The shard of redemption, p.33
The Shard of Redemption, page 33
Hayes reached into his go-bag, pulled out his own paperwork and placed it atop the folder.
Stout glanced down. “And that?” she asked.
“Washington State Superior Court warrant — Emily Granger, AKA Dr. Elara Grant — probable cause for Murder One, Laura Jones, and flight across state and international lines.”
Hayes slipped his Stetson on his head and dipped it low, shading his eyes. Then a faint smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. “Local bullet.”
Stout’s gaze lingered on the Stetson a moment before she closed the folder.
“Ames is already there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
Hayes folded his arms and settled back.
“He’ll do what he does,” he said. “Coyote shows up at the fence line, you don’t know if he’s passin’ through or fixing to tear the place apart.”
The jet pushed west, heading east.
Chapter 54
Tien Shan Ridge — Midnight
The snow slashed sideways, a stinging, blinding white assault against the tree line. The mountains loomed, their peaks hidden by the swirling storm. The chopper knifed through the wind, rotors thundering, buffeted in the thin air.
Athena sat forward in the jump seat, headset pressed tight. “Range?”
“Two klicks,” Suhana answered, her eyes narrowing at the flickering displays. “Signal’s dirty. I’m getting a lattice echo. Scramble pattern looks artificial.”
“It is a deliberate jam,” McGregor said, peering through the side glass.
“Lights. West flank.” He pointed. “That’s no relay outpost; that’s a compound.”
Below them, floodlights cut through the whiteout, rows of satellite dishes and radar spires rimed in ice. Figures moved along the perimeter wall.
“Quantum-array hardware,” said Athena, “military grade.”
McGregor’s tone hardened. “Part of the satellite-blocking grid. They’re refitting these stations.”
Suhana leaned over the comms bank, tapping a handheld signal analyzer clipped to the panel. The device spat out waveforms and hashed signatures on a small screen. “Encryption spikes confirm it,” she said. “Quantum burst signatures. They’re jamming everything within ten klicks. If we fly any closer, we’re broadcasting our position.”
“Abort approach,” Athena ordered. “Take us north. Ridge line. Find high ground for a set-down.”
Jeremy pulled the cyclic back, pitching the nose up to climb over the rough terrain. The helicopter yawed sharply, rotors screaming as the cross-wind slammed them sideways. Snow engulfed the cockpit, visibility dropping to nothing. The altimeter jittered.
“Hang on!” Jeremy shouted. The chopper banked hard, nose dipping before he caught it, skids kissing the slope. The left skid bit deep, the tail swung, and for a gasped breath the world tilted. Then the engine roared, and the machine slammed flat, skidding to a stop against a line of buried rock.
Silence, except for the wind.
“Everyone in one piece?” Jeremy asked.
“Still vertical,” McGregor answered, unstrapping. “Hell of a landing.”
Jeremy ran his hand across the console. “No way to hide the heat plume.”
Athena shoved the door open. The wind punched through, freezing air slicing her face. “They’ll send a patrol,” she said. “We walk from here.” Then she turned to Jeremy. “You’re rear support. You’ve got the med pack, rope, and sidearm. Stay sharp. Stay centered.”
He nodded. She saw the flicker in his eyes, the recognition of what that meant. A man who’d seen enough of war to never want to live it again.
Suhana pulled her hood up, checking her handgun. “Comms are jammed. Line-of-sight only.”
McGregor slung his rifle. “We move fast, low, and quiet. The longer we stay up here, the more eyes find us.”
Suhana nodded. “You’re in charge of the mission, McGregor. Smyth comes back alive. And remember—trust goes both ways.”
He met her eyes, something unspoken caught between them.
“Let’s move,” said McGregor.
They left the chopper and entered the whiteout; four shadows climbing through drifts and scree, the loose rock shifting treacherously under each step. The wind shrieked across the ridge. Their breath came in thin bursts, swallowed by altitude.
It took them more than three hours to reach the high pass. The storm deepened, the path ahead unreadable. Darkness pressed so close that the ridge seemed to vanish beneath their boots.
