EPTEMBER 7, 2:17 A.M.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Painter hurried down the hall. He didn’t need any more trouble, but he got it.

The entire command bunker was in lockdown mode after the attack. As he had suspected, after the fiery death of Mapplethorpe, the few remaining combatants ghosted away into the night. Painter was determined to find each and every one of them, along with every root and branch that supplied Mapplethorpe with the resources and intelligence to pull off this attack.

In the meantime, Painter had to regain order here.

He had a skeleton team pulled back inside. The injured had been transported to local hospitals. The dead remained where they were. He didn’t want anything disturbed until he could bring in his own forensic team. It was a grim tour of duty here this evening. Though Painter had employed the air scrubbers and ventilation to clear the accelerant, it did nothing to erase the odor of charred flesh.

And on top of resecuring the facility here, he was fielding nonstop calls from every branch of the intelligence agency: both about what had happened here and about the aborted terrorist act at Chernobyl. Painter stonewalled about most of it. He didn’t have time for debriefings or to play the political game of who had the bigger dick. The only brief call he took was from a grateful president. Painter used that gratitude to buy him the latitude to put off everyone else.

Another attack threatened.

That was the top priority.

And as the latest problem was tied to that matter, he gave it his full and immediate attention. Reaching the medical level, he crossed to one of the private rooms. He entered and found Kat and Lisa flanking a bed.

Sasha lay atop it as Lisa repositioned an EEG lead to the child’s temple.

“She’s sick again?” Painter asked.

“Something new,” Lisa answered. “She’s not febrile like before.”

Kat stood with her arms crossed. Lines of worry etched her forehead. “I was reading to her, trying to get her to sleep after everything that had happened. She was listening. Then suddenly she sat up, turned to an empty corner of the room, called out the name Pyotr, then went limp and collapsed.”

“Pyotr? Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yuri mentioned Sasha had a twin brother named Pyotr. It must have been a hallucination.”

While they talked, Lisa had retreated to a bank of equipment and began powering them up. Sasha was wired to both an EKG and EEG, monitoring cardiac and neurological activity.

“Is her device active?” Painter asked, nodding to Sasha’s TMS unit.

“No,” Lisa answered. “Malcolm checked. He’s already come and gone. Off to make some calls. But something’s sure active. Her EEG readings are showing massive spiking over the lateral convexity of the temporal lobe. Specifically on the right side, where her implant is located. It’s almost as if she’s having a temporal lobe seizure. Contrarily her heart rate is low and her blood pressure dropped to her extremities. It’s as if all her body’s resources are servicing the one organ.”

“Her brain,” Painter said.

“Exactly. Everything else is in shutdown mode.”

“But to what end?”

Lisa shook her head. “I have no idea. I’m going to run some more tests, but if she doesn’t respond, I can think of only one possible solution.”

“What’s that?” Kat asked.

“Though the TMS implant is not active, the spiking EEGs are centered around it. I can’t help but believe those neuro-electrodes are contributing to what’s happening to her. Her electrical activity is frighteningly high in that region—as if those wires in her brain are acting like lightning rods. If I can’t calm her neural activity, she may burn herself out.”

Kat paled at her assessment. “You mentioned a solution.”

Lisa sighed, not looking happy. “We may need to remove her implant. That’s where Malcolm went, to make some calls to a neurosurgeon at George Washington.”

Painter crossed and put an arm around Kat’s shoulders. He knew how attached she had become to the child. They had lost many lives protecting her. To lose her now…

“We’ll do everything we can,” Painter promised her.

Kat nodded.

Painter’s beeper buzzed on his belt. He slipped his arm free and checked the number. The Russian embassy. That was one call he had to take. Gray should be landing at Chelyabinsk in another few minutes.

As he glanced back up, Lisa waved him away with a small tired smile. “I’ll call you if there’s any change.”

He headed for the door—then a sudden thought intruded, something he had set aside and not yet addressed. He frowned questioningly over to Kat.

