Black Order

"Our interest goes back a considerable way, I'm afraid. British intelligence has had their eye on the Waalenbergs since the end of World War II."

Painter settled back down into his chair, tiring. One of his eyes was having trouble focusing. He rubbed at it. Too conscious of Lisa studying him, he turned his attention to Paula. He had not voiced his discovery of the Nazi symbol buried within the center of the Waalenberg crest, but apparently MI5

was already aware of the connection.

"We knew the Waalenbergs were major financial backers of the Ahnenerbe Forschungs und Lehrgemeinshaft, the Nazis' Ancestral Heritage and Teaching Society. Are you familiar with the group?"

He shook his head, triggering a spasm. His headaches of late had spread to his neck and shot pain down his spine. He rode the agony, teeth clenched.

"The Ancestral Heritage Society was a research group, under Heinrich Himmler. They were conducting projects seeking out the roots of the Aryan race. They were also responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities committed in concentration camps and other secret facilities. Basically they were mad scientists with guns."

Painter held back a wince—but this time it was more psychic than physical. He had heard Sigma described in similar terms. Scientists with guns. Was that their true enemy here? A Nazi version of Sigma?

Lisa stirred. "What was the Waalenbergs' interest in this line of research?"

"We're not entirely sure. But there were many Nazi sympathizers in South Africa during the war. We know the current patriarch, Sir Baldric Waalenberg, also had interests in eugenics, and he participated in scientific conferences in Germany and Austria before hostilities broke out. But after the war, he disappeared into seclusion, taking his entire family with him."

"Licking his wounds?" Painter asked.

"We don't believe so. After the war, Allied forces scoured the German countryside, searching for secret Nazi technology." Paula shrugged. "Including our own British forces."

Painter nodded. He had already heard about that pillaging and looting from Anna.

"But the Nazis were good at spiriting away much of their technology, employing a scorched-earth policy. Executing scientists, bombing facilities. Our forces came upon one such site in Bavaria minutes late. We discovered a scientist, shot in the head in a ditch, yet still alive. Before he died, he revealed some clues as to what had been going on. Research into a new energy source, one discovered through quantum experimentation. They'd had some breakthrough. A fuel source of extraordinary power."

Painter shared a glance with Lisa, remembering Anna's discussion about zero point energy.

"Whatever was discovered, the secret was smuggled out, escaped through rat runs set up by the Nazis. Little is known except the name of the substance and where the trail ended."

"At the Waalenberg estate?" Lisa guessed.

Paula nodded.

"And the name of the substance?" Painter asked, though he already knew the answer, putting it together in his head. "Was it called Xerum 525?"

Paula glanced to him sharply, straightening with a frown. "How did you know?"

"The Bell's fuel source," Lisa mumbled to him.

But to Painter, it only made sense. It was time to come clean with Dr. Paula Kane. Painter stood.

"There's someone you need to meet."

Anna's reaction was no less intense. "So the secret to manufacturing Xerum 525 wasn't destroyed? UnglaublichT

They were all gathered back at the Richards Bay airport, huddled in a hangar while a pair of dusty Isuzu Trooper trucks were being loaded with weapons and equipment.

Lisa ran an inventory check through a medical kit while overseeing the discussion between Painter, Anna, and Paula. Gunther stood at Lisa's side. His brow was deeply furrowed with worry as he watched his sister. Anna seemed steadier after the medicine Lisa had given her.

But for how long?

"While the Bell had been evacuated to the north with your grandfather," Painter explained to Anna, "the secrets of Xerum 525 must have been shipped south. Dividing two parts of one experiment. At some point, word must have reached the Waalenbergs of the Bell's survival. Baldric Waalenberg—as a financial backer for the Ancestral Heritage Society—must have known about GranitschloR"

Paula agreed. "The society was the group that backed Himmler's expeditions into the Himalayas."

"And once discovered, it would have been easy for Baldric to infiltrate spies into GranitschloR."

Anna's face had grown paler—and not from illness. "The bastard has been using us! All along!"

Painter nodded. He had already explained the gist of it to Lisa and Paula on the ride back to the hangar. Baldric Waalenberg had been orchestrating everything, pulling strings from afar. Not one to waste talent or reinvent the wheel, he had allowed the GranitschloR scientists, experts in the Bell, to continue their research, while all the time, his spies siphoned the information back out to Africa.

"Afterward, Baldric must have built his own Bell," Painter said, "experimenting in secret, producing his own Sonnekonige, refining them through the advanced techniques discovered by your scientists. It was the perfect setup. Without another source of Xerum 525, Granitschloft was vulnerable, unwittingly under the thumb of Baldric Waalenberg. At any moment, he could pull the rug out from under them."

"Which he did," Anna spat out.

"But why?" Paula asked. "If this secret orchestration was working so well?"

Painter shrugged. "Maybe it was because Anna's group was drifting further and further away from the Nazi ideal of Aryan supremacy."

Anna pressed a palm against her forehead, as if that would ward against what she was learning. "And there were rumblings…among some of the scientists…of going mainstream, of joining the scientific community and sharing our research."

"But I don't think it was just that," Painter said. "Something more is afoot. Something larger. Something that suddenly made Granitschlofi obsolete."

"I believe you might be correct," Paula said. "For the past four months, there has been a sudden increase in activity at the estate. Something stirred them up."

"They must have come to some breakthrough on their own," Anna said with a worried expression.

Gunther finally spoke up, gruff, a grinding of boulders. "Genug!" He'd had enough and struggled with English in his frustration. "The bastard has Bell…has Xerum…we find it. We use it." He waved an arm to his sister. "Enough talk!"

Lisa found herself heartily agreeing, siding with the giant. "We must find a way inside." And soon, she added to herself.

"It would take an army to storm the place." Painter turned to Paula. "Can we expect any help from the South African government?"

She shook her head. "Not a chance. The Waalenbergs have greased too many palms. We're going to have to find a more covert infiltration."

"The satellite photos didn't help much," Painter said.

"So we go low tech," Paula said and led them toward the waiting Isuzu Troopers. "I have a man already on the ground out there."

6:28 a.m.

Khamisi lay flat on his belly. Though dawn had come, the first rays of the sun only cast deeper shadows along the floor of the jungle. He wore camouflage fatigues and had his large double-bore rifle, his .465 Nitro Holland & Holland Royal, strapped to his back. In his hand, he carried a traditional Zulu short spear, an assegai.

Behind him lay two other Zulu scouts: Tau, the grandson of the elder who had rescued Khamisi from the attack, and his best friend, Njongo. They also carried firearms, along with short and long spears. They were more traditionally attired in pelts, skin daubed with paint, and otter-skin headbands.

The trio had spent the night mapping the forest around the mansion, discerning an approach that avoided the elevated walkways and the guards that patrolled them. They had used game trails that burrowed through the underbrush and skirted along with a small herd of impala, keeping hidden in the shadows. Khamisi had stopped at several points to rig ropes, linking walkway to ground, camouflaged as vines, along with a few other surprises.

With his duty done, he and the scouts had been heading out to where a stream flowed under the wildlife fencing that circled the estate.

Then a moment ago, he had heard the feral scream.

Hoo eeee OOOO.

It ended with a screeched yowl.

Khamisi froze. His very bones remembered the call.

Ukufa.

Paula Kane had been right. She had believed the creatures came from the

Waalenberg estate. Whether escaped or purposefully planted to ambush Khamisi and Marcia, she didn't know. Either way, they were loose now, hunting.

But who?

The call had come a distance to the left.

It wasn't hunting them. The creatures were too skilled hunters. They would not give away their presence so soon. Something else had drawn them, stirred up their bloodlust.

Then he heard a voice shout out in German, a sobbed cry for help.

It was closer.

His bones still vibrating from the call, Khamisi wanted to run, to flee far and fast. It was a primal reaction.

Tau mumbled in Zulu behind him, urging the same.

Khamisi instead turned in the direction of the pleading cry. He had lost Marcia to the creatures. He remembered his own terror, neck deep in the water hole, waiting for dawn. He could not ignore this other.

Rolling to Tau, Khamisi passed on the maps he had drawn. "Get back to camp. Get these to Dr. Kane."

"Khamisi…brother…no, come away." Tau's eyes were huge with his own fear. His grandfather must have told him stories of the ukufa, the myths come to life. Khamisi had to give the man and his friend credit. No one else had volunteered to enter the estate. Superstitions ran high.

But now faced with the reality, Tau had no intention of remaining.

And Khamisi couldn't blame him. He remembered his own terror when he'd been with Marcia. Instead of holding his ground, he had fled, run, allowed the doctor to be killed.

"Go," Khamisi ordered. He nodded toward the distant fence line. The maps had to get out.

Tau and Njongo hesitated for a breath. Then Tau nodded, and the pair rose up in a low crouch and vanished into the jungle. Khamisi couldn't even hear their footfalls.

The jungle had fallen into a dread silence, heavy and as dense as the forest itself. Khamisi set out in the direction of the cries—both man and creature.

After another full minute, another yowl burst out of the jungle like a flight of startled birds. It ended in a series of yipping cackles. Khamisi paused, struck by something familiar in this last eerie bit.

Before he could consider it further, a soft sobbing drew his attention.

It came from directly ahead.

Khamisi used the muzzle of his double-bore rifle to part some leaves. A small glade opened in the jungle ahead, where a tree had fallen recently and cleared a part of the forest. The hole in the canopy allowed a shaft of morning sunlight to pierce to the floor. It made the surrounding jungle even darker with shadows.

Across the glade, movement drew his eye. A young man—no more than a boy—low in a tree, struggled to reach another branch, to climb higher. He couldn't reach. He couldn't get a grip with his right hand. Even from here, Khamisi saw the trail of blood soaked down the boy's sleeve as he vainly struggled.

Then the boy suddenly sank to his knees, hugging the bole, attempting to hide.

And the reason for the boy's sudden terror stepped into view.

Khamisi froze as the creature stalked into the glade, under the tree. It was massive, belying its silent tread out of the forest. It was larger than a full-grown male lion, but it was no lion. Its shaggy fur was albino white, its eyes a hyperreflective red. Its back sloped from thickset high shoulders to a lower rear end. Its muscled neck supported a large, muzzled head topped by a pair of wide batlike belled ears. These swiveled, focused on the tree.

Lifting its head, it sniffed upward, drawn by the blood.

Lips rippled back from a maw of ripping teeth.

It howled again, ending again in a hair-raising series of cackling whoops.

Then it began to climb.

Khamisi knew what he faced.

Ukufa.

Death.

But as monstrous as it appeared, Khamisi knew its true name.

6:30 a.m.

"Species Crocuta crocuta" Baldric Waalenberg said, stepping to the LCD monitor. He had noted Gray's continued focus upon the creature on the screen, overlaying the video feed of Fiona in the cage.

Gray studied the massive bearlike creature, frozen, facing the camera, growling, mouth wide, baring white gums and yellowed fangs. It had to weigh three hundred pounds. It guarded the macerated remains of some antelope.

"The spotted hyena," Baldric continued. "The species is the second-largest carnivore in Africa, capable of dropping a bull wildebeest all by itself."

Gray frowned. The creature on the monitor was no ordinary hyena. It massed three to four times the normal size. And the pale fur. Some combination of gigantism and albinism. A mutated monstrosity.

"What did you do to it?" he asked, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. He also wanted to keep the man talking, buying time. He matched gazes with Monk, then returned his attention to the old man.

"We made the creature better, stronger." Baldric glanced to his grandson. Isaak continued to watch the play dispassionately. "Did we not, Isaak?"

"Ja, grootvader."

"Prehistoric cave pictures in Europe show the great ancestor of today's hyena. The giant hyena. We've found a way to return Crocuta to its former glory." Baldric spoke with the same scientific dispassion as when he had discussed breeding black orchids. "Even enhanced the species' intelligence by incorporating human stem cells into its cerebral cortex. Fascinating results."

Gray had read of similar experiments done with mice. At Stanford, scientists had produced mice whose brains were one percent human. What the hell was going on here?

Baldric stepped to the blackboard with the five runic symbols. He tapped the board with the cane. "We have a series of Cray XT3 supercomputers working on Hugo's code. Once solved, this will allow us to do the same with mankind. To bring about the next evolution of man. Out of Africa again, man will rise anew, putting an end to the mud races and racial mixing, a purity will supersede all. It only waits to be unlocked from our corrupted genetic code and purified."

Gray heard echoes of the Nazis' Obermensch philosophy, the superman myth. The old man was mad. He had to be. But Gray noted the lucidity of his gaze. And on the screen lay proof of some monstrous success toward that end.

Gray's attention shifted to Isaak as he tapped a key and the mutated hyena vanished. Insight flashed through him. The albinism in the hyena. Isaak and his twin sister. The other white-blond assassins. Children all. Baldric hadn't been experimenting only with orchids and hyenas.

"Now let us return to the matter of Painter Crowe," the old man said. He waved a hand toward the screen. "Now that you understand what awaits the young meisje in the cage if you don't answer our questions truthfully. No more games."

Gray studied the screen, the girl in the cage. He could not let anything happen to Fiona. If nothing else, he needed to buy her time. The girl had been pulled into all of this because of his own clumsy inquiries in Copenhagen. She was his responsibility. And more than that, he liked the girl, respected her, even when she was being a pain in the ass. Gray knew what he had to do.

He faced Baldric.

"What do you want to know?"

"Unlike you, Painter Crowe has proven more of an adversary than we had anticipated. He has vanished after escaping our ambush. You're going to help us find out where he's gone."

"How?"

"By contacting Sigma command. We have a scrambled, untraceable line. You're going to break communication silence and find out what Sigma knows about the Black Sun project and where Painter Crowe has gone into hiding. And any hint of treachery…" Baldric nodded to the monitor.

Gray now understood the strident lesson here. They wanted Gray to understand fully, strangling any hope of deception. Save Fiona or betray Sigma?

The decision was momentarily postponed as one of the guards returned with another of Gray's demands.

"My hand!" Monk called out, noting the prosthesis carried by the guard. He struggled, his elbows still bound behind his back.

Baldric waved the guard forward. "Give the prosthesis to Isaak."

Isaak spoke up, speaking Dutch. "Did the lab clear it of any hidden weapons?"

The man nodded. "Ja, sir. All clear."

Still Isaak inspected the prosthetic hand. It was a marvel of DARPA engineering, incorporating direct peripheral nerve control through the titanium wrist contact points. It also was engineered with advanced mechanics and actuators that allowed precise movements and sensory input.

Monk stared at Gray.

Gray noted Monk's left fingers had finished tapping a code on the contact points of his right wrist's stump.

Gray nodded, stepping closer to Monk.

There was one other feature of DARPA's electronic prosthesis.

It was wireless.

A radioed signal passed between Monk and his prosthetic hand.

In response, the disembodied prosthetic clenched in Isaak's grip.

Fingers formed a fist.

Except for a raised middle finger.

"Screw you," Monk mumbled.

Gray grabbed Monk's elbow and yanked him toward the double doors that led into the main house.

The explosion was not large—no more than an extra loud and brilliant flash grenade. The charge had been blended directly into the plastic sleeve of the outer hand, impossible to detect. And while it wasn't much, it proved enough of a distraction. Cries of surprise and pain erupted from the guards. Gray and Monk slammed through the double doors, fled down the hall, and took the first turn. Out of direct sight, they pounded across polished hardwood floors.

Alarms immediately erupted, clanging and urgent.

They needed an escape route ASAP.

Gray noted wide stairs leading up. He guided Monk to them.

"Where we going?" Monk asked.

"Up, up, up…" Gray said as they fled, taking two steps at a time. Security would expect them to make a break for the nearest door or window. He knew another way out. In his head, a schematic of the manor house revolved. He had studied the estate closely as they were marched over here. Gray concentrated, trusting his sense of direction and position in space.

"This way." He hauled Monk off a landing and down another corridor. They were on the sixth floor. Alarms continued.

"Where—?" Monk began again.

"High ground," Gray answered and pointed toward the end of the corridor where a door awaited. "To the walkway in the canopy."

But it wouldn't be that easy.

As if someone had overheard their plan, an inner metal shutter began lowering over the exit door. An automated lockdown.

"Hurry!" Gray yelled.

The shutter trundled quickly, already three-quarters closed.

Gray sped faster, leaving Monk behind. He grabbed a hall chair as he ran past it and flung it ahead. It landed on the hardwood floor and skittered across the polished surface. Gray chased after it. The chair struck the closed outer door as the inner metal shutter clamped down atop it. Gears ground. A red light flared above the doorway. Malfunction. Gray was sure some warning bulb was already flaring in the mansion's main security nest.

As he reached the door, the wooden chair legs splintered and cracked, crushed beneath the grinding shutter.

Monk ran up, out of breath, arms still clamped behind his back.

Gray ducked under the chair and reached for the knob on the exit door. It was a strain with the shutter blocking the way.

His fingers clamped on the knob and twisted.

Locked.

"Goddamn it!" he swore.

More of the chair cracked. Behind them, the tromp of boots echoed, coming fast up the stairs. Voices barked orders.

Gray twisted around. "Brace me!" he said to Monk. He would have to kick the far door open.

On his back, legs pistoned up and ready, Gray leaned against Monk's shoulder for leverage.

Then the exit door simply popped open ahead of him, revealing a pair of legs in camouflaged khakis. One of the walkway patrols must have noted the malfunction and come to investigate.

Gray aimed for the man's shins and kicked out.

Caught by surprise, the man's legs went out from under him. He hit his head with a clang against the shutter and landed hard on the planks. Gray dove out and clocked the man again with his heel. His body went slack.

Monk followed, rolling to Gray, but not before kicking the trapped chair free of the shutter. The metal security gate continued its descent and slammed closed.

Gray relieved the guard of his weapons. He used a knife to slice away Monk's bindings and passed him the man's sidearm, an HK Mark 23 semiautomatic pistol. Gray confiscated the rifle.

Weapons in hand, they fled down the canopy bridge to the first crossroads. It divided just as the bridge reached the jungle. They checked both directions. So far it was all clear.

"We're going to have to split up," Gray said. "Better our chances. You have to get help, get to a phone, contact Logan."

"What about you?"

Gray didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"Gray…she may already be dead."

"We don't know that."

Monk searched his face. He had seen the monster on the computer screen. He knew Gray had no choice.

Monk nodded.

Without another word, they fled in opposite directions.

6:34 a.m.

Khamisi reached the canopy walkway, scaling up a tree on the opposite side of the glade. He moved swiftly and silently.

Below, the ukufa still circled the tree, guarding its trapped prey. The loud bang a moment ago had startled the ukufa. It had dropped from the tree, wary and cautious. It stalked around the tree again, ears high. Alarms and klaxons echoed out from the manor house.

The commotion also concerned Khamisi.

Had Tau and Njongo been discovered?

Or maybe their camouflaged base camp outside the estate grounds had been found? Their rallying point was disguised as a Zulu hunting campsite, one of the many such nomadic camps. Had someone realized it was more than that?

Whatever the cause of the alarm, the noise at least had made the giant hyena monster—the ukufa—more guarded. Khamisi used its distraction to reach one of the overhead bridges. He rolled onto the planks, freeing his rifle. Anxiety kept his senses sharp. Terror, however, had shed from him. Khamisi had noted the creature's ambling gait, the soft rattling growl, a few sharp nervous cackles escalating into whoops.

Normal hyena behavior.

Though monstrous in size, it was not something mythic or supernatural.

Khamisi took strength in its flesh.

On the bridge, he hurried along the planks to where it crossed near the boy's tree. He unhooked a coil of rope from his pack.

Bending over the walkway's steel cabling, he spotted the boy. He whistled sharply, a bird call. The boy's attention had remained focused below. The sudden noise above his head made him flinch. But he glanced up and spotted Khamisi.

"I'm going to get you out of there," he called out in low tones, using English, hoping the boy understood.

Below, something else heard Khamisi, too.

The ukufa stared up at the bridge. Red eyes locked onto Khamisi's. Lids lowered as it studied the man on the bridge. Teeth bared. Khamisi read a calculating attention in its focus.

Was this the creature that had ambushed Marcia?

Khamisi would have liked nothing better than to unload both barrels into its smiling face, but the noise of the large-bore rifle would draw too much attention. The estate was already on full alert. So instead, he placed the rifle at his feet. He would need both arms and shoulders.

"Boy!" Khamisi said. "I'm going to toss you a rope. Snug it around your waist." He mimed what to do. "I'll pull you up."

