Origin

1

Matt Adams poured the tepid tap water over his cold breakfast cereal, eyes bleary. Milk was expensive, and in his current state, he could barely tell the difference between milk and water anyway.

Adams had not had a good night’s sleep in more than a week. Sometimes the nightmares were like that — they would come in cycles, often two or three a night, and then there would be nothing for months.

For the past week he had managed the odd hour here and there when his body literally collapsed, but then the dreams would come, and he would be wide awake again, unwilling to close his eyes, no matter how tired he was.

He knew what caused it — there was no way in hell he would ever forget that — but the fact remained that he was a shadow of his former self, a washed-up wreck of a man. The news he’d received that morning wasn’t doing anything to raise his spirits either.

Evelyn Edwards — previously Evelyn Adams, back when they had been married — was dead. Killed in some sort of helicopter crash flying back from a NASA mission to the Antarctic.

The wreck had been strewn across the Drake Passage, and it was unlikely that any bodies were ever going to be recovered. Instead of a funeral, a state memorial service for Lynn and her team was going to be held in Washington DC in just two weeks.

It was NASA that had called to tell him the tragic news, and invite him to the memorial service. There weren’t many other people outside of her professional circle to invite. With no family to speak of, most of the people she knew were from within NASA.

Adams had told the lady on the other end of the phone that he would be attending. As he ate his cereal, his mind kept spinning back towards Lynn.

The thing was, he still loved her. A tear rolled down his cheek, and then he looked at the cereal bowl on the table in front of him, no longer even able to tell what it was.

An hour later, he was still there.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is located in the south-west corner of South Dakota on the border with Nebraska. Administered by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, it covers almost three and a half thousand square miles, and incorporates three of the poorest counties in the United States.

Marginalized at the best of times, the American Indian population of the United States has faced major problems with poverty, education, health and welfare, and this condition is nowhere so obvious as at Pine Ridge.

As Adams rode his bicycle unsteadily to work, he considered himself lucky to have a job at all. It wasn’t a good job — and certainly not in the same league as his previous employment, which had come to such a tragic end — but it was a job nevertheless. The wage was low but at least he didn’t have to worry about his rent.

With less than four per cent of the reservation’s land suitable for farming, and very much ignored by the federal government, the result was that poverty was endemic and conditions were ripe for alcoholism, crime, and other associated problems. And so as Adams arrived at the small tourist hut at the edge of the Badlands National Park, he considered himself one of the lucky ones.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe is a proud one, part of the seven tribes that had once made up the Great Sioux Nation.

Matt ‘Free Bear’ Adams belonged to the tribe, which was known by its members more properly as the Oglala Lakota Oyate. Its fabled ancestors had fought the US military in Red Cloud’s War and the Great Sioux War, and had been amongst those massacred at Wounded Knee.

Adams’ own ancestry was less clear, however. Found outside the tribal police headquarters in Pine Ridge at an estimated age of two days old, his parentage had never been determined. He was taken under the wing of the local police chief, brought in to live with the man’s own family. This had only lasted the first few years of Adams’ life, however. When the kindly old man was gunned down in the city one cold November night, Adams had soon found himself being passed from pillar to post. An orphanage here, a foster home there, he had lived in more than two dozen places before he entered his teens.

But the young Adams was resilient, the spirit inculcated in him by the police chief in those early years never far from the surface. He never let the situation get him down, never gave in, and always kept fighting.

It was Adams’ fighting spirit that finally brought him to the attention of Jim ‘Big Bear’ Maddison, the leader of the Strong Heart Akicita warrior society and a distant relative of the great Chief Crazy Horse, best known for leading a war party against US government forces at the Battles of the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn.

Like the police chief before him, Maddison brought Adams under his wing. When he was introduced to the tribal elders, they recognized not only his fighting spirit, but also his deeper, spiritual nature, and so took their own interest in him.

The tribe’s traditional war, hunting and tracking skills were treated as something of an anachronism by most Lakota, no longer considered relevant for contemporary needs. Such skills had not been passed down from generation to generation since the 1800s, and yet some of the Lakota holy men still retained knowledge of the old ways.

These men observed nature and formed a relationship with all aspects of the world — animals, plants, and the land itself. And so when it came to seemingly physical processes such as tracking, they would not rely on visible sign alone, but also listened to what the world was telling them about itself.

Not many people were capable of this connection to the earth, or attaining such spiritual alignment, but the young Adams had shown an incredible aptitude for the teaching of the Lakota elders. This had led in turn to trouble with other members of the tribe, who argued vocally that a child with no tribal lineage or ancestry should never be allowed to receive such instruction.

And so despite Big Bear’s protection, Adams’ life was not an easy one, never able to avoid the stigma of his orphaned status, and constantly having to fight to get what was given free to most. But his spirit shone through, until he became the most highly regarded tracker on the reservation, and had the name ‘Free Bear’ gifted to him by Maddison and the Lakota holy men, to illustrate how he had freed himself from the trappings of ancestry and made a name for himself through sheer ability and force of will.

What Maddison and the tribal elders would think of him now — ready to take out a group of tourists on the Badlands Native American Experience — was anyone’s guess. But as he led the party of twelve tourists on horseback into the wonders of the Badlands, he wasn’t thinking about disappointing Maddison.

Instead, all he could think about was Lynn.

The tour was four days long, and the group camped out overnight, gathering around the campfire to discuss the day’s experiences and listen to Adams tell tales about the land’s mythology.

Despite the low night-time temperatures, Adams spent his nights out beneath the stars. There were millions of them, brilliantly bright in the absence of manmade lighting, and as Adams sipped a cup of nettle tea, he felt his mind — his spirit — start to roam the cosmos.

But then thoughts intruded, bringing his astral journey back down to earth with a jolt. Lynn. They had been in love, married, then divorced — and now he would never see her again until he, too, ascended into the spirit world.

It was in the Badlands National Park where they had first met, and Adams took another swig from the cup and smiled as he remembered.

He was just twenty at the time, nearly two decades before, and had been hunting a male pronghorn across the grassy plain, a lone animal that must have become separated from its herd. He didn’t intend to kill it; his aim was to get as close as he could to it without it realizing. He wanted to be able to be so close that he could touch it. That was skill.

And so he had lain in wait for hours, tracked the beast for miles, and stealthily moved closer, ever closer. He had been within just ten feet of the magnificent animal when he had sensed them.

Two people. Travelling on foot. Just over one mile away, to the north-east.

He listened harder, ear close to the ground, senses acutely tuned. He prayed the big pronghorn wouldn’t sense them too.

He edged closer — eight feet, six feet, four, two. The sounds of the unknown pair were louder now, but Adams was sure he could reach out and touch the animal before it heard them.

‘Look at that!’ he heard a young female voice cry out.

‘Get your camera!’ he heard another, and that was enough — just as he was reaching, the animal startled, head turning to the high-pitched cries, and then it was in motion, accelerating away across the plain.

Adams sighed and looked up. There was no use getting angry. What did tourists know? Maybe they should know better but they never did, and Adams had long ago learnt that fact of life.

He knew the two girls were close now, he could hear them chattering to one another.

‘Aw, you were too slow!’

‘He got away!’

‘Maybe we’ll see him again…’

He decided to have some fun and try and recoup something from the day.

Perfectly invisible in the long grass, he waited until they were almost on top of him, and then sat bolt upright in front of them.

He was going to give a comical ‘Boo!’ but his breath caught in his throat as he saw the girl on the left.

She was the most beautiful girl Matt Adams had ever seen.

It turned out that the two girls were on spring break from Harvard, and instead of catching a flight to Florida or Cancun and spending the week in drunken debauchery, they had decided to travel the Great Plains and gain some physical insight into their country’s history.

The beautiful girl was called Evelyn Edwards, and was majoring in astronomy and physics, subjects Adams didn’t immediately see her being interested in. She looked more like a model than a physicist.

The other girl was her roommate, and was certainly plainer than Lynn — Adams had quickly found out what she liked to be called — and was more the type Adams would associate with astrophysics.

After apologizing for scaring them and explaining who he was and what he had been doing, Adams had then invited both ladies back to his hometown of Pine Ridge for dinner.

Lynn’s friend had baulked at the idea but Lynn, clearly interested, had agreed for both of them.

What followed in the days after was a whirlwind romance, as Adams exposed Lynn to the wonders of the American Great Plains, providing a light-hearted release from the pressure of her studies. It was a sad fact that her friend was soon forgotten, and travelled back on her own after the first two days indicated that she was something of a third wheel.

On the last day before Lynn was due to go back to Harvard, Adams had taken her out into the Badlands again, and they had sat under the very tree he was now lying under. They had talked long into the night, and then he had reached forward, touching her cheek gently with his fingers.

And when they had finally kissed, Adams had instinctively known that they were destined to be together.

The tour came to a merciful end and Adams returned to the cabin that served as base of operations for the tour. He took care of the horses, then showered and changed.

After receiving his cash payment from the tour manager, he decided to get on his bike and head straight for the nearest bar.

He wasn’t a drinker, but occasionally — if the nightmares persisted — he tried to see if the alcohol would help him sleep. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t; and sometimes when it did, the dreams came back worse than ever. Fearful of having the nightmares in front of the tourists, he had not slept at all on the tour and was now at the stage where his body was demanding sleep of any kind, even the kind filled with nightmares.

After just one hour, Adams had had enough. He was already on the verge of being drunk, and feared what would happen if he had any more. He could already tell that the drink wasn’t going to help him sleep this time, and so he paid his tab and left for home.

Cycling down the streets in the cool night, Adams picked the wrong road twice, which caused him to laugh out loud. You used to be the best tracker there was! Ha! Look at you now, can’t even find your damned house!

But he eventually did find it, a dilapidated one-storey squat-house — bedroom, bathroom, lounge-diner and kitchenette, small yard outside surrounded by a chain-link fence.

It wasn’t much but it was home.

Home sweet home. Adams giggled as he left the bike in the yard and staggered up towards the porch, pulling open the outside screen door.

Leaning against the door frame, he fumbled for his keys, then fumbled again as he tried to get the key in the lock. He wasn’t quite drunk, but the alcohol was cetainly not aiding his co-ordination.

Finally, after much cursing, he managed, and stepped through the door into his lounge.

And then he sensed it for the first time, something he should have picked up long ago.

There were other people in his house.

He started to move but stopped in his tracks as he felt the cold steel of a large calibre handgun press hard into the back of his head.

In an instant, Adams was stone cold sober.

2

The lights came on, blinding in their intensity after the pitch dark, and a sharp pain shot through Adams’ eyes, directly into his brain.

He got his bearings moments later, and saw there were four men in the room with him, including the one behind him with the gun. They were all dressed in identical dark blue suits, white shirts, dark blue ties. Adams was in no doubt that the other three men also carried guns.

Two men were out to the flanks, whilst one stood straight in front of him, just two feet away. This man — short crew cut, sharp eyes hidden behind rimless spectacles, his movement fluid, relaxed — approached Adams, staring into his face with barely concealed disdain.

‘Where is she?’ he asked in a cold monotone.

‘Who?’ Adams asked, genuinely confused, and not just by the alcohol he had consumed that night.

The man opposite didn’t reply but merely punched Adams straight in the face with a leather-gloved fist.

Adams’ head rocked back, blood flying from his nose out across the thin carpet. He fell to one knee, momentarily dazed. The pain was sharp, causing his eyes to water reflexively, but he knew that this was the least of his worries.

‘Let’s not play games here, Mr Adams,’ the man said calmly, the violence not affecting him in the slightest. ‘You know who we mean. Where is she?’

Adams shook his head, eyes down at the floor as he spat blood from his mouth. He looked back up. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

The man sighed, rolled his eyes theatrically to the ceiling, and stomped viciously down with a booted foot into Adams’ face.

His head rocked back again, and he saw stars. His ears popping, he looked back at the man in front of him, eyes questioning.

‘Your ex-wife,’ the man explained in exasperation. ‘Dr Evelyn Edwards. Where is she?’

Adams’ head rang again, but not from being hit. It was confusion. My ex-wife? Lynn? ‘She’s dead,’ Adams said bluntly. Isn’t she?

‘If she’s dead,’ the man said ponderously, ‘then how do you explain the email?’

‘Email?’ Adams wondered aloud. ‘What email?’

The suited man came forward to hit Adams again, but he held his hands up, placating. ‘Hey, hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve been out on a tour for the past four days!’

The man paused, considering the matter. ‘You mean you’ve not seen the email?’ he asked at last. He pulled a sheet of paper from a pocket, holding it up directly in front of Adams’ face.

Adams closed his eyes, re-opened them, trying to focus. It was a print-off from an email. He recognized his own email address, but not the sender.

He looked harder, clearing the pain from his head as he read the words.

Adams was dumbfounded. Was this message from Lynn? He looked at the date. Two days ago. That was four days after the helicopter crash that was supposed to have killed her.

‘So what do you make of it, Mr Adams?’ the man asked. ‘Which “park” is she referring to?’

Adams’ head was spinning but clarity hit him suddenly. Lynn was alive, in danger, and she needed his help. Why else would the men be here, unless they believed the message was genuine? And if they were trying to find her, with force and with weapons, it could only be for one reason — to finish the job, and make sure she was dead.

Adams knew he wasn’t up to much at the minute, but the anger that suddenly coursed through his veins seemed to revitalize him. They wanted to kill Lynn? Well, we’ll see about that, Adams thought silently to himself. We’ll damn well see about that!

His mind and spirit unified as one for the first time in many years. Free Bear jerked backwards, head twisting out of the way of the gun barrel, his hand snaking round to grab the gunman’s arm.

With the other three men still to draw their weapons, Adams knew he had a chance. His elbow jerked back violently, connecting with the gunman’s jaw and knocking him cold. At the same time, Adams grabbed the handgun, finger slotting through the trigger guard.

The man in front had his own Sig Sauer semi-automatic halfway out of its quick-release belt holster when Adams fired. The shot hit him centre mass, propelling him backwards through the small room, a plume of blood bursting from his back as the round left the body in a gigantic exit wound.

Adams angled swiftly to his left, firing again. The alcohol was having an effect, though, and he caught the third man in the shoulder, but it was enough to incapacitate. He ignored the man as he fell to the floor, eyes wide, going into immediate shock, and instead turned instantly to fire at the last intruder.

This man, realizing that fumbling with his gun might prove fatal, was instead charging towards Adams, trying to close the distance and disarm him. It was a good strategy. By the time Adams had turned, it was too late — the man was on top of him, shoulder driving hard into Adams’ gut.

The wind knocked out of him, the gun went spiralling into the air, landing near the kitchenette. And then Adams felt the weight of the man on top of him, his big meaty fingers gripping his throat, squeezing the life out of him.

The whisky, the lack of sleep, the blows to the head, the sheer confusion of everything that was going on was too much for him, and he felt himself giving in to the pressure of the fingers, his brain going light from lack of oxygen.

No! There was no giving in; there simply couldn’t be.

His arm pushed out from under the big man’s body, reaching for the cheap glass coffee table near the sofa. Just as his eyes were going dim, he used the last of his energy to smash through the glass.

The sharp sound of breaking glass made the man pause, relax his hold slightly, and that was all Adams needed, as he grabbed a shard of broken glass from where it had fallen on the floor, driving it into the big man’s neck with a feral yowl of triumph. The carotid artery was severed and a great stream of bright crimson blood sprayed out and covered his own face.

Adams lay on the floor for several minutes afterwards, blood pooling off his body on to his cheap carpet.

Finally, he got to his knees, then to his feet, and surveyed the carnage. Three men dead, one unconscious from shock.

But Adams was OK. And he knew exactly where to go.

The park.

Lynn was alive.

3

Stephen Jacobs sipped his herbal tea from a china cup as he stared at the screen on the large walnut desk in front of him.

On the screen, the eleven other members of the organization’s elite leadership stared back at him. It was a secure electronic conference call, bringing together twelve of the world’s most influential power brokers for an emergency discussion.

Yasuhiro Obata looked seriously into the camera. ‘Have we been compromised?’ he asked simply. As the head of Japan’s largest zaibatsu business conglomerate, he was used to direct speech, a fact some of the more political members of the inner leadership found rather disconcerting.

‘No,’ Jacobs answered, equally directly. ‘The body has been secured at our Nevada facility, and everyone outside of the organization has been neutralized.’

‘Except for Dr Edwards,’ interjected Sergio Molina, the Italian motorsport kingpin.

Jacobs adjusted himself in his club chair before he answered. ‘It is true that we have yet to find Dr Edwards, yes. But the operation to locate her has just begun.’

On the screen, he saw Yuri Andropov, the owner of Russia’s largest media concern, lean forward. ‘And if she talks beforehand?’

‘It will not come to that, I am sure,’ Jacobs replied and took another sip of tea. ‘Besides, she knows very little. If she surfaced, what would she say? Nothing that people would believe, anyway. And let us not forget that our organization controls eighty per cent of the world’s media. The story would be killed in any case. But put yourselves in her place — she feels someone is trying to kill her, which is why she contacted her ex-husband rather than the authorities. It’s highly unlikely she will want to bring attention to herself. No, ladies and gentlemen, I think we are safe for the time being.’

‘How much longer do we need?’ asked Lord Thomas Hart, the longest serving member of Britain’s House of Lords.

Jacobs turned his eyes to the image of Professor Philippe Messier, the Director General of CERN, the nuclear research centre and particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. ‘Professor?’ he asked, passing the ball along.

Messier cleared his throat. ‘Things are progressing well. We should be ready to test the device before the end of the month.’

There were looks of great satisfaction on the faces of all the assembled leaders, even hints of excitement. The dream was close to being realized.

‘We can’t afford to take any chances,’ said Tony Kern, special aide to the President of the United States. ‘Do whatever you have to, Mr Jacobs. Just make sure Dr Edwards is taken out of the picture.’

Jacobs nodded his head. Taking out Dr Edwards wouldn’t be a problem. The wheels were already in motion.

Matt Adams stretched as he got out of the searing hot taxicab, straight into the frenetic, bustling metropolis of Santiago, Chile.

The population here was predominantly Amerindian, and Adams’ classically Lakota features blended in perfectly. It was like a home away from home.

Adams had his own passport but he knew it wouldn’t be long before his name would be out on the wire. The agents wouldn’t report back, and the powers that be — whoever they were — would immediately assume he was on the run, possibly attempting to meet Lynn at the unknown location. And while they obviously had no idea where this was, which would limit the coverage they would be able to put out, they would certainly be able to make life hard for him.

