The Doomsday Key

  He paused to steady himself. One fast dash and he could be inside the hut. But before he could move, new jets of flame burst forth on the far side of the field. A line of men bearing flamethrowers set off down the rows of corn, burning the fields that had yet to be harvested.

  What the hell’s happening?

  Off to the right, the single granary tower exploded in a fiery whirlwind that spiraled high into the air. Shocked, but using the distraction, Jason dashed to the Quonset hut’s open door and dove through it.

  In the glow of the fires, the room looked unmolested, almost tidy. The back half of the hut was full of all manner of scientific equipment used in genetic and biological research: microscopes, centrifuges, incubators, thermocyclers, gel electrophoresis units. To the right were cubicles with wireless laptops, satellite uplink equipment, even battery backup units.

  A single laptop, still powered by the batteries, glowed with a screensaver. It rested in Krista’s cubicle, but there was no sign of his girlfriend.

  Jason hurried to the cubicle and brushed his thumb over the touch-pad. The screensaver vanished, replaced with a view of an open e-mail account. Again it was Krista’s.

  Jason stared around the hut.

  Krista must have fled, but where?

  Jason quickly accessed his own e-mail account and toggled the address for his father’s office on Capitol Hill. Holding his breath, he typed rapidly as he described the attack in a few terse sentences. In case he didn’t make it, he wanted some record. Just before he hit the Send button, he had a moment of insight. Krista’s files were still up on the screen. He dragged them, attached them to his note, and hit Send. She would not want them lost.

  The e-mail failed to immediately transmit. The attached file was huge and would take an extra minute to upload. He couldn’t wait. Jason hoped the battery pack would last long enough for the e-mail to go through.

  Fearful of waiting any longer, Jason swung toward the door. He had no way of knowing where Krista had gone. He hoped she had fled into the surrounding desert. That was what he was going to do. Out there were mazes of gullies and dry washes. He could hide for days if necessary.

  As he hurried toward the exit, a dark figure appeared and blocked the doorway. Jason fell back with a gasp. The figure stepped into the hut and whispered in surprise.

  “Jase?”

  Relief flushed through him. “Krista …”

  He hurried to her, his arms wide to take her in. They could still both escape.

  “Oh, Jason, thank God!”

  His relief matched hers—until she lifted a pistol and fired three times into his chest. The shots felt like punches, knocking him backward to the floor. Fiery pain followed, turning the night even darker. Distantly he heard gunfire, explosions, and more screams.

  Krista leaned over him. “Your tent was empty. We thought you’d escaped.”

  He coughed, unable to answer as blood filled his mouth.

  Seemingly satisfied with his silence, she turned on a heel and headed back out into the nightmare of fire and death. She stopped, momentarily silhouetted against the flaming fields, then vanished into the night.

  Jason struggled to comprehend.

  Why?

  As darkness folded over him, he would have no answer to his question, but he alone heard one last thing. The laptop in the neighboring cubicle chimed. His message had been sent.

  2

  October 10, 7:04 A.M.

  Prince William Forest Virginia

  He needed more speed.

  Hunched over the narrow handlebars of the motorcycle, Commander Grayson Pierce flew the bike around a sharp corner. He leaned his six-foot frame into the curve, nearly shearing off his kneecap as he laid the bike low around the turn.

  The engine roared as he opened the throttle and straightened his trajectory. His target raced fifty yards ahead of him, riding a smaller Honda crotch rocket. Gray pursued on an older-model Yamaha V-Max. Both bikes were powered by V-4 engines, but his motorcycle was larger and weighed more. If he was going to catch his target, he would need every bit of skill.

  And maybe a bit of luck.

  They’d reached a short straightaway through the parklands of Prince William Forest. A dense line of hardwoods framed the two-lane road. The mix of towering beech and aspen made for a handsome scenic drive, especially now, in October, when the leaves were changing. Unfortunately, a storm last night had blown most of those leaves into patches of slippery mire on the blacktop.

