letters.
His eyes blurred, and he tried to focus them, tried to make sense of it all. But his gaze drifted to the other window, the one that showed a video feed of a large concrete building. The angle was so narrow that he couldn’t make out where the building was located. It could have been in the middle of a city or right in a desert, and Nick wouldn’t have known.
In a third window, a clock was counting backward.
Abort. His lips formed the word automatically. He had to stop it. Save what was there to be saved.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed the white sails whizz by him. He spun his head in their direction and saw them fight against the increasing wind. But he knew if he didn’t stop the countdown, they would have to fight against something even stronger than the wind. And they would lose.
“Abort,” he whispered and lifted his hands to the keyboard, noticing all of a sudden how heavy they were, as if filled with lead. Like bricks, they landed on the keys, creating a row of gibberish among the scrolling code.
He willed his pinky to press the escape button to clear his typing, but his finger didn’t move, didn’t execute his brain’s order.
Do it, damn it! Nick wanted to scream, but his tongue felt thick and sluggish.
He stared at his hands, barely able to focus on them now. They looked frozen in place, paralyzed.
His heart began to race. Again and again he tried to move his fingers but failed. Failed not only himself, but his fellow Phoenix, and his country.
Nick held his breath like he always did. But no matter how often he’d seen this vision play out, he never looked away, always hoping against all hope that this time the outcome would be different. It wasn’t.
The explosion on the screen was of massive proportions. The shockwave reached the water moments later, blasting the boats off their course and into the air, crushing them as if they were made of matchsticks. Bits of sail cloth flew like tiny birds in the churning air.
But by that time the shockwave had reached Nick, too, and he was flung in the air and catapulted toward the wall. For a split second before he hit it, he saw the house he’d been in: a mansion, though it wasn’t his.
“Nooooo!”
His own scream pulled him from the vision. Bathed in sweat, he reared up. There was darkness all around him. He was in bed. Next to him, somebody moved.
“Nick?” It was the panicked voice of a woman.
Breathing hard, he tried to concentrate, tried to remember where he was. It took him three seconds to find his bearings.
“I’m fine,” he said, already dragging his legs out of bed to sit up at the edge. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep, Michelle.”
He felt her hand on his back and instinctively jerked away.
“But, you’re—”
“I’m fine.” He jumped up. “I’ll take a shower if you don’t mind, then I’ll go.”
Before Michelle could voice a protest, he left her bedroom and closed the door behind him. Outside in the hallway, he ran a shaky hand through his damp hair and tried to calm his pounding heart.
The vision, unlike all his other premonitions, came only during sleep and was becoming more frequent, as if to show him that the event he was seeing was coming closer. Yet he was no closer to averting it than he’d been three years ago when he’d first had this premonition after the murder of the founder of the top secret Phoenix program.
He was running out of time.
12
Michelle stared at the closed bedroom door Nick had just disappeared through. She leaned over to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. Soft light illuminated the otherwise dark room. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was just after five in the morning.
Her heart still raced. She’d been sound asleep when Nick’s scream had woken her. It had sounded as if he’d been in mortal danger and for an instant she’d wondered if somebody had broken into her apartment. But it was clear now that Nick had had a nightmare.
But why? What grown man had nightmares? It was the stuff kids dealt with, when they dreamed about monsters. Or maybe people who’d gone through some recent trauma. But Nick struck her as thoroughly balanced. But what if he wasn’t? Had she made an error in judgment? What was wrong with the stranger she’d invited into her bed?
Heart beating