EPTEMBER 7, 10:38 A.M.

PRIPYAT, UKRAINE

Gray secured the black belt over the Russian field jacket, camouflaged in forest green. He stamped his feet more securely into the boots. Kowalski tossed him a furred cap. The stolen uniform fit decently, but his partner’s outfit looked ready to burst at the seams. The two Russian soldiers, stripped to their underclothes, had been posted at the front of the jailhouse. Caught by surprise, it had not been hard to knock them out and secure the uniforms.

“Let’s go,” Gray said and headed to a motorcycle.

“Shotgun,” Kowalski called out.

Gray glanced over, realizing the man was not talking about a weapon. They both had AN-94 Russian assault rifles.

Kowalski eyed the sidecar to the IMZ-Ural motorcycle. “Always wanted to ride in one of these,” he said and climbed into the open car.

Gray shifted the rifle over a shoulder and hiked a leg over the seat.

Moments later, engine growling, they shot through the old prison gates and out into the weed-strewn streets of Pripyat. Gray checked his wristwatch.

Twenty minutes.

Leaning lower, he throttled up, goosed the gas, and sped through the faded, rusted city. The asphalt was broken, and shattered glass threatened the tires. Around every corner, they met unexpected obstacles: abandoned rusted skeletons of automobiles, moss-covered old furniture, and even a strangely surreal stack of band instruments.

Despite the hazards, Gray raced at breakneck speeds, taking corners hard enough to lift the sidecar off its tire. Kowalski whooped a bit at these turns. They passed the occasional soldier patrolling the streets, who lifted a rifle or arm in greeting as they raced past; at other times, Gray spotted a flash of a haunted face peering through a broken window, one of the stray scavengers of the city.

Reaching the outskirts of Pripyat, Gray sped toward the horizon as a trio of deer sprang away from the roar of the cycle. He aimed for the towering ventilation stack of the reactor. Even over the roar of the cycle, he heard snatches of amplified voices rolling out from the grandstands. According to Masterson, Senator Nicolas Solokov was planning some attack on those gathered here to observe the sealing of the Chernobyl reactor.

But what was the man’s plan?

What was Operation Uranus?

As Gray raced down a freshly paved asphalt road, he studied the growing hulk of the Chernobyl complex ahead. His eyes were drawn to what looked like a gargantuan Quonset hut off to one side. The arched steel hangar reflected the morning sunlight like a mirror.

And it was moving.

Like oil on water, the sunlight flowed over its curved exterior. It closed slowly upon the Chernobyl reactor. Most of the complex was gray concrete and whitewashed surfaces, but along one side, a hulking structure stuck out along one edge, blackened like a dead tooth. It marked the grave of reactor number four, a massive black Sarcophagus. The rolling hangar, open at one end, sought to swallow the structure under its high arch.

As they drew closer, Gray’s mind shuffled through possibilities. Archibald Polk had been exposed to a deadly level of radiation, possibly from here. Whatever Nicolas was planning had to involve the old reactor. Nothing else made sense.

Masterson had warned that security would be high near the grandstands, especially with the number of dignitaries in attendance. The stands stood a quarter mile from the reactor. Gray weighed which path to take: to head for the grandstands or the reactor. What if he was wrong about the reactor? Could there be a bomb somewhere among the stands?

As the bike shot across the open plain between Pripyat and Chernobyl, a broadcasted voice reached him, echoing and hollow, extolling the virtues of nuclear cooperation in the new world. There was no mistaking that voice. Gray had attended several events at the White House.

It was the president of the United States.

Gray factored this into his account. The Secret Service would surely have canvassed the site, swept it multiple times, set up a strict protocol. Additionally, the Secret Service would have agents on all sides of the reactor, again searching for any threat.

Gray studied the number of parked vehicles, the sea of satellite antennas. The entire grandstand area was cordoned off with fences, gates, and patrolling guards—on foot and in open jeeps. While his disguise worked at a distance, Gray doubted the ruse would get him through to the stands. He had no identification, no passes for the event.

As he weighed his options, speeding toward the immense site, he was awed by the sheer size of the project. The giant steel hangar slowly trundled along a pair of tracks, pulled by whale-size hydraulic jacks. It had already reached the dead reactor and had begun to close over it, arching high into the sky, its steel now nearly blinding with sunlight, so tall that the Statue of Liberty could stand on her own shoulders and still not reach the roof of the arched hangar.

Even Kowalski whistled his appreciation at the dimensions of the rolling structure. He finally leaned over and called out, “What’s the plan when we—?”

Gray lifted an arm, silencing him. A new voice had cut into the president’s speech. Like the president, this speaker was also familiar. He spoke Russian, then repeated his words in English, playing for the international audience.

Senator Nicolas Solokov’s voice boomed toward Gray. “I protest this travesty!” he bellowed. “Here we all are, congratulating ourselves for erasing a shameful piece of Russian history—for hiding it, as though it never happened, sweeping it under a steel rug. But what about those killed during the explosion, what about the hundreds of thousands doomed to die of cancers and leukemia, what of the thousands of babies born into deformity, pain, and mental debilitation? Who will speak for them?”

Gray was now close enough to see the stage that rose before the amphitheater seating. Figures were too small to make out, but giant video screens flanked the stage. One displayed the Russian president, the other the United States’s leader. Each president stood behind a podium. In the center of the stage, another figure stood amid chaos. Nicolas Solokov. Guards tried to haul the senator from the stage, while others protected him so he could speak. From all the milling confusion, Nicolas must have barged onto the stage to initiate this dramatic, televised protest.

Off to the side, men in black surrounded and shielded the president.