  Gray snapped the throttle wider. Acceleration kicked him in the pants. With the slightest wobble, the bike rocketed down the straight stretch, turning the center line into a blur.

  But his target was also taking advantage of the straight road. So far, most of Route 619 had been a roller-coaster ride of sudden turns, deadly switchbacks, and rolling hills. The hour-long chase had been brutal, but Gray could not let the other rider escape.

  As his target slowed for the next turn, the distance between them narrowed. Gray refused to let up. Maybe it was foolhardy, but he knew his bike’s capabilities. Since acquiring it, he’d had one of the robotics engineers from DARPA—the Defense Department’s research and development branch—outfit the motorcycle with a few modifications.

  They owed him a favor.

  Gray’s own outfit—designated Sigma—served as the muscle behind DARPA. The team consisted of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines to act as its field operatives.

  One of the modifications to the bike was a head’s-up display built into his helmet. Across his face shield, data flickered on the left side, noting speed, RPM, gear, oil temperature. On the right side, a navigational map scrolled data that projected best possible gear ratios and speeds to match the terrain.

  From the corner of his eye, Gray watched the tachometer slip into the red zone. The navigational array blinked a warning. He was coming at the corner too fast.

  Ignoring the data, Gray kept hard on the throttle.

  The distance between the two bikes narrowed further.

  Thirty yards now separated them as they hit the curve.

  Ahead, the rider tilted his bike and roared around the bend. Seconds later, Gray hit the same turn. He sought to eke out another yard by hugging tighter around the blind corner, skimming the center yellow line. Luckily, at this early hour the roads through here were empty of traffic.

  Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the wildlife.

  Around the corner, a black bear crouched at the shoulder of the road with a cub at her side. Both noses were buried in a McDonald’s bag. The first motorcycle sped past the pair. The noise and sudden appearance startled the mother bear into rearing up, and the cub acted on pure instinct and fled—right into the road.

  Gray could not get out of the way in time. With no choice, he swung the bike into a hard skid. His tires smoked across the blacktop. As he hit the soft loam of the opposite shoulder, he let the bike drop and kicked away. Momentum slid him across the moist leaves on his back for a good twenty feet. Behind him, the bike hit an oak with a resounding crash.

  Coming to a stop in a wet gulley, Gray twisted around. He could see the hind end of the mother bear hightailing it into the woods, followed by her cub. Apparently they’d had enough fast food for one day.

  A new noise intruded.

  The roar of a motorcycle, coming up fast.

  Gray sat straighter. Down the road, his target had swung around and was barreling back toward him.

  Oh, great…

  Gray ripped away the chinstraps and tugged off his helmet.

  The other cycle rocketed up to his position and braked hard in front of him, lifting up on its front tire. The rider was short, but muscled like a pit bull. As the bike came to a stop, the rider pulled off his helmet, too, revealing a head shaved to the skin. He frowned down at Gray.

  “Still in one piece?”

  The rider was Monk Kokkalis, a fellow operative with Sigma and Gray’s best friend. The man’s stony feat
ures were carved into an expression of concern and worry.

  “I’m fine. Hadn’t expected a bear in the road.”

  “Who does?” Monk cracked a wide grin as he booted his kickstand into place and climbed off the bike. “But don’t go thinkin’ of welshing on our bet. You set no rules against natural obstacles. Dinner’s on you after the conference. Porterhouses and the darkest ale they have at that steak-house by the lake.”

  “Fine. But I want a rematch. You had an unfair advantage.”

  “Advantage? Me?” Monk stripped off one of his gloves to expose his prosthetic hand. “I’m missing my hand. Along with a fair amount of my long-term memory. And been on disability for a year. Some advantage!”

  Still, the grin never wavered as Monk offered his DARPA-engineered prosthetic. Gray took the hand, feeling the cold plastic fasten firmly on him. Those same fingers could crush walnuts. Monk pulled him to his feet.

