Yana stepped up next to Zahra and wrapped her arm around her shoulder. Yana had formally moved past the whole no-touch thing. “So, Ms. Kane, I only have one question for you now?”
“What’s that?”
The Russian smiled and winked at Hammet. “When do we begin?”
Zahra couldn’t hold back her smile. “Right now. Yana Fedorov, Hammet Braun… Welcome to PAINTED WOLF.”
Epilogue
Henri Vogel, former Commander of Sixth Seal operations, sat in the backseat of the Sno-Cat, hands in his lap, cuffed with zip ties, exhausted, distraught, and furious. The five-seat vehicle’s tank tread chewed through the ice as they pushed forward in silence. The cabin was at capacity. There was a trooper on either side of him and two up front in the captain’s chairs.
In a matter of a few hours, since Master Chief Luka Meier had led his mutiny, Henri’s world had crumbled to dust. Everything he’d known was gone. He’d dedicated more than half of his life to the Sixth Seal, and because of curiosity, Tobias Krause had taken it away.
It made him want to look deeply into Ulrich’s death. Henri had rightfully believed that his commander had botched the infiltration of a Swiss clinic. Why would Krause lie about his own son’s death?
But Henri knew why. Ulrich had also been a curious man.
“I’ll kill him.”
“What?” the trooper to his right asked.
Henri just stared through the front windshield, paying the man no attention. His mind was elsewhere. Henri’s mind worked well when immersed in conflict. He had just finished a plan that could afford him the opportunity of asking Krause face-to-face whether he had his son killed or not. Henri still had men like Emil in the organization, men who were loyal to him.
Henri casually turned his head and locked eyes with the trooper. “I said, ‘I’ll kill him.’”
Four of the five men turned and looked at him. The driver could only glance up at him in his overhead mirror.
“Kill who?” the same trooper asked.
Henri faced forward and stared through the windshield. “Tobias Krause. I’m going to kill him.”
The navigator reached for the vehicle’s radio, but Henri launched forward and drove his head into the man’s nose. Then, when he rocked back, he pulled the trooper’s knife free of his belt and elbowed the men beside him in the face. Henri lashed out with a kick, driving the tip of his steel-toe boot into the driver’s temple. He flipped the knife up between his bound wrists and twisted, making short work of the zip cuff.
The tight confines of the cabin made it impossible for the troopers to use their rifles or draw their pistols, and neither one of them had thought to use their knives.
But Henri did.
I should have trained you better.
Henri killed the four men in six seconds.
He pulled the driver out of his seat and stripped the corpses of the necessary gear, but he didn’t dump the bodies. Not yet. When he sat in the driver’s side chair, the radio crackled to life.
“Sno-Cat, this is Skibird. Do you copy?”
Henri answered. “Yes. Go ahead, Skibird.”
“Good news. We are operational, though a lot of the instruments are fifty-fifty at best. I hope you have a damn good pilot with you.”
Henri grinned. “As a matter of fact, we do. See you soon, Skibird.”
Stuttgart, Germany
Present Day
The news of his team’s failure in Antarctica both infuriated him and terrified him. The Sixth Seal had fumbled their greatest opportunity in sixty years. Dietrich had led everyone to believe that the Underworld had been destroyed, and until a few days ago, Tobias had no reason to doubt the claim. And now, his life was truly at risk.
Based on his body’s degradation, his doctors estimated that he had another year left, tops. Tobias felt much worse than that. He coughed into his handkerchief but didn’t check it. He knew there’d be blood in it again.
There was a knock on his office door. He had made it known to Zelda that he did not want to be disturbed unless it was absolutely imperative.
He sighed. “Yes?” Tobias reached into the top drawer, touched the fingerprint scanner, and unlocked the door.
His granddaughter entered. “I have important news, Grandfather.”
Even though she had stood up to him recently, Zelda had returned to her duties as his de facto operations proxy. She’d gotten whatever she needed to off her chest. The mission was always her top priority, a quality of hers he’d grown to respect.
He motioned for her to enter. She did and quickly crossed the room, stopping in front of his desk. “As you requested, I contacted our people at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base.”
“And?”
“There has still been no contact with the LC-130 since it left Troll. No one knows what happened.”
Tobias sat back. “I think I know…”
“Grandfather?”
He blinked and waved her off. “Never mind that. Now, leave me to my medicine.”
She bowed slightly. “Yes, Grandfather. And happy birthday.”
Tobias waited a moment longer for Zelda to put more distance between herself and his office. When he was confident that she was gone, he reopened the drawer and touched one of the two small fingerprint scanners built into the underside of the desktop.
The first scanner controlled his office’s door locks.
He pressed the second one.
It activated the hydraulic system beneath his desk. It kicked in with hardly a sound, and Tobias, his wheelchair and his entire desk, lowered down into his onsite laboratory. This was where his medicine was located, and no one other than his chief scientist was allowed inside.
Not even Zelda or Henri. The last outsider to see this room had been his son.
He pulled back on the joystick of his wheelchair and backed himself away from his desk. Inside the secret basement level were his latest experiments regarding his serum. The equipment here was as advanced as it got. Tobias’ experience in this particular field was second to none, though most people only knew him as a high-level financier.
Zelda’s recent coming-out party worried Tobias greatly. He always knew that she’d eventually start asking questions about her father and her future role atop the Sixth Seal ladder. Tobias needed to keep a close eye on her. Though he was proud of the woman she had become, he knew she could also become a threat to him and also a liability.
He drove himself around to the left-hand side of the room and headed straight for an oversized double-door refrigerator. Tobias struggled but was able to push himself up and stand in place, a feat few had witnessed in some time. He placed his hand on the fridge’s palm reader until he heard a soft click. Then he opened both doors, basking in the near-freezing temperature of the escaping air.
He missed the frigid air of Antarctica.
Unlike a kitchen refrigerator, this one didn’t have spacious shelving to store large grocery items. This fridge had been designed for a particular purpose. A vault-like door took up the top third, and it held a prize more valuable than all of Krause Global.
He dropped his eyes from the special containment unit and down to the rest of the fridge.
Tobias extended his forefinger and placed it on another identification tool. This one didn’t scan the unique friction ridges in his skin. A small needle quickly jabbed his fingertip and scanned his blood. Three seconds later, a small click announced that the sample had passed the screening and the drawer had unlocked.