Whatever Nicolas had planned, it had begun. Gray leaned lower and gunned the engine. The motorcycle rocketed down the blacktop toward the stands.

The speaker squawked with electronic feedback, then Nicolas continued, shouting, “You all believe a handsome coffin like this marks an end to a blasted legacy, but it is all sham! The monster has already escaped its cage! No matter how large a lock or how strong the steel, you cannot put that monster back behind bars. The only real end to this legacy is to fundamentally change our attitudes, to set true and lasting policy. This ceremony is nothing more than a pale charade! All posture, no substance! We should be ashamed!”

Finally, the guards overwhelmed the senator’s supporters. Nicolas’s microphone was ripped from his hands. He was dragged bodily off the stage.

The Russian president began speaking in his native tongue, sounding both angry and apologetic. The U.S. president motioned the agents to disperse, not wanting to appear spooked by a showboating politician. Speeches slowly resumed.

Behind them, the arch continued to swallow the reactor.

Gray slowed his bike. He still had a choice to make: to head to the grandstands or the reactor. He considered Nicolas’s protest, his dramatic exit. It had all been artfully staged. The senator had plainly orchestrated a reason not to be at the event, to be taken away. But where? He would not leave that to chance. He would not risk being trapped in harm’s way. Whoever had dragged Nicolas from the stage must be in his employ, removing him to safety.

Beyond the gaggle of TV vans, Gray spotted a green army jeep hightailing it away from the media area. It was on a dirt road that paralleled the eight-foot-tall tracks of the massive archway. The rutted path headed away from the reactor and curved around the end of the tracks toward the rear side of the complex.

Gray spotted a suited figure in the backseat.

Nicolas.

Gray stared upward. The blinding steel structure now consumed half of the blackened hulk of the Sarcophagus. In another fifteen minutes, it would close completely over the crypt. The grandstands rested a quarter mile away from the reactor.

Gray had to make a choice.

He pictured Nicolas Solokov seated behind the desk in the guard shack during the interrogation. From the cut of his clothes to the patterns of his speech, the man was arrogant and self-assured, an ego matched only by a need to control. It radiated out of him.

Nicolas would want to watch what was to come.

So why was he heading behind the reactor?

Unless…

Gray swung the cycle off the blacktop and cut across the open fields. He headed straight for the end of the tracks, intending to intercept the vehicle as it rounded the bend in the road.

“Pierce!” Kowalski yelled. “Where are we going?”

“To save the president.”

“But the grandstand’s over that way!” Kowalski pointed an arm in the opposite direction.

Ignoring him, Gray bounced the cycle like a dirt bike across the rolling plain. Kowalski clutched tightly to the handrails. Gray gunned the engine and sped faster over the wild terrain. Mud and grass spattered behind him.

Ahead, the jeep raced alongside the four hundred yards of tracks. The vehicle was almost to the end. It would be close. Gray was still a football field away from the road.

And they’d been spotted.

An arm pointed toward their racing motorcycle. From the distance, Gray and Kowalski would appear to be Russian soldiers out for a joy ride. Confusion should reign for a moment in the jeep. That’s all they would have.

“Kowalski!”

“What?”

“Can you take out one of their rear tires as they make that curve?”

“Are you nuts?” he asked, his voice rattling with the bike.

“Hang on.”

Gray angled the bike into a dry sandy wash. Floods had swept the stretch fairly flat and smooth.

“Take your shot!” he yelled to Kowalski.

The large man already had his assault rifle up. Kowalski braced himself in the sidecar and brought the rifle to his shoulder. Gray heard him almost purr to his weapon. “C’mon, baby, make Daddy proud.”

Directly ahead, the jeep had reached the end of the tracks. It slowed to make the sharp turn but still took the corner hard. The driver fought to hold his vehicle to the road.

Gray heard a pop-pop from the sidecar. The Russian AN-94 fired double shots with every squeeze. At the same time, the jeep suddenly fishtailed as the driver lost control, his left rear tire smoking and tossing tread. It skidded sideways and slammed into a concrete pylon between the ends of the track.

Kowalski hooted his satisfaction and rubbed the side of his weapon. “Thank you, baby!”

Further self-congratulation was cut off as their cycle left the sandy wash and sailed back into coarser terrain. Spitting rocks, the cycle tore forward and reached the roadway in seconds.

The Russian jeep rested where it had crashed, one side crumpled, killing one of the soldiers in the front passenger seat. The other three occupants had piled out and retreated into a jumble of concrete barriers and low metal shacks that filled the space between the two track rails.

As Gray rounded into view, a roar of clapping erupted from the grandstands, along with cheering. The ceremony was reaching its climax. Covered by the noise, Gray barely heard the shots fired at them. The bike’s front tire blew, but Gray had anticipated an attack and aimed the cycle to the far side of the crumpled jeep. He slammed to a skidding stop behind it and rolled off the bike.

Kowalski tumbled out alongside him, and together they sheltered behind the crashed vehicle.

More rounds pinged off the front of the jeep.

Gray risked a fast peek around the rear bumper. He spotted a suited figure fleeing straight down the center of the tracks, which rose eight feet tall to either side, built of concrete and steel.

Nicolas Solokov was making a three-hundred-yard dash for the goal—in this case, the back end of the rolling archway. Gray tried to get a shot at him, but a bullet struck the bumper and whistled past his ear. He caught a glimpse of a smoking pistol, borne aloft by a raven-haired woman.

Elena.

Cursing, he dropped back.

Kowalski yelped, nicked in the shoulder.

The woman and a soldier held them pinned down.

Gray checked his watch.

Ten minutes.

