by Steven James
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. “I mean… I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, like questioning the Bible or anything, I just-”
“No, it’s okay. Maybe I just need a glass of water.” Amber’s voice sounded wavery, uncertain. “I’ll be right back.”
She rose.
And returned to the bathroom.
The USS Louisiana
International waters, Gulf of Oman
“Louisiana full stop,” Captain Reaves said, then heard the ensign echo his command.
He felt the forward momentum of the submarine change, but after twenty-two years at sea it didn’t affect his balance at all, and he stared unflinchingly at the emergency action message that had just printed out.
Though it still needed authentication by his executive officer, the EAM was properly formatted.
He studied it silently, picked up the mic. “Lieutenant Commander,” he said, “to the con.”
The reply came back through the intercom. “Aye, sir.”
The message told Reaves to move to DEFCON 1, known in the military as “cocked pistol.” Maximum readiness.
Something big was up. And he and his crew were right in the middle of it.
86
8:49 p.m.
11 minutes until the transmission
The cool air of the tunnel whipped past my face.
It was hard to calculate the cart’s speed, but I would have guessed we were moving at twenty-five, maybe thirty miles per hour, which meant that if it was five miles to the base, we should’ve arrived by now. Unfortunately, however, I didn’t see any indication that we were nearing the end of our route. Instead, all I saw was the perpetual purple-black darkness pressing in against the forward operating light’s meager beam.
It’s possible this doesn’t end at the base. It’s possible you were wrong.
No, these tracks have to lead somewhere.
As we traveled, we passed a series of cylindrical nodes buried partway into the earth, placed uniformly about thirty meters apart, all connected by a thick bundle of wires.
The extremely low frequency electromagnetic transmitters.
I reviewed what we knew-or at least what I thought we knew: we would arrive at the top level of the station. From there, a stairwell in the east corner accessed the base’s second level and another stairwell at the far end of the crew quarters led down to the command level, where the control room would be.
Weatherford had told me there were ten or eleven Eco-Tech members, but of course, it was possible there were more.
What’s their agenda? If they’re anti-nuke, why try to fire a nuclear missile? Are Cassandra and Terry just using them as pawns?
Even if SWAT or local law enforcement had arrived at the Inn the very moment we’d left it, without another cart on that end of the tunnel, they wouldn’t be able to A light.
Faint, distant, but there was definitely something ahead of us. I motioned for Lien-hua to let up on the throttle, but she must’ve noticed it as well because we were already slowing.
“What do you think, Pat?” she called.
“Take us up there. As close as you can.”
“They might hear the motor.”
“If there’re people there, they’ve heard it already.”
We closed the distance until I could see that the light was indeed coming from the upper level of the base where all eight tunnels converged. Lien-hua brought the motorized cart to a stop about twenty-five meters from the portal.
We stepped down. A steady, audible hum was coming from the long line of electromagnetic nodes.
“They’re powered on,” Lien-hua said.
Not good.
The noise wasn’t overwhelming and I doubted it would’ve masked the sound of our railcar.
Flashlights off and guns unholstered, as quickly as we dared, Lien-hua and I approached the base’s entry bay.
87
Solstice asked Donnie, “Are we ready to send the signal?”
“Yes.”
She handed him a copy of the coded message. He stared at the indecipherable sequence of numbers and letters. “What are these?”
“Deactivation codes,” she lied. “Enter them in but wait with the signal. Eight minutes. We send it at nine o’clock.”
“Why?”
Because that’s when the Louisiana is in position, she thought.
“Our agenda doesn’t concern you,” she said.
“And if I do this, Lizzie-you’ll let her go?”
“No one will lay a hand on her.”
“Tell me. Swear it!”
“I swear it to you. No harm will come to her.”
Obviously still distressed about the death of his wife, but finally compliant, he turned to the keyboard.
She spoke into her headset radio to get an update from her team and make sure the explosives were all in place. Eclipse told her the hostages were secure. Everyone else confirmed that they were on their way to the control room, except for Cyclone, who did not respond.
“Cyclone?” Solstice repeated into her mic, but once again there was no reply. “Millicent, where are you?”
Nothing.
She turned to Typhoon. “Check on her. Sweep the crew quarters first, then go take a look in the tunnels.”
With a heavy nod, the thickly muscled ape picked up one of the AR-15s and stalked through the hall toward the stairs.
We entered the upper level of the base and I saw the concrete-encased elevator shaft to my right. It appeared to be just over a meter wide and nearly two meters across and reminded me of an extremely runout and exhausting crack I’d climbed in Yosemite a few years ago. An electrical line stretched up from a relay control module and disappeared out of sight in the shaft.
That’s how they sent the web-based message earlier that everything was fine.
I made note of it. I could use that to contact Margaret.
After we’d stopped Cassandra Lillo.
Twelve stout concrete pillars supported the ceiling of the room. Seven other tunnels spidered out in all directions. The second opening to our left contained a cart that looked like the one Lien-hua and I had just ridden here.
