June 1, 2:08 A.M.
Nashville, Tennessee
"They're still hunting you," Kat said, her voice sounding tinny through the cheap disposable phone. "They will be all night."
Gray sat in the passenger seat of a nondescript white Ford van-the more nondescript the better, it seemed, according to Kat's report. They'd ditched the muscle car hours ago in a wooded park outside of Bowling Green and hot-wired their new vehicle from a used-car lot. The van shouldn't be missed until the dealership opened in the morning.
Still, they kept moving, knowing that the dragnet for the escaped Fort Knox terrorists would be ever widening. To stay ahead of it, they traveled back roads, avoiding main thoroughfares, threading their way south until they reached Nashville.
"You've got everyone looking for you," Kat continued. "FBI, military intelligence, civilian law enforcement. It's still a clusterfuck out here in D.C., especially with all of this coming down in the middle of the night. Now that the terrorist flag has been raised, everyone's scrambling."
As Monk drove slowly through a suburban industrial park on the outskirts of Nashville, Gray glanced to the backseat. Seichan sat with her arms crossed, staring at the dark mix of warehouses, supply stores, and mechanic shops. Because of her past crimes, she was not officially a member of Sigma. She could never be. Her recruitment as an asset and spy was known only by a small handful of people within their organization, all well trusted. To the rest of the world's intelligence agencies, she remained a wanted terrorist, a deadly assassin for hire.
"How did that alert at Fort Knox get raised in the first place?" Gray asked. "All of our identification was solid. What tipped them off? We were scanned and photographed at the depository. Did Seichan's picture get flagged by some database?"
"I'm still working on that," Kat replied. "But I can tell you the alert wasn't generated from Fort Knox. It came from an outside source, but I can't trace it. At least not right now. It's too early. Everyone is still covering his or her ass at this point. I imagine files are being shredded all over D.C."
"So we were set up. It was an ambush from the start." He could guess who orchestrated it all, picturing the officer in charge at Fort Knox. "Any further news on Waldorf?"
Gray had spoken to Kat an hour ago after purchasing the disposable cell phone. The conversation had been brief as she tried to quell a hundred fires while blowing chaff to keep Sigma's involvement a secret and misdirecting the nation's various intelligence and security agencies to keep Gray and his teammates from getting caught.
"No," she said. "I've made numerous inquires, but Waldorf vanished shortly after the base alert got raised. But he must be hunting for you as desperately as everyone else."
"Why do you say that?"
"It was one of the reasons I was calling you back. To warn you. The Learjet that you took from D.C. was blown up in midair about fifteen minutes ago, shortly after taking off from the Louisville Airport. A blast took out the tail section. Estimates are that it was a bomb tied to an altimeter timer. The plane reached a certain height and the ordnance blew."
Gray remembered the young pilot. A hot coal of anger settled deep in his belly. "Waldorf was gunning for us. But he must have known we wouldn't be on that plane."
He squeezed a fist on his knee as he realized what this meant. The bombing was an act of pure vengeance, a murderous tantrum after Waldorf had been thwarted.
"I thought you should know," Kat warned. "It's another reason you must keep moving."
"Understood." He heard her sigh loudly, sensing more was to come. "What?"
"I heard from Dr. Janice Cooper again."
It took Gray a moment to place that name-then he remembered. "She was working with that Japanese physicist."
"They're both still under guard, but her partner who survived the massacre has been continuing to consult with other labs. At our request, he's been studying the massive neutrino surges rising from the West."
"Has he been able to pin down the location?"
"No, but he has been able to extrapolate the magnitude of the coming explosion. He says it may be over a hundred times larger than the one in Iceland."
Gray pictured Ellirey Island crumbling to fiery ruin.
A hundred times larger than that?
The level of destruction would be massive, the scale unimaginable.
Kat continued, "Which brings me to the real reason I called. The Japanese physicist has worked up a rough estimate for when it might blow. Like he did with Iceland."
"When?" Gray asked, tensing his abdomen, anticipating the punch.
"In about five hours."
A sinking despair settled through him. What could they do in five hours? Even if they weren't being hunted, they'd have a hard time even flying to the West Coast in time to accomplish anything. But Sigma already had other operatives out there.
"Any word from Director Crowe?"
Her voice grew strained. "No. He had gone down into a cavern system under some ruins, but local rangers reported an explosion there, burying much of it in rubble. I have Lisa monitoring teams combing the desert where he'd last been seen. She's a wreck. Nothing's turned up. And I've spoken to Ronald Chin at least a dozen times. He's heard nothing from Painter either."
Gray hoped the director was okay, but they still needed someone out west who could address the trouble that was escalating in that region. "Did you tell Chin about the geological timer ticking down?"
"I did, but without a location, what can he do? That's why I need you to find a way to free that old Indian map from the gold plate. If there's some clue as to where this cache of unstable nanotech is hidden, we need to know it now."
"I'll do what I can, but I'll need some foundry where I can heat up this gold plate. See if I can't melt away the ordinary gold and expose the map at its heart."
"I anticipated that."
Of course she did.
"I have the name of a small goldsmith shop near you. I'll give you the address. The owner will meet you there in fifteen minutes."
She passed on the location. It was only a few blocks away, in the same industrial park they were driving through. Leave it to Kat to have every variable covered.
But there remained one last variable .
"Can I have a word with Monk?" she asked, sounding stern.
"Hang on." He held out the phone to his friend. "Looks like you're in trouble."
Monk kept hold of the steering wheel with the stump of his wrist and took the phone. He cradled it between his shoulder and chin and regained his grip on the wheel.
"Hey, babe," he said.
Kat's voice whispered from the phone, but the words were too faint to make out.
"No, I didn't lose another hand," Monk said, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel. "I just lost my prosthesis. Big difference, hon."
Gray imagined Kat scolding her husband in an operatic duet that has been going on between husbands and wives for ages, that eternal mix of exasperation and love.
A slow smile spread across Monk's face. He whispered back words that were mundane and ordinary-but in fact were as loving as the lyrics of any aria. "Uh-huh... okay... yeah, I'll do that..."
In an effort to give them privacy, Gray turned to study the dark streets, but his eyes caught on the rearview mirror. He saw Seichan staring at the back of Monk's head, her face soft and lost, not knowing anyone was watching.
But she was still a hunter.
As she sensed his attention, her gaze flicked and trapped him in the mirror's reflection. Her face went hard again as she turned away.
Monk's voice suddenly grew sharper. " What? Just now?"
Gray drew his focus back up front.
Monk lifted his chin to address the car. "Kat's just heard. Lisa's on the phone with him now. Painter's been found."