Nicolas heard gunfire behind him and tried to race faster down the concourse between the raised tracks, but he’d twisted his left ankle after the crash. He had to trust Elena to keep him safe.

Two workers walked behind the backside of the steel Shelter. The massive structure rolled slowly along the rails, creeping a foot a minute on Teflon bearings, drawn by the massive hydraulic pulling jacks to either side.

A garage-door-size service hatch lay open ahead and offered access to the inside of the looming Shelter. It was the main reason Nicolas had fled from the others. He could not be sitting in front of that open door when Operation Uranus came to fruition.

He hobbled as fast as he could down the packed gravel roadway between the tracks. He had to get through that door, across the interior of the Shelter, and out the rear side before it closed.

Even he couldn’t stop Operation Uranus.

All he could do was get out of its way.

The plan had been formulated back in 1999, when the Shelter Implementation Plan had first started. The SIP’s goal was to stabilize and cover the old Sarcophagus. Engineers had been warning for years that the old crypt could collapse at any moment, exposing two hundred tons of radioactive uranium to the atmosphere. By that time, sections of the old Sarcophagus had already begun to crumble. Tiny holes and fissures had formed. So the first phase of the SIP sought to stabilize the Sarcophagus. That meant patching holes, shoring up structural wall pillars, and securing the rickety ventilation stack. This was all done while the Shelter’s massive arch was being constructed a safe four hundred yards away.

That initial structural work was completed in 1999—but it held some secrets. After the fall of the Soviet Union, corruption ran rampant. It had cost little to have four concussion charges secretly planted into the new wall pillars. They had remained dormant and inactive until yesterday. Last night, one of Nicolas’s men had sent a signal to the buried charges, setting the timers to match the closure of the Shelter over the Sarcophagus. Once set, there was no turning back.

At exactly two minutes before the Shelter sealed, the charges would blow. No one would even hear them. All that would be noted was a crash of concrete, followed by the collapse of an entire section of the Sarcophagus’s wall—the side that faced the grandstands. For an entire two minutes, the stands would be bathed in massive amounts of radiation before the Shelter finally sealed against the concrete wall behind the Sarcophagus. The exposure would not be enough to cause immediate fatalities. In fact, no one would feel anything. But during those two minutes, everyone in attendance would absorb a lethal dose of radiation.

They would all be dead within a matter of weeks.

In attendance were the Russian prime minister and president, alongside the leaders from across the Americas and the European Union. If successful, Nicolas’s mission would throw the major world governments into disarray, so that when the radiological bloom spread globally from his mother’s operation at Chelyabinsk 88, the world would need a strong voice, someone who had spent his career warning of just such a catastrophe.

They would turn to the only survivor of Operation Uranus.

And over the coming months—guided by the secret cabal of savants—Nicolas would demonstrate a remarkable prescience, intuitive knowledge, and brilliant foresight.

Out of the fire to come, Nicolas would quickly rise to power in Russia, and from there, stretch his influence globally. The Russian Empire would rise from these radioactive ashes to guide the world in a new direction.

It was such a thought that fueled him now.

He limped up to the two men following the back end of the Shelter. He pulled the pistol from his pocket. Two head shots. Almost point-blank. They dropped like leaden sacks to the gravel. There could be no witnesses.

Nicolas hurried through the open service hatch that pierced the back wall of the hangar. It took a dozen steps to cross through the hatch. The Shelter’s steel walls were twelve meters thick.

Once through, Nicolas entered the heart of the Shelter.

Despite his desperation, he gaped at the sheer wonder of the massive space. The arch of steel climbed a hundred meters overhead and was two and a half times as wide. Cavernous did not describe the place. Like stars in the night sky, hundreds of lamps lit the vast interior, positioned along steel scaffolding that lined the inside of the Shelter. Overhead, a maze of yellow tracks crisscrossed the roof. Giant robotic cranes waited stationary, ready to tear apart the old Sarcophagus. Giant hooks the size of ships’ anchors and skeletal pronged grips hung from the trolley cranes.

Just inside the Shelter, Nicolas stopped long enough to hit the giant red button that closed the service hatch. It trundled slowly closed behind him, creeping down on giant gears.

According to their original plan, Nicolas and Elena were to hole up outside in a control booth on the far side of the Shelter. The booth, which controlled the winch engines, was heavily lead-lined to protect the operator from any radiation. It was also positioned on the opposite side from the concussive charges, so exposure should be minimal.

Nicolas needed to reach that booth, but if Elena remained pinned down between the tracks back there, he wanted to protect her from the burst of radiation that would come. Though not in a direct line of the exposure like the grandstands, her position could still be exposed to scatter radiation through the open rear hatch—maybe not enough to kill her, but it could destroy her chances of having healthy children.

So to protect his own future genetic heritage, Nicolas sought to shield her. But more than that, he could not totally discount that he did care for the woman. His mother would interpret such tender feelings as weakness, but Nicolas could not deny his heart.

As the door slowly lowered, Nicolas headed off.

“Elena!” Gray called out from behind the jeep. “You must help us!”

There was no answer.

At least not from Elena.

“Pierce, I don’t think you’re going to talk your way out of this,” Kowalski said. His partner crouched a few steps away. His shoulder wept blood through his jacket, but it was only a graze. “She’s one crazy bitch. Why is it always the crazy ones who are such good shots?”

“I don’t think she’s crazy,” Gray mumbled.

At least he hoped not.

He had seen how she had reacted to the revelation that Sasha was Nicolas’s biological daughter. A mix of shocked dismay and protectiveness. There was some connection between Elena and the girl, something more than just an augmented sisterhood.

He had to trust he was correct.

“Sasha came to me!” Gray called out. “Sought me out. She guided us here for a reason.”

