Leah yanked free of Jack’s grasp and ran toward the trio. Jack spun around and held his hand up, blocking the automatic weapon from getting a clear shot. He stared into the man’s eyes and the message was clear.
If you want to shoot her, it’ll have to be through me.
Fischer’s commando leveled the barrel at Jack’s chest for a moment, then lifted it up and away.
Leah dropped down to her knees and looked into Garrett’s soot-covered face. “Are you okay?”
Garrett coughed once and nodded. “We saw you guys go out — by the time I found Marko, fire had filled the exit.” He nodded toward the billionaire. “Al grabbed and flung us both to the floor of the airplane, or we’d have been dead.”
“We got out through a hole in the fuselage.” Paulson wiped soot off his lips and looked up at the machine guns pointed down at them. “Guess we screwed up big.”
“Get into the sleds,” ordered one of the armed men.
“And if we don’t?” asked Leah.
“Several of your expedition members are already dead, ma’am. I suggest you don’t make it any worse for yourselves.”
CHAPTER 90
Leah looked down at Juan Cortez’s lifeless body. Next to him lay Rooster and Chase Parker. Dark-red blood stained the ice around their bodies.
Leah dropped on her knees next to Juan’s body. “What happened?” she cried, rage threatening to blind her as she blinked away tears.
“They tried to give you more time to get the Caribou airborne,” Ridley said softly. Angus Lyon and Orlando Perez stood behind Ridley, their grease covered overalls now stained red with blood after having tried to provide life-giving first aid. “The SEAL guarding us got knocked down, but he’s okay. He could have shot us but he didn’t. The SEAL commander’s got chopped up by flying debris.” Ridley nodded toward a storage building. “He’s inside — unconscious.”
“Who ordered deadly force?” Jack demanded.
Ridley pointed to a thin white figure walking quickly toward the rear of the Hercules. “That’s the guy in charge — from what we hear.”
“You’re a murderer,” Leah shouted.
The figure turned around. He hesitated and then walked over toward them. When he got within ten feet, he stopped and flipped down his hood. “My name is Stanton Fischer.” He pointed toward the bodies, now covered with the tarps. “I’m sorry about your friends, but they shouldn’t have—”
“Do you know what you’ve done?” Leah raged. “These aren’t soldiers. They never hurt anyone!”
“Dr. Andrews, I presume,” Fischer said. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, and the implications for our national security are incalculable.”
“Fuck your national security, and fuck you!” She lunged toward him, and he stepped backward in shock. Ridley held her back with a gentle hand.
“Do you know what you stumbled upon?” Fischer asked.
With visible effort, Leah controlled her voice. “We found real people whose lives were already a living hell — people who deserve to be taken back to their homes and allowed to live in peace.”
“The President has a more realistic view of the situation.” He signaled his commandos. “Give them two minutes to pay their respects and then lock them in one of the remaining Russian shacks where they can’t get themselves into any more trouble.”
“You can’t keep this a secret,” Leah said. “When I get out of here, I’m calling every television network and telling them what we found and what you’ve done.”
Fischer simply turned and, without another word, jogged toward the LC-130 Hercules.
“We’re not getting out of here,” Paulson said flatly.
Ridley chuckled. “You figure that out all by yourself?”
Paulson looked down at the ice and blinked. “Damn, it looks like I did it this time, Mac. I really fucked up.”
“Yeah, you sure as hell did,” the mechanic replied. “Now you’d better figure out how to get us out of this mess.”
Leah squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Even so, the tears flowed down her cheeks. Jack reached out and held her.
“Juan worshiped the ground I walked on. It’s my fault that he’s dead — and we’re in this debacle.”
“We all knew what we were getting into,” Jack said, “even Juan.”
She pulled back and wiped away a tear. “If I could just take it all back.”
Jack looked at her and then at Paulson. They were in deep trouble. After what they had discovered and what happened to Juan and Rooster, they’d never be allowed to speak to the media. Paulson was right: We’re not getting out of here alive.
The billionaire nodded, acknowledging Jack’s understanding, but also seeming to urge Jack to do something.
As he held Leah through her wracking sobs, Jack thought back to Paulson on Everest. To get them out of this, he’d have to go deep — deep and personal.
I need to motivate her — motivate all of us.
“Juan is gone, Leah. You can’t help him but you still have an important job.”
She looked up, her brow wrinkled in confusion, bordering on anger. “Juan and Rooster and Chase are dead. What possibly could be more important?”
“What about that little Native American girl? Remember her lying in the tube — helpless and alone.”
Her face went blank for a second.
Time to push her hard.
“While you’re here feeling sorry for yourself, those people are being loaded into a scientific meat wagon.”
“What the hell can I do, Hobson?” she snapped. “You want me to charge the Hercules — like Juan?”
“It’d be a better ending than crying in your soup.” Jack softened his tone. “As long as we’re alive, there’s hope for them. If we can find a way out of this, you’ll have a chance to tell your story to the world.”
“How the hell are we going to get out of this?”
Jack glanced over at the billionaire. “Got any ideas, Al?”
“I doubt they got the balls to execute us.” He looked up at Stanton’s commandos surrounding the LC-130. “We’ll probably be held at some secure facility outside the United States until someone decides our fate.” He shrugged. “We’re like enemy combatants. We’ll have to be warehoused at some CIA black site.”
“So we play ball like good little boys and girls,” Garrett whispered. “For now. Then make a break for it when we get a chance.”
“Exactly,” Jack said.
CHAPTER 91
BLM Chief Teresa Simpson sat in her Washington office, watching the first snowfall of the year drift down over the city. Six inches of fresh powder had snarled traffic and shut down the federal government, a situation that seemed patently ridiculous to Teresa, who had grown up in Denver, Colorado.
The serene picture was in stark contrast to the reality of the situation, at least for the handful of people who knew what was going on. And she unfortunately knew precious little. After her rare appearance at the National Security Council, she’d heard nothing regarding the civilian extraction.
The forest is too damned quiet.
That’s what her dad had said when he took her deer hunting in the Colorado wilderness. If the forest got too quiet, it meant the animals had been spooked.
Teresa opened her desk and pulled out the notebook in which she kept personal notes jotted down during telephone conversations. She flipped backward through the pages until she found a name written near the bottom of one page with a phone number directly above it. She hesitated for a moment; making this call would mean breaking the chain of command.