He stepped aside from the machine gun and was about to prepare for close quarter combat with whoever was inside the gliders when he spotted a small, angular imperfection on the ice sheet before them. Nature did not create objects that were angular, and indeed rarely produced any kind of dimensional symmetry, a handy way of detecting man-made structures in the wilderness. He squinted at the tiny speck left in the wake of the fleeing gliders and almost immediately recognized it for what it was.
‘Break left!’
The ATV swerved hard left across the ice, but the other vehicles in the formation did not respond as quickly. Veer dropped down into a crouch and covered his head as he saw the tiny speck suddenly flare brilliantly as the square of C4 detonated directly in the path of two of his ATVs.
The blast ripped beneath one of the ATVs and hurled it into the air, smashed tracks and shattered glass blossoming out within the fireball as the vehicle was torn apart by the ferocious blast and hurled in different directions amid a roiling cloud of flame and black smoke.
Veer huddled against the wall of the ATV in which he crouched as metallic debris showered the vehicle. He squinted as he saw a second vehicle engulfed in flames career across the ice and slam into the wreckage of the first as it plunged back down onto the glacier, billowing clouds of smoke and flame blazing inside it as the driver and gunner burned alive.
A second detonation followed as another C4 charge exploded and shattered the chassis of another ATV, flame and smoke snapping from the vehicle as it rocketed along the glacier and crashed through an icy outcrop, the vehicle tumbling in a ball of flame as its burning occupants were hurled out onto the ice.
‘Fall back!’ Veer yelled.
The ATVs slowed dramatically and turned away from the chase as Veer stood up once more and roared in fury, one thick fist slamming down onto the roof of his ATV as he watched the gliders pull away and escape to the north.
*
Ethan pulled the canopy shut and huddled inside his Arctic jacket as he watched the ATVs fall away from them, the sunlit horizon smudged now with drifting clouds of black smoke from the burning wreckage of three ATVs.
‘That’ll learn them,’ Hannah said triumphantly.
Ethan shook his head.
‘They won’t stop there,’ he assured her. ‘Majestic Twelve will have paid them handsomely to finish their mission. They’ll regroup and continue to pick us off one by one until they get what they want.’
He keyed the microphone.
‘Lieutenant Riggs, our tail is clear for the time being. How much farther?’
‘We’re within a couple of miles,’
Riggs replied. ‘
Combat spread, go!’
The ice gliders flying ahead and above them descended gently toward the ice sheet and landed, their parachutes billowing behind them for a moment until their pilots spilled the wind from them and drew them in.
The gliders began to spread out on the ice, just like an infantry unit would when approaching an enemy position to prevent that enemy from taking out entire platoons using mortar fire or grenades. Ethan looked across to his right and saw an identical glider, its driver focusing intently ahead as they gradually closed in on what looked like a low ridge of hills protruding from the endless ice sheets. It took almost fifteen minutes to reach the edge of the hills.
‘No visual,’ Riggs reported as he surveyed the ridgeline. ‘We’ll have to go in on foot – those slopes are too rough for the gliders and we don’t know what’s on the other side.’
Ethan peered out to his left and right. ‘No way we can send a couple out to the sides, see around the edges first?’
Riggs’s reply was adamant.
‘This feature extends for miles, and with MJ-12 right behind us we don’t have enough time for an extensive recon’ of the area. We go in here and now.’
Ethan said nothing more as the glider coasted to within a hundred yards of the low hills, and from his vantage point he could now see that the hills were in fact a ridge of loose boulders of snow and ice, as though a gigantic hoe had torn through the surface of the ice sheet and churned it over.
Riggs guided the ski glider alongside the rough edge of the mound and then allowed it to slide to a halt as he shut down the engine, Ethan and Hannah’s glider likewise sliding to a halt. Ethan pulled the headset from his ears, grateful to get it off his head as he saw the remaining ski gliders pull in at various spots down the length of the ridge, canopies opening and billowing clouds of warm vapor puffing from their interiors onto the frozen air in the golden sunlight.
Ethan unlocked the canopy and pushed it open, felt the fierce bite of the cold against his skin as he stood up in his seat and climbed out. Hannah jumped out onto on the ice with him and stretched her legs as the SEALs jogged to the edge of the ridge, their weapons at port arms as they began scaling the unstable slopes.
