceasefire to find one man.' Foster made no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice.

'Two men, General,' Jeff reminded. 'United States citizens. One of whom happens to be my son.'

'Mr Tracy.' The general paused, made sure that Jeff was paying careful attention. 'I understand how distressing this must be for you, but in the absence of anything more concrete, the Government is not in a position to assist you at this time.'

'I see. Is that your final word?'

'It is.'

Jeff lowered his eyes, listened as Foster rustled paper on the other end of the line.

'Goodbye, General.'

'Tracy, listen,' Foster added as Jeff leant in to cut the connection. 'We'll contact you if – '

Scott knelt on the packed earth, hands resting uncomfortably on his head. His shoulders had cramped twenty minutes ago, the blood long since drained from his frozen hands and fingers. He shifted on his knees as mud and water wicked its way into his jeans, the wind from the tundra lifting the shirt from his body and running ice-cold fingers over his exposed skin.

He looked sideways, saw that Brains' lips had turned blue. 'Brains,' he hissed, his own lips cold and numb.

'Stop.' One of the pilots took a threatening step towards him.

Scott turned back and stared into the reflective visor. 'Look,' he said with all the authority he could muster, despite the tremor that the wind raked intermittently through his body. 'How long is this going to go on?' He shifted again on his knees, made as if to stand.

'Stop.' A weapon aimed towards his head and Scott sank back onto the freezing earth. He blinked in the wind, cocked his head as the drumbeat hum of rotors sounded on the air. Scott squinted into the glare, eyes drawn to the black speck of a helicarrier as it streaked directly towards them.

'What did he say?' Gordon was the first to break the silence.

Jeff stared unseeing at the paperwork piled on his desk. The Berezhni conflict had been going on for so long that the world barely remembered what it was about. Old news that rarely hit the vidcasts anymore, despite the fact that lives were being lost on the borderzones daily, and that billions of dollars better spent elsewhere were still being thrown into a pointless offensive. And now here the war was, right in his face.

Thrown right into Jeff Tracy's lap.

'Father?'

Jeff slammed his hands to the desk and wiped every item from its surface in one fell swoop. Paperwork crumpled to the parquetry, pens shot spinning across the floor, a half-empty cup exploded into shards of coffee-stained ceramic.

Gordon calmly dodged the splintering cup and took a step towards the desk. 'Dad. What did the General say?'

Jeff raised his head, steadied his breathing, tamped his anger down, hard. 'He said that Berezhnia and Russia have been observing a ceasefire for the last eight months and that any kind of action on behalf of the United States would be considered an act of war.'

'The government doesn't consider the kidnap of United States citizens to be an act of war?' Virgil's voice rose, his temper ignited by frustration. And fear.

'He says there's no evidence Scott and Brains have been unlawfully diverted, or that they have passed over the border, or that they were even in Russia to begin with.'

One by one Jeff met the eyes of his sons. He inhaled a steadying breath, delivered the most distressing element of his conversation with Foster. 'The General suggested that if we were certain they had been in the area, that we concentrate our efforts on looking for wreckage on the Russian side of the border.'

'You're joking.'

Jeff shook his head.

'They can't just leave it like that.' Gordon stepped closer to his father, shards of ceramic splintering beneath his feet.

'This was a planned attack.' Jeff looked down at the contents of his desk, spilled across the floor. 'The Berezhnis knew what exactly what they were doing. All we can do now is wait for their demands.'

'We can't just wait to hear.' Virgil looked ready to snap. He stepped into the morass of paperwork, uncaring of the contracts that crushed beneath his feet, and slammed his hands down hard on the bare timber of Jeff's desk. 'We have to do something. Anything!'

Jeff flinched as Virgil's hands thumped against the woodwork, looked up and met his son's eyes. 'Let me try a couple more calls.'

The helicarrier was huge. Third generation, double rotors backed up by turbine engines that screamed above the wind, the sound piercing Scott's brain and making him duck, instinctively, as the giant machine touched down metres away from them. The downdraft tore through the frozen grass, whipped through his shirt and his hair, lifted debris from the cracks in the cold ground and hurtled it into his face. Scott observed through slitted eyes as a half-dozen soldiers spilled from the carrier doors, hunched into position beneath the spinning rotors and crabwalked carefully towards them. Weapons aimed. Weapons locked.

'Scott…' Brains said, the word torn away on the ice-cold wind.

Scott glanced at Brains, then back at the helicarrier as an officer exited the vehicle, jumping lightly from the platform onto the hard-packed earth, head turned down to avoid the backwash from the still-turning rotors. The officer moved easily, deliberately, leisurely followed the soldiers towards them, waited patiently as Scott and Brains were hoisted to their feet. Only then, when Scott and Brains stood wavering in the wind, with the muscles burning in their thighs and shoulders and their nerves screaming with the effort of remaining upright after so long cramped down on the hard cold ground, did the officer lift his head, revealed a moustachioed face, heavy features, skin that hadn't seen the sun for a very long time.

'Let me introduce myself.' The moustachioed man shoved his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, pulled the garment close around him as his boots dug into the icy ground. 'I am General Goran Tereshchenko.'

'Tereshchenko?' Scott stared, eyes searching the big man's face.'You're supposed to be – '

Tereshchenko's lips twitched as a soldier stepped forward and cracked Scott in the face with the butt of his machine gun, sent him reeling backwards, stumbling, as another blow caught him from behind and collapsed him onto the frozen earth.

'Well, well,' said Tereshchenko when the commotion had subsided. 'The mad scientist and the billionaire's son.' He looked down to where Scott lay sprawled on the ground. 'An interesting, and somewhat unexpected, combination.'

Brains followed Tereshchenko's gaze. 'W-what have you done?' he asked, hoped his stutter didn't betray his terror.

Tereshchenko shrugged. 'His welfare is not important,' he replied in thickly accented English. 'Not nearly as important as yours.'

'I… I-I…' Brains swallowed thickly. Looked up and met Tereshchenko's unwavering gaze. 'I-I'm not who you think I a-am.'

'We shall see.' Tereshchenko raised a finger into the air.

Immediately a soldier clamped Brains' head between two huge, hot hands, while a second operative manhandled his left eye painfully open. A laser beam hit his eye, streamed a blue line across the surface of his retina. For a moment Brains was blinded, his whole world bathed ice-cold in blue. He flinched at the beam, jerked his head back against the ham-fists that held it steady. 'I-I'm not,' he repeated futilely as the scanner fell away and the soldier presented the readout for the General's scrutiny.

'Hmm.' Tereshchenko studied the display. 'Unless you are in the possession of a black market retina, then you are indeed who I think you are. The infamous Gary Ross. Scientific prodigy. Secret weapon of the United States Government. Developer of Project Razer.'

Tereshchenko stepped closer and stroked his moustache thoughtfully. 'Tell me, Dr Ross, where have you been hiding? Don't you know the entire world has been looking for you? And most especially,' he added dangerously, 'for Project Razer?'