The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel sf-9 Page 35

  Gray shook his head and headed on foot back inside.

  He would have to trust she would do the right thing.

  29

  November 20, 9:06 A.M. IRKST

  Olkhon Island, Russia

  Seichan didn’t know what to do.

  Pak leaned close to her face. She smelled the tobacco on his breath from the cigarettes he had been chain-smoking since he got here.

  “Tell me what they said! Where are they?”

  He still held her phone in his hand. Behind Pak, the stone-faced North Korean unit leader—whose name she had learned was Ryung—continued to hold a pistol to Rachel’s chest. Pak had forced Seichan to find out where Gray was, then ended the call before she could warn him in any way.

  Both of the North Koreans were clearly losing patience.

  Pak stalked across the common room of the inn, angrily puffing on a cigarette. Ju-long hung back by the fire, looking none too pleased about any of this. Seichan got the feeling he was under some coercion. He was a man driven by money and position in Macau. For him, there could be no profit in what was happening here.

  Not that such sentiment would lead him to help them.

  Rachel was bound to a chair across from her. Both of them had been expertly immobilized by Ryung’s men. There was no magical way to free themselves from this situation. No secret knife, no way to break the chair or slip her bonds.

  Seichan knew the reality of the situation. They were both at Pak’s mercy—an emotion she doubted existed in the man.

  Recognizing this, Seichan had told them earlier where Gray and the others had gone, to Burkhan Cape. If she had failed to do that, they would have shot Rachel. She had no doubt of that. She only had to stare over to the innkeeper’s legs sticking out the kitchen door, one shoe fallen off, sprawled in a pool of blood, to be certain.

  So she told them about Gray’s sunrise meeting at the coast. She sought to buy time, hoping to create a long enough delay for Monk to arrive at the inn and possibly upset the scenario, maybe even rescue them, or at least allow Seichan a possible opportunity to free herself and Rachel during the chaos.

  After her earlier confession, Ryung had dispatched a handful of men to Burkhan Cape. They returned thirty minutes later, getting confirmation that Seichan had spoken the truth. But while they were questioning the shaman, the man simply stepped out of the mouth of his cave and threw himself to the rocks below, never revealing where Gray had gone from there.

  The North Koreans had to accept she didn’t know either—not that they didn’t use the time to rough the two women up. Rachel and Seichan had matching cigarette burns on the back of their hands as proof.

  Then came the damned call.

  Pak had used the opportunity to get an update.

  “Don’t tell them,” Rachel said around a split lip. “You know what’s at stake.”

  Clearly growing frustrated with Seichan’s delaying tactics, Pak stubbed out his cigarette and returned from his angry stroll around the room. He came back rubbing his palms, a gleam of dark amusement in his eyes.

  Seichan went cold.

  “Let’s make this interesting, shall we?” he said.

  Parting his palms, Pak revealed a North Korean silver coin in his hand. On the surface was the smiling visage of the dictator Kim Jong-il.

  “You know I am a betting man,” Pak said. “So a game, a wager. Heads. We shoot your friend. Tails. She lives.”

  Seichan glared at the man’s needless cruelty.

  “I am going to keep flipping this coin until you tell me,” Pak pressed. “The first head that comes up, she dies.”

  Ryung fixed his pistol more firmly to Rachel’s chest.

  Stepping back, Pak flipped the coin high into the air. It flashed silver in the lamplight.

  Seichan relented, knowing she could delay no longer. “Fine! I’ll tell you!”

  “Don’t!” Rachel warned.

  The coin struck the floor and bounced until Pak trapped it under his boot, wearing a mean smile, enjoying this way too much.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard,” he said. “Now tell me.”

  She did, telling him the truth, changing tactics. If stalling no longer worked, her best hope was to get them all moving. Once under way, she might find an opportunity to break free.

  “Very good,” Pak said, pleased with himself.

  He lifted his shoe.

  The fat-cheeked face of Kim Jong-il smiled up from the floor.

