End Game

by Robert Stanek

  Turning right, he slid in between two heavy sheets of plastic. The air was stale and musty, heavy with the scent of decay. He tried to quiet his breathing, his steps too, as he went. Passing through another plastic wall, he found himself standing in front of a sarcophagus. The white marble of the stone coffin in the deep recess looked to be as ancient as the stones of the church itself.

  Grabbing one of the overhead utility lights and dragging its electrical cord across the floor, he brought light to the shadows and confirmed no one was hiding in the recess. Then just as he was turning around, he heard something, faint but distinctive. A foot sliding along the floor, perhaps.

  He launched himself forward, gliding between sheets of plastic into the next area and the next. Soon he was standing before a trio of stone coffins, trying to find his way around and listening to an odd series of clicks and clacks that seemed to resonate from within the very stones of the crypt itself.

  As he worked his way around the stone coffins, he came upon a sarcophagus pulled out of the wall. He hopped over it and peered into the hole his new vantage point revealed, the hair on the back of his neck standing up when he saw a thin beam of light within. Instinctively, he fired at where the person holding the light should be, rushing into the darkness on his hands and knees without a second thought.

  In an instant, he was surrounded by the pervasive gloom, unsure whether he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing, or his mind was playing tricks on him. He reached for the phone in his pocket, using it to help illuminate his surroundings and confirm that the tunnel and door he sensed in the darkness were real.

  The sudden ringing of the phone in his hand startled him. He cupped his hand around the speaker and spoke quietly into the microphone. “Edie?” he whispered, unsure how close the assassin was.

  “I’m here,” she said, “but I don’t see you.”

  “Left from the stairs, in a hidden recess, behind one of the stone coffins,” he said. “There’s a tunnel.”

  He stepped forward cautiously, moving to stand beside the massive stone door, his eyes probing, for Edie, for any sign of Alexis, half expecting her to make a move on him while he was alone and vulnerable. Kneeling, he ran a hand along the floor until he located what he was looking for. Raising his hand to his face, he breathed in the coppery scent of blood between his fingers.

  He started into the tunnel, but the sound of feet slipping across stones caused him to freeze mid step. Gun in hand, he swiveled around. As a ray of light reached into the darkness, he realized it was only Edie making her way in from the crypt. He stepped toward her quickly, putting a finger to his lips. Then he grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her.

  Into her ear, he whispered, “She’s close. Do you have a spare light?”

  Edie shook her head, offering him the mag light she was carrying instead. He took it and put a hand over it, dulling its beam to a pale pink glow. He took Edie’s arm and pulled her low to the floor, showing her the drops of blood in front of the door. “I winged her,” he whispered.

  “Any idea where this goes?” she whispered back.

  He shrugged. “I’m going in. You coming? Can you get our AFM friends on comms?”

  She nodded. Before he could slip away, she grabbed his hand and put a headset into it. “Don’t break this one,” she said when he was up on comms. A moment later, she added, “Right behind you.”

  Scott slipped away, moving at a steady pace through the darkness. Despite the pain, he held the flashlight loosely in his injured hand and the gun in the other. The passageway he hurried along was carved from the very bedrock upon which the city of Valetta was built. As he went, he could see where men had picked and blasted their way through, leaving a path that was wide enough so that he couldn’t touch both sides by extending his arms and high enough so that a tall man could walk without worry but not much bigger.

  In places, water from above seeped through and made the stones weep and sometimes these weeping stones created thin puddles under his feet. At the first few, he shined the flashlight on the floor, expecting to see a soggy trail leading away, but his target continued to leave behind no sign or trace of her passage.

  Coming into a natural gallery filled with stalactites and stalagmites with a shallow pool at its heart, he paused, expecting his quarry to pounce at any moment. This didn’t happen. Instead, the uncanny quiet persisted and he continued through, skirting the pool on his way. The moment he started into the tunnel, he stole a backward glance. He almost expected to see Edie, but there was no sign of her. “Edie,” he whispered, knowing the microphone in the headset would pick up his voice, but there was no response.

