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  If four armed men hadn’t just tried to beat information about Lynn’s whereabouts out of him, Adams would have thought her paranoid. But it would certainly appear that there were people out to get her, and they had been able to intercept the email. He hoped that was as far as they had got.

  Lynn looked up again into his eyes. ‘Do you believe me?’

  He stared back at her, melting in the green limpid pools of her eyes. ‘I believe you.’ He held her tight, kissed her cheek. ‘I believe you.’

  Stephen Jacobs poked at the logs burning in the vast fireplace, feeling rather than seeing when Commander Flynn Eldridge entered the living room.

  Eldridge, a former commander of the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six, was now in charge of an even more clandestine group. Known as the Alpha Brigade, it operated out of the Nevada desert, on the direct orders of the organization headed by Stephen Jacobs. The group consisted purely of ex-military special forces operatives, pulled in from the SEALs, the Marine Force Recon, the Green Berets, the Delta Force, and from the Air Force Special Forces. They were a private army, not operating on government orders but able to exist above the law due to the protection given to them by Jacobs’ organization.

  Eldridge loved every minute of it – no congressional oversight, nobody breathing down his neck, no ridiculously restrictive rules of engagement – and the only thing that mattered to Jacobs was results. Eldridge was therefore given carte blanche in his operations, as long as he got the job done, a fact that appealed immensely to his ruthless, aggressive nature. If he needed information from someone, he could torture them. If he needed to make a point for someone, he could execute the person next to them.

  He was the king of his own little world, a world of hired mercenary killers, one which he dominated through sheer force of will. Sometimes he thought he was in danger of becoming like the US Army Special Forces men sent into the jungles of Laos and Cambodia to train up the guerrilla forces that ‘went native’ during the Vietnam War, men who were treated like gods by the tribal people, and who lost all sense of reality. But he always reigned himself back in when he felt it was getting to that stage – after all, he was a professional. Ruthless, fearsome, merciless, but a professional nevertheless.

  But as he entered the large, mahogany-panelled living room of Jacobs’ vast mansion house on Washington’s Potomac River, Eldridge was all too aware of his recent failings. First, he had failed to make sure everyone aboard the helicopter was dead back in the Antarctic. Second, a team of his men had seriously underestimated the survivor’s ex-husband, Matt Adams. Now Adams was undoubtedly going to rendezvous with Edwards, and then – who knew?

  ‘Sir,’ Eldridge announced, standing to attention behind the old man.

  Jacobs continued to prod the fire, causing embers to fall, to ignite the dead areas and feed the flames. ‘Good evening,’ he said eventually, without turning round. He continued to stoke the fire for a few more minutes, Eldridge growing more and more uncomfortable with every passing second.

  Finally, Jacobs turned round and locked eyes with the special forces commander. ‘I am sure you understand how our organization responds to failure.’

  Eldridge nodded, having executed several men himself who had been deemed to be unworthy of the group’s standards.

  ‘How secure are you feeling right now?’ Jacobs asked directly.

  Eldridge adjusted his position uncomfortably. He was not used to being on the receiving end of threats. ‘I need another chance, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ll get them.’

  Jacobs smiled, reassured by the strength of Eldridge’s conviction. He wasn’t sure if it was the threat of execution or the thought of the coming reward if everything went according to plan that gave the big man such convincing self-belief. Either way, Jacobs believed him.

  ‘Good. The fact is, we need to find these two characters, and we need to find them fast.’

  Eldridge nodded his head. ‘Do we have any leads?’

  For the first time that night, Jacobs smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, we do.’

  5

  ‘IT’S SO STRANGE,’ Lynn said, holding a fresh cup of coffee in her hands.

  ‘What’s that?’ Adams asked, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. He had managed to sleep for a few hours on board the plane, before the nightmares woke him, but was now unable to do so again. And perversely, now his body had been rewarded with sleep, instead of being satiated, it just craved even more.

  ‘The other helicopter,’ Lynn answered straight away. ‘I’ve been checking a few things out since I’ve been here, and it just seems to have vanished – no flight plans filed, no record of a take-off, no record of it ever having landed. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but it seems to have never even existed.’

  ‘Sounds military,’ Adams said, thinking about the recent visit to his house by what seemed to be government agents. ‘Probably linked to the intelligence services.’

  Lynn nodded her head. ‘That’s what I thought,’ she continued. ‘But why? I mean, why would they be doing it?’

  ‘I guess the reason they’d give would be national security, but who really knows? It could be rogue elements, it could be anything. The one thing that is clear is that they’re ruthless.’ Adams pointed at the backpack. ‘And that evidence you’ve got in there is our only potential bargaining chip.’

  Adams stretched out, thinking about what was in the bag. High-definition footage of the burial site, measurements, notes, diagrams and, most importantly, DNA samples of the body itself.

  ‘If we’re going to get out of this, we have to learn more about that body – who it is, what it was doing there, and why it’s so damned important.’ He considered the matter further. ‘We need to get back to the US and get those samples tested, get the rest of the evidence copied and spread around. Like insurance.’

