The Blood Code (25 page)

Chapter Forty-One

He’s alive.

He came for me.

Anya’s knees buckled. Ryan was weaponless and appeared barely able to stand. And the blood…

His entire upper body was covered with it.

She swallowed hard and started to catapult herself across the room, wanting to throw her arms around him. As she stepped forward, her grandmother’s hand tightened on hers, a death grip holding her back.

For a brief second, silence fell, Ryan’s words registering with everyone. No one moved.

Ivanov hesitated, seeming to debate whether Ryan was telling the truth. Whether he should lower the gun.

He didn’t.

“You need her,” Ryan said, eyes steady on the Russian president. “For the code, and for the future of your homeland. Killing her would be a colossal mistake.”

All eyes in the control room went to Ivanov. “What would you know about the code?”

“More than you. Let her come over here, to me, and I’ll tell you.”

The leader bristled, kept the gun trained on Anya’s head. “Tell me, or I’ll kill her.”

Ryan drew a deep breath. Grams squeezed Anya’s hand. In anticipation? Fear? Grams claimed she was the only who knew the code. Did Ryan actually know it or was he bluffing?

He was silent for so long, Anya bit her bottom lip. When Ivanov set the gun directly against her temple, Ryan raised a hand in a
wait
gesture.

“Her blood,” he said, low and apologetic as he shot a glance at her. “The code is in her DNA.”

As his words sunk in, Ivanov slowly lowered the gun. He either assumed Ryan was no threat in his current state, or the Russian president was as shocked as the rest of them at Ryan’s announcement. Anya understood the words but not the meaning. How could her blood be the code Ivanov needed to initialize the missiles?

Grams’s voice, rigid and damning, came from behind Anya. “You’re lying.”

The acerbic tone of her voice got everyone’s attention. Including Ryan’s. He cut his gaze to Natasha, back to Ivanov, his steady demeanor leaving no doubt in Anya’s mind he was indeed telling the truth. “You may be willing to risk Anya’s life over this, Natasha, but I’m not.”

Using Anya’s hand as a crutch, Natasha leveraged her weight and stood. “I don’t know who you are,” she said to Ryan, “but you know nothing about my granddaughter.”

Ryan’s gaze flicked to Anya. “I know Peter Radzoya was a brilliant computer engineer with a penchant for writing unbreakable codes. His wife, Ekateirna was an accomplished geneticist. I read your Agency transcripts, Natasha. Peter and his wife hit on using a genetic fingerprint—a code as unique as the person—to guarantee it would take years, possibly decades, for anyone to figure out it was the key to Peter’s backdoor setup. Then you went to work to manipulate Yeltsin into weapons reduction talks with America and Britain.”

“The code has nothing to do with Anya,” Natasha insisted.

“Yes, it does, and when you decided Anya’s life was in danger if anyone found out about the source of the code, Peter and Ekateirna knew they had to come up with a different one. They were on their way to the lab to change it the night they were killed.”

Snaking cold slithered up Anya’s spine. Her grandmother didn’t respond, didn’t argue, and in that second, Anya knew it was true. All of it.

Her blood, with its defects, was a weapon of mass destruction.

Prometheus
. The comic book antagonist her father loved. He’d given her all the issues the first Prometheus had appeared in, telling her the books held a secret. They’d been in Anya’s school bag the night her parents were killed. When she’d slipped away from the car, her mother had insisted she take the bag with her. On their way to America, Grams and Anya had stopped in Switzerland, and Grams had taken the comics away, telling Anya she was too old for comic books now.

Her knees again threatened to go out. Her heart jumped around like a ferret caged inside her ribs. “How is that possible?”

Ryan’s gaze stayed on Ivanov. “Anya, your mother was a bright geneticist like you. Your father, a computer genius. Put the two of them together and…” His voice trailed off, letting her fill in the rest.

Ivanov chuckled, a low-throated, humorless sound. “Even I would not have thought of such an ingenious code.” He glanced at Anya with a new twisted glint in his eye. “Royal blood comes through once again.”

Why was Ryan doing this? Telling such a secret to this madman? Giving Ivanov control over the missiles? Giving him control over her?

You may be willing to risk Anya’s life over this, but I’m not.

Ryan knew Ivanov would put a bullet in her head if Grams didn’t give him the code. Grams wouldn’t do it, but Ryan would. Saving her…and damning them all in the long run if it were true.

Anya glared at Ryan.
How dare he—

He winked.

At her.

So subtle, she almost missed it.