I pictured the topography of the terrain above us, evaluated that tunnel’s direction in relation to the one we’d emerged from, and had an idea of where it might lead. Silently, I gestured toward the stairwell, but before we could reach it I heard movement in the tunnel containing the other railcar.
Swift, cat-like, Lien-hua leapt against one of the support columns to cover me. I raised my gun and my flashlight, approached the tunnel’s entrance. “FBI! Put your hands in the air!” Sweeping the beam before me, I saw Alexei Chekov standing about twenty meters away.
A woman lay at his feet.
She wasn’t moving, and from here I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead.
88
8:54 p.m.
6 minutes until the transmission
“Hands away from your body, Alexei!”
He held up his empty hands. “We need to hurry. We only have until 9:00."
I motioned with the barrel of my gun for him to step away from the woman. “On the ground. On your knees. Do it.”
“We have six minutes.”
“Down!”
He stepped to the side, went to one knee, then the other.
“Six minutes until what? They send the signal?”
“Yes.”
I punched at my watch so the timer would go off in five. Alexei gestured toward the radio hanging from the injured woman’s belt. “They’re sending someone to look for her.”
Keeping my gun trained on him, I signaled for Lien-hua to check the woman’s pulse, then I walked around Alexei so I’d be able to monitor the tunnel’s entrance while I frisked him.
Cautiously, Lien-hua approached the woman, no doubt aware, as I was, that all of this might be an elaborate trap.
I had the plastic cuffs with me, and though I doubted cuffing Alexei would do much good, I did it anyway. At leas
t it might slow him down if he tried to make a move on me or Lien-hua.
From where I stood now, I could see the woman’s face and recognized her as one of the the Eco-Tech operatives whose photos Alexei had sent to my email account. “Her name is Millicent Alman,” I told Lien-hua.
“She was setting explosives.” Alexei nodded toward the dirt wall of the tunnel. “Triacetone triperoxide.” A strip of TATP with a wireless detonation package had been implanted into the tunnel’s wall with two narrow spikes.
Oh, this was just getting better and better.
Lien-hua bent beside Millicent, checked her pulse, her airway. “She’s alive.”
I patted Alexei down. “What did you do to her?”
He was clean.
“It’s Propotol.” He was eyeing the tunnel’s opening carefully. “She’ll be all right, but she’s going to be out for a couple hours. We should really get out of the line of fire.”
I thought again of the geographic alignment of this tunnel.
Donnie’s biometric ID was at the sawmill… In their break room there was a stairwell to the basement… With a second tunnel, that would explain “You came from the sawmill, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You hacked into my email, read the schematics, that’s how you found it.” It was more of an observation than a question.
“Yes.”
I helped him to his feet. “Where’s the bone gun?”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“What about Burlman’s sidearm?”
“I don’t use guns.”
A person in his profession?
“Because of your wife? Because she was shot?”
He stared at me. “Yes. Because of my wife.”
Millicent had a handgun, a radio, and two sets of plastic handcuffs, all of which Lien-hua helped herself to.
When Alexei had first asked me to help him, he’d told me he wanted to deal “appropriately” with the people who killed the Pickrons, and he’d wanted my help finding Valkyrie… “It was Valkyrie, wasn’t it?” I said. “That’s who killed Tatiana?”
He chose not to reply, but I took his silence as a yes.
At the sheriff’s department when the topic of our wives’ deaths had come up, he’d said that he had someone to take out his vengeance on, that I had only God to blame.
That’s why he’s here. To kill Valkyrie. “Did Millicent tell you who Valkyrie was before you drugged her?”
“Yes.”
“Dana Murkowski?” I said, referring to the alias Cassandra Lillo was apparently using for this mission.
Alexei looked at me stiffly. “That’s right.”
But why would Cassandra have killed Alexei’s wife?
“Pat,” said Lien-hua urgently, “we need to get-”
Abruptly, Alexei held out both hands, palms up, dropping the spent cuffs to the ground. I aimed the Glock at him, but he wasn’t coming at me. He’d freed himself even faster than I’d guessed he would.
“If you fire,” he said, “it’ll give away our location.”
I looked at the time on my watch: 8:55.
Move, Pat. Go.
Dragging Millicent across the ground wasn’t ideal, and with my bum ankle and Lien-hua’s slim frame, we weren’t well-suited to move her. Gesturing toward Millicent and then the railcar, I told Alexei, “Carry her over there.” He lifted her, brought her to the cart, gently set her down. Lien-hua tested one of the bars supporting the metal runners to make sure it was sturdy, then cuffed Millicent’s left wrist to it.
You can’t leave Alexei here.
And you can’t take him with you.
“Stick out your leg,” I told him. “Quickly.”
Giving me a curious look, he obeyed. While Lien-hua kept her gun trained on Alexei, I secured the GPS ankle bracelet that I’d brought with me around his left ankle.
“You knew we’d meet up with him?” Lien-hua sounded amazed.
“I had my suspicions.”
Lien-hua asked Alexei, “Did Millicent say anything about Jerusal-”
“Get down!” I’d seen movement near the stairwell.
We ducked, flashlights off.
