Callsign: Queen - Book I (A Zelda Baker - Chess Team Novella) Read online

  Armina stared, mesmerized by its slow rotation, wondering if there could be any natural explanation. She racked her brain, but nothing came to mind. Wind could not move the heavy machinery, and there was little breeze tonight. It was surreal. No lights, no music. Just the slow creak of the dead attraction, come to life.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Oleg’s voice trembled and he quaked. “I want to go home.”

  “This is why we are here.” Alexei had recovered from his moment of shock and was back in character. “Something is happening in this place, and we are going to find out what it is.” Beckoning with theatrical aplomb, he signaled for the others to follow him as he moved closer to the old amusement park and its resurrected feature attraction.

  Armina supposed she should at least be a little frightened, but by returning her eye to the viewfinder, she slipped back in to her comfort zone. The camera created a subconscious distance between her and her subject. It was as if she was in a richly textured virtual world where she could experience the thrill of danger while remaining insulated from harm. Goose flesh rose on the back of her neck as she imagined the comments this video would receive once posted online. They were going to be celebrities!

  “The amusement park has been the source of many stories…AAAH!” Alexei’s discourse ended in a scream of terror as someone or something reached out of a nearby doorway and yanked him inside. They heard him cry out once again, a clipped sound that was immediately muffled.

  And then silence.

  A dark stain appeared in the crotch of Oleg’s pants, and he stood frozen in the middle of the street. His lips moved, but he could form no words. Armina took two steps toward the doorway where Alexei had vanished, but the fear her camera had kept at bay now threatened to overwhelm her, and she backed away, slowly at first, then faster.

  “Oleg, we have to go get help.” She sounded like a frightened child, and at this moment, she was. “You’ve got to come with me. We have to get out of here now!” Oleg didn’t move. She knew she should go back, take him by the arm, and drag him along with her, but her feet would not listen to her brain, and they kept back-pedaling, taking her farther and farther away from Oleg, and from Alexei, if he was still alive.

  She suddenly realized she was still looking through her camera. Even the shock of Alexei’s sudden disappearance had not been sufficient to make her stop recording. What was wrong with her? There was no time to contemplate the question, because a dark form had just appeared from the shadow of the Ferris wheel and was headed toward Oleg with blinding speed.

  She wanted to shout a warning. Even a scream would remind her immobilized body that she was still alive, still capable of movement, but as the figure came closer to Oleg, and she got her first good look at it, she could do nothing but stare in mute disbelief.

  Oleg, for his part, finally overcame his paralysis, uttering a strangled cry and raising his hands in a futile attempt at self-defense. The thing, whatever it was, smashed him to the ground, clawing, biting and snarling with rage.

  It was only when the monster ripped out Oleg’s throat that Armina managed to lower her camera and run.

  Chapter 2

  The skies over Kiev, Ukraine

  Queen answered her sat phone on the first ring without bothering to check the identity of the caller. She already knew who was on the other end of the line. “I suppose I’m about to learn why my flight has been diverted.”

  The plan had been for her to land in Siberia where she would begin her search for Rook. Queen tensed as she thought about Rook, who’d gone missing in Siberia on his last mission. She’d become close to him, closer than a teammate should, but the big lug had worked his way past her defenses and now she found herself unable to focus on much beyond locating him. If she found him alive, he’d have to answer for his silence. If she found him dead...she’d get his body home and bury him properly. His parents and sisters deserved as much. “The last time I checked, the Ukraine was not on the itinerary.”

  “Sorry Queen,” Deep Blue replied. “If there was any other way…” A former Army Ranger and United States President, Duncan had resigned his office, but continued to serve as Deep Blue, the guiding force behind Chess Team, a Black Ops Delta squad culled from the ranks of the Joint Special Operations command of the United States military. The team was tasked with the defense of the nation and even the world, against the kinds of threats that most military leaders would refuse to believe even existed. Their call signs were taken from chess: Their leader, Jack Sigler, was “King.” Erik Somers, a mountain of a man, was “Bishop.” Shin Dae-Jung was “Knight,” while Stan Tremblay answered to “Rook.”

  Rook… She felt a pinch in the back of her throat at the thought of him missing in action, possibly dead, in Siberia. She forced down the brief flicker of emotion with a shake of her head.

  “I know, boss. I know.” She trusted Deep Blue implicitly and while she didn’t appreciate the change in plans, if the team’s resident strategic guru thought there was a good reason to divert her flight, and mission, then she wasn’t about to argue the point.

  “Something came up a couple of hours ago.” Deep Blue said. “I know finding Rook is important to you. It’s important to all of us. You’ll be back on his trail in the morning. Scout’s honor. But right now, there’s a job that needs doing, and you just happen to be in the neighborhood. Make that, above the neighborhood.”

  “Not anymore,” Queen said as the plane hit the runway and bounced a few times before setting down. “We just touched down.”

  “You do know you are supposed to turn off all electronic devices during takeoffs and landings?”