The boy nodded, eyes wide, face swollen from crying and fear.

Leaning over the edge, Khamisi swung the coil of rope and tossed it toward the boy. The rope unfurled, crashing through the leaves. It failed to reach the boy, nesting up in the branches above.

"You'll have to climb to it!"

The boy needed no goading. With a chance to escape, his effort at climbing grew more determined. He scrambled and kicked and got himself up to the next branch. He tied the rope around his waist, shaking it loose from the branches. He showed some skill with the rope. Good.

Khamisi pulled in the slack, bracing it around one of the steel cable posts supporting the bridge. "I'm going to start pulling you up! You're going to swing out."

"Hurry!" the boy called out, too sharply and too loudly.

Khamisi pivoted on a hip and saw the ukufa had noted the boy's renewed movement. It drew the monster like a cat after a mouse. It had mounted the tree and was climbing up, digging in its claws.

With no time to waste, Khamisi began wheeling the rope up, arm over arm. He felt the boy's weight burden the rope as he was lifted free of his perch. Bending to check, he spotted the boy swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

The ukufa did, too, eyes tracking the arc. It continued its climb. Khamisi read its intent. It was planning to leap and snag the boy, like bait on a line.

Khamisi hauled faster. The boy continued to swing.

"Wie zijn u?"a voice suddenly barked behind him.

Startled, he almost let go of the rope. He craned over a shoulder.

A tall, lithe woman stood on the walkway, dressed in black, feral-eyed. Her hair was blond but shaved close to the scalp. One of the senior Waalenberg children. She must have just stepped onto this section and discovered him. She had a knife already in one hand. Khamisi dared not let go of the rope.

Not good.

Below, the boy cried out.

Khamisi and the woman glanced down.

The ukufa had reached the boy's former perch and bunched up for its leap. Behind Khamisi, the woman laughed, a match to the cackle of the creature below. The planks creaked as she stepped toward his back, knife in hand.

They were both trapped.

6:38 a.m.

Gray knelt at the crossroads. The elevated walkway split into three paths. The left led back to the manor house. The center walkway skirted the forest's edge and overlooked the central gardens. The path to the right simply headed straight off into the heart of the jungle.

Which way?

Crouched, Gray studied the slant of shadows, comparing it to the pattern he had studied on the LCD monitor. The length and direction of the shadows had offered a general clue to the position of the rising sun in respect to the location of Fiona's imprisonment. But that still left a large swath of estate to cover.

Feet pounded on the walkway, shaking it slightly.

More guards.

He had encountered two groups already.

Gray shouldered his rifle, rolled to the edge of the walkway, and dropped off its edge. He hung by his arms to the cabling and worked hand over hand to the leafy shelter of a tree branch. A moment later, a trio of guards clattered by overhead, bouncing the walkway. Gray clung tightly, jiggled about.

Once they were past, he used the tree branch to scoot back onto the path. Hooking and swinging his leg over, he noticed a rhythmic vibration in the cable in his hand. More guards?

Flat on his belly on the planks, he leaned an ear against the cable, listening like an Indian tracker on a trail. There was a distinct rhythm to the vibration, audible, like a plucked string of a steel guitar. Three fast twangs, three slow, three fast again. And it repeated.

Morse code.

S.O.S.

Someone was knocking out a signal on the cable.

Gray crouched and sidled back to the branching of the walkway. He felt the other support cables. Only one vibrated. It led off along the path to the right, the one headed into the depths of the jungle.

Could it be…?

With no better clue, Gray set off down the right path. He kept pace near the walkway's edge, attempting to keep his tread silent and the bridge from swaying. The path continued to diverge. Gray paused at each crossing to find the cable vibrating in code and followed its trail.

Gray was so focused on the path, that when he ducked under the heavy frond of a palm leaf he suddenly found himself staring at a guard only four yards away. Brown-haired, midtwenties, typical Hitler youth. The guard leaned on the cable handrail, facing Gray's direction. His gun was already rising, as he'd been alerted by the shuffle of the palm tree.

Gray didn't have time to get his rifle up. Instead, still moving, he slammed his weight to the side—not in an attempt to dodge the coming slug. The guard couldn't miss at this range.

Gray struck the cabled handrail, jarring it.

The guard, braced against it, bobbled. The muzzle of his rifle jittered too high. Gray closed the gap in two steps, getting under the rifleman's guard, the pilfered dagger already in his hand.

Gray used the man's imbalance to silence his scream, planting the dagger through the man's wind box, severing his larynx. A twist and the carotid spurted. He'd be dead in seconds. Gray caught his body and heaved it over the rail. He felt no remorse, remembering the guards laughing as Ryan had dropped into the monster's den. How many others had died that way? The body fell in a shushing whisper of leaves, then crashed into the grassy underbrush.

Crouched low, Gray listened. Had anyone heard the guard's fall?

Off to the left, surprisingly near, a woman shouted in accented English. "Stop kicking the bars! Or we'll drop you now!"

Gray recognized the voice. Ischke. Isaak's twin sister.

A more familiar voice responded to the woman. "Sod off, you bony-assed prat!"

Fiona.

She was alive.

Despite the danger, Gray grinned—both in relief and respect.

Staying low, he snuck down to the end of the walkway. It dead-ended at a circular path that edged an open glade. The one from the video. The cage was suspended from the elevated walkway.

Fiona kicked the cage's bars. Three fast, three slow, three fast. Her face was a mask of determination. Gray felt the vibration under his feet now, transmitted along the cage's support cables.

Good girl.

She must have heard the alarms from the manor house. Perhaps guessed it might be Gray and sought to signal him. Either that…or she was just damned pissed. And the pattern was just an annoying coincidence.

Gray spotted three guards at the two-, three-, and nine-o'clock positions. Ischke, still dazzling in her black and white outfit, stood on the far side—at twelve o'clock—both hands on the inside rail, staring down at Fiona.

"A bullet through your knee might quiet you down," she called to the girl, placing a palm on a bolstered pistol.

Fiona paused in midkick, mumbled something under her breath, then lowered her foot.

Gray calculated the odds. He had one rifle against three guards, all armed, and Ischke with her pistol. Not good.

A spat of static sounded from across the glade. Garbled words followed.

Ischke unhooked her radio and lifted it to her lips. "Ja?"

She listened for half a minute, asked another question that Gray couldn't make out, then signed off. Lowering the radio, she spoke to the guards.

"New orders!" she barked to the others in Dutch. "We kill the girl now."

6:40 a.m.

The ukufa let out a trebling series of yips, ready to leap at the dangling boy. Khamisi sensed the approach of the woman at his back. Hands on the rope, he couldn't go for any of his weapons.

"Who are you?" the woman asked again, knife threatening.

Khamisi did the only thing he could.

Bending his knees, he threw himself over the cabled railing. He clenched hard to the rope as he tumbled. Overhead, the line whistled around the steel support post. As Khamisi fell earthward, he caught a glimpse of the boy being dragged skyward, flailing with a long scream of surprise.

The ukufa leaped at its fleeing prey, but Khamisi's falling weight zipped the boy straight up to the walkway, banging him hard against it.

The sudden stop ripped the rope from Khamisi's grip.

He fell, landing on his back in the grass. Overhead, the boy clung to the underside of the walkway. The woman stared down at Khamisi, eyes wide.

Something large crashed to the ground a few meters from him.

Khamisi sat up.

The ukufa bounded to its feet, throwing ropes of saliva, furious, growling.

Its red gaze fell heavily upon the only prey in sight.

Khamisi.

His hands were empty. His rifle still rested on the planks above.

The creature yowled in bloodlust and anger. It leaped at him, intending to tear out his throat.

Khamisi fell to his back, lifting his only weapon. The Zulu assegai. The short spear was still strapped to his thigh. As the ukufa dropped onto him, Khamisi shoved the blade up. His father had once taught him how to use the weapon. Like all Zulu boys. Before they left for Australia. With an instinct that crossed deep into the past of his ancestors, Khamisi slipped the blade under the creature's ribs—one of flesh, not myth—and drove it deep as the hyena's weight fell atop him.

The ukufa screamed. Pain and momentum carried it over Khamisi and yanked the spear's handle from his fingers. Khamisi rolled clear, weaponless now. The ukufa thrashed in the grass, corkscrewing the impaled blade inside it. It screamed one last time, jerking hard, then went limp.

Dead.

An angry cry above drew his eye.

The woman on the bridge had found Khamisi's rifle and had it pointed at him. The blast sounded like a grenade. A bush exploded at his heels, gouting up soil. Khamisi shoved back. Overhead, the woman shifted the rifle, fixing him more surely in its sights.

The second blast sounded oddly sharper.

Khamisi twisted away—but found himself unscathed.

He glanced up in time to see the woman topple over the cable, her chest a bloody ruin.

A new figure stepped into view on the walkway.

A muscular man with a shaved head. He had a pistol held out, steadied on the stump of a wrist. He leaned over the cable and spotted the boy, still dangling by his hands.

"Ryan…"

The boy sobbed with relief. "Get me out of here."

"That's the plan…" His gaze found Khamisi. "That is, if that guy down there knows the way out of here. I'm so friggin' lost."

6:44 a.m.

The pair of gunshots echoed through the forest.

A small flock of green parrots took wing from canopy roosts, squawking in protest, flapping across the glade.

Gray crouched.

Had Monk been found?

Ischke must have thought the same, her head craned in the direction of the gunfire. She waved to the guards. "Check it out!"

She raised her radio again.

The guards, rifles in hand, pounded around the circular elevated walk, all coming in Gray's direction. Caught off guard, Gray dropped and rolled, hugging his rifle to his chest. He flung himself off the planks. The closest guard would be in view in mere seconds. Like before, he snatched the planks' support cable, but in his haste, off balance, he barely caught a purchase with one hand. His body swung. The rifle slipped from his shoulder, dropping away.

Twisting and reaching, he snagged the leather strap with one finger. He silently sighed in relief.

Guards suddenly battered past overhead, boots hammering, jigging and bouncing his perch.

The rifle's leather strap popped off Gray's finger. Gravity disarmed him. The weapon fell, spearing into the underbrush. Gray grabbed another handhold and hung there. At least the rifle hadn't gone off when it hit the ground.

The guards' footfalls echoed away.

He heard Ischke talking on her radio.

Now what?

He had a knife against her pistol. He didn't question her compunction to use it or her marksmanship.

The only real advantage he had was surprise.

And that was severely overrated.

Hand over hand, Gray traversed the underside of the walkway and reached the circular concourse. He continued along the underside, keeping to the outer edge, out of direct view of the Waalenberg woman. He had to move slowly or his swaying weight would alert Ischke. He timed his movements to the occasional breeze that ruffled the canopy.

But his appearance did not go unnoticed.

Fiona crouched in her cage, putting as many bars as she could between her and Ischke. Plainly she had understood Ischke's earlier words in Dutch. We kill the girl now. Though the gunfire had momentarily distracted the blond twin, eventually her attention would return to Fiona.

From her low vantage, Fiona spotted Gray, a white-jumpsuited gorilla scaling the underside of the walkway, half-hidden by the foliage. She jerked in surprise, almost standing, then forced herself to stay low. Her eyes tracked him, their gazes met.

Despite her noisy bravado, Gray read the terror in her face. The girl looked so much smaller in the cage. She hugged her arms around her chest, attempting to hold herself together. Hardened as she was by the streets, he sensed her only defense against a complete panicked breakdown was her prickly blustering. It sustained her—barely.

Blocking with her body, she signaled him. She pointed down and slightly shook her head, eyes wide in fear, alerting him.

It wasn't safe below.

He searched the thick grasses and bushes of the glade. Shadows lay thick. He saw nothing, but he trusted Fiona's warning.

Don't fall.

Gray estimated how far he'd come. He was about at the eight o'clock position along the circular walkway. Ischke stood at the twelve o'clock. He still had a distance to traverse, and his arms were tiring, his fingers aching. He had to move faster. Stopping and starting were killing him. But he feared going any faster would draw Ischke's attention.

Fiona must have realized the same. She stood and began kicking the bars again, rattling her cage, swaying it with her weight. The motion allowed Gray to increase his pace.

Unfortunately her effort also drew Ischke's wrath.

The woman lowered her radio and yelled at Fiona. "Enough of your foolishness, child!"

Fiona still clutched the bars and kicked.

Gray hurried past the nine o'clock position.

Ischke stepped to the inner rail, half in view. Luckily her focus was fully on Fiona. The woman pulled a device out of the pocket of her sweater. She used her teeth to extend the antenna. She pointed it at Fiona. "It is time you met Skuld, named after the Norse goddess of fate."

A button was pressed.

Almost directly under Gray's toes, something howled in anger and pain. It thrashed out of the shadowed eaves of the jungle and stalked into the grassy clearing. One of the mutated hyenas. Its hulked mass had to tip three hundred pounds, all muscle and teeth. It growled low, hackles high on its sloped back. Lips snarled back as it barked and snapped at the empty air, sniffing up at the cage.

Gray realized the monster must have been stalking him all along from below. He suspected what was coming.

He hurried, swinging past the ten-o'clock spot.

Ischke called to Fiona, enjoying the terror, prolonging the cruelty. "A chip in Skuld's brain allows us to stimulate its bloodlust, its appetite." She tweaked the button again. The hyena howled, leaped at the cage, flinging ropes of drool, driven into a ravening bloodlust.

So that was how the Waalenbergs controlled their monsters.

Radio implants.

Subverting nature again to their will.

"It's time we sated poor Skuld's hunger," Ischke said.

Gray would never make it in time. Still, he rushed.

Eleven o'clock.

So close.

But too late.

Ischke pressed another button. Gray heard a distinct clink as the trapdoor in Fiona's cage unlatched.

Oh, no.

Gray paused in midswing. He watched the trapdoor fall open beneath Fiona. She fell toward the slathering beast below.

Gray prepared to drop after her, to protect her.

But Fiona had learned from Ryan's demise. She was prepared. As she fell, she caught the lower bars of her cage and hung there. The creature, Skuld, leaped for her legs. She tucked up and hauled with her arms.

The beast missed and crashed back to the underbrush with a yowl of frustration.

Climbing up, Fiona now clung to the outside of the cage like a spider monkey.

Ischke laughed with dark delight. "Zeer goed, meisje. Such resourcefulness! Grootvader might have even considered your genes for his stock. But alas you'll have to satisfy Skuld instead."

From below, Gray watched Ischke raise her pistol again.

He swung beneath her, staring up between the planks.

"Now to end this," Ischke muttered in Dutch.

Indeed.

Gray pulled with his arms, kicked back his legs—then swung forward and over, like a gymnast on a high bar. His heels struck Ischke in the belly as she leaned on the rail, steadying her aim at Fiona.

As his heels connected, her pistol blasted.

Gray heard the ring of slug on iron.

Missed.

Ischke was knocked back as Gray followed through and crashed to the planks. He rolled up, knife in hand. Ischke was down on one knee. Her pistol lay between them.

They both lunged for it.

Ischke, even with the wind kicked out of her, proved incredibly fast, like a striking snake. Her fingers reached the pistol first, snatching it up.

Gray had a knife.

He jammed his blade through her wrist and into the planks. She screamed in surprise, dropping the pistol. Gray tried to grab it, but the hilt bounced off the planks as Ischke thrashed. It flew past the walkway's edge.

The momentary distraction was long enough for Ischke to yank her wrist free from the planks. She pivoted off her other wrist and kicked out at Gray's head.

He lunged back, but her shin struck his shoulder as hard as the bumper of a speeding car. Gray rolled with it, bruised to the bone. Damn, she was strong.

Before he could get up, she leaped at him, swinging her arm at his face, trying to use the tip of the blade impaled through her wrist to blind him. He barely caught her elbow, twisted it, and carried them both to the walkway's edge.

He didn't stop.

Locked together, their bodies fell off the walkway.

But Gray hooked his left knee around one of the walkway's support posts. His body jerked to a stop, swinging by his leg, wrenching his knee. Ischke peeled off of him and dropped away.

Upside down, he watched the woman snap through some branches and crash hard into the grassy sward.

Gray hauled himself back up to the walkway, sprawling flat.

With disbelief, he saw Ischke climb to her feet below. She limped a step to steady herself, ankle painfully twisted.

A clatter to Gray's side startled him.

Fiona landed on the planks, swinging over from one of the cage's suspension wires.

During the fight, the girl must have crabbed her way atop the cage, then used the wires to reach the walkway. She hurried to him, shaking her left hand and wincing. Fresh blood flowed from where Ischke had cut her.

Gray searched again below.

The woman stared up at him. Murder in her eyes.

But she wasn't alone in the clearing.

Behind her, Skuld raced toward the woman, the hyena's muzzle low to the ground, a shark in the grass, scenting blood.

How fitting, Gray thought.

But the woman merely raised her uninjured arm toward the beast. The massive hyena ground to a stop, lifted its nose, dripping drool, and rubbed against her palm like a savage pit bull greeting its abusive master. It mewled and lowered to its belly.

Ischke never broke eye contact with Gray.

She limped forward.

Gray stared below.

Steps from the woman, Ischke's pistol rested in plain view.

Gray climbed up, gaining his feet. He grabbed Fiona's shoulder and shoved her forward. "Run!"

She needed no further goading. They raced around the arc of the walkway. The girl flew on fear and adrenaline. They reached the exit.

Fiona made the corner, hanging on to one of the support posts to keep her footing. Gray followed her example. As he swung clear, a ringing spark off the support post accompanied a pistol blast.

Ischke had found her gun.

Spurred on, they ran faster along the straight path, putting distance between them and the limping shooter. In a minute, approaching a crisscross of paths, Gray suspected they might be safe. Caution overcame panic.

He slowed Fiona by the same crossroads he had stopped at before. Paths led in all directions. Which way? By now, there was a good chance Ischke had raised an alarm—unless the fall had broken her radio, but he couldn't count on that. He had to assume guards were already congregating between here and the outside world.

And what about Monk? What did the gunplay that drew off Ischke's guards portend? Was he alive, dead, recaptured? There were too many unknown variables. Gray needed a place to hole up and hide, to let his trail cool.

But where?

He eyed the one path that bridged back to the manor house.

No one would expect to look for them over there. Plus the place had phones. If he could get to an outside line…maybe even find out more about whatever the hell was really going on there…

But it was a pipe dream. The place was locked up tight, a fortress.

Fiona noted his attention.

She tugged on his arm and pulled something from her pocket. It looked like a couple of playing cards on a chain. She held them up.

Not playing cards.

Key cards.

"I nicked them from that ice bitch," Fiona said, half spitting. "Teach her to slice me."

Gray took the cards and examined them. He remembered Monk scolding

Fiona for not stealing the museum director's keys when they were trapped in Himmler's crypt. It seemed the girl had taken Monk's lesson to heart.

With narrowed eyes, Gray again studied the manor house.

Thanks to his little pickpocket, he now held the keys to the castle.

But what to do?

13 XERUM 525

10:34 a.m.

HLUHLUWE-UMFOLOZI PRESERVE

ZULULAND, SOUTH AFRICA

Painter sat in the mud-stone and woven-grass hut, cross-legged around a series of maps and schematics. The air smelled of dung and dust. But the small Zulu encampment served as the perfect staging spot, only ten minutes from the Waalenberg estate.

Periodically, security helicopters buzzed the camp, rising from the estate, wary and watchful of their borders, but Paula Kane had the site well orchestrated. From the air, none could tell that the small sandy village was anything but a way station for the nomadic tribes of Zulu that eked out a living in the area. Nobody would suspect the council under way in one of the ramshackle huts.

The group had gathered to strategize and pool resources.

Across from Painter, Anna and Gunther sat together. Lisa kept near Painter's elbow—as she had since arriving in Africa, her face stoic but her eyes worried. Near the back, Major Brooks stood in the shadows, ever vigilant, palm resting on his bolstered pistol.

They were all attentive on the final debriefing from Khamisi, a former game warden here. At his side, leaning forward, head to head, was the most surprising addition to the gathering.

Monk Kokkalis.

To Painter's shock, Monk had wandered into the encampment with an exhausted and shell-shocked young man, both led by Khamisi. The young man was recuperating in another hut, kept safely out of harm's way, but Monk had spent the last hour relating his story, answering questions, and filling in blanks.

Anna stared at the set of runes Monk had finished drawing. Her eyes were bloodshot. She reached out a trembling hand toward the paper. "These are all the runes found in the books of Hugo Hirszfeld?"

