Vlado frowned. As they no doubt did with the events in Nevada, although I suspect that had more to do with Miller and his associates’ pathetic failure at keeping the information I shared with them under wraps, somehow.
An hour had passed since his return to the main research facility with his sedated prisoner in tow. He had still been seething at what had happened in Nevada when Ivan had walked in on him and Jessica Wu, thereby precipitating the unfortunate sequence of events that had followed.
Crovir’s gaze switched to him. As always, since the king had awoken, Vlado could not help the wave of nervousness that danced through his veins when he found himself the focus of those dangerous, pale eyes.
‘Why did you not kill him?’
Vlado looked at Ivan Vlašic where he lay on the bed. Though he felt no regret for what he had done to the man, he could not deny that Ivan had been a good friend to him for two centuries.
‘He might still prove useful if we have to bargain with the Crovir First Council. Although they believe I am missing right now, that situation might change if Victor and his allies convince them otherwise.’
Crovir watched him for a silent moment before dipping his chin. ‘That is a clever notion. I agree with your decision.’
Vlado masked his relief and glanced at another camera feed. ‘What about King Bastian?’
Crovir raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’
Vlado mulled over his next words carefully. ‘If you cannot make him change his mind, then what do you intend to do with him?’
Crovir straightened to his full height, his eyes darkening to pewter. ‘Are you asking me whether we should kill him?’
Vlado stood his ground and nodded stiffly.
A strange look came over Crovir’s face then.
He touched his chest and stared at his younger brother where he sat on the bed in his cell. ‘I tried to kill him once. In the heat of battle.’ His tone turned thoughtful. ‘To do so cold-bloodedly…’ He tailed off and lapsed into silence.
Surprise washed through Vlado. There was no mistaking the guilt and affection he had seen in the older king’s eyes.
He stared at the feed from Ivan’s cell, troubled. Is that what it means? To have a brother?
Vlado thought of his childhood with Jonah. There had been times when he had felt alone and wanted more. Wanted a mother. Wanted siblings and friends. His relationship with Ivan was the closest thing he had ever had to knowing what it was like to have either. Still, although his upbringing had been strict and filled with rules, he had never once doubted the love Jonah had for him. Vlado’s admiration for his father’s strength of will and his far-reaching ambitions had only grown with the passage of time, until they had become sacrosanct.
It had been his decision to become a subject of the experiments they had been carrying out in the past century, ever since they had teamed up with the Axis alliance and the Nazis during the Second World War. Though he now possessed the same superior genetic and nanotechnology enhancements as the latest generation of super soldiers they had bred in their labs, the fact that he had been conceived the natural way meant he needed regular injections to keep the molecular structure of his altered DNA stable. It was a small price to pay for their end game.
Vlado knew what Jonah would have made of Crovir’s words had he still been alive. He would have found them weak.
He frowned, his resolve hardening. I will not hesitate when it comes to making your dreams come true, father. Even if one of them has to die, we WILL rule this world once more.
Howard drummed his fingers on the workstation and scowled at the data streaming across the array of flat-screen monitors.
Even though he’d recruited his group of hackers and Jordan and Eva to help him sift through the decades of satellite intel from IONDS, the Integrated Operational Nuclear Detection System, it was taking forever to identify the specific information he was looking for.
Made up of a combination of defense and Navstar GPS satellites, the aim of the IONDS network was to detect nuclear energy sources occurring naturally in outer space and those of man-made origin on Earth. Although IONDS was geared toward spotting major nuclear events, the latest electro-optical devices on the satellites meant they could also identify the presence of nuclear radiation at a low, constant level.
Like, say, that projected by a collection of nuclear-powered submarines, warships, and secret facilities under the ice somewhere.
‘Hey, Howard?’
Howard glanced at the monitor featuring a permanent link to Jordan and Eva’s computer lab in Sumava. ‘Yeah?’
Jordan scratched his day-old stubble, his expression thoughtful. ‘How about we make a formula?’’
Howard stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What if we could teach our systems to isolate the specific nuclear signature of those four subs?’
Howard frowned. ‘Is that even possible? I thought the IONDS network didn’t go back that far.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Jordan said. ‘But we could get the original VELA satellite data from the DoD and the US Atomic Energy Commission.’
A thrill of excitement surged through Howard. This was the best idea he’d heard in over twelve hours.
He smiled. ‘By “get,” I take it you mean “illegally acquire?”’
Jordan blinked. ‘Is there any other way?’
Howard chuckled. ‘Neither of us are nuclear physicists, though. How do you propose we come up with this formula?’
Jordan arched an eyebrow. ‘You mean you don’t know any nuclear physicists?’
Howard sighed. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that you invented an AI I’m in love with, I would so crash your servers right now.’
Jordan grinned.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alexa pressed her hand over the mouth of the armed man standing with his back to her and pierced the base of his skull with a sai. He stiffened before slumping soundlessly in her hold, his lips parted on a silent cry. Anatole moved silently past her and took out the second guard. They shifted the bodies into a side passage before heading into the gloom of the tunnel.