  Heads.

  “Looks like you lose,” Pak said and signaled his man.

  Ryung stepped back, aimed his gun, and shot Rachel in the chest.

  Horror as much as the blast made Seichan jump, rocking her chair back, almost toppling over.

  Equally stunned, Rachel stared down at the blood welling through her shirt—then back up at Seichan.

  Seichan gaped at Pak, at his betrayal.

  He shrugged, looking surprised at her response. “It’s the usual house rules,” Pak said. “Once the dice are in the air, all bets are final.”

  Across the way, Rachel’s head slumped to her chest.

  Seichan despaired.

  What have I done?

  9:20 A.M.

  Cold darkness enfolded her.

  All her strength and heat seeped out the single hole in her chest, taking at last the fiery pain with it. With each fading breath, she felt a small ache remaining, more spiritual than physical.

  I don’t want to go . . .

  Rachel struggled to stay, but again it was not a fight of muscle and bone, but of will and purpose. She had heard the others leave the inn, abandoning her to her death.

  But Monk would come . . .

  She held on to that hope. She knew he could not save her, not even with his considerable medical skill. Instead, she clutched to that thinning silver strand of her existence for one purpose.

  To tell him where the others had gone.

  Hurry . . .

  She drifted deeper into that darkness—when the creak of a door, a rush of footsteps, held her a moment longer from oblivion.

  A hand touched her knee.

  Down that dark well, faint words fell to her, nearly unintelligible, but still the desire rang through.

  Where?

  She took her last and deepest breath and told them, hope slipping from her lips—not for her, not for the world.

  Instead, she pictured storm-blue eyes.

  And was gone.

  30

  November 20, 9:22 A.M. IRKST

  Olkhon Island, Russia

  “This is nuts!” Duncan yelled.

  “This is faster,” Monk said.

  Duncan could only watch as his partner hauled on the wheel of the bus, careening its long length around a point of the coastline. He fishtailed across the shore ice, coming close to clipping an ice-fishing hut. Then he was trundling onward.

  After Gray’s call, Monk had commandeered the bus, sending passengers and driver fleeing out the door. Monk then got behind the wheel and headed west from the southern tip of the island, blazing his own trail across the open ice. Monk must have anticipated this earlier, as he had spent much of the bus ride from Sakhyurta talking to their driver, asking about the thickness of the frozen shelf, how far it stretched from the coast this time of year.

  Duncan somewhat understood his partner’s reasoning. Both of them had plenty of time to study a map of Olkhon Island after landing in Irkutsk. A topographic chart showed that the road from the ferry station to the village inn was circuitous and winding. It would be a slow slog.

  Additionally, the island was crescent shaped, bending toward the west at its northern end—where they needed to go.

  So the most direct path, from point A to point B, was as a crow flies—or rather a seal swims. By traveling straight across the shore ice, they could halve their time in reaching Gray’s team.

  Still . . .

  Jada clung to her seat, her eyes huge.

  Ice boomed under them. Cracks skittered in the wake of the
ir passage. People watched from the shoreline, pointing at them.

  This far out, the thickness of the ice was questionable at best, so they dared not slow. Momentum was their best hope.

  “That must be Burkhan Cape!” Jada yelled, pointing to a craggy promontory sticking out of a forested bay.

  Duncan spotted the timbered houses of a small town hugging that same bay. Must be Khuzhir.

  “Three more miles!” Monk called and pointed to the windows on the right side of the bus. “Gray said he’d left his ATV parked on the ice as a marker for the sea tunnel. Keep watch for it!”

  Duncan moved to that side as Monk finally began angling closer to shore, where thankfully the ice should be thicker. After another long tense five minutes, Jada hollered, making him jump.

  “There!” she called out and pointed. “By that big rock shaped like a bear!”

  With rounded ears and stubby muzzle, the boulder did look like a grizzly’s head. And past the granite beast’s shoulders, a black dot marked the presence of a lone ATV, a small flag waving from its rear.