Silence stretched. Then a soft voice finally spoke. “How? How did Sasha guide you here?”

Elena was testing him.

Gray took a deep breath. He lifted his rifle in the air and tossed it aside.

“Pierce…,” Kowalski growled. “If you think I’m throwing my gun away, you’re as nutty as she is.”

Gray stood up.

Across the gap, the Russian soldier’s rifle shifted toward him. Elena also rose and barked at the soldier, keeping him from shooting outright. Elena wanted to know more about Sasha. Across the way, the Russian pair shared a fortress of concrete pylons. Elena kept her pistol pointed at him.

Gray answered her question. “How did Sasha guide us? She drew pictures. First she guided the Gypsies to my door. Then she drew a picture of the Taj Mahal, which guided us to India, where we discovered your true heritage and history. You have to ask yourself why. Sasha is special, is she not?”

Elena just stared at him with her hard, dark eyes.

Gray took that as agreement and continued, letting her see and hear the truth in his words. “Why were we sent to India? Why even engage us at all? Why now? There has to be a reason. I think Sasha—consciously or unconsciously—is trying to stop what you’re planning on doing.”

Elena showed no flicker of acknowledgment, but Gray was still alive.

“She sent us on a path to discover your roots: from the Oracle of Delphi, through the Gypsies, to now. I think there was some reason your lineage was begun. Perhaps the fulfillment of a great prophecy that is yet to come.”

“What prophecy?” Elena asked.

Gray noted a flicker of both recognition and fear. Was there some nightmare etched into their psyches? Gray pictured the mosaics found at the Greek stronghold in India, including the last mosaic on the wall, a fiery shape rising out of smoke from the omphalos. Gray took a chance and quickly described what they had found, finishing with, “The figure looked like a boy with eyes of fire.”

The pistol in Elena’s arm began to tremble—though it still didn’t waver from its aim at his chest. Gray heard Elena mumble a name that sounded like Peter.

“Who is Peter?” Gray asked.

“Pyotr,” Elena corrected. “Sasha’s brother. He has nightmares sometimes. Wakes screaming, saying his eyes are on fire. But…but…”

“What?” Gray pressed, intrigued despite the time pressure.

“When he wakes, we all do. For just a moment, we see Pyotr burning.” She shook her head. “But his talent is empathy. He’s very strong. We attributed the nightmares to some quake of his talent that radiated outward. An empathic echo.”

“It’s not just an echo from Pyotr,” Gray realized aloud. “It’s an echo going back to the beginning.”

But where does it end?

Gray stared over to Elena. “You cannot truly want what is to come. Sasha plainly did not. She brought me here. If she wanted Nicolas’s plan to work, all she had to do was remain silent. But she didn’t. She brought me to you, Elena. To you. To this moment. You have the chance to either help Sasha or destroy what she started. It’s your choice.”

Her decision was instantaneous, perhaps born out of the fire in her brain. She pivoted on a toe and fired. The Russian soldier dropped, killed instantly.

Gray hurried over to her. “How do we stop Operation Uranus?”

“You cannot,” she answered, her voice slightly dazed, perhaps dizzy from the sudden reversal of roles, or perhaps merely waking from a long dream.

Elena handed Gray her pistol, as if knowing where he must go. He was already sidling past her and heading off between the rails. If she didn’t know how to stop Operation Uranus, perhaps Nicolas did.

“You must hurry,” she said. “But I…I may know a way to help.”

She turned and glanced toward the back side of the complex, where Nicolas been headed originally.

Gray pointed to the motorcycle. Though the front tire was flat, it would still be faster than on foot. “Kowalski, help her.”

“But she shot me.”

Gray didn’t have time to argue. He turned and sprinted through the forest of concrete pylons. The way opened ahead, lined by the tracks to either side. At the other end of the concourse, he spotted Nicolas limping through a wide door in the massive steel wall and vanishing into the darkness.

Gray pounded down the way.

Down to six minutes.

As he flew, he saw the black gap in the steel wall begin to narrow. The door was closing.

They’d escaped the jail, but now what?

Elizabeth ran behind Rosauro, while Luca trailed and guarded their backs with a pistol. Using his cane, Masterson limped as best he could next to Elizabeth. She helped the old man by holding on to his elbow.

Their first priority was to find a phone and to raise an alarm. But the entire city appeared haunted and desolate. Birches grew out of broken streets, weeds grew everywhere, buildings were scribed with lichen and moss. How were they going to find a working phone here?

“The next intersection!” Masterson gasped and waved his cane while taking a hop on his good leg. “To the left. The Polissia Hotel should be at the end of that next block.”

Masterson had suggested the destination. Apparently the hotel had been renovated for a gala the prior night and was being used this morning as a shuttle station for guests invited to the ceremony.

But what about uninvited guests?

Elizabeth had caught a glimpse of Gray and Kowalski flying away on a motorcycle as they’d made their own escape. She hoped they were okay and could do something to stop that bastard. As she fled with the others, her head ached and her eyes strained. Tension and fear wore her down.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Masterson wheezed.

She glanced at him. She knew he was apologizing for more than just involving her and the others in this escapade.

“I truly didn’t think your father was in any bloody danger,” he explained. “I thought the Russians’ interest in Archibald’s work was just a matter of industrial espionage, stealing data. I never thought it would result in his death.”

Even though she understood the professor’s position in the past and recognized the international threat now, she could not find her way to forgiving him. Not for her father, and not for involving them in all this without their consent. She was tired of secrets—both her father’s and this man’s.

As they neared the intersection, two Russian soldiers stepped from a doorway. One dropped a cigarette and ground it underfoot. The other lifted his rifle and barked at them in Russian.