But Adams was not without his own resources. He had flown in from Mexico just an hour before, after first visiting an old friend of the Tohono O’odham Nation, a vast tribal land that bordered Mexico.

He had borrowed a passport and some cash from the man, careful of what he had told him. It wasn’t that he thought his old friend would be loose-lipped, it was rather that the less he knew, the safer he would probably be — after all, his friend was still employed by the federal government. Adams had used the borrowed passport to travel from Mexico to Chile, the photograph being close enough in appearance to arouse no suspicion and as he adjusted quickly to the new environment, he set off in the direction of his rendezvous.

Once he had regained sufficient strength after the fight at his house, Adams had searched the bodies. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing to be found. No ID, no jewellery, no tattoos, not even any labels in their clothes. The only distinguishing factor was that all four men had been packing identical Sig Sauer P229 .40 calibre semi-automatic handguns, held in spring-loaded belt holsters. The guns were sold at a thousand dollars a unit, and their presence told Adams a great deal.

The team was professional, so much so that Adams had to conclude that they were government operatives. But which government? The lead interrogator had spoken with an American accent — possibly a Brooklyn base, but smoothed out over the years by travel until it had picked up something of West Virginia. He suspected the team operated out of Washington, and this had been borne out when he found their car parked four streets over. It was a metallic grey Ford sedan with civilian plates, but Adams knew the type well enough. Classic government undercover issue. Again, it was scrupulously clean, but for Adams this only confirmed his suspicions. Only an elite government agency would be so careful.

But if an agency of the US government, then which one? CIA, FBI, DEA, DIA, NSA, Department of Homeland Security? There was a veritable alphabet soup of organizations that could be involved. It could even be NASA, as Lynn seemed to suspect, although Adams wasn’t aware that the space agency had any direct action wing. Still, nothing would surprise him any more.

He had decided to use the car as far as he could, and after packing a small bag and gathering his meagre savings from a strongbox under the kitchen table, Adams had travelled north out of the reservation. He drove as far as Bismarck up in North Dakota, where he had abandoned the car and bought a Greyhound bus ticket to Winnipeg, Canada.

Instead of getting on the bus, though, he had trekked further into town and hitchhiked his way back down south. The subterfuge wouldn’t last forever, but it might waste some of his enemy’s resources and give him a window of opportunity to reach his real destination.

Within twenty-four hours he was crossing the Mexican border on foot, on one of the countless unmanned trails he had discovered when he had worked in the area years ago — before the ‘incident’, before the nightmares, before his life had gone to hell.

Boarding the plane at Mexico City, he had suddenly been overcome with a terrible fatigue. It was the aftermath of adrenalin, a backlash of the parasympathetic nervous system creating the powerful desire for sleep.

He recognized the gift for what it was, and as he took his seat in the cabin, he allowed himself to close his eyes and relax.

And at last, mercifully, he slept.

Adams took the bumps slowly along the desert road in his Toyota Landcruiser, taking the twists and turns at under five miles per hour; no matter how hard he pressed the accelerator, the vehicle would go no faster.

He looked through the windscreen up at the burning sun, and looked away, his head aching.

He pulled over to the side of the road. It was no use. He’d been on the truck’s trail for three days now, and was no closer to catching it. He needed a rest, just half an hour to shut his eyes. He’d been here before so many times, knew what the consequences would be if he fell asleep, and yet he was powerless to resist. He had to carry on, had to try and get there in time, at least once, at least this time. But he was so tired…

He was in the desert, on foot now, tracking the tyre marks that had gone off the road just half a kilometre from where he had been resting. The sun was lower in the sky, several hours having passed. He cursed himself, knowing what that would mean. He would find the truck like he had a thousand times in the past, open the doors, hoping that this time it would be different. But he knew it wouldn’t be different, and yet still he soldiered on, tracking the tyre marks for another mile over the dusty terrain, until he found the truck lying there deserted in the dying rays of the afternoon sun.

He edged closer to the truck’s rear doors, one hand on his pistol while the other reached out for the handle, the metal searing hot.

Taking a deep breath, hoping beyond hope that it would be different, he yanked the doors open.

And again, like every time, he stared at what lay in the back of the truck, opened his mouth, and screamed.

Adams woke with a start, the hand of the female passenger next to him resting on his shoulder, rocking him awake.

He looked at her through half-closed, confused eyes.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked him, a concerned look on her face.

Adams tried to smile at her. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Just a bad dream.’

The lady nodded her head in understanding. ‘Wow,’ she said, obviously moved by what she had seen. ‘It must have been really bad.’

She put her hand on his, and Adams was grateful for the contact. He smiled at her properly this time. ‘Yes,’ he said, not knowing what else to say. ‘It was.’

‘What?’ Jacobs exploded down the telephone, his cup of tea spinning on its saucer.

‘They’re dead,’ the voice on the other end of the line came back. ‘Three out of four anyway. The other was incapacitated, in the hospital now.’

Jacobs didn’t ask for details. They had underestimated Adams, plain and simple. He was known to be a recluse but they had had his file, knew his background. They should have been more careful.

‘Where is he now?’ Jacobs asked. It was imperative that they find him. If he made it to Evelyn Edwards, then one more person would know what had happened at the Pine Island Glacier, what had been discovered. And then more people would find out; it was inevitable, once a secret had been shared.

‘He caught a Greyhound bus up to Canada, got into the depot in Winnipeg late last night.’

‘Get our people at NSA checking the station’s CCTV feeds, then track his movements through the city.’

Like most cities, Winnipeg had its share of CCTV cameras littering its streets. By entering certain parameters, facial recognition software could track a person’s movements from camera to camera.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And find out if they’re having any luck tracing the movements of Dr Edwards.’

The most concrete thing they had was her location over four days ago, a cybercafé in Punta Arenas, in the south of Chile. By the time a team had arrived, she had been long gone, and who knew where. She was a resourceful woman, that much was certain.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And let me know how they’re doing on cross-referencing both of their files. The answer to the location of the meeting place might be right there, just waiting to be found.’

People often reverted to familiar places, and this was certainly indicated by the urgent email sent by Edwards. The question was whether the information was on file somewhere. If it was, the NSA supercomputers would find the answer sooner or later. It was just a question of crunching the data for long enough.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘OK,’ Jacobs said in dismissal, replacing the receiver.

He picked up his tea again, but then the voice of his immediate superior, loud and clear inside his head, caused him to spill it across the desk. Damn!

‘Problems?’

‘No,’ Jacobs intoned clearly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘We cannot afford any problems. Not now, when we are so close.’

‘Leave it to me.’

‘Yes. There is nothing else we can do. But do not let us down.’

Jacobs swallowed hard. ‘I won’t,’ he said finally, filled with the conviction that came from being the leader of the world’s most powerful organization. ‘Our dream will be realized, you can all count on that.’

‘Yes,’ the voice replied. ‘And then you can take your rightful place among us.’

Jacobs smiled at the thought, and knew that he would do whatever it took.

Santiago held special memories for Adams, and as he stood in the middle of the Parque Metropolitano at the summit of San Cristobal, looking down over the smog-hazed city below him, the past came vividly back to him.

It was here that he had proposed to Lynn all those years ago, after riding the funicular to the top of the mountain, hand in hand. Happy. So blissfully happy.

He had stared into her eyes, gone to one knee, and asked her. And she had said yes. It had been the happiest moment of his life, and he had known that she had felt the same way.

‘Hey.’

Adams’ head snapped round at the voice. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts and memories that he had never noticed the lone woman detach herself from a group of tourists and approach him from the side.

Lynn.

Despite the years, she hadn’t changed one bit. If anything, she looked even better now than she had done the last time he had seen her. She was obviously under a great deal of stress, but although she looked as if she hadn’t slept properly in weeks, her underlying beauty shone through her exhausted features.

There was no doubt it was her, Evelyn Edwards, live, here in the flesh. So the email was true, and she did need his help.

‘Lynn,’ he said finally, taking her in his arms and embracing her for the first time in fifteen long years.

4

‘So how are we looking?’ asked David McNulty as he drove the ball three hundred yards across the fairway. Semi-professional in his younger days, McNulty still found time for eighteen holes on a weekend, even now he was the President of the United States.

‘Good,’ Tony Kern replied. ‘The trade delegation is due in Beijing tomorrow morning, and we think the Chinese are going to go for it. The—’

Kern was cut off by the shrill ring of his cellphone. Staring at the screen, Kern answered it instantly, despite President McNulty standing right beside him, waiting for an answer to his question.

‘Yes,’ he answered simply, and then hung up. Ignoring the president, who still waited expectantly next to him, he then speed-dialled a number on his phone, turning away from McNulty.

‘News from the NSA,’ he whispered. ‘Santiago, Chile. Parque Metropolitano.’ He nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he finished, and hung up.

McNulty stood there, hands on his hips, staring at his assistant. ‘Sorry, Tony, am I disturbing your business?’

Kern couldn’t miss the acid tone in McNulty’s voice, but it was of no concern. Despite being President of the United States, McNulty was not one of the chosen. And it would not be long before their roles would be reversed, and McNulty — and all others like him — would be crushed to dirt under the feet of the world’s true elite.

‘It was horrific,’ Lynn explained when they were back in the twin room she had booked at the Hostal Americano. A cheap, basic hotel in the downtown area of Santiago, it was nevertheless good enough for their purposes.

Adams sat on the bed opposite Lynn and listened. She had already explained how they had found a body in the ice, possibly as much as forty thousand years old but with clothing and equipment that posed a variety of extremely puzzling questions. He sipped a glass of water as she told him how the team of army engineers had descended on the glacier and extracted the body, before evacuating everyone by helicopter.

He had questions building up — too numerous to count — but didn’t want to interrupt before Lynn had finished. She was clearly relieved to be getting it all out in the open, to have someone to speak to at last about her ordeal.

‘I saw the blinking lights, and just started screaming for everyone to get out of there,’ Lynn continued. ‘And then, I don’t know why, I just reacted, I yanked open the pilot side door and jumped.’ Her voice choked up with emotion. ‘It exploded while I was still in mid-air, the flames touching me before I hit the water.’

Her face reddened as tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t save any of them!’ she blurted, and Adams crossed to her bed, holding her in his arms as her body wracked with sobs. ‘Oh Matt, I should’ve tried to get them out! But I didn’t, I just jumped, and saved myself, and all the rest are dead! They’re all dead!’

Adams just held her tight as she collapsed into him. He could tell her how she did the right thing, how she would be dead too now if she had stayed to help the others, how nobody would have survived anyway, but he knew that these were just empty platitudes. Lynn was an exceptionally gifted woman, the brightest he had ever known. There was nothing he could tell her that her logical brain would not have already convinced her of. The fact was, she had done the only thing she could have done, and he knew she would come to terms with that sooner or later, no matter what he said.

And so he just held her, and let her cry.

‘It was a fishing trawler that found me,’ she continued later on, Adams still by her side on the bed, holding her hand. ‘They’d seen the explosion. I was bobbing around in the water like a tenpin, my backpack keeping me afloat. When the crew pulled me out, I was near hypothermic, unconscious, and in shock. They took me back to shore, off the coast of southern Chile, radioed in the crash, and got me medical attention. When I finally came to, and realized where I was, I panicked. I begged the doctor to release me, and cover up the fact I’d ever been there. I told him a modified version of what had happened, told him I was scared for my life. And I was — if the crash was recorded, and it was mentioned that there was a survivor, I knew they would come for me. I was — and still am — in no doubt that the explosion on the helicopter was an execution. That body is important to someone, that’s for damned sure.’

Adams considered the fact that he had further proof of that — the intercepted email, the attempt to force information from him — but decided to let her finish her own story before confirming her suspicions with a tale of his own.

‘The doctor agreed, even gave me some money to help me on my way. I was on the mainland by the next day, which is where I sent the message to you. I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t know who I could trust. I mean, it was the head of NASA I’d called with news of the discovery, so who else could I go to? Now maybe NASA are in on it, maybe not — maybe the message was intercepted, some other group got involved, who knows? Maybe the engineers weren’t even from the army. All I know is that someone wants to kill anyone who had any knowledge of that body.’

Lynn looked into Adams’ eyes and squeezed his hand tighter. ‘I didn’t even know if you’d believe it. I saw the news reports, how I’d been reported dead in the “accident”. I prayed that it would get to you, that you’d believe it. I couldn’t call, couldn’t risk the fact that they could trace it. I sent the email encoded, via a few cut-off routes to lose its origin. If you hadn’t turned up within the next few days, I would’ve tried to leave the country by myself. I still have my passport, but I don’t want to use it — I’m sure they’ll be looking for me at the airports.’

If four armed men hadn’t just tried to beat information about Lynn’s whereabouts out of him, Adams would have thought her paranoid. But it would certainly appear that there were people out to get her, and they had been able to intercept the email. He hoped that was as far as they had got.

Lynn looked up again into his eyes. ‘Do you believe me?’

He stared back at her, melting in the green limpid pools of her eyes. ‘I believe you.’ He held her tight, kissed her cheek. ‘I believe you.’

Stephen Jacobs poked at the logs burning in the vast fireplace, feeling rather than seeing when Commander Flynn Eldridge entered the living room.

Eldridge, a former commander of the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six, was now in charge of an even more clandestine group. Known as the Alpha Brigade, it operated out of the Nevada desert, on the direct orders of the organization headed by Stephen Jacobs. The group consisted purely of ex-military special forces operatives, pulled in from the SEALs, the Marine Force Recon, the Green Berets, the Delta Force, and from the Air Force Special Forces. They were a private army, not operating on government orders but able to exist above the law due to the protection given to them by Jacobs’ organization.

Eldridge loved every minute of it — no congressional oversight, nobody breathing down his neck, no ridiculously restrictive rules of engagement — and the only thing that mattered to Jacobs was results. Eldridge was therefore given carte blanche in his operations, as long as he got the job done, a fact that appealed immensely to his ruthless, aggressive nature. If he needed information from someone, he could torture them. If he needed to make a point for someone, he could execute the person next to them.

He was the king of his own little world, a world of hired mercenary killers, one which he dominated through sheer force of will. Sometimes he thought he was in danger of becoming like the US Army Special Forces men sent into the jungles of Laos and Cambodia to train up the guerrilla forces that ‘went native’ during the Vietnam War, men who were treated like gods by the tribal people, and who lost all sense of reality. But he always reigned himself back in when he felt it was getting to that stage — after all, he was a professional. Ruthless, fearsome, merciless, but a professional nevertheless.

But as he entered the large, mahogany-panelled living room of Jacobs’ vast mansion house on Washington’s Potomac River, Eldridge was all too aware of his recent failings. First, he had failed to make sure everyone aboard the helicopter was dead back in the Antarctic. Second, a team of his men had seriously underestimated the survivor’s ex-husband, Matt Adams. Now Adams was undoubtedly going to rendezvous with Edwards, and then — who knew?

‘Sir,’ Eldridge announced, standing to attention behind the old man.

Jacobs continued to prod the fire, causing embers to fall, to ignite the dead areas and feed the flames. ‘Good evening,’ he said eventually, without turning round. He continued to stoke the fire for a few more minutes, Eldridge growing more and more uncomfortable with every passing second.

Finally, Jacobs turned round and locked eyes with the special forces commander. ‘I am sure you understand how our organization responds to failure.’

Eldridge nodded, having executed several men himself who had been deemed to be unworthy of the group’s standards.

‘How secure are you feeling right now?’ Jacobs asked directly.

Eldridge adjusted his position uncomfortably. He was not used to being on the receiving end of threats. ‘I need another chance, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ll get them.’

Jacobs smiled, reassured by the strength of Eldridge’s conviction. He wasn’t sure if it was the threat of execution or the thought of the coming reward if everything went according to plan that gave the big man such convincing self-belief. Either way, Jacobs believed him.

‘Good. The fact is, we need to find these two characters, and we need to find them fast.’

Eldridge nodded his head. ‘Do we have any leads?’

For the first time that night, Jacobs smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, we do.’

5

‘It’s so strange,’ Lynn said, holding a fresh cup of coffee in her hands.

‘What’s that?’ Adams asked, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. He had managed to sleep for a few hours on board the plane, before the nightmares woke him, but was now unable to do so again. And perversely, now his body had been rewarded with sleep, instead of being satiated, it just craved even more.

‘The other helicopter,’ Lynn answered straight away. ‘I’ve been checking a few things out since I’ve been here, and it just seems to have vanished — no flight plans filed, no record of a take-off, no record of it ever having landed. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but it seems to have never even existed.’

‘Sounds military,’ Adams said, thinking about the recent visit to his house by what seemed to be government agents. ‘Probably linked to the intelligence services.’

Lynn nodded her head. ‘That’s what I thought,’ she continued. ‘But why? I mean, why would they be doing it?’

‘I guess the reason they’d give would be national security, but who really knows? It could be rogue elements, it could be anything. The one thing that is clear is that they’re ruthless.’ Adams pointed at the backpack. ‘And that evidence you’ve got in there is our only potential bargaining chip.’

Adams stretched out, thinking about what was in the bag. High-definition footage of the burial site, measurements, notes, diagrams and, most importantly, DNA samples of the body itself.

‘If we’re going to get out of this, we have to learn more about that body — who it is, what it was doing there, and why it’s so damned important.’ He considered the matter further. ‘We need to get back to the US and get those samples tested, get the rest of the evidence copied and spread around. Like insurance.’

Lynn nodded, knowing he was right. All of a sudden, she was extremely glad she had sent the email to Matt. He was always so sure, so strong. And despite her own strengths, she had felt so lost here, stranded and alone against the vast machine of the US government, or whoever it was that was after her.

She felt unfamiliar feelings in her gut, ones she had not felt since — well, since the last time she had been with Matt, she finally admitted to herself. Was it the stress? Or were the feelings real?

As she lay back on her bed and closed her eyes, giving in to the need for sleep, she had no answer.

Later that night, she awoke in a cold sweat, nightmares from the helicopter crash swamping her unconscious, disturbing her inner demons.

And then Matt was there with her, holding her close, whispering in her ear that she would be OK, everything would be all right.

He climbed in next to her, arms around her, and as she felt his strong embrace, she knew that he was right.

Eldridge smiled to himself as the aeroplane shot through the thin air of near-space at over four thousand miles per hour, one hundred thousand feet above the earth.

The Aurora stealth aircraft was a secret military project many thought was still years from completion, although it was in reality already mission-ready. Powered by a radical new pulse detonation wave engine, it could reach speeds once thought impossible. From the airstrip at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to the skies above Santiago would take less than an hour.