“Earlier,” he said, “I don’t know if I heard you correctly.”

Kat looked at him.

“What did you mean when you said Monk was still alive?”

12:20 P.M.

Southern Ural Mountains

Monk sidled along the train in the pitch dark. He ran his stumped forearm along the cabs as he moved down the tracks. He stretched and waved his other hand in front of him. Stumbling over railroad ties and larger stones in the gravel, he worked his way from the front of the train toward the back.

A moment before, as Monk had stepped out of the train, Pyotr had stopped screaming. It had cut off abruptly. The silence was even worse, creating a stillness as complete as the darkness. Monk’s heart pounded.

Reaching the next ore car, he hiked up over the edge and waved his arm into the open space. “Pyotr?”

His voice sounded exceptionally loud, echoing down the tunnel. But he didn’t know where the boy was or even if he was still on the train. The only option was to work methodically backward.

Monk hopped back down and moved toward the next car. He stretched his right arm out again, sweeping ahead of him—

—then something grabbed his hand.

Monk yelped in surprise. Warm leathery fingers wrapped around his. He reflexively yanked his arm back, but the fingers held firm. A soft hoot accompanied the grip.

“Marta!” Monk dropped and gave her a fumbling hug in the dark.

She returned it, nudging her cheek against his, and gave a soft chuff of relief. Her entire body trembled. He felt the pounding of her heart against his chest. She broke the embrace but kept hold of his hand. She urged him to follow with a gentle tug.

Monk gained his feet and allowed her to guide him. He knew where she was taking him. To Pyotr. Moving more swiftly, Monk reached the last cab. Unlike the open ore cars in the middle, the last cab was enclosed.

Marta hopped through an open door.

Monk climbed in after her. The old chimpanzee shuffled and herded him to a back corner. He found Pyotr on the floor, flat out on his back.

Monk’s hand patted over him, defining his shape out of the darkness. “Pyotr?”

There was no response.

He felt the boy’s chest rise and fall. Fingers checked his small face. Was he injured? Had he taken a fall? His skin was feverish to the touch. Then a tiny hand wandered like a lost bird and discovered Monk’s fingers—and gripped hard.

“Pyotr, thank God.” Monk scooped him up and sat with the boy in his lap. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Small arms wrapped around his neck. Monk felt the burn of the boy’s skin, even through his clothes.

Pyotr spoke, at his ear. “Go…”

Monk felt a chill pass through him. The tone sounded deeper than Pyotr’s normal tentative falsetto. Maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the boy’s raw fear. But Monk felt no tremble in his thin limbs. The single word had more command than plea.

Still, it was not a bad idea.

He stood and lifted the boy up. Pyotr seemed heavier, though Monk was past the edge of exhaustion into a bone-deep fatigue, near collapse. Marta helped guide him to the door. He jumped out and landed hard. With the boy in his arms, he hurried back toward the front of the train. He had brought one rifle with him, but he’d left the other in the front cab.

Reaching the car, Monk asked, “Can you—?”

Even before he finished the question, Pyotr clambered out of his arms and gained his own feet.

“Stay here.” Monk quickly climbed inside, grabbed the second rifle, and slung it over his shoulder.

He returned to Pyotr. The boy took his hand.

Monk expelled one hard breath. Which direction? The train had stopped halfway along the tunnel. They could either return to Konstantin and the other children or continue ahead. But if they had any hope of stopping this madwoman, Monk saw no advantage in going back.

Perhaps Pyotr thought the same thing. The boy set off in that direction. Toward Chelyabinsk 88.

With two rifles strapped to his back and a boy and chimpanzee in tow, Monk marched down the pitch-black tunnel. They had come full circle and headed back home. But what sort of welcome would they face?

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, General-Major. I don’t know what’s wrong with the children. They’ve never demonstrated this type of catatonia before.”