Two hours had passed since they touched down outside Uranium City. They’d hired a pair of 4x4s at the airport and driven fifteen miles north, to where Eva had identified a large concentration of subterranean activity not far from the mine that had supposedly been closed following a rockslide in 2015.
From Eva’s analysis of the ground-penetrating-radar images she’d obtained after hacking a passing satellite, the hidden mine spanned a two-mile stretch of land sitting between the juncture of three lakes. It ran parallel to one of the fault zones in the region known to contain rare earth element ores.
They’d left their vehicles in the conifer forest a couple of miles from the coordinates Eva had provided them with and travelled the rest of the way on foot. An hour of recon had revealed the concealed entrance to the facility, a score of ventilation shafts, three escape tunnels, and the dozen guards watching the perimeter. They had also come across a camouflaged landing strip half a mile to the east.
It had not taken long for them to dispose of the men outside the mine; luckily, none had been super soldiers.
‘If we’re going to find anything, it’ll be in there,’ Lucas had said when they assembled in the trees two hundred feet from the mine’s primary opening.
‘We should use the air ducts and the secondary tunnels to get inside,’ Conrad had added. ‘Extend the element of surprise for as long as we can.’
Alexa had nodded briskly. ‘I agree.’
Eva’s estimates from the satellite imagery had put the mine some eight hundred feet at its deepest. Though the AI had discerned generators and power cables running through the four levels of the complex, she had not been able to find any computer network linked to them. She also did not know the exact number of men inside the facility since the satellite had not been equipped with infra-red cameras.
They had split into pairs before making their way to d
ifferent access points. By the time Alexa and Anatole had rappelled down a ventilation shaft and reached the first level, the red-haired Immortal had started to sweat profusely.
‘Are you alright?’ Alexa had said in a low voice.
Anatole had nodded and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
‘I have a thing about underground spaces.’
Something small and black had scuttled across the passage five feet ahead of them.
Anatole had blanched.
‘And rats. I have a thing about rats too.’
Alexa had arched an eyebrow.
‘Are you being serious right now?’
‘As a heart attack,’ Anatole had said dully.
Alexa had sighed and muttered something under her breath.
They had come across the armed guards minutes later.
Having dispatched them, they moved on.
A jangling noise reached Alexa’s ears as they neared an intersection. A shadowy passage became visible up ahead. The sound grew louder.
They sidled up opposite walls of the tunnel and peered around the corners. Alexa drew a sharp breath, reached across the passage, and yanked Anatole sharply back by his shoulder.
A train of carts zoomed by inches from their noses, wheels rattling on metal tracks set in the ground. Alexa glanced up and down the narrow corridor before dashing after the last vehicle as it went past.
Anatole swore and followed her. ‘What the hell are you—?’
‘They’re empty!’ Alexa said. ‘Which means they’re heading inside!’
She jumped, grabbed the backend of the cart, and climbed inside before turning and grasping Anatole’s hand. He scaled the metal container and landed beside her.
He froze in the next instant. ‘Is that a rat?’
Alexa followed his stiff gaze to the small, dark shape on the other side of the cart. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Are you sure?’
Alexa pinched her forehead. ‘I should have partnered up with the Power Ranger.’
Anatole ignored the insult and clutched her arm. ‘No, seriously, are you sure it’s dead? I just saw its tail twitch!’
The carts juddered as the passage abruptly curved and dropped into a turn.
Lucas headed stealthily toward the micro digger, his gaze darting to the dozens of figures negotiating the metal walkways of the cave above him and the men at the bottom of the gigantic ore pit to his left. He was aware they only had to look this way to see him.
He moved into the shadow of the cab, climbed silently onto the rotating platform, and placed his Glock carefully against the temple of the man in the orange boilersuit sitting inside the cabin with a cigarette between his lips and a newspaper on his lap.
The miner froze.
Lucas caught the cigarette stub as it fell from the man’s parted lips and carefully crushed it against the outer wall of the digger.
‘You and I are going to step down from here and go for a nice walk,’ he murmured. ‘Nod if you understand.’
The man nodded furiously.
Lucas kept his gun at the miner’s head as he guided him off the machine and back the way he had come. The guy rocked to a standstill when he saw the four unconscious men Reid was trussing up inside a side tunnel. There was a dead guard on the ground behind them.
‘Look!’ he blurted out, ‘I don’t know what you want, but just don’t kill—’
Lucas clamped a hand over the man’s mouth, pressed the Glock deeper into his flesh, and glanced at the ID badge clipped to his chest. ‘Boris, is it?’
The man nodded, his panicked breaths fast and heavy behind Lucas’s palm.
‘We’re not going to kill you, Boris,’ Lucas said. ‘As long as you keep your voice down.’
Boris swallowed and gasped out a muffled, ‘Okay!’
‘I’m going to take my hand away now,’ Lucas said. ‘If you scream, I’ll shoot you. If you talk louder than a whisper, I’ll shoot you. If you manage to raise the alarm somehow, I will shoot you. Got it?’
Boris whimpered.
Lucas slowly lowered his hand. Reid finished tying up the other miners and rose to his feet. Boris stared at them with round eyes.