  “Right. How often do I fly commercial?” For a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was the United States’ touchy political relations with Russia and the nations in her sphere of influence, it had been decided that Queen would go in quietly and keep a low profile as she conducted her investigation into Rook’s disappearance. She had to admire the fact that, despite no longer being a sitting president, Deep Blue could pull enough strings to divert an international flight on a few hours notice. “On that note, you had a contact lined up for me in Tomsk. How am I supposed to get outfitted? I couldn’t exactly check my MK 23 in my cosmetics bag.”

  Deep Blue laughed, a rarity for him over the past several months as he dealt with the end of his presidency and began planning to get the team’s new headquarters up and running. “I’ve made similar arrangements in Kiev. The pickings will be slim, but I am assured your weapon of choice is in stock.”

  “My weapon of choice is always with me,” Queen said, looking down at her hand as she flexed it. Queen preferred to get up close and personal with her enemies. Guns came in handy, but her hands never jammed, and they were easier to clean if they got a little blood on them.

  When she looked up, Queen noted the old woman sitting across the aisle peeking over the top of her enormous handbag. The woman’s wide eyes bounced back and forth between Queen’s hands and her face. Queen gave the woman a serious look and watched her slowly ducked down behind her bag. The woman no doubt remembered the days of the KGB and knew well enough to keep quiet about such conversations.

  “Right,” Deep Blue said. “In case you come across something your hands can’t handle—”

  Queen fought a grin. She knew Deep Blue would never say that to her face.

  “—pick up anything you think you might need. I’ll handle the tab. The proprietor will equip you and assist you with your exit strategy.”

  “Will do.” The plane rolled up to the gate, and confused passengers began whispered conversations, speculating about the reason for the diversion of their flight. “So tell me about this assignment.”

  “We’ve found something at Manifold Alpha.” Hidden in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire, Manifold Alpha had once been a Manifold Genetics facility and would soon serve as the base of operations for the new and clandestine Chess Team. “More accurately, we’ve managed to decrypt one of the many memos
we harvested from their network. It doesn’t go into detail, but it references a project in Pripyat.”

  “Shit. Are you trying to turn me into a glo-stick?” Queen stood and retrieved her bag from the overhead compartment and strode down the aisle, ignoring the resentful stares from passengers who had doubtless believed they had landed due to some sort of mechanical failure.

  “People visit there all the time. At least they did until recently. About a year ago, the government shut down all tours into Pripyat, and stopped issuing permits for individual visits. That’s the only other clue we have that something is not right there.”

  Queen nodded to the flight attendant who offered only a blank stare in return, and winked at the pilot, an awkward-looking man of middle years with a protuberant nose and Adam’s apple to match. He’d been ogling her all the way down the aisle, and his face split into a yellow-toothed grin as she acknowledged him. She wondered how he would react if he could see the angry red skull that was branded in her forehead, a gift from General Trung, formally of the VPLA—Vietnam’s elite “Death Volunteers”, and now covered by a layer of makeup and a blue bandana as a concession to her need to keep a low profile.

  “I need to emphasize to you that this is a fact-finding mission. My connections in that part of the world are limited right now, and relations with Russia are tenuous at best. Not to mention, we don’t know the extent of Manifold’s influence there, though we would be foolish not to assume it is strong and widespread. Exercise caution.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’m serious. I can’t send a Blackhawk to the outskirts of Kiev to rescue you without creating an international incident. Find out what’s going on, if anything, and report back to me once you’ve gotten away safely. If Manifold is up to something in Pripyat, I’ll decide how to proceed from there. Don’t make yourself known, and don’t engage. You are to be just another shadow in the night.”

  “Hooah,” she said, with more force than conviction, and ended the call.

  Chapter 3

  Queen shouldered her pack, felt at her hip for the reassuring presence of the Heckler and Koch Mark 23, though the civilian weapon was a poor substitute for her own MK 23, and slipped out of the shadows. It was well past nightfall, and no one was about. She had spent the past few hours in hiding, reading up on her destination and observing the comings and goings of disinterested local police. One pass every thirty minutes, and scarcely a glance spared for anything but the road. They were simply going through the motions.

  Set atop a white pedestal shaped like an inverted triangle, block letters spelled out the name “Pripyat.” Queen grimaced as she trotted past the closest thing this dead city had to a gravestone. Seen on what seemed like every website devoted to Pripyat, it had become an icon of this dead city.

  Founded in 1970, the once-thriving city had been built as a home for workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In its heyday, the Soviets had pointed to Pripyat as a model for the modern city, constructed according to a careful plan featuring shopping and cultural centers, modern recreation facilities, a state-of-the-art hospital and schools serving each residential area. The city had flourished for more than a decade, but it all came to an end in 1986 with the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. An evacuation had been hastily arranged, and citizens removed from the city thirty-six hours later, with no idea of the extent of the disaster. Most had believed they would be returning soon, and had left virtually all of their belongings behind. The city remained closed, a living time capsule memorializing the disaster. Looters and vandals had since stripped Pripyat of anything of value, but reminders lay everywhere of the people that had once called this place home.

