State of Emergency

CHAPTER 2


Vitebsk Station

St. Petersburg, Russia

7:12 PM Moscow time





Katya Orlov was in love enough to let herself be dragged through uneven drifts of grimy snow along Zagorodny Prospekt. Her boyfriend, Wasyl, had suggested she borrow her mother’s Sberbank card. It wouldn’t be stealing, he’d assured her, merely a loan they would pay back after he got work aboard the fishing boat.

The columned entries of Vitebsk Station loomed before her, bathed in brightness against the dark night. Slush soaked through her tattered leather boots. She wore thin cotton socks and her American straight-leg jeans did little to protect slender legs from the cold. She’d thought of packing a few things, but Wasyl had said it wouldn’t matter. They could buy what they needed—and they would need little, for they were soul mates.

Rafts of evening commuters, recently disgorged from an outbound city train, flowed in a gray woolen sea. New snow hung heavy on the night air. The greasy smell of sausages and boiled potatoes drifted from the green kiosks up on the platforms inside the station. As a girl, Katya had thought Vitebsk’s stone breastwork and clock tower made it look like a palace. It was a fantastic place with interesting people—but she’d never met anyone as interesting as Wasyl.

Of course, her mother hated him. It was not because he was nineteen and handsome and three years Katya’s senior—but because he was Ukrainian and often spoke of taking her to Odessa. He was a man with dreams and a real plan to get her out of their drafty flat in Pushkin—where she would surely have to live with her mother forever unless she found someone to marry her. Wasyl promised they would travel by train, rent a berth where they could sleep in each other’s arms and eat eggs and fresh green salads. Once in Odessa they could stay in his rich uncle’s beautiful dacha on the Black Sea. Wasyl had a friend with a fishing boat who’d promised him a job.

It was perfect. All they needed was train fare—and perhaps a little sum more to tide them over.

“There,” Wasyl said, flipping a thick swath of black hair out of his face once they jostled their way through the doors and into the echoing marble main hall of the station. He pointed to a row of ATMs—bankomats in Russian—along the sidewall below a Soviet-era mural of dedicated factory workers and a sweeping Art Nouveau staircase. “We can get the money there.”

The damp heat of so many people hit Katya full in the face. A woman with two toddlers on a dog-leash tether fell in beside them, the little ones in tiny wool coats chattering between themselves. A bent and wrinkled babushka shuffled along beside them, pushing a creaky metal cart and working her way through the crowd toward the same bankomats.

A businessman in a sable hat and long black coat stood at the nearest machine and Wasyl crowded in front of the woman and her jabbering children to make sure he got to the next one first. He flipped his hair again and held out his hand for the Sberbank card.

Katya reached in the hip pocket of her jeans and handed it to him.

“The PIN?” Wasyl demanded, sliding the card in the slot.

“My birthday,” Katya said, the heavy weight of guilt suddenly pressing against her shoulders.

Wasyl sighed. “And exactly when is that again?”

Katya shook her head in disbelief. Surely a true love would remember such a thing.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered, heartbroken.

Wasyl did the math in his head and punched the buttons. The machine gave a faint pop.

Katya thought she heard a child’s worried cry. At the same instant a molten ball of flame erupted from the bankomat, cutting Wasyl, then Katya, in half.





Ninety seconds later

Embarcadero BART Station

San Francisco





Jordan Winters leaned against the train window and shut his eyes against the stark interior lighting. He felt the swaying rumble through exhausted bones. Night shift sucked. By the time he got home his kids had already caught the bus and his wife was headed out to her shift at the hospital. But jobs were as scarce as politicians with backbone and he was lucky to have work at all. To make matters worse, the Pontiac had lost a U-joint the week before, so he’d been forced to take the train and then the bus to and from work. That meant another half hour on each end of his trip if he made the connections just right. At this rate, he got to see his wife fifteen minutes a day and on weekends—if they were lucky and she didn’t have to cover for another nurse.

They made up for it by talking on the phone every day during his commute as soon as he got phone reception. Tuned to the timing of it all, his eyes flicked open the moment he felt the train shudder and began to slow.

“Good morning, bright eyes,” he said, glancing at the older man next to him who gave a rolling eye. Jerks blabbed in public on their phones all the time about much less important things. Trains going outbound from the city weren’t nearly as crowed as those packed with commuters heading in at this time of day, but they were still full enough you could read the paper of the guy sitting next to you, so Winters kept his voice at a respectful level.

“Hey, Jordy,” his wife said. She sounded hoarse. Her cold was getting worse. “How’s my man?”

“I’m fine,” Winters said. He gathered his jacket and moved toward the doors as they hissed open. “You’re sick. Why don’t you call in today?”

“I do feel like crap, baby,” she said. “But you know I can’t call in. I don’t qualify for OT if I take a sick day this pay period and heaven knows we need the money, honey.”

Jordan pushed his way along the packed platform, ducking and dodging the endless tide of morning commuters. He could smell the relatively fresh air of Market Street rolling down the stairway above as he passed the ATMs in the ticketing lobby.

“We don’t need the money that bad,” he lied. “I can pull an extra shift this weekend if I have to.”

He worked his way toward the escalator and what his buddies on the night shift called the “world of the day-worker.”

“I’d better not. . . .” Her voice wavered.

After fourteen years of marriage, Jordan knew that slight hesitation meant he had her. “It’ll be worth it to spend the day with you.”

“That would be nice,” she said, sniffling.

He sweetened the deal. “I’ll stop by that Czech bakery you like before I catch the bus and get you a couple of kolache. That’ll put meat on your bones.”

She giggled. He loved it when she giggled.

“It’s settled then. I . . .” He paused, one foot on the escalator, cursing under his breath. He’d loaned his last ten bucks to Cal at work.

Jordan pushed back from the escalator and through the crowd, past the guy playing his saxophone in front of an open case, toward the bank of three ATMs along the white tile wall. Most people were coming to catch the train so it was easier now that he’d turned around and wasn’t a salmon swimming upstream.

“Oh, Jordan . . . you really think I should?”

“No question about it.” He felt the thrill of getting to spend a few precious moments with his wife—even if it meant feeding her soup and fruit kolache.

With a new spring in his step, he made his way to the ATM just as the headlight from the next city inbound beamed out of the tunnel. Brakes squealed above the din of frenzied commuters, desperate to catch this particular train as if it were the last one on earth. Hundreds of people shoved and jostled their way from the stairs and escalators, flinging themselves into the bowels of the packed station.

Jordan chatted happily with his wife as he put his card into the slot, thankful to be going home.

“You just get better.” He began to punch in his PIN. “I’ll be there—”

A blinding flash of heat and light shoved the words back down his throat.

The initial blast all but vaporized Jordan Winters and everyone else within five meters. Commuters were blown from their expensive loafers and high heels. Their bodies, some intact, some in mangled bits and pieces, hurtled across the tracks in front of the oncoming train.

Above, at ground level, passersby felt Market Street rumble under their feet. A blossom of inky smoke belched from the dark stairwell, carrying with it the screams of the dying and the smell of the dead.