He stared down at Olivia.
She smiled at him again. “Goodbye, Captain.”
Snatching his gun off the desk where he’d left it, he pointed it at her head.
“Go on. Do it,” she said. “You know you want to.”
Damn right he did. No one would ever come close to matching the number of dead that would undoubtedly lie at Olivia’s feet. Billions, if the Resistance’s projections were correct.
Her smile broadened. “You can’t, can you? You’re too good for that. You’d never shoot an unarmed—”
He pulled the trigger, blowing the top of her head off, ensuring she’d never speak another word.
“Satisfied?” Chloe asked. “Can we go now?”
There was no satisfaction in killing Olivia. His inability to stop what she’d already unleashed made her death a footnote to what he knew would be happening next.
Without responding, he headed for the door, Chloe running right beside him. When they entered the corridor, they found two members of Olivia’s strike team waiting there.
“Where is she?” one of them asked.
“She didn’t make it,” Chloe said as she tried to push past them.
The man grabbed her arm. “What do you mean, she didn’t make it?”
Ash shoved him away. “She means Olivia’s dead.”
The other man raised his rifle, aiming it at Ash. “You killed her, didn’t you?”
Before Ash could respond, two shots rang out, and both men dropped to the ground.
Chloe, her gun held near her waist, said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”
They raced down the corridor, retracing their path back to the emergency tunnel. Somewhere behind them, Ash could hear others running in their direction, the Project Eden members who’d been held captive in their own command center now trying to escape the coming destruction.
“This way,” Chloe said, turning down a smaller hallway that Ash almost missed.
At the end, they could see another one of Olivia’s people standing in the open entrance to the tunnel, waiting.
“Close it behind us!” Ash yelled as they approached.
“Where are the others?” the man asked.
“Not coming,” Chloe said.
“What happened?”
As they neared the door, Ash could hear the Project Eden members turning into the hallway. “Just close it!” he ordered. He rushed through the opening right behind Chloe.
The man hesitated a moment, then followed him and shut the door.
Ash went over to the monitor mounted on the rock wall that controlled the entrance, and touched the screen, engaging the lock. The others would be able to release it from the inside, but it would at least slow them down a bit. As far as Ash was concerned, none of them deserved the chance at escape. They had all played their parts in the plan to kill most of humanity, so they could all go to hell.
“Give me that,” Chloe said to Olivia’s man as she ripped the flashlight he was holding out of his hand. “Come on!”
The three of them headed quickly down the tunnel, the flashlight’s beam bouncing across the ground ahead of them.
“How much time?” Ash asked.
Chloe glanced at her watch. “A minute if we’re lucky.”
They weren’t.
They made it halfway to the opening of the cave when they heard a low rumble behind them.
“Faster!” Ash yelled.
The sound grew louder and louder as the ground began to shake, and dust and pieces of rock started to fall from the top of the tunnel. Ten steps on, a large chunk dropped from the ceiling and grazed the side of the other man’s head, knocking him to the ground. Ash yanked him back to his feet. The man was bloodied and dazed.
“I got you,” Ash said, putting an arm around him.
The man stumbled forward, gained his footing again, and began running on his own.
More rocks assaulted them as the rumble became a roar.
Ahead, the tunnel curved slightly to the right. As soon as Chloe reached the bend, she yelled something back at them. Ash couldn’t hear her above the noise, but when he reached the point where she’d been, he saw what she was trying to tell him.
The opening of the cave, just fifty feet away. Ash thought he could see some movement beyond it, but it was hard to tell, because the perpetual dark of the Arctic winter was only slightly lighter than the pitch black of the cave.
A loud boom suddenly engulfed the tunnel, shaking the ground so hard all three of them were thrown off their feet. A large section of the ceiling crashed down between Ash and Chloe.
Ash grabbed the other man and pulled him back to his feet, then half carried him over the fallen rock. Once they cleared it, Chloe braced the man on the other side. They headed off again just as part of the ceiling behind them collapsed, and bits of rock pelted them in the back.
Nearing the opening, Ash could hear the wail of the wind, and realized the movement he’d seen moments earlier was snow, but not just normal snow. Blizzard snow.
The storm that had been threatening earlier had arrived.
They stopped at the entrance just long enough to pull on the hoods of their jackets, then made their way on the narrow pathway that led across the cliff face back to the relative safety of the island.
“Where are the others?” Chloe asked.
The rest of Olivia’s team had left Bluebird not long before them, but the path was empty.
“Back to base,” Olivia’s man said. “Supposed to meet there.”
“Do you know the way?” Ash asked.
“Yeah. I think so.”
Think so? Ash thought. He and Chloe had only come this way the one time, and while both were excellent with directions, navigating through a full-on blizzard would magnify even the slightest of mistakes.
They were three-quarters of the way toward the top when the ground shook again. Chloe grabbed on to the cliffside. Ash started to do the same, but Olivia’s man began waving his arms around, attempting to regain his balance as he tipped backward toward the edge. Below were rocks, the icy sea, and certain death.
Ash whipped out a hand, snatched the man’s sleeve, and tried to pull him back. For a second, he thought they would both go over the side, but then Chloe grabbed the man’s other arm and stabilized them.
Ash took two deep breaths, and glanced toward the cave.
The entrance was gone.
Once the shaking subsided, they continued along the path. When they reached the top, they huddled together, the snow whipping across their faces. Even with the flashlight, their visibility was only a dozen feet at most.
“Which way?” Ash asked.
The guy looked around for longer than Ash would have liked, then pointed. “That way. Until we reach the ridge.”
Chloe looked at Ash, the silent question in her eyes, “What if he’s wrong?”
He grimaced and stared at her for a moment. “Okay, we keep our pace steady, and hold on to each other at all times. Chloe, you lead.”
“Goody,” she said.
They headed through the storm.
5
Christophe De Coster paid the cab driver and climbed out onto the sidewalk. It had taken him a bit longer to get to Gare Montparnasse than he’d hoped, but, as was his nature, he’d built a buffer into his schedule, and still arrived at the station in plenty of time to greet Marcus Lunt when his train pulled in.
Lunt was one of the primary owners of the advertising company Christophe worked for, but he had long ago moved into semi-retirement in Bordeaux. Every month, he would make the trip to the capital, spend the next day at the office being briefed on current projects, and head back home. And every month, Christophe would be at the station waiting for him when he arrived, and accompany Lunt to the man’s Paris apartment, where Christophe would give his boss a pre-briefing. This ensured that when Lunt showed up the next morning, he would look more involved than he really was in the everyday workings of the company.