From behind, a voice called out.
Reynolds turned around and saw that it was one of the Russian workers making his way back from the bathroom.
Weak bladder like me, thought Reynolds.
The man stopped in his tracks and turned to look up into the star-filled sky.
“Helicopters,” said the man to Reynolds. A second later, he repeated himself this time pointing into the air. She quickly realized that his English vocabulary was limited to a few words.
Switching into Russian, Reynolds asked, “Do you know who they are?”
“No,” replied the man. “No one is supposed to come for us for another week.”
“Could it be the army on maneuvers?” asked Reynolds.
“I don’t know,” replied the man, shrugging his shoulders.
A few seconds later, a couple more groggy people joined them. They stood there, staring at the three helicopters as they noisily came in to land on the camp’s designated landing zone, a patch of flat ground one hundred meters from their tents. It was then that it hit Reynolds. Aside from their running lights, the helicopters were completely blacked out.
Her gut told her something wasn’t right.
She looked for Professor Zakhava among the growing throng of people who had been attracted by the noise of the helicopters like moths drawn to the light. When she didn’t see him, her stomach began to tie up in knots. As the senior Russian on the site, she wanted him nearby to talk with whomever had just landed in the dark.
One of the Russian students saw the darkened shapes of men jumping from the helicopters. With a friendly wave, he walked towards them. He hadn’t gone two steps before he was cut down in a hail of bullets fired by one of the new arrivals.
With a loud scream, a young female student turned to run, only to die where she stood.
Within seconds, more students were mercilessly shot down.
“Run!” yelled someone from behind Reynolds.
Suddenly, a surge of adrenaline and the instinctive need for self-preservation kicked in. Reynolds turned on her heels and ran into the night. Behind her, she could hear the sound of automatic gunfire. People screamed and pleaded for their lives only to die, killed at the hands of their unknown attackers.
It was a horrible massacre.
With tears in her eyes, Reynolds ran straight past the tent that held their office. Her instincts told her to seek the safety of the tunnel system dug under the ice. She could no longer hear the sounds of death being sown as her ears were filled with the sound of her own heart beating loudly. She opened the door leading down into the tunnel and ran as fast as she could down the stairs. A second later, she lost her footing and fell onto her back. A sharp pain shot from her spine as she slid along the icy floor, until she landed in a heap alongside an old generator. With fear coursing through her body, she scrambled up on her feet and ran down the nearest tunnel, looking for a safe place to hide. Up ahead, she saw several boxes covered by a dark-green tarp. Reynolds ran over and hid behind them. With a silent prayer on her lips, she struggled to make sense of what was going on.
Who had attacked their camp, and why? She could find no logical reason for the massacre taking place on the frozen ground above her. Reynolds closed her eyes and hoped that whoever was out there would leave and let her live.
Her heart skipped a beat when she heard the sound of another set of feet scrambling down the slippery stairs. Reynolds peered out from behind her cover and saw Freeman standing there, unsure of what to do next. Fear filled his eyes. Reynolds was about to call him over, when a shot rang out. Freeman’s body jerked slightly and then tumbled to the frozen floor.
Reynolds brought her hand up to her mouth to stifle a scream when she saw blood seeping out from under Freeman’s dead body.
Terror gripped her soul.
Reynolds bit her lip when she heard the sound of someone slowly making their way down into the icy tunnels. She pulled her parka hood over her head and tried to make herself blend in with the green tarp she was hiding behind.
Ever so slowly, Reynolds could hear the sound of ice crunching underfoot as an assassin carefully made his way down the long passage.
If she stayed where she was, she knew that she would be found. It was just a matter of time, seconds perhaps. Her only salvation lay in distracting the man long enough to make it back out into the night. She turned her head slightly and saw an abandoned thermos lying on the ground behind her. Reynolds grabbed it, and then as quietly as she could, she got up on her knees. She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart and tossed the thermos down a small side tunnel. It clattered loudly as it slid across the ice. A second later, the thermos disappeared from view. Like a runner hearing the starter pistol fire, Reynolds, with her head down, was up on her feet and running for her life down the narrow tunnel.
She never heard the shot.
To her, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. First, she felt her feet give out underneath her. The next thing she knew, she was falling to the floor and sliding along the ice until she came to a sudden stop against the wall. Unable to move, Katherine Reynolds lay on her back looking up at the roof of the tunnel. Something dark came into view. Reynolds blinked her eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. A man stood above her, completely enclosed in a military-style biohazard suit. She could see his deep-brown eyes through the protective eyepieces of his gas mask. She tried to say something, but found that she couldn’t speak. The world was beginning to close in around her as her vision narrowed. The last thing Katherine Reynolds saw before she died was a sad look in the eyes of the man who was about to end her life as he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
6
Ryan Mitchell stepped from the elevator into the noisy hotel lobby filled with people already half-drunk. He hadn’t gone more than a couple of meters before a young woman carrying a tall drink and wearing a cheap plastic bachelorette crown tripped over her own feet and landed in his arms. With a smile, he helped her back up onto her feet and waited for her friends to escort her into the elevator. He shook his head at the women and made his way out onto the casino floor of the Paris Hotel. The melodic chimes from hundreds of slot machines filled the air. It was late Friday night, and as usual, the hotel was packed. He paused for a moment by a tall mirror to adjust his black bow tie. Mitchell felt out of place in his snug, jet-black tux. He was more at home in his old, well-worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Mitchell looked around at the casino’s patrons and snickered to himself. Hardly anyone other than James Bond wore a tuxedo to a poker game anymore; however, this was the outfit he had been instructed to wear to the rendezvous. Tucked into his right ear was a nearly invisible state-of-the-art earpiece that could receive as well as transmit.
Mitchell’s penetrating blue-gray eyes searched the floor for his friends. A former U.S. Army Ranger in his early thirties, he stood at just over two meters tall and had a trim, athletic build with thick, brown hair that he liked to keep cut short. His skin was tanned from a recent skiing vacation in Colorado with his girlfriend, Jennifer March. He soon spotted Nate Jackson playing the slots. With a confident smile, he walked past his comrade without saying a word as he tried to look the part of a high-stakes poker player. Mitchell was surprised to see that Jackson was up three hundred dollars, as he was notorious for having bad luck with any game of chance.