‘And then planned to give the device away, for free,’ Ethan finished the story. ‘They’ve been in this together from the start. Mary did not flee because she was afraid of persecution, Mary was the target that should have been. Now she knows what’s happened to Stanley, my guess is that she’ll do everything she can to expose the technology and spread word of it before Majestic Twelve are able to pin her down.’
‘We need to find her,’ Lopez said urgently. ‘We can use Amber’s cell phone and … ’
Ethan was about to agree with Lopez when suddenly he heard a car door slamming. Ethan whirled in time to see their escorts leaving in the people carrier, the vehicle cruising away from the hotel.
‘Where the hell are they going?’ Lopez snapped.
‘Damn it, Amber’s taking off on her own,’ Ethan said. ‘The only person who could have found us so accurately and sent heavies has to be somebody that Amber spoke to.’
Lopez closed her eyes. ‘Amber’s damned phone. She contacted her mother.’
‘Mary’s got a fortune to play with if Stanley did what I think he did, and sold out before sending the money to Mary. She’d have hired professional bodyguards to grab Amber — we just got carried along for the ride. Now, Amber’s going to join her mother.’
Lopez watched as the vehicle disappeared down the drive and then she grabbed Ethan’s arm.
‘Majestic Twelve would do anything now to stop Mary from broadcasting anything about the fusion cage. They’ll send that agent we ran into in Argentina, the tall guy, Mitchell?’
Ethan nodded. ‘He’ll stop at nothing. The moment Amber makes her move he’ll cut her down without hesitation. Majestic Twelve are protecting him from prosecution, including this.’
Ethan gestured to the hotel behind them.
‘You think that Mitchell did this?’ Lopez asked.
‘I think that he realised what Stanley had done, what Mary has done,’ Ethan replied. ‘Stanley didn’t want to die, and had family relying upon him. Yes, he would fight tooth and nail, but throwing himself over a balcony would serve no purpose. He must have been pushed.’
As Ethan finished speaking the police officer hurried back down to the cordon. He had a cell phone in one hand and excited looking on his face.
‘Looks like you were right,’ he said conspiratorially as he handed Ethan the cell phone. ‘The detective on site is not certain, but she thinks there’s a second person involved. There are traces of blood on the balcony, and drag marks in the carpet that she thinks may have been caused by somebody dragging a body and throwing it over the balcony. So that means there’s a homicide here. I passed on your description of the perpetrator to the team.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ Ethan said as he took the cell phone and dialled a number. ‘The FBI can talk to our senior officer at the DIA, Doug Jarvis. I’m calling him right now.’
The line rang repeatedly for several long seconds, and then finally picked up.
‘Hellerman.’
‘Who?’
‘Warner, is that you?’
‘Where’s Jarvis?’
‘Long story, man. Listen, get yourself under cover as fast as possible. There’s a whole crap storm brewing here and yours and Lopez’s names are all over it!’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Jarvis has been forcibly retired and you’re both being hunted again by the FBI for the murders of a bunch of tree — huggers in Virginia and some guy in a hotel.’
Ethan felt his blood run cold as he looked at the hotel.
‘Okay,’ Ethan said, keeping his voice calm in front of the police officer. ‘We need a ride out of here as fast as possible. We’re at that hotel.’
‘You’re what?!’ Hellerman replied. ‘Get out of there now! Where do you need to go?’
‘Las Vegas,’ Ethan replied. ‘Mary Meyer is the one behind all of this, she invented the device and now she’s about to release it to the public across just about any channel she can find. Majestic Twelve will do anything they can to stop her. They’ve already murdered Stanley Meyer, and I believe the agent we encountered in Argentina was behind it. Mitchell.’
‘There’s a plan in place,’ Hellerman replied. ‘Get to Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base in Martinsburg, West Virgnia, as fast as you can. Transport will await. Use the clearance code Have Gray at the gates, it’ll get you through, now get out of there!’
Even as Ethan shut off the phone, he saw FBI agents emerging from the hotel and looking around, and saw one of them point in his direction. A woman, with long auburn hair and a fresh face, reached for a radio at her belt.
‘Time to leave,’ Lopez said.
The police officer’s radio crackled and he reached for it as a stern — sounding female voice shouted at him. Ethan lunged forward and un — holstered the officer’s service pistol, yanked it free as he tucked one boot in behind the officer’s ankle and shoved him onto the grass. He turned the pistol over in his hands as he and Lopez whirled and dashed across the lawns.
‘Wait!’
Ethan plunged into the woods lining the hotel drive and followed Lopez through the thickets until they burst out onto the drive as a smart looking Lexus appeared ahead, driven by an elderly couple. Ethan stood in the middle of the road as he aimed the pistol at the car. The driver panicked and stopped, his eyes wide as he threw his hands up beside his head.
Ethan rushed forward and opened the driver’s door.
‘You’re in no danger,’ he said in a perfectly reasonable voice. ‘We’re working with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Get in back, and we’ll give you back your car in a short while.’
The old man nodded frantically as on the other side Lopez helped the elderly wife out of her seat and installed her in the back.
Ethan jumped into the driver’s seat and turned the Lexus around as they fled the scene, the sound of sirens somewhere behind them. Ethan turned hard right out of the hotel’s drive and then took the first left he encountered, putting distance and direction to good use to avoid any pursuit.
‘They won’t take long to figure out what happened to us,’ Lopez pointed out.
‘This’ll dupe them for a while,’ Ethan replied. ‘Mitchell has a head start on us, and he’ll fly on a private jet no doubt with diplomatic immunity of some kind. The only advantage we have is that we know which vehicle Amber is travelling in and where it’s headed. We’ve got to get to them before Mitchell or this is all over.’
XXXVI
The massive C–5A Galaxy of the 167th Airlift Wing out of Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base in Virginia had landed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada just before sunset, the sprawling military airfield within sight of Las Vegas’s glittering galaxy of lights already shimmering in the fading light of dusk as Ethan watched the sun setting behind the sandy colored mountains of the Sierra Nevada range.
Despite General Nellis’s lofty rank, the airfield was not named after him, but Ethan felt as though the senior officer deserved such an accolade for taking the chances that he had, along with Jarvis’s mysterious assistant, Hellerman. Ethan walked with Lopez off the C–5A along with the crew, both of them wearing uniforms that made them appear as nothing more remarkable than loadmasters or engineers.
‘This way.’
An Air Force sergeant guided them toward a dark blue personnel truck destined to carry the crew across the airfield to the crew rooms. There, Ethan and Lopez would split off from the main group and leave the base on their desperate mission to locate Mary Meyer and Amber.