Savina stared across the room. A pair of nurses and two soldiers had helped spread the ten children on the floor, lined up like felled trees. They’d brought in pillows and blankets from the neighboring bedrooms. Two medical doctors had been summoned: Dr. Petrov specialized in neurology, and Dr. Rostropovich in bioengineering.

In a sheepskin-trimmed jacket, Petrov stood with his fists on his hips. The medical team had been in the process of evacuating when called over here. A large caravan of trucks and vehicles was already lined up for departure.

“I’ll need a full diagnostic suite to better understand what’s happening,” he said. “And we’ve already dismantled—”

“Yes. I know. We’ll have to wait until we reach the facility in Moscow. Can the children be transported safely?”

“I believe so.”

Savina stared hard at the doctor. She did not like his equivocation.

He nodded his head with more certainty. “They’re stable. We can move them.”

“Then make arrangements.”

“Yes, General-Major.”

Savina left further details to the medical staff and headed back down to the control bunker below. While dealing with the matter here, Savina had also been in contact with her resources in the Russian intelligence and military communities. The information gridlock at Chernobyl seemed to finally be loosening. Contradictory reports and rumors swirled around events at the ceremony: everything from a full nuclear meltdown to a foiled terrorist attack by Chechen rebels. The firming consensus was that there had definitely been a radiological leak, though the extent remained unclear.

And why had Nicolas remained silent?

The worry gnawed a ragged edge to her temper and patience.

And now the strangeness with the children.

Savina needed to clamp down on the chaos and focus on the matter at hand. No matter what the circumstances were at Chernobyl, Operation Saturn would proceed. Even if Nicolas had somehow failed, she would not. Her operation alone would unsettle the world economies, kill millions, and spread a radioactive swath halfway across the globe. It would be harder, but with the savant children still under their control, they would persevere.

With such a focus in mind, she cast aside the confusion and sought the cold dispassion of the resolute. She knew what she must do.

Reaching the bunker, she found the wall screens still dark, except for the grainy view of M.C. 337. She studied the spread of small bodies on the rocky floor. There was still no sign of movement over there.

She turned to the two technicians. “Why aren’t the other cameras back online?”

The chief engineer stood up. “The diagnostic reboot finished a few minutes ago. We were waiting on your orders to power systems back online.”

Savina sighed and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Did everyone have to be dragged by the nose? She motioned to the board. “Do it.”

Despite her desire to snap at the man, she kept her voice even. While she had ordered the shutdown, she had indeed left no standing order regarding the power situation.

To avoid any further misunderstanding, Savina pointed to the view of M.C. 337. “Keep the power cut off to the other substation. All except its camera.” She didn’t want any more surprises from that side.

As the two technicians set to work, lights flickered across the board, and the dark screens filled with images of the tunnel and the heart of her operation. Everything appeared fine—except for one glaring exception.

The train was no longer parked beside the mining site.

Savina pointed to the screens. “Bring up the cameras, sequentially down the tunnel. Find the train.”

Fingers punched keys at the master control, and snapshots of the tunnel flipped across the screen, dizzying her head. Then halfway down the passage, the train appeared. It sat idle on the tracks. Savina stepped closer to that monitor and studied the ore cars and cabs. She saw no movement. Someone could be hiding, but Savina didn’t think so.

“Continue down the tunnel,” she ordered.

More digital images flowed. She spotted movement on one.

“Stop!”

A single wall lamp lit this section of the dark tunnel. It lay about a quarter klick from the blast doors. As Savina watched, figures appeared out of the darkness, walking into the light from the deeper tunnel.

Savina’s fingers tightened on the edge of the control board.

It was the American…leading a child by the hand.

As they drew farther into the glow, Savina recognized the boy.

Pyotr.

Straightening, Savina glanced to the grainy image from M.C. 337. All the children remained collapsed. So why was this one boy still up and moving?

“General-Major?” the engineer asked.

Savina’s mind spun but failed to settle on any explanation. She shook her head. As if sensing the eyes upon them, the pair stopped in the light. The American looked behind him. His eyes narrowed with confusion.