‘This place must have some kind of office,’ Lucas said in a cold voice. ‘You’re going to take us there.’
Boris blinked. ‘I just work here. I mean, the pay is great and as long as I don’t ask questions, everything’s—’
‘The office, Boris!’ Lucas snapped.
The man hesitated before nodding. He remained frozen to the ground.
Reid glanced at Lucas.
‘So, where is it?’ he asked the miner testily.
Boris gulped and pointed behind him with a trembling hand. ‘Back that way. It’s on the other side of the main ore pit.’
Lucas’s heart sank.
‘Well, shit,’ Reid said.
‘This is a bit of a predicament,’ Conrad said.
‘You think?’ Ethan muttered above him.
A shower of dirt rained down on Conrad as Ethan’s boots slipped against the walls of the borehole.
It had been fifteen minutes since they infiltrated the facility through one of the escape tunnels. They had disposed of the three guards they had encountered, come upon the miners’ living quarters on the second level, and secured the four men eating in the mess. They had found a map of the mine tacked to the wall and had been following it to the next levels when the wooden planks they’d walked across in the gloom had suddenly collapsed beneath them, revealing an abandoned drilling hole just wide enough to take a man.
They’d fallen some twenty feet before wedging themselves against the walls with their hands and boots.
‘I’m gonna keep moving down,’ Conrad said presently. ‘This thing has to end somewhere.’
‘You’ve been saying that for the last five minutes.’ Ethan paused. ‘Can you even see anything down there?’
Conrad eyed the pool of darkness between his legs. ‘Nope. But, hey, look on the bright side. Eva said this place was eight hundred feet deep. We’re already over seven hundred in.’
Ethan sighed. ‘Not if this is an exploration borehole. Those go way deeper.’
Conrad’s stomach plummeted. ‘You had to ruin it for me, didn’t you?’
They shifted down another twenty feet. Sweat dripped off Conrad’s face and neck and disappeared into the murky depths of the borehole.
‘How about you use your powers?’ he suggested, the muscles in his arms and legs burning as he braced them against the rock.
‘To do what?’ Ethan said.
‘I don’t know. Levitate us out of here?’ Conrad said, hope lacing his words.
Silence descended from above. ‘Are you kidding me right now, Greene?’
‘You mean you can’t?’
‘Stop. Please. I can literally hear Jared’s spirit laughing inside my head.’
Conrad blinked. The shadows were lightening below.
‘Hey, I think I see—’
Ethan cursed as he slid and dropped.
Conrad braced himself against the wall a second before his cousin’s weight bore down on him. They slipped another ten feet before he managed to stop their fall.
‘Tell me that’s not your ass on my head, Storm,’ Conrad grunted as he heaved and pushed against the rock.
‘Be grateful it’s just my ass. If I’d been facing the other way, it would have been my—’
A distant clattering echoed up the walls of the borehole.
They froze.
‘What was that?’ Ethan said.
Conrad carefully lowered his gaze and peered down between his legs.
He inhaled sharply. ‘Tracks. I think I see some kind of metal tracks!’
The noise grew louder. Shadowy shapes flashed past some thirty feet below.
‘Those are mining carts!’ Conrad shouted. ‘I’m gonna let go!’
‘What? Are you crazy?!’
The rest of Ethan’s protest was drowned out as Conrad droppe
d. He fell out of the borehole’s opening seconds later and crashed into the base of a metal container. Air whooshed out of his lungs when Ethan landed hard on his back. Conrad groaned as he slowly climbed off him.
‘Hey, get your own cart,’ someone said above them.
Ethan stiffened before relaxing beside him. Conrad rolled onto his back and looked into Anatole’s upside-down, grinning face above the lip of the cart behind them.
Alexa appeared next to him.
She glanced back the way they had come before frowning at them. ‘Where the hell did you guys come from?’
It was at this point that they heard the sounds of a gunfight. Ten seconds later, the train of carts hurtled out of the tunnel and emerged into a pit at the bottom of a large cave.
Conrad rose from a low crouch and peered over the side of the cart.
Lucas and Reid stood behind an excavator on a ridge thirty feet above them. A man in an orange boilersuit was visible on the floor of the digger, his hands over his head and his body jerking repeatedly while Lucas and Reid exchanged gunfire with the armed figures on the metal walkways above them and the ones in the pit below.
‘It’s like he’s got the words “shoot me” tattooed on his forehead,’ Conrad muttered as he stared at Lucas.
Alexa sighed. ‘Anna said the same thing. If there’s a gunfight, he’s always the first in the fray. He’s a trouble magnet with a capital T.’
Ethan checked his gun. ‘We best go get our troublesome generals.’
‘All right,’ Anatole said with an enthusiastic grin. ‘One for all and all for—’
‘Don’t.’ Alexa scowled. ‘Just. Don’t.’
Ethan stretched out the kinks in his neck, rose to his feet, and sent out a blast of elemental energy around the cave. The sound of weapons crumpling into useless lumps of metal echoed against the rock walls.
‘Hey!’ Reid yelled from behind the excavator. ‘You got our guns too!’
‘Whoops,’ Ethan murmured.
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