“Kak tebya zavut?”

“Let me handle this,” Masterson said and waved for Rosauro and Luca to lower their weapons.

The professor straightened his white hat and leaned more heavily on his cane. He doddered to the front and called out in Russian, “Dobraye utro!”

Masterson spoke fluently. All Elizabeth understood were the words London Times. Masterson must be attempting to pass them off as visiting press.

The soldier lowered his weapon. “You are Englishers.”

Masterson nodded with a broad, embarrassed smile. “You speak English. Brilliant. We’ve gotten ourselves lost and could not find our way back to the Polissia Hotel. If you’d be so kind, perhaps you could escort us back there.”

From the crinkling of the soldiers’ brows, they must not have understood him that well. Masterson was using their own lack of fluency to unbalance them, to deflect them from questioning the cover story. But the soldier with the rifle did understand their goal.

“Polissia Gostineetsa?” he asked.

“Da! Now there’s a good chap. Could you take us there?”

The pair spoke in rapid snatches of Russian. Finally one shrugged and the other turned with a nod.

Behind them, a scream of a motorcycle erupted, shattering the quiet town. Far down the street, in the direction of the jail, a motorcycle with a flashing blue light and sidecar swung into the road, bearing two soldiers with furred caps. They were spotted. Shouts called out in Russian toward them.

Suddenly the pair of soldiers in front of them stiffened.

“Trouble,” Masterson said and pushed Elizabeth down the street. “Run!”

Rosauro spun on a heel and snap-kicked the closest soldier in the face. Bone cracked, and he fell stiffly backward. The other guard lifted his weapon, but Luca was quicker on the draw with his pistol. Blood exploded from the soldier’s shoulder, twisting him around as if mule-kicked, but his weapon chattered with automatic fire, sweeping toward them.

Masterson rolled and shielded Elizabeth, while both Luca and Rosauro dropped flat to the street. The professor fell against her and knocked her to her knees. Luca’s pistol cracked again, and the gunfire ended.

Masterson slid off her and slumped to the road. Elizabeth had felt the shuddering impacts into his body. He rolled to his back while blood pooled under him.

“Hayden!”

He waved her off, still holding his cane. “Go!”

The motorcycle screamed down the road toward them all.

Rosauro yanked her up.

Luca fired at the motorcycle, but it swerved behind cars and debris for cover. Return fire from the soldier in the sidecar sparked the pavement around them.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” Masterson said again, blood bubbling at his lips.

“Hayden…” She covered her mouth, unable to find the words to thank him, to forgive him.

Still, he saw it in her eyes and gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment with a shadow of a smile, content. “Go…,” he said hoarsely, eyelids closing.

Rosauro pushed her down the street toward the next intersection. Luca kept firing one-handed behind him as he ran—then the slide on his pistol popped open, out of ammunition. Strafing fire chased them.

Rosauro guided them alongside the edge of the road, putting a rusted truck between them and the cycle. “Around the corner!”

But they’d never make it.

No longer under fire, the cycle roared straight for them.

Elizabeth looked over her shoulder. As the motorcycle swerved through the bodies in the street, Masterson suddenly rolled with the last of his strength and jammed his cane into the front wheel of the bike. The stout rod snapped and sent the cycle flipping up on its front tire and over. It crashed upside down and slid across the rough pavement, casting sparks and leaving a bloody smear.

Rosauro urged them all onward. “Hurry!”

Hopefully the cycle’s roar had covered most of the gunplay, but they had to be away from here as quickly as possible. Reaching the intersection, they headed along the next street. A quarter mile down the road stood a bright hotel, freshly painted, lights glowing. A few polished black limousines waited at the curb.

They hurried toward it. Luca tossed aside his empty pistol, and they did their best to straighten and dust off their clothes into some semblance of normalcy. They slowed when they reached the hotel and strode toward it, as if they belonged. No one accosted them. The hotel was mostly deserted, just a pair of drivers lounging in the lobby. A few staff members also worked behind a desk. Everyone else appeared to be at the ceremony.

Rosauro crossed to the front counter. “Is there a phone we could use? We…we’re with the New York Times.”

“Press room…over there,” a tired-eyed young man said in halting English. He pointed toward a door off the lobby.

“Spazeebo,” Rosauro thanked him.

She led them through the door. The room was square with a low counter that ran along the full perimeter of the space. A central table held mounds of office supplies: reams of paper, stacks of pads, pens, staplers. But what drew Elizabeth’s attention were the two-dozen black telephones that rested along the wall counter.

Rosauro headed to one side, picked up the receiver, and listened for a dial tone. She nodded her satisfaction. As she dialed, she said, “I’ll alert central command. They’ll spread the word and get an evacuation started.”

Elizabeth sank into a neighboring chair. In the momentary calm, she began to tremble all over. She could not stop. Masterson’s death…it broke something inside her. Tears started flowing—grieving for the professor, but also for her father.

Rosauro finished dialing and waited. A frown slowly formed, and her eyebrows pinched together.

“What’s wrong?” Luca asked.

She shook her head, worried. “There’s no answer.”

12:50 A.M.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Painter knocked lightly on the locker room door and pushed it cautiously open. He was met by a pistol pointed at his face. Kat lowered the weapon, her eyes relieved.

“How’s everyone?” he asked and followed her inside.

“So far, so good.”

A Sigma corpsman took up her position at the door. Kat led Painter into the main room, lined by banks of metal lockers and benches. At the back was an archway that led to the showers and sauna.