As the power returned and pools of lights flickered into existence, Monk knew the cameras must also be online. Without much reason or ability to hide, Monk continued several steps, heading toward the nearest lamp. It was only then that he realized something was amiss.

Or rather missing.

He searched behind him. Marta was gone. He had thought she had been following him in the dark. She moved so silently. He stared back down the throat of the tunnel. He saw no sign of her. Had she remained back at the train? Monk even searched ahead, thinking maybe she had gone scouting in advance of them. But the tunnel ended in two hundred feet at a set of tall blast doors.

Marta was nowhere to be seen.

Speakers off by the doors spat with static, then a crisp voice spoke in English. “Keep moving forward! Bring the boy to the door if you wish to live.”

Monk remained frozen, unsure where to go from here.

12:35 P.M.

KYSHTYM, RUSSIA

Seated in an old farm truck, Gray led the caravan through the gates of the airstrip and out onto a two-lane road that headed off into the mountains. Walls of towering fir and spruce trees flanked the road, creating a handsome green corridor.

In the rearview mirror, Gray watched the small mountain town of Kyshtym recede and vanish into the dense forest. The town lay on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, only nine miles from their destination, Chelyabinsk 88. Like the entire area, the town was not without its own legacy of nuclear disaster and contamination. It lay downwind of another nuclear complex, designated Chelyabinsk 40, also known as Mayak, the Russian word meaning “beacon.” But Mayak was not a shining beacon to Russian nuclear safety. In 1957, a waste tank exploded due to improper cooling and cast eighty tons of radioactive material over the region, requiring the evacuation of hundreds of thousands. The Soviets had kept the accident a secret until 1980. As the road turned a bend, the town vanished, like so much of the Soviet Union’s nuclear history.

Continuing onward, Gray settled into his seat. The road crossed a bridge with guardrails painted fire-engine red. A warning. The bridge spanned a deep river that marked the former boundary of restricted territory. The road wound higher into the mountains.

Behind Gray trailed a dozen trucks of different makes and models, but all well worn and muddy. Gray shared the front seat with Luca and the driver, who were conversing in Romani. Luca pointed ahead and the driver nodded.

“Not far,” Luca said, turning to him. “They already sent up spotters to watch the entry road. They report lots of activity. Many cars and trucks heading down the mountain.”

Gray frowned at the news. It sounded like an evacuation. Were they already too late?

In the bed of the truck, four men lounged, half covered in blankets. Gray had been impressed with their arsenal hidden under the blankets: boxes of assault rifles, scores of handguns, even rocket-propelled grenades.

Luca had explained the lax control of such weaponry on the Russian black market. The small army, gathered from local Russian Gypsy clans, had met them in Kyshtym. They swelled the ranks of the men Luca had brought with them from the Ukraine. Gray had to hand it to Luca Hearn: if you needed to gather a fast militia, he was the Gypsy to call.

In the trucks behind them, Kowalski and Rosauro followed. They had left Elizabeth back at the jet, safely out of harm’s way, guarded by a trio of British S.A.S soldiers.

Everyone had to move swiftly. Speed was essential. The plan was to strike the underground facility, lock it down, and stop whatever was planned. The nature of Operation Saturn remained a mystery. However, considering it was in the heart of the former Soviet Union’s plutonium production facilities and uranium mines, it had to be radiological in nature.

Senator Nicolas Solokov’s words still haunted him.

Millions will still die.

Gray had learned the man was born about ninety miles from here, in the city of Yekaterinburg. This was the region the man represented in the Russian Federal Assembly, which meant he knew the area and its secrets. If someone wanted to plot a nuclear event, here would be a great place to do it.

But what was planned?

Back in Kyshtym, Elizabeth paced the length of the jet. Her arms were folded over her chest, her chin low in concentration. She was worried for the others, fearful after hearing what Gray and the others sought to stop.

Millions will die.

Such madness.