The wink was a message, but what?
Was
he bluffing? Buying time until the CIA arrived? Even if it were true, it would take time for Ivanov to have her DNA analyzed for the code. Ryan had to know that. He
was
buying them time to get out of there and somehow avert a nuclear disaster.

Andreev cleared his throat. “We have the tools we need here, sir. Your hand and retinal scans will activate the system. Her DNA”—he gave Anya a look of distaste—“will then unlock the system and initialize the missiles.”

“I’m not your damn key to initializing anything.” Anya jerked her hand out of her grandmother’s. Bluffing or not, she wasn’t going along with this plan. “And I’ll never give you my blood.”

Ivanov secured his gun in the waistband of his uniform. “I don’t need your blood. I already have your genetic analysis.”

“What?” Ryan said.

Anya echoed his shock. “How did you get that?”

“His doctor took your DNA,” Natasha said, “when he treated your wound.”

Ivanov snapped his fingers at Andreev. “Give me her medical file.”

Andreev produced a black briefcase and withdrew a file from it, setting it on the desk.

Ivanov pointed at Ryan. “Remove him.”

The prime minister took out a small black gun and aimed it at Ryan. “Move!”

Anya jumped forward to intercept Andreev, but Natasha once again grabbed hold of her, locking her arms around Anya in a bear hug. How could she be so strong after what she’d been through?

Ryan’s eyes swung to Anya’s and a flicker of doubt—the first she’d ever seen in them—appeared.

Ivanov opened the file and pointed his gun at her again. “Read the DNA sequence to me, Anya.”

The smaller man gestured for Ryan to walk out of the center. Ryan took half a step backward, lowered his voice as he spoke to her. “Do as he says. Stay alive.”

“Yes, Anya.” Ivanov chuckled with a manic edge. “If you want to save your grandmother, read me the code.”

“So you can kill millions of innocent people?
Poshol ti nahooy
.”

His laughter died at her derogatory use of Russian.

“President Ivanov,” Inga stepped forward. “Surely, you’re not going to set off nuclear weapons…”

The gun boomed and a round, red spot appeared on Inga’s forehead. She froze, eyes wide for half a second before she toppled to the floor.

At the same moment, Ryan rushed Andreev. Whatever his plan, Anya had to help. She jerked forward, but Natasha hugged her tighter, refusing to let her go. Anya could have broken through her arm restraints, but didn’t want to hurt her grandmother. “Let go, Grams.”

“I won’t,” Natasha said.

The two men scuffled, Andreev throwing himself at Ryan and sending both of them out the door, and onto to the floor outside the center. Andreev’s gun went off, echoing inside the room, and Anya flinched, screaming Ryan’s name as the door
whooshed
shut, cutting them off.

Ivanov ran for the door, punching the computerized keypad on the wall to lock it. Just as he did, Ryan appeared on the other side of the glass, beating it with his left fist. His mouth moved, and Anya made out that he was saying her name.

Obviously, this was not part of his plan. She reached out a hand toward him, and squirmed in her grandmother’s arms. He stepped back, raised Andreev’s gun, and fired at the glass. Anya and Natasha ducked, but the glass didn’t give.

Ivanov faced them, a smile lighting up his face. He tapped the glass with a fingernail. “Bulletproof. Fifty caliber armor piercing rounds cannot break it.”

Ryan unloaded another bullet at Ivanov’s head. A thin spiderweb crack appeared but that was it.

Ivanov laughed. “Looks like it is just the three of us.” He pointed his gun at Natasha. “Or maybe two.”

Anya shoved Grams to the side as the gun discharged. Natasha hit the chair, knocking it over as she tumbled to the ground. The bullet missed her…

And nailed Anya squarely in her left hand, still in the air from pushing Natasha aside. The tiny missile ripped through flesh and bone, slamming Anya’s hand back as it passed through and ricocheted off a nearby computer.

Out of the two of them, Grams had gotten the worst deal. Still, the burning in Anya’s hand was intense. Using it to fuel her anger, she rushed Ivanov. If she was going to die, she was going down swinging.

Ivanov outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She didn’t care. Even as his eyes widened and he raised the gun at her, she knocked it aside and jumped him. He stumbled backward from the force of her entire weight slamming into him.

Together they hit the wall, the back of Ivanov’s head smacking against the glass where Ryan had created the spiderweb. Anya caught a brief glimpse of Andreev lying on the ground, his head twisted at an odd angle. Ryan was nowhere in sight.

Anya shoved all thoughts of Ryan out of her head and aimed her thumbs at Ivanov’s eye sockets. Her injured left hand didn’t want to obey her commands, and Ivanov twisted his head to avoid her right, but she managed to smear blood across his face. Small victory.