Monk nodded. "And that old fart was convinced they were damn important, critical to some next stage in his plan."

Anna's gaze rose to Painter. "Dr. Hugo Hirszfeld was the overseer for the original Black Sun project. Do you remember how I told you he was convinced he had solved the riddle of the Bell? Performed one last experiment, one done in secret, attended only by himself. A private experiment that supposedly produced a perfect child, one uncorrupted of taint or devolution. A perfect Knight of the Sun. But his method…how he did it…no one knew."

"And the letter he wrote his daughter," Painter said, "whatever he discovered frightened him. A truth…too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free. To that end, he hid the secret in this runic code."

Anna sighed wearily. "And Baldric Waalenberg was confident enough that he could solve the code, gain the lost knowledge for himself, that he destroyed the Granitschloff."

"I think it was more than just that you were no longer needed," Painter said. "I think you were right before. Your group was a growing threat with talk of coming out of hiding, going mainstream. And with perfection so close, the culmination of the Aryan dream, he could not risk your continuing presence."

Anna shifted the paper with Monk's sketched runes toward her. "If Hugo was right, deciphering his code could prove critical to treating our own condition. The Bell already holds the ability to s/otv down our disease—but if we could solve this riddle, it may offer a true cure."

Lisa inserted a bit of reality into the discussion. "But before any of that can happen, we must gain access to the Waalenberg Bell. Then we can worry about cures."

"And what about Gray?" Monk asked. "And the girl?"

Painter kept his face tight. "There is no telling where he is. Hiding, captured, dead. For the moment, Commander Pierce is on his own."

Monk's face soured. "I can sneak back in. Use the map Khamisi has of the grounds."

"No. Now is not the time to divide forces." Painter rubbed at a needling headache behind his right ear. Noises echoed. Nausea welled.

Monk stared at him.

He waved away the man's concern. But something in Monk's focus suggested that it wasn't just his boss's physical failings that worried him. Was Painter making the right choices? How was his mental status? The doubt touched a chord in himself. How clear was his thinking?

Lisa's hand drifted to his knee, as if sensing his consternation.

"I'm fine," he mumbled—as much to himself as to her.

Further inquiry was interrupted by the room's rug door being shoved open. Sunlight and heat wafted inside. Paula Kane ducked into the dark interior. A Zulu elder followed her in full ceremonial regalia: plumes, feathers, leopard skin decorated with colorful beadwork. Though in his midsixties, his face was unlined, seemingly carved of stone, his head shaved. He carried a wooden staff topped with feathers, but he also bore an antique firearm, looking more ceremonial than functional.

Painter recognized the weapon as he stood up. An old smoothbore English "Brown Bess," a flintlock from the Napoleonic Wars.

Paula Kane introduced the visitor. "Mosi D'Gana. Zulu chief."

The elder spoke in crisp English. "All is ready."

"Thank you for your assistance," Painter said formally.

Mosi nodded his head slightly, acknowledging the words. "But it is not for you we lend our spears. We owe the Voortrekkers for Blood River."

Painter frowned, but Paula Kane filled in the details. "When the English drove the Dutch Boers out of Cape Town, they began a major trek into the interior. Friction escalated between the arriving immigrants and the native tribes. The Xhosa, the Pondo, the Swazi, and the Zulus. In 1838, along a tributary of the Buffalo River, the Zulus were betrayed, thousands killed, their homelands lost. It was a slaughter. The river became known as Blood River. The Voortrekker conspirator of that murderous assault was Piet Waalenberg."

Mosi lifted his old weapon and held it out to Painter. "We do not forget."

Painter did not doubt that this very gun had been involved in that infamous battle. He accepted the weapon, knowing a pact had been forged with the passing of the flintlock.

Mosi settled to the ground, dropping smoothly into a cross-legged position. "We have much to plan."

Paula nodded to Khamisi and held open the rug flap. "Khamisi, your truck is ready. Tau and Njongo are already waiting." She checked her watch. "You'll have to hurry."

The former game warden stood. Each had their own duty to perform before nightfall.

Painter met Monk's gaze. He again read the worry in the man's eyes. But not for Painter—for Gray. Sundown was eight hours away. But there was nothing they could do until then.

Gray was on his own.

12:05 p.m.

"Keep your head down," Gray whispered to Fiona.

They strode toward the guard at the end of the hall. Gray wore one of the camouflage uniforms, from jackboots to black cap, the brim pulled low over his eyes. The guard who had lent Gray the outfit was unconscious, gagged, and hog-tied in a closet of one of the upper bedrooms.

He had also borrowed the guard's radio, clipped to his belt and trailing an earpiece. The chatter on the line was all in Dutch, making it hard to discern, but it kept them abreast of events.

Walking in Gray's shadow, Fiona wore a maid's outfit, borrowed from the same closet. It was a bit large, but it was better to hide her shape and age. Most of the house staff were natives in various shades of dark skin, typical of an Afrikaner household. Fiona's mocha-brown complexion, her Pakistani heritage, fit well enough. She also hid her straight hair under a bonnet. She could pass as native if no one looked too closely. To complete the act, she walked in tiny submissive steps, shoulders slumped, head down.

So far, their disguises had not even been tested.

Word had spread that Gray and Fiona had been spotted in the jungle. With the manor house shuttered down, only a skeleton patrol kept post inside the mansion. Most of the security forces were searching the forests, outbuildings, and borders.

Unfortunately, security was not so thin here as to leave an outside phone line open. Shortly after using Ischke's key card to gain entry back inside the mansion, Gray had tested a few house phones. Access required passing through a coded security net. Any attempt to gain an outside line would only expose them.

So their options were few.

They could hide. But to what end? Who knew when or if Monk would make it to civilization? So a more proactive role was needed. The plan was to first gain a schematic of the mansion. That meant penetrating the security nest on the main floor. Their only weapons were a sidearm carried by Gray and a hand Taser in Fiona's pocket.

Ahead, at the end of the hall, a sentry manned the upper balcony, guarding over the main entryway with an automatic rifle. Gray strode up to the man.

He was tall, stocky, and his heavy-lidded eyes made him look piggish and mean. Gray nodded and continued toward the stairs. Fiona followed at his heels.

All went well.

Then the man said something in Dutch. The words were beyond Gray, but they had a lurid ring to them, ending in a guttural low laugh.

Half turning, Gray saw the guard reach to Fiona's bottom and give it a firm pinch. Another hand went for her elbow.

Wrong thing to do.

Fiona swung to the man. "Piss off, you wanker."

Her skirt brushed the man's knee. A blue spark burned through her pocket and zapped the man's thigh. His body arched back, a strangled noise gargled forth.

Gray caught him as he fell back, still convulsing in his arms. Gray dragged him off the landing and into a side room. He dropped him to the floor, pistol-whipped him unconscious, and began gagging him and tying him up.

"Why did you do that?" Gray asked.

Fiona stepped behind Gray and pinched his butt, hard and sharp.

"Hey!" He stood and swung around.

"How do you like it?" Fiona fumed.

Point taken. Still he cautioned, "I can't keep tying up these bastards."

Fiona stood with her arms crossed. Her eyes, though angry, were also scared. He couldn't blame her for her jumpiness. He wiped some cold sweat from his brow. Maybe they had better just hide and hope for the best.

Gray's radio crackled. He listened hard. Had their attack by the staircase been noted? He translated through the garble, "…ge'vangene…bringing in the main door…"

More followed, but Gray barely heard much past the word ge'vangene.

Prisoner.

That could only mean one thing.

"They caught Monk…" he whispered, going cold.

Fiona uncrossed her arms, face concerned.

"C'mon," he said and headed toward the door. He had relieved the downed guard of his Taser and shouldered the man's rifle.

Gray led the way back to the stairs. He whispered his plan to Fiona as they hurried down the stairs to the main entrance hall. The lower floor was empty, as was the foyer ahead.

They crossed the polished floor decorated with woven rugs in African motifs. Their footsteps echoed. To either side, stuffed trophies mounted the walls: the head of an endangered black rhino, a massive lion with a moth-eaten mane, a row of antelopes with various racks of horns.

Gray crossed toward the foyer. Fiona pulled a feather duster from an apron pocket, a part of her disguise. She crossed to one side of the door. Gray took a post, rifle in hand, on the other.

They didn't have long to wait, barely getting into position in time.

How many guards would be accompanying Monk?

At least he was alive.

The metal shutter over the main entrance began to rise, clattering upward. Gray leaned down to count legs. He held up two fingers toward Fiona. Two guards were accompanying a prisoner in a white jumpsuit.

Gray stepped into view as the gate trundled fully up.

The guards saw nothing but one of their own, a sentry with a rifle manning the door. They entered with the prisoner in tow. Neither noticed Gray palming a Taser or Fiona coming up from the other side.

The attack was over in moments.

Two guards convulsed on the rug, heels drumming. Gray kicked each in the side of the head, probably harder than he should have. But anger fueled through him.

The prisoner was not Monk.

"Who are you?" he asked the startled captive as he quickly dragged the first guard toward a neighboring supply closet.

The gray-haired woman used her free arm to help Fiona with the second man. She was stronger than she appeared. Her left arm was bandaged and secured across her chest in a tight sling. The left side of her face was savaged with jagged scratches, sutured and raw. Something had attacked and mauled her. Despite her recent injuries, her eyes met Gray's, fiery and determined.

"My name is Dr. Marcia Fairfield."

12:25 p.m.

The Jeep trundled down the empty lane.

Behind the wheel, Warden Gerald Kellogg mopped his sweating brow. He had a bottle of Birkenhead Premium Lager propped between his legs.

Despite the hectic morning, Kellogg refused to break routine. There was nothing else he could do anyway. Security at the Waalenberg estate had passed on the sketchy details. An escape. Kellogg had already alerted the park rangers and posted men at all the gates. He passed on pictures, faxed over from the Waalenberg estate. Poachers was the cover. Armed and dangerous.

Until word of a sighting reached Kellogg's office, he had nothing to keep him from his usual two-hour lunch at home. Tuesday meant roasted game hen and sweet potatoes. He drove his Jeep across the cattle guard and into the main drive, lined by short hedges. Ahead, a two-story beadboard Colonial sat on a full acre of manicured property, a perk of his position. It had a staff of ten to maintain the grounds and household, which included only himself. He was in no hurry to marry.

Why buy the cow and all that…

Plus his tastes leaned toward unripened fruit.

He had a new girl in the house, little Aina, eleven years old, from Nigeria, black as pitch, just like he liked them, better to hide the bruising. Not that there was anyone to question him. He had a manservant, Mxali, a Swazi brute, recruited from prison, who ran his household with discipline and terror. Any problems were dealt with swiftly, both at home and when needed elsewhere. And the Waalenbergs were only too happy to help any troublemakers disappear. What became of them once they were dropped off by helicopter at the Waalenberg estate, Gerald would prefer not to know. But he had heard rumors.

Despite the midday heat, he shivered.

Best not to ask too many questions.

He parked his car in the shade under a leafy acacia tree, climbed out, and strode down the gravel path to the side door that led to the kitchen. A pair of gardeners hoed the flower bed. They kept their eyes down as Gerald passed, as they were taught.

The smell of roasting hens and garlic whetted his appetite. His nose and stomach drew him up the three wooden steps to the open screen door. He entered the kitchen, belly growling.

To the left, the stove door was open. The cook knelt on the planks, head in the oven. Kellogg frowned at the odd tableau. It took him a moment to realize it wasn't the cook.

"Mxali…?"

Kellogg finally noted the underlying smell of seared flesh behind the garlic. Something protruded from the man's arm. A feathered dart. Mxali's weapon of choice. Usually poisoned.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Kellogg backed away, turning to the door.

The two gardeners had dropped their hoes and had rifles pointed at his wide belly. It was not uncommon for small marauding bands, filth from the black townships, to raid farms and outlying homes. Kellogg held up his arms, skin going cold with terror.

A creak of a board drew him around, half ducking.

A dark figure stepped out of the shadows of the next room.

Kellogg gasped as he recognized the intruder—and the hatred in his eyes.

Not marauders. Even worse.

A ghost.

"Khamisi…"

12:30 p.m.

"So what exactly is wrong with him?" Monk asked, thumbing where Painter had disappeared into one of the neighboring huts with Dr. Paula Kane's satellite phone. The director was coordinating with Logan Gregory.

Under the shadowy eaves of another hut, he shared a log with Dr. Lisa Cummings. The medical doctor was quite the looker, even when covered with dust and a bit haunted around the eyes.

She turned her attention to Monk. "His cells are denaturing, dissolving from the inside out. That's according to Anna Sporrenberg. She's studied the deleterious effects of the Bell's radiation extensively in the past. It causes multisystem organ failure. Her brother, Gunther, suffers from a chronic version of it, too. But his rate of decline is slowed by his enhanced healing and immunity. Anna and Painter, exposed as adults to an overdose of the radiation, have no such innate protection."

She went into more details, knowing Monk shared a background in medicine: low platelet counts, rising bilirubin levels, edema, muscle tenderness with bouts of rigidity around the neck and shoulders, bone infarctions, hepatosplenomegaly, audible murmurs in the heartbeat, and strange calcification of distal extremities and vitreous humor of the eyes.

But ultimately it all came down to one question.

"How long do they have?" Monk asked.

Lisa sighed and stared back toward the hut into which Painter had vanished. "No more than a day. Even if a cure could be found today, I fear there might still be permanent and sustained damage."

"Did you note his slurring…how he dropped words? Is that all the drugs…or…or…?"

Lisa glanced back to him, her eyes more sharply pained. "It's more than the drugs."

Monk sensed this was the first time she admitted this to herself. It was stated with dread and hopelessness. He also saw how much she suffered for it. Her reaction was more than just a concerned doctor or a worried friend. She cared for Painter and plainly struggled to hold her emotions in check, to guard her heart.

Painter appeared in the doorway. He waved Monk over. "I have Kat on the horn."

Monk rose quickly, checked the sky for choppers, and crossed to Painter. He accepted the satellite phone, covered the mouthpiece, and nodded to Dr. Cummings. "Boss, I think the woman could use some company."

Painter rolled his eyes. They were bloodshot, splotchy with hemorrhages in the sclera. He shaded his sore eyes and crossed toward the woman.

Monk watched from the doorway and lifted the phone. "Hey, babe."

"Don't babe me. What the hell are you doing in Africa?"

Monk smiled. Kat's scolding was as welcome as lemonade in the desert. Besides, her question was rhetorical. She had surely been debriefed.

"I thought this was supposed to be a babysitting assignment?" she continued.

Monk merely waited, letting her vent.

"When you get home, I'm locking you…"

She continued for another long, scrambled minute.

Finally, Monk got a word in edgewise. "I miss you, too."

A blustering sound subsided into a sigh. "I heard Gray is still missing."

"He'll be fine," he assured her, while hoping the same.

"Find him, Monk. Do whatever it takes."

Monk appreciated her understanding. He intended to do just that. She asked for no promise of caution. She knew him too well. Still, he heard the tears in her next words.

"I love you."

That was caution enough for any man.

"I love you, too." He lowered his voice and slightly turned away. "Both of you."

"Come home."

"Try to stop me."

Kat sighed again. "Logan is paging me. I must sign off. We've a meeting scheduled for zero seven hundred with an attache at the South African embassy. We'll do what we can to put pressure on from here."

"Give 'em hell, babe."

"We will. Bye, Monk."

"Kat, I—" But the line had disconnected. Damn.

Monk lowered the phone and stared at Lisa and Painter. The two leaned together, talking, but Monk sensed it was more the need to be close than any real communication. He stared down at the phone. At least Kat was safe and sound.

12:37 p.m.

"They were taking me to an internment cell down below," Dr. Marcia Fairfield said. "For further questioning. Something must be worrying them."

The three of them were back up in the room on the first-floor landing. The guard who had manhandled Fiona still lay unconscious on the floor, blood dribbling from his nostrils.

Dr. Fairfield had quickly related her story, how she was ambushed in the field, attacked by the Waalenbergs' pets, dragged away. The Waalenbergs had learned through channels about a possible role she had with UK intelligence. So they staged her kidnapping as a fatal lion attack. Her wounds certainly still looked swollen and raw. "I was able to convince them that my companion, a game warden, had been killed. It was all I could do. Hope he made it back to civilization."

"But what are the Waalenbergs hiding?" Gray asked. "What are they doing?"

The woman shook her head. "Some macabre version of a genetic Manhattan Project. That's as much as I can tell. But I think there is some other scheme in the works. A sideline project. Maybe even an attack. I overheard one of my guards talking. Something about a serum of some sort. Serum 525, I heard them say. I also heard Washington, D.C., mentioned in the same context."

Gray frowned. "Did you hear of any timetable?"

"Not exactly. But from their laughter I got the impression whatever was going to happen would be soon. Very soon."

Gray paced a few steps, knuckling his chin. This serum…maybe it's a biowarfare agent…a pathogen, a virus… He shook his head. He needed more information—and quickly.

"We have to get into those basement labs," he mumbled. "Find out what's going on."

"They were taking me to that internment area," Dr. Fairfield said.

He nodded, understanding. "If I pose as one of your guards, that might be our ticket down there."

"We'd have to hurry," Marcia said. "As it is, they must be wondering what's keeping me."

Gray turned to Fiona, ready for an argument. It would be safest if she stayed hidden in the room, out of sight. It would be hard to justify her presence alongside a prisoner and a guard. It would only arouse suspicion and attention.

"I know! No place for a maid," Fiona said, surprising him yet again. She nudged the guard on the floor with her toe. "I'll keep Casanova here company until you get back."

Despite her brave words, her eyes shone with fear.

"We won't be gone long," he promised.

"You'd better not be."

With the matter settled, Gray grabbed his rifle, waved Dr. Fairfield toward the door, and said, "Let's go."

In short order, Gray marched Marcia at gunpoint into the central elevator. No one accosted them. A card reader restricted access to the subterranean levels. He swiped Ischke's second key card. The lighted buttons for the sublevels changed from red to green.

"Any idea where to start?" Gray asked.

Marcia reached out. "The greater the treasure, the deeper it's buried." She pressed the bottommost number. Seven levels down. The elevator began to descend.

As Gray watched the floors count down, Marcia's words nagged.

An attack. Possibly in Washington.

But what type of attack?

6:41 a.m. EST WASHINGTON, D.C.

Embassy Row was only two miles from the National Mall. Their driver turned onto Massachusetts Avenue and headed toward the South African embassy. Kat rode with Logan in the backseat, comparing final notes. The sun had just risen, and the embassy appeared ahead.

Its four stories of Indiana limestone shone brilliantly in the morning sunlight, highlighting its gables and dormers typical of the Cape Dutch style. The driver pulled up to the residence wing of the embassy. The ambassador had agreed to meet them in his private study at this early hour. It seemed any issues concerning the Waalenbergs were best dealt with out of the public's eye.

Which was fine with Kat.

She had a pistol in an ankle holster.

Kat climbed out and waited for Logan. Four fluted pilasters supported a carved parapet with the South African coat of arms. Beneath it, a doorman noted their arrival and opened the glazed front door.

As second in command, Logan led the way. Kat kept a step or two behind, watching the street, wary. With as much money as the Waalenbergs wielded, she did not trust who might be in their private employ…and that included the ambassador, John Hourigan.

The entrance hall opened wide around them. A secretary in a neat navy business suit ushered them across the hall. "Ambassador Hourigan will be down momentarily. I'm to take you to his study. Can I bring you any tea or coffee?"

Logan and Kat declined.

They were soon ensconced in a richly paneled room. The furniture—desks, bookcases, occasional tables—was constructed of the same wood. Stinkwood, native to South Africa, so rare it was no longer available for commercial export.

Logan took a seat by the desk. Kat remained standing.

They didn't have long to wait.

The doors opened again, and a tall, thin man with sandy-blond hair entered. He wore a navy suit but carried his jacket over one arm. Kat suspected the casual approach was pure artifice, meant to make his manner appear more amiable and cooperative. Like meeting here in his private residence.

She wasn't buying it.

As Logan made introductions, Kat surveyed the room. With a background in the intelligence services, she imagined the conversation here would be taped. She studied the room, guessing where the surveillance equipment was hidden.

Ambassador Hourigan finally settled to his seat. "You've come to inquire about the Waalenberg estate…or so I was informed. How may I be of service?"

"We believe someone in their employ may have been involved in a kidnapping in Germany."