  Chapter 11

  Mediterranean Sea

  Afternoon, Wednesday, 20 June

  On board the USS Kearsarge, Chief Roberts paced back and forth outside Sit 1, chewing on the end of a hand-rolled Cuban cigar he was trying to talk himself out of going topside to light up. “Talk to me,” he said to the voice in his ear.

  “Chief, we’ve located Evers,” Captain Parker said.

  “About time,” the chief replied, eyeing his watch. If the director was right about the timeline, they were only minutes away from everything going sideways. “Progress? Tell me, you’ve made progress. The brass is ready to lockdown everything. It’s going to get ugly.”

  “What I’m looking at is hard to explain,” Edie said. She paused, then told him about Scott’s pursuit of the target, the church, the secret tunnel she was staring at.

  The chief bit clean through the end of the cigar in his mouth and almost choked on it. “Evers has a beat on Gosling? Tell me yes?”

  “He’s in pursuit,” Edie said quickly. “We’re close, but we’ve still no idea of the target location. These tunnels could go anywhere.”

  “We’ll work on it,” the chief said, ending the call.

  The chief rushed into the situation room, making his way directly to analyst position six. “Petty Officer Hansen,” he said, “get me everything you can find on Saint John’s Cathedral in Valetta, the crypt, particularly. I need civil engineering plans for city substructures too. Sewers, tunnels, everything.”

  The chief turned to the young petty officer manning analyst position five. “Simms, get me Dave Gilbert at the National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center.”

  “On it, chief,” the petty officer said.

  The chief eyed Executive Commander Howard across the room. Progress was definitely something he wanted to share. The preliminary reports on the pathogen they’d found in the vial had only told part of the story. Updates were being released every few minutes. The new reports were grim, but the real-time simulations were worse.

  Ugly things would happen within minutes of the pathogen being released. Projections showed the virus would sweep through Valetta within an hour of release, dooming everyone in the city. From there, the virus would spread city by city hour by hour until there was no place left on the island to escape it. Within hours, the fate of a half million people would be sealed.

  “Gilbert on one, chief,” Simms said.

  The chief pushed the button for line 1 as he snatched up the phone. “Gilbert,” the chief said, “I’ve got another job for you and that big black box of yours.”

  “Here to help,” a female voice said.

  The chief growled into the phone. “You’re not Gilbert. Get me Gilbert, Dave Gilbert.”

  “Chief Roberts, I’m Nancy, Nancy Leitner. I work with Dave,” the woman said. “They’ve got Dave—”

  “Nothing I tell you is for anyone’s ears but Gilbert’s. Got that?” the chief said, cutting Nancy off. “I know this sounds like a strange request, but I need to him to locate whatever he can on secret tunnels under Saint John’s Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. Everything, got that. No matter how small. I need to know where it goes, what it’s for, who built it. Got that?”

  “Understood, chief,” Nancy said, “and there’s not a darn thing you could tell me today that would surprise me. This is one day
I’m never going to forget.”

  “Not a day I’ll ever forget either,” the chief said just before ending the call.

  Hansen handed the chief a diagram of the Saint John’s Cathedral, showing the location of the hundreds of inlaid marble tombs and a large area in the middle with the label “Crypt of the Grand Masters beneath Choir”. Eyeing the garbage, the chief put the cigar in his mouth one last time. Then tossing the cigar away, he marched across the room to the executive commander.

  “Parker and Evers,” the chief said, interrupting the ongoing discussion, “they’ve located Gosling and are closing in on her.”

  Chapter 12

  Mediterranean Sea

  Afternoon, Wednesday, 20 June

  Scott knew he’d traveled about a half mile underground when he saw the roughhewn stairs and the arched portal. He was growing concerned and wanted to double back for Edie, but then plain as day he saw Alexis. She was standing at the top of the stairs, both hands working to pull open a heavy steel-wrapped door pitted with rust and decay.