The only unfortunate thing, Eldridge reflected as he checked the harness on his chute, was that the aircraft wouldn’t be able to land — the risk of people seeing it was just too great. Instead it would take the lesser risk of slowing down and reducing altitude so that he could parachute out of it once it had reached its destination.

Eldridge was no stranger to parachute drops and was looking forward to liaising with his team. There were six members of the Alpha Brigade already on the ground in Santiago, who had been searching for Lynn Edwards in Punta Arenas since the email had been sent. More of his team would join them later; at the moment they were being recalled from other operations, and tasked to Eldridge in Santiago. They would have to travel by more conventional, slower aircraft, but they would be there by late the next morning.

And then the hunt would begin in earnest.

Jacobs rubbed his chin in contemplation as he relaxed in his private sauna. Sweat dripped from every square inch of his body, pooling on the Scandinavian pine-wood floor, and he breathed in deeply, then exhaled, expanding his chest.

The information had come in unexpectedly and had to be acted on fast, and he was pleased he had managed to arrange for the Aurora to get Eldridge there quickly.

Once there, Eldridge would capture Matt Adams and Lynn Edwards, and arrange for the pair to be delivered covertly to the base in Nevada for interrogation. It would be tidier if Adams and Lynn could just be taken out, executed on the spot, but it was vital that Jacobs knew what had been going on for the past week — who else Lynn had told, who they had told, ad infinitum until the situation was entirely contained.

And that was a definite possibility, now that the pair’s location had been determined. Computer power had defined a possible area that Lynn could have reached since the crash, taking into account various factors such as data from ports, airports, train stations and bus depots, credit card use, availability of cash, use of passport, feeds from CCTV units, and basic triangulation algorithms.

This area was then cross-referenced with every available scrap of information about the past lives of Matt Adams and Evelyn Edwards, and further computer searches had finally found a seventeen-year-old credit card bill for two train tickets from Lynn’s family home in Maine down to Mexico. Time-consuming manual labour had at last unearthed the circuitous route through South America taken by the young couple, and card purchases along the way provided further confirmation that it had in fact been Lynn and Adams who were the travellers.

Once the data was cross-checked, the triangulation zone matched almost perfectly with the couple’s prior visit to Santiago, Chile. It made perfect sense, too — Lynn could easily have gone that far north in the time available, without having to cross any borders, and it would be easy to get lost in a city of five million people.

Once the target city had been located, it was then a matter of checking hotel bookings, travel companies, taxi services, CCTV footage, and satellite photography.

Evelyn Edwards’ features had finally been caught on CCTV going into the Parque Metropolitano, and the data was immediately fed to the Alpha Brigade members who were already in Chile.

Further CCTV followed Lynn as she met a second person, whose features were subsequently confirmed as belonging to the second target, Matt Adams. The pair were then electronically followed back to the Hostal Americano, where the primary target had apparently booked a room for cash under the name of Patrice Leaky.

The five men from the Alpha Brigade were on-site within the hour, ready to roll, and as Jacobs sat in his sauna, the sweat rolling off his body in fat, thick droplets, he had to admit that it was an impressive turnaround.

With Eldridge also en route for Chile, Jacobs was confident that the pair would be in Nevada by nightfall. They would be expertly interrogated, every last drop of information forced from them.

And then they would be executed.

6

‘They intercepted the email?’ Lynn asked over the small breakfast table, incredulous.

Adams nodded. ‘They even showed me a copy. I wouldn’t have known about it if they hadn’t, I hadn’t been home for days.’

The night before, Adams had purposely not told Lynn the details about the attack on his house, knowing how she would react. She had a terrible night as it was, and Adams knew she wouldn’t have slept a wink if he had told her his own story.

But now Lynn looked as if she had been bitten by a snake, recoiling with sudden terror. ‘They might know where we are!’ she whispered, trying to contain her rising panic. ‘If they intercepted the message, they could know anything!’

Adams shook his head. ‘No. They came to me because they had no idea where you were. They needed to get the information from me.’

‘And you’re sure you weren’t followed?’

‘Pretty sure. I had a borrowed passport, used a random route, never noticed anything out of the ordinary. And I’m pretty good at that.’ Adams winced even as he said it. That might once have been true, he thought, but not any more. He hadn’t even seen Lynn come up to him in the park. He was out of practice, plain and simple. As it stood, Lynn seemed to be doing a better job than he was. What if he had been followed?

‘It might not have even been people following you,’ Lynn warned. ‘Electronic surveillance — credit card purchases, closed-circuit television with facial recognition software, satellite photography, the list is endless!’

Since her escape, Lynn had been meticulously researching the techniques and methods of her potential enemies, and her razor-sharp mind had absorbed an incredible amount of information on the subject. She didn’t have the practical experience but certainly now knew the theory well enough to be worried.

‘Hey,’ Adams said as soothingly as he could, all too aware that Lynn was right. ‘I only used cash, I don’t even have any credit cards, and I was careful to avoid cameras. I didn’t use a phone either. I think we should be OK for now.’

Lynn looked at him for a moment before making her decision. ‘No. We have to leave. Now.’

Adams nodded his head. He actually agreed, he just wanted Lynn to calm down, to try and relax. Mistakes were made when tensions were high, and Adams knew that better than most. ‘OK,’ he said, grabbing his bag from the second bed. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’

Within three minutes, Lynn was ready with him at the door. Reaching out to touch the thin wooden partition, his hand stopped, and he reflexively put out his other hand to stop Lynn, a finger going to her lips to silence her.

He pressed his head closer to the door, listening, senses tuning to the world beyond the door.

The noise was coming from the stairs. Six pairs of feet, booted, heavy, as if each person carried something. It could be luggage of course, but it could just as easily be weaponry of some kind. There was a defined movement to the footsteps, a rhythm, a sense of cohesion that felt vaguely military.

He felt his old senses coming back to him slowly, crawling out of the veil they had been hiding behind since that day in the desert.

He sniffed the air, and smelled no cologne, no deodorant, just a faint hint of natural soap, enough to disguise the more potent smell of body odour.

And then he picked up the breathing — regular, even, paced, but slightly elevated, and not by the exercise but by anticipation.

‘Hit team,’ he said to Lynn finally. ‘Six men, armed, turning down the hallway now. We’ve got ten seconds.’

7

CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, is based near Geneva, Switzerland. Famous across the world for its search for the ‘God Particle’ at its Large Hadron Collider facility, the institution was originally founded in 1954 to unite Europe’s — and later the world’s — foremost nuclear physicists. Since then, its particle physics research has taken over to a large extent, and its discovery and then its creation of antimatter is both admired and feared in equal measure.

Many members of the general public were genuinely terrified when the collider — more commonly known as the LHC — was first switched on. Consisting of billions of particles being deliberately smashed together along miles of underground piping — sometimes as many as ten thousand per second — it was thought in some quarters that the device might create a black hole that would destroy the entire world in the blink of an eye.

Of course, no such thing ever happened, and the LHC has hummed away safely ever since, on a constant quest for the explanation of the beginnings of the universe.

Professor Philippe Messier considered the history of the LHC laboratory as he entered the elevator. He had just finished examining a damaged portion of the pipeline, which was getting the full attention of an army of engineers and machinists. Satisfied that everything that could be done was being done, he decided to check on the more important project, three hundred feet further under the surface.

Whereas the LHC was very much the public face of CERN, the project below — even though it had cost close to several trillion euros over the decades — was unknown by all but a handful of select people in the outside world, all part of the elite organization headed by Stephen Jacobs. The others — engineers, technicians, physicists, mathematicians, machinists, and hundreds of skilled and unskilled workers — were not part of the chosen, and would never be allowed to leave the facility. In a way, they were slaves to the machine, destined to work until they perished.

Messier smiled as he descended lower in the elevator, excited whenever he thought about the project. As the elevator came to a smooth stop, and the doors opened, the vast machine was revealed in all its glory.

Although it depended to a large extent on the power secretly generated by the LHC above, the technology that this secret device relied upon was more esoteric by far, unknown to the vast majority of the human populace. It was a gift from the gods, almost literally, Messier thought as he approached it.

Soon, he thought as he neared it. Soon.

A shiver of excitement ran through him as he looked through the huge observation windows. Soon it would be fully operational, and it mattered to him not one iota that the result might well be the destruction of the human race, except for the chosen few.

The chosen few who would soon be as gods themselves.

Adams ran past Lynn, who stood rooted to the spot, clutching her backpack. He looked through the window on the opposite side of the room, across the Avenue Santa Maria to the block opposite.

Within two seconds, he had spotted the sharpshooter on the roof, rifle aimed at the window, as well as the reflection in the shopfronts opposite of two men waiting by the Hostal Americano foyer below him.

‘Get by the side of the window!’ Adams whispered forcefully to Lynn. Then he pulled the nearest bed across the floor, using it to barricade the door. It wouldn’t stop the team for more than a few extra seconds, but it would be enough.

Eldridge had met up with his men at the hotel at three in the morning. He had listened to their briefing, drawn his own equipment, and laid out the plans for the capture of the fugitives.

At seven o’clock the same morning, he had led his team down the stairs and watched as his two lead men had raced at the door, small metal battering ram held between them. The strategy was pure ‘shock and awe’ on the small unit tactical level — smash through the door, disorientate the targets with stun grenades, and effect a quick arrest, subduing both people with force if necessary.

But although the door had shattered, it had not caved forwards into the room as expected. Why the hell not?

‘Murphy!’ he called. ‘What’s the hold-up?’

As the man on the right used the ram again, he called back, ‘There’s a bed behind the door! They knew we were coming!’

Eldridge pressed the toggle on his tactical mic, speaking directly to the sharpshooter on the opposite roof. He would have liked to have more men outside, but their resources were necessarily limited in such a remote location.

‘Williams, what do you see?’

‘Nothing, movement at the window a moment ago — wait a second, they’ve broken through the window, the male target has something in his hand, he — arrgghh!’

Eldridge’s blood went cold as the connection went dead.

Sprinting once more towards the window, Adams had grabbed Lynn by the hand, dragging her with him. In his other hand, he had snatched up a large mirror from the dressing table. At the window he pulled the curtain back and slammed his booted foot straight through it; the glass shattered, falling to the ground two storeys below.

An instant later, ignoring the cries of Lynn as he secured his grip on her wrist, Adams thrust the mirror up and out, angling its reflection straight at the sniper opposite. He saw the man recoil instinctively from the sudden, intense reflection of sunlight that hit him in the eye through the telescopic lens of his rifle, then heard the team behind him thumping against the door, breaking it down, and in that tiny window of opportunity, he pulled Lynn forward and jumped with her straight out of the window.

Adams had seen the wide, canvas awning over the entrance to the hotel’s foyer when he had arrived, and then later confirmed that Lynn’s room was directly above it, two floors up.

Jumping was a risk — they could easily hit a metal support strut — but the odds were more favourable than staying in the room and taking on six armed men.

Adams was pleased that Lynn didn’t scream on the way down, although he didn’t know if it was bravery or shock. Either way, though, silence was a good thing — he hoped that the men below hadn’t already been alerted by the broken glass, as he would need every advantage he could get.

They hit the fabric straight on and, using the bounce from the awning, Adams gripped the edge rail with one hand, his other arm going round Lynn’s waist, and swung round and down, letting go at the end of the swing and dropping lightly to the ground, right in front of the two men he had seen earlier.

As he landed he let go of Lynn, who staggered disorientated to the side. The men’s eyes went wide as they saw him, hands on their earpieces, obviously receiving communication from the team above.

Before they could react, Adams launched himself forward, his full body weight behind a heavy straight right to the first man’s jaw. Adams saw the eyes go, and as the man dropped unconscious to the ground, Adams was already twisting to the other side, throwing a left hook towards the second man. It connected but his timing was off, and the man just staggered back, hurt but still a threat.

Adams saw him instinctively go for the pistol in his belt, and then saw his head twist round from another heavy impact. He turned, and saw Lynn standing there, backpack in her hands, having swung it at the man with all her might.

Adams was impressed, but Lynn had always been a tough one. The man was still conscious but he was down. Adams suddenly remembered the sniper opposite. His vision might be impaired but he was still capable of getting off some shots.

He pulled Lynn to one side, taking shelter behind one of the two huge terracotta plant pots stationed on either side of the main entrance even as his suspicions were confirmed and the rounds hit the sidewalk where they had just been standing. Adams noticed that the impacts left no mark, except for small black smears — rubber bullets. They could still be deadly if the target was unfortunate but it indicated that whoever was after them wanted them alive.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that they were now stuck between a sniper on one side and a team of men in the hotel behind them. The sniper might only have rubber bullets but they would still incapacitate them easily enough. If they ran into the street, they would be shot with these bullets; if they retreated back into the hotel, they would be greeted by the six men who would now doubtless be racing down the stairs to the foyer.

Adams made a quick calculation in his head — from the time he had broken the window and they had jumped, he guessed no more than fifteen seconds had passed. During that time, the team upstairs was probably only just through the door, the team leader putting it all together, deciding what to do. An armed team descending two flights of stairs would take at least thirty seconds.

Adams knew there would be a back entrance to the hotel, probably exiting into a service alley. He should have scoped out the exits as soon as he arrived. Sloppy. And sloppy could easily mean dead against these guys. He would have to raise his game if he and Lynn were going to survive.

As it was, they had thirty seconds to go back into the hotel and find their way out the other side.

It would have to be enough.

8

Eldridge led his men back down the stairs, cursing all the way. How had they known his team was coming? And who would have guessed they would jump out of the window? What a mess!

The latest update from Williams made him feel no better. Apparently his two men outside had been taken out, and the two fugitives had actually turned and run back inside the building!

Eldridge didn’t know what their plan was but he knew it had been a mistake not putting people at the back door. But with such a limited amount of men, what could he do? He couldn’t cover everywhere, and the back entrance had seemed a very unlikely place to need covering when he had drawn up the plans for the arrest.

Still, he considered as he neared the first landing, plans never survive contact with the enemy. The crusty old Master Chief who had led his SEAL training down at Virginia Beach had been right about that, at least.

As they neared the bottom of the stairs and the foyer, he realized the impression they would make, six armed men running full tilt through a cheap city hotel. The op was supposed to go down quietly, and even though they had approval from the Chilean government and the Santiago metropolitan police, Eldridge was aware that the mission was about to overstep the agreed boundaries.

The hotel foyer had been cleared of guests by the hotel staff for the duration of the op — the idea had been to bundle the arrested pair down the stairs and into the van waiting outside — but Eldridge understood what a spectacle was taking place, and how bad it might look for the US government if things continued to get worse. He stopped for a second on the last step — the van! Of course! How could he have forgotten?

‘Renfrew,’ he said into his mic as he took the last stair into the hotel foyer, ‘get the van round to the back! Now!’

Adams and Lynn crashed together out of the metal service door into the narrow alleyway. They had found the exit through the kitchen, after sprinting at full speed through the foyer, reception and dining room.

Adams was surprised that there were no other guests around, and then realized that they must have been confined to their rooms. There were no staff members around either, and he suddenly understood how well-connected the team must be to have secured the hotel so efficiently.

As they ran down the service alley past overflowing refuse bins, towards the wider junction at the end, Adams was relieved that there had been no guard at the door. He began to believe that they might even be able to make their escape, when he saw the ominous black shape cruise across in front of them, its huge metal bulk cutting off the end of the alleyway.

It was a large, black panel van, one Adams had glimpsed only for a brief instant as they had been penned in by the sniper in front of the hotel. The race for the rear exit had obviously been anticipated, and the van had moved to cut off their escape.

The vehicle was fifteen feet away, and Adams saw the door pop open, a man leaning out towards them, submachine gun outstretched. Adams — not so sure that this gun’s bullets would be made of rubber — grabbed the huge wheeled bin next to him and pushed it down the alley with an almighty heave towards the armed man.

The bin hit the van’s door, knocking the man back inside the vehicle, and Adams immediately gestured to Lynn, indicating the fire escape to their left. He heaved her up on top of another bin so she could reach the first rung and she pulled herself up. Then Adams was with her, climbing up towards the roof of the building behind the hotel.

Adams looked down and saw the man below pushing the van door hard, shoving the bin back into the alleyway. The man looked up, enraged, raising his MP5 submachine gun towards them.

But it was too late. They had made it to the roof.

Eldridge was far from happy.

He had not wanted to launch the operation until the rest of his team were there, but then Jacobs had been in contact, telling him to strike now, while they were sure where the pair were. Eldridge could see the logic — strike while the iron was hot, it would be calamitous if the pair escaped again. And yet he had been reluctant to launch the takedown with just nine men. They were all experts of course, but that wasn’t the point — nine men were just too few to control a building, and the area surrounding it. It was asking for trouble, and his operational experience should have caused him to tell Jacobs ‘no’.

But, Eldridge reflected, you didn’t ever tell Jacobs ‘no’. Nobody did. And so he had followed his orders like a good soldier, and now this — a complete mission breakdown.

The two targets had escaped from the hotel, and had managed to make their way past the buildings at the back of the Hostal Americano, emerging on to the Huérfanos, the main road that ran parallel to the Compañia de Jesús. Mercifully, Jacobs had managed to get a direct satellite feed from the NSA, and his own intelligence operators in Nevada were now able to direct the Alpha Brigade team on to the targets via aerial observation.

But it was still a complete screw-up in Eldridge’s eyes. A chase spilling out across the streets of Santiago was just going to involve more and more people — people whom the Alpha Brigade would end up having to silence.

It seemed that Matthew Adams and Evelyn Edwards had again been underestimated. Two teams of Eldridge’s men — men of the fabled Alpha Brigade, the best of the best — had so far failed, and Jacobs had made it more than plain that anything less than outright success would simply not be tolerated.

Grimacing, Eldridge knew he would have to push on. The organization aside, he was not a man who accepted failure.

Eldridge and his men tore out of the block of buildings, hot on the tail of their two targets. He was now being provided with real-time information on the pair’s movements, monitored from directly above. He knew it was from an observation satellite in low-earth orbit, and was not surprised that access to such a satellite had been granted so quickly — although relations between the various intelligence services were notoriously bad, Jacobs’ organization always had a way of expediting things.

As Eldridge led his team on to Huérfanos, the electronic voice in his earpiece told him that the targets had just entered the Plaza de Brasil, less than five hundred feet directly east. Ignoring the startled look on the faces of the people in the streets as they stared at the heavily armed, masked men sprinting down the palm-lined boulevard, he quickly directed his teammates.

