“Has there been any word of Dillon’s whereabouts?
“Yes. You were quite right; he is heading straight for you. He really must be stopped, although we have no idea of his exact location. Maybe he’s come to find you, Kirill? Maybe he is still pissed off with you for pulling that gun on him in Cornwall? Maybe he wants to find out why you didn’t die? That would make for a very interesting conversation, don’t you think?” There was a twisted mocking humour in Ramus’s voice.
“I thought you said you would take care of him?”
“Oh, have no fear, Kirill. I’m working on it.”
The comm. cut. Kirill stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray with measured aggression. All of a sudden it tasted like the, foul, dogend that it was.
Kirill spoke quickly into the Bluetooth headset attached to his right ear, his voice carried an edge as sharp a Samurai’s sword. His words direct and to the point, instructing the security guard at the other end. “Go and get the device.” The guard disconnected, and Kirill looked dispassionately around the room, gaze tracing the contours of the furniture. Something was troubling him, a nervousness that made him feel uneasy, even with trained Assassins and his personal security guards surrounding him. Dillon wouldn’t get within a hundred metres of him. Kirill laughed out loud, a deep hollow mocking laughter.
Two guards appeared outside Kirill’s apartment. “Take the device down to level 8. Let me know when you are there, and I will join you to arm it. If you value your life — you will ensure that the maximum security is maintained at all times, do I make myself clear?” Both guards nodded their understanding.
He pushed the button on the comm. A feminine voice at the other end answered.
“Have you found her yet?”
“No, sir,” came the smooth purring voice.
“Well, put more people on it and damn well find her!” He failed to hide his irritation and the tinge of urgency that had crept in to his tone. He took a deep breath. The tension and acid re-flux, he was experiencing, was making him feel nauseous. “I was given to believe that Assassins were supposed to be the very best at seek and destroy?”
“That is correct, sir.”
Kirill cut the connection. He left his apartment, entering the cool depths of the facility, heart pounding, and perspiration rolling down his temples. Damn you to hell, Dillon, he thought.
Damn you.
Claudia Dax lay flat on her back inside the air-conditioning shaft, a mass of multi-coloured wiring directly above her, a slender tablet computer in her hand. The tears had gone; her mind working at full throttle.
She knew the facility’s surveillance systems like the back of her hand; after all, she had made it her business to familiarise herself with every aspect of their programming. And, like all hackers, she had found all of the weak spots, and had then written in her own private backdoor — coding that had escaped the close scrutiny of the fail-safe programmers and had allowed her access to… everything.
On the tablet’s screen, she looked out at the Chinooks, their rotors idling, pilots awaiting their orders. She saw Kirill stub out his cigarette, and she watched with tired and strained eyes as he spoke on the comm and then leave his apartment to disappear back into the facility. The tension was consuming her. And she knew: Knew that she was waiting to die and there was no way that she would be able to escape them — after all, where would she go? What would she do?
She was in the middle of nowhere.
Tears rolled down over her cheeks, flowing freely, and Claudia despised herself for being weak, and her self-loathing turned to selfpity and she cried and cried, and then everything was suddenly looking out of control. And why was this happening to her?
She stopped crying. Wiping away the moisture from her eyes with the sleeve of her pyjamas.
How long did she have?
Even if they were to realise that she had entered the air-con system, it would take them hours to search all the vents and shafts. After all, the facility was huge. And looking on the bright side, as she had watched on the monitor, the majority of the Assassins had already left on the earlier Chinooks.
“Maybe they would give up and all leave?”
Although she knew that was not an option.
She also knew that they would hunt her to the end…
Claudia closed her eyes for a moment, her mind in overdrive. How was she going to turn this situation on its head? From being a victim and the hunted, to being the predator and the hunter. But how the hell was she going to do that?
And then it struck her.
Claudia started to crawl carefully along the ventilation shaft.
She suddenly had a purpose — a goal to attain…
She needed an edge, something to negotiate with.
And if she had copied the Chimera blueprints once, she could surely do it again.
Kirill moved with the agility of a man half his age, his hands working quickly and precisely, as he placed each explosive package around the core of the facility. He moved with care, alert, the automatic pistol he was carrying in his jacket pocket had the safety catch slid to off. A reassurance against any unwelcome visitors, such as, Jake Dillon…
Where was that annoying bastard? He mused.
He pushed the thought from his mind. Ten, one kilo packs of hi-explosive, each with a detonator linked wirelessly to the mother of all bombs. A small nuclear device — capable of vaporising the entire facility and everything in it. The ten much smaller charges were there merely for good measure.
Claudia Dax would wish the day that she had taken a bullet to the head in preference to what was to come…
Kirill stood in the corridor and glanced down at the tablet computer in his hand and the plan of the facility on the bright screen. The complex had been dug out of the mountain and designed to be impenetrable from attack by air or from the valley far below. He attached one of the hi-explosive packages to an overhead beam, and then moved on to the next location.
Finally, Kirill found himself in the main programming suites. The power had been cut and all defence systems inoperable. The mainframes and all systems were silent, cold and dead.
Kirill sighed.
The thought of Dillon niggled away at the back of his mind. Ramus had underestimated the former army intelligence officer. He had thought it an easy task to kill him, even with his Assassins doing the dirty work. How wrong he had got that…
Moving to the main console, Kirill flicked a few switches. A panel moved back silently on the side of the mainframe case; there were no markings to show that the Chimera Programme was stored on the now exposed hardrive. The slender black box slid free, was presented to him, dull, totally unimpressive. He lifted it carefully, noting how it made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up and bristle. He placed it gently into the inside breast pocket of his jacket…
Then, Kirill placed the smallest and final hi-explosive inside the mainframe. It locked in place and then blinked blue at him. He pulled the tablet computer from the bottom of the case he was carrying. He tapped in a series of digits on the screen; the menu opened up immediately as Kirill tapped one of the icons. The screen turned into a continuous waterfall of binary code, a never ending script, the final detonation command sequence. Once delivered up to the mainframe, the nuclear device would automatically count-down and no one could stop it…
“Have you checked that everything is in place?”
“Yes, Professor Kirill. Everything is now ready, sir.”
He tapped the enter button, and synchronised all of the hiexplosive packs with the nuke. Confirmation was instantaneous.