  Their eyes locked for an instant. He didn’t know whether she heard his approach or just sensed his presence. What he did know, however, was that he had so many questions for her. Then she was bolting away even before he got a chance to get off a clean shot.

  With that, Scott dashed along the tunnel and up the stairs after her. While her lithe form was able to slip through without fully opening the door, he found himself having to squeeze through as he tried to force the door to open wider. The delay cost him, but as he spilled through he found himself suddenly in what was clearly a manmade structure. The subbasement of a very old building, if he had to guess.

  The fusty space, lined with dust-covered barrels, casks and decaying furniture, forced him to zigzag to make his way. The floor was uneven. The lighting, poor, and filtering down to him from an unseen source, perhaps from cracks in the ancient ceiling itself. Catching a glimpse of Alexis, he fired, the shot missing and sending up a plume of dust and debris.

  He was running hard, the beam of his flashlight dancing along in front of him with each stride, his eyes never leaving Alexis. She was no more than twenty yards ahead, racing toward an alcove at the far side of the subbasement. He squeezed off another round as soon as she was locked in his sights, but by that time, she was already slipping through a previously unseen door and into the chamber beyond.

  The moment he crossed the threshold, she spun around and fired at him. Two quick shots missed his head by millimeters as they struck the metal-wrapped door and ricocheted away in a splash of sparks and splinters. He saw in her eyes a naked rage, but something else too. A vulnerability perhaps, or perhaps a hint of desperation.

  “Alexis!” he shouted, returning fire.

  But she was gone, swallowed by darkness.

  Scott dove into the darkness after her, crashing into a stack of wooden casks and crated bottles, sending them flying against the hard stones where they cracked open and revealed the pungent earthy aroma of their liquid contents. “Whiskey and wine,” he thought to himself as he sloshed and crunched his way through.

  The corridor ended abruptly. The door he found was closed and unyielding, forcing him to fire rounds at its locking mechanism. After he forced his way past the door, he found a long spiral staircase leading up and up. He could see Alexis well ahead of him, taking the stairs two at a time as she raced along.

  Scott leveled his gun on her, using his other arm to brace himself and set his sights. For a moment he wondered why she was doing what she was doing. Was it retribution for the pain he saw? Payback to those who caused her such depths of hurt?

  He planted a round in the rail, another in the steps at her feet, before rushing after her. Though he couldn’t see her now, he knew she was working to open the door at the top of the stairs because he could hear her hands clawing desperately at its frame. He considered what she had done and what she was trying to do and tried to fathom what kind of punishment awaited her if he caught her.

  He wondered if the door was impassible. If it was, he would finally get the break he needed to end this. It was only as he reached the top of the landing that he realized this could also be an opportunity for her and it was this split-second hesitation that helped prepare him for the one-two punch of the pair of bullets that struck him clean in the chest.

  A wrenching feeling gripped him. He went down gasping, groping for the rail and the wall. “Air, breathe,” Scott told himself, but air wouldn’t fill his lungs. Still tumbling backward, he slammed into the wall and then he careened down the stairs.

  Coming to a sudden, painful stop, he ran his hands frantically over his chest, expecting to find blood and mess—his own end. He continued gasping at air he couldn’t find. Then as if someone had uncorked a bottle, air rushed into his lungs and he gulped and panted.

  As Scott pushed himself to his feet, he remembered he was wearing ballistics gear. The bullets had not pierced the protective panels, but they had knocked the wind out of his sails. He’d have nasty bruises where they struck, and likely from his fall as well, but he’d live.

  He pressed on, reaching the door quickly. Here, he paused and stooped low before continuing, his gun at the ready. As he darted into darkness, Scott knew why he wanted so desperately to catch Alexis alive. He wanted answers—answers he would only get if she was breathing—and knew this desire was perhaps guiding his hand.