Doctor Chandler emerged from his glider, and Ethan looked about in alarm. ‘Where’s Amy?’
Riggs shook his head. ‘Porter’s glider went down with Amy,’ he informed Ethan. ‘We lost a few good people already and we haven’t even found Black Knight yet.’
Ethan found himself mourning the spirited young scientist’s loss, but he knew that they had no time to grieve. Majestic Twelve would catch up with them again soon enough.
‘Is that the impact crater?’ Hannah asked as she looked at the ridge.
‘I guess so,’ Ethan replied, ‘Black Knight is about the only thing that’s crashed down here.’
It was the voice of a scientist behind them who corrected Ethan.
‘It’s not something that’s come down,’ he replied, ‘it’s something that’s come
up
.’
Ethan peered curiously at Doctor Chandler as together they began clambering up the slopes of the ridge until they reached the top, broken chunks of glacial ice embedded in mounds of loose snow.
Ethan moved alongside two of the SEALS, who were lying prone on the ridge top with their weapons held before them as they looked at something. He heard their voices just before he reached them.
‘We’ve got a problem.’
Ethan rested alongside them and looked down and his heart leaped into his mouth.
Opposite the ridge was another similar ridge, and below them plunged a deep chasm of glowing blue ice, a canyon ripped into the glacier as though a giant’s sword had plunged down from the heavens and sliced into the continent for miles.
Hannah looked at the wrecked gliders, the vast freezing wilderness and the plunging chasm, and then at Ethan. ‘I bet you ten bucks we don’t make it out here here alive.’
***
XIX
Defense Intelligence Agency,
Anacostia-Bolling,
Washington DC
Nicola Lopez held out her identity card to the security guards manning the entrance to the huge base, one of them scrutinizing it for a long moment. The soldier looked at the image of Lopez on the ID card, arrogant and full of vigor, and then at the weary looking woman sitting in the sedan in front of him.
‘You got an appointment here, ma’am?’ he asked.
Lopez managed a smile despite her uncertainty over just how the DIA was going to react to her sudden arrival with one of their most wanted fugitives sitting alongside her in the vehicle.
‘Contact Doug Jarvis,’ she said simply. ‘Tell him that Nicola Lopez is here with Aaron James Mitchell. He’ll understand.’
The soldier nodded and moved off to the command post as Mitchell glowered across at her.
‘You just sold me out?’
‘You think they’re going to just let us walk in there?’ Lopez challenged. ‘I’m supposed to be in a coma and you’re a wanted man. Better to let them understand that we’re here together, by choice, than let them think you’re trying to infiltrate one of the most secretive locations in the entire continental United States, no?’
Mitchell shrugged and returned to silence as Lopez waited and wondered what kind of greeting they would get once word reached Jarvis of their arrival. She got her answer a minute or so later when the security guards burst from the command post, fanning out and bellowing at the top of their lungs.
‘Show us your hands! Out of the vehicle and get down on the ground,
now
!’
Mitchel looked at her, and now it was Lopez’s turn to shrug.
‘It’s not so bad – they didn’t just open fire on us.’
Lopez carefully climbed out of the vehicle and put her hands on her head. Mitchell mirrored her actions nearby as the soldiers advanced, glaring at them down the barrels of their rifles as from the buildings beyond the checkpoint dozens of DIA agents sprinted with weapons drawn toward them.
Lopez placed her hands behind her back and crossed her legs at the ankle as the soldiers moved in. She winced as one of them thumped a knee into her back to pin her down as he cuffed her, several more soldiers piling in on top of Mitchell and cuffing him before they were both hauled to their feet, Lopez’s hair in disarray as two dozen DIA agents surrounded them, weapons drawn, stern faces glaring at Mitchell.
‘Hold your fire,’ Lopez said, hoping that enough of them knew who she was and would listen to her. ‘He’s on our side.’
None of the agents replied or even looked at her. She was wondering whether anybody at the damned agency even knew what she had been through in the name of national security when she saw a familiar figure striding toward her across the lawns.