  Lynn nodded, knowing he was right. All of a sudden, she was extremely glad she had sent the email to Matt. He was always so sure, so strong. And despite her own strengths, she had felt so lost here, stranded and alone against the vast machine of the US government, or whoever it was that was after her.

  She felt unfamiliar feelings in her gut, ones she had not felt since – well, since the last time she had been with Matt, she finally admitted to herself. Was it the stress? Or were the feelings real?

  As she lay back on her bed and closed her eyes, giving in to the need for sleep, she had no answer.

  Later that night, she awoke in a cold sweat, nightmares from the helicopter crash swamping her unconscious, disturbing her inner demons.

  And then Matt was there with her, holding her close, whispering in her ear that she would be OK, everything would be all right.

  He climbed in next to her, arms around her, and as she felt his strong embrace, she knew that he was right.

  Eldridge smiled to himself as the aeroplane shot through the thin air of near-space at over four thousand miles per hour, one hundred thousand feet above the earth.

  The Aurora stealth aircraft was a secret military project many thought was still years from completion, although it was in reality already mission-ready. Powered by a radical new pulse detonation wave engine, it could reach speeds once thought impossible. From the airstrip at Groom Lake in the Nevada desert to the skies above Santiago would take less than an hour.

  The only unfortunate thing, Eldridge reflected as he checked the harness on his chute, was that the aircraft wouldn’t be able to land – the risk of people seeing it was just too great. Instead it would take the lesser risk of slowing down and reducing altitude so that he could parachute out of it once it had reached its destination.

  Eldridge was no stranger to parachute drops and was looking forward to liaising with his team. There were six members of the Alpha Brigade already on the ground in Santiago, who had been searching for Lynn Edwards in Punta Arenas since the email had been sent. More of his team would join them later; at the moment they were being recalled from other operations, and tasked to Eldridge in Santiago. They would have to travel by more conventional, slower aircraft, but they would be there by late the next morning.

  And then the hunt would begin in earnest.

  Jacobs rubbed his chin in contemplation as he relaxed in his private sauna. Sweat dripped from every square inch of his body, pooling on the Scandinavian pine-wood floor, and he breathed in deeply, then exhaled, expanding his chest.

  The information had come in unexpectedly and had to be acted on fast, and he was pleased he had managed to arrange for the Aurora to get Eldridge there quickly.

  Once there, Eldridge would capture Matt Adams and Lynn Edwards, and arrange for the pair to be delivered covertly to the base in Nevada for interrogation. It would be tidier if Adams and Lynn could just be taken out, executed on the spot, but it was vital that Jacobs knew what had been going on for the past week – who else Lynn had told, who they had told, ad infinitum until the situation was entirely contained.

  And that was a definite possibility, now that the pair’s location had been determined. Computer power had defined a possible area that Lynn could have reached since the crash, taking into account various factors such as data from ports, airports, train stations and bus depots, credit card use, availability of cash, use of passport, feeds from CCTV units, and basic triangulation algorithms.

  This area was then cross-referenced with every available scrap of information about the past lives of Matt Adams and Evelyn Edwards, and further computer searches had finally found a seventeen-year-old credit card bill for two train tickets from Lynn’s family home in Maine down to Mexico. Time-consuming manual labour had at last unearthed the circuitous route through South America taken by the young couple, and card purchases along the way provided further confirmation that it had in fact been Lynn and Adams who w
ere the travellers.

  Once the data was cross-checked, the triangulation zone matched almost perfectly with the couple’s prior visit to Santiago, Chile. It made perfect sense, too – Lynn could easily have gone that far north in the time available, without having to cross any borders, and it would be easy to get lost in a city of five million people.

  Once the target city had been located, it was then a matter of checking hotel bookings, travel companies, taxi services, CCTV footage, and satellite photography.

  Evelyn Edwards’ features had finally been caught on CCTV going into the Parque Metropolitano, and the data was immediately fed to the Alpha Brigade members who were already in Chile.

  Further CCTV followed Lynn as she met a second person, whose features were subsequently confirmed as belonging to the second target, Matt Adams. The pair were then electronically followed back to the Hostal Americano, where the primary target had apparently booked a room for cash under the name of Patrice Leaky.

  The five men from the Alpha Brigade were on-site within the hour, ready to roll, and as Jacobs sat in his sauna, the sweat rolling off his body in fat, thick droplets, he had to admit that it was an impressive turnaround.

  With Eldridge also en route for Chile, Jacobs was confident that the pair would be in Nevada by nightfall. They would be expertly interrogated, every last drop of information forced from them.

  And then they would be executed.

  6

  ‘THEY INTERCEPTED THE email?’ Lynn asked over the small breakfast table, incredulous.

  Adams nodded. ‘They even showed me a copy. I wouldn’t have known about it if they hadn’t, I hadn’t been home for days.’

  The night before, Adams had purposely not told Lynn the details about the attack on his house, knowing how she would react. She had a terrible night as it was, and Adams knew she wouldn’t have slept a wink if he had told her his own story.