McGregor weighed the risk of light, then clicked on a narrow-beam flashlight. Low and tight, the faint cone of light cut through the storm, revealing only a few feet of uneven stone and drifting snow.
He led with mountain-born precision, testing footing, choosing cover, reading the slope’s angles with the practiced eye of a man who’d spent years in the RCMP. Athena followed close, then Suhana, monitoring the handheld signal analyzer, and Jeremy with rope coiled over one shoulder, med pack slung tight.
“Static’s clearing. Radar interference dropping as we climb,” said Suhana.
“Good,” Athena said. “Stay alert.”
They crested a narrow ridge, a natural choke point of shattered stone. The wind dropped suddenly, leaving a strange silence.
Athena’s instincts flared. She touched McGregor’s shoulder.
He froze as her flat palm lifted: Hold.
The stillness broke with a single metallic click.
“Down!” she hissed.
The mountain erupted. Tracer rounds tore the dark in orange streaks, ricocheting off rock with the stutter of shrapnel. Sparks skittered across the ice. Jeremy slammed down beside Suhana, dragging her with him. McGregor pivoted behind a jagged outcrop, rifle barking in three-round bursts, precise, controlled, lethal.
Athena rolled to one knee, scanning the ridgeline. A frigid gust of wind swept through, making the air feel like it was burning. Shapes moved above, six, maybe seven, advancing in pairs, firing in practiced rotation.
McGregor caught her eye, two fingers slicing left: Flank. Athena swept her hand across her chest: Cover.
Suhana shifted to one knee, calm under fire. She steadied her handgun, breath measured. Three shots snapped through the storm: two to the chest, one to the mask. Three men fell without a sound, their bodies swallowed by snow.
The return fire intensified, a storm within the storm. McGregor moved with practiced precision, climbing higher through the ice and wind, his rifle steady despite the recoil. Each burst found its mark. Two mercenaries folded under his fire, tumbling lifeless into the drift.
Then, a new sound split the chaos. A single, flat crack.
A sniper. High and distant.
Suhana spun, staggered, and collapsed. A red bloom spread across the snow beneath her.
Jeremy moved before thought: breaking cover, sprinting over open ice, bullets carving the air around him. He slid to his knees beside her, already pressing gauze against the wound, breath coming in gasps that crystallized midair.
Athena turned toward the upper ridge, caught the faint muzzle flash through the flurry, and fired in short, precise bursts. The sniper’s visor shattered, the body folding backward over the ledge. One more shape moved. A flash of motion, a shadow, and she dropped him too.
Silence followed. Only the wind remained, roaring down the slope and carrying the last curl of smoke into the dark.
Seven down. Nothing moved.
The smell of cordite mingled with the iron tang of blood, sharp in the frozen air. But a blast of wind scoured the ridge clean.
Jeremy pressed gauze into the wound, wrapped Suhana’s shoulder tight. She winced but kept her composure.
Athena crouched beside them. “You’ve got her, Jeremy. Take her back to the chopper.”
He hesitated, glancing up slope. “And leave you two here?”
Athena reached out and gripped his forearm. “Go now.”
Jeremy met her eyes and nodded. “I’ll be back for you.”
McGregor came down off the higher rock, boots crunching through the snow. He kneeled without a word and helped Jeremy loop the climbing rope beneath Suhana’s arms, under her hips and crossing it over his chest.
“We’ll buy you time,” McGregor said.
Suhana gritted her teeth as the knots tightened. “McGregor,” she managed, breath thin but steady, “remember what I said—trust works both ways.”
Jeremy hitched Suhana higher on his back. “Ready?”
“Here,” McGregor said, handing the flashlight to Jeremy. “We’ll clear the ridge.”
Athena raised two fingers to her eyes and pointed down the slope: Eyes open, go.
Jeremy nodded and started down, each step deliberate in the storm. Athena kept her rifle up, covering them, as the two of them faded into the white, and only the wind remained.