Doug Jarvis, for once, was not sauntering along with his hands in his pockets but was hurrying at a spritely pace for his age, his gray hair whipping around in the breeze as he reached the command post and the ring of armed guards parted for him.
‘Hold your fire,’ he said.
To Lopez’s chagrin the armed agents immediately obeyed and lowered their weapons, still watching Mitchell. To her absolute amazement, Jarvis seemed to barely even notice the big man as he hurried up to her and threw his arms around her.
‘Nicola, I thought we’d lost you!’
Lopez blinked, unable to return the embrace with her hands manacled behind her back. Jarvis held her for a moment longer and then stepped back, one hand holding each of her shoulders as he looked her up and down with a broad smile on his face.
‘You look like shit,’ he pointed out.
Lopez struggled to conceal the smirk that ached across her face.
‘And you still can’t hold a candle to me,’ she replied.
‘What happened? When did you wake up, and what’s this asshole doing here?’
Jarvis tipped his head in Mitchell’s direction and Lopez sighed.
‘It’s a long story, but if Mitchell here hadn’t turned up at the hospital I’d be dead. Mitchell wants to come over to us, Doug. Looks like MJ-12 have decided he’s past his sell by date.’
Jarvis released her shoulders and turned to confront the huge operative, who merely regarded him in stony silence with eyes as dark as night.
‘Give me one good reason not to have you dragged into those bushes over there and ventilated with bullet art?’
Mitchell’s reply was as sombre as it was unintimidated.
‘Because you need me,’ he said. ‘Majestic Twelve have taken their gloves off and they’re coming for all of you, for all of us.’
Jarvis sneered at the big man. ‘So you finally get out of your depth and then you come running here?’
Mitchell smiled without warmth.
‘You put me in the highest security facility available in the entire country, and as soon as I was ready I escaped without problem. If I was your enemy I would have continued running, but it was MJ-12 who were prepared to let me rot in there. I knew that by doing so they had changed their plans, and by leaving me where I was they were clearing up loose ends. That meant that they would pursue all of you, and remove the itch in their side. I decided to scupper that plan and come here to show you that my work for them is done.’
Jarvis peered at Mitchell for a long moment and then at Lopez.
‘You believe any of this?’ he asked her.
Lopez shrugged.
‘Got no reason not to,’ she replied. ‘MJ-12 sent a female assassin to take me down, that’s all I know right now. But given everything that’s happened over the last few months it sounds plausible that MJ-12 is looking to remove us from play.’
Jarvis made his decision.
‘Put him in custody,’ he ordered his agents. ‘Nicola, come with me. There’s a great deal you need to catch up on.’
*
‘Hey, brainbox!’
Lopez saw Hellermen before he saw her, the scientist completely consumed by some kind of marching robotic device at his work station inside one of the DIA’s secretive Watch Centers. Hellerman whirled, his jaw dropping as he heard her voice.
‘Lopez!?’
Hellerman’s robot marched off his desk and clattered onto the floor as the scientist launched himself at her. Lopez hugged Hellerman tightly, always amused to see the younger man’s unveiled affection for her. When he drew back, she was surprised to see tears welling in his eyes and many of the other employees sat behind their work stations watching discreetly, the ranks of television monitors arrayed across the walls of the Watch Center glowing with news feeds from around the world.
‘When did you wake up?’ he asked, his voice constricted.
‘I got woken up,’ she said. ‘Looks like I’ll pull through.’
Hellerman nodded, took off his spectacles to clean them and then blew his nose as he recovered his senses and the smile appeared once more.
‘It’s good to have you back. For a while there I…’ He stuttered slightly and shook his head. ‘Can we get married now?’
Lopez placed a hand gently on his cheek, his tin beard rasping against the skin of her palm as she smiled back at him. ‘One thing at a time, Romeo. Where’s Ethan?’
‘Oh,
him
,’ Hellerman replied. ‘The competition. He’s in Antarctica.’
‘Where abouts in Antarctica?’
Jarvis walked into Hellerman’s office, his hands once again in his pockets as he spoke.
‘Ethan was dispatched on a new mission for us while you were still napping at the hospital,’ he said, all pretence of affection already vanished. ‘A lot’s changed while you’ve been gone.’