The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

He hopped down.

They must be blindly strafing in all directions.

A frantic crashing erupted on the far side of the stream.

Monk caught a flash of tawny fur. His heart thudded in panic.

Tiger.

Instead, two roe deer smashed into view, and with a flash of dancing hooves, they darted away. Monk forced his heart out of his throat and crossed to the children. The sonic blast had flattened them. The hunters knew of the kids’ hypersensitivity and were trying to immobilize them.

Monk scooped Pyotr up with his stumped arm and tossed him across his shoulder. He dragged Kiska to her feet and supported her around the waist, hiking her up. Burdened, Monk crossed to Konstantin, intending to kick the boy into action.

They dared not stop.

Marta intervened. She nosed under Konstantin’s chest and pulled one of his arms over her back. Supporting him with her shoulders, she sidled down toward the river below. The boy’s legs dragged behind her.

Monk followed with the other two children. While deafened by the sonic flare, Monk still felt the boy’s trembling moans of agony. He hobbled faster and reached the river’s course.

The water flowed through a steep-banked channel, a full four meters wide. It churned and gurgled, loud enough to dull the sharper ranges of the sonic flare.

Monk waved to Marta. He pointed downriver. She swung in that direction. They continued, following the twisting course. After a few turns, the steep ridges blocked more and more of the wailing.

Kiska stirred first. She knocked free of Monk’s arm and gained her own feet. She still covered her ears with her hands. Konstantin soon followed, freeing Marta, who panted and gasped, knuckling on both arms.

As they fled from the screams, Monk kept a watch behind him.

Expecting at any moment to see a pair of tigers loping after them.

Distracted, he ran into Kiska, who had stopped. Tangled, he toppled to his knees, dropping the boy to the ground.

Konstantin had also halted at his sister’s side, frozen in place with Marta. It seemed they had more to fear than just the hunters behind them.

Beyond the pair, a massive brown bear rose up from the riverbank. It had to weigh six hundred pounds, damp from the river and plainly tense from the caterwauling of the flares. Black eyes stared back at their party. It rose up on its hind limbs, stretching eight feet tall, bristling, growling, baring yellow teeth.

The Russian grizzly.

The symbol of Mother Russia.

With a roar, it fell and charged straight at them.

6:03 A.M.

Washington, D.C.

The old man woke into brightness. It stung his eyes and pounded into his skull. He groaned and turned his head away. Nausea spilled burning gorge up into his throat. He choked it back down with a gasp.

He blinked away the glare and found himself strapped to a bed. Though a sheet covered him, he knew he was naked. The room was stark white, clinical, sterile. No windows. A single door with a small barred window. Closed.

A figure sat in a chair beside the bed, in a suit, the jacket hung on the seat back, sleeves rolled up. His legs were crossed, his hands folded primly on his lap.

He leaned forward. “Good morning, Yuri.”

Trent McBride smiled down at him without a trace of warmth.

Yuri glanced down to his chest, remembering being shot by a tranquilizer dart. He searched around, still confused, dazed.

“You’ve been given a counterstimulant,” McBride said. “Must have you alert, since we have much to discuss.”

“Kak…ya…,” he choked out, his tongue pasty and thick.

McBride sighed, reached to a bedside table where a glass with a straw rested, and offered Yuri a sip.

He did not refuse. The lukewarm liquid burned like the finest vodka. It pushed back the shadows at the edges of his thoughts and washed the paste from his tongue.

“Trent, what are you doing?” Yuri tugged at the straps that bound down his arms.

“Filling in the blanks.” McBride pressed an intercom button at the head of the bed. “As I mentioned, you’ve not been forthcoming with all the details of your research at Chelyabinsk 88. We must correct that oversight.”

“How do you mean?” Yuri tried to sound innocent, but he failed miserably as his voice shook. He wished he were a stronger man.

“Hmm,” Trent said. He leaned forward and stripped the sheet covering Yuri. “I suppose we might as well get the ugly part over with so we can speak like true colleagues.”

Yuri stared down at his naked body. His pale skin was dotted by tiny suction cups, each the size of a dime, topped by a pea-size knot of electronics sprouting a thread-thin antenna. They lined his legs from toe to groin, his arms from fingertip to shoulder. His chest was a chessboard grid of the sticky cups.

Before he could question what they were, the door to the room opened and a slender figure entered. Yuri had to struggle a moment to remember his name, though he had just met the man. Dr. James Chen. They had used the researcher’s office for the meeting at Walter Reed.

The door clamped shut, soundproofed.

Chen crossed to them. He carried a laptop open in his arms. “We’re all calibrated.”

As the man settled into a seat and rested his laptop on the bedside table, Yuri caught a glimpse of the computer screen before it was swung away. It had a stylized figure of an outstretched man dotted with small glowing circles.

“Electroacupuncture,” McBride said and waved a hand over the array of suction cups. “Microelectrodes inserted into acupuncture points along the prime meridians. I don’t purport to understand it fully. This is Dr. Chen’s line of expertise. He’s made remarkable progress using this technique to alleviate pain, allowing battlefield surgery without general anesthesia. Brilliant work and why he became a Jason. I then recruited him to our joint investigation because of his innovative use of microelectrodes. Microelectrodes like you used with your own test subjects.”

McBride tweaked one of the antennas with a finger. Yuri felt a stinging stab. “We’ve learned that what can be used to deaden pain in the right circumstances, can also be used to amplify it.”

“Trent…don’t…,” Yuri begged.

McBride ignored him, turned to Chen, and pointed to one of the cups near his knee, then to a second one near his groin.

The researcher lifted a stylus and drew a line on the computer screen.

Yuri’s leg blistered with fiery pain. A scream burst from his throat. It was as if someone had dug a scalpel from knee to groin, cutting down to the bone. Then it ended just as quickly.

Gasping, Yuri searched down. He expected to see blood flowing, flesh smoking. But there was only pale skin.