Anxiety kept her on her feet, for the team, for the fate of millions. She had a laptop open on a table. She had tried to work, to keep busy. She had begun downloading her digital pictures from her camera. Professor Masterson had kept her camera safe after she was kidnapped by the Russians. He had returned it to her following their escape from the jail in Pripyat.

On the screen, the photos scrolled as they downloaded into the laptop.

Pacing past, she caught a glimpse of the omphalos, resting at the center of the chakra wheel. Despite her worry, her heart still thrilled at the thought that the stone was the original Delphic artifact. For two decades, historians knew the smaller stone at the museum was a copy, the fate of the original a mystery. Some scholars hypothesized that perhaps some oracular cult had survived the temple’s destruction and that they’d stolen the stone for their secret temple.

Elizabeth drew back to the laptop. She stared at the omphalos. Here was that proof. She sank into the chair as a sudden realization struck her. She remembered what was carved inside the museum’s copy: a curving line of Sanskrit.

image

It was an ancient prayer to Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom and secret knowledge. No one knew who inscribed it there or why. But it was not unusual to see religious graffiti from one religion marking another.

Still, Elizabeth began to suspect the truth. Perhaps the copy of the omphalos had been left behind like a road marker. She scrolled through the images and came upon the photo of the wall mosaic, depicting a child and young woman hiding from a Roman soldier underneath the dome of the omphalos, where the Sanskrit poem was written. It read, “She who had no beginning, ending, or limit, may the Goddess Sarasvati protect her.” It could definitely be referring to the last Oracle, a prayer to protect her lineage. Lastly, the goddess Sarasvati herself made her home in a sacred river. Many religious scholars believed that this mythical river was the Indus River, where the exiled Greeks made their new home.

Elizabeth suspected that someone had left that secret message for others to follow. As she and her father had.

She brought up the image of the original omphalos again. She had taken several pictures, including the triple line carved upon the stone that warned of the trap—written in Harappan, Sanskrit, and Greek. She brought up that image.

There had been another example of this triple writing on the chamber walls. Beneath the figure of the fiery-eyed boy. She brought that up, too. Beneath the mosaic, the line of Harappan was intact, but half of the Sanskrit and Greek and been worn away. Only a letter or two remained legible.

She read what she could. “‘The world will burn…’”

The line nagged, reminding her of what Gray and the others sought to prevent. She stared at the image of a boy rising in smoke and fire from the omphalos and felt a chill of concern. But what was the rest of the message? The only intact line was the one written in indecipherable Harappan. It was a challenging word puzzle.

Unless…

Elizabeth jolted upright and leaned closer, her earlier worries forgotten. She glanced between the two images on the screen. She began to understand what she was looking at. She had lines of Harappan translated into Greek and Sanskrit. Translated. She breathed harder. On the computer, she had the beginnings of a digital Rosetta stone for this lost language.

She returned back to the broken line of passage beneath the smoky boy. She studied it, compared, and pulled up pictures of the writing on the stairwell wall, too. She began to spot commonalities.

Could she translate it?

Sensing something important, she set to work.

12:45 P.M.

General-Major Savina Martov studied her adversary. She stared at the American on the screen. He remained stopped within the pool of light by the tunnel lamp. She lifted the microphone to her lips.

“Move to the doors now!” she barked sharply.

From the way he jumped at her words, the man had heard her. There was no problem with the speakers near the blast doors.

“General-Major,” the engineer said. “I have a priority call for you from the Arkhangelsk Missile Base.”

Savina tilted back and picked up the handset. One of her contacts was established at the base there. “Martov here.”

“General-Major, some disturbing intelligence is coming out of the Ukraine. It seems that Senator Nicolas Solokov is dead.”

Savina inhaled sharply. She kept any stronger reaction in check. Still, her throat tightened. Her contact did not know Nicolas was her son, only that he was intimate and supportive of her operations here.