  Queen broke through a tree line surrounding the city and paused, scanning the spectral skyline, black against the moonlit sky. Abandoned buildings, now only dark husks, stood arrayed like black sentinels, keeping their silent watch. Any one of them could take an hour to search—time she did not have. One woman, one night and an entire city to cover with no clues to guide her in the right direction.

  She wished the rest of Chess Team were here with her. They would scour this place in a flash and be back in time for breakfast. Thoughts of Chess Team though, led to thoughts of Rook, and that was not a road she should let her mind travel when she had a job to do.

  “All right,” she told herself. “Enough with the lily-ass sentimentality. Time to move.”

  If Manifold had a presence in Pripyat, she doubted it would be here on the outskirts of town, but somewhere deep in the heart of the dead city, perhaps near the harbor and Pripyat River. That would afford them ingress and egress without traveling surface roads. Her first target, she decided, would be the hospital. The hospital had featured cutting-edge technology for its day, and perhaps a medical facility, even an old one, might hold some appeal for Manifold. It seemed as logical a place as any to begin.

  She moved with haste, slipping down pathways choked with weeds and detritus. She kept her eyes open for danger, but the city was as still as it was silent. Could Deep Blue have been mistaken? Of course, he had said it was a thin possibility, nothing more than a single mention.

  She crossed Lenin Avenue and made her way up Friendship of the Nations Street, smiling that the Soviets would choose such a name at the height of the Cold War. Of course, the old Soviet Union was dead, but relations between the Americans and Russians were not much better.

  A foul smell—the coppery scent of blood mixed with the stench of released bowels—made her wrinkle her nose in disgust. She knew what that meant. The smell of death was not something one ever forgot. Like a hound on the scent, she moved to where the odor was strongest, pushed aside a low-hanging branch, and grimaced at the sight that greeted her. A young man lay on his back, his limbs akimbo like a grotesque marionette. She nudged his leg and found it stiff. The blood seeping from his torn throat, however, was fresh. He had not been dead for long. She gazed down at his round face, pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes that gave him a cherubic appearance in death. Not at all cherub-like were the red tracks that had been clawed across his fair face, the ragged red hole that had been his throat, his broken, twisted arms and his ruined torso covered in…bite marks? Kneeling down beside the body, she ripped open the young man’s shredded t-shirt, and leaned in for a closer look. They were bite marks, all right, and although she was no medical examiner, she was sure they were human.

  “What the hell happened to you, and who did it?” This was strange, but she wasn’t about to waste time wondering. If her investigation didn’t turn up anything else, Deep Blue could make sure the local police received an untraceable anonymous tip. Her first instinct was to cover the young man’s face, but if this turned out to be a simple murder investigation for the local police, she’d already disturbed the crime scene enough. She stood and checked to make sure she’d left no muddy footprints before moving on.

  When she reached the hospital, she found that, like virtually every other medical facility she’d ever seen, it was a plain, utilitarian building that looked more like a storage facility than a place where human hurts were tended.

  She crouched in the brush at the edge of a large parking lot that had not yet been reclaimed by the forest. Some brave weeds had sprung up through the cracks, but the deserted lot offered no easy way to cross without being spotted. It was a good defense against intruders, but there was no way to tell if the open space had been created by design. The growth of the weeds looked natural enough. But there was only one way to find out. Queen burst from her hiding space, sprinted across the pavement and reached the hospital just seconds later.

  No alarms sounded.

  No traps.

  No guards.

  She crept along the outside wall to the double front doors. The doors were locked, but the glass was missing from both. She slipped inside, stepping carefully to avoid the shards of glass littering the floor.

  The inside was worse off than the outside. She didn’t know what she had expected from a place t
hat had been abandoned for a quarter of a century, but not this. The floor was as debris-strewn as the ground outside. Dirt, leaves and bits of paper carpeted the floor, and the walls were stained by years of poor protection from the elements. She decided to begin on the top floor and work her way down. Floor by floor, she found the upper levels to be much the same. The place was a mere skeleton of what it had once been.

  She was finishing her inspection of the second floor when she sensed she was no longer alone.

  Chapter 4

  She heard it before she saw it. A low, guttural growl rose to a snarl that reverberated through the empty hall. Maybe a wild dog wandered in here and now it thinks I’ve got it cornered? Even as the thought struck her, she somehow knew that was not the case. Perhaps this dead city had her on edge, but there was something sinister, even otherworldly, about the sound.

  A scuffling came from the room on her right and something leapt through the doorway coming right at her. She barely had time to move, pivoting to the side as the thing collided with her, sending her flashlight bouncing away and knocking her to the floor. The thing, whatever it was, hit the wall with a resounding crash that arrested its momentum.

  Stunned, she rolled over onto her back. Her ribs burned, and the wind was knocked out of her. That thing is stronger than Bishop. She looked back at it in time to register a vaguely human form, and then it was crouching to spring. She reached for her Mark 23, but she was an instant too slow. It attacked.

  Her fighter’s instinct took over. Queen brought her knees to her chest and kicked out, catching it in midair and using its momentum to send it hurtling past her. No time to waste, she rolled over, sprang to her feet and dashed through the nearest doorway.