Athena and McGregor worked without speaking. The ridge was raw and wind-scoured. The dead lay where they’d fallen, black shapes against the white. They dragged the bodies into the shadow of a rockfall, stripped them of weapons, rations, comms tags, two flashlights and night vision goggles.
“Take the magazines,” Athena said. “We’ll need them.”
McGregor nodded, sliding each into his pack. She watched as he worked with a grim precision. Athena crouched near one of the fallen, brushing snow from a sleeve. A faint symbol showed half-erased by blood: a rose compass. “Alignment,” she muttered. “They’re everywhere.”
McGregor began to inventory their gear: climbing lines, cold-weather rations, two breaching charges, three grenades, a cracked radio, and a diver’s watch that still ticked.
“Enough?” She asked.
“If we’re careful,” he said. His fingers paused over the breaching charges. “These might open a door … or bury one. Depends on how we use them.”
McGregor stood looking down the slope. Below them, the valley stretched gray and endless, a landscape of ice and silence. Athena stood beside him. They heard the faint thrum of the chopper and listened until the valley swallowed the sound, leaving only the wind’s steady moan through the rocks.
“They made it,” she said. McGregor nodded.
They didn’t speak again for a while. The wind did the talking, thin, relentless, unkind. They ate rations and drank water to restore their energy. Then slung their packs on their backs.
“You got something to tell me?” Athena asked.
McGregor hesitated, then shouldered his rifle. “Let’s head out.”
They started east, following the ridge toward the next rise. Their boots scraped over ice, the wind pushing at their backs. The silence between them grew until it became its own kind of noise.
Two hours later, McGregor stopped. His breath smoked in the air.
“His name wasn’t Smyth,” he said, voice low.
Athena turned, brow tightening. “What are you talking about?”
“The man you’re after. The one who killed Kurt Devlin. Your husband. The one behind all of this.” He looked straight at her. “His real name is Marc McGregor.”
The words landed like a blow. Athena’s hand tightened on her rifle strap. “You’re telling me—”
“He’s my brother,” McGregor said. “My little brother. Three years younger than me.”
She stared at him, disbelief cutting through the cold. “But you look nothing alike.”
“Exactly. I take after our father. Marc looks like our mother.” He looked past her, toward the valley. “Everything about this is my fault. I followed Dad into the RCMP, and I talked Marc into joining too. He was good … brilliant, even. Went into intelligence. Then he went deep … too deep. I thought I could pull him back. That’s why I sent Kurt after him.”
Athena’s eyes narrowed. “Kurt went after your brother?”
McGregor’s voice roughened against the wind. “To bring him home.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, then opened them, staring out into the darkness.
“Instead, Marc killed him. If I hadn’t pushed him into this life … none of it would’ve happened: Kurt, Bastien Beaulieu, hundreds in Africa … what happened to Octavia Clarke, all of it traces back to him … to me.”
A gust lifted loose snow and scattered it like powdered glass.
Athena studied the lines etched around his eyes, the exhaustion in his stance. His remorse hung heavy in the air. It had been there the whole time, but only now could she see it.
He’s the only one capable of capturing Smyth alive. But I didn’t come here to capture anyone. I came to kill Smyth. The thought chilled her more than the snow and the wind. Bring the Minister down, or make Smyth pay? Choose the mission. Vengeance or redemption?
“Let’s get this done.” Her voice was resolute and unwavering.
They moved on, slower now, the revelation settling between them like the cold itself.
At the next rise, she looked back over the valley, towards the bodies buried beneath stone, the snow already covering the blood.
Chapter 55
Southern Array — The Complex
The wind cut like wire. Snow hissed along the rock face, frosting goggles and rifles. Each breath came thin, a private argument between lung and altitude.
Athena kept her face down, shoulders driving forward.
Two klicks, she thought. Two klicks, and this will all be over.
They had been moving for seven hours, past burned waypoints and a deep, ominous ravine. The air was thinner, colder and breathing, painful. At the rock shelf just after dawn, from deep in her coat, a pulse of light blinked. The satellite phone. She pressed the receiver to her ear.