The contact continued speaking. “Rumors are still swirling as to the details surrounding the events. Some say he was killed by terrorists, while others say he may have had a hand in the actions there. All that is certain is that he is dead. Cameras from inside the sealed Shelter show his body, along with his assistant. He was shot in the head. Radiation levels are still too high to safely remove his body, but measures are under way. I can’t say…”

The man’s words droned on, but Savina had stopped listening. Tears welled up in her eyes. She tilted her head back to keep them from spilling. As the man finished, Savina thanked him for the call and hung up.

She turned her back slightly from the technician and engineer.

Nicolas was dead.

Her only son.

Maybe a part of her had known this already. For the past hour, she had been unable to shake a pall of despair. Her breathing had grown heavier. Nicolas…

“General-Major?” the engineer asked softly.

His gentleness only angered her. She turned her attention to the screen. The American still hadn’t moved. As if her grief were oil, her frustration set flame to it. A fury built inside her. The American had been thwarting her all day, and now defied her.

No longer.

Tears dried in the heat of her vehemence.

Her son might be dead, but she had given birth to another child, to the dream that would rise out of the ashes here. Family blood was not the only way to leave behind a legacy. She would finish what had killed her son. She would find another figurehead to take his place. It might take longer, but it would be done. The world had stolen her son. But she had the power to strike back.

A fierceness entered her voice that made the engineer take a step back. “Enough!” She pointed to the two screens on the left. They depicted the heart of Operation Saturn. One displayed a view up the shaft toward the planted charges; the other centered on the iris set in the floor. “Initiate Saturn! On my mark!”

The engineer and technician swung to their stations. They tapped furiously.

Savina stared at the man on the screen. If he wouldn’t bring Pyotr to her, she would light a fire under the man. There would be no retreating, no escape.

“Green across the board,” the engineer said tersely. “Awaiting your mark.”

“Go!”

She took a deep breath and watched the two screens. One monitor flashed with light. She heard a distant muffled explosion. Rocks tumbled past the camera, followed by a surge of mud, smothering the view. On the other screen, the iris rolled open as a sluice of rock and mud washed down atop it with a heavy wallop. Moments later, black water flowed from above, gushing in a solid column. The engineers’ calculations proved perfect. The arc of the water sluiced straight down the open maw of the iris.

It had begun.

The world had killed her son. But her brainchild would live. Though she had initiated the operation with a fury that was equal parts hope and retribution, she could not deny a dark vein in her steel. As the water flowed, she knew she would have her revenge on the world for what it had stolen from her today.

She turned her attention to the American.

Once whetted, her vengeance sought a new target.

She was not done.

Monk picked himself off the ground. The explosion still rang in his head. Trapped in the enclosed space, the concussive force had slammed against his ears like the clap of giant hands. He had covered Pyotr with his own body.

As his head continued to ring, he helped the boy to his feet. Distantly a heavy roaring echoed from the dark tunnel behind him, sounding like the growl of some great dragon. But Monk knew what he was hearing.

The rush of water.

Tons of water.

He also knew what it all meant—the explosion, the subterranean waterfall—it meant he had failed. Operation Saturn was under way, dumping a toxic slurry into the heart of the world.

The loudspeaker squawked again by the blast doors.

“Drop your weapons!” the woman said with a mix of ice and fire, cold determination laced with anger. “Bring the boy to the door. And I suggest you move quickly. The radiation levels are rising rapidly. You have less than five minutes before you absorb a lethal dosage.”

Monk had no choice. He shrugged off the rifles and let them clatter to the tracks. Pyotr reached over and grabbed the sleeve of his stumped arm.

Together they hurried the last couple hundred yards, racing as radiation rose in the tunnel. Ahead, the blast doors slowly parted, revealing a line of five soldiers with rifles leveled.

Their welcoming committee.

Pyotr urged him faster, as if the boy knew something Monk did not.

Monk’s wounded leg lanced an agonizing spike with every step. His chest tightened. His breathing wheezed. He stared down toward his waist. He still wore his dosimeter badge. It flapped with each step. Monk could see the surface. It showed crimson, but with each passing yard, it grew a shade darker.