  “That’s gotta be it,” Monk said.

  As they drew nearer, the mouth of a tunnel appeared in the cliff, lined by massive icicles. Duncan thought he spotted movement in the woods at the top of the escarpment, but with the sun rising on the other side of the island, the forest was in deep shadow.

  If anyone was up there, it was probably stunned onlookers come to watch the bus.

  The brakes squealed as Monk slowed them—or at least, he tried to.

  The bus spun sideways, skidding across the ice.

  They broadsided the ATV and bulldozed it in front of them, pushing it back toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  Duncan and Jada both retreated to the opposite side of the bus as the cliff wall came rushing toward them.

  But the vehicle finally slowed to a shuddering stop, coming to rest ten yards from the mouth of the sea tunnel.

  Monk rubbed his palms on his thigh. “Now that’s what I call parallel parking.”

  Duncan scowled. “Is that what you call it?”

  They all tumbled out the door, wanting to make sure they were at the right place before unloading their gear.

  Gray came running from the shadows of the tunnel, drawn by the commotion, his eyes huge at their means of transportation. He clearly must have recognized the bus from his own icy sojourn from the mainland to the island.

  “What?” he asked with a grin. “You couldn’t find a cab?”

  9:28 A.M.

  Gray gave Monk a fast hug. It was good to see his best friend, even under the circumstances and his unusual means of transportation.

  He quickly shook Jada’s hand, but he pointed his finger at Duncan. “I need you to get that Eye up to that vault. Kowalski’s back there and can show you. We found the cross, but we have no way of telling if it’s energized in any way.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Jada said, offering her expertise.

  Gray nodded his thanks, staring out across the ice, wondering what was taking Seichan and Rachel so long. He had expected them here before Monk and the others.

  Jada stepped back toward the bus. “I left my pack—”

  A sharp whistle pierced the morning, followed immediately by a massive blast of fire and ice. Jada got blown into Duncan, who caught her. The concussion knocked them all off their feet and down the tunnel, accompanied by a barrage of broken icicles.

  Gray slid on his back, staring past his toes.

  Outside, the bus upended, tipping up on its front grill, windows exploding. A fireball rolled from beneath it and into the sky, trailed by a cloud of smoke. The ice shelf shattered beneath its bulk, and the bus sank nose-first into the lake.

  A rocket attack.

  But who . . . and why?

  Still, a greater question loomed. “Where is the Eye?” Gray asked, fearfully yelling, half deafened.

  Duncan helped Jada to her feet. She pointed to the wreckage sinking into the lake.

  “My pack . . .”

  It was still on the bus.

  “Everybody back!” Gray said, pointing deeper into the tunnel.

  They fled away from the rage of fire and smoke—and into the cold darkness of ice and frost.

  As they reached a bend in the tunnel, Gray glanced back. The rear of the bus stuck out crookedly from the ice, smoking and charred. Fire spread outward in streams of gasoline and oil. Shadows moved beyond those flames.

  Who were they? Russian forces? Had someone in Moscow grown wise to their covert presence on the island?

  “Monk, stay here,” Gray ordered. “Alert us if anyone starts into the tunnel.”

  And they would, he knew.

  Whoever had orchestrated this attack had purposefully targeted their only means of transportation, intending to trap Gray’s group inside here. The reason why didn’t matter. With time running out, only one objective remained: recovering the Eye and getting it to that vault.

  Gray led Duncan and Jada back to the cavern. Kowalski anxiously awaited them.

  “What the hell, man?” the big man asked. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said and turned to Duncan. “We need to retrieve Dr. Shaw’s pack from that burning bus.”

  “How?” Duncan asked.

  Gray turned to Jada. “Do you think you can climb that rope by yourself when the time is right?”

  She nodded. “What do you want us to do?”

  Gray told them.

  “You’re nuts,” Duncan said, looking around for support.

  Kowalski just shrugged. “We’ve done stupider things.”

  9:34 A.M.