He tried to hit her and the gun went off. Anya heard a startled intake of breath.

Grams.

Dropping off Ivanov, Anya hit the ground and whirled around to look for her grandmother. Natasha slid down the front of a desk, legs sprawled in front of her as blood leeched from between her fingers where they lay over her heart. “Anya?”

Anya scrambled to her grandmother’s side. “Grams. Oh, God.” She pressed both hands over Natasha’s chest. Blood gushed over their entwined fingers.

She eased her grandmother down to the floor, tears pooling in her eyes. “You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Stupid words. Nothing was going to be okay. So much blood. Her grandmother was dying right in front of her eyes.

Natasha patted Anya’s hand. Her eyes fluttered closed. “I’m…so…proud of you.”

“Don’t leave me, Grams. Open your eyes. You’ve got to stay with me.”

“Your parents…would have been…so proud…”

“Grams, I need you. Please. Please don’t leave me.”

“Don’t give him anything.” Natasha gave her hand a solid squeeze. “I love you, Anya.” Then she whispered, “
Vnooch-ka
.” Granddaughter.

Anya squeezed back, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I love you, too, Grams.”

Natasha’s eyes fluttered closed one last time.

No, Grams.

Natasha drew one last shuddering breath.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind Anya. As grief overwhelmed her, another emotion rose with it. Cold rage.

There was nothing left. No one left. Just her and Ivanov.

Time to finish the game.

Anya raised her eyes to look Ivanov in the face. “Here.” She held up her bleeding hand. “Give me the file.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Get to Anya.

That mantra looped over and over in Ryan’s head, blocking out the pain and dizziness. Logic, the one thing he’d always relied on, kept tacking on
before the bastard kills her
.

He had to ignore the logic voice because if he didn’t…

Well, if he didn’t, he’d fall to his knees and give up right there.

Logic had not been his friend inside the control room. Seeing Ivanov pointing his gun at Anya’s head had screwed it up. Ryan’s plan had been to distract Ivanov, get him to lower his weapon, and then take him out before he had the chance to hurt Anya or her grandmother.

Best laid plans…

He should have made something up about the code, instead of telling Ivanov the truth. But he hadn’t known Ivanov had a gene map of her blood. Ryan had figured he’d have to obtain one, and that would buy Anya— and Ryan— more time.

The only thing Ryan could hope for was that the president wasn’t stupid. His fixation with genes and royalty made the truth the most effective weapon against him. Nuclear war or not, if Ivanov believed Anya was still worth something to him and the future royal dynasty of Russia, he’d think twice about killing her.

At least that’s what Ryan had told himself. The reality was, in his light-headed state, he couldn’t come up with a more believable story.

The lock on the command center door was computerized. Frustration had made him do stupid things, like shoot at the bulletproof glass, but logic had finally come through and stopped him from sending a bullet into the keypad on the wall. Breaking the lock meant using his brain, not his brawn.

Sweat ran down his face as he stumbled into the old command center. The bulky monitors and antiquated keyboards called to him.

The spot where he’d made love to Anya mocked him.

Unhooking the nearest keyboard from its hard drive, he snugged it under his useless arm and turned to run back to the new GI 42. The sudden movement made the room swim and he lost his balance, knocking his bad shoulder into the wall. Good thing his arm was numb.

Get to Anya.

Before the bastard kills her.

Ryan pushed through the doorway and ran as fast as he could through the old presidential quarters, bathroom, and into the subway. His legs wobbled under him, and at times, darkness crowded his vision. He blinked away his fatigue, pushed through the pain, forced his legs to keep moving.

Get to Anya.

His shoe slipped in something slick and wet on the tiled floor of the subway, and he skated off balance for several seconds before falling on his ass. The keyboard shot out from under his arm and skittered across the floor. For a second, he just sat there, black spots dancing in front of his eyes, body racked with pain where it wasn’t numb. He was so tired. If he could sit there for a minute—just one fucking minute—maybe he could recoup enough strength to get up again.

Anya doesn’t have a minute. The
world
doesn’t have a minute.

If Ivanov started a nuclear war, they were all going to die.

On a basic human level, he cared about that. But if he was being honest with himself, the only person he cared about in that moment was the princess.

His eyes closed for a second. Then forced them open. Slapped his face with his good hand. Rolled onto his side and started crawling toward the dropped keyboard.

“Looking for this?”