Two would go down each side of the square, racing round to cut off the north and south exits, while the van would drive round to secure the far west exit. Eldridge and his partner would enter the Plaza directly, and make the arrest.

He hoped.

9

The sight that greeted Adams and Lynn as they entered the plaza took their breath away, although they hardly paused, pressing on into the main square, and the centre of the Festival del Barrio Brasil.

Everywhere they looked, something was going on. There was street theatre, mime artists, dance troupes, art exhibitions, acrobats, music bands, surrounded by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of captivated spectators. The big plaza was also well covered by trees, offering shade and shelter, and it looked the perfect place to get lost in the crowd.

Adams, all too aware that the armed team was probably right behind them, pulled Lynn forward further into the vast mass of people, slowing down to a fast walk so as not to draw attention.

With everything that was going on in the plaza, it seemed an impossibility that they would be seen.

Five hundred feet below the Nevada desert, the technicians monitored the live feeds coming in from the NSA satellites, as well as the Santiago metropolitan CCTV.

They observed as the targets — Charlie One and Charlie Two — entered the crowded plaza. They lost them both momentarily, but then the program software highlighted them, indicating them with a blue light, and the lead technician cross-checked the given location and patched it through to the plaza’s CCTV cameras, which then turned and focused on the given targets.

Images then came up of Charlie One and Two, drifting easily through the crowd, an American Indian man and Caucasian woman, late thirties, both carrying bags, looking carefully around them.

As the technician reported the details to the field team, he felt almost guilty about how easy it all was.

Eldridge gasped as he saw the crowds, wondering how in the hell he would ever find the targets in such an environment, but then his earpiece crackled, and the information came through with crystal clarity — they were forty yards south-east into the park, directly in the middle of a group of twenty-seven spectators just to the side of the acrobat display.

He relayed the information to the rest of his team, clicked the safety off his weapon, and stalked forward, ignoring the screams of the people who saw him.

Adams didn’t know which was first — the sight of the CCTV camera, all but hidden behind a large palm tree to the north of the square, turning slowly towards them, until it stopped directly facing them, or the sound of screams coming from behind them, the screams one might well imagine coming from people seeing men with guns.

But in an instant he knew they were not hidden — they were trapped. Even now, the exits to the square might be being blocked off, creating a kill zone in the plaza. He knew that whoever was behind what was going on wanted them alive, but he also realized that this might well be preferential, not necessarily essential. He certainly wasn’t going to take any risks with the situation.

Frantically, he scanned the plaza, the crowds, the bands, the dancers, the exhibits, the displays, the—

He stopped dead and, despite himself, a smile broke out across his face.

There was a commotion up ahead, that much Eldridge didn’t have to be told, he could see it with his own eyes, something happening in the crowd, a ripple of people, roaring, laughter, shouts.

The voice coming through his earpiece told him that the two targets had left the crowd, heading further south-east, towards what appeared to be an animal display area. They were pushing past the crowds there, approaching the animals, and then — Eldridge shut himself off, not believing what he was hearing.

Then he was there himself, pushing past people so that he could see, and he knew that the voice had been right.

He pulled back, yelling into his microphone to his teammates. ‘Get to the van! Now! They’re on the back of a damn horse!’

10

Adams felt Lynn’s grip tighten around his waist as he manoeuvred the horse through the rapidly parting crowd.

He knew that the two of them on the back of a horse would only draw attention, their elevated position making them momentarily more of a target, but he hoped that the extra speed they would now have would more than compensate for it. He also didn’t expect shots to be fired wildly in such a packed public place, but there were no guarantees of that, and so he dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and drove onwards towards the west exit.

From their higher position, they could both see more of what was going on. None of it was good. Lynn had twisted round to scope out what was going on behind, then turned and whispered in his ear, ‘Two armed men right behind us.’ He was amazed at the control of her voice, damping down any of the horrendous emotions that she must have been going through. At the same time, he had himself identified four policemen at work in the plaza, their attention shifting to the commotion around the animal enclosure.

Adams and Lynn had raced in quickly, Adams jumping lithely on to the back of the unsaddled horse, arm down to pull Lynn up after him. The children who had been feeding the animal hay backed away quickly, and the keeper had tried to grab Adams’ leg to pull him off, but Adams had managed to kick him away, controlling the horse through the pressure of his thighs to steer her towards the far exit.

Riding bareback was a difficult skill but it was one that Adams had mastered long ago, and one which he still often demonstrated during his tours. It was made more difficult by having Lynn behind him of course, but not impossible.

He encouraged the horse — a fine chestnut mare — forwards, and she lightly skipped the barrier of the enclosure, starting to pick up pace. The crowd behind were calling for the police, and Adams knew they didn’t have long to get out of the plaza.

Tim Renfrew sat watching the plaza exit in his van, submachine gun aimed out of the side window.

He was still under orders to bring them in alive if possible, so he was planning on shooting the horse instead. If the horse went down, the targets would be momentarily helpless, hopefully for as long as it took for Renfrew to get close up and taser them.

He could see the large crowd parting, pandemonium seeming to break out visibly, some people running screaming from the plaza, and then there they were. Charlie One, Charlie Two, and the horse — better make that Charlie Three, Renfrew decided as he aimed down the sight of the MP5.

But the animal was going too quickly, it was charging, galloping, and then all he could see through the sight was the fierce visage of Adams as he rode the horse hard towards the van.

And then they were all there, almost on top of him, and he had to pull himself back into the van, out of harm’s way, as the horse seemed to jump straight at him, hooves scraping the hood.

And then Renfrew looked up, and the horse and the two riders were gone, now on the far side of the van, galloping with the traffic north up the Maturana.

Eldridge was definitely not going to be happy.

Within two minutes the van was full, Eldridge’s team all back inside as Renfrew piloted it into the Maturana traffic, following the fugitives north.

Eldridge was getting constant feedback on the horse’s location, but it wasn’t necessary; out of the windshield ahead of him he could see the animal galloping down the boulevard, Adams and Lynn tight on its back. He could also hear the sound of sirens, converging from the rear and sides.

Damn. It appeared that local law enforcement was getting involved, which might cause a whole host of problems.

‘Faster,’ he ordered Renfrew.

‘Hey, I’m trying,’ Renfrew objected as he wove the large van in and out of the constant stream of vehicles. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of traffic.’

Eldridge looked in the wing mirror, seeing the flashing lights behind them, closing in. ‘Ram the other cars off the road if you have to,’ he ordered. ‘We need to catch that damn horse!’

The horse was nervous, Adams knew, and he couldn’t blame her. The road was jammed up, and he had to guide her at a gallop through tons of moving steel, the sound of growling engines and blasting horns being enough to make any animal nervous — humans included, Adams thought as he struggled to control their unconventional transport.

Behind him, Lynn was keeping him posted on what was going on in the street. ‘The van’s getting closer, even nudging other vehicles out of the way now,’ she yelled into his ear. ‘Police cars too, coming up fast behind them.’

Adams nodded his head, watching the road. He then turned to Lynn quickly.

‘Hold on!’ he yelled as he pulled down to the left, the unbridled mare turning with his will, straight across the oncoming traffic of the Compañia de Jesús.

Adams was glad that Lynn couldn’t see what was happening in front of them, as a huge Ford RV headed straight for them down the busy street. He leant in close to the mare’s neck, coaxing her onwards, until she reared upwards and vaulted the massive vehicle in one smooth motion.

‘Matt!’ Lynn cried out as the horse landed and then immediately veered sharply around another car. As Adams turned to Lynn, he felt her grip slipping from his waist, and his eyes went wide as he saw her slide straight off the side of the horse.

‘She’s going!’ Eldridge announced to the teammates in the rear of the van as they rounded the corner, forcing their way on to the Compañia de Jesús. ‘She’s going!’

In the front cabin, Eldridge and Renfrew watched as the horse miraculously vaulted the front of a huge 4x4, then snaked lithely around another car, and then — yes! — as Evelyn Edwards lost her grip on Adams and plummeted towards the hard concrete street below.

As soon as Adams felt Lynn’s grip go, his body reacted instinctively, and instantaneously.

Gripping the mare’s thick mane in one hand, he shifted his weight to the side, digging his knees in to tighten his grip, his other arm shooting out towards Lynn.

Just as she left the horse’s back, Adams clamped down on her forearm with his powerful grip, leaning halfway down the animal’s flank. The horse continued to gallop along the street, and Lynn secured her other hand over Adams’ outstretched arm, screaming as she was dragged along, feet banging painfully against the rough asphalt.

Adams grimaced in pain himself as he struggled to pull Lynn back up, still trying to control the unsaddled horse. As he pulled, Lynn’s hands clawing up his arm, he glanced forward, gasping as he saw the truck bearing down on them, its huge steel mass threatening to smash straight into both of them.

Lynn followed his eyes, her own going wide as she saw the truck. Adrenalin pouring into both of their bodies, Adams pulled with all his might, Lynn grabbing him tight, as he lifted her higher, higher, until finally she was up and Adams swung her on to the back of the horse once more, pulling his own body back out of the way as the truck blared its horn and passed them, just inches away.

In the van, Eldridge at least had the satisfaction of knowing that the police were no longer on his tail — Jacobs must have somehow called them off.

It was a blessing not to have to worry about the city’s own police force; if it had been planned from the start to be multi-agency, that would have been different. But if additional elements started to get involved once the mission was already in motion, then things would definitely get screwed up.

More screwed up, Eldridge corrected himself, because of course things were already screwed up royally. The escaping targets had not only got through the intersection with the Ricardo Cumming unscathed, weaving their way almost magically through the oncoming vehicles, their unlikely transport had now disappeared from view entirely. Luckily, the voice through his earpiece was able to update him with an instant fix, informing him that the horse had taken a sharp right up Arz González, towards Catedral. Unfortunately, it also seemed that the distance between them was steadily increasing.

‘Come on,’ he urged Renfrew. ‘Can’t this heap of junk go any faster?’

Renfrew was ignoring Eldridge at this point, concentrating with everything he had just to keep the unwieldy van on the road. But he was determined to catch them. He’d never be able to live it down if he failed to catch a horse, driving a vehicle with a five-litre V8 under the hood. But the horse did have its advantages; it was far more manoeuvrable than a motor vehicle, for a start, able to weave in and out of traffic with ease. But surely the horse would begin to tire at some stage, and then Renfrew would have them.

As the horse pushed on towards the end of Arz González, it seemed to slow. Was it getting tired already? Renfrew gunned the engine harder.

And then something happened that caused both him and Eldridge to gasp out loud.

Adams saw it from a distance, and it took him only seconds to make the decision.

The entrance to the Cumming metro station was right there ahead of them, across the Catedral that transected the end of Arz González.

He slowed the mare as they reached the end, checking the traffic on the Catedral and, seeing that it was mercifully light, speeded up straight across the street, over the sidewalk, and down the steep stairs that led to Santiago’s underground rail system.

11

The Metro de Santiago is South America’s most extensive metro system. Its five lines have more than a hundred stations and over a hundred kilometres of track; servicing over two million passengers per day, it is the city’s lifeblood.

As Adams led the loyal mare on to the platform, past the screaming, pointing, awed spectators, he was pretty sure that this would be the first time a horse had been on the tracks. He didn’t even know if the horse would be willing to leave the platform and make the jump between the steel rails, but he knew he had to take the chance — the rest of his plan depended upon making it to the tunnels.

Lynn holding tightly to him, he pulled the horse in short on the edge of the platform, and then they jumped from the safety of the platform to the tracks beneath.

The operators in the Nevada intelligence section were having their work cut out for them.

Following a horse down city streets via CCTV and satellite imagery was fairly easy, but now the horse — and nobody in the control room had any idea how the rider was managing to do it — had gone down into Santiago’s subway system.

The chief technician had to immediately hack into the city’s municipal transport department’s mainframe, and hive off its surveillance camera footage.

By the time he had got the raw footage feeding through to his own monitors, the only image from the platform camera showed the back legs of the horse taking off at full gallop down the east tunnel towards Santa Ana.

Reluctantly, he reached for the telephone.

The reports came through to Eldridge thick and fast.

Orders were given to the transport police to immediately halt the trains on the system, and send men down the tunnels to flush the horse and riders out. Meanwhile, Eldridge was urging Renfrew faster on down Catedral towards Santa Ana station, where they planned on intercepting the pair and putting an end to their crazy race across the city once and for all.

Minutes later, Eldridge was leading his team down the stairs of Santa Ana subway station four at a time, weapons shouldered, safety catches off.

At the same time, crowds of people were surging the opposite way up the stairs towards the exit, and Eldridge didn’t know if it was because the transport police were evacuating the subway or because of something else.

The team hit the bottom of the stairs at a fast run, and Eldridge could have sworn he heard the whinnying of a horse coming from round the corner.

Heading for the westbound platform, the team passed the last few stragglers as they streamed along the modern, tiled corridor and eventually turned through a grand archway on to the platform itself.

‘Ready!’ Eldridge called, and the team raised their weapons in unison, 9mm submachine guns aimed straight ahead at the dark tunnel opposite them, ready to shoot the horse the moment it came through. If the two targets weren’t instantly electrocuted on the track’s rails as they fell from the dead animal, his men would then race forward and subdue them.

The men adjusted their positions as they heard the horse whinny again from just inside the tunnel, seeing its vague outline coming towards them, and exhaled steadily, each man holding his breath to make his shots accurate.

And then the chestnut mare burst into the light of the platform, still coming forward at full gallop, racing between the steel rail lines, a beautiful, impressive beast, its coat glistening in the fluorescent lighting, muscles rippling down her flanks.

‘Hold your fire!’ Eldridge yelled as the horse continued past them, racing at full speed, along the track and through into the next tunnel, until she disappeared again from sight.

The horse was an impressive sight, but there had been something missing. Something vital.

‘Where the hell are Adams and Edwards?’ Eldridge yelled in exasperation.

Adams had stopped the horse halfway down the tunnel, dismounted with Lynn, and then slapped the animal on the flank to send her towards the next platform. As he watched her gallop off down the tracks, he offered a prayer to the animal spirits, thanking them for delivering the magnificent animal to them, and asking for her safety.

Adams was sure that there had to be an access point somewhere along the track, a crew hatch that would lead to a service area. The tunnel was dark, though, lit only by dim red emergency lights, and his night vision was nowhere near as good as it had once been.

It was Lynn who spotted the steel door, over on the left, in the shadows.

Adams raced over and levered it open. Checking the tunnel once again for signs of pursuit, he took Lynn by the hand and pushed through into the dark service corridor beyond.

Their eyes finally adjusting to the dark, Adams decided to leave the lights off, unwilling to draw further attention to themselves. But within less than two minutes, he stopped dead.

‘People up ahead,’ he whispered urgently to Lynn, ‘coming towards the corridor. They’ll be in here soon.’

Quickly, he pulled her back down the corridor, several feet beyond where they had just come. In the dark, Adams had noticed a row of lockers and metal cupboards lining the wall, and now both he and Lynn pulled at the handles frantically, trying to find one that was open.

‘They’re at the door!’ Adams warned, even as Lynn managed to get a door open. They pushed into the confined space, pulling the aluminium door shut behind them as quietly as they could.

The cupboard was used for cleaning products, and was full of brooms, mops and chemicals. But there was enough room for them, and they both watched through the slats in the door as the lights went on.

After a few moments of adjusting to the blinding illumination, they could make out a group of uniformed police — probably the municipal transport police Adams realized — racing down the corridor towards the tunnel.

Adams didn’t know whether the horse would have been found yet — the Santa Ana platform was still some distance away from where they had dismounted, but she might have managed it if she was going at full speed — and therefore didn’t know whether it was already suspected that the pair had left the tunnel via the corridor, or whether the police were just accessing the tunnel through a direct route. Either way, it would now certainly appear to the police — and whoever they reported to — that the targets were not in the service corridor, which would hopefully give him and Lynn some breathing space to make their escape.

They waited until the steel access door to the tunnel swung shut behind the men, and then opened the cupboard door, stalking carefully down the now brightly lit corridor, ready for action at any moment.

They emerged at street level less than ten minutes later, mercifully only having to hide twice more, Adams’ returning senses giving them just enough time to react.

The exit took them out on to Catedral, just a hundred yards from the intersection with Brasil.

There was minimal CCTV coverage in this area, but both Adams and Lynn were now both fully aware of the danger of satellite surveillance and immediately ducked under the cover of a grocery store awning, pretending to look at the varied fruit on display.

‘We need to find a car and get out of the city,’ Lynn said decisively. So far, it had been her ex-husband who had been leading the way, and although she was more than grateful — it was what she had contacted him for in the first place, of course — she was not the kind of person who dealt easily with being helpless. Taking charge now would at least let her salvage something of her sense of worth.

She checked her backpack nervously, relieved — and amazed, given what they had just been through — that it was still there.

‘Just what I was thinking,’ Adams agreed. ‘But where do we get one?’

‘Right here,’ Lynn answered instantly.

‘What?’ Adams asked in surprise, but as he saw the excited glint in the eyes of his ex-wife, he knew that her plan would be a good one.

In the control centre, deep beneath the Nevada air force base, the technicians were frantic.

They had entered the search parameters — platforms, tracks, service entrances and exits, all possible locations where the two targets could have emerged on to the streets of Santiago — and they were now monitoring each and every one of these potential areas.

The problem was that it had taken a number of minutes for the request for the satellite redirects to go through from their own organization to the NSA, and from the NSA to the National Reconnaissance Office which actually operated the satellites.

If the targets had exited the tunnels in that time and made it far enough, such a direct search would reveal nothing.

But there was still the city-wide CCTV system, the facial recognition software, and the physical eyes on the ground. If the order was given, every government agency in Santiago could be instructed to find Matthew Adams and Evelyn Edwards. The municipal police, the national police, the paramilitary carabineros, all of these and more could be mobilized in the search.

But for now, the technicians would continue to monitor what they could, and hope for a result.

‘Damn!’ Eldridge exclaimed violently, punching a marble pillar in the Santa Ana foyer with a gloved hand.

Adams and Edwards were nowhere to be seen — not in the tunnels, not on the platforms, not in the service areas and, according to the information coming through his earpiece, they had yet to be picked up by any surveillance on the streets of the city.

Eldridge knew the pair could still be in the underground system — a thorough search of the labyrinth could literally take days — and started to realize that his chances of making an arrest were growing slimmer every minute.

It was an hour later when he learnt that the hunt may have already moved beyond the confines of the city.