His eyes widened too perfectly. "I'm shocked to hear such allegations. But I've heard nothing about this from the German BKA, Interpol, or Europol."

"Our sources are concrete," Logan insisted. "All we ask is cooperation with your Scorpions to follow up locally."

Kat watched the man feign an intensely pensive expression. The Scorpions were the South African equivalent of the FBI. Cooperation seemed unlikely. The best Logan sought here was to keep such organizations out of Sigma's way. While they could not negotiate cooperation against such a political powerhouse as the Waalenbergs, they might place enough pressure to keep any policing authorities from helping them. A small concession, but a meaningful one.

Kat continued standing, watching the slow dance these two men performed, each trying to gain the best advantage.

"I assure you that the Waalenbergs hold the international community and governing bodies in the utmost respect. The family has supported relief efforts, multinational charity organizations, and nonprofit trusts throughout the world. In fact in their latest act of generosity, they've endowed all South African embassies and chanceries around the globe with a golden centennial bell, marking the hundred-year anniversary of the first gold coin minted in South Africa."

"That is all well and good, but it doesn't—"

Kat cut Logan off, speaking for the first time. "Did you say gold be//?"

Hourigan's eyes met hers. "Yes, gifts from Sir Baldric Waalenberg himself. One hundred gold-plated centennial bells bearing the South African coat of arms. Ours is being installed in the residence hall on the fourth floor."

Logan met Kat's eyes.

Kat spoke. "Would it be possible to see it?"

The strange tack of the conversation unsettled the ambassador, but he failed to come up with a good reason to deny it, and Kat imagined he hoped it would be a way to even gain an upper hand in the quiet war of diplomacy going on here.

"I would be delighted to show you." He stood up and checked his watch. "I'm afraid we'll have to move smartly. I do have a breakfast meeting I must not be late to."

As Kat had imagined, Hourigan was using the tour as an excuse to end the conversation early, to wheedle out of any firm commitment. Logan stared hard at her. She hoped she was right.

They were led to an elevator and taken to the top floor of the building. They passed hallways decorated in artwork and South African native crafts. Then, a large hall opened; it appeared more museum than living space. There were display cabinets, long tables, and massive chests with hand-beaten brass fixtures. A wall of windows overlooked the rear yard and gardens. But in a corner hung a giant gold bell. It looked as if it had recently been uncrated, as bits of the straw stuffing were still scattered on the floor. The bell itself stood a full meter tall and half again as wide at the mouth. The coat of arms had been stamped on it.

Kat stepped closer. A thick power cable ran from its top and coiled to the floor.

The ambassador noted her attention. "It's automated to ring at set times of the day. Quite a marvel of engineering. If you look up inside the bell, it's a marvel of gears, like a fine Rolex."

Kat turned to Logan. He had paled. Like Kat, he had studied the sketches Anna Sporrenberg had made of the original Bell. This was an exact duplicate done in gold. Both had also read of the detrimental effects that could be radiated from the device. Madness and death. Kat stared out the upper-story window. From this height, she could just make out the white dome of the Capitol.

The ambassador's earlier words now horrified.

A hundred golden bells…endowed around the globe.

"It took a special technician to install it," the ambassador continued, though now a slightly bored lilt entered his voice, winding the meeting toward its end. "I believe he's around here somewhere."

The room's door closed behind them, slamming slightly.

All three turned.

"Ah, here he is," Hourigan said upon turning. His voice died when he spotted the submachine gun held by the newcomer. His hair was white-blond. Even from across the room, Kat spotted a dark tattoo on the hand supporting the gun.

Kat dove for her ankle holster.

Without a word, the assassin opened fire, spraying bullets.

Glass shattered, and wood splintered.

Behind her, beaten by ricocheting rounds, the golden bell rang and rang.

12:44 p.m.

SOUTH AFRICA

The elevator doors opened on the seventh sublevel. Gray stepped out, rifle in hand. He searched both directions along a gray hallway. Unlike the rich woods and fine craftsmanship used in the main manor house, this sublevel was lit by fluorescents and maintained a rigid sterility in its decor: bleached linoleum floors, gray walls, low roof. Smooth steel doors with glowing electronic locks lined one side of the hall. The other doors appeared more ordinary.

Gray placed his palm against one.

The panel vibrated. He heard a rhythmic hum.

Power plant? Must be massive.

Marcia stepped to his side. "I think we've come down too far," she whispered. "This feels more storage and utility."

Gray agreed. Still…

He crossed to one of the locked steel doors. "Begs the question, what're they storing?"

The sign on the door read: embryonaal.

"Embryonic lab," Marcia translated.

She crossed to join him, eyes guarded, wincing slightly as she moved her bandaged and splinted arm.

Gray raised Ischke's card again and swiped it. The indicator glowed green and a magnetic lock released. Gray pushed the door. He had shouldered his rifle and now had his pistol out.

The overhead fluorescents flickered then came on steady.

The room was a long hall, a good forty meters. Gray noted how chilly the air was in here, crisper, filtered. A flush line of floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel freezers covered one side. Compressors hummed. On the other side were steel carts, tanks of liquid nitrogen, and a large microscope table wired to a micro-dissection table.

It appeared to be some form of a cryonics lab.

At a central workstation, a Hewlett-Packard computer idled. The Screensaver spun on the LCD monitor. A silver symbol rotated against a black background. A familiar symbol. Gray had seen it depicted on the floor of Wewelsburg castle.

"The Black Sun," Gray mumbled.

Marcia glanced at him.

Gray pointed to the spinning sun. "The symbol represents Himmler's Black

Order, a cabal of Thule Society occultists and scientists obsessed with the superman philosophy. Baldric must've been a member, too."

Gray sensed they had come full circle. From Ryan's great-grandfather to here. He nodded to the computer. "Look for a main directory. See what you can find out."

While Marcia aimed for the workstation, Gray crossed to one of the freezers. He pulled it open. Frigid air welled out. Inside were drawers, indexed and numbered. Behind him, he heard Marcia tapping at the computer. Gray edged one drawer open. Neatly arranged in clips were a score of tiny glass straws filled with a yellow liquid.

"Frozen embryos," Marcia said behind him.

He closed the drawer and looked down the length of the hall at the number of giant freezers. If Marcia was correct, there had to be thousands of embryos stored here.

She spoke, drawing him over. "The computer is a database, logging genomes and genealogy." She glanced over to him. "Both human and animal.

Mammalian species. Look at this." Strange notations filled the screen.

NUCLEOTIDE VEHANDEUNG tDNA) [CROCUTA CROCUTA't ThuNnvd 14;56:25 GMT

Schema V.l.IS

VERANDERING L vi .'t.". "Ii.■ i■■—-■-■-_-r—-i-_-

A.0.2. Dipi-rimidinc to Di Thymidine fc[CT]>TT)

CODE HANGSCHKKEN

ATGGTTACGCGCTCATG G AATTCTCGCTCATG GA ATTCTCGCTCGTCAACT

LoclA.^. Gedeekelijk

A.ijA. Dinudcoridc d ran scrip tic]

B.5.L.5 Cryptischc pkatrnttrvcrLng

Loci B J.

B.7.5.1. FeatamidsDtide rgfTACAGATTC]

Term i ndjtrdc ?r.i bil ircic}

CTAGAAATTACGCTCTTA CGCTTCTCG CTTGTTAC GCGCTCA

GTTACGCGCTCGCGCTCA TG G4ATTCTCGC TCATG

ATGGTTACGCGCTUCGC TGGAATTCTCGCTC ATG GAATTCTCGCTC

"They appear to be a list of mutational changes," Marcia said. "Defined down to the level of polynucleotides."

Gray tapped the name near the top. "Crocuta crocuta,"he read. "The spotted hyena. I've seen the end result of that research. Baldric Waalenberg mentioned how he was perfecting the species, even incorporating human stem cells in their brains."

Marcia brightened and tapped back to a main directory. "That explains the name of the entire database. Hersenschim. Which translates to 'chimera.' A biologic term for an organism with genetic material from more than one species, whether from grafting like in plants or insertion of foreign cells into an embryo." She tapped one-handed at the computer, focused. "But to what end?"

Straightening, Gray glanced down the length of the embryonic lab. Was all this any different from Baldric's manipulation of orchids and bonsai trees? Just another way to control nature, to manipulate and design it according to his own definition of perfection.

"Hmm…" Marcia mumbled. "Strange."

Gray turned back to her. "What?"

"As I said, there are human embryos here." She glanced over a shoulder to Gray. "According to the cross-referenced genealogy, all of these embryos are genetically tied to the Waalenbergs."

No surprise there. Gray had noted the similarities in the Waalenberg offspring. Their patriarch had been tweaking the family lineage for generations.

But apparently that wasn't the strange part.

Marcia continued, "Each of the Waalenberg embryos in turn is referenced to stem cell lines that are then tracked to Crocuta crocuta."

"The hyenas?"

Marcia nodded.

Understanding and horror grew. "Are you saying he's been planting his own children's stem cells into those monsters?" Gray could not hide his shock.

Did the man's atrocities, his conceit, never end?

"That's not all," Marcia said.

Gray felt a sickening jolt in his gut, knowing what she was going to say next.

Marcia pointed to a complicated chart on the screen. "According to this, stem cells from the hyenas are cross-referenced back to the next generation of human embryos."

"Dear God…"

Gray pictured Ischke holding out her hand and stopping the charging hyena. It was more than just master and dog. It was family. Baldric had been implanting cells from his mutated hyenas back into his children, cross-pollinating like his orchids.

"But even that's not the worst…" Marcia began, pale and disturbed to her core. "The Waalenbergs have been—"

Gray cut her off. He had heard enough. They had more to search. "We should keep moving."

Marcia glanced to the computer with reluctance, but she nodded and stood. They left the monster lab and continued down the hall. The next door was marked foetussen. A fetal lab. Gray continued down the hall without stopping. He had no desire to see what horrors lay inside there.

"How are they achieving these results?" Marcia asked. "The mutations, the successful chimeras…? They must have some way of controlling their genetic manipulations."

"Possibly," he mumbled. "But it's not perfected—not yet."

Gray remembered Hugo Hirszfeld's work, the code he hid in runes. He now understood Baldric's obsession with it. A promise of perfection. Too beautiful to let die and too monstrous to set free.

And certainly the concerns of the monstrous didn't scare Baldric. In fact, he bred the monstrous into his own family. And now that he had Hugo's code, what was Baldric's next step? Especially with Sigma breathing down his neck. No wonder Baldric wanted so desperately to know about Painter

Crowe.

They reached another door. The room beyond must be huge, as it was spaced a distance from the fetal lab. Gray noted the name on the door.

XERUM 525.

He matched gazes with Marcia.

"Not serum" Gray said.

"Xerum," Marcia read, shaking her head in a lack of understanding.

Gray used his stolen card. The green light flashed, the lock released, and he pushed inside. The room's lights flickered on. The air here smelled vaguely corrosive with a hint of ozone. The floor and walls were dark.

"Lead," Marcia said, touching the walls.

Gray didn't like the sound of that, but he had to know more. The cavernous space looked like a storage facility for hazardous wastes. Shelves stretched deep into the room. Stacked on them were yellow ten-gallon drums with the number 525 stamped on them.

Gray remembered his concern about a biowarfare agent. Or did the drums hold some type of fissionable material, nuclear waste? Was that the reason the room was lead-lined?

Marcia showed little concern. She crossed to the shelves. Each shelf spot bore a label, marking each drum. "Albania," she read, then stepped to the next one. "Argentina."

Other countries were named, in alphabetical order.

Gray stared across the shelves. There had to be a hundred drums at least.

Marcia glanced to him. He understood the sudden concern in her eyes.

Oh, no…

Gray hurried into the room, searching the shelves, stopping periodically to read a label: Belgium…Finland…Greece…

He ran on.

At last he reached the spot he was looking for.

UNITED STATES.

He recalled what Marcia had overheard, something about Washington, D.C. A possible attack. Gray stared down the rows of drums. From all the countries named here, it wasn't just Washington under threat. At least not yet. Gray remembered Baldric's concern about Painter, about Sigma. They were his most immediate threat.

To compensate, Baldric must have moved up his timetable.

Above the label marked united states, the shelf was empty.

The corresponding drum of Xerum 525 was gone.

7:45 a.m. EST

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

"ETA on MedSTAR?" the radio dispatcher asked. He sat before the hospital's touch-screen program, wireless headset in place.

The helicopter crackled back, "En route. Two minutes out."

"The ER is asking for an update." Everyone had heard about the shootout on Embassy Row. Homeland Security protocols were in effect. Calls and alarms were being raised throughout the city. Confusion reigned at the moment.

"Embassy medical personnel pronounced two on the spot. Two of their own. South African nationals, including the ambassador. But two Americans are also down."

"Status?"

"One dead…one critical."

14 MENAGERIE

1:55 p.m. SOUTH AFRICA

Fiona listened at the doorway, Taser in hand. Voices approached the first-floor landing. Terror strangled her. Whatever reserve of adrenaline had been sustaining her for the past twenty-four hours was reaching its end. Her hands shook, her breathing remained shallow and rapid.

The gagged and bound guard, the one who'd grabbed her, lay sprawled behind her. She'd had to shock him again when the bloke had begun to moan.

The voices approached her hiding spot.

Fiona tensed.

Where was Gray? He had been gone almost an hour.

Two people approached her door. She recognized one of their voices. It was the blond bitch who had sliced her palm. Ischke Waalenberg. She and her companion spoke Dutch, but Fiona was fluent in the language.

"…key cards," Ischke said angrily. "I must have lost mine when I fell."

"Well, dear zuster, you are home and safe now."

Zuster. Sister. So her companion was her brother.

"We'll change the codes as a precaution," he added.

"And no one has found the two Americans or the girl?"

"We have all the borders of the estate under double guard. We're confident that they're still on the grounds. We'll find them. And grootvader has a surprise."

"What sort of surprise?"

"Insurance that no one leaves the estate alive. Remember he did take DNA samples from them when they first arrived."

Ischke laughed, chilling Fiona's blood. The voices wandered away.

"Come." The brother's voice faded down the stairs as they descended toward the main floor. " Grootvader wants us all downstairs."

Their voices trailed to a stop near the bottom of the staircase. With her ear pressed to the door, Fiona could make out no other words, but it sounded like an argument over some matter. But she had heard enough.

No one leaves the estate alive.

What were they planning? Ischke's icy laugh still rang in her head, mirthless and satisfied. Whatever was being plotted, they seemed certain of its outcome. But what did their DNA samples have to do with it?

Fiona knew there was only one way to find out. She had no idea when Gray would return and feared time was running out for all of them. They would need to know what the danger was…if they were to avoid it.

That meant only one thing.

She pocketed her Taser and took out her feather duster. She twisted the dead bolt and unlocked the door. For this hunt, she needed all the skills from the street. She pulled open the door and slipped out of the room. Pausing, her back to the door, she pushed it closed with her rear end. She had never felt so alone, so purely frightened. Reconsidering, she rested her hand on the doorknob. She closed her eyes and steadied herself, offering up a prayer, not to God, but to someone who had taught her how courage came in many forms, including sacrifice.

"Mutti…" she prayed.

She missed her foster mother, Grette Neal. Old secrets from the past had killed the woman, and now new secrets threatened Fiona and the others. For any hope of survival, she needed to be as brave and selfless as Mutti.

The voices below drifted away down the staircase.

Fiona sidled closer, feather duster raised in defense. She peered over the first-landing balcony, just enough to spot the white-blond heads of the twins. Their words reached her again.

"Don't keep grootvader waiting," the brother said.

"I'll be right down. I just want to check on Skuld. Make sure she is back in her kennel. She was quite aroused, and I fear she might harm herself in her frustration."

"The same might be said of you, my sweet zuster."

Fiona took a step closer. The brother touched his sister's cheek, creepily intimate.

Ischke leaned into his touch, then pulled away. "I won't be long."

Her brother nodded and stepped toward the central lift. "I will let grootvader know." He pressed a button and the doors opened.

Ischke headed off in a different direction, toward the back of the manor.

Fiona hurried to follow. She clutched the Taser in her pocket. If she could get the bitch alone, make her talk…

Flying down the steps, Fiona slowed near the bottom, resuming a more subdued pace. Ischke was headed down a central hall that seemed to run straight through the heart of the manor house.

Fiona followed from a distance, head lowered, feather duster folded in her arms like a nun with a Bible. She took tiny steps, a nondescript mouse of a servant. Ischke descended a set of five stairs, passing a pair of sentries, and followed along another hallway to the left.

Fiona approached the pair of guards. She increased her pace, appearing like a servant late to some obscure duty. Still, she stayed deeply bowed, half-buried in her oversize maid outfit.

She reached the short stairs.

The guards ignored her, plainly on their best behavior after the mistress of the house had just passed them. Fiona skipped down the five steps. Once in the lower hall, Fiona found it empty.

She stopped.

Ischke was gone.

A mix of relief and terror suffused through her in equal parts.

Should I return to the room? Hope for the best?

She remembered Ischke's cold laughter—then the woman's voice barked sharply, close, coming from a double set of decorative iron-and-glass doors to the right.

Something had pissed Ischke off.

Fiona hurried forward. She listened at the door.

"The meat must be bloody! Fresh!" Ischke hollered. "Or I'll put you in there with her."

Mumbled apologies. Footsteps ran away.

Fiona leaned closer, her ear to the glass.

A mistake.

The door shoved open, striking her in the side of the head. Ischke stormed through, running straight into Fiona.

Ischke swore, elbowing her aside.

Fiona reacted instinctively, relying on old skills. She untangled herself and bunched into a ball, dropping to a knee, cowering—it didn't take much acting.

"Watch where you're going!" Ischke fumed.

"Ja, maitresse,"she fawned, bowing deeper.

"Get out of my way!"

Fiona panicked. Where was she supposed to go? Finding Fiona at the door, Ischke would wonder what she had been doing crouched there. The woman's body still held the door open. Fiona scraped her way, bowing through the open doorway, out of Ischke's way.

Fiona's hand went to her hidden Taser, but it took her a moment to drop what she had just stolen from Ischke's sweater pocket. She had not meant to steal it, just reflexes. Stupid. Now the delay cost her everything. Before she could free her Taser, Ischke swore and strode away. The heavy iron-and-glass door swung shut with a clang between them.

Fiona cringed, cursing herself. What now? She would have to wait a few moments before leaving. Suspicions would be too aroused if she were spotted on Ischke's trail again. Besides, she knew where Ischke was headed. Back to the lift. Unfortunately, Fiona didn't know the house well enough to take an alternate route to the main hall, to attempt an ambush.

Tears threatened, a mix of fear and frustration.

She had bollixed the whole deal.

Despairing, she finally took note of the chamber ahead. It was brightly lit, with natural sunlight streaming through a geodesic glass roof. It was some type of inner circular courtyard. Giant palms rose from the central floor and crowned toward the glass roof. All around, massive colonnades supported the high roof and set off deep cloisters around the room. Three lofty halls, arched and as high as the central courtyard, branched off like chapels off a church's nave, forming a cross.

But this hall was no place of worship.

The smell struck her first. Musky, fetid, the reek of a charnel house. Cries and ululating moans echoed across the cavernous space. Curiosity drew her a step forward. Three stairs led down to the main floor, empty of staff. The man whom she had heard run off after being scolded by Ischke was nowhere in sight.

From her post, she searched the room.

Fitted into each of the sunken cloisters around the edges of the giant courtyard were massive cages, sealed in front by iron-and-glass grates, like the entry door. Behind the bars, she spotted hulking shapes, some curled in slumber, others pacing, one hunkered over a knob of leg bone, gnawing. The hyena creatures.

But that wasn't all.

In other cages, she spotted additional monstrosities. A gorilla sat sullen near the front of one cage, staring straight at Fiona with an unnerving intelligence. Worse yet, some mutation had stripped the beast of its fur. Wrinkled elephantine skin hung from its body.

In another, a lion paced back and forth. It was furred, but it grew out bleached and patchy and was presently fouled with feces and gore. It panted, eyes red-rimmed. Fangs protruded, saber-toothed and sickled.

All around were twisted forms: a striped antelope with corkscrewing horns, a pair of skeletally tall jackals, an albino warthog plated like an armadillo. Gruesome and sad at the same time. The jackals caged together wailed and yipped, moving woodenly, crippled.