Certain he was delusional from loss of blood, Ryan blinked twice at the sight of Josh Devons and another man in front of him. They were dressed in dark blue coveralls with Russian name badges sewn on them.

Devons held up the keyboard. He passed it to the other man and helped Ryan up. “Dude. You look like shit to the tenth.”

He felt like shit to the nine hundredth. “What are you two doing here?”

“Saving your ass from the looks of things.”

The man next to Devons nodded. “John Quick, Team Pegasus.”

Get to Anya. Get to Anya.
“I have to get back. Anya…is…”

He almost fainted. Devons caught him.

Quick grabbed his other arm. “Where’s Natasha Radzoya?”

“East.” He moved his head in the direction of Ivanov’s presidential bunker. He didn’t have the energy to explain, nor did he have time. He shrugged off the men’s steadying hands and grabbed the keyboard. “Follow me.”

The keyboard safely under his arm once more, he pushed his legs into a run. Well, running was out of the question. It was more like a fast shuffle, but the rhythm worked with his mantra. Devons and Quick followed at his side, ready to catch him if he fell.

Halfway there, an alarm went off, much like the one he and Anya had heard earlier in the old bunker. Lights in the tunnels flashed red, skittering and bouncing over the marble, stone, and metal. Ryan’s pulse stopped for a moment.

This alarm, blaring like the Second Coming, meant only one thing.

He was too late.

Ivanov had declared war.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Devons called over the blaring.

Ryan didn’t bother to answer, a new rush of adrenaline fueling his legs. When they arrived at the glass-walled command center and looked inside, Anya sat in a chair staring into space. She was covered with blood. Natasha was on the floor, dead by the looks of things. Quick swore under his breath.

Through the bulletproof walls, Ryan heard a faint, computerized female voice counting down in Russian from thirty.

All the screens on the far walls showed nuclear silos around the outskirts of Moscow. Their steel doors were opening, launchers rising.

“Holy fuck,” Devons said as he realized what was happening.

With his left hand, Ryan tore off the outer covering of the door’s keypad. Breaking the code would take too long. He had to override it.

He jammed the end of the keyboard’s cord into the USB outlet. Hit several keys and watched words file across the digital display.

Inside the room, Ivanov’s head jerked up. Ryan met his gaze through the glass. The security system must have announced an intruder trying to override the lock.

Dropping the keyboard to the floor, Ryan wiped blood off his hands and fell to his knees in front of it. “Come on, come on,” he pleaded with the keypad.

A moment later, he felt a heavy gaze boring into him. The Russian president ignored Devons and Quick and stared down at Ryan with a smile, egging him on. Ivanov’s face was smeared with blood but Ryan couldn’t see any visible facial wound. Was it Anya’s blood?

Logic told him yes. She’d fought the bastard. Where was that hellcat now when he needed her?

Andreev’s gun—the one he’d relieved the dead man of—was in the small of Ryan’s back and fully loaded, but the minute he pressed the key to override the locking system and open the door, Ivanov would shoot him before he could pull the trigger.

“You two armed?” he asked Devons and Quick.

“We couldn’t get weapons into the subway, but we have these.” Devons drew a hammer from his coveralls. Quick drew a large, commercial-grade wrench.

Better than nothing.

Something happened inside the room. Ivanov looked over his shoulder at the screens on the wall. Ryan hit the last keystroke, and then paused a finger over the Russian word for Enter.

This was it.

Still distracted, Ivanov continued to look behind him, so Ryan drew the gun from his waistband and tapped the key with the end of the barrel.

Whoosh.

As the sliding door opened, Ryan raised the gun to fire at Ivanov, but the man was lying on the floor. Anya stood over him, chest heaving, and a fierce light in her eyes. The Russian flag, from pole to weighted bottom, was in her hand.

She’d belted the president with his own flag.

Tossing it on top of the unconscious man, she removed the gun from Ivanov’s hand and palmed it like a pro. Her left hand was dripping blood all over the floor. Ryan motioned at Devons to bandage her hand “We have to stop the launch. I rearranged the code when I read it to him, but he figured out what I was doing, snatched the file out of my hands, and entered it himself.”

As if to punctuate her words, the computerized female voice came from the speakers overhead, still counting down in Russian, “
Twenty
.”

Ryan staggered to his feet, stepped over the unconscious president, and hugged Anya to him as Devons secured his undershirt around her bleeding hand. He buried his nose in her hair, but she pulled back, grabbing his arm to steady him as she led him to the main computer. “Can you stop it?”

“
Nineteen
.”