Kat led him to a neighboring aisle. He found Malcolm on a bench, and Lisa seated on the floor, her arm around Sasha. The girl stared up at him with large blue eyes and rocked slightly. Her gaze found Kat’s, and her entire body relaxed.

Lisa stood. She had changed into a fresh pair of scrubs, no longer covered in blood. Kat bent down, picked up Sasha, and sat on the bench with her. She whispered in the girl’s ear, which drew a small smile from the child.

Lisa slipped into Painter’s arms, then stared up at him for a breath. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, concerned.

Painter thought he’d been hiding it well, but how did one completely mask the fury and grief that filled him now?

“It’s Sean,” he said.

Kat and Malcolm glanced over to him.

Painter took a deep breath. “The bastard killed him.” He could still hear the gunshot, the snap of feedback, and see his friend’s body fall.

“Oh, God…,” Lisa mumbled and pulled tighter to him.

“Mapplethorpe’s heading down here, searching for the girl.” Painter checked his watch.

Kat noted his attention. “The fail-safe?”

“Set for four minutes.” Painter prayed he had everything prepared correctly. The air was now heavy with the sweet-smelling accelerant.

“If we have to defend the room,” Kat asked, “do we have to worry about the gunfire igniting the air?”

He shook his head. “The compound functions like aerosolized C4. It takes a strong electrical spark to set it off, not a flash of fire.”

Lisa kept to his side. “Then what do we do from here?”

Painter waved them to their feet. He wanted to protect them as best he could. He would lose no others. But he didn’t have much to offer.

“We’d better hide.”

Mapplethorpe followed his commando team down the hall.

He had employed this same group of men many times in the past, a mercenary team that included former British S.A.S. and the South Africa’s Recces. They were his muscle across the world political map. They shied at nothing that was asked of them: assassinations, kidnappings, torture, rape. Whatever clandestine operation he needed run, these men would get it done. Best of all, afterward they would simply disappear, leaving no trace, just shadows and ghosts.

It was hard men such as these who kept the country secure. Where others feared to tread, these soldiers did not balk.

The point man reached a door at the end of the hall. Its sign read LOCKER ROOM. The soldier held up a fist. In his other hand, he clutched an electronic tracker.

Earlier, Trent McBride had reported that the child’s microchip transmitter was still functioning. There was no place she could hide. They’d picked up her signal on this level.

The commando waited upon his order to proceed.

Mapplethorpe waved him through the door. He checked his watch. The fail-safe was set for another three minutes. In case Painter Crowe decided not to abort the firestorm, he wanted the girl nabbed and evacuated. If they were quick enough, it should not be a problem. An emergency exit lay at the other end of the hallway and led off to an underground garage.

Ahead, the soldiers burst through the door and ran low and fast into the next room. Mapplethorpe followed in their wake, closing the door behind him. He heard quiet orders flow among the group as they spread through the rows of lockers.

Mapplethorpe followed the commando with the tracker, flanked by two more soldiers. The lead man ran along the lockers, his arm held high. He finally reached the source of the signal, dropped his arm, and pointed.

In the silence, Mapplethorpe heard a faint whimper coming from inside the locker.

At last.

A padlock secured the door, but another soldier whipped out a small set of bolt cutters and snapped the lock off.

Mapplethorpe waved. They were running out of time. “Hurry!”

The head commando tugged the locker’s handle and yanked the door open. Mapplethorpe caught a glimpse of a digital tape recorder, a radio transmitter—and a Taser pistol wired to the door.

A trap.

Mapplethorpe turned and ran.

Behind him, the pistol fired with a pop and a crackle of electricity.

Mapplethorpe screamed as he heard a loud whuff of ignition, sounding like the firing of a gas grill. A flash of heat, and a fireball blew outward. It picked him off his feet and carried him down the row. His clothes roasted to his back. He breathed flames, his scalp burned to bone. He struck the wall, no longer human, just a flaming torch of agony.

He rolled and burned for a stretch of eternity—until darkness snuffed him away.

A floor below in the gym locker room, Painter heard the screams echoing down from the medical locker room directly overhead. He had set the trap above, knowing Mapplethorpe would come searching for the girl’s signal. He had planted one of the Cobra radio transceivers used to draw off the helicopters back at the safe house. Like before, he set the device to mimic the girl’s signal.

As a boy, Painter had often gone hunting with his father on the Mashantucket Reservation, his people’s tribal homelands. He had grown skilled at the art of baiting a trap and luring prey. Today was no different.

His false trail had drawn the others like moths to a flame.

And like those moths, they met a fiery end.

Painter felt no remorse for his trap. He still pictured Sean McKnight falling to the floor. Two other staff members had also been killed. Painter checked his watch. The second hand swept past the twelve, crossing the fail-safe deadline set for one o’clock.

He held his breath, but nothing happened.

Earlier, after setting the fail-safe, he had fled to the mechanical room and manually disabled the electronic sparking system. He had needed the levels flooded with the accelerant gas, but Mapplethorpe had been right. Painter could not let the men and women captured by the commando team die, not even to protect the girl. So he had set the trap instead, localizing the firestorm to the one room and luring Mapplethorpe and his team to it.

With a majority of the soldiers dispatched and its leader killed, the others would likely disperse and vanish into the night.

Lisa leaned against him. “Will the fires spread?”

The answer came from above. Sprinklers engaged and rained both water and foam over them.

“Is it over?” she asked.

Painter nodded. “Right here it is.”

Still, Painter knew things elsewhere were far from settled.

10:53 A.M.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Gray sprinted toward the closing steel door at the back end of the massive hangar. He pounded down the roadway between the tall rails. He passed the bodies of two dead workers, shot in the head.