The three of us slid behind the railcar.
A dump-truck-sized man came into view and turned toward our tunnel, an assault rifle in his hands.
He was less than thirty meters away.
“Cyclone?” he yelled.
If you call to him he’ll pin you down, but you can’t fire first, not without “You in there?”
Alexei tossed a rock ahead of us, and it clanged on the metal track. The man with the rifle raised his light, saw Millicent unconscious, and immediately sprayed a burst of bullets at us, hitting the cart. Lien-hua and I returned fire. I hit him in the chest, she might have as well, but he was wearing body armor and he didn’t go down, but instead lurched awkwardly back into the stairwell out of the line of fire.
“You threw that stone so he’d shoot at us,” Lien-hua said to Alexei.
“Law enforcement protocol,” he replied. “You have rules. I realize that. It was the best way to get him to-”
The radio we’d acquired from Millicent came to life. The guy was calling for his team.
This was going down.
Now.
89
8:56 p.m.
4 minutes until the transmission
Solstice heard Typhoon radio for help.
“Spread out,” she barked into her radio. “Cover the hallways. No one gets to the control room.”
Then she ordered Donnie, “Finish with the code now or I swear I’ll have my people shoot your little girl where she stands!”
I recognized the voice on the radio. Cassandra Lillo.
“We have to move. Lien-hua, cover me. Alexei, you stay here.” I angled toward the entry bay and waited for any glimpse of the shooter edging around the corner of the stairwell.
Nothing.
Heart slamming against my chest, I made my way toward the end of the tunnel.
Amber didn’t come out of the bathroom.
Tessa reassured herself that Amber was just using the toilet or maybe cleaning up after having her tears smear her mascara so much, but beneath those thoughts was a dark inkling, a tiny, discomfiting suspicion that barely even registered to her on a conscious level.
But then it did.
The toilet had not flushed. The water in the sink had not been turned on. No sound at all was coming from the room at the end of the hall.
With a deepening sense of apprehension, Tessa picked up her flashlight and went to check on her stepaunt.
“Pat!” I heard Lien-hua whisper harshly behind me, but I’d already seen what she was warning me about-Alexei, streaking toward me through the tunnel, flipping something out of his right sleeve.
The bone gun.
How?
You had him carry Millicent. Maybe he’d hidden it under I almost squeezed the trigger, but he wasn’t coming for me. He reached the room, and as Lien-hua and I went after him, he disappeared into the stairwell.
Two rapid shots.
The sound of a body tumbling down the stairs.
By the time Lien-hua and I got to the stairwell, Cassandra’s voice was cutting through the radio we’d taken from Millicent: “Kill the hostages.”
The metal stairs twisted out of sight before us.
No one visible. Not Alexei, not the shooter.
Lien-hua and I flew down the steps, taking them two at a time.
Tessa rapped on the bathroom door. “Amber? Everything okay?”
Nothing.
She tried the doorknob.
Locked.
“Amber. Open the door.”
Only silence in reply.
“Amber,” Tessa cried louder, trying the doorknob again. “Open up the door!”
We reached the bottom of the stairs.
The shooter lay at our feet. His neck was broken, his head contorted at a hideous angle. He was breathing hoarsely, wide-eyed and afra
id.
The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle he’d fired at us lay on the ground-Alexei had left it-but a large sheath on the man’s belt was missing its knife. “Help me,” he managed to say.
There wasn’t anything we could do for him right now. I knelt beside him and asked urgently, “Where are the hostages?”
“Room,” he muttered. He tried to say more, but his words burbled away into something indistinguishable.
I envisioned the base’s schematics. Cassandra will be in the control room. But the hostages? Where?
Lien-hua grabbed the assault rifle.
“Go right,” I directed her. “If you don’t find the hostages, get to the control room and stop Cassandra!”
She darted right and I sprinted left toward the crew quarters.
90
8:57 p.m.
3 minutes until the transmission
“Amber!”
No answer.
The meds?
The sleeping pills?
No, no, no!
Tessa yanked out her phone, tried 911. The line was dead.
Pick the lock.
You have to get in that room!
The doorknob was like most bathroom locks-just a hole on the outside. Easy to get into if you have a barbeque skewer-thing or maybe a paperclip or bobby pin. Or a thick nail.
“I’m coming!” she yelled to Amber, though at this point she doubted her stepaunt could hear her. As fast as she could, Tessa rushed downstairs to Sean’s workbench.
The interrogators unfastened Terry’s wrists.
While they were lifting him toward the bed, he went for Riley’s gun, but as he snagged the weapon, it discharged, sending a round through Riley’s pelvis. The guy shuddered to the ground, screaming. Terry dropped back into the wheelchair, and by the time he’d landed, he’d already swung the gun toward Riley’s head. “Don’t move!” he shouted to the other agents.
The two of them froze, tense, hands already on their weapons.
For a moment, Terry debated with himself about trying to kill them all but decided he probably wouldn’t be able to do it without getting himself shot.
“Place your guns on the bed,” Terry commanded. “If you try anything, Riley dies.”