Still, pity did little to hold back the terror of seeing the giant hyenas. Her eyes fixed on the one gnawing a thigh bone of some massive animal. Water buffalo or wildebeest. A bit of meat and black fur still waited to be worried from the bone. Fiona could not help imagining that it could have been her. If Gray hadn't rescued her…

She shivered.

Tensing its massive jaws, the giant hyena cracked the leg bone, snapping it like a gunshot.

Fiona jumped, awakened again.

She retreated to the door. She had waited long enough. With her mission a failure, she would sneak back to her hiding place with her tail tucked between her legs.

She grabbed the door and yanked on it.

Locked.

2:30 p.m.

Gray stared at the row of heavy steel levers, heart pounding in his throat. It had taken him too long to find the master circuit switches for the electrical board. He could sense the power flowing through the giant cabling in the room, an electromagnetic force felt at the base of the neck.

He had already wasted too much time.

After discovering one of the drums of Xerum 525 was missing, one intended for the United States, urgency weighed heavily upon Gray. He had abandoned any attempt to reconnoiter the remainder of the subbasement. Right now, it was more important to get a warning off to Washington.

Marcia had reported seeing an emergency shortwave radio in the security block when she had been taken from her cell. She knew whom to call, a partner of hers, Dr. Paula Kane, who could pass on the warning. Still, they both knew that to go for the radio was probably a suicide mission. But what choice did they have?

At least Fiona was safely ensconced away.

"What are you waiting for?" Marcia asked. She had cut free her sling and changed into a laboratory smock from one of the storage lockers. In the dark, she might pass for one of the lab's researchers.

Marcia stood at his back, clutching an emergency flashlight.

Gray raised a hand to the first lever.

They had already located the fire stairs for the subbasement. The stairs should lead back to the main house. But to get outside and reach the security block, they needed an additional means of distraction, extra insurance.

The answer had come a few moments ago. Gray had been leaning against one of the hallway doors. He noted the vibration and hum of the level's power plant. If they could fry the main board—create more chaos, possibly blind their captors for a spell—they'd have a better chance of making it to that radio.

"Ready?" Gray asked.

Marcia flicked on her flashlight. She met his gaze, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Let's do it."

"Lights out," Gray said and yanked the first lever.

Then the next and the next.

2:35 p.m.

Fiona watched the lamps around the courtyard flicker and die.

Oh, God…

Fiona stood in the center of the courtyard, near a small fountain. Moments ago, she had slipped from her post by the locked main door and had crept halfway across the central courtyard. She had gone in search of another exit. Surely there had to be one.

She froze now.

A momentary silence spread across the room, as if the animals sensed some primary change, a loss of the perpetual subsonic hum of power. Or maybe it was merely a sense of power shifting to them.

A door creaked open behind her.

Fiona slowly turned.

One of the iron-and-glass cages nudged open, nosed by one of the hyena monsters. The blackout had demagnetized the locks. The beast crept out of its cage. Blood dripped from its muzzle. It had been the one gnawing the thigh bone. A low growl flowed from it.

Somewhere behind her, Fiona heard a cackling yip as some silent communication passed through the menagerie's predators. Other doors creaked on iron hinges.

Fiona remained fixed by the fountain. Even the water pump had died, silencing the waters, as if fearful of drawing attention to itself.

Somewhere down one of the arched side chapels, a bright scream echoed forth. Human. Fiona imagined it was the zookeeper whom Ischke had scolded. It seemed his charges would get their bloody meal after all. Footsteps ran in her direction. Then a new scream erupted, pained and garbled amid a yowl of yips and cries.

Fiona shut her ears against the last cry, followed by the sound of feeding.

Her full attention remained on the first escapee.

The bloody-muzzled hyena approached. Fiona recognized the creature from the shadow of spotting on its flank, barely discernible, white on white. It was the same beast from the jungle.

Ischke's pet.

Skuld.

It had been denied its caged treat before.

But no longer.

2:40 p.m.

"Help us…bittel" Gunther rushed into the hut, followed by Major Brooks.

Lisa stood up, lowering her stethoscope from Painter's chest. She had been monitoring a systolic murmur. In just the past half day, it had changed from an early-peaking murmur to a late one, suggesting a rapidly progressing stenosis of the man's aortic valve. Mild angina had worsened to bouts of syncope, swooning faints if Painter overexerted. She had never seen such a rapid degeneration. She suspected calcification around his heart valve. Such odd mineralized deposits had begun appearing throughout Painter's body, even in the fluids of his eye.

Lying flat on his back, Painter pushed to his elbows with a wince. "What's wrong?" he asked Gunther.

Major Brooks answered with a worried southern drawl. "It's his sister, sir. She's having some type of fit…a seizure."

Lisa grabbed the med kit. Painter tried to stand but had to be assisted by Lisa on his second attempt. "Just stay here," she warned.

"I can manage," he answered, showing his irritation.

Lisa didn't have time to argue. She let go of his arm. He teetered. She hurried to Gunther. "Let's go."

Brooks waited, unsure whether to follow or lend an arm to Painter.

The major was waved off.

Painter hobbled after them.

Lisa ran out of the hut and crossed to the neighboring one. The day's heat struck her like stepping into an oven. The air hung motionless, burning, impossible to breathe. The sun blinded. But in a moment, Lisa was ducking into the cooler darkness of the next room.

Anna lay on a grass mat, half on her side, body arched, muscles contracted. Lisa hurried to her. She had already established an intravenous catheter in her forearm. Painter had the same. It was easier to administer drugs and fluids.

Lisa quickly dropped to a knee and grabbed up a syringe premeasured with diazepam. She gave the entire dose in one bolus IV. In seconds, Anna relaxed, dropping back to the floor. Her eyes fluttered open and consciousness returned, groggy but attentive.

Painter arrived. Monk appeared in tow with him.

"How is she?" Painter asked.

"How do you think?" Lisa asked, exasperated.

Gunther helped his sister sit up. Her face was ashen, covered in a sheen of sweat. Painter was destined for the same in the next hour. Though both were exposed, Painter's larger bulk seemed to be sustaining him a bit more heartily. But their survival was down to hours.

Lisa stared up at the shaft of sunlight spearing into the room from a slit window. Twilight was too far off.

Monk spoke into the worried silence. "I spoke to Khamisi. He reports that every light in the damn mansion just went out." He wore a tentative grin, as if unsure any good news was welcome. "I'm guessing it's Gray's handiwork."

Painter frowned. It was his only expression lately. "We don't know that."

"And we don't know it isn't." Monk wiped a hand across the top of his shaved head. "Sir, I think we need to consider moving up the timetable. Khamisi says—"

"Khamisi is not running this op," Painter said, coughing harshly.

Monk met Lisa's eyes. The two of them had held a private discussion twenty minutes ago. It was one of the reasons Monk had made the call to Khamisi. Certain expediencies had to be verified. Monk nodded to her.

She slipped a second syringe from her pocket, stepped to Painter's side.

"Let me flush your catheter," Lisa said. "There's blood in it."

Painter held up his arm. It trembled.

Lisa supported his wrist and injected her dose. Monk stepped beside Painter and caught him as his legs went out from under him.

"What—?" Painter's head lolled back.

Monk shouldered him under one arm. "It's for your own good, sir."

Painter frowned at Lisa. His other arm swung at her—whether to hit her or express some shock at her betrayal, Lisa doubted he even knew. The sedative swooned him away.

Major Brooks watched, his mouth hanging open.

Monk shrugged at the Air Force man. "Never seen a mutiny before?"

Brooks collected himself. "All I can say, sir…about bloody time."

Monk nodded. "Khamisi is on his way in with the package. ETA three minutes. He and Dr. Kane will take over ground support here."

Lisa turned to Gunther. "Can you carry your sister?"

As proof, he scooped her up and stood.

"What are you all doing?" Anna asked weakly.

"You two are not going to last until nightfall," Lisa said. "We're going to make a run for the Bell."

"How…?"

"Don't worry that pretty little head of yours," Monk said and hobbled out with

Painter, supported by Major Brooks. "We've got it covered."

Monk again met Lisa's eyes. She read his expression.

It may be too late already.

2:41 p.m.

Gray led the way up the stairs, pistol in hand. He and Marcia moved as silently as possible. She kept a palm over her flashlight's lamp, keeping any illumination to a minimum. Just enough to see where they were going. With the elevators incapacitated, he feared running into a stray guard on the stairs.

Though he was disguised as a guard, one leading a researcher out of the darkened basement, he'd still rather avoid any unnecessary encounters.

They crossed past the sixth sublevel, dark like the one below.

Gray continued, increasing his pace, balancing caution against the fear secondary generators would kick in at some point. Climbing around the next landing, a glow appeared ahead.

Holding up a hand, he stopped Marcia behind him.

The light didn't move. It remained stationary.

Not a wandering guard. Probably an emergency lamp.

Still…

"Stay here," he whispered to Marcia.

She nodded.

Gray continued ahead, pistol raised and ready. He climbed the steps. At the next landing, light seeped through a half-open doorway. As Gray approached, he heard voices. Farther up the stairs, it remained dark. So why was there light and power here? This level must be on a separate circuit.

Voices echoed down the corridor.

Familiar voices. Isaak and Baldric.

They were out of direct sight, hidden deeper in the room. He glanced below and saw Marcia's face limned in the light washing down the stairs. He waved her up to his landing.

She had heard the voices, too.

Isaak and Baldric seemed unconcerned about the loss of electricity. With power here, did they even know the rest of the manor was blacked out? Gray held his curiosity in check. He had to warn Washington.

Words reached him. "The Bell will kill all of them," Baldric said.

Gray paused. Were they talking about Washington? If so, what were their plans? If he knew more…

Gray held up two fingers to Marcia. Two minutes. If he wasn't back, she was to head up on her own. He had left her his second pistol. If he could see this Bell, it might be the difference between saving lives and losing them.

He held up the two fingers again.

Marcia nodded. It would be up to her if Gray was caught.

He squeezed into the opening, not budging the door, afraid a squeak of hinges would alert the two inside. The same gray fluorescent-lit hall stretched ahead. But it ended a short distance away at a double set of steel doors, opposite where the darkened elevator opened on this floor.

One of the double doors stood open.

Gray moved quickly, staying on the balls of his feet. He reached the doors and hugged the wall. He dropped to a knee and peered past the edge of the door.

The chamber beyond was low-roofed but cavernous, encompassing this entire sublevel. Here was the heart of the laboratory. Banks of computers lined one wall. Monitors glowed with scrolling numbers and code. The computers probably warranted the separate circuit, their own power supply.

The room's occupants, so focused on the task at hand, hadn't noted the loss of power elsewhere. But surely they would be alerted any minute.

Baldric and Isaak, grandfather and grandson, were bent over a station. A thirty-inch flat-screen monitor on the wall flashed rapidly through a series of runes, one after the other. It was the five from Hugo's books.

"The code remains unbroken," Isaak said. "Is it wise to move the Bell program global while we still have this riddle unsolved?"

"It will be solved!" Baldric slammed a fist on the table. "It is only a matter of time. Besides, we are close enough to perfection. Like with you and your sister. You will live long. Fifty years. The deterioration will not weaken you until your last decade. It is time for us to move forward."

Isaak looked little convinced.

Baldric straightened. He lifted an arm and waved it toward the ceiling. "See what delays have wrought. Our attempt to distract international attention to the Himalayas has backfired."

"Because we underestimated Anna Sporrenberg."

"And Sigma," Baldric added. "But no matter. Governments now breathe down our necks. Gold will buy us only so much protection. We must act now. First Washington, then the world. And in that chaos, there will be plenty of time to break the code. Perfection will be ours."

"And out of Africa, a new world will arise," Isaak said in rote, as if it were a prayer drilled into him at a young age, cemented in his genetic code.

"Pure and cleansed of corruption," Baldric added, ending the litany. But his words were equally dispassionate. It was as if all this were no more than another step in his breeding program, a scientific exercise.

Baldric teetered straighter on his cane. Gray noted how enfeebled the man really appeared, with no audience but his grandson. Gray wondered if the accelerated timetable wasn't fueled more by Baldric's own impending mortality than by any true necessity. Were they all unwitting pawns in Baldric's desire to move forward in his plan? Had Baldric orchestrated this scenario on purpose—consciously or unconsciously—to justify acting now, during his lifetime?

Isaak spoke again. He had shifted over to another workstation. "We've green lights across the board. The Bell is powered up and ready for activation. We'll now be able to cleanse the estate of the escaped prisoners."

Gray stiffened. What was this all about?

Baldric turned his back on the flashing runic code and focused toward the room's center. "Prepare for activation."

Gray shifted to see farther into the room.

In its center rested a massive shell, composed of some type of ceramic or metallic compound. It was shaped like an upended bell and stood as tall as Gray. He doubted he could hug his arms halfway around its circumference.

Motors sounded, chugging and echoing, and an inner metal sleeve lowered from the ceiling, encased in a clockwork of gears. It dropped into the larger outer shell. At the same time, a neighboring yellow tank opened a gasket and a stream of purplish metallic liquid flowed into the heart of the Bell.

Lubricant? Fuel source?

Gray had no idea, but he noted the numbers stamped on the side of the tank: 525. It was the mysterious Xerum.

"Raise the blast shield," Baldric ordered. He had to yell to be heard above the clanking gears of the motor assembly. He motioned to the floor with his cane.

The level here was covered by the same gray tile, except for a dull black circular section, thirty yards across, surrounding the Bell. A raised border edged it, a foot thick, like the ring in a circus. The ceiling above was a mirror of the floor, except the roof had an indented border.

It was all lead.

Gray realized the outer floor ring must rise on pistons and insert into the ceiling, forming an entire cylinder locked around the Bell.

"What's wrong?" Baldric yelled again, turning to Isaak at his station.

Isaak toggled a switch back and forth. "We're getting no power to the blast shield motors!"

Gray glanced to his toes. The motors must be on the level below. The darkened level. A phone rang inside the room, chiming stridently, competing with the motors. Gray could guess who was calling. Security had finally discovered where the masters of the house were hidden.

Time to go.

Gray straightened and turned.

A pipe swung down and struck his wrist, knocking the pistol from his hand. The wielder swung at his head. Gray barely ducked in time.

Ischke stalked toward him. Behind her, the doors to the darkened elevator stood open, pried apart. The woman must have been trapped in the elevator when the power went out, then climbed down here. Masked by the noise from the Bell's motors, Gray had not heard the doors being pried open behind him.

Ischke raised her pipe, plainly skilled in the art of staff fighting.

Gray fixed his eyes on her and retreated into the Bell's chamber. He refused to glance toward the fire stairs. He prayed Marcia had already left, was en route to reach the shortwave radio and raise the alarm in Washington.

Ischke, her clothes stained with oil, her face smudged, followed Gray inside the Bell chamber.

Baldric spoke behind Gray. "Wat is dit?'tX seems little Ischke has trapped the mouse who has chewed through the wiring."

Gray turned.

Unarmed. Out of options.

"Generators are coming back online," Isaak said, his manner bored, unimpressed by the intrusion.

A grind of motors rumbled under Gray's feet. The blast shield began to rise from the floor.

"Now to exterminate the other rats," Baldric said.

2:45 p.m.

Monk yelled to be heard over the helicopter's rotors. Sand and dust swirled around them in the rotor wash's whirlwind. "You know how to fly this bird?"

Gunther nodded, grabbing the chopper's stick.

Monk clapped the large man on the shoulder. He would have to trust the Nazi. Monk could not fly the bird himself, not one-handed. Still, with the giant's allegiance now centered on his sister's survival, Monk thought it was a safe bet.

Anna sat in the back with Lisa. Painter slumped between them, head hanging. He had only been lightly sedated. Painter mumbled occasionally, nonsensically, warning about some impending sandstorm, lost in past fears.

Ducking his head under the blades, Monk circled around the helicopter. On the far side, Khamisi stood beside Mosi D'Gana, the Zulu chieftain. They clasped each other's forearms.

Mosi had shed his ceremonial gear and now wore khaki fatigues, cap, and an automatic rifle over one shoulder. A bolstered pistol hung from a black belt. But he had not totally abandoned his heritage. A short spear with a wicked blade was strapped to his back.

"You have the command," Mosi said formally to Khamisi as Monk approached.

"My honor, sir."

Mosi nodded and let go of Khamisi's arm. "I've heard good things about you, Fat Boy."

Monk joined them. Fat Boy?

Khamisi's eyes widened, a mix of shame and honor shining in them. He nodded back and stepped away. Mosi climbed into the helicopter. He would be joining the first-wave assault. Monk had no choice. He owed the chieftain.

Khamisi crossed to Paula Kane. The pair would be coordinating the ground assault.

Monk searched beyond the swirling plume of sand and dust. The forces had gathered quickly, coming in on foot, on horseback, on rusted motorcycles and beat-up trucks. Mosi had spread the word. And like his great ancestor Shaka Zulu, he gathered an army. Men and women. In traditional pelts, in worn fatigues, in Levi's. And more were still coming.

It would be up to them to keep the Waalenberg army occupied, to secure the estate if possible. How would the Zulus fare against the superiorly armed and experienced security forces of the estate? Would it be Bloody River all over again?

There was only one way to find out.

Monk pulled himself into the crowded rear compartment. Mosi settled into a seat next to Major Brooks. They sat on the bench facing Anna, Lisa, and Painter. One other newcomer, a half-naked Zulu warrior named Tau, was also strapped in the back. He half twisted to keep a short spear thrust at the throat of the chopper's copilot.

Head Warden Gerald Kellogg sat next to Gunther, bound and gagged. One eye was swollen and purpling.

Monk tapped Gunther on the shoulder, and waved a finger to get the bird in the air. With a nod of acknowledgment, Gunther pulled on the collective, and the chopper leaped into the air with a roar of the engines.

The ground dropped away. The estate stretched out ahead of them. Monk had been informed that the estate was equipped with surface-to-air missiles. Weaponless, the slow-moving commercial chopper would be a flying bull's-eye.

That would not be good.

Monk leaned forward.

"Time to earn your keep, warden."

Monk grinned wickedly. He knew it was not a pretty sight, but it came in handy now.

Kellogg blanched.

Satisfied, Monk reached forward and lifted the radio's mouthpiece to the warden's lips. "Connect us to the security band."

Khamisi had already obtained the codes. Hence Kellogg's black eye.

"Stick to the script," Monk warned, still grinning.

Kellogg leaned a bit farther away.

Was his smile really that awful?

To reinforce the threat, Tau pressed the point of his spear into the soft flesh of the man's neck.

Static squelched from the radio, and Kellogg passed on the message as instructed. "We've recaptured one of your prisoners," the warden told base security. "Monk Kokkalis. We're flying him over to the rooftop helipad."

Gunther monitored security's response over his headphones.

"Roger that. Over and out," Kellogg said.

Gunther yelled a bit. "We've been given the all clear. Here we go."

He nosed the helicopter forward and sped toward the estate. Ahead, the mansion came into view. It looked even more massive from the air.

Swinging around and settling into his seat, Monk faced Lisa. Beside her, Anna leaned against the window, eyes squeezed closed in pain. Painter hung in his straps and groaned. The sedative was wearing thin.

Lisa helped settle him back.

Monk noted that she held Painter's hand—and had all along.

Her face found Monk's.

Fear shone bright in her eyes.

But not for herself.

2:56 p.m.

"Is the broadcast rod raised?" Baldric asked.

Isaak nodded at his console.

"Ready the Bell for activation."

Baldric turned to Gray. "We've fed your companions' DNA codes into the Bell. It will modify its output to denature and selectively destroy any matching DNA while remaining harmless to all others. Our version of a final solution."

Gray pictured Fiona hidden up in her room. And Monk was being flown in right now.

"There's no need to kill them," Gray said. "You've recaptured my partner. Leave the others alone."

"If I've learned nothing in these past days, I've learned it's best to leave no loose strings." Baldric nodded to Isaak. "Activate the Bell."

"Wait!" Gray yelled, stepping forward.

Ischke had retrieved his pistol and warned him away with it.

Baldric glanced back, bored and impatient.

Gray had only one card to play. "I know how to break Hugo's code."

Surprise softened Baldric's stern demeanor. He lifted a delaying hand toward Isaak. "You do? You can succeed where a series of Cray computers has so far failed?"

Doubt rang in the man's voice.

Gray knew he had to offer Baldric something, anything to stop him from switching the Bell on and irradiating his friends. He pointed to the monitor, repetitively cycling through the runes. The computer shuffled and sought a combination that offered some mnemonic cipher.

