“Thought you might want this back,” he said.
“Thanks,” Tyler said as he mechanically replaced it in his belt holster.
“So,” Grant said, “shall we call the police now?”
“I doubt that’ll be necessary,” Tyler said as he gazed in awe at the smoking hole in the ground. “I imagine we’ll have plenty of company in a few minutes.”
TWENTY-TWO
Thirty seconds after he lost the video and data signals from the road train, Colchev felt the shock wave from the immense explosion shake the van like a paint mixer. He tried reaching the men in the Ford, but all he got was static in return. He tore his headset off and smashed it against the console, swearing a stream of Russian curse words in violation of his own directive.
Locke had somehow caused a premature detonation, literally vaporizing his carefully designed plan. At least the man was likely dead, but his operatives were also gone.
Colchev sat back in numbed silence to consider his next move. If someone at the base had discovered the Killswitch didn’t arrive from the airport, the explosion of the truck bomb was intended to bring any investigation to a dead stop. But with Pine Gap still intact, the Americans would act quickly to track down the weapon. That meant he had to act decisively. Quitting just as they were starting was not an option. He’d never get a chance like this again, so he could not waste time hesitating.
The van slowed.
“Keep driving,” Colchev said, moving to the van’s passenger seat. “Head to the rendezvous.” A mushroom cloud rose in the distance.
“What the hell happened?” Zotkin said. “Wasn’t that early?”
“We lost the truck,” Colchev said.
Zotkin’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles were white. “How?”
“An intruder got on board and blew it up. It was Tyler Locke, the engineer who killed Golgov and Popovich in New Zealand.”
Zotkin gaped at him. “Locke is here?”
“He must have been with Bedova.”
“Did he survive?”
Now that Colchev thought about it, there was a chance Locke was still alive. He had to operate under that assumption.
“He may have made it,” Colchev said, “but there’s nothing we can do about that now. The site will be crawling with police before long. Gurevich and Lvov are dead, too.”
Given how soon the explosion happened after Gurevich got out of the CAPEK cab, they had to have been caught in the blast.
Zotkin’s jaw clenched. “The US government will put every resource they have into finding the weapon.”
“We have a solid plan for getting the Killswitch back to America. Our larger concern is retrieving the xenobium to power it.”
“Can we still accomplish our mission?”
“Absolutely,” Colchev said, betraying not a flicker of doubt in his voice. He did, however, have grave doubts. Without the xenobium, the Killswitch was just a regular bomb, and not a very powerful one at that. With the xenobium, the Killswitch could change the world.
Colchev’s phone rang, and he answered the blocked call warily. Other than his operatives, only his mole at Pine Gap had this number.
“Yes?” Colchev said.
“It’s me,” a man’s voice said. They didn’t risk using names. The call was forwarded by a VOiP service, so there would be no way to trace it to Colchev from the source. Still it was a risk they’d avoided until now. His mole was desperate.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what the hell happened!”
“The package wasn’t delivered as planned.”
“I know that! Don’t you think I heard? What am I supposed to do now?”
“Can you get out?”
“No. They put us on immediate lockdown.”
“What about the trigger?”
“I can’t smuggle it out now, for God’s sake! You’ll have to wait.”
“We can’t. I’ll have someone check the drop in Sydney tomorrow. If the—” In his anger at the ruined scenario, Colchev almost said “xenobium”, but mentioning the word would raise alarms. “If the trigger isn’t in the planter box by midnight, our business is concluded.”
“You can’t leave me hanging out to dry! It’s only a matter of time before they realize I helped steal the weapon.”
“You knew the risks, and you were paid a lot of money to take them.”
A long pause. “I’ll tell them everything.”
“What will you tell them? You have no idea where we’re taking the package.
Colchev hung up and opened his window. He erased the phone’s contents, removed the battery, wiped both parts clean of fingerprints, and tossed them into the desert.
“Do you really think he can do it?” Zotkin asked.
Colchev shook his head. “Doubtful, but there’s nothing we can do to help him at this point.” Without the truck bomb to divert attention from the theft, it would be almost impossible for his mole to get the xenobium out of Pine Gap undetected. Colchev massaged his forehead to ward off the headache he could feel coming on.
“If he gets caught, he’ll reveal the location of the dead drop.”
“Which is how we’ll know if he was caught.” His capture wasn’t a concern because he couldn’t tell the authorities anything useful. Colchev had led him to believe he was stealing the Killswitch weapon for some American mercenaries planning to sell it on the black market.
“What about the xenobium?” Zotkin said. “We can’t use the Killswitch without the trigger.”
“We have proof that there’s more xenobium in Peru. And now we know how to find it, thanks to Fay Turia.”
Zotkin opened his mouth to voice further concerns, then thought better of it when he saw Colchev’s icy stare.
Five minutes later, Zotkin turned onto a dirt path and drove for a half-mile until he parked the van behind a rocky tor. He opened his phone.
“We’re ready.” After a moment, he hung up. “They’ll be here in four minutes.”
Colchev nodded. They wiped down the van and jogged back to the highway. The van would eventually be found, but their trail would go cold here.
They reached the road just as two cars arrived. Both were beige sedans, the first with only two men inside, the other with four. The contents of the stolen Killswitch crate had been divided between the trunks.
Colchev and Zotkin got in the back of the lead car, and they sped away.
“Buran,” Colchev said to the driver, “you and Vinski will wait at the dead drop tomorrow. Be aware that the location may be compromised. If the delivery is made, pick up the trigger and rendezvous with the package in Mexico.”
“What about us?” Zotkin said.
“We’ll follow the trail that Fay Turia led us to in case we need a backup source of xenobium.”
The cars stayed at the speed limit as they headed south. In ninety minutes they’d be at the remote airfield where they’d parked a chartered PC-12 Pilatus prop plane. Four hours after that, they’d be at Bankstown airport on