The proprietors of the grocery store on Catedral had been found by a couple of customers — unharmed, but gagged and tied up behind the counter — and they had reported it immediately to the local police.

It seemed that the owners of the store, who lived in the apartment above, had had a car parked behind the premises, which had been stolen by the fugitives. An instant APB had been put on the vehicle, and Eldridge learnt soon after that the car had made it as far north as Mercedarios in Conchali, before being abandoned. It was unknown what had happened to the pair since — they might have stolen another car, gone back on to the subway, or even caught a surface train or bus out of the city.

The technicians back at base were running images of the escaped pair through the surveillance camera footage of all train, metro and bus stations but had so far found nothing. Information from traffic cameras, including images of the drivers as they passed speed check areas, was also being analysed, but Eldridge didn’t hold out much hope.

The game was going to continue, and it was certainly going to be an interesting one.

12

Lynn checked her backpack again as she and Adams reclined in the back of the large truck. Everything was still there, mercifully intact. Evidence of the man they had found in the ice, a man forty thousand years old. A man people were willing to kill for.

As she turned to Adams, who sat next to her, it troubled her deeply that he was now a target too. He knew about the body — and even if he didn’t, they would assume he did anyway — and he was therefore in as much danger as she was.

They had found the truck at a roadside stop just outside the city limits of Santiago. They had ditched the first stolen car, and then Adams had hot-wired another from a parking lot just two blocks over. They had then driven this one out of the city, careful to obscure their faces whenever they noticed traffic or speed cameras of any kind, aware that such images could be fed back and analysed. The resources of their enemy seemed truly enormous.

They had driven the stolen vehicle north to Colina, a fairly large town fifteen miles north of Santiago. There, they had parked the car in a secure underground parking lot, paying for a week’s stay, sure that it wouldn’t be noticed by the authorities until they were long gone from the area.

They had then hiked to a truck stop, bought lunch and got chatting to a friendly driver, shipping computer parts up to a factory in Copiapó, four hundred miles further north. For a little mordida, the local term for a bit of friendly bribery which meant literally ‘the bite’, the driver agreed to their travelling with him. It was no skin off his nose, he explained, and he was grateful for the extra cash.

‘So where are we headed?’ Adams asked Lynn finally.

Thus far, it had only been clear that she wanted to travel north. ‘Peru,’ she said. ‘A place called Nazca.’

‘Nazca?’ Adams asked. ‘As in the Nazca lines?’ When Lynn nodded in reply, he asked, ‘Why there?’

The Nazca lines were mysterious etchings on the desert floor, of such incredible size that they were only clearly visible from the air. A collection of straight lines, animals, geometrical figures and birds up to three hundred metres in size, it is believed they were scratched into the desert pampa over two thousand years ago. Theories on the purpose of the lines included it being a vast astronomical calendar, or a collection of ritual walkways connected to a water or fertility cult, or a representation of the dreams of a drug-taking shaman; some even believed them to be extraterrestrial landing strips.

Adams had heard of them but he had no idea why they should head there. He had no problem with Peru itself — if they were trying to get back to the US, Peru was as good a transit point as any — but he knew Lynn must have a good reason for travelling to Nazca specifically.

‘Fabricio Baranelli,’ Lynn answered cryptically.

‘Who?’

‘I guess I should say Professor Fabricio Baranelli,’ Lynn corrected herself. ‘He is the top man in his field, after all.’

‘And that field is?’ Adams asked.

‘Archaeology. He’s on an expedition at the moment, mapping the area. I think he’s developing some sort of new theory about the geoglyphs there.’

‘Geoglyphs?’

‘The lines, the marks in the earth. I don’t know exactly what he’s working on, but it’s important.’

‘And why do we want to see him?’ Adams asked, still confused.

‘I know him from Harvard,’ Lynn explained. ‘I’ve known him for years, and he’s a dear friend. He’s also the only person I know in South America who might be able to help us. The fact that he’s digging around a major, protected archaeological site means he must be plugged in to the government, he must have friends in the right places. I’m hoping he might be able to use his contacts, maybe get us back into the US.’

Adams considered the matter. He had been wondering how they were going to get back to America. He was resourceful but he was having difficulty working out a plan for getting Lynn back. Her passport would certainly be compromised by now, of that he was sure. In fact, he didn’t even know if he could trust his own anymore; it was feasible that the enemy might have tracked his route from Pine Ridge, discovered the passport he had been using, and flagged it up. That left crossing borders on foot, which he wasn’t sure Lynn would manage, given the vast distances involved, or using other forms of transport, each of which presented their own problems. These methods were all slow as well, which gave the enemy more time to track them down.

Baranelli was an outside bet, but he might offer them something — it certainly helped to have government contacts. He might also have close media contacts, which they could perhaps use to get the evidence in Lynn’s backpack out into the public domain.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘This truck will take us as far as Copiapó, which still puts us about six hundred miles away from Nazca, with the Peruvian border in the middle. Any plans for that?’ he asked, with more sarcasm than he wished.

Lynn didn’t mind a bit — she realized what a position she had put him in, pulling him out of his own life and putting him in mortal danger. A bit of sarcasm was neither here not there in comparison. She smiled at him warmly, taking his hand in hers. ‘Hey,’ she said, looking into his dark, brown eyes, finding herself lost in them for a moment, hypnotized by his soul. She blinked out of it, and carried on. ‘I’m sorry I got you into this, I really am. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I owe you my life.’

Adams held her gaze for a time, then turned away, embarrassed by his own perceived failings. They had survived, but he had hardly put in a faultless performance.

He looked up into her eyes again, and Lynn could see the earnestness, the honesty, in the man she once loved. ‘I’d do it again, any time you asked.’

She smiled, nodded her head, and wiped a tear from her eye. ‘I know,’ she whispered, holding his hand to her heart, ‘I know.’ She kissed his hand, looked up at him again. ‘You want to know my plan for getting to Peru? You. I have faith in you, Matt. I need you to get us there.’

13

‘How are things progressing?’

Jacobs heard the words loud and clear but did not have an immediate answer. What was he supposed to tell them? That he was currently pulling all the strings he could, using the full resources of the US government, just to hunt down two normal, everyday, inconsequential human beings? What would they think of him and his organization then?

But if he lied, would they know? And if they did know, what would their reaction be? Jacobs was not in fear for his physical safety but if they reneged on their promises as a result of the continued failure of the Alpha Brigade, it would be worse than torture and death to him.

But, he considered, their resources were necessarily diluted by distance, and as a result they needed him just as much as he needed them — perhaps even more so at this point in time.

And so Jacobs decided to give them the truth, although not a complete explanation.

‘The targets are still at large,’ he said finally. ‘We are close to reacquiring them, however, and there is no indication that the information has gone any further thus far. And even if details of the find are eventually revealed, we are confident we can downplay the evidence. There shouldn’t be a problem. Especially,’ Jacobs continued, building in confidence, ‘as the latest reports from CERN indicate that we are about to enter the testing phase for the device. Even if knowledge of your existence, and our involvement, was now made public, it would be too late to matter any more anyway.’

‘You are wrong,’ the voice countered immediately. ‘Anomalies always matter. Unknown variables can disrupt things beyond comprehension. Everything needs to be perfect. We thought you understood this.’

‘This is life,’ Jacobs shot back, trying to rein in his frustration. ‘Things are sometimes imperfect, you just have to deal with them the best way you can.’

‘This is not how one of us would handle things,’ came back the instant response. ‘We do not accept imperfection.’

The connection was terminated and Jacobs sat back in his leather chair and took a sip of water from the thick glass on the desk in front of him.

So they didn’t accept imperfection. Well, that was absolutely fine.

Neither did he.

‘Are you OK?’ Lynn asked Adams from the passenger seat of the small, twenty-year-old Fiat.

Adams was all too aware of how he must look. Sweat was rolling down his brow, he had a ghostly pallor, and he was shivering uncontrollably. The absence of sleep, combined with the adrenalin and excitement of the past few days, was becoming intolerable, and it was a lot harder than he had anticipated.

Since the incident in the desert all those years before, he had been unwilling to talk about his problems. He had at first refused to accept he even had a problem, and even when he had finally admitted it, he had never considered asking for help. He realized now that this was unrealistic bravado and for the first time in his life he wanted help. He wanted to just crawl up into a ball and cry for help. But he also knew this was never going to happen.

‘I think I’m coming down with a fever,’ he lied.

‘Do you want me to drive?’

Adams thought about it for a few moments. Concentrating on the road was hurting his head but at least it was giving him something to do. Sitting in the passenger seat, consumed by self-pity, would probably be worse.

‘No thanks,’ he replied, putting a bit more life into his voice. ‘I’ll be fine. Best I have something to do, you know?’

Lynn looked at him, as if really seeing him for the first time since their reunion the day before. ‘You’ve changed since we were together,’ she said finally.

If you only knew, Adams thought. ‘How do you mean?’ he asked instead.

Again, Lynn considered the matter. ‘I don’t know… Before, you seemed so full of life… Larger than life, really. Now you seem more… subdued.’ She smiled apologetically at him, sorry to be so negative but curious about the change in the man she had once loved so much.

‘Life does that to you eventually, I guess,’ Adams replied, knowing as he said it that it was such comments that had made Lynn notice the change in the first place. ‘But it’s probably just the fever getting me down, you know,’ he recovered quickly.

Seconds of silence passed into minutes as they continued along Interstate Five, through the vast expanse of the Chilean desert plains.

They had reached Copiapó late the previous night, and had paid cash for the local bus to Caldera on the coast. Once in the small town, they had asked around for a car to buy, and found a willing seller just minutes away. The car was no piece of art, had no air conditioning, and was barely roadworthy, but it seemed able to go from A to B. Which was all they could ask, considering the price they paid. It was also unlikely to be traced until they were long gone. Unless their pursuers tracked them to Caldera and then went door to door until they found someone who had recently sold a car, they figured they would be relatively safe.

They’d stocked up on food, drink and jerrycans of gasoline, unsure how regular gas stations were going to be, and then started the long trek north. The road bordered the Pacific Ocean for much of its length, and both Adams and Lynn were amazed by the beauty of the route. Eventually, the coastal mountains rose up, and the road started to turn north-east, into the vast wilderness of the Atacama Desert.

They were halfway to Nazca now, and just a hundred miles away from the Peruvian border.

Adams decided to forget about the previous conversation and get on to another topic. He was also starting to feel drowsy, and needed the conversation to keep him awake. ‘So tell me about the body.’

He had seen the photographs that Lynn and her colleague had secretly taken of the body when it was still half-entombed in ice, before the arrival of the military team. But he knew she must have seen more when the body had finally been extracted, and with everything that had been going on, they hadn’t really had a good chance to talk about it.

‘It was… strange, really,’ Lynn began. ‘From our initial discovery, it seemed that the body was a man just like modern man. He was in a depression at the bottom of a ridge, which meant that the ice hadn’t crushed the body but kept it perfectly preserved, we think for about forty thousand years.’

‘And he looked normal?’

‘As if he’d been buried there last year. That’s what makes it unique.’

‘So what do we think humans looked like forty thousand years ago?’

‘Well, that’s something else I’ve been researching since getting to Santiago. Apparently, in terms of body proportions, we probably looked almost exactly the same as we do today, we’ve changed very little since the first Homo sapiens came on the scene about two hundred thousand years ago.’

‘And facially?’

‘Our skulls were a little different, a mix of both human and Neanderthal elements. Frontal flattening, a larger jaw, very large upper molars. So, facially, we would have looked very different.’

‘And yet the body you found was the same as ours?’

‘Exactly the same. But it’s more what we found with the body than the body itself.’

‘You mentioned some sort of unusual clothing back at the hotel.’

Lynn nodded her head. ‘Yes, and Jeff…’ she paused as she thought of her colleagues, remembering them. ‘Well, he used to work for the National Security Agency, and he’d never seen anything like it before. And then when that military team pulled the body out, there were other things there with it.’

Adams glanced sideways at her, fascinated. ‘Like what?’

‘Major Daley wasn’t happy having us there and he and his men made sure we didn’t see too much. But the boots, for instance — they had some sort of attachment to the sides, definitely mechanical, perhaps electrical even. And then they found something else, which Tommy and I both thought looked like a motorized sled of some kind.’

Adams thought about this for some time, the desert road streaming past in one long, white blur.

‘If you forget about the dating, what would you think had happened? What would the man have been doing there?’

Lynn thought for a few moments. ‘Cold-weather gear, motorized sled, it would suggest he was perhaps part of some sort of Antarctic research team.’ She paused. ‘Maybe even just like us.’

‘Could the dating be wrong?’ Adams asked next.

‘Possibly,’ Lynn answered straight away, the thought having been constantly on her mind. ‘But we were all as sure as you can be, without taking the ice samples away and analysing them in a laboratory — which is what Major Daley and his team were supposed to be doing.’

‘So,’ Adams said at length as he mopped cold sweat from his eyes, ‘it seems most likely that the body was part of some current military or government research team, was buried there recently, and the forty-thousand-year dating is inaccurate. If they were out there testing some new cold-weather gear, it would also explain why there’s been a cover-up.’

‘Killing a whole team of NASA researchers just to cover up cold-weather equipment and clothing tests?’ Lynn said in disbelief.

‘If you’d said the dating was a hundred per cent accurate, I wouldn’t consider the possibility,’ Adams said. ‘But it’s not a hundred per cent, and even if it’s as high as ninety-nine per cent, I’d still think that the one per cent chance that the body was buried more recently is the most likely.’

Lynn wanted to respond but couldn’t. The fact was, he was right. In all the drama and fear of the past few days, and the excitement of the discovery, a more down-to-earth, mundane explanation had been pushed to the back of her mind. But the logical side of her understood that the more mundane explanations were, more often than not, the correct ones.

But did such an explanation make sense in light of the subsequent reaction? A team of scientists killed, the body stolen, emails intercepted, her ex-husband targeted by interrogators, hit squads searching South America — it all seemed too much just to cover up some new government technology. Somehow, a discovery that redefined human existence seemed more of a justification for what she had been through and the lives that had been lost.

‘Well,’ Adams said, ‘I guess we’ll have a better idea when we get the data analysed back in the States.’

Lynn nodded her head, deep in thought. ‘You’re right. Let’s just make sure we get there in one piece.’

Eldridge met the rest of his men at Santiago’s SCL Airport, where the Lear jet landed on the private runway towards the rear of the complex.

He boarded the plane alone, his nine other teammates still working with the police and government agencies back in the city, trying to come up with a movement profile for the two fugitives.

Out of the twenty-four men on board, Eldridge retained a group of four, sending the other twenty off to liaise with the existing men in Santiago. He then declared the Lear jet his new operations centre, and ordered the plane to be refuelled and ready for take-off immediately. On the orders of Stephen Jacobs, the private jet had been specially modified to accept aerial refuelling, and this was promised to be immediately available from the Chilean Air Force, enabling Eldridge to stay in the air indefinitely.

He felt that he needed to be able to react to incoming information instantly — from the air, he could get to anywhere on the continent relatively quickly. If he was stuck on the ground, it would double or even triple his response time. And with every hour that passed, every hour that Adams and Edwards were out there, the risk to the organization grew.

The surveillance footage from traffic cameras was being fed back slowly, and Jacobs was piping it straight to the supercomputers at the NSA, from where it was then sent to his own technicians in Nevada.

There was nothing so far, but Eldridge knew they couldn’t have gone too far. Both of the fugitives’ passports had been red-lighted, and if they were used, an arrest would be made instantly. Photo surveillance at all airports, ferry ports and transnational bus and train stations was being constantly analysed, and there had been no hits so far. This indicated two things to Eldridge. The first was that the fugitives were still in Chile, somewhere within her borders. The second was that they were using the roads, probably driving stolen vehicles or hitchhiking.

Eldridge put in requests for the national police and the Carabineros to stop suspect vehicles and check IDs, as well as to check on stories of hitchhikers. He also requested all information on recently stolen vehicles to be fed directly to him.

As he studied the maps of Chile’s road system, he figured that there were again two options: they would either take their time along the slow, empty back roads, in the belief that they would be less likely to be seen; or they would take the major roads, hoping to blast along them and use speed as their ally, putting as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible.

Eldridge ordered detailed satellite analysis of the vehicles travelling along the country’s back roads, the NSA’s systems programmed to report any anomalous driving behaviour, and then put in another call, direct to the Chief of National Police.

‘Señor Vasquez,’ Eldridge began, not needing to give his own name, ‘I’m afraid I have another request.’ With the apparent full backing of the US government, it was more of an order than a request, but niceties had to be observed.

‘What is it you want, my friend?’ Vasquez replied obsequiously.

‘I want roadblocks,’ Eldridge replied. ‘On every interstate, at hundred-kilometre intervals.’

There would be no escape, Eldridge promised himself. No escape.

14

Adams didn’t see the roadblock until it was almost too late, so tired that his eyes closed involuntarily every so often, travelling blind for dangerous distances before his vision returned.

It was hard to judge distance against the desert backdrop but he guessed the roadblock was set up about a mile further down the long, straight highway. From this distance, he could make out what looked like three police cars straddling the interstate, waving down vehicles to check their documents.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Adams told Lynn, nudging her awake from her own sleep.

Opening her eyes, she instantly took in the sight ahead of her. ‘Oh no,’ she moaned. She felt the car slow as Adams took his foot off the gas.

Adams wasn’t using the brakes, not wanting to draw attention to the car by slowing suddenly, but he did want to slow the car enough to figure out a plan of action.

‘What are we going to do?’ Lynn asked, and Adams struggled to come up with an answer. If they stopped, it would be instantly suspicious, and the police would immediately come to them. If they got to the checkpoint, their identification would almost certainly get them instantly arrested. And Adams wasn’t sure if the little Fiat was capable of smashing through the roadblock.

‘I guess we’re just going to have to make it up as we go along,’ he said finally.

Police Sergeant Manuel Vega sat on the hood of the lead car, chatting to his men. Sitting out in the middle of the Atacama waiting for vehicles to come along was nobody’s idea of fun. The temperature out in the desert could drop well below zero, and although it was the middle of the day, the men were all starting to feel the effects of the cold.

Stamping their feet to keep warm, one of the officers suddenly pointed down the road at the small car coming towards them.

Vega slid off the hood and clapped his hands together. ‘Oh joy,’ he said, feeling nothing of the sort. ‘Another one. Still,’ he joked to his men, ‘at least we get overtime, eh?’