  But now Lynn looked as if she had been bitten by a snake, recoiling with sudden terror. ‘They might know where we are!’ she whispered, trying to contain her rising panic. ‘If they intercepted the message, they could know anything!’

  Adams shook his head. ‘No. They came to me because they had no idea where you were. They needed to get the information from me.’

  ‘And you’re sure you weren’t followed?’

  ‘Pretty sure. I had a borrowed passport, used a random route, never noticed anything out of the ordinary. And I’m pretty good at that.’ Adams winced even as he said it. That might once have been true, he thought, but not any more. He hadn’t even seen Lynn come up to him in the park. He was out of practice, plain and simple. As it stood, Lynn seemed to be doing a better job than he was. What if he had been followed?

  ‘It might not have even been people following you,’ Lynn warned. ‘Electronic surveillance – credit card purchases, closed-circuit television with facial recognition software, satellite photography, the list is endless!’

  Since her escape, Lynn had been meticulously researching the techniques and methods of her potential enemies, and her razor-sharp mind had absorbed an incredible amount of information on the subject. She didn’t have the practical experience but certainly now knew the theory well enough to be worried.

  ‘Hey,’ Adams said as soothingly as he could, all too aware that Lynn was right. ‘I only used cash, I don’t even have any credit cards, and I was careful to avoid cameras. I didn’t use a phone either. I think we should be OK for now.’

  Lynn looked at him for a moment before making her decision. ‘No. We have to leave. Now.’

  Adams nodded his head. He actually agreed, he just wanted Lynn to calm down, to try and relax. Mistakes were made when tensions were high, and Adams knew that better than most. ‘OK,’ he said, grabbing his bag from the second bed. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’

  Within three minutes, Lynn was ready with him at the door. Reaching out to touch the thin wooden partition, his hand stopped, and he reflexively put out his other hand to stop Lynn, a finger going to her lips to silence her.

  He pressed his head closer to the door, listening, senses tuning to the world beyond the door.

  The noise was coming from the stairs. Six pairs of feet, booted, heavy, as if each person carried something. It could be luggage of course, but it could just as easily be weaponry of some kind. There was a defined movement to the footsteps, a rhythm, a sense of cohesion that felt vaguely military.

  He felt his old senses coming back to him slowly, crawling out of the veil they had been hiding behind since that day in the desert.

  He sniffed the air, and smelled no cologne, no deodorant, just a faint hint of natural soap, enough to disguise the more potent smell of body odour.

  And then he picked up the breathing – regular, even, paced, but slightly elevated, and not by the exercise but by anticipation.

  ‘Hit team,’ he said to Lynn finally. ‘Six men, armed, turning down the hallway now. We’ve got ten seconds.’

  7

  CERN, THE EUROPEAN Organization for Nuclear Research, is based near Geneva, Switzerland. Famous across the world for its search for the ‘God Particle’ at its Large Hadron Collider facility, the institution was originally founded in 1954 to unite Europe’s – and later the world’s – foremost nuclear physicists. Since then, its particle physics research has taken over to a large extent, and its discovery and then its creation of antimatter is both admired and feared in equal measure.

  Many members of the general public were genuinely terrified when the collider – more commonly known as the LHC – was first switched on. Consisting of billions of particles being deliberately smashed together along miles of underground piping – sometimes as many as ten thousand per second – it was thought in some quarters that the device might create a black hole that would destroy the entire world in the blink of an eye.

  Of course, no such thing ever happened, and the LHC has hummed away safely ever since, on a constant quest for the explanation of the beginnings of the universe.

  Professor Philippe Messier considered the history of the LHC laboratory as he entered the elevator. He had just finished examining a damaged portion of the pipeline, which was getting the full attention of an army of engineers and machinists. Satisfied that everything that could be done was being done, he decided to check on the more important project, three hundred feet further under the surface.

  Whereas the LHC was very much the public face of CERN, the project below – even though it had cost close to several trillion euros over the decades – was unknown by all but a handful of select people in the outside world, all part of the elite organization headed by Stephen Jacobs. The others – engineers, technicians, physicists, mathematicians, machinists, and hundreds of skilled and unskilled workers – were not part of the chosen, and would never be allowed to leave the facility. In a way, they were slaves to the machine, destined to work until they perished.

  Messier smiled as he descended lower in the elevator, excited whenever he thought about the project. As the elevator came to a smooth stop, and the doors opened, the vast machine was revealed in all its glory.

  Although it depended to a large extent on the power secretly generated by the LHC above, the technology that this secret device relied upon was more esoteric by far, unknown to the vast majority of the human populace. It was a gift from the gods, almost literally, Messier thought as he approached it.

  Soon, he thought as he neared it. Soon.

  A shiver of excitement ran through him as he looked through the huge observation windows. Soon it would be fully operational, and it mattered to him not one iota that the result might well be the destruction of the human race, except for the chosen few.

  The chosen few who would soon be as gods themselves.

  Adams ran past Lynn, who stood rooted to the spot, clutching her backpack. He looked through the window on the opposite side of the room, across the Avenue Santa Maria to the block opposite.