His heart thundered in his ears, but he still heard cheers echoing from the distant grandstands, as if this were a track meet and he was sprinting for the finish line in the four-hundred-meter dash. Only in this race, the spectators’ lives depended on him crossing the finish line in time.

With a final burst of speed, he reached the hatchway and dove on his belly under the descending door. It was like entering a crawl space beneath a house. The door was yards thick, composed of plates of steel. He scrabbled forward as the edge continued to drop, pressing down on him. Panic fired his heart. He kicked and paddled, worming his way forward as he was flattened farther under the thick door.

Finally, he reached the end and rolled out into a cavernous space. He took in the sight in a heartbeat: a vast interior, lined by scaffolding, enclosing a ten-story blocky structure of concrete and blackened steel. It was the infamous Sarcophagus, the gravestone over reactor four. By now, the hangar had been hauled almost completely over the crypt. Beyond the Sarcophagus rose a wall of concrete. The hangar would end its crawl and butt up against that wall, sealing the Sarcophagus completely.

But for now, an arch of sunlight spanned the Sarcophagus like a fiery rainbow. It was all that was left open to the world. As Gray stared, the sunlit rainbow grew incrementally narrower.

Off to the left, Gray heard someone speaking in Russian outside the hangar, proud and bold, broadcasted loudly from the grandstands. He also heard the continual steady drone of the hydraulic jacks as they pulled the hangar the last few feet.

Then to the right, a pistol fired.

Gray pictured the bodies outside.

Nicolas was leaving an easy trail of bread crumbs to follow.

As Gray sprinted in that direction, he kept low as he dodged around several stacks of plate steel, a pile of broken concrete, and a forklift. The air smelled of oil and tasted rusty. As he reached the corner of the Sarcophagus, he freed the pistol from his belt.

Peering around the corner, he spotted a figure limping toward the narrowing arch of sunlight. He was about twenty yards from escaping. Gray leveled his pistol.

“Nicolas!” Gray barked at him.

Startled, the man tripped around.

“Don’t move!” Gray shouted.

Nicolas searched for a second, then turned and fled. Gray could not risk killing the man. Not until he found out what was planned. So he took careful aim and shot. Nicolas’s good leg went out from under him. He sprawled onto the floor.

Gray rushed toward him, but a man such as Nicolas did not rise to his height of power by folding under stress. The senator rolled behind a stack of steel I-beams. Shots fired back at Gray, forcing him to duck to the side. He took shelter behind a pallet of lumber.

“Chyort! Rodilsya cherez jopu!” Nicolas cursed at him in Russian, his voice edging toward hysteria. He yelled at Gray. “We can’t stay here, you svoloch! We have less than three minutes.”

Beyond the man’s hiding place, Gray watched the sliver of sunlight between the massive concrete wall and the trundling hangar pinch ever closer together. There was only four feet of space left. No wonder Nicolas was in a hurry.

“Then tell me how to stop Operation Uranus!” Gray called back.

“There is no way to stop it! It’s all been set in motion. All we can do is get out of the way…now!”

“Tell me what you’ve done.”

“Fine! Concussion charges! Planted inside the pillars on the other side of the Sarcophagus. They’ll rip a wall down and expose everyone on that side to a lethal dose of radiation. There’s no way to defuse them. We MUST go now!”

Gray attempted to digest what he’d heard, trying to seek a solution. Even if he ran outside and screamed for an evacuation, it would be too late.

“There’s no reason for us to die with them,” Nicolas continued. “The world needs a new direction. Needs strong men. Like myself. Like you. Our group’s goal is to better the state of mankind, to forge a new Renaissance.”

Gray remembered the senator’s earlier discussion about propping up a new prophet onto the world stage. So this is how he planned to do it, creating world chaos, then offering a solution, one promoted by a figurehead who was guided by the prescience and knowledge of augmented children.

“Even if we die here,” Nicolas pressed, “it won’t be the end. Plans are already in motion that cannot be stopped. Our deaths would serve no purpose. Join us. We can use such men as yourself.”

In truth, Gray could think of no way to stop what was to come.

Beyond Nicolas, the walls continued to close.

“Two minutes!” he called to Gray. “There’s a lead-lined control booth just outside. We can still make it if we leave right now!”

Nicolas shifted behind his hiding place, plainly considering making a run for it. But with a twisted ankle on one side and a wounded leg on the other, he must know that path was certain death.

Then again, so was staying here.

Nicolas finally tossed out his pistol and stepped into the open. He faced Gray, arms out to either side, tottering on his legs. “If this is the only way to live, so be it!”

Gray cursed under his breath. Unable to stop the deaths to come, his only recourse was to apprehend the mass murderer who had orchestrated the deadly operation. Gray stepped out into the open with his pistol leveled.

At that moment, the drone of the hydraulic pumps climbed into a screaming roar. With a groan of twenty thousand tons, the massive arch began to shudder.

What was happening?

Kowalski stepped over the dead soldier to join Elena at the control panel. While Gray had fled on foot, Elena had driven the motorcycle like a NASCAR driver on crack. Kowalski had clung so hard to the sidecar’s handles that his fingers still trembled. They had rocketed to the rear side of the steel archway and sailed up to a concrete bunker that trailed big cables.

It was the control shack for the hydraulic jacks.

A fierce but brief firefight followed.

Kowalski had tried to help, but Elena spun like a ballerina with a machine gun. She danced and pirouetted through a hail of bullets as if anticipating each shot. She took out four soldiers. Kowalski managed to kill only one.

Nicolas’s men, Elena had said once the gunfight ended.

Once inside, Elena had set to work. Bent over the control board, she pushed the hydraulics toward the redline, seeking to close the hangar faster.

