Vital Force Read Free Page B

smoke.
    â€œWhat do you mean they shot it down. With what?”
    â€œThey say it was laser. Zap! One shot. Star Wars shit.”
    Jake had read about the Airborne Laser program, but he had no idea they had become operational. “But why?”
    Yuri shrugged his shoulders. “Because they could. It’s one thing to test on your missiles, but to shoot down someone else’s missile-” His voice trailed off as he stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk.
    Jake imagined the Russian government was hot right now, with that American revelation. Damn. What balls that took.
    â€œOur world is over, Jake. Passed us by. Shit. Laser beams shooting missiles out of the sky. What’s the use?”
    He had a good point, and maybe that was it. Maybe the Americans had to do it this way.
    â€œThere was no other way,” Jake said. “You tell someone you can shoot down their nuclear missiles, maybe they believe you, maybe they don’t. But you shoot down the most sophisticated missile in their arsenal, and they gotta believe you can do it again and again. The race is over.”
    â€œNo shit.” Yuri thought for a moment, his eyes seemingly transfixed on something behind Jake, and then returning directly to peer at the brown in the American’s eyes. “I need to go. Your friends in the Air Force just made me a dinosaur.”
    â€œWhat will you do, Yuri?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe Siberia. Go fishing. You come back, Jake. I have a dacha on a lake near here. We go fishing together.” The Russian finally smiled. “Thank you for coming here.”
    Jake helped him into a cab and patted the top as the car drove off. As he walked down the cobblestone in the cold darkness, he couldn’t help but think of the missile test earlier in the day. A laser. Man, the world was changing, he thought. Would it make the thousands of ICBMs in both the Russian and U.S. arsenals obsolete? More than likely. It was too much for him to think about with all the alcohol.
    â—
    The dark Volkswagen sedan pulled away from the curb, its lights off, as it crept along the road a block and a half behind the man on the sidewalk.
    In three blocks, the man stumbled up into the lobby of the Shevchenko Hotel, and the car pulled over to the side of the road.
    Inside the car, the bald driver tapped his chopsticks lightly against the steering wheel. The Asian woman, her eyes having a hard time staying awake, tried her best to block out the tap tap tapping. If she could find a way out of this, away from this crazy man, she would. But was she really that different from him? Probably not. Not as annoying, she knew that much. Just finish the task at hand, she thought, and then back to America.

3
    There was no way for Jake to tell how long he had been sleeping before it happened. In the darkness of the hotel room, the shades pulled tight against the city lights, his first recollection of anything out of the ordinary came in the form of a slight sound. A clicking noise. But strange hotels always had strange noises, so he closed his eyes again and tried his best to stop the pain in the back of his skull from the vodka.
    Next came a struggle, and his spinning mind reeled about as he lashed against the arms and legs that enveloped him. What was that smell? He knew then that he was in trouble.
    â—
    When he woke again, Jake was cold and shivering in only his underwear and a T-shirt, and obviously in a cramped space. His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. No way, Jake knew. The odor was unmistakable. Rubber, dirt, oily rags. A car trunk. A car with bad shocks, he thought, as a sudden jerk bounced him up and then back onto the hard surface.
    His arms were strapped to his back and something was stretched around his mouth to his neck.
    He tried to shift and stretch his legs, but they had run a line from his neck to his hands and then on to his ankles, which were also lashed and wrapped back toward his bound wrists.