  As Gray brushed wet leaves from his Kevlar motorcycle suit, his cell phone chimed from his breast pocket. He pulled it out and checked the Caller ID. His jaw tightened.

  “It’s HQ,” he told Monk and lifted the phone to his ear. “Commander Pierce here.”

  “Pierce? About time you picked up. I’ve called you four times in the past hour. And may I ask what you are doing in the middle of a forest in Virginia?” It was Gray’s boss, Painter Crowe, director of Sigma.

  Fighting for some adequate explanation, Gray glanced back at his motorcycle. The bike’s GPS must have betrayed his location. Gray struggled to explain, but he had no adequate excuse. He and Monk had been sent from Washington to Quantico to attend an FBI symposium on bioterrorism. Today was the second day, and Gray and Monk had decided to skip the morning lectures.

  “Let me guess,” Painter continued. “Out doing a little joyriding?”

  “Sir …”

  The sternness in the director’s voice softened. “So did it help Monk?”

  As usual, Painter had surmised the truth. The director had an uncanny ability to assess a situation. Even this one.

  Gray looked over at his friend. Monk stood with his arms locked across his chest, his face worried. It had been a hard year for him. He had been brutalized in an enemy’s research facility where a part of his brain had been cut out, destroying his memory. Though he had recovered what was left, gaps remained, and Gray knew it still haunted him.

  Over the last two months, Monk had been slowly acclimating back to his duties with Sigma, restricted though they might be. He was on desk duty and offered only minor assignments here in the States. He was limited to gathering intel and evaluating data, often beside his wife, Captain Kat Bryant, who also worked at Sigma headquarters and had a background in Naval Intelligence.

  Gray knew Monk was straining at the bit to do more, to gain back the life that had been stolen from him. Everyone treated him as if he were a fragile piece of porcelain, and he’d begun to bristle at all the sympathetic glances and whispered words of encouragement.

  So Gray had suggested this cross-country race through the park that bordered the Quantico Marine Corps Reservation. It offered a chance to blow off some steam, to get a little grit in the face, to take some risk.

  Gray covered the phone with his hand and mouthed to Monk, “Painter’s pissed.”

  His friend’s face broke into a broad grin.

  Gray returned the phone to his ear.

  “I heard that,” his boss said. “And if you’re both done having your bit of fun, I need you back at Sigma Command this afternoon. Both of you.” “Yes, sir. But can I ask what it’s about?”

  A long pause stretched as if the director was weighing what to say. When he spoke, his words were careful. “It’s about the original owner of that motorcycle of yours.”

  Gray glanced at the crashed bike. The original owner? He flashed back to a night two years ago, remembering the roar of a motorcycle down a suburban street, running with no lights, bearing a deadly rider, an assassin of mixed loyalties.

  Gray swallowed to gain his voice. “What about her?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  1:00 P.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Hours later, Gray had showered, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, and sat in the satellite surveillance room of Sigma headquarters. He shared the space with Painter and Monk. On the screen shone a digital map. It traced a crooked red line from Thailand to Italy.

  The path of the assassin ended in Venice.

  Sigma had been tracking her for over a year. Her location was marked by a small red triangle on a computer monitor. It glowed in the middle of a satellite map of Venice. Buildings, crooked streets, and winding canals were depicted in precise gray-scale detail, down to the tiny gondolas frozen in place, capturing a moment in time. That time was shown in the corner of the computer monitor, along with the approximate longitude and latitude of the assassin’s location:

  10:52:45 GMT OCT 9

  LAT 41°52’56.97"N

  LONG 12°29’5.19"E

  “How long has she been in Venice?” Gray asked. “Over a month.”

  Painter ran a tired hand through his hair and narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He looked exhausted. It had been a difficult year for the director. Pale from spending much of the day in offices and meetings, Painter’s mixed Native American heritage was only evident in the granite planes of his face and the streak of white through his black hair, like a tucked snowy feather.

  Gray studied the map. “Do we know where she’s staying?”

