“Mark.” His voice seemed unnaturally weak and feminine for a man his size. “I work in the engine room. They said they’d let me go after I finished the work. Well I finished the work, and I want to go home.”
Elise studied him. For a big man Mark looked more like a frightened child. It could have been an act, albeit a very good one or he could be telling the truth. “Who held you hostage?”
Mark tightened his fists again, trying vainly to break free from the restraints. “I don’t know. Really I don’t. They came in during the middle of the night, woke us all up and made us work. Told us we could only go home once we’d completed the task.”
“And what was the task?”
“They wanted us to reconfigure the diesel engines so they no longer required electricity to start. We were to install manual starting mechanisms and additional gearing to the steering so they no longer required powered assistance.”
“Why?” Elise asked.
“They didn’t say. They just said we could go home once it was complete.” Mark shook his head. He looked like he was going to cry. “Elise. I just want to go home. Do you think you could please put the gun down?”
Elise looked at the other survivors. Every one of them remained precisely where she’d left them. “Sorry, Mark. There’s a ship full of Navy SEALs docking alongside us right now. Once I have some help, I’ll untie you and we can get to the bottom of this. I must ask you to remain patient a few minutes longer. Can you do that for me?”
Mark began to shift his arms violently. He looked like someone who’d mentally snapped. “No! No! Not you again — I don’t want to talk to you lady. You’re gonna hurt me again!”
“Hey Mark, relax!” Elise moved to the side of him, but his brown eyes kept staring straight ahead, directly where she’d just been standing, as though she hadn’t moved. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“No. No. Please don’t hurt her!” Mark mumbled through the tears of a child. “I’ll be good. I will do what you ask.”
“Who are you talking to, Mark?” Elise scanned the room. “No one’s asking you to do anything, Mark.”
Mark turned to face her directly, and cried out in abject horror. “The little lady standing behind you!”
Chapter Fifty-Four
In front of her, Elise noticed one of the twenty survivors had disappeared. She was the smallest of the lot of them; a petite blonde woman who looked too small for her maintenance clothes. Elise hadn’t given her any notice because the levels of drugs were so high in the woman’s system Elise figured she would be unconscious for a few days still.
Elise moved quickly. She ducked and turned to face the woman. Bringing the Uzi up to fire simultaneously, her response was fast — but not fast enough. Elise felt the knife gently prick the side of her neck and then stop dead.
“It’s resting on your carotid — so I suggest you don’t move if you’d like to live.” The female voice was barely more than a whisper, but confident.
“Okay. Who are you and what would you like me to do?” Elise asked.
“My name’s Christine and I’m now in charge. And you’re going to drop the Uzi.”
“What’s to stop you just killing me once I do that?”
“Nothing, but I don’t see what other choice you have. If I let you go with a weapon like that you’re bound to kill me. So we’re at an impasse.”
Elise shrugged. “Or I let you pierce my carotid and I turn and kill you instantly with the Uzi.”
“That’s another option too!” Christine’s voice betrayed her doubt. “But you’ll have to choose fast — I don’t feel thrilled by the idea of meeting a bunch of Navy SEALs.”
“There’s a third option, you haven’t thought about.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Christine asked.
“Mark!” Elise said. “He’s the big guy whimpering like a baby by the way. He might snap his cable ties and take his chances that you won’t sever my carotid when he tackles you. Perhaps he figures we’re both going to die anyway, at least this way he’ll get to live”
“Never. You’d die before he even got out of his chair and then I’d take your Uzi and finish Mark and the rest of them — now I’m finished with them.”
“Maybe.” Elise watched as Mark broke all the cable ties and stood up. “But I’d say it’s our only chance of surviving. You’re a big guy, Mark. I trust you.”
“All right, no more games —”
Christine’s voice was stopped short by the motion of Mark throwing his full three hundred pounds of bodyweight into her. The knife brushed along the side of Elise’s neck but didn’t have the force to damage her carotid artery.
Elise ducked and pivoted round to the right bringing the Uzi up straight towards Mark and Christine who were both on the floor. Christine was much faster than Mark to regain control and had already brought her small pen knife to rest in Mark’s throat.
“Stand up!” Christine yelled. “Now.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mark said as he stood up.
Elise smiled kindly. “It’s all right, Mark. You did great.”
For a small woman, Christine had managed to pull Mark back so her arm could wrap around his neck. Only a little under half of her face was visible. “So, we’re back where we started,” Christine said. “Only now I have a hostage and a shield.”
Elise grinned. “Not exactly.” She then squeezed the trigger and put a grouping of three 9 mm parabellum bullets through Christine’s right eye.
The Secretary of Defense stepped into the room, followed by two teams of Navy SEALs. Christine’s lifeless body dropped to the floor with a thud and Mark backed away immediately.
“My dear, Elise!” Margaret smiled like a proud mother. “I’m so glad to see all that time we spent training you in the CIA didn’t go to complete waste — you can still shoot like a professional.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The hovercraft sped along the Taylor Valley at eighty miles per hour. Sam had worked hard to convince Alexis to wait until they had made it back to the Maria Helena and Antarctic Solace for reinforcements before heading to the Massive Hadron Collider. Somewhere inside they would find answers to what happened to the passengers of the Antarctic Solace and why the scientists of the Pegasus were now dead. He wanted those answers as much as she did, but there was no way he was going to let her get killed on a fool’s errand hell bent on revenge. They would have their revenge, but they would do it on their terms, with a lot more firepower.
Alexis remained quiet in a solemn trance for most of the trip. Sam didn’t try to press her. She’d just found out that five of her friends were now dead because she’d sent them here to investigate ice tunnels.
Next to him, Alexis stopped reading a passage from Pier which she’d read at least ten times before and closed the journal. “What’s Genevieve and Tom’s story?”
“What story?” Sam asked.
“Why did their love work?” She sighed. “How did they get their balance right? I was Pier’s mentor and advisor for his physics doctoral thesis. He was younger than me, and quite attractive with boyish good looks. I was attracted to him and he made me laugh, but I never would have dated him let alone marry him, because we were in different places in life and no amount of time would have brought us together.”
Sam paused. Unsure if she was somehow comparing her non-relationship with Pier and what happened in the ice cavern. Sam wasn’t sure if she saw him as a fun break in her normally conservative life, or wanted more. Then he heard the names Alexis had spoken. “Did you say Genevieve and Tom?”