“Athena?” Neil’s voice crackled through the static.
“Copy,” Athena answered.
“You’re alive. Location?”
Under the static, a tonal disruption began pulsing, and Athena answered between gasps of breath. “We’ve got line … of sight on the southern … dish array,” said Athena. “Smyth’s trail runs … straight through it.”
Neil’s tone shifted, and the pulse interrupted his words. “You’re down to … hours. Kozo’s traced … recursive pulses … your sector. something’s … building under … array. Power grids … transport, global comms … it’s bleeding … through every … system … Alignment touches.”
Athena turned the phone to speaker, shielding it from the wind. She motioned McGregor closer. “You’re on open,” she said.
McGregor leaned close. “ASEAN sent a team in to … investigate … They never returned.”
The pulses were increasing. Neil’s voice was hard-edged and splintering through static.
“That site … isn’t a relay. It’s an … underground … quantum-tech complex … a control node … for entangled … transmitters and re … cursive routing. If … completes … it’ll cascade …” Neil’s voice became metallic and barely audible. “Aviation and marine navi … gation … food dis … tribution net …works and emer … gency response. Medical systems … fail … money … stops … moving … planes … lose guidance …You have to … disrupt it … Disrupt … the link … or … the world … goes dark.”
Athena frowned. “That’s not our mission.”
“It is now,” Neil said. “Cut … that uplink … nothing … else matters.”
McGregor straightened. “The Alignment built … the control center into the relay?”
“It’s their … core node … Smyth’s … target, but … that complex is … the weapon … break … the signal.”
Neil’s voice spiked briefly through the static, “End call. They’re … scanning.”
“Copy,” Athena said. She cut the line and slipped the phone inside her coat.
McGregor’s eyes met hers. They crouched under the lee of a ridge where the mountain’s shadow broke the wind. Below, the structure shimmered under floodlights, its angles too precise for stone: metal ribs gleaming through snowdrift, vents exhaling faint trails of vapor.
Athena unrolled the schematic Kozo had transmitted when they were on the west China border. “South entrance is buried under ice. The ventilation duct here …” she pointed with a gloved finger “… feeds into the sublevel maintenance ring.”
McGregor surveyed the terrain. “We’ll need to climb light. We’ll stash our packs here. Take the charges and weapons to the sublevel.”
Athena took a drink from her canteen and nodded. “If this array’s transmitting … at that depth … the server cores are running hot. That’s the weak point.” She handed him the canteen.
After a few gulps of water, he adjusted his rifle strap. “If the maintenance grid’s automated, one power spike, and we’ll light up every camera from here to Astana.”
“Then we don’t trip it,” Athena said. “We go quiet. Shut the duct sensors, slip in while the cooling vents rotate.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“Not like this,” she replied. “This time, the mountain’s listening.”
They timed the descent between gusts. The path was a fracture line through ice and shale, a slick slope that punished every misstep. McGregor led, securing anchors as they went, their breath pluming white against the dark.
At the base of the ridge, the structure revealed itself in full: a bunker half-swallowed by snow, its vents pulsing with heat haze. The sound was wrong, not the hum of machinery but a low, thrumming resonance that seemed to come from within the mountain itself.
McGregor crouched beside the vent Athena had marked. “It’s narrow, but it runs deep. You first.”
Athena looked into the black mouth of the duct, vapor rising like breath. “If we get separated—”
“We won’t,” said McGregor. He offered his head lamp, reduced to a thin beam. “Follow the pulse.”
They slipped into the vent, metal walls pressing close. The sound of the storm died behind them. Ahead, the hum grew louder, resolving into a rhythmic vibration that trembled through steel and stone.
Inside, the air changed from thin and open to that dry, humming pressure that gathers where metal is asked to do impossible things. Rows of server columns glowed with blue light, the floor swallowed sound. The machinery’s pulse was a steady thrum Athena felt in her teeth.