  Painter shook his head. “Somewhere in the Santa Croce area. It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods of Venice, not very touristy. A maze of bridges, alleys, and canals. An easy place to keep hidden.”

  Monk sat back from the other two, adjusting the connection of his prosthetic hand. “So why did Seichan pick that city of all the places in the world to hole up?”

  Gray glanced to the corner of the monitor. It displayed a photo of the assassin, a woman in her late twenties. Her features were a mix of Vietnamese and European descent, possibly French, with her bronzed skin, slender features, and full lips. When Gray had first met her three years ago, she’d almost killed him, shooting him point-blank in the chest. Even now he pictured her in that same turtlenecked black bodysuit, recalling how it had hugged her lithe form, hinting at both the hardness and softness that lay beneath.

  Gray also pictured their last association. She’d been captured and held prisoner by the U.S. military, badly bloodied and recovering from abdominal surgery. At the time, Gray had helped her escape custody, paying back a debt owed after she had saved his own life—but her freedom had not come without a price.

  During the surgery, Gray’s boss had a passive polymer tracker secretly planted in her belly. It was a condition for her release, extra insurance that they’d be able to monitor her location and movements. She was too important to let go, too intimately tied to a shadowy terrorist network known as the Guild. No one knew anything about the true puppetmasters of that organization—only that it was well entrenched and had tendrils and roots globally.

  Seichan claimed to be a double agent assigned to infiltrate the Guild and discover who truly ran its operations. Yet she offered no proof except her word. Gray had pretended to allow her to escape, while at the same time he kept silent about the implanted tracker. The device offered U.S. intelligence services a chance to discover more about the Guild.

  But Gray suspected her decision to go to ground in Venice had nothing to do with the Guild. He felt Painter Crowe’s gaze on him, as if waiting for him to come up with an answer. His boss’s face was impassive, stoic, but a flicker in those ice-blue eyes suggested that this was a test.

  “She’s returning to the scene of the crime,” Gray said and sat straighter.

  “What?” Monk asked.

  Gray nodded to the map overlay. “The Santa Croce area also houses some of the oldest sections of the University of Venice. Two years ago, she murdered a museum curator in that city, one connected to
the same university. Killed him in cold blood. She said it was necessary to protect the man’s family. A wife and daughter.”

  Painter confirmed the same. “The child and mother do live in that area. We’ve got people on the ground trying to pinpoint her location. But the tracker is passive. We can’t narrow her location to less than two square miles. In case she shows up, we do have the curator’s family under surveillance. With so many eyes looking for her, she must be maintaining a low profile, possibly using a disguise.”

  Gray remembered the strain in Seichan’s face when she had tried to justify the cold-blooded murder of the museum curator. Possibly guilt, rather than the Guild, had drawn her back to Venice. But to what end? And what if he was wrong? What if this was all an artful bit of trickery? Seichan was nothing if not brilliant, an excellent strategist.

  He studied the screen.

  Something felt wrong about all this.

  “Why are you showing me this now?” Gray asked. Sigma had been tracking Seichan for over a year, so why the sudden urgency to call him back to central command?

  “Word has filtered down from the NSA, passing through the new head of DARPA and down to us. With no real intelligence gained from Seichan’s freedom this past year, the powers-that-be have lost patience with the operation and have ordered her immediate capture. She’s to be brought in to a black ops interrogation center in Bosnia.”

  “But that’s insane. She’ll never talk. Our best chance of discovering anything concrete about the Guild is through this operation.”

  “I agree. Unfortunately, we’re the only ones who hold that position. Now if Sean was still heading DARPA …”

  Painter’s words trailed off into a place of pain. Dr. Sean McKnight had been the founder of Sigma and the head of DARPA at the time. Last year he’d been killed during an assault on Sigma Command. The new head of DARPA, General Gregory Metcalf, was still fresh to his position, still dealing with the political fallout following the assault. He and Painter had been butting heads ever since. Gray suspected that only the president’s support of Painter Crowe kept the director from being fired. But even that support had its limits.