"You'll fail on your own," Gray promised.

"And why's that?"

Gray licked his dry lips, scared, but he had to stay focused. He knew with certainty that the computer would fail because he had already solved the riddle of the runes. He didn't understand the answer, but he knew he was right, especially considering Hugo Hirszfeld's Jewish heritage.

Still, how much could he give away? He had to bargain to the best of his ability, balancing between the truth and the answer.

"You have the wrong rune from the Darwin Bible," Gray said truthfully. "And there are six, not just five, runes."

Baldric sighed. Disbelief deepened the lines around his mouth. "Like the sun wheel you drew before, I suppose?" He turned back toward Isaak.

"No!" Gray called out firmly. "Let me show you!"

He searched around and spotted a marker on one of the computer stations. He pointed and waved for it. "Pass me that."

Brows pinched, Baldric nodded to Isaak.

The marker was tossed at him.

Gray caught it and knelt on the floor. He drew on the gray linoleum tiles with the black marker. "The rune from the Darwin Bible."

He drew it.

t

"The Mensch rune," Baldric said.

Gray tapped it. "It represents man's higher state, the godlike plane hidden in all of us, our perfected selves."

"So?"

"This was Hugo's goal. The end result sought. Yes?"

Baldric slowly nodded.

"Hugo would not have incorporated the result into his code. His code leads to this." He tapped the rune harder. "This doesn't belong in the code."

Slowly understanding dawned…as did the old man's belief. "The other runes in the Darwin Bible…"

Gray drew on the floor, illustrating his point.

Mr=r

"These two runes make up the third." He circled the two double-pronged runes. "These represent mankind at his most basic, what leads to the higher state. As such, it is these two runes that must be incorporated into the code."

Gray wrote the original series of runes. "This is the wrong sequence." riXMY

He crossed them out and inscribed the correct set, splitting the last rune.

riXMir

Baldric stepped closer. "And this is the correct series? What must be deciphered?"

Gray answered truthfully. "Yes."

Baldric nodded, eyes squinting as he considered this revelation. "I believe you are right, Commander Pierce."

Gray stood.

"Dank't/," Baldric said and turned back to Isaak. "Activate the Bell. Kill his friends."

3:07 p.m.

Lisa helped lift Painter out of the helicopter as the rotors wound down. The Zulu warrior Tau shouldered his other side. The sedative she had given Painter was short-acting. It would wear off in another few minutes.

Gunther supported Anna, her eyes glazed. The woman had dosed herself with another numbing injection of morphine. But she had begun coughing up bloody sputum.

Ahead of them, Monk and Mosi D'Gana stood over the dead bodies of a trio of helipad sentries. Security had been caught off guard, expecting to be accepting a prisoner. It had only taken a short spat from a pair of pistols equipped with silencers to commandeer the helipad.

Monk switched places with Tau. "Stay here. Guard the chopper. Keep an eye on the prisoner."

Warden Kellogg had been pulled from the helicopter and dumped on the roof. He was gagged, his hands cuffed behind his back, his ankles tied. He wasn't going anywhere.

Monk waved Major Brooks and Mosi D'Gana to take the lead. They had all reviewed the house schematics from Paula Kane and calculated the best route to the subbasement level. It was a ways to go. The helipad was situated near the back of the mansion.

Brooks and Mosi led them toward the rooftop door to the manor house, assault rifles held at shoulders. The pair moved as if they'd worked together before, synchronized, efficient. Gunther also carried a pistol in his fist and a stubby-nosed assault rifle across his back. Bristling with armament, they reached the door.

Brooks dashed forward. Key cards stolen from the dead guards unlocked the way below. Brooks and Mosi disappeared inside, scouting ahead. The others hung back.

Monk checked his watch. Timing was everything.

A short whistling rose from below.

"Down we go," Monk said.

They hurried through the door and found a short stairwell leading to the sixth floor. Brooks stood at the landing. Another guard sprawled on the stairs, his neck sliced open, his life's blood pumping away. Mosi crouched at the next landing, bloodied knife in hand.

They continued down, around and around the stairs. They encountered no other guards. As they'd hoped, most of the estate's forces were directed outward. The massing of Zulu tribesmen had to be drawing a majority of their attention.

Monk checked his watch again.

Reaching the second floor, they exited the stairs and aimed down a long corridor of polished wood. It was shadowy and dark. The wall sconces flickered, as if the electrical system was still fritzing after the blackout…or something was drawing off a lot of power.

Lisa also noted a rankness to the air.

The corridor dead-ended into a cross passage. Brooks scouted to the right, the direction they needed to go. He came slamming back around, flattening against the wall.

"Go back…back…"

A fierce and challenging growl erupted around the corner. A series of cackles followed…and excited yips. A single screeched scream drowned it all away.

"Ukufa,"Mosi said, waving them back.

"Run!" Brooks said. "We'll try to scare them off, then catch up."

Monk tugged Lisa and Painter away.

"What are…?" Lisa asked, words strangling.

"Someone's loosed the dogs on us," Monk said.

Gunther stumbled along with Anna. The giant carried his sister, her feet uselessly scuffling the floor.

A burst of gunfire erupted behind them.

Yips and ululations changed into cries of pain and anger.

They ran faster.

More blasts echoed, sounding almost frantic.

"Damn it!" Brooks swore loudly.

Lisa glanced over a shoulder.

Brooks and Mosi abandoned their post and pounded down the corridor, arms pointing back, firing.

"Go, go, go…" Brooks yelled. "Too goddamn many!"

Three massive white-furred creatures ripped around the corner behind the men, heads low to the ground, jaws slathering, hackles bristling. Claws dug into the wood floors as they raced in a serpentine pattern, almost anticipating the bullets, avoiding kill shots. All three bled from wounds but seemed more goaded than weakened from their injuries.

Lisa turned back around in time to see a pair of the same beasts stalk out of rooms to either side at the end of the corridor, cutting off escape.

An ambush.

Gunther's massive pistol went off like a cannon, deafening. His shot missed the lead creature as it shifted out of position like a flicker of shadow.

Monk raised his own gun, pulling to a stop.

Lisa's momentum carried her forward. She went down on a knee, pulling Painter's limp form with her. He crashed, waking slightly with the impact.

"Where—?" he asked groggily.

Lisa pulled him lower as the hall filled with gunfire.

A sharp scream arose behind her.

She jerked around. A heavily muscled form lunged out of a neighboring doorway and slammed Major Brooks into the wall.

Lisa scrabbled away with a cry.

Mosi dove to the man's aid, a spear above his head, a howl on his lips.

Lisa hugged Painter.

The creatures were everywhere.

Movement caught Lisa's eye. Another beast rose from behind a door to the left, creaking the hinges. Its muzzle was bloody with fresh gore. Crimson eyes glowed in the dark room. She flashed back to the madness of the first Buddhist monk she had seen, ravening, wild, but still operating with cunning and intelligence.

It was the same here.

As the monster stalked toward her, its lips snarled back with a growl of triumph.

NUCLEOTIDE VEHANDEUNG tDNA) [CROCUTA CROCUTA't ThuNnvd 14;56:25 GMT

Schema V.l.IS

VERANDERING L vi .'t.". "Ii.■ i■■—-■-■-_-r—-i-_-

15 HORNS OF THE BULL

3:10 p.m. SOUTH AFRICA

Khamisi lay in a gully covered by a camouflaged tarp.

"Three minutes," Dr. Paula Kane said next to him, also on her belly.

The two studied the black fence line through binoculars.

Khamisi had his forces spread out along the border of the park. Some Zulu tribesmen wandered in plain sight, switching cows along old paths. A group of elders in traditional beads, plumes, and feathers stood wrapped in shoulder blankets. Back at the village, drums and singing had begun, loud and bright. The gathering at the way station had been staged as a wedding ceremony.

Motorcycles, ATV bikes, and trucks had been parked haphazardly around the area. Some of the younger warriors, even women, skulked around the vehicles, a few couples clasped in amorous embraces, others lifted carved wooden cups, shouting in feigned inebriation. A group of bare-chested men, painted for the celebration, bounced in a traditional dance done with clubs.

And except for the clubs, not a weapon was in sight.

Khamisi adjusted the focus on his binoculars. He shifted and lifted his field of view above the tall game fencing topped by barbed curls of concertina wire. He could make out movement in the jungle canopy beyond. Waalenberg forces had gathered along the elevated walkways, spying over the fence, guarding the borders.

"One minute," Paula intoned. She had a sniping rifle on a tripod under their tented tarp, hidden in the shade of a stinkwood tree. He was surprised to learn she had won gold medals in Olympic marksmanship.

Khamisi lowered his binoculars. The traditional Zulu attack strategy was termed "the Buffalo." The largest body, named the "chest," would lead a full frontal assault, while from either side, the "horns of the bull" would strike out at the flanks, cutting off any retreat, encircling the enemy. But Khamisi had made a slight modification, compensating for modern armaments. It was the reason he had scouted the grounds all night, planting his surprises.

"Ten seconds," Paula warned and began counting down quietly. She settled her cheek to the side of her rifle.

Khamisi lifted his transmitter, twisted the key, and held his thumb over the row of buttons.

"Zero," Paula finished.

Khamisi pressed the first button.

Beyond the fence, the charges he had planted throughout the night ignited in fiery detonations, shattering through the canopy, igniting sequentially for maximum chaos. Sections of flaming planks and branches sailed high while an entire forest of birds took wing in fright, an explosion of rainbow confetti.

Khamisi had planted C4 packets, supplied through British channels, at key junctures and supports for the elevated walkway. Explosions spread, encircling the mansion, crashing the canopy bridges, stripping the Waalenberg forces of the high ground, and inciting panic and confusion.

Ahead, Zulu warriors dropped blankets to reveal rifles or knelt down and tugged free buried tarps that hid weapons caches, becoming the chest of the Buffalo. To either side, engines revved all around Khamisi as warriors mounted their vehicles, turning cycles and trucks into the horns of the bull.

"Now," Paula said.

Khamisi pressed the next buttons, one after the other.

The fence line for a full half mile exploded with a fiery twist of metal and barbed wire. Sections dropped flat to the ground, exposing the belly of the enemy.

Khamisi shed his tarp and stood. A motorcycle sped up from behind, kicking sand and dirt as it skidded to a stop next to him. Njongo waved him to mount. But Khamisi had one last duty. He lifted a siren horn over his head and squeezed the trigger. Its trumpet blast echoed across the homeland of the Zulus, sounding once again the charge of the Buffalo.

3:13 p.m.

The explosions echoed down from above, flickering lights across the Bell chamber. Everyone froze. Baldric stood with his grandson Isaak by the control board. Ischke guarded Gray from a step away, her pistol leveled at his chest. Eyes drifted toward the ceiling, questioning.

Not Gray's eyes.

His gaze remained focused on the power meter on the console. Its indicators slowly rose toward a full pulse. Deaf to Gray's pleading, Baldric had activated the Bell. A rising hum penetrated the lead cylinder encased around the device. On a video monitor, the outer shell of the Bell glowed a pale blue.

Once the power meter reached its peak, a pulse would erupt and broadcast outward for five miles, killing Monk, Fiona, and Ryan wherever they hid. Only Gray was safe in the chamber, under the shield.

"Find out what's happening," Baldric finally ordered his grandson as the explosions died away.

Isaak was already reaching for the red phone.

The pistol blast startled all of them, coming on the heels of the muffled explosion, loud and intimate.

Gray spun around as blood splattered across the tiled floor.

Ischke's left shoulder bloomed crimson as she spun with the impact, shot from behind. Unfortunately, her pistol was clutched in her right hand. Knocked around, Ischke took aim at the shooter by the door.

Dr. Marcia Fairfield knelt in a shooter's stance, but with her right arm incapacitated, she had shot with her left, missing her kill shot.

Ischke was not so compromised. Even caught by surprise, her aim was rock solid.

Until Gray dove into her side.

Two pistols went off, deafening in the chamber—Ischke's and Marcia's.

Both missed their target.

Gray bear-hugged Ischke from behind, twisting her away from Marcia, but the woman was strong and fought like a wildcat. Gray managed to get his hand around Ischke's fist that held the gun.

Her brother ran toward them, a long German-steel dagger in his hand, held low.

Marcia fired from her stance, but she had no clean bead on Isaak either as Gray's and Ischke's tussling bodies blocked her shot.

Gray drove his chin into Ischke's bloody shoulder. Hard. She gasped, weakened slightly. Gray got her arm up and squeezed her fingers. Her pistol blasted. He felt the recoil in his own shoulder. But the shot was too low, striking the floor at Isaak's toes. Still, the ricochet grazed the man's calf, stumbling him a step.

Ischke, seeing her twin injured, savagely freed her arm and slammed her elbow into Gray's ribs. The air was knocked from him and pain danced across his eyes. Ischke broke free.

Beyond her, Isaak caught his footing, murder in his eyes, dagger glinting.

Gray did not wait. Lunging forward, he shoulder-checked Ischke from behind. The woman, still slightly off balance from breaking Gray's hold, flew forward into her brother.

Onto his dagger.

The serrated blade plunged into her chest.

A scream of surprise and pain burst from her lips. It echoed out of her brother. The pistol dropped from Ischke's fingers as she clutched her twin in disbelief.

Gray dove and caught her falling pistol before it struck the ground.

Skidding on his back, he aimed toward Isaak.

The man could have moved, should have moved, but he just held his sister in his arms, his face a mask of agony.

Gray fired from the side, a clean head shot, putting Isaak out of his misery.

The twins collapsed together to the floor, limbs entwined, blood pooling together.

Gray stood up.

Marcia ran into the room, pistol aimed toward Baldric. The old man stared at his dead grandchildren. But there was no grief in his eyes as he leaned on his cane, only a clinical detachment, dismayed by disappointing lab results.

The fight had taken less than a minute.

Gray saw the power meter for the Bell was in the red zone. He had maybe two minutes until the pulse. Gray placed the hot muzzle of the pistol against the old man's cheek. "Turn it off."

Baldric met his eyes. "No."

3:13 p.m.

As the explosions echoed away, the frozen tableau in the upper hallway of the Waalenberg mansion thawed. The hyena creatures had flattened to the floor as the booming erupted. A few had turned tail, but the remainder stayed near their trapped prey. All around, muscled bulks rose back to their feet.

"Don't fire!" Monk whispered urgently. "Everyone into that room!"

He waved toward a side door, where they could make a better stand, limit their exposure. Gunther hauled Anna. Mosi D'Gana stepped away from the beast he had impaled with a spear. He helped Major Brooks to his feet. Blood flowed thickly from a deep bite to the man's thigh.

Before they could move farther, a savage growl of warning arose from Monk's other flank.

His name was whispered. "Monk…"

Lisa crouched over Painter's limp form on the floor, near another doorway. A massive creature, the largest by far, rose behind the pair, sheltered in the door, shielded by Lisa and Painter.

It shouldered up, stance wide, guarding its prey. Its entire muzzle rippled back from razor teeth, growling, blood and saliva dripping. It eyes glinted crimson, warning them back.

Monk sensed if any of them raised even a weapon it would rip into the pair on the floor. He had to take the chance, but before he could move, a shout barked down the hall, full of command.

"Skuld! No!"

Monk turned.

Fiona stepped into view at the end of the hall. She stalked right past two of the creatures, ignoring them as they dropped, mewling, falling on their sides. A Taser crackled with blue sparks in one hand. She held another device in the other. The antenna pointed at the beast hovering over Lisa and Painter.

"Bad dog!" Fiona said.

To Monk's amazement, the creature backed off, growls fading, hackles lowering. As if under a spell, it lolled a bit in the doorway. Fire died in its eyes as it sank to the plank floors. A soft lowing moaned from it, half-ecstatic.

Fiona reached their side.

Monk stared up and down the hall. The other monsters fell under the same spell.

"Waalenbergs planted chips in the bastards," Fiona explained and hefted the device in her hand. "Had them wired for pain—and pleasure."

A contented mewl rose from the massive monster in the doorway.

Monk frowned at the transmitter. "How did you get—?"

Fiona stared up at him and waved the device for them to follow her.

"You stole it," Monk said.

She shrugged and headed down the hall. "Let's say I bumped into an old chum, and somehow it ended up in my pocket. She wasn't using it."

Ischke, Monk thought as he gathered the others to follow.

Monk helped Lisa with Painter. Gunther carried Anna under one arm. Mosi and Brooks leaned on each other. They made a sorry assault team.

But they now had backup.

Behind them, the pack trailed, a dozen strong, more joining, lured by the aura of pleasure emanating from the girl, their own little Pied Piper of monsters.

"I can't get rid of them," Fiona said, babbling a bit. Monk noted how her hands trembled. She was terrified.

"Once I found the right button," she said, "they followed me from their cages. I hid back in the room where Gray told me to wait…but they must have remained in the halls and rooms around here."

Great, Monk thought, and we run right smack into them, the perfect postcoital snack.

"Then I heard your yells, then the explosions, and—"

"Fine." Monk finally cut her off. "But what about Gray? Where is he?"

"He took the elevator downstairs. That was over an hour ago." She pointed ahead, where the corridor ended at a balcony overlooking a larger hall. "I'll show you."

She hurried. They stumbled along to keep up, checking periodically behind them to watch the pack. Fiona led them down a set of stairs to the main entry hall. Closed elevator doors were opposite the massive carved front doors of the mansion.

Major Brooks limped toward the electronic lock, flipping through a set of key cards. He swiped several before he found one that turned the red light to green. A trundle of motors sounded. The cage rose from somewhere below.

As they waited, the hyena pack slunk down the stairs, lounging, basking in the pleasurable glow from Fiona's device. A few padded the hall floor, including the one called Skuld.

No one spoke, eyeing the monsters.

Distantly, muffled by the door, screams and gunshots reached them. Khamisi was in the thick of his own war. How long would it take for him to get here?

As if reading Monk's mind, the double doors to the mansion slammed open. Distant gunfire shattered brightly, popping and blasting. Screams grew richer. Men poured in. Waalenberg forces in retreat. Among them, Monk spotted the black-suited figures of the elite, ice-blond siblings, a dozen strong, looking little fazed, as if they'd come in after a refreshing day on the tennis courts.

As war waged outside, the two forces eyed each other in the hall.

Not good.

Monk's team pressed back, pinned against the wall, outnumbered five to one.

3:15 p.m.

Gray stepped away from Baldric Waalenberg.

"Watch him," he ordered Marcia.

Gray slid to Isaak's former workstation, one eye on the Bell's power meter. He reached to a toggle he had seen Isaak flip before. It controlled the blast shield around the activated device.

"What're you doing?" Baldric asked, voice sharp with sudden concern.

So there was something that scared the old man worse than a bullet. Good to know. Gray snapped the toggle back. Motors rumbled underfoot and the shield began to lower. A sharp blue light pierced its top edge, blazing forth as the lead wall dropped from the roof.

"Don't! You'll kill us all!"

Gray faced the old man. "Then turn the goddamn thing off."

Baldric stared between the lowering shield and the console. "I can't turn it off, you ezeh The Bell is primed. It must discharge."

Gray shrugged. "Then we'll all watch it happen."

The ring of blue light thickened.

Baldric swore and turned to the console. "But I can erase the kill solution.

Neutralize it. It won't harm your friends."

"Do it."

Baldric typed rapidly, his knobby fingers moving swiftly. "Just raise the shield!"

"After you're done." Gray watched over the old man's shoulder. He saw all their names appear on the screen along with an alphanumeric code marked genetisch profiel. The man hit the delete key four times and the genetic profiles were erased.

"Done!" Baldric said, turning to Gray. "Close the blast shield!"

Gray reached to the toggle and switched it back with a pop.

A groan sounded underfoot—then something cracked with a ground-shuddering jolt. The lead shield froze in place, partly lowered.

Beyond the edge, a blue sun glowed in the heart of the blast chamber. The air rippled around the Bell as its outer shell spun in one direction and the inner in the other.

"Do something!" Baldric begged.

"The hydraulics are jammed," Gray mumbled.

Baldric backed away, eyes widening with every step. "You've doomed us all! Once fully powered, the Bell's raw and unshielded pulse will kill everyone within five miles…or worse."

Gray was afraid to ask what could be worse.

3:16 p.m.

Monk watched the rifles rise toward them.

Outnumbered.