Just outside the shack’s window, one of the towering motors smoked, looking ready to blow. On one of the screens, flashing red warning signs blinked.

That couldn’t be good.

Kowalski stepped out of Elena’s way and stared at a row of monitors. They displayed video feed from inside the hangar. On the middle screen, Kowalski spotted two tiny figures on the floor.

Gray and the Russian guy.

From the angle of the camera, Kowalski could see what Gray could not.

Oh, crap!

“Elena!” he called out. “A little help here!”

He turned in time to see her suddenly slump toward the floor. He reached out and caught her around the waist. His hand found the shirt under her dark jacket soaking and hot. He parted the coat and saw her entire left side drenched in blood. It seemed her dancing had not been as flawless as he’d thought.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he said with an ache in his voice.

She waved to the monitors. “Show me.”

Gray struggled to comprehend the sudden acceleration of the hangar’s closure. The momentum of twenty thousand tons was not easy to get moving quickly, but it was definitely closing faster, accompanied by the scream of hydraulic motors.

“No!” Nicolas cried out.

Gray realized the anguish in his voice was twofold: fear that he now had even less time to escape, and dismay that his plans would be ruined if the hangar sealed too soon.

“Let’s go!” Gray said, pointing his pistol at the man.

Nicolas lowered his outstretched arms—and revealed what was hidden behind the pile of I-beams. The man’s hand had been out of view until now.

A second pistol.

It pointed at Gray’s belly and fired.

Gray managed to twist sideways, but the bullet still burned a line of fire across his stomach. He pointed his own weapon and fired. The shot, thrown off by the sudden attack, ricocheted harmlessly off the floor. Even worse, the pistol’s slide popped open.

Out of bullets.

The same could not be said for Nicolas.

The Russian drew a dead bead upon Gray.

As a consequence of his concentration, Nicolas missed the movement along the roof of the arched hangar. A massive yellow trolley crane swept above them and dropped a giant hook.

The whistling as it plummeted finally drew Nicolas’s eye. He glanced up as the massive steel hook, large enough to anchor ships, slammed into the pile of beams next to him. He tried to leap aside, but the impact knocked half the pile over, pinning his legs.

His pistol skittered across the concrete floor.

“Help me!” the man groaned, desperate, panicked.

No time.

Beyond the pile, the narrowing gap between the steel arch and concrete wall was little more than a foot wide. Gray vaulted over the collapsed pile of beams and sprinted for the exit.

As he reached the slit of sunlight, Nicolas screamed at him. “You’ve not won, you svoloch! Millions will still die!”

Gray had no time to question him. He shoved into the crack and wormed between the squeezing walls, concrete on one side, steel on the other. The vault was a dozen yards thick. He scooted as fast as he could. Still the pressure began to squeeze his chest, trying to hold him for the final crush.

He took one last breath and exhaled all his air, collapsing his chest. He shoved the last few feet and fell out of the crack with a great gasp of air, landing on his hands and knees.

Like being born a second time.

Behind him, he missed a figure standing off to the side of the hangar. She slipped into the crack as he vacated it.

Gray turned. “Elena! No! You’ll never make it!”

He rolled to his feet and lunged for her. But she had already slid deep into the crack, deeper than he could follow with his larger form. She moved swiftly, her lithe figure fading farther and farther away.

Gray prayed she’d make it safely to the other side, but it was still certain death. Only then did he note the long smear of blood trailing into the narrowing crack.

A growled voice spoke behind him.

“Where’s Elena?” Kowalski asked.

Gray watched her vanish out of the crack. He shook his head.

Kowalski stared up and down the side of the hangar. “She left me up there. After she dropped that anchor on that bastard. Said she was coming down here to help.”

Gray turned away. “I think that’s where she’s headed.”

Nicolas lay on his back, his legs weighted under a half ton of steel beams. Through a haze of agony, he heard footsteps stumbling toward him. He turned his head. Elena came up to him.

His eyes winced with a pain deeper than any broken bones. “Oh, milaya moya, what are you doing here?”

She sank next to him.

Blood soaked through her shirt.

“Lubov moya…,” he said with a mix of pain and protectiveness. He lifted an arm, and she fell into his embrace. He held her and rocked her gently as the last of the sunlight squeezed away.

A commanding grind of steel on concrete sounded with a note of finality as the Shelter sealed. A few moments later, a crumbling crash echoed as the far side of the Sarcophagus collapsed. The concussion charges had worked as planned, but the Shelter was already closed tight around it, sparing those outside.

He wasn’t so lucky.

Nicolas stared up at the lighted archway. The inner steel surfaces were all lined by a thick coat of polycarbonate, all the better to reflect radiation and hold it inside.

Not that it mattered, but Nicolas lifted the flap of the dosimeter badge secured to his jacket pocket. The surface had been white when he’d put it on this morning. It was now solid black.

He let it go and reached another arm to cradle Elena better.

“Why?” he asked.

There were many questions buried in that one word. Why had Elena betrayed him? Nicolas knew she must have. Nothing else made sense. But also why did she come back?

Elena did not answer. He shifted and saw the glaze to her eyes.

Dead.

And so was he.

The living dead.

He knew what end awaited him. He had lived his professional life exploring such deaths. It would be as agonizing as it was humiliating.

As he cradled Elena closer to him, something slipped from her hand and landed on his leg. He reached out and grabbed this last gift from her.

His pistol.

She must have collected it from the floor.

This is why she had come.

To say good-bye and to offer him a way to escape with her.

He nestled into her and kissed her cold lips one last time. “Ty moyo solnyshko…”

She was indeed his sun.

Holding her, he raised the gun to his lips.

And took his escape.