Despite his leg, he sped faster.

Monk and Pyotr sprinted for the doors.

As they neared the exit, a massive blast shattered like thunder, coming from out in the cavern of Chelyabinsk 88. Monk’s steps stuttered in surprise, but Pyotr tugged him onward.

The guards, equally startled, twisted around. One dropped flat in fear.

Pyotr aimed for the gap. Hitting the line, the boy leaped over the soldier’s prone form. His other hand darted and snatched a sidearm from the holster of a neighboring soldier. The boy swung and slapped the weapon into Monk’s one hand.

There was no fumbling. It had hit his palm perfectly. Monk swung out his arm. From point-blank range, he fired into the line, using a reflexive skill buried deeper than his erased memory.

He emptied the entire clip, dropping all five men.

Monk tossed the pistol aside. Pyotr dashed forward and grabbed another. He passed it to Monk, snatched his sleeve again, and they were off.

All around the cavern, more explosions rocked. Men screamed and smoke poured from several of the abandoned apartment buildings. As he ran, he spotted the screaming passage of a rocket-propelled mortar or grenade. It slammed into another of the buildings. Concrete and glass exploded outward, showering the soldiers below.

The base was under attack.

But by whom?

Gray raced the truck down the concrete ramp and through the massive doors. On the plane ride here, he had read about these complexes, these cities underground. The Soviets used to bring in orchestras and bands to play for the workers, filling subterranean amphitheaters. Still, Gray was not ready for the sheer size of the place.

Nor the chaos.

Six trucks had led the initial assault.

To soften them up, Luca had said.

Gray couldn’t argue. This was Luca’s army, not his.

He had one mission.

Gray shot through a wall of smoke. He saw rocket fire slamming into the five-story apartment buildings, collapsing entire sections. Luca was in the bed of the truck, braced with a rocket on his shoulder. Two trucks flanked to either side. Kowalski drove one, Rosauro the other.

After their trucks passed through the mouth of the tunnel, the Gypsies closed off the exit road behind them, blocking the way with a pair of logging trucks, heavy with timber. Two dozen men manned the barricade and kept anyone from leaving.

Gray was impressed by the Gypsies’ attack strategy—both now and moments before.

On the way up here from the airport, all the vehicles in the region appeared to be just ordinary rural traffic, wandering the mountainside roads and dirt tracks. Then, upon a coordinated signal, the entire peaceful-looking countryside rose and turned upon the mountain in a synchronized assault. Rifles bristled out of bunkers built into the centers of hay trucks. Horses broke away from wagons with riders bearing shotguns, covering steeper terrain swiftly. Motorcycles rocketed out of the back of paneled milk trucks and shot up the side roads. The sudden transformation locked the mountainside down in a matter of minutes.

The Russians who had already left the subterranean compound were waylaid on the road, driven into ditches, stripped of weapons, and tied up. By the time Gray reached the mountain entrance, the advance assault team was already barreling into the throat of the tunnel, leaving a trail of smoke and fire for him to follow.

Gray hadn’t hesitated. They had no time to spare. Operation Saturn had to be found and stopped.

And Luca’s men assisted there, too. Like any good army, the Gypsies had gathered intelligence in advance of an attack. On the way up here, a man in a black ankle-length duster had stood in the middle of the road and waved Luca’s truck to stop. Two men in laboratory coats knelt in the roadside ditch, hands behind their backs, rifles held at their heads. The Gypsies hadn’t been gentle. Then again, it was the Russians who had slaughtered their mountaintop village and kidnapped their children.

The Russians had started this war; the Gypsies intended to finish it.

The interrogator passed Luca a hand-drawn map, splattered with blood. Luca handed it off to Gray. It was a crude schematic of Chelyabinsk 88, including a circle around the control station for Operation Saturn, located in a subbasement bunker beneath one of the cavern’s apartment structures.