  What Scott found on the other side of the door was a surprise: an anti-chamber and a hidden door in the wall revealed by light leaking through from the unseen space beyond. Beyond that was a gilded chapel, the walls of which were carved with garlands of flowers—a symbol of the prosperity of the Order of Saint John that had also adorned chapel walls in Saint John’s Cathedral.

  Leaving the chapel, he found marble floors, almond-colored walls and a crowded, chandelier-lined hall. As he entered, he felt as if he’d stumbled into a new world from the one he’d just left and there ahead of him no more than ten yards away was Alexis Gosling. She’d come up hard against the crowd and was having to force her way through. Cupped in her hand, he saw an olive-hued canister. Small enough to be discrete but big enough to be the delivery system for the virus.

  Scott holstered his gun and plunged into the sea of humanity. As he bumped and pushed, he grabbed onto a passing waiter. “Dove sono?” he said. Where am I?

  “Chiedo scusa?” The waiter replied, clearly puzzled by the question.

  Scott pulled himself around the waiter and pressed on. Alexis was directly in front of him, headed for a large public room, a meeting hall or ballroom perhaps where he thought he saw the wife of the British Prime Minister talking to the President of Singapore.

  Suddenly, hands were grabbing his arms. “Venire con noi,” the well-dressed men said. Come with us.

  “Captain Parker, Edie, Edie, Edie,” he said quickly, keying the microphone on his nearly forgotten headset. Then to the men, he said, “Agent Scott Evers.”

  “Credentials? Papers?” one of the men said in English.

  Before they could draw their guns, Scott twisted around and put his knee into the groin of one while he brought the butt end of his gun around to the side of the other’s head. “So sorry for this,” he said as brought both elbows down onto the first man’s back and then planted a booted foot into the other’s chest.

  Cries of surprise went up from the crowd. Heads turned and eyes locked on him. He saw a bodyguard step protectively in front of another man. The Prime Minister of Malaysia perhaps, he thought.

  Still little more than ten yards away, Alexis too stole a glance in his direction, looking alarmed to see him still breathing. As she turned again, facing front, she stumbled and fell. Tumbling into the person in front of her, her head thrust into the man’s shoulder, both went down. Her right hand shot out, searching for anything to break her fall. She found only the edge of a serving table, which her fingers grasped at desperately, pulling it over on top of her and sending an avalanche of glasses and bottles cascading ac
ross the floor.

  Earlier cries of surprise were turning to screams of alarm and panic. Within five strides, Scott was standing in the place where she had fallen. He looked down at the floor but saw only the man still struggling to get up and broken glass. No Alexis.

  Behind him, Scott heard heavy footfalls and shouting. The rapid, full force response wasn’t unexpected with the high alert status, but he had no time to explain anything that was happening to anyone.

  “Edie, speak to me,” he said, switching the headset to voice-activated mode. “I really need you. Edie?”

  He spun a tight circle, but couldn’t find Alexis in the agitated crowd. As he scanned, he saw the President of Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister of Singapore and other dignitaries. The faces he saw told him clearly where he was. He’d stumbled into the afternoon black tie event. Somehow it didn’t surprise him that the Crypt of the Grand Masters was secretly connected to the Palace of the Grand Master, also known as the President’s Palace. By the time his gaze landed on a bearded David Owen Blake less than twenty yards away, he knew Alexis’s sudden fall had been a staged distraction.

  “Blake, David Owen Blake is here, the President’s Palace,” he said, his head swiveling to the right where Alexis Gosling was crouched down, rolling hissing canisters across the floor and then pulling a submachine gun from her shoulder bag. An instant later, the gun was spitting bullets as she turned a wide arc.

  Bodies fell; terrified screams filled the room. People trampled each other as everyone fought to get away. Scott ripped his gun from its holster, fired twice in rapid succession. Both bullets struck the mark and Alexis slumped over, her head lolling to one side.