As Adams rolled the car to a stop in front of the lead police car, he rolled his window down and cold air spilled into the cabin. The sweat started to freeze on his body.

He watched with interest at the reaction of the police chief and his men. First there was total disinterest; then, as they realized the car held a Caucasian woman and an Amerindian man, there was a flutter of concern, a narrowing of the eyes, and then rapid movements as orders were given.

Adams saw the police chief check an A4 sheet of paper, presumably with their pictures on, then bark orders at his men, who then surrounded the vehicle, weapons drawn.

‘Get out of the car, hands on your head!’ shouted the sergeant. ‘Now!’

‘Just wait a minute,’ Adams said reasonably from his place behind the wheel. ‘Do you know who we are?’

‘Terrorists, damn it!’ the police sergeant screamed. ‘Get out of the car, now!’

Perfect, thought Adams. Branding people as terrorists was a typical move if you wanted things to happen quickly. Tell people there’s a criminal on the loose, and the wheels will turn very slowly, if at all. Tell them it’s a terrorist, and the reaction couldn’t be more different.

Vega watched the pair in the car with eagle eyes. He couldn’t believe it was his team that had caught them! Terrorists, in his country! And he had caught them! He was going to be rewarded for this, that was for sure. A promotion was a certainty, possibly with a presidential citation to follow.

But why was the man so calm? And why was he asking questions?

The man’s next words caused even more confusion.

‘You’ll know what we are carrying then,’ he said, a smug smile on his face.

What did he mean? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. ‘Get out of the car! This is your last warning! Get out now, or we will open fire!’

And then the woman moved, her hands raising something up to the windscreen for them to look at. What was it?

He peered forward, trying to make it out.

It was a… a test tube?

Lynn held one of the DNA samples of the frozen body up to the windscreen. She had been reluctant to show it, but Adams had argued that if they were arrested, the samples would be lost anyway, and so she had agreed to go along with his off-the-cuff plan.

‘Bacillus anthracis,’ she heard Adams tell the nervous police sergeant through the open window. ‘Anthrax.’

Anthrax? Vega’s head started to spin. He’d been told nothing about this! But there it was, something in a cold-storage test tube, just like you’d find in a laboratory.

Would it be anthrax? Vega just didn’t know. What else could it be? Why would terrorists be carrying test tubes of anything, if it wasn’t a weapon of some sort?

‘Once I let go, and you gentlemen breathe in the spores,’ he heard the man continue, ‘you’ll start to feel the effects by later this afternoon. It’ll feel like flu to start with, then get rapidly worse, your body’s systems collapsing until — in maybe a week’s time, if you’re lucky — it progresses to lethal haemorrhagic mediastinitis.’ The man flashed him a smile. ‘Fatal in ninety per cent of cases.’

It took less than thirty seconds for Vega to make up his mind.

‘Drop your weapons,’ the sergeant ordered his men, and both Adams and Lynn sighed with relief. They’d bought it, hook, line and sinker.

As the policemen lowered their weapons, Adams progressed to phase two of the plan.

‘Now put your guns on the ground and step back two paces.’

The police sergeant barked a translation of the order to his men, and they all did as they were told. Passionate about their work as they might otherwise be, the threat of infection with a lethal bioweapon was more than enough to ensure their compliance.

Adams and Lynn slowly stepped out of the car, Lynn keeping the fearsome test tube held up where everyone could see it. After assessing the assembled men, Adams picked two of the most promising candidates. ‘You two,’ he said, gesturing at them, ‘handcuff the rest of the team.’

The sergeant again translated, and the handcuffing was quickly done, the fear writ large across the faces of the officers. The handcuffed men were told to lie face down on the ground, and Adams turned back to the two policemen who had done the handcuffing.

‘Now,’ he said to them, ‘take off all your clothes.’

Like many things in life, the discovery of the handcuffed police officers was down to sheer bad luck. Adams and Lynn were only sixty miles from the border; if the policemen had been undiscovered for only an hour, then the two of them would have made it in their stolen police car, their borrowed uniforms allowing them to cross over into Peru unquestioned. On the empty desert roads of the Atacama, it was certainly feasible. Traffic here was scarce, and it certainly wasn’t unheard of for hours to pass without any vehicles whatsoever.

Adams had taken the police team fifty yards off the main road and hidden them behind a small copse of trees. He had considered taking the vehicles off the road as well but had decided against this, as he couldn’t be sure if the area was being monitored by satellite. It was unlikely such units would be zoomed in, but the absence of vehicles at a requested roadblock would certainly be noticed. He had just prayed that no driver would come across the empty vehicles in the next hour or so.

But it was not to be. Not more than twenty minutes after Adams and Lynn had accelerated away in the sergeant’s police car, a small livestock truck came trundling slowly up the road. The driver had slowed even further, and then stopped. After waiting in his vehicle a few moments, he had got out and wandered over to the first car. Seeing nobody, he had then checked the second police car, and then the Fiat. Still nobody. Not a soul.

The driver stood there wondering what to do when he caught motion out of the corner of his eye. His head turned, and he first of all saw the copse of trees further back from the road. And then he saw the movement again — a leg, kicking out from behind one of the trees.

Nervous, he had grabbed the shotgun from the passenger footwell of his truck and tracked slowly across the dirty scrubland towards the trees. Under a minute later he was at the copse, rounding the first tree, shotgun at the ready.

His eyes widened in disbelief as he saw the six police officers, bound back to back on the ground, screaming silently at him through their gags.

Once freed, Vega found that the police radios had been broken. Likewise, their personal cellphones had all been smashed to pieces by the crazed terrorists.

Upon quizzing the truck driver, it appeared that he had a cellphone, and Vega quickly commandeered it, finally managing to get through to headquarters.

‘We have a major situation here,’ he told his commander breathlessly. Terrorists were on the loose with anthrax.

Eldridge heard the conversation between Sergeant Vega and his captain in virtual real-time, and cursed his own bad luck. They were low on fuel, and were holding position as they waited for aerial refuelling. The refuelling aircraft would be with them within the next ten minutes, but the delivery of fuel would take a further hour. During this time, they would continue to head towards the fugitives from their current position due east of Santiago, but at a seriously reduced speed.

Given the current speed of the stolen police car, Eldridge knew that it was unlikely that he and his onboard team would make it to the border in time. His other men, currently scattered at various points around central Chile, would also not be able to make it in time, which meant he was going to have to trust the local authorities to pick the pair up.

But what was this about anthrax? The police sergeant had said that the pair had shown them a glass, freeze-packed test tube, which they claimed contained weaponized anthrax.

Did they? Eldridge thought it highly doubtful. Where the hell would they have got such a thing? Did they have contacts in Chile? Or did Adams use his old government contacts and get some before he came here? But if that was the case, how would he have got it past customs?

The fact that it was in a test tube was also strange, given that weaponized anthrax was designed to be used in aerosol form. But they nevertheless had a test tube, which led Eldridge to consider whether—

Damn!

What if Edwards had collected samples from the body? She always seemed to have a backpack with her, and as Eldridge cast his mind back to the Antarctic, he realized that it was the same one she had boarded the helicopter with. Why the hell hadn’t he picked up on that before?

Thinking back further, he remembered their conversation in the dining room of the Matrix base camp.

‘So since talking to Atkinson last night, you didn’t go back out to the body until this morning?’ he had asked her, pretending at the time to be Major Daley of the US Army Engineers.

Edwards had looked at him, and then shaken her head. ‘No,’ she had replied. ‘Samuel ordered us to return here and stay until you guys arrived.’

Eldridge tried to examine his memory of that day, extract the image of Edwards from the recesses of his mind, examine it for any evidence of lying. It was a hopeless task, he knew, and yet he tried, searching his image of her face for any waver, anything that hinted at dishonesty.

But he already knew the answer. Of course they had been back out. What scientist wouldn’t? It hadn’t seemed an issue at the time, as Eldridge knew he was going to kill them all anyway, but it was now apparent that he hadn’t given it enough consideration at the time. Yet another mistake.

It wasn’t one he would bother Jacobs with yet. If the pair was stopped at the border, he would be there within another hour, and the whole sorry incident could be wrapped up.

But they had to be caught first, and so Eldridge immediately contacted Nevada, who in turn ordered the NSA to retask the necessary satellite to provide real-time footage of the escaping police car. He next ensured that the border patrols at the checkpoint at Arica were on full alert, and reinforcements from the Chilean military were en route, just in case.

Talking to the border patrol, it transpired that they had a Lynx scout helicopter on loan from the British Army Air Corps, and Eldridge immediately gave the order for it to fly south on Interstate 5 to intercept the fugitives if possible, or at least to provide close surveillance.

Part of him was tempted to let the pair get to the border, where more forces would be ranged against them, but another part told him that they had lost them several times already, and waiting was no longer an option — the fugitives had been located, Eldridge knew where they were right now, and the border patrol forces had the capability of getting to them within the next ten minutes.

Yes, it was definitely a good idea to send in the helicopter, and send it in hard. Eldridge called back to make sure the men aboard the chopper were well-armed.

And then he called the authorities in Peru, to warn them what was happening over the border. And to get them mobilized.

Just in case.

15

They heard it long before they saw it, the slow, steady whump, whump, whump of helicopter rotors, high in the sky above them.

Lynn turned to Adams. ‘How far are we?’

Adams glanced quickly at the odometer. ‘Just twenty miles,’ he answered. ‘Damn.’

Somebody must have discovered the roadblock cops and called it in, or else they must have escaped somehow. Either way, the border had been alerted, which meant they were going to have to come up with a new plan, and quickly.

He turned to Lynn. ‘Any ideas?’ he asked hopefully.

‘It depends what they’re up to,’ she said, craning her neck up to look through the windscreen, catching just a glimpse of the Lynx scout helicopter above them. ‘If they’re just monitoring us, they’ll follow us to the border, where the police will arrest us. We can use the anthrax ploy again, but I don’t know if it’ll work a second time. If the helicopter crew has been ordered to make the arrest, though, it’ll have to land at some stage…’

Adams nodded his head, following her reasoning instantly. Given Lynn’s last experience in a helicopter, he hoped she wouldn’t panic. He turned to her. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked gently.

She nodded her head. ‘It’s our only chance.’

Adams returned his gaze to the road, determined. ‘Then we’ve got to get that chopper to land.’

What was this? Captain Marco Delongis saw the police car on the highway below his helicopter brake to a screeching halt, then watched as the two fugitives leapt from the vehicle.

What was the man holding? Delongis narrowed his eyes. Pistol!

He fought the natural urge to command the pilot to pull up, knowing that a 9mm handgun round would do absolutely nothing to harm the helicopter. Instead he continued to watch in dread fascination as the man loosed off all fifteen rounds from the gun until it clicked empty. He then saw the man look at the gun in disgust, and fling it to the ground.

He had obviously taken the pistol from one of the policemen at the roadblock but he hadn’t had the good sense to take their spare ammunition. He saw the woman screaming something at her partner, pointing up at the helicopter, and then they were running, straight off the highway and into the scrubland that bordered it.

They were obviously panicking, the sight of the helicopter causing them to flee on foot in blind fear. Delongis was always surprised when this happened, the effect his little aircraft could have on people, and always glad. It made things substantially easier.

The fact that the pair had stopped the car and fled on foot also made life easier. His orders had been to stop the vehicle and arrest the two fugitives. He would have had to manoeuvre the chopper in front of the speeding car, hovering above the highway, in order to get it to stop, and he was glad he didn’t have to. Who knew how crazy this pair was? They might have driven straight at him.

As it was, he just had to land near them, deploy the four-man team from the rear, and wait for the arrest. Easy, especially as the pair was now unarmed.

But there was, Delongis reminded himself, the problem of the anthrax. The word was that the fugitives had a test tube, which indicated that it wasn’t weaponized, but its presence would still be enough to make his men wary. Their orders were to bring the pair in alive, but Delongis had given his own orders: if it looked like either the man or the woman was going to use the anthrax, they should be shot immediately. There was no point taking unnecessary chances.

Adams and Lynn ran as hard as they could, legs pumping over the coarse, uneven terrain, doing their very best to give the impression of panicking, fearful fugitives.

They heard the helicopter closing in, sensed it nearing them, but they didn’t turn to look, they just kept on running, eyes ahead.

Lynn’s peripheral vision picked it up first, the gunmetal grey body swooping past their flank, whipping up desert sand all around them as it banked, lifted, and landed just twenty yards away.

The pair turned, exchanging glances. This was it.

Lynn held up her backpack defensively as the black-clad four-man arrest team deplaned into the swirling sands, assault rifles up and aimed.

‘Down, down, down!’ the lead man shouted at them as the team sprinted forward.

‘Wait!’ shouted Lynn, holding up the backpack higher. ‘Anthrax!’

The lead man lifted one gloved fist, and the other team members stopped short. ‘Put the bag down!’ he announced with heavy authority. ‘We are authorized to shoot you if you do not comply!’

When there was no immediate reaction from her, he pushed the muzzle of his gun threateningly towards her. ‘Put it down!’ he called again. ‘Now!’

Lynn looked across at Adams, who reluctantly nodded his head.

Defeated, Lynn put the bag at her feet and waited helpless as the men surged forward.

16

As Delongis watched with his co-pilot from the cockpit, he was delighted to see that this was going to be even easier than he had hoped. Obviously, the sight of the black-clad SWAT team had taken the fight right out of the terrorists and they had capitulated without a struggle. There had been the threat of the anthrax, of course, but it had been dealt with swiftly.

And now his men were moving forward to make the arrest, removing handcuffs from their belts, and—

Delongis watched in horror as the man and the woman both produced handguns and grabbed one man each, arms going round their throats, guns aimed at their heads.

This was impossible. Two of his men held at gunpoint! They must have taken more than one gun from the police, and Delongis cursed his reckless stupidity. He gripped the arms of his seat, his knuckles turning white, as the other two team members threw their assault rifles to the side and then lay down on the dusty ground, forced to handcuff themselves.

And then he saw the fugitives take their hostages, the woman careful to retrieve her backpack, and begin moving steadily towards his helicopter.

Within seconds, Adams and Lynn were at either side of the helicopter, next to the cockpit doors.

‘Open the doors!’ Adams shouted fiercely. ‘Or we’re gonna blow their heads off!’

When there was no instant response, Adams pushed the muzzle of his gun further into the man’s head, forcing his face into the cockpit’s plexiglas window, so the pilots could see the man’s fear up close.

Seconds later, the man on his side nodded his head and released the door, his partner doing the same thing on the opposite side.

‘Leave the rotors turning and get out,’ Adams ordered, and again both men complied. Adams glanced across at Lynn and noticed the quizzical look she gave him, but ignored it.

‘Now run to your friends,’ he instructed them and was gratified to see the men do as he said, running to join their compadres in the dirt.

Adams looked at Lynn and nodded his head, and the two of them simultaneously cracked their pistols across the back of their hostages’ heads, knocking them both out cold.

Seconds later, they were safely ensconced in the cockpit, Adams taking the controls with swift, confident actions.

Lynn looked at him, confused. ‘You know how to fly this thing?’ she asked, bewildered. ‘When did you learn that?’

Adams finished his checks and looked at Lynn. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me,’ he said, and pushed forward on the gyro.

Captain Delongis, cowering in the scrub, looked up, and with a deeply regrettable mixture of rage and humiliation saw the Lynx rise steadily from the desert and power away towards the border.

Eldridge tried hard to conceal his rage, but it was difficult.

The Lear jet was on its way to the border now, with an estimated arrival time of no more than twenty minutes. He should have been arriving at the border checkpoint to take possession of his prisoners, but now? His prey had hijacked a helicopter and was all set to just fly straight over the border and he had no way of stopping them.

Well, that wasn’t quite true, Eldridge had to admit to himself; he had no non-lethal way of stopping them. And it had really come to that decision. Was trying to capture them alive for fear of what they knew worth the mounting costs and attention the whole debacle was creating? Eldridge was starting to think it was doubtful.

Was it likely that the pair had told anyone else, or had the ability to deliver any evidence to anyone who would even care? Surely the organization could deal with the media even if things did find their way into the public spotlight. Eldridge knew that the special programme was operating right on schedule, and soon nothing else would matter anyway.

Mind made up, he picked up the satellite telephone and dialled the number for Stephen Jacobs. He would present his case and ask for permission to blow the helicopter out of the sky, killing the fugitives and wiping them off the face of the earth once and for all.

Ten minutes later, Eldridge was being patched through to Colonel Carlos Santé, the commander of Chile’s First Armoured Brigade. Jacobs had finally capitulated, and agreed to the killing of the fugitives. Although reluctant to authorize their deaths without first interrogating them, Jacobs had seen the unfortunate reality of the situation and had surrendered to it. Rather they die now, he had said, than they escape again.

The brigade provided Chile’s anti-aircraft border defence and was based in Arica, just next to the border itself. Colonel Santé was in command of a battery of Gepard 1A anti-aircraft artillery vehicles, bought only a few years before from the German contractor and recently updated to launch the deadly Mistral anti-aircraft missiles.

The conversation was brief, as Eldridge stressed the timeframe; the helicopter would be approaching the border now, if it hadn’t already entered Peruvian airspace. Santé promised he would shoot the chopper down immediately.

The next call Eldridge made was to the Peruvian side, seeking permission for the helicopter to be shot down by the 1st Armoured Brigade, even if it had already crossed into Peru. The mere mention of terrorism and anthrax meant that permission was instantly granted.

As Eldridge continued his own flight towards the border, he smiled.

There was no way the fugitives would escape 20kg of high explosive hurtling towards them at 1,200 miles per hour.

No way at all.

17

The stolen Lynx helicopter overflew the border just ten minutes after being hijacked, and Adams and Lynn could see the masses of vehicles congregated around the checkpoints below.

‘At least we’re safe up here,’ Lynn said as she looked down at the desert below. As they passed into Peruvian airspace, she clutched him, holding him tight. ‘We made it!’ she exclaimed.

Adams just nodded, his attention occupied by — what? What was it that he’d noticed? He scanned the desert again, the masses of cars, trucks and vans around the Interstate 5 border checkpoint; but that wasn’t it.

His vision drifted further, and then he saw it — about two miles out towards the west, some sort of military installation. His eyes narrowed as he tried to look at it in more detail. It was movement that had caught his eye.

‘Lynn,’ he said, ‘check out that military base over in the west. Can you make anything out?’

Lynn looked out of the side glass, straining to see. There was movement. But what? She looked harder. Could it be… Surely not.