The elevator cage hadn't reached this floor yet, and even if it had, it would take too long to get aboard and close the doors. There was no way to avoid a firefight.

Unless…

Monk leaned to Fiona. "How about a little pain…"

He nodded to where the hyenas had retreated to the stairs.

Fiona understood and shifted her finger on her device, switching from pleasure to pain. She pressed the button.

The effect was instantaneous. It was as if someone lit the hyenas' tails on fire. A mighty scream yowled from a score of throats. Creatures fell from balcony perches overhead, crashing to the floor. Others rolled down the stairs into the men. Claws and teeth lashed at anything that moved in a blind rage of fury. Men screamed. Rifles fired.

Behind Monk, the elevator doors finally chimed open.

Monk fell back, drawing Fiona with him, guiding Lisa and Painter.

Gunfire peppered at them, but most of the Waalenberg forces focused on the hyenas. Mosi and Brooks offered return fire as they retreated into the cage.

Still, it would be close. And what then? Alerted, the forces would simply chase after them.

Monk stabbed blindly at the subbasement buttons.

Time enough to worry about that later.

But one of their party was not one to procrastinate.

Gunther shoved Anna into Monk's arms. "Take her! I hold them off."

Anna reached for him as the doors closed. Gunther gently pushed her arm down and stepped back. He turned away, pistol in one fist, rifle in the other—but not before staring hard into Monk's eyes, sealing their silent pledge.

Protect Anna.

Then the doors closed.

3:16 p.m.

Khamisi raced through the jungle, hunched low over the motorcycle. Paula Kane rode behind him, rifle on her shoulder. Zulu warrior and British agent. Strange bedfellows. Some of the bloodiest history of the land had taken place during the Anglo-Zulu wars of the nineteenth century.

No longer.

Now they were a fine-tuned team.

"Left!" Paula yelled.

Khamisi twisted the wheel. Paula's rifle muzzle swung to his other side. She fired. A Waalenberg sentry fell back with a scream.

To either side, gunfire and explosions echoed throughout the jungle.

The estate's forces were in full rout.

Suddenly, with no warning, their cycle jetted out of the jungle and into a ten-acre manicured garden. Khamisi braked to a stop, skidding into cover under the branches of a willow.

The mansion filled the world ahead.

Khamisi lifted his binoculars from around his neck and searched the roofline. He spotted where the park helicopter had landed at the helipad. Movement drew his eye. He adjusted the binoculars, and a familiar shape focused into view. Tau. His Zulu friend stood at the roof's edge and studied the war below.

Then from the left, a shape entered the field of view, behind Tau, a pipe gripped above his head. Warden Gerald Kellogg.

"Don't move," Paula said behind Khamisi.

Her rifle's stock settled atop Khamisi's head as she aimed through her sniper's scope.

"I see him," she said.

Khamisi cringed but held still, staring through his binoculars.

Paula squeezed her trigger. The rifle blasted, ringing his ears.

Warden Kellogg's head snapped back. Tau almost fell off the roof in fright, but he dropped flat, unaware his life had just been saved.

Khamisi caught some of Tau's fear, a tremble of foreboding after the close call. How were the others doing in there?

3:17 p.m.

"You've doomed us!" Baldric repeated.

Gray refused to give up. "Can you slow the Bell from discharging? Buy me time to get below. To fix the shield."

The old man stared at the frozen blast shield, crowned by blue light. Fear reflected in his face. "There may be a way, but…but…"

"But what?"

"Someone has to go inside there." He pointed his trembling cane at the blast chamber and shook his head, plainly refusing to volunteer.

A voice called as the door pushed open. "I'll do it."

Gray and Marcia spun, lifting their pistols.

An amazing sight hobbled into the room. Monk came first, supporting the dark-haired woman who had just called to them. Most of the others were strangers. An older black man limped in with a clean-shaven youth in a military buzz cut. They were followed by Fiona and a tall athletic blond woman who looked like she had just run a marathon. The two supported an older man, limp, barely standing. Momentum seemed to be all that kept him on his feet. As soon as the women stopped, he sagged. His face, hanging down until now, raised, met Gray's gaze with familiar blue eyes.

"Gray…" he mumbled numbly.

A shock of recognition passed through him. "Director Crowe?"

Gray hurried to his side.

"No time," the dark-haired woman warned, still supported by Monk. She looked little better than Painter. Her eyes studied the shield and Bell with a look of familiarity. "I'll need help getting inside the chamber. And he's coming with me."

She lifted a trembling arm at Baldric Waalenberg.

The old man moaned. "No…"

The woman glared. "We'll need two sets of hands on the polarity conduits. And you know the machine."

Monk motioned to the black man. "Mosi, help get Anna inside there. We'll need a ladder." He then faced Gray and clasped him in a brief handshake, leaning forward to touch shoulders in a more familial gesture.

"We don't have much time," Gray said in Monk's ear, surprised at how relieved he was at Monk's arrival. Renewed hope surged through him.

"Tell me about it." Monk unhooked a radio and passed it to Gray. "Get that contraption movin'. I'll get things going here."

Gray grabbed the radio and headed out. He had a thousand questions, but they would have to wait. He kept the radio channel open. He heard noises and voices, arguments and a few shouts. Footsteps followed him, running. He glanced back. It was Fiona.

"I'm coming with you!" she shouted and closed the distance by the time he reached the fire stairs.

He clambered down.

She lifted a transmitter with an extended antenna. "In case you run into any of those monsters."

"Just keep up," he said.

"Oh, shut up."

They ran the rest of the way, reaching the lower-level hallway and utility room.

Monk came on the radio. "Anna and the old bastard are inside the chamber. Course he's none too happy about it. A shame. And we were getting to be such good friends."

"Monk…" Gray warned, focusing his man back on task.

"I'm going to pass the radio to Anna. She'll coordinate with you. Oh, by the way, you've got less than a minute. Ciao."

Gray shook his head and yanked on the utility door.

Locked.

Fiona saw him tug on the door a second time and sighed. "No key?"

Gray frowned, pulled out his pistol from his waistband, and aimed at the lock. He fired. The blast echoed in the hall, leaving a smoking hole where the lock used to be. He shoved the door open.

Fiona followed. "I guess that works, too."

Ahead, he spotted the motor assembly and pistons for raising and lowering the blast shield.

A strange rhythmic static flowed over the radio, ebbing and flowing like waves on a beach. Gray realized it must be interference from the Bell. Monk must have passed Anna the radio.

Confirming this, he heard the woman's voice arguing through the static. It was a jumble of technical debate, an angry mix of German and Dutch. Gray tuned most of it out as he circled the motor assembly. Then the woman's voice spoke more clearly in English.

"Commander Pierce?"

He cleared his throat. "Go ahead."

Her voice rasped with exhaustion. "We have our fingers in the proverbial dike up here, but it won't hold."

"Hang tight."

Gray spotted the problem. A fuse smoked by one of the pistons. Using the edge of his shirt, he yanked it out. He turned to Fiona. "We need another one. Must be a spare around here somewhere."

"Hurry, Commander."

Static grew ominously louder, but not enough to cover Baldric's words, whispered to Anna urgently, "…join us. We could use another expert with the Bell."

Even frightened, Baldric was playing all the angles.

Gray listened more closely. Would she betray them? He motioned to Fiona. "Toss me that transmitter."

She underhanded it to him. He caught it and snapped off the metal antenna. He didn't have time to find a spare fuse. He would have to jump it. He jammed the antenna between the contacts and crossed to a control board with a massive manual wrench-lever. The operation was self-explanatory.

At the top was marked op and below it onder'aan.

Up and down.

Not exactly rocket science.

Gray spoke into the radio. "Anna. You and Baldric can get out of there."

"We can't, Commander. One of us has to keep their finger in the dike. If both of us let go, the Bell will blow instantly."

Gray closed his eyes. They dared not trust Baldric's cooperation.

Static had grown to a dull roar in his ear.

"You know what you must do, Commander."

He did.

He shoved the lever.

Distantly her last words reached him. "Tell my brother…I love him."

But as she lowered the radio, one final statement rasped out—whether to answer Baldric's offer, or to make a last declaration to the world, or simply to satisfy herself.

"I'm not a Nazi."

3:19 p.m.

Lisa knelt on the floor, cradling Painter. Then she felt the rumble of massive machinery below her knees. Ahead, the giant lead shield rose toward the ceiling, pinching off the blaze of blue light.

She rose half up. Anna was still in there. Even Monk took a step toward the closing blast shield.

A terrified scream erupted from inside.

It was the old man. Lisa spotted his fingers scrabbling above the edge, frantic, trying to catch a grip. Too late. It rose above his reach and smoothly clamped into the ceiling's O-ring.

His screams could still be heard, muffled, frantic.

Then Lisa felt it. In the gut. A whompoi power. It had no description. A quake that rattled without movement. Then nothing. Complete silence, the world holding its breath.

Painter moaned, as if the effect were painful for him.

His head lay in her lap. She examined him. His eyes had rolled back in his head. His breathing grated with fluid. She shook him gently. No response. Semicomatose. They were losing him.

"Monk…!"

3:23 p.m.

"Hurry, Gray!" Monk called into the radio.

Gray pounded back up the steps, followed by Fiona. Below, he had delayed only long enough to find a replacement fuse and repair the shield. He didn't understand all that Monk had relayed, but he filled in the blanks with what he knew. Painter had some form of radiation poisoning, and the Bell held the only cure.

As he neared the fifth-floor landing, he heard a heavy booted tread stumbling down toward them. Gray pulled out his pistol. Now what?

A massive figure, heavy-browed and pale white, appeared above, half falling down the stairs toward him. His shirt was soaked in blood. A ragged scrape raked the side of his face from crown to throat. He held a broken wrist to his belly.

Gray raised his weapon.

Fiona pushed past him. "No. He's with us." And in a lower voice to Gray, she added with a nod, "Anna's brother."

The giant stumbled to them, recognizing Fiona, too. Eyes narrowed at Gray with tired suspicion. But he waved his rifle back up the stairs. "B/ockiert,"he grunted.

Blockaded.

So the giant bought them time with his own blood.

They hurried down the hall toward the Bell chamber. But Gray knew he had to prepare Gunther. After Anna's sacrifice, he owed her brother at least that. He touched the man's elbow.

"About Anna…" he began.

Gunther turned to him, tensing, eyes going pained, as if he expected the worst.

Gray faced that fear and explained in terse words, sparing nothing, ending with the final truth. "Her efforts saved everyone else."

The large man's feet had slowed with the telling. What his wounds couldn't bring low, grief finally did. He slumped slowly to his knees in the hall.

Gray paused. "Her last words…were for you, passing her love."

The man covered his face and curled to the floor.

"I'm sorry…" Gray offered.

Monk appeared in the doorway. "Gray, what the hell are you—?" Then he spotted Gunther in a posture of pure grief. His voice died.

Gray strode toward Monk.

It was not over for any of them.

3:22 p.m

"Lower the shield!"

Lisa glanced to see Commander Pierce stride into the chamber with Monk, both leaning their heads together. She stood over the Bell's control suite. She had spent the past few minutes familiarizing herself with the device. On the trek here, Anna had gone over in detail how the Bell functioned. The woman had feared she might be too debilitated to oversee its use. Another had needed to know. That onus fell upon Lisa.

"The shield!" Gray called to her again from Monk's side.

She nodded dully and flipped the toggle.

Motors clattered below. She turned to watch the blast shield drop. With the Bell quiescent, light no longer blazed out from inside. A step away, Painter lay on a tarp on the floor, attended for the moment by Dr. Fairfield. To the right, Mosi and Brooks dragged another tarp over the bodies of the twins.

What about the pair's grandfather?

The blast shield continued to lower, waist-high now. The Bell sat quietly in the center, waiting to be activated again. Lisa remembered Anna's description of the bell-shaped device. The ultimate quantum-measuring tool. It scared the hell out of her.

To the left, yelling a bit to be heard over the motor, Monk related the radioed message from Khamisi. The Zulu forces had secured the estate, driving any surviving Waalenberg forces into the mansion, where a siege was under way. A continuing firefight ensued above.

"Gunther blocked the fire stairs," Gray said. "And the elevator doors are jammed open. It should buy us some time." He waved to Brooks and Mosi. "Keep a watch on the outer hall!"

They lifted their weapons and headed out.

As they left, Gunther stumbled inside. From the expression on his face, Lisa knew he had been told about Anna. He had shed all his weapons. Each step was leaden as he headed toward the lowering shield. He had to witness the end. A final absolution for all the blood on his hands.

The shield settled to a stop. The motors went silent.

Lisa feared viewing the damage herself, but she had a duty here.

She crossed toward the Bell.

Anna lay on her side in the shadow of the device, curled like a baby. Her skin was ash white, her dark hair turned snowy, as if she had become a marble statue. Gunther stepped over the lip of the shield and knelt beside his sister. Without a word, expressionless, he bent and scooped her in his arms. She lolled limply in death, her head coming to rest on her brother's shoulder.

Gunther stood, turned his back on the Bell, and headed away.

No one tried to stop him.

He vanished out the door.

Lisa's gaze fell upon the other figure still sprawled atop the blast chamber's lead floor. Baldric Waalenberg. Like Anna, his skin had gone an unnatural white, almost translucent. But the radiation had burned away all his hair, too, leaving him bald, not even eyebrows or lashes. His flesh had also collapsed to his bones, giving him a mummified appearance. And something about his underlying osseous structure was…was wrong.

Lisa froze, horrified to step any closer.

With the hair gone, flesh sunken, the skull was plainly misshapen, as if partially melted, then hardened again. His hands were twisted, fingers oddly elongated, apelike. The word devolution filled her head.

"Get him out of there," Gray said with disgust, then faced Lisa. "I'll help you get Painter inside."

Lisa slowly shook her head, stepping back. "We can't…" She could not take her eyes off the twisted horror that was the former Waalenberg patriarch. She couldn't let that happen to Painter.

Gray came up to her. "What do you mean?"

She swallowed, still staring as Monk grabbed the monstrosity by the sleeve of his shirt, plainly afraid to touch his flesh. "Painter is too far gone. The Bell only held the hope of staving off or slowing the debilitation, not reversing it. Do you want to suspend your director in his current state?"

"If there's life, there's hope."

His words were spoken softly, gently. They almost succeeded in drawing her attention away as Monk hauled the old man's devolved form out of the device, bumping over the lip.

Lisa opened her mouth to argue against false hope.

Then Baldric Waalenberg's eyes snapped wide, milky and blind, looking more like stone than flesh. His mouth stretched in a silent and prolonged scream. His vocal chords were gone. He had no tongue. Nothing was inside him but horror and pain.

Lisa gave voice to the man, crying out, backing away until she bumped into the console. Monk recognized the true horror here, too. He lunged away, dropping Baldric on the tiles outside the blast chamber.

The mutated form collapsed. The limbs remained toneless, muscleless. But the mouth opened and closed, a fish out of water. Eyes stared blindly.

Then Gray stepped between Lisa and the horror. He gripped her shoulders. "Dr. Cummings." Her gaze, fluttering in panic, settled to his. "Director Crowe needs you."

"There…there's nothing I can do."

"Yes, there is. We can use the Bell."

"I can't do that to Painter." Her voice rose in pitch. "Not thafl."

"It won't happen. Monk told me how Anna instructed you. You know how to set the Bell for a minimum output, for a palliative radiation. What just happened here is different. Baldric had amped the Bell up to a maximum setting, one set to kill. And ultimately…ultimately you reap what you sow."

Lisa covered her face with her hands, trying to block everything out. "But what are we trying to reap?" she moaned. "Painter is at death's door. Why make him suffer any longer?"

Gray pulled her hands down. He leaned to catch her gaze with his own. "I know Director Crowe. And I think you do, too. He would fight until the end."

As a medical doctor, she had heard such arguments before, but she was also a realist. When there was no hope, all a caregiver could provide was a measure of peace and dignity.

"If there was a chance to cure," she said with a shake of her head, her voice steadying, "even a small one, I'd take it. If we knew what Hugo Hirszfeld had been trying to communicate to his daughter. His perfected code." She shook her head again.

Gray caught her chin in his fingers. She tried to break free, flaring with irritation. But his grip was sure and hard on her.

"I know what Hugo hid in those books," he said.

She frowned at him, but she read the truth in his eyes.

"I have the answer," he said.

NUCLEOTIDE VEHANDEUNG tDNA) [CROCUTA CROCUTA't ThuNnvd 14;56:25 GMT

Schema V.l.IS

VERANDERING L vi .'t.". "Ii.■ i■■—-■-■-_-r—-i-_-

16 RIPPLE OF THE RUNES

3:25 P.M. SOUTH AFRICA

"It's not a code," Gray said. "It was never a code."

He knelt on the floor, a marker in hand. He circled the set of runes he had drawn for Baldric Waalenberg.

riXMiK

The others had gathered around him, but he kept his attention fixed on Lisa Cummings. The answer Gray had discerned made no sense, but he sensed it was the lock, and this woman, who knew more about the device than anyone else in the room, might hold the key. They would have to work together.

"Runes again," Lisa said.

Gray frowned at her for an explanation.

She nodded to the floor. "I saw another set of runes, a different set, drawn in blood. They spelled out Schwarze Sonne."

"Black Sun," Gray translated.

"It was the name for Anna's project in Nepal."

Gray pondered the significance. He pictured the Black Sun symbol on the workstation below. Himmler's original cabal must have been split after the war. Anna's group to the north. Baldric's to the south. Once separated, the two groups diverged further and further apart until allies became adversaries.

Lisa tapped the runes on the floor, drawing back his focus. "The runes I

decoded were a simple transposition of letters for symbols. Is this the same?"

Gray shook his head. "Baldric made the same assumption. It was why he was having so much trouble deciphering the runes. But Hugo would not bury his secret so shallowly."

"If it's not a code," Monk asked, "then what is it?"

"It's a jigsaw puzzle," Gray said.

"What?"

"Remember back when we talked to Ryan's father?"

Monk nodded.

Gray pictured that meeting with Johann Hirszfeld, the man crippled with emphysema, lost in the past, the family estate forever shadowed by Wewelsburg Castle and the family's dirty little Nazi secret.

"He described how inquisitive his grandfather Hugo had been. Always searching up strange things, investigating historical mysteries."

"It's what drew him to the Nazis," Fiona said.

"And in his spare time, Hugo was all about sharpening his mind."

Johann's words echoed through Gray: Memorization tricks, jigsaw puzzles. Always with the jigsaw puzzles.

Gray tapped the set of runes. "This was just one more mental brainteaser. But not a code…a jigsaw. The runes were shapes to be manipulated, rearranged, returning order out of chaos."

Gray had worked the puzzle out in his head over the past day, letting the runes twist and turn in his mind's eye until one shape formed. He knew it was the answer. Especially knowing the angst at the end of Hugo's life, his expressed regret for his collaboration with the Nazis. But what did it mean? His eyes fell upon Lisa.

He redrew the six runes on the floor, one after the other, reassembling them in their proper sequence. He completed the jigsaw on the floor, inscribing the last rune and completing the spell.

Order out of chaos.

Absolution out of collaboration.

Holy out of unholy.

From the pagan runes, Hugo showed his true heritage.

"It's a star," Monk said.

Lisa lifted her eyes. "Not any star…it's the Star of David."

Gray nodded.

Fiona asked the most important question. "But what does it mean?"

Gray sighed. "I don't know. I have no idea what it has to do with the Bell, with perfecting the device. Maybe it was merely a final declaration of who he was, a secret message to his family."

Gray recalled Anna's last words.

I am not a Nazi.

Was Hugo's runic code just another way to say the same?

"No," Lisa said sharply, her certainty resounding across the room. "If we're going to solve this, we must act as if this is the answer."

Gray saw something fill her eyes, something missing a moment ago.

Hope.

"According to Anna," she continued, "Hugo went into the Bell chamber alone with a baby. Without any special tools. It was just him and the boy. And once the experiment was over, tests showed that he had succeeded, produced the first true and pure Knight of the Sun."

"What did he do in there?" Fiona asked.

Lisa tapped the Star of David. "This is somehow tied to it. But I don't know the significance of the symbol."

Gray did. He had studied multiple religions and fields of spiritual study during his youth and while polishing his Sigma training. "The star's meaning is diverse. It's a symbol of prayer and faith. And maybe more. Note how the six-pointed star also is really two triangles—one atop the other. One pointing down, one up. In Jewish Kabbalah, the two triangles are the equivalent of yin and yang, the light and the dark, the body and the soul. One triangle represents matter and the body. The other our soul, our spiritual being, our conscious mind."

