Doctor Chandler emerged from his glider, and Ethan looked about in alarm. ‘Where’s Amy?’
Riggs shook his head. ‘Porter’s glider went down with Amy,’ he informed Ethan. ‘We lost a few good people already and we haven’t even found Black Knight yet.’
Ethan found himself mourning the spirited young scientist’s loss, but he knew that they had no time to grieve. Majestic Twelve would catch up with them again soon enough.
‘Is that the impact crater?’ Hannah asked as she looked at the ridge.
‘I guess so,’ Ethan replied, ‘Black Knight is about the only thing that’s crashed down here.’
It was the voice of a scientist behind them who corrected Ethan.
‘It’s not something that’s come down,’ he replied, ‘it’s something that’s come up.’
Ethan peered curiously at Doctor Chandler as together they began clambering up the slopes of the ridge until they reached the top, broken chunks of glacial ice embedded in mounds of loose snow.
Ethan moved alongside two of the SEALS, who were lying prone on the ridge top with their weapons held before them as they looked at something. He heard their voices just before he reached them.
‘We’ve got a problem.’
Ethan rested alongside them and looked down and his heart leaped into his mouth.
Opposite the ridge was another similar ridge, and below them plunged a deep chasm of glowing blue ice, a canyon ripped into the glacier as though a giant’s sword had plunged down from the heavens and sliced into the continent for miles.
Hannah looked at the wrecked gliders, the vast freezing wilderness and the plunging chasm, and then at Ethan. ‘I bet you ten bucks we don’t make it out here here alive.’
XIX
Nicola Lopez held out her identity card to the security guards manning the entrance to the huge base, one of them scrutinizing it for a long moment. The soldier looked at the image of Lopez on the ID card, arrogant and full of vigor, and then at the weary looking woman sitting in the sedan in front of him.
‘You got an appointment here, ma’am?’ he asked.
Lopez managed a smile despite her uncertainty over just how the DIA was going to react to her sudden arrival with one of their most wanted fugitives sitting alongside her in the vehicle.
‘Contact Doug Jarvis,’ she said simply. ‘Tell him that Nicola Lopez is here with Aaron James Mitchell. He’ll understand.’
The soldier nodded and moved off to the command post as Mitchell glowered across at her.
‘You just sold me out?’
‘You think they’re going to just let us walk in there?’ Lopez challenged. ‘I’m supposed to be in a coma and you’re a wanted man. Better to let them understand that we’re here together, by choice, than let them think you’re trying to infiltrate one of the most secretive locations in the entire continental United States, no?’
Mitchell shrugged and returned to silence as Lopez waited and wondered what kind of greeting they would get once word reached Jarvis of their arrival. She got her answer a minute or so later when the security guards burst from the command post, fanning out and bellowing at the top of their lungs.
‘Show us your hands! Out of the vehicle and get down on the ground, now!’
Mitchel looked at her, and now it was Lopez’s turn to shrug.
‘It’s not so bad — they didn’t just open fire on us.’
Lopez carefully climbed out of the vehicle and put her hands on her head. Mitchell mirrored her actions nearby as the soldiers advanced, glaring at them down the barrels of their rifles as from the buildings beyond the checkpoint dozens of DIA agents sprinted with weapons drawn toward them.
Lopez placed her hands behind her back and crossed her legs at the ankle as the soldiers moved in. She winced as one of them thumped a knee into her back to pin her down as he cuffed her, several more soldiers piling in on top of Mitchell and cuffing him before they were both hauled to their feet, Lopez’s hair in disarray as two dozen DIA agents surrounded them, weapons drawn, stern faces glaring at Mitchell.
‘Hold your fire,’ Lopez said, hoping that enough of them knew who she was and would listen to her. ‘He’s on our side.’
None of the agents replied or even looked at her. She was wondering whether anybody at the damned agency even knew what she had been through in the name of national security when she saw a familiar figure striding toward her across the lawns.
Doug Jarvis, for once, was not sauntering along with his hands in his pockets but was hurrying at a spritely pace for his age, his gray hair whipping around in the breeze as he reached the command post and the ring of armed guards parted for him.
‘Hold your fire,’ he said.
To Lopez’s chagrin the armed agents immediately obeyed and lowered their weapons, still watching Mitchell. To her absolute amazement, Jarvis seemed to barely even notice the big man as he hurried up to her and threw his arms around her.
‘Nicola, I thought we’d lost you!’
Lopez blinked, unable to return the embrace with her hands manacled behind her back. Jarvis held her for a moment longer and then stepped back, one hand holding each of her shoulders as he looked her up and down with a broad smile on his face.
‘You look like shit,’ he pointed out.
Lopez struggled to conceal the smirk that ached across her face.
‘And you still can’t hold a candle to me,’ she replied.
‘What happened? When did you wake up, and what’s this asshole doing here?’
Jarvis tipped his head in Mitchell’s direction and Lopez sighed.
‘It’s a long story, but if Mitchell here hadn’t turned up at the hospital I’d be dead. Mitchell wants to come over to us, Doug. Looks like MJ-12 have decided he’s past his sell by date.’
Jarvis released her shoulders and turned to confront the huge operative, who merely regarded him in stony silence with eyes as dark as night.
‘Give me one good reason not to have you dragged into those bushes over there and ventilated with bullet art?’
Mitchell’s reply was as sombre as it was unintimidated.
‘Because you need me,’ he said. ‘Majestic Twelve have taken their gloves off and they’re coming for all of you, for all of us.’
Jarvis sneered at the big man. ‘So you finally get out of your depth and then you come running here?’
Mitchell smiled without warmth.
‘You put me in the highest security facility available in the entire country, and as soon as I was ready I escaped without problem. If I was your enemy I would have continued running, but it was MJ-12 who were prepared to let me rot in there. I knew that by doing so they had changed their plans, and by leaving me where I was they were clearing up loose ends. That meant that they would pursue all of you, and remove the itch in their side. I decided to scupper that plan and come here to show you that my work for them is done.’
Jarvis peered at Mitchell for a long moment and then at Lopez.
‘You believe any of this?’ he asked her.
Lopez shrugged.
‘Got no reason not to,’ she replied. ‘MJ-12 sent a female assassin to take me down, that’s all I know right now. But given everything that’s happened over the last few months it sounds plausible that MJ-12 is looking to remove us from play.’
Jarvis made his decision.
‘Put him in custody,’ he ordered his agents. ‘Nicola, come with me. There’s a great deal you need to catch up on.’
‘Hey, brainbox!’
Lopez saw Hellermen before he saw her, the scientist completely consumed by some kind of marching robotic device at his work station inside one of the DIA’s secretive Watch Centers. Hellerman whirled, his jaw dropping as he heard her voice.