‘Matt,’ she said finally, ‘it looks like guns. Big ones, mobile artillery pieces. And they’re moving, lining up.’ She looked even closer, and realization hit her. ‘They’re lining up on us!’ she cried out. ‘They’re going to shoot us down!’

Colonel Santé watched as the first of his battery of artillery pieces loosed off a Mistral missile, flame shooting from the rear as it blasted into the sky, rocketing towards the escaping helicopter at over a thousand miles per hour.

The stolen chopper was now ten miles into Peru; impact would be in approximately thirty seconds.

Colonel Santé used the time to light a cigar.

Adams was coaxing everything he could out of the chopper, nearing two hundred miles per hour as they raced into the Peruvian interior.

But he was all too aware that they had no hope of outrunning an anti-aircraft missile. The radar showed that one such weapon had already been launched and was homing in on the helicopter’s infrared signature.

It had been many years since Adams had been in a Lynx but instinct told him where to find what he was looking for.

He reached for the toggle switch on the interface in front of him, flipping it down hard.

‘What was that?’ Lynn asked, trying to control her rising panic. She had told Matt that she would be OK, but the truth was that she was scared; and not just superficially scared but scared right down to her core. Just travelling in a helicopter after what had happened in Antarctica was a struggle, but with a missile now threatening once more to destroy her, she felt her heartbeat rising, her palms turning sweaty.

Not again, the voice kept repeating in her head. Please, not again.

Her inner voice was interrupted by Adams’ reply. ‘Countermeasures,’ he announced. ‘Infrared, to confuse the missile’s own infrared guidance system. Should make the missile fly into it, rather than us.’

‘Does it work?’

Adams grimaced. ‘We’ll know in about ten seconds.’

Colonel Santé could no longer see either the helicopter or the missile with the naked eye, and so watched the radar with his bombardiers as he puffed away on his cigar.

The signature of the missile quickly caught up with that of the helicopter. There was a blur of light — the impact — and the men watched closely as the light dimmed.

But what was this? The image of the helicopter was still there!

Damn! The countermeasures must have been deployed. Santé puffed angrily on his cigar as he realized that the pilot must know more about the helicopter than he’d been led to believe.

‘Another sortie!’ he announced gruffly. ‘Launch guns two through five!’

If one missile had failed to do the trick, four would surely accomplish the task. After all, the cost was immaterial — the man who had called had promised full reimbursement for any ammunition used, as well as a little sweetener for Santé himself if he succeeded in shooting the chopper down.

Countermeasures or not, four missiles were a guarantee of destruction.

Adams knew it had been a lucky escape, and that they were unlikely to be so lucky again. The artillery commander would doubtless now order a multiple strike, and if several missiles were launched, one would be bound to get through.

Another approach had to be taken, and Adams knew what it was. The only trouble would be getting Lynn to agree to it.

He waited for a moment, wanting to leave it until she really had no other choice. And soon he saw the electronic blips appear on his radar. Four of them.

He quickly calculated their speed of approach, his own current speed, and estimated the impact time at about a minute and a half. He checked the surface map once again, and reduced his airspeed. He wanted to reach the canyon at almost exactly the same time as the missiles.

‘Are we slowing down?’ Lynn asked incredulously.

Adams turned to her, nodding his head. And then he told her his plan.

At the headquarters of 1st Armoured Brigade, Santé watched with fascination as his four majestic birds streaked towards the unfortunate helicopter. He admired the pilot of the chopper as he carried out evasive manoeuvres — up, down, left, right — and at the same time pitied him for his futile efforts.

There wasn’t long to go, and although the chopper was now almost fifty miles into Peru, he wasn’t anxious about the clash of authority — he had been promised Peruvian cooperation.

He noted how the fleeing pilot deployed more countermeasures, and how one of his missiles went for the infrared bait, exploding behind the chopper.

And then he smiled widely as the remaining three missiles struck directly, seeing the big flare on the radar screen.

He blinked, and the screen was blank.

The missiles had done their work; the helicopter — and the people in it — were no more.

18

Eldridge received the news within a minute of the destructive impact.

So, it was over. Or was it? Eldridge was aware that he had made this mistake before, signing off on their deaths too early. Well, not this time. He would check himself. The Lear jet would be over the impact site within the next ten minutes, and there were Chilean and Peruvian military and law enforcement teams also on their way there.

He would check the site from the air — check that the helicopter was really destroyed, and it wasn’t just another damned trick — and then he would land, and lead the crash scene investigation.

After being hit by three separate missiles, the wreckage would be an inferno, no more than a smouldering mess; but Eldridge would not be happy until he found some evidence of the bodies within.

Then he would be able to relax.

The Lear jet cruised over the crash site within the estimated ten minutes, and Eldridge was gratified to see the fiery wreckage of the chopper, buried at the bottom of a deep canyon, flames licking up the sides, almost reaching his own aircraft.

It was doubtful that anyone could have survived such an explosion, but if his current assignment had taught Eldridge anything, it was that all things were possible.

He entered the cockpit and told the pilot to find a place to land.

It was twelve hours later, after the darkness of night had well and truly drawn in and the temperature had dropped to near freezing, that the crash scene investigators found something.

There had been low-level squabbles early on in the day about whose jurisdiction such an investigation should come under, but Eldridge and his men took control of the scene, utilizing the investigators from both countries in order to fast-track the operation.

But there really wasn’t much to go on. The impact had superheated the fuselage, obliterating everything inside in an instant. By the time the Lynx crashed into the canyon’s deep valley bottom, there wasn’t a whole lot left to investigate.

What there was, was extracted, separated, examined and identified piece by piece. The investigators told Eldridge that the heat had been so intense that it was doubtful anything would be left of the two fugitives who had stolen the craft. The best they could hope for would be bits of charred bone, or perhaps an odd tooth or two.

Eldridge was not going to be satisfied until he knew for sure that Adams and Edwards were dead, which was why his first sense of true relief did not come until almost midnight.

‘Here, sir!’ the excited technician announced, carrying something in a small clear plastic wallet.

‘What is it?’ Eldridge demanded.

‘It’s a tooth,’ the man replied happily. ‘It’s badly burnt,’ he continued, holding it up for Eldridge to see with his own eyes, ‘but it is the tooth of the man who was in the helicopter when it went down.’

‘You’re sure?’ Eldridge asked, only letting his excitement rise a little at this point.

‘One hundred per cent, sir,’ the technician replied.

Eldridge nodded. ‘Good.’ He took the wallet with the tooth inside from the man. ‘I’ll need to get it tested immediately.’

Stephen Jacobs was excited. He had just flown to Switzerland to see the machine with his own eyes, and was delighted with the progress of the CERN team. It was really going to happen.

He was flying home now, thirty-eight thousand feet above the Atlantic in his own private jet, when the phone rang.

‘Jacobs,’ he said, answering the call.

‘Sir,’ he heard the deep rumble on the other end announce, ‘it’s Eldridge. The situation here has been contained.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jacobs asked.

‘Yes, sir. The helicopter was almost totally destroyed, but we managed to find three burnt teeth. DNA testing shows two of them belonged to Matthew Adams, and the other to Evelyn Edwards. There’s no way they could have survived. It’s over.’

Jacobs sat down deeper into his leather club chair. It was over, yes. And yet it was also all about to begin — the deaths of the two fugitives heralded the birth of the new world order.

‘Good,’ Jacobs said finally. ‘You can come home, and take your place among us. It is almost time.’

Jacobs could almost feel the excitement of the man radiating through the satellite phone. ‘Yes, sir,’ the Alpha Brigade commander said, and Jacobs put the phone down, ending the call.

Yes, Jacobs thought to himself as he stretched out in the chair, delighted at the news from Peru, it is almost time.

19

Adams scanned the desert scrub for signs of life as they settled in to their temporary shelter, but found none. Satisfied that they were safe, he pulled the cover over them and put his arm around Lynn to help keep her warm.

After their helicopter had been blown out of the sky the night before, the pair had used the hours of darkness to walk across the desert. The chopper’s navigation system had provided their exact location, and Adams had then worked out the direction of the nearest large town, which was Arequipa. Using the stars for navigation, by the time dawn came they had covered thirty miles and were both nearing exhaustion.

Adams would ordinarily have been able to keep on walking much further, but the recent lack of sleep was hitting hard, making him into a quivering, uncontrolled wreck. They decided that they would rest up for the day — moving at night was better for combating the freezing desert temperatures, as well as for keeping hidden from view — and Adams spent the next half an hour preparing a hide, a small natural crevasse well hidden among a scattering of sun-bleached rocks.

Adams hoped that there would be no search for them but knew they had to be cautions. A trickle of blood ran down his chin from the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away.

‘How are your gums?’ he asked Lynn, the blood reminding him of what they had done to escape.

‘Not bad, considering,’ she replied with a smile, which showed the gap in the top row of teeth.

The night before, Adams had started to perform evasive manoeuvres, getting whoever was watching them used to the chopper’s erratic movements. Then, when the missiles had been just behind them and the lip of the canyon was right in front of them, he had slowed the helicopter and taken it right down to the ground, and then they had jumped.

They fell ten feet to the hard, dusty desert floor, both of them rolling through the rough sand towards the edge. They saw the missiles hit the helicopter which exploded with a tremendous, cataclysmic roar, its destroyed body falling to the canyon floor below.

They came to a stop just an arm’s length from the huge drop over the canyon, and Adams had cradled Lynn in his arms, holding her tight, protecting her from the intense heat of the explosion. As the heat started to die down, Adams had released her, his shirt smeared with blood from her mouth.

Knowing the pursuit would continue without some proof that they had been in the helicopter when it went down, Adams had used the precious seconds they had before the missiles hit to give their enemy the physical evidence that would be needed.

He had withdrawn his utility knife, snapping it round into the pliers position. He had then quickly wrenched out two of his own teeth, blood spurting from his gums across the cockpit. The pain had made his head dizzy, but he had maintained control of the aircraft, deploying one more round of chaff.

As the countermeasures took out one more missile, he had been amazed as Lynn had pulled the pliers from him and wrenched out one of her own teeth, casting it on to the cockpit floor. Blood trickled from her mouth as she looked at him, and Adams saw the determination in her eyes. He hadn’t wanted Lynn to copy him, but he knew it made sense — if the pursuers just had teeth from one of them, they might well carry on their search. With definite evidence of two bodies, they likely wouldn’t bother.

And then Adams had taken the helicopter down, and they had exchanged one more look of mutual reassurance before they had opened the doors and jumped.

An hour later Lynn found herself with her own arms cradling Adams, their roles now reversed. He was shivering uncontrollably, unable to stop himself, teeth chattering, his entire body convulsing violently.

They had taken extra clothing from the helicopter, as well as some emergency blankets they had found, and Lynn packed the clothing around him, covering him in the blanket; but still he shivered so hard that Lynn was scared he was going to rip himself apart.

She gave him water, and some of the rations they had found on board, forcing him to eat a couple of small chocolate bars. She then took off her clothes, stripped him naked too, and climbed underneath the same blanket as him, arms and legs entwining with his, sharing her body heat.

She held him close, and the feel of his body next to hers brought memories back to her, powerful memories from their joint past together, lying in bed for hours, making love, resting in each other’s arms, and then making love once more.

They had been happy at the time, she knew that now. Why had she not known it then? It had been her work that had stopped her from ever truly living in the moment with him, stopped her ever truly being happy with him; even as they lay together in blissful harmony, she couldn’t help but start thinking about her next research project. Who was she going to recruit for the project, how were they going to raise the money, what results could they expect to find? The list went on, and it eventually began to tear them apart.

Adams was a man who enjoyed life, here, in the moment, and Lynn was obsessed by her work. When her husband had mentioned having children, she had scoffed at the suggestion — had he no idea what her work entailed, how time- and energy-consuming it was? Children were definitely going to have to wait. Adams had wanted to know for how long, and Lynn hadn’t been able to give him an answer. They had stayed together for a short while afterwards, but it was clear that their lives had different priorities, and eventually they had drifted apart so far that divorce had been the only option.

And now? As Lynn held Adams in her arms, the warmth of her skin flowing into his body, she recognized how mistaken she had been. Where had her work brought her? She lived alone, and people were trying to kill her, and the only person she could turn to was the man she had been with originally. She was at the top of her field, certainly, but what did that matter now?

She felt Adams stir next to her, his eyes opening, groggy and disorientated. ‘Lynn?’ he said weakly.

‘It’s OK,’ she replied, holding him closer. ‘It’s OK. It’s just a fever.’

She saw him close his eyes again, felt him breathing deeply. Then he reopened his eyes, staring directly into her own. ‘No,’ he said sadly, ‘it’s not.’

He still longed for sleep, just a few hours of real, honest sleep. He could have continued to pretend he had a fever but he owed it to Lynn to tell her the truth.

‘I’ve not been sleeping,’ he said plainly, registering the surprise on her face as he spoke. ‘I have bad dreams.’

‘But… You? Why?’ Lynn just could not understand it. The Matt Adams she’d known had never had any problem sleeping. He had been full of life, full of optimism and hope, and when the time had come for sleep, he had drifted off with no cares in the world.

‘After we broke up,’ he began, glad to finally get it off his chest, to share his problems with someone, especially this someone, ‘I was recruited by the government.’

‘What?’ Lynn was surprised once more. He hadn’t shown any interest in working for the government when they had been together, that was sure. He had been the best tracker on the reservation, she knew that much, and he had often helped the local police with tricky cases, but government work was something else altogether.

‘US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,’ Adams clarified. ‘They had a group set up called the Shadow Wolves, responsible for tracking smugglers through the border territories between Mexico and the US. All trackers like me, from nine different tribes. They’d heard about me, and wanted me to join.’

‘And you agreed?’ Lynn asked, again finding it hard to reconcile with the Matt Adams she had known.

‘What else was there for me to do?’ he asked in return. ‘We’d just been divorced, you’d told me I needed direction in life — like you had with your own work — and the opportunity came up, so I took it.’

Lynn nodded her head, sorry she had been in part responsible for his decision. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged gently.

‘Well, I worked with the Shadow Wolves for years, became the top man in the unit — my success record was off the chart. And then one day everything changed.’

Lynn saw the look in his eye — harrowed, guilty, tortured. She didn’t say anything, knowing he would go on when he was ready.

‘A call came in about a truck driven by a gang of child smugglers. We’d heard of the group before, they’d been bringing kids across the border for the past few months, but we’d never been able to get a handle on them. This time we had the make and model of the truck they were using, so we knew we had them.’ His eyes wandered, lost in the past. ‘We tracked the truck across sixty miles of Tohono O’odham territory, and we finally found it, just ten miles from the border.

‘It was abandoned, just left out in the desert sun. We approached it carefully, ready for the smugglers to run, but when we got to the driver’s cab, there wasn’t anyone there. Marks in the sand indicated that the drivers had left the night before, maybe even the day before. The truck had been there twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours.’ Adams paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. ‘We went round the back to open the doors and check inside, but already we could smell what it was. Dead bodies.’

He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the memories. ‘We opened those doors to a nightmare. Sixty-seven children, some as young as three years old, crammed together in the back of the truck, unable to move, and then left there for dead in the middle of the desert. It was the height of summer, temperatures inside must have reached over a hundred and fifty degrees. And there was no ventilation in the truck. They never had a chance.’

Tears started to roll down Adams’ cheeks as he remembered the horror of what he had seen as the truck doors opened. ‘They were all dead — all of them. Died from the heat, and from asphyxiation. Can you imagine how they must have felt? Trapped in that oven, unable to get out, people dying next to you, above you, under you. There was vomit and diarrhoea everywhere, scratches on the inside of the truck as they struggled to get out.’

Adams wiped away his tears, and looked at Lynn. ‘And you know why the smugglers left them there, why they ran away?’ Lynn shook her head. ‘It was because they’d heard that the Shadow Wolves were chasing them. They thought they didn’t have a chance, so they took off, escaped on foot, leaving the truck behind. Because of us.’ He looked down, too upset to continue.

Lynn held him close, their bodies warm, reassuring. ‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ she said softly, knowing it made no difference but saying it anyway.

‘I could have found that truck quicker,’ Adams answered immediately. ‘I was supposed to be the best, and I failed. I failed badly, and they all died because I wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t good enough.

‘I tried to carry on working afterwards, but pretty soon I started having nightmares about it. They began to get worse and worse, more like night terrors really, and pretty soon I was scared to go to sleep. After a while, I was completely incapable of work. I was broken. They finally let me go, and I went back to the reservation, where I’ve been struggling to just get by ever since.’ Adams held Lynn’s hands, looking into her deep, lustrous, opaline eyes. ‘You might not think it, but you’ve given me something to live for,’ he said finally. ‘Thank you.’

Lynn’s heart jumped in her chest. She had endangered his life, and he was thanking her? Tears began to stream down her own cheeks, as she realized something she had been unwilling to admit. She still loved him, even as she was sure he still loved her.

Close, their bodies still naked, intertwined, Adams wiped her tears away and then moved his head even closer, his lips brushing hers. At first the kiss was exploratory, checking for her reaction, and then she responded, pulling in tightly, kissing him back with unexpected passion.

Relieved that the desire was mutual, both Adams and Lynn let go completely, moving in perfect synchrony as the build-up of stress and adrenalin that had filled them for the past few days transformed itself into frenetic, frenzied passion, their bodies fitting into a rhythm they had thought long forgotten, until Lynn buried her face in Adams’ neck and they both felt the tension escape them in a flow of sweet, wonderful relief.

20

Two days later Adams and Lynn finally made it into the small town of Nazca.

They had walked most of the way to Arequipa during the second night, then had to hole up again during the day, finally getting there the following night. It didn’t take long to organize transport on to Nazca — they had simply walked around the town until they made it on to Highway 1 heading north, and then hitched a lift.

The driver of the big truck, on his way to Lima, had dropped them off in the small, dusty town just as dawn was rising. The town itself was unprepossessing, consisting of a grid-like formation of one-storey houses and shops on a section of the desert pampa that lay in the shadow of towering mountains beyond.

Although the town itself was nothing to write home about, Lynn squeezed Adams’ hand tight as they watched the sun rise slowly, majestically, above the snow-capped peaks in the distance, its muted pink-red glow spreading warmth down through the valley.

They just watched it together, hand in hand, in silence for several long, wonderful minutes, all worries temporarily forgotten as they admired the imperial beauty of the natural world.

As the sun finally pushed its way above the mountaintops, Adams turned to Lynn. ‘So where do we find Baranelli?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure,’ Lynn replied sheepishly, ‘but I think I’ve got a good idea.’