“Of course,” Ryan lied. They only had a few seconds before the whole world changed. He wanted to spend those last few seconds holding her. Telling her that he loved her.

“
Eighteen
.”

Instead, he had to save the world.

And he had no flippin’ idea how to override an ICBM launch program. Where was Del when you needed a super geek?

“
Seventeen
.”

His left hand flew across the keys even before he fully sat down, looking for any way to get inside the program. Surprise, surprise, like most of the modern world, it ran on a Windows-based system. An extremely high-tech, highly encrypted system, running on layers of Russian passwords that consisted of code names and biometric scans.

“
Sixteen
.”

For the next few seconds, he worked at getting behind the program, finding some kind of administration log-in, password, or other config system he could override. The alarm continued to wail, lights continued to flash. The system continued to count down.

“
Twelve
.”

He started to admit he couldn’t do it, but when he looked up into Anya’s eyes—as well as Devons’s and Quick’s—and saw confidence shining in them, he swallowed the truth. They all believed in him. Believed he could pull off a miracle.

“
Eleven
.”

“Get away from that computer!”

Anya whirled around, and Ryan saw Ivanov was on his feet, staggering toward them.

“
Ten
.”

What did Conrad always say?
When the shit gets too deep, pull the plug
.

Unfortunately, pulling the computer’s plug wasn’t that simple. And now Ivanov was once again getting in the way.

“
Nine
.”

Devons raised his hammer, but Anya stayed his arm, looked at Ryan. “You stop the launch. I’ll take care of Ivanov.”

The hellcat was back. She raised the gun and pointed Ivanov’s own weapon at his head. “You killed my parents. You killed my grandmother.”

“
Eight
.”

Windows was the easiest software in the world to hack for passwords. Ryan found the start menu, clicked shutdown. Miracle of miracles a window popped up and asked him what he wanted to do. Shut down or restart.

“
Seven
.”

Ivanov stopped in his tracks. Egomaniac that he was, he was smart enough to save his own skin. “I did what I had to for Russia.”

“
Six
.”

Ryan hit restart. The system balked. He hit the F8 key. Windows took him to a safe mode startup screen.

Anya fingered the trigger on the gun. “Russia, my ass. You did this for yourself.”

“
Five
.”

Control panel. User accounts.

Come on, come on.

Ryan searched the passwords.

“
Four
.”

There was no termination password, and he didn’t have time to type in all the different passwords to find one that would override the system.

“
Three
.”

Pull the plug.
But how? Blow up the computer? Remove the motherboard? He grabbed the CPU. Screws held the protective plates in place.

“
Two
.”

“How do we stop the launch?” Anya demanded from Ivanov. A lump had appeared on the side of his head above his ear. “Tell us!”

“You can’t stop it.”

A dozen nuclear missiles sat locked and loaded for launch. Anya huffed out a heavy sigh, face scrunched in frustration.

“
One
.”

The screen in front of Ryan went to black. A DOS screen appeared. A screen with one directive. One beautiful Russian directive, asking if he wanted to abort.

Someone—probably the original programmer, Peter Radzoya—had had the good sense to give the president an out in case he changed his mind.

Ryan typed
DA.
YES
. Windows took over again. A new screen appeared.

Stunned, he could only stare at the words as he mentally translated them.

Bio-scanner confirmation needed
.
Twenty seconds to launch.

The counter flipped to twenty. The disembodied female voice started a new countdown.

Damn it
. Ryan slapped the desktop.

Anya’s gaze darted between him, Ivanov, and the screens on the far wall. “What happened? Did you stop it?”

The computer clock continued counting down. “Not yet. The bio-scanner wants confirmation to abort.”

“What kind of confirmation?”

“Fingerprints? Retina? I don’t know.”

Anya kept the gun trained on Ivanov as she scooted backward toward the bio-scanner. An outline of a hand was lit on the glass. She wiped her uninjured hand on her pants, laid it on the scanner, and used the gun to depress a button. The scanner made noises and began working.

It only took a few seconds for it to process, but nothing changed on the screen in front of him. There was only six seconds until launch. “It didn’t work.”

“Damn it.” She looked at her hand. “Does it need my genetic code, rather than my fingerprints?”

Ivanov chuckled in that condescending manner he had. “I’m the only one who can stop the launch.” He waggled his fingers at them. “And I will never stop it.”

Ivanov’s fingerprints? Ryan doubted it would be that easy, but he was the president.

Anya laughed, a hysterical laugh full of frustration. “Of course. It’s your fingerprints that it needs.” Her hand firmed on the gun. “Put your hand on that scanner.”