  This is becoming a bad habit.

  Duncan stood again in his boxers by a body of water—only this time, at the slippery lip to a breathing hole through the ice, its edges worn smooth by the bodies of mother seals sliding into and out of the water. He pictured those same seals dropping into the water here and swimming back through the tunnel, traveling under the ice all the while to reach the open lake.

  Duncan wouldn’t have to go that far, but where he was going was still a long distance in one breath. And he didn’t have the fatty insulation of a winter seal.

  Neither did his swimming companion.

  Jada had stripped to shorts and a sports bra.

  Beyond her, Gray and Kowalski readied the two ATVs parked in the cavern, checking weapons. The plan was for them to pick up Monk on the way out.

  Duncan returned his attention to Jada, who shivered next to him, but little of her trembling had to do with the cold.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She swallowed and nodded.

  “Stick to my heels,” he said with a smile. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “Thinking about it is only making it worse.”

  She was right.

  Duncan cinched the shoulder holster tighter around his bare chest and gave her arm a squeeze. Lowering to his rear, he slid down one of the worn chutes in the lip of the breathing hole. With a short drop, he plunged into the pool of water beneath the thick sheet of ice covering the floor of the cave.

  The cold immediately cut through him, worse than he had mentally prepared for. His lungs screamed, wanting to gasp and choke. He forced his legs to kick, his arms to pull, and swam away from the hole. Staying under the ceiling of ice, he headed toward the tunnel leading out. The plan was to swim beneath the ice of the tunnel and get to the outside without being seen.

  He twisted back to see Jada splash into the depths. Her body visibly clenched, looking ready to go fetal from the shock, but she fought through it. With a savage kick of her legs, like a stallion striking out at a barn door, she came shooting toward him.

  Damn, she was fast.

  She had claimed as much when Gray had first proposed this plan.

  Duncan kicked off a wall and headed down the tunnel. Diffuse light turned the ice above a deep azure blue, illuminating enough of the depths below to see. He stroke
d hard to keep ahead of Jada, flipper-kicking to go faster—but also to stay warm.

  The tunnel was only thirty yards long, a swim he could normally make in one breath, but in this freeze, trapped under that thick ice, it was a deadly challenge.

  He tracked their progress by monitoring the light. It grew brighter with every stroke and kick as he sought the morning sunlight beyond the tunnel.

  Still, the cold quickly sapped his endurance. He found his lungs aching for air, his limbs starting to quake. As he neared the tunnel’s end, pinpricks of darkness danced across his vision. He checked behind him, saw Jada struggling, too.

  Keep going, he willed them both.

  Ahead, he spotted their target. It spurred him into a frantic crawl.

  Ten yards from them, the bus rested crookedly on its grill on the bottom of the lake. According to Gray, its rear end still stuck out of the ice above.

  With a promise of fresh air, he swam over to its side. The windshield had been blown out by the concussive blast of the rocket. Reaching through, he grabbed the wheel and hauled himself into the shadowy interior of the vehicle. He shot upward past the seats and surfaced inside the pocket of air at the rear of the bus.

  Jada appeared a second later.

  They both gulped air as quietly as possible, appreciating not only the oxygen but also the warmth. The recent flames had heated the interior considerably. Neither of them complained.

  Outside their hiding spot, Duncan heard voices, speaking what sounded like Korean, maybe Chinese. So far no alarm had been raised at their presence. The enemy had not expected its trapped quarry to pop up inside the submerged bus.

  It was a small advantage.

  He turned to Jada and pointed below. She nodded and they both submerged. Grabbing seatbacks, they pulled themselves back down the length of the bus, searching for Jada’s pack.

  Everything loose had fallen to the front of the bus or spilled out the missing windshield. Refreshed with oxygen, Jada swam like a seal herself, while he felt like a blundering whale. She found her pack quickly enough, and they returned to the surface.

  Jada checked inside, the relief on her face expressed everything.

  He offered her a thumbs-up, which she returned.