The Nazca Lines Hotel, on Jiron Bolognesi, was just five minutes from the famed Nazca Lines, which explained its popularity among tourists, astronomers, explorers and conspiracy theorists.

The lines had originally been noticed in 1939, when an American scientist called Paul Kosok flew over the dry coastline in a small plane. The lines up until then had been thought to be part of some form of irrigation system, but Kosok, an expert in irrigation, quickly discounted such an explanation.

His flight happened to coincide with the summer solstice, and he soon discovered that the lines of the sunset ran parallel to those of a huge drawing of a bird in the desert sands, which made him dub the area ‘the biggest astronomy book in the world’.

After Kosok, a young German mathematician called Maria Reiche went on to study the area for the next five decades, concluding that the colossal drawings were part of an astronomical calendar made by the people of the Nazca culture, possibly also intended to send messages to the gods.

Reiche had lived at the Nazca Lines Hotel, then known as the Hotel Turistas for many years, giving hour-long talks about the archaeological phenomenon every evening.

Lynn had heard Baranelli talk about Reiche back at Harvard, and felt sure that he would stay in no other place during his time in Nazca. Not that there were many other places anyway.

Adams and Lynn walked past trimmed lawns and baby palm trees and entered the hotel’s white-painted colonial foyer. They made straight for the reception desk.

Lynn, trying not to be too self-conscious about her missing tooth and her generally dishevelled appearance, strode towards the desk, a smile on her face.

‘Good morning,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Do you speak English?’

The young female clerk nodded her head. ‘A little, yes.’

‘Great,’ Lynn said. ‘We’re fellows up from Harvard, we’re supposed to be meeting Professor Baranelli here for breakfast but I think we might be a little too early. Would it be OK if we wait here for him?’

The clerk looked unsure. ‘You are wanting to meet Professor for breakfast?’

Lynn nodded her head. ‘That’s right,’ she confirmed.

‘I’m very sorry, Professor Baranelli no here.’

‘He’s not staying here?’ Lynn asked, more than a little worried.

‘Oh no, he is staying here, it is that he has already left.’

‘Left?’ Lynn asked. ‘Where’s he gone?’

The clerk pointed back out across the manicured lawn. ‘The airfield across the road,’ she said. ‘If you hurry, you might get there before he flies.’

Less than two minutes later, Adams and Lynn were back across the Jiron Bolognesi, pounding quickly through a metal archway and across the cold tarmac towards the small flight centre.

Looking up, they could see two small propeller-driven aircraft heading out across the skies. Did one of them hold Baranelli?

There were a dozen or so other planes scattered around the open hangars, three of which seemed to be getting ready for flight. For so small a place, the airstrip seemed inordinately busy.

Adams was just reaching for the door of the flight centre when Lynn tugged at his sleeve. ‘Matt,’ she said excitedly, pointing over to one of the three aircraft which were taxiing to the runway. ‘There he is!’

Adams followed Lynn’s outstretched finger, seeing a slightly overweight, balding man with a deep tan, steel-rimmed spectacles and old-fashioned khaki shirt and shorts, about to climb on board one of the little planes.

‘Professor!’ Lynn shouted across the runway.

The man looked her way, annoyance on his face, albeit mixed with a hint of curiosity.

When Lynn waved her hand and shouted to him again, recognition dawned and a wide smile broke his heavy features. He gestured for the pilot to stop the plane and he practically ran to Lynn across the runway.

‘Lynn!’ he exclaimed in an ebullient, southern Italian accent. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘We need your help,’ Lynn said directly.

After a moment’s consideration, Baranelli smiled. ‘Of course, whatever you need is yours. But we will have to talk on the plane,’ he said, turning back to board the aircraft. ‘We only have an hour where the conditions will remain perfect.’

Lynn looked at Adams and groaned. Another aircraft? That was all she needed.

Still, she followed Baranelli aboard the small plane, praying that for once — just once — she would be able to land normally.

‘Most of the year, you have to be in the air mid-morning or early afternoon due to the haze at other times,’ Baranelli explained as the Cessna lifted off from the airstrip, climbing high into the thin mountain air, ‘but I’ve found recently that the early morning is best. I’ve been up here fifty times already, and it still fascinates me, let me tell you.’

Lynn and Adams both nodded. Lynn knew that her old friend was the most passionate of men, and no more so than when he was talking about his work. She would have to try hard to steer the conversation around to what they wanted. But just as she was about to speak, Baranelli interjected.

‘Have you seen the lines from the air before?’ he asked both of his guests.

Adams and Lynn shook their heads.

‘No?’ Baranelli said delightedly. ‘Well, you’re in for a treat! And who better to give you the guided tour than me? If you’re lucky,’ he said with a wink, ‘I’ll even fill you in on my own theories about the site.’

For the next thirty minutes, the aeroplane described lazy arcs across the sky as it traced the immense lines of the Nazca plain.

Baranelli was like a machine, simultaneously making notes in a dog-eared booklet, taking high-definition photographs and performing complex calculations whilst also continuously and enthusiastically narrating the history of the lines better than any professional tour guide could have done.

‘Isn’t it incredible?’ Baranelli asked, and not for the first time. ‘From here, the lines and geoglyphs look to have no purpose, meaninglessly intersected across the pampa, some expertly executed, others crudely rendered, just a big jumbled mess. But if we look closer,’ he continued, nodding to the pilot who began to descend, closer to the desert plain, ‘we can see the beauty of the design. We can see the wedges,’ he said, indicating huge trapezoidal designs, stretching for up to two and a half thousand feet, ‘and how they are intersected by the lines themselves — perfectly straight for up to nine miles. And then there are spirals, triangles, circles, the list goes on. These geometric shapes, do you know how many there are here?’

Lynn shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘Somewhere in the region of nine hundred. Nine hundred! Can you believe it? It is truly incredible. And then there are the shapes!’ Baranelli continued, in a world of his own. ‘There are around seventy biomorphs — animal and plant figures, including some very well-known examples. The hummingbird, the heron, the condor, the dog, the hands, the spider, the pelican, the monkey,’ he said, punctuating each word with a stab of his finger in the geoglyph’s direction, and Adams and Lynn found themselves staring in awe at the designs, clustered together in one area of the vast plain, which Baranelli had told them was nearly two hundred square miles in area. The size of the shapes was astounding. From their vantage point, Adams estimated the pelican figure must have been almost a thousand feet in length.

‘And then we have my personal favourite,’ Baranelli continued, smiling. ‘The astronaut.’

Peering out of the aircraft’s windows, Adams and Lynn looked down at a figure etched on to the side of a small hill. The light caught the image perfectly, and they could both see the design of a man, seemingly wearing some sort of helmet, right hand raised in greeting. But to whom? To what?

‘Well?’ Baranelli asked his guests, clearly excited. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s certainly interesting,’ Lynn replied. ‘What’s its purpose?’

Baranelli turned away from the window and raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘That is the question! What is any of it for? What do you think?’ he asked, a professor testing his students.

‘There’ve been many theories over the years,’ Lynn started, ‘beginning with Kosok’s belief that it represented some sort of astronomical calendar, but computer modelling showed that the alignments were no more common than random chance.’

‘Indeed,’ Baranelli agreed, nodding his head. ‘And what else?’

‘Well, I think the prevailing theory is that they are religious walkways, linked to water or fertility cults.’

‘Yes, many people are of that opinion,’ the professor concurred. ‘Ethnographical and historical data seem to indicate that worship of mountains and water sources dominated Nazcan religion and culture from ancient times. The lines can therefore be seen as sacred paths, leading the faithful to areas where such deities could be worshipped.’

‘Many people… but not you?’ Lynn probed.

Baranelli laughed at the idea. ‘Certainly not me!’

‘And so what do you believe?’ Adams asked.

‘It is time we landed,’ Baranelli said in reply. ‘We will continue our talk over lunch perhaps?’

21

An hour later, Baranelli was ensconced with his two guests at a private table back at the Nazca Lines Hotel, a large glass of Chianti in his hand as he continued his lecture.

‘Have you heard of the “ancient astronaut” theory?’ he asked them.

Lynn nodded her head, sipping from a glass of water. ‘Back in the nineteen sixties, Erich von Däniken proposed that the straight lines were runways for extraterrestrial spacecraft, in fact he saw the whole Nazca plain as some sort of gigantic airport.’

‘That’s right,’ Baranelli said, ‘although we’re not sure if the surface would have been strong enough to take the weight of repeated landings. But he also had other interesting theories about the rest of the geoglyphs, claiming that the Nazcans drew them once these extraterrestrials had left, presumably having returned to their home planet.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Adams asked.

‘Similar things have been documented around the world,’ Baranelli explained. ‘So-called “cargo cults” emerge when an indigenous people is visited by a more highly advanced culture, ascribing to them — and their advanced “cargo” — supernatural significance, seeing them as deities and gods. There was a prevalence of such cults in the south-west Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the islands were used by the Americans and Japanese as staging posts for the war effort, bringing in huge amounts of materiel. When the bases closed after the war and these goods dried up, the island populations tried to encourage further deliveries of goods by building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and worshipping them.’

‘And this is what von Däniken believed happened here?’ Adams asked.

‘Yes, and he didn’t just stop there, he believed that religion as a whole, all over the world, was created to worship extraterrestrials who had come down to earth, amazing primitive man with their advanced technology and leaving them to come up with supernatural explanations for what they had seen.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Adams said sceptically. ‘So God was an alien?’

‘One of von Däniken’s chapter headings — indeed probably the one that made him famous — is “Was God an Astronaut?”’ Baranelli explained, a smile on his face.

‘And just what evidence did he give to support that claim?’ Adams asked, still not buying it.

‘You have to understand that it is not just von Däniken who has argued this over the years, but many people — astronomers, astrophysicists, historians, philosophers, you name it. There is a large body of what they would term evidence in support of the theory, although others would say it was a body of curious anomalies rather than outright evidence.’

‘What sort of anomalies?’ Lynn asked, still trying to find a link between her own discovery and this talk of ancient aliens.

‘The Nazca Lines are one such anomaly — where did they come from, who designed them, and for what purpose? Does the fact that they can only be seen from the air indicate that whoever drew them meant for them to be seen by airborne peoples? And where would this flying technology have come from so long ago? So we have an anomaly, something that doesn’t seem to fit in with regular historical or archaeological knowledge.

‘And what else do we have?’ Baranelli asked before Adams or Lynn had the chance to reply. ‘A sixteenth-century map discovered in the ruins of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul shows Antarctica at the bottom, with the land mass shown much as it would appear if it were free from ice — something which it has not been for fifteen million years. So was this a copy from maps made millions of years ago, or did this sixteenth-century admiral have access to ground-penetrating radar and satellite analysis? And if he did, where could this technology have possibly come from?

‘Then there are the various ancient artworks which show what seem to be alien visitors, or astronauts with helmets — much like the geoglyph we have just seen, in fact. These can be found from ancient cave drawings in the African Sahara to Mayan temples in Mexico, and everywhere in between — Zimbabwe, South Africa, Russia, Val Camonica in northern Italy, Uzbekistan, the list goes on and on. Always the same images — what seem to be man-like figures in strange clothes and helmets. The carving from the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque in Mexico, for example, clearly shows an astronaut-like figure sitting at the controls of a miniature rocket-ship. Can that be explained conventionally?’

Baranelli took a large drink of his wine before ploughing on. ‘And what about such mysteries as the Mayan calendar, predicting eclipses for untold thousands of years? Where did they get the technology to calculate such things? Ancient electric batteries have been found in Iraq, nine thousand-year-old crystal lenses in Assyria, an iron post in a courtyard in Delhi that has not rusted in four thousand years, a twenty-thousand-ton granite block turned upside down in Peru — who can explain such things?

‘And let us not forget the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and all of its surrounding temples, the Great Sphinx, and so on. Do we know, even now, how such things were built? Or why? The Great Pyramid was built from over two million stone blocks, some of which weighed as much as seventy tons. It is the most accurately aligned structure in existence, facing true north with only one-twentieth of one degree of error, and is also located precisely at the centre of the earth’s land mass. The outer casing stones were highly polished and flat to an accuracy of one-hundredth of an inch, and could have been seen from Israel, and perhaps even the moon. Why? The answer is, we simply do not know. We only know these anomalies are there, crying out for an explanation.’

‘And aliens can provide such an explanation?’ Adams asked.

‘Why not? People claim they visit us now, why should they not have come thousands of years ago?’ Baranelli could see the disbelief in the eyes of both Adams and Lynn, and although he did not necessarily subscribe to the theory himself, he also knew it could not be discounted out of hand. ‘Some people,’ he carried on, ‘see information contained in religious texts as direct evidence of alien visitation.’

‘Go on,’ Adams said, unsure but curious now.

‘Has it never occurred to you that most religions have very similar stories in their writings? Ancient Sumer, the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, the Old and New Testaments — all are almost identical, once you get right down to it. And where did culture — science, mathematics, agriculture, writing — originate?’

‘Ancient Sumer,’ Lynn answered.

Baranelli clicked his fingers. ‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘So after millions of years of slow, painful evolution, we have a sudden spurt of development. In the blink of an eye — in evolutionary terms — we were irrigating the land, building temples, making complicated mathematical calculations, reading and writing. So what went on in ancient Sumer?

‘Some people claim that it was here that alien visitors first came to us, providing us with the seeds of our modern civilization. In turn, we ascribed supernatural significance to them, and organized religion was born. Thus, “gods” coming down from heaven in fiery chariots are not dreams, visions, or metaphors, this is what really happened, aliens coming to earth in their spaceships. But how else could ancient man explain it? And so religion began in Sumer, and then spread across the region, first to Egypt, and then on to Israel, finally spanning the globe and including India, Rome and Greece in its thrall. Everywhere it went, it was modified by the indigenous people there but it was essentially the same as the factual reports of alien landings and alien technology that was experienced first-hand by the Sumerians.’

‘So God was an astronaut?’ Adams asked, still unconvinced.

‘Who knows? It is a theory, yes? A story. And no more or no less convincing than any other, in my opinion.’

‘Well, Fabricio,’ Lynn said, ‘we have a little anomly of our own.’

‘Forty thousand years old?’ Baranelli asked excitedly.

‘Well, that’s how it appeared. Obviously, most of the evidence has now been destroyed.’

‘When did civilization appear in Sumer?’ Adams asked Baranelli.

‘About 3800BC,’ the professor answered immediately. ‘Nearly six thousand years ago, give or take.’

‘So do you have any theories about an advanced people that may have existed forty thousand years ago?’ Adams persisted.

‘Perhaps the cycle that we saw begin in Sumer was not the first time such a thing happened,’ Baranelli said, unsure.

‘What do you mean?’ Lynn asked.

‘I mean if extraterrestrial beings could have come to the earth and provided man with civilization in 3800BC, they — maybe the same beings, maybe another group from another region of the universe entirely — could have come here forty, fifty, a hundred thousand years ago, even. We cannot rule it out. Or else mankind evolved such technology on its own during that period, without any external help.’

‘And then?’ Adams asked.

‘And was then destroyed, like Atlantis, some global catastrophe that completely wiped out mankind. Perhaps some pockets survived, but due to conditions on the planet had to revert to nature, as it were, becoming more primitive in order to survive.’

‘Like Atlantis?’ Adams asked. ‘Are you saying that Atlantis existed?’

‘No,’ Baranelli said slowly, choosing his words carefully. ‘What I am saying is that almost every modern-day culture has some form of Atlantean, pre-historic advanced-culture myth. Is it just a coincidence, or do these myths have a basis in truth? The body Lynn found would certainly seem to indicate that this is the case, no?’ Baranelli asked, his eyebrows raised. ‘And then you have to consider the universality of the ancient flood myths. In our Christian culture, we know predominantly about Noah and the Flood, but this, too, can be traced back to its origins in ancient Sumerian folklore. Indeed, many respected scientists believe the world did experience such catastrophic flooding, in the period between 12,000 and 10,000BC.

‘But this is just an example, to show that it could well be true. Other calamities could have befallen ancient man — meteor strike, volcanic eruptions, the list goes on. The bottom line is, it is certainly possible that an advanced civilization, perhaps even more advanced than our own, once walked the earth, and was subsequently all but wiped out. You have not analysed the DNA yet?’ he asked suddenly.

‘No, not yet. We’re hoping to do that back in the US, if we can get there.’

Baranelli nodded his head, deep in thought. ‘So the body might not even be Homo sapiens,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is some other branch of the genus Homo, which for some reason progressed faster than us. Maybe their reliance on technology made the catastrophe hit them much harder than it hit us, so they died out completely, allowing us to scrape our way up to the top.’

Lynn and Adams exchanged looks. Another branch of the human family? It was something they hadn’t even considered, and to Adams it certainly seemed more convincing than Lynn having found an alien body or time traveller, two other possibilities that might have explained the ancient corpse.

‘It appears to me that you need to get the DNA tested immediately,’ Baranelli announced. ‘That way we will know what we are dealing with.’

‘That’s why we’ve got to get back to the US,’ Adams agreed. ‘Get the evidence analysed, find out what the hell is going on.’

Baranelli nodded his head. ‘It will be dangerous, my friends. It is clear that the body is important to someone, and they will stop at nothing to keep whatever secret it is that they are hiding.’

‘You’re right about that,’ Adams said. ‘I think we’re dealing with some top-level government interest, with enough power to get things done well south of the border too.’

‘Anybody like that who has a secret, it must be a secret worth knowing, yes?’ Baranelli asked with a mischievous smile and a wink. He took another sip of his wine, and looked directly at Adams and Lynn. ‘And so this is the help you need, yes? You want to know if I am able to get you back to the US undetected?’

Adams and Lynn both nodded and then watched as Baranelli refilled his glass and polished off half of it with one long, leisurely pull.

‘But only if you think you can do it without endagering yourself,’ Lynn added seriously.

Baranelli waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I think I can help you, and I’m sure it won’t endanger me one little bit. Besides, what’s life without a little excitement?’ He finished his wine. ‘You will be back in the US by tomorrow, I promise. Just promise me you will tell me what you find out.’

‘We will, Fabricio,’ Lynn agreed. ‘And we’ll also find out who’s behind all this,’ she said, hands clasping Adams’. ‘I’m tired of being the victim,’ she continued, and Adams was shocked by the fiery determination in her eyes. ‘They think we’re dead, they think they’ve won. Well, we’re going to find out who they are, and we’re going to take this fight to them.’