They’d lost their best chance to get the remaining Killswitch back. Now it was loose in the United States.
All Grant could hope was that Tyler had better luck.
FORTY-NINE
Still groggy from the blow to his head, Tyler took turns with Jess chipping at the wall with the crowbar. Two hours after being trapped in the tunnel between the collapsed central chamber and the bricked-up barricade, his head continued to throb, mostly from the injury but also because he was angry at himself that his plan hadn’t worked. He’d fully expected to die from the cave-in, but he thought the xenobium would have been buried with him. His wooziness made it hard to tell if he’d come up with a poor scheme or Colchev had just gotten lucky.
His only consolation was that Grant and Morgan probably had done a better job of retrieving the Killswitch.
Even so, he needed to get out of the pyramid and warn them that Colchev had the xenobium.
They’d removed twenty bricks so far. There was no way to know how thick the wall was, so they were racing to break through before the battery on their single lantern died.
Fay sat against the wall with Jess’s arm around her. A day without her insulin had made her weak, but the situation was not yet life-threatening. As Tyler hacked at the mortar, she told them about her conversations with Colchev.
“Did he say what his target was?” Tyler asked.
“He mentioned Washington, DC, and that America would be on its knees. The attack would take China down with it.”
“Nadia Bedova, his former colleague, asked me about Wisconsin Ave. There’s a Wisconsin Avenue in downtown DC. The nation’s capital is a tempting target.”
Tyler turned toward them and frowned at the scenario.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked.
“Something doesn’t make sense about it.”
“Why?”
“Fay said she heard them say that they only had one day left, which would be July twenty-fifth, the same day that Bedova asked me about. If Colchev plans to take out DC, why does it have to be tomorrow?”
“Is something special happening in Washington?”
“Could be, but we’re past the Fourth of July. And the President’s plane is protected against EMP bursts better than any other plane on earth. Colchev would know that.”
“The gamma rays. He could be trying to kill the President.”
“But again, why tomorrow? Bedova also mentioned the Baja drug cartel and the word ‘Icarus’. Did he say anything about them?”
Fay shook her head. “Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. I was the one who let them …” Tyler trailed off. No sense rehashing his mistakes.
“You did your best,” Jess said. “You saved me and Nana.”
Tyler didn’t answer. Failure didn’t sit well with him. He slammed the crowbar into the mortar.
The brick moved, but this one jutted away from him.
He pounded again, and the brick fell outward, letting a sliver of muted daylight through. He could make out the dimly lit interior of one of the pyramid’s previously excavated chambers.
“We’re through!”
Jess and Fay got to their feet and cheered.
Now that he could wedge the crowbar between the bricks and force them out from inside, the hole got bigger quickly. In five minutes the gap was wide enough.
Jess went first and helped Fay traverse the breach. Tyler wriggled out and flopped onto the ground, only to find himself face to face with a family of four gaping in astonishment at the trio covered in dust and squirming out of a wall that had been there for centuries.
The father, who was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, asked, “What in the world is going on?”
Tyler ushered Jess and Fay out. As he passed the astonished tourist, Tyler handed him the crowbar and said, “You will not believe how long we’ve been in there.”
After a quick refueling stop in Lima, Colchev’s private jet lifted off for North America. The xenobium was safely ensconced in the leaded case. Bomb-sniffing dogs might have detected the explosives in the Killswitch, but he was confident he could get the small specimen of xenobium past customs.
He called Oborski to find out the status of the Killswitch. They should have smuggled it through the Mexican drug gang’s cross-border tunnel by now.
“Where are you?” Colchev said when Oborski answered.
“On our way to Phoenix. Our charter is ready to take off when we get there.”
“And the package?”
“Safe. We had some problems at the border. The black man and some woman were there and tried to take it back, but we got away before they could see our vehicle. Our friends on the peninsula won’t be happy about us revealing their smuggling route.”
“I don’t care about them. Is everything on schedule for tomorrow?”
“Yes. The latest reports show no problems with the launch. It’s still set to go off at noon.”
“Good. We’re on schedule to meet in Shelby. Have the plane there tonight.”
“Understood.”
He hung up and told Zotkin the news.
“I have to admit, Vladimir,” Zotkin said with a smile. “After everything we had to overcome, I did not think this would happen.”
Colchev slapped him on the back and laughed. “Never lose faith, my friend. I will chill the vodka tonight, for tomorrow we will be toasting the downfall of America and the establishment of Russia as the most dominant nation on the planet.”
While federal operatives on both sides of the border combed the Mexican drug houses and the nondescript office on the American side for evidence, Grant and Morgan gave their reports to the FBI. Separately. Grant had been through enough debriefings to know that wasn’t a good sign.
His interview finished long before Morgan’s, so he tried calling Tyler again from the lobby of the San Diego field office while he waited.
No answer, but he did have a voicemail waiting.
The message ended, and Grant clicked the phone off.
Morgan slammed the door open and stalked past him out of the lobby. He caught up with her outside as she plunked herself in the driver’s seat of the pool car. She opened the passenger window and said, “You coming?”