With the goal known, Gray careened the truck down the curving road toward the ongoing siege at the high-rise complex. The initial attack, while dramatic and surprising, had also clogged the road with rubble. One entire building had fallen across the central roadway.

Gypsies in trucks continued to mount a fiery barrage.

Others abandoned their vehicles and prepared for a ground offensive.

Gray skidded his truck to where the men gathered and rolled out. Kowalski and Rosauro joined him. Hopping out of the truck bed, Luca called out in Romani. Men responded. After a few exchanges, Luca turned to Gray and hunkered down with him behind one of the trucks.

“The Russians have taken to the buildings, defending more fiercely the deeper you go.”

Gray knew why. “They’ve pulled their forces back to defend the control station. If they’ve not already initiated Saturn, they will soon. We can’t wait.”

Luca held up a restraining hand and glanced back toward the gathered ground troops. “I have a man…ah, here he is.”

A small figure ran low over to them. He wore cement-gray clothes and a black cap. The two Romani men spoke quickly.

“This is Rat,” Luca introduced the newcomer.

“Nice name,” Kowalski mumbled.

“He’s a scout. Skilled at finding paths no one would think to guard. He may know a way, but it’ll have to be a small party. No more than five or six.” Luca looked around at their small group. “Perhaps just us. Va?”

“Va,” Kowalski agreed, then glanced to Gray for confirmation.

“The other men will keep the Russians busy,” Luca added, waving to the ground forces and trucks.

“We go then?” Rat asked in stilted English.

“Va,” Gray answered, earning a grin from the man and a clap on his knee.

They readied their weapons—rifles and sidearms—and followed the small man toward a pile of rubble. Gray could see no way through. Luca motioned to the ground forces as they passed. A sharp warbling whistle spread across the smoky cavern.

Rat waved their small team under a tilted section of wall. Gray ducked and found it led to a basement window of the closest apartment building.

As they slowly continued into the scout’s maze, Gray heard a shout rise behind him.

“Opre Roma!”

Like a flame set to dry grass, the clarion call spread.

Gunfire and rocket blasts intensified.

Continuing onward, Gray prayed they weren’t too late.

Savina moved swiftly down the stairs and into the bunker. She ignored the twinges from her back, the shooting pains down her legs, and her pounding heart. At the first sound of attack, she had the blast doors to the tunnel sealed and locked.

Above, waiting for her, a group of the five strongest soldiers had been summoned by Dr. Petrov. The plan was to abscond with five children, carried on the backs of the soldiers. No more. She could not take all ten. Their best chance to escape was to move quickly and efficiently. The American prisoner had given her the idea. He and the children had fled out a back service tunnel. They would do the same.

But Savina had one last measure to address.

She entered the bunker and found the technician and engineer tearing out keyboards. They had already used magnetic wands to wipe the hard drives. The damage to the controls would guarantee that nothing would interfere with the progress of Operation Saturn.

“Is everything locked down?”

The engineer nodded his head vigorously. “It would take an electrical genius weeks to repair it.”

“Very good.” She lifted her pistol and shot the engineer through the forehead. The technician tried to run, but Savina swung her arm and dropped him at the foot of the stairs, pierced through the neck. He writhed, choking on his own blood.

She could not risk these two being caught. What they dismantled, they might be forced to fix at gunpoint.

She could not let that happen.

To satisfy herself even further, Savina grabbed a fire ax from the back wall and crossed to the boards. Lifting it high, she smashed both computers and electronics boards. Afterward, she rested the ax on the floor and leaned on its handle. She stared at the row of LCD screens. They still displayed views from various cameras. She considered smashing the monitors, too, but with her back in full spasm, she didn’t know if she could lift the ax again.

And in the end, what did it matter?

She shoved the ax to the floor and stared at the centermost screen. Water poured in a toxic black stream.

Let them see what she had wrought.

She smiled, enjoying this one last act of cruelty, then turned and headed for the stairs.

Let them watch the world die.

No one could stop her.