"And joined together, they're both" Lisa said. "Not just a particle or a wave—but both."

Gray saw some edge of understanding, enlightenment. "What?"

Lisa stared toward the blast chamber. "Anna said the Bell was basically a quantum-measuring device that manipulated evolution. Quantum evolution. It's all about quantum mechanics. That's got to be the key."

Gray frowned. "What do you mean?"

Lisa explained what Anna had taught her. Gray, having studied biology and physics in depth for Sigma, needed little elaboration.

Closing his eyes, he sat back, trying to find a balance between the Star of David and quantum mechanics. Was there an answer between them?

"You said Hugo went into the chamber with just the baby?" Gray asked.

"Yes," Lisa said softly, as if sensing she needed to let him run with his thoughts.

Gray concentrated. Hugo had given him the lock. Lisa had given him the key. Now it was up to him. Letting go of time's pressure, he allowed his mind to twist and turn the clues and pieces, testing, rejecting.

Like another of Hugo's jigsaw puzzles.

As with the Star of David, the right combination finally formed in his head. So clean, so perfect. He should have thought of it sooner.

Gray opened his eyes.

Lisa must have noted something in his face. "What?"

Gray stood. "Get the Bell powering up," he said, crossing to the console. "Now!"

Lisa followed him and began running through the procedure. "It will take four minutes to reach a palliative pulse." She glanced to Gray as she worked, eyes inquisitive. "What are we doing?"

Gray turned toward the Bell. "Hugo didn't go into the chamber without any tools."

"But that's what Anna—"

"No." Gray cut Lisa off. "He went in with the Star of David. He went in with prayer and faith. But mostly he went in with his own quantum computer."

"What?"

Gray spoke rapidly, knowing he was right. "Consciousness has baffled scientists for centuries…going all the way back to Darwin. What is consciousness? Is it just our brain? Is it just nerves firing? Where is the line between brain and mind? Between matter and spirit? Between body and soul?"

He pointed to the symbol.

"Current research says its there. We are both. We are wave and particle.

Body and sou't. Life itself is a quantum phenomenon."

"Okay, now you're babbling," Monk said, joining him, drawing Fiona.

Gray took a deep breath, excited. "Modern scientists reject spirituality, defining the brain only as a complex computer. Consciousness arises merely as the by-product of the firing of a complex interconnectivity of neurons, basically a neural-net computer, operating at the quantum level."

"A quantum computer," Lisa said. "You mentioned that already. But what the hell is it?"

"You've seen computer code broken down to its most basic level. Pages of zeroes and ones. That is how the modern computer thinks. Turning a switch on or off. The zero or the one. The theoretical quantum computer, if it could be built, offers a third choice. The old zero or one—but also a third choice. Zero and one."

Lisa squinted. "Like electrons in the quantum world. They can be waves or particles or both at the same time."

"A third choice," Gray said with a nod. "It doesn't sound like much, but by adding this possibility into a computer's arsenal, it allows such a device to perform multiple algorithmic tasks simultaneously."

"Walk and chew gum," Monk mumbled.

"Tasks that would take modern computers years to perform could be done in fractions of a second."

"And our brains do this?" Lisa said. "Act like quantum computers."

"That is the newest consensus. Our brain propagates a measurable electromagnetic field, generated by our complex interconnectivity of neurons. Some scientists conjecture that it is this field where consciousness resides, bridging the matter of the brain with the quantum world."

"And the Bell is hypersensitive to quantum phenomena," Lisa said. "So by Hugo joining the baby inside the Bell chamber, he influenced the result."

"What is observed is changed by the act of observing. But I think it was more than that." Gray nodded to the Star of David. "Why this? A symbol of prayer?"

Lisa shook her head.

"What is prayer but a focus of the mind, a focus of consciousness…and if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, then prayer is a quantum phenomenon."

Lisa understood. "And like all quantum phenomena, it will and must measure and influence the result."

"In other words…" Gray waited.

Lisa stood. "Prayer works."

"That's what Hugo discovered, that's what he hid in his books. Something frighteningly disturbing but too beautiful to let die."

Monk leaned on the console next to Lisa. "Are you saying he willed that baby to be perfect?"

Gray nodded. "When Hugo entered the chamber with the baby, he prayed for perfection, a concentrated and focused thought, selfless and pure. Human consciousness, in the form of prayer, acts as a perfect quantum-measuring tool. Under the Bell, the pure quantum potential in the boy was measured, swayed by Hugo's focus and will, and as a result, all the variables settled into perfect place. A perfect roll of the genetic dice."

Lisa turned. "Then perhaps we can do the same to reverse the quantum damage in Painter. To save him before it's too late."

A new voice intruded, coming from Marcia, who still nursed Painter on the floor. "You'd better hurry."

3:32 p.m.

Monk and Gray rushed Painter into the blast chamber, slung in a tarp.

"Put him close to the Bell," Lisa directed.

As they obeyed, she called out final instructions to the others. The Bell was already spinning, its two shells revolving in opposite directions. She remembered Gunther's description of it. A Mixmaster. That pretty much described it. A soft glow also shone from its outer ceramic shell.

She sank to her knees next to Painter, checking vitals, the few that remained.

"I can stay with you," Gray said at her shoulder.

"No. I think more than one quantum computer might interfere with the results."

"Too many cooks in the kitchen," Monk agreed.

"Then let me stay," Gray said.

Lisa shook her head. "We'll only get one shot at this. If it takes focus and will to heal Painter, it might be best if the mind directing that focus was a medical doctor."

Gray sighed, little convinced.

"You did your job, Gray. Gave us an answer. Gave us hope." She stared up at him. "Let me do mine."

He nodded and stepped away.

Monk leaned down to her. "Just be careful what you wish for," he said, his words fraught with levels of meaning. He was not so much the dumb oaf he pretended. He pecked her on the cheek.

The pair left.

Marcia called from the console. "Pulse in one minute."

She twisted around. "Raise the blast shield."

As the gears ground below her, Lisa leaned over Painter. His skin had a bluish hue—then again maybe it was just the Bell's glow. Either way, he was moments from expiration. His lips were cracked, his breathing much too shallow, his heartbeat sounded more murmur than beat. Even his hair. The roots had gone snow-white. He was failing at an exponential rate.

The blast shield rose around her, closing them off from the rest of the group. Voices beyond, hushed already, grew muffled then ended as the shield locked into the roof.

Alone, with no one looking, Lisa leaned over Painter, resting her forehead against his chest. She didn't need to focus her will in some meditative verve. It was said there were no atheists in a foxhole. It was certainly the case here. But she didn't know what God to ask for succor at this moment.

Lisa remembered Anna's discussion of evolution and intelligent design. The woman had insisted it was quantum measurements that ultimately collapsed potential into reality. Amino acids formed the first replicating protein because life was the better quantum-measuring device. And if you extrapolated that further, consciousness, which was an even greater quantum-measuring device than life alone, evolved for the same reason. One more link in the evolutionary chain. She pictured it.

AMINO ACIDS »»» FIRST PROTEIN »»» FIRST LIFE »»» CONSCIOUSNESS

But what lay beyond consciousness? If the future dictated the past through quantum measurements, what desired consciousness to form? What better quantum-measuring tool lay further in the future, dictating the present? How far into the future did this chain go? And what lay at its end?

AMINO ACIDS »»» FIRST PROTEIN »»» FIRST LIFE »»»

CONSCIOUSNESS»»»???

Lisa remembered one other cryptic statement from Anna, when Lisa had confronted her about God's role in all this. While quantum evolution seemed to remove the hand of God from sudden beneficial mutations, Anna's last words on the matter had been you're looking at it the wrong way, in the wrong direction. Lisa had attributed the cryptic statement to the woman's exhaustion. But maybe Anna had pondered the same question. What did lie at the end of evolution? Was it merely some perfect and incorruptible quantum-measuring device?

And if so, was that God?

She had no answer as she leaned over Painter. All she knew was that she wanted him to live. She might hide from the others exactly how deeply she felt for him—maybe even from herself—but she could hide it no longer.

She opened her heart, allowed her vulnerability to shine.

As the Bell hummed and its glow swelled, she let go.

Maybe that's what had been missing in her life all along, why men seemed to fade from her, why she ran. So no one would see what could be harmed so easily. She hid her vulnerability behind an armor of professionalism and casual dalliance. She hid her heart. No wonder she was alone on a mountaintop when Painter stumbled into her life.

No longer.

She lifted her head, shifted over, and kissed Painter softly on his lips, putting into action what she had sought to hide.

She closed her eyes as the last seconds counted down. She opened her heart, willing the man a future, wishing him to be healthy, hale, and whole, and mostly praying for more time with him.

Was that the ultimate function of the Bell? To open a quantum conduit to that great quantum-measuring tool that lay at the end of evolution, a personal connection to that final designer.

Lisa knew what she had to do. She let go of the scientist inside, let go of her own self. Her goal was beyond consciousness, beyond prayer.

It was simply belief.

In the purity of that moment, the Bell burst with a blinding light, joining them together, turning reality into pure potential.

3:36 p.m.

Gray flipped the toggle, and the shield began to lower. They all held their breath. What would they find? The motors grumbled. Everyone gathered around the shield wall.

Monk glanced to him, his eyes worried.

In the silence, a small chime sounded, coming from the left.

The blast chamber slowly cleared into view. The Bell, quiet and dark, rested inertly in the center—then Lisa appeared, crouched over Painter, her back to them.

No one spoke.

Lisa slowly turned, rising. Tears, held suspended by lashes, poured down her cheeks. She clutched Painter under her arm as she stood. He looked no better. Pale, weak, debilitated. But he lifted his head on his own and spotted Gray.

His eyes shone sharp and focused.

Relief spread through Gray.

Then the small chime sounded again.

Painter's eyes flicked in its direction—then back to Gray. Painter's lips moved. No words came out. Gray stepped closer to hear.

Painter's eyes narrowed hard on him. He tried again. The word was faint and made no sense. Gray worried about the man's mental status.

"Bomb…" Painter repeated hoarsely.

Lisa heard him, too. She glanced in the same direction as Painter. To the body of Baldric Waalenberg. She then shoved Painter toward Monk.

"Take him."

She headed to the man's twisted form. At some point, unseen, unmourned, Baldric had finally expired.

Gray joined her.

Lisa knelt down and shoved up the man's sleeve. He wore a large wristwatch. She turned it over. A second hand swept over a digital readout.

"We've seen this before," Lisa said. "A heartbeat monitor tied to a microtransmitter. After his heart stopped, it began a countdown."

Lisa twisted the man's arm so Gray could read the number.

02:01

As he watched, the second hand swept over the number twice more. It sounded the familiar chime as it dropped below 02:00.

"We have less than two minutes to get the hell out of here," Lisa said.

Gray took her at her word and straightened. "Everybody out! Monk, radio Khamisi! Tell him to clear all his men as far away from the mansion as possible."

His partner obeyed.

"We have a helicopter on the roof," Lisa said.

In seconds, they were all running. Gray took Painter from Monk. Mosi helped Brooks. Lisa, Fiona, and Marcia followed.

"Where's Gunther?" Fiona asked.

Brooks answered. "He left with his sister. He didn't want anyone to follow him."

There was no time to search for him. Gray pointed to the elevator. Monk's group had jammed the doors open with a hall chair, to keep anyone from using it to come after them. Mosi yanked it out one-handed and threw it down the hall.

They piled inside.

Lisa hit the top button. Sixth floor. The elevator slowly began to rise.

Monk spoke. "I radioed our man up top. He doesn't fly, but he knows how to turn a key. He'll get the engines warmed up."

"The bomb," Gray said, turning to Lisa. "What do we have to expect?"

"If it's the same as back in the Himalayas, it'll be big. They've developed some quantum bomb using that Xerum 525 material."

Gray pictured the tanks stored at the deepest level.

Crap…

The elevator continued to climb, passing the main floor, which was deathly silent. And upward they went.

Painter stirred, still unable to hold his own weight. But he caught Gray's eyes. "Next time…" he whispered hoarsely "…you go to Nepal on your own."

Gray smiled. Oh yeah, Painter was back.

But for how long?

The elevator reached the sixth level and opened.

"One minute," Marcia said. She had had the presence of mind to note and monitor the time.

They raced up the roof stairs and found the helicopter waiting, blades spinning. They ran for it, supporting one another. Once under the rotors, Gray passed Painter to Monk.

"Get everybody aboard."

Gray ran to the other side and climbed into the pilot's seat.

"Fifteen seconds!" Marcia called.

Gray cranked the engine speed. Blades screamed. He yanked on the collective, and the bird lifted its skids off the roof. Gray was never so happy to leave a place. The helicopter took to air, rotoring up. How much clearance would they need?

He adjusted his blade pitch and fed more power.

As they swept upward, he yawed the bird a bit. He searched the grounds around the estate. He saw Jeeps and motorcycles racing in all directions away from the mansion.

Marcia started a countdown. "Five, four—"

Her precision was slightly off.

A blinding light suddenly blazed beneath them, as if they were lifting off the sun. But the most disturbing effect was the total and absolute silence. Unable to see, Gray fought to hold the bird in the air. But it was as if the air had vanished beneath him. He sensed the helicopter plunging earthward.

Then the light fell away around them with a loud clap, shedding like a wash of water.

The rotors suddenly found air again, bobbling in the sky for a long moment.

Gray stabilized the craft and banked away, frightened to his core. He stared back to where the mansion used to be. A massive, smooth-walled crater lay below, cut cleanly through rock and soil. It was as if some mighty Titan had taken a giant ice-cream scoop to the mansion along with most of the surrounding gardens.

Everything was gone. No debris. Just emptiness.

Pools and creeks, cut in half, poured over the lip in trickling waterfalls.

Farther from the edge, Gray spotted vehicles stopping and people glancing back, some walking closer to check. Khamisi's army. Safe. The Zulu people gathered along the borders, claiming back what they had lost so long ago.

Gray flew the chopper over them, banking to circle the crater. He remembered the missing drum of Xerum 525, the one marked for the United States. He toggled the radio and began passing a long chain of security codes to reach Sigma Command.

He was surprised to hear someone other than Logan pick up the line. It was Sean McKnight, the former director of Sigma. Fear iced through Gray. What was he doing there? Something was wrong. McKnight quickly briefed him on what had happened. The last came as a blow to the gut.

He finally signed off, numb and shocked.

Monk had leaned forward, noting his growing consternation.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

He turned. He had to face his partner when he said it.

"Monk…it's about Kat."

5:47 p.m. EST WASHINGTON, D.C.

Three days had passed. Three long days settling matters in South Africa.

Finally, their plane had landed at Dulles International after a direct flight from Johannesburg. Monk had ditched Gray and the others at the terminal. He had hailed a taxicab and taken off. Then the taxi hit congestion near the park. Monk had to force himself not to yank open the door and run on foot, but eventually the bottleneck broke up, and they were moving again.

Monk leaned forward. "Fifty bucks if you get me there in under five minutes."

Acceleration threw Monk back into the seat. That was more like it.

In two minutes, the jumble of brown brick buildings appeared. They flashed past a sign that read Georgetown university hospital. Tires squealed into the visitors' parking lot, almost sideswiping an ambulance.

Monk threw a fistful of bills at the driver and leaped out.

He squeezed sideways through the automatic door, impatient when it opened too slowly. He ran headlong down the hall, dodging patients and orderlies. He knew which room in ICU.

He ran past a nursing station, ignoring a yell to slow down.

Not today, honey.

Monk winged around the corner and spotted the bed. He ran, fell to his knees in the last steps, and slid in his sweatpants up to the side of the bed. He hit the lowered side rail rather hard.

Kat stared at him, a spoonful of jiggling lime green Jell-O halfway to her mouth. "Monk…?"

"I came here as soon as I could," he said, panting, winded.

"But I just talked to you ninety minutes ago on the satellite phone."

"That's just talking."

He shoved up, leaned over the bed, and kissed her square on the mouth. The bandages were wrapped around her left shoulder and upper torso, half hidden by a blue hospital gown. Three gunshots, two units of blood lost, collapsed lung, shattered collarbone, and lacerated spleen.

But she was alive.

And damn lucky.

Logan Gregory's funeral was set for three days from now.

Still, the pair had saved Washington from a terrorist attack, gunning down the Waalenberg assassin and stopping the plot before it could come to fruition. The ceremonial gold Bell was now buried deep in Sigma's research labs. The shipment of Xerum 525 intended for the Bell had been found at a shipping yard in New Jersey. But by the time the U.S. intelligence agencies had tracked the shipment—encumbered by the vast web of Waalenberg-owned corporations, shells, and subsidiaries—the one last sample of Xerum was found degraded, left too long out in the sun, gone inert due to improper refrigeration. And without the fuel source, the Bells, even those recovered from other embassies, would never ring again.

Good riddance.

Monk preferred evolution the old-fashioned way.

His hand drifted to her belly. He was afraid to ask.

He didn't have to. Kat's hand covered his. "The baby's fine. Doctors say there should be no complications."

Monk sagged again to his knees, resting the side of his head on her stomach, relieved. He closed his eyes. He snaked an arm around her waist, gently, careful of her injuries, and pulled tight to her.

"Thank God."

Kat touched his cheek.

Still on his knees, Monk reached to his pocket and lifted out the black ring box. He held it out, eyes still closed, a prayer on his lips.

"Marry me."

"Okay."

Monk opened his eyes, staring up into the face of the woman he loved. "What?"

"I said okay."

Monk lifted his head. "Are you sure?"

"Are you trying to talk me out of it?"

"Well, you are on drugs. Maybe I'd better ask you—"

"Just give me the ring." She took the box and opened it. She stared silently for a moment. "It's empty."

Monk took the box and stared inside. The ring was gone.

He shook his head.

"What happened?" Kat asked.

Monk growled. "Fiona."

10:32 a.m.

The next morning, Painter lay on his back in another wing of Georgetown University Hospital. The table retracted from the doughnut-shaped CT machine. The scan had taken over an hour. He had almost fallen asleep, having rested very little over the past few days. Anxiety plagued his nights.

A nurse opened the door.

Lisa followed her inside.

Painter sat up. It was chilly in the room. Then again, he was wearing nothing but a threadbare hospital gown. He sought some manner of dignity, tucking and snugging, but finally conceded defeat.

Lisa sat down next to him. She nodded back to the monitoring room. A clutch of researchers from Johns Hopkins and Sigma had their heads bent together, the focus of their attention on Painter's health.

"Looks good," Lisa said. "All signs of internal calcification are receding. Your lab values are all returning to normal. You may retain some minor residual scarring to your aortic valve, but possibly not even that. The rate of recovery is remarkable…dare I say, miraculous."

"You may," Painter said. "But what about this?"

He ran his fingers through the white streak of hair over one ear.

She reached up and followed his fingers with her own. "I like it. And you're going to be fine."

He believed her. For the first time, deep down, he knew he would be okay. A shuddering sigh flowed from him. He would live. There was still a life ahead of him.

Painter caught Lisa's hand, kissed her palm, then lowered it.

She blushed, glanced to the monitoring window—but she didn't pull her hand from his as she discussed some technical matter with the nurse.

Painter studied her. He had gone to Nepal both to investigate the illnesses reported by Ang Gelu and as a personal odyssey, a time for private reflection. He had expected incense, meditation, chants, and prayers, but instead it had turned into a hellish and brutal journey around half the globe. Still, in the end, maybe the result was the same.

His fingers tightened on her hand.

He had found her.

And though they had been through so much together in these past days, they still barely knew each other. Who was she really? What was her favorite food, what made her let out a belly laugh, what would it be like to dance with her, what would she whisper when she said good night?

Painter knew only one thing for certain as he sat in his gown, all but naked next to her, exposed down to the level of his DNA.

He wanted to know everything.

2:22 p.m.

Two days later, rifles fired their last shot into the blue sky, cracking brilliantly across the green slopes of Arlington National Cemetery. The day was too bright for a funeral, a glorious day.

Gray stood off to the side as the funeral ended. In the distance, overlooking the clutch of black-suited mourners, rose the Tomb of the Unknowns, eighty tons of Yule marble quarried from Colorado. It represented loss without a name, a life laid down in service to the country.

Logan Gregory was now one of them. Another unknown. Few would know of his heroism, the blood shed to protect all of us.