“Am I supposed to be grateful to you for that?” Nina snarled.
“Be grateful to Kari. Be very grateful. She’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
The door slid open, two uniformed guards entering, hands on their guns. Nina offered no resistance beyond a hate-filled glare as her wrists were fastened behind her back.
“Get off in Paris and use one of the company jets to come home,” Frost told Kari as they left. “Dr. Wilde?”
“What?” she snapped.
“I hope you have enough sense to be on that return flight with Kari.”
Nina said nothing as the door clanged shut behind her.
Chase looked out of the cockpit window. Ravnsfjord lay ahead.
He hurried to the hold. “One last thing!” he said to Starkman as he hooked his parachute release line onto the ceiling rail. “Some of these people are civvies. Just ’cause they work for Frost doesn’t automatically make them targets-only shoot at anyone who’s shooting at you!”
“Always were a do-gooder, weren’t you, Eddie?” Starkman replied.
“I just don’t like killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“What if we run into the company lawyers?”
“That’s tempting… but still no! Okay, everyone hook up!”
Chase pushed the button to lower the Provider’s rear ramp. The plane was descending rapidly. Freezing wind blasted in with the near-deafening rasp of the plane’s engines. The office buildings passed below; coming up fast was the Frosts’ house, overlooking everything from the top of the crag, and beyond it the biolab.
The plane roared barely a hundred feet over the house, then the ground dropped away. The minimum altitude at which the parachutes would work was 250 feet, and the terrain between the house and the biolab was just far enough below…
“Jump!”
Chase threw himself out. The parachute exploded from its pack as the release line ripped free. At such a low altitude, if the chute didn’t deploy perfectly he would smash into the ground before having a chance to do anything about it.
Grass and snow and rock rushed towards him, a car heading towards the bridge over the fjord-
Sudden deceleration hit him, the chute snapping open and yanking the harness tight around his chest.
He braced himself-
Whump!
It was a bruising landing, the parachute barely having enough time to slow him to a survivable speed. He ignored the shock of impact, shrugging off the parachute as he checked his surroundings. The other parachutists were dropping around him, hitting the ground hard. Chase hoped Starkman’s men knew what they were doing. Anyone who was hurt in the landing was screwed-they didn’t have the time or the manpower to carry wounded with them.
Having dropped its passengers, the C-123 made a sharp turn, pulling up to gain altitude as it rose over the fjord.
A line of smoke lanced out from the edge of the fjord, the trail of a Stinger antiaircraft missile as it homed in…
And exploded!
One wing blown off in a burning cloud of fuel, the Provider corkscrewed helplessly into the steep-sided valley, plowing into the rocky wall and bursting apart in a thunderous fireball.
“Holy shit!” Starkman yelled.
“Looks like we’re walking home!” Chase shouted back. Now free of his parachute, he readied his weapon, a Heckler and Koch UMP-45 submachine gun. “Okay! Let’s melt the Frost!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nina watched in horror from the Mercedes as the plane plunged into the side of the fjord and exploded. “Jesus!”
“Qobras’s people-it has to be!” Kari shouted. “They’re making a last stand!”
“Well, hoo-ray for them!” Nina twisted to look out of the rear window. The last of the parachutists were now on the ground. “I hope they blow the place to hell, and your father with it!”
Slap!
Nina reeled. Kari had hit her! The hot sting across her cheek wasn’t so much painful as humiliating, but somehow that actually made it worse.
Kari issued orders as the Mercedes approached the bridge. “Call the security center and warn them that we have fourteen intruders heading for the biolab! And you,” she added, turning to the driver, “get us to the plane, now!”
“Melt the Frost?” Starkman said in disbelief as the team ran towards the biolab. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”
“Since Tibet,” Chase admitted. He assessed the tactical situation. The open ground provided little cover-for Frost’s men as well as for Starkman’s. The buildings would give their opponents some protection, but it would be easy to outflank them.
The Stinger had been fired from the security building at the northwestern corner of the facility. If Frost’s men had any other heavy weapons, that was where they would be.
“Jason! Six men, cover!” He made a chopping gesture towards the security block. Starkman nodded and passed on the order.
The team of six split off from the main group. Chase quickly advanced on the lab’s entrance. The biolab didn’t have many exits-aside from the main doors and the security entrance, the only other ways in or out were through fire escapes and the ramp leading to the underground garage. Which meant that the closest place any of Frost’s forces could emerge was…
The dark glass doors of the main entrance flew open, uniformed guards rushing out. Armed guards, equipped with MP-7s. Armor-piercing rounds, like the ones Chase himself had used in Tibet.
“Hit ’me!” he shouted, diving to the ground and bringing up his UMP. Starkman and the other six men did the same. The front wall of the biolab erupted with fountains of dust as they raked the building with.45-caliber fire. The doors burst into black shards, blood spraying among the glass as the guards fell.
More MP-7 fire crackled off to Chase’s left as another group of guards ran from the security block. They were better prepared than their late colleagues, and also had more cover, ducking behind the walls on either side of the steps.
Starkman’s second team was about thirty yards distant from them, out in the open with the road still to cross. They had split into two groups of three, one group diving to the ground to give the other covering fire as they raced for the nearest building.
The security forces fired back, trying to catch the running men before they reached cover. One of the guards put his head too far above the wall and had a chunk of his skull blown away by a.45 round, gore sluicing through the air as he fell backwards.
But the others kept firing.
One of the running men fell, bloody wounds blossoming across his chest. His companions didn’t even break their stride until they reached the building and flung themselves into cover.
The guards turned their fire on the men lying on the ground. Clods flew up into the air as bullets thudded into the earth. Chase saw a line of spraying dirt advancing on one man like a snake at its prey, but there was no way he could warn him.
Red blood spouted into the air among the churned-up soil.
The guards redirected their fire, trying to pin down the other men on the ground-
A pair of grenades arced through the air, tossed with precision by the team in the cover of the building. They exploded at head height over the steps and showered the guards with lethal shrapnel. Every window within thirty feet shattered under the double blast.
“Main doors!” yelled Chase, sprinting towards the entrance. Starkman and the others followed, spreading out to provide cover.
Chase reached the wrecked doors, flattening himself against one side and glancing into the building’s interior. The horseshoe-shaped reception desk was unmanned, the guards staffing it now dead at his feet.