She was only a woman.
She came at the tree from behind, from upslope. She slipped to it without disturbing leaf or twig.
Planting her rifle an inch from the back of the dead oak, she fired through it. A cry of surprise and pain erupted as a body fell out of the tree's hollow on the far side. She came at him with her dagger.
He was burly, smelled of grease, his face stubbled with a black beard. He cursed at her in Arabic with a heavy Moroccan accent. She had the dagger at his neck, intending to interrogate him, to find out why she had been ambushed and who had sent them.
She could make him talk. She knew ways.
Instead, she dragged her knife across his throat, below the larynx, a silent kill, and kicked him in his face. There was no need to interrogate him, she realized. She already knew the answers to her questions.
Something had changed. A kill order had been sent by Magnussen. Catching her alone in the woods, they'd tried to take her out first.
She pictured Gray and the others. She ran headlong toward the parking lot. They had no idea.
She reached to a pocket and flipped open her phone. She jabbed in the number she had memorized.
As it was picked up, she let all her anger ring out. 'Your operation! Just so you know, it failed!'
1:20 P.M.
Rachel stood with Wallace in a hotel garden at the heart of Bar-sur-Aube. She checked her watch. Kowalski and Seichan should have been here by now.
She stared out toward the street. The plan was to meet for lunch, to go over plans. They had rooms booked here. The hotel-le Moulin du Landion-had been stylishly converted out of a sixteenth-century water mill. The original canal still ran through the gardens, turning an old wooden waterwheel.
She should have been charmed by the place, but all she felt was ill. Her head pounded, her throat burned, and her fever was getting worse. She finally slumped and sat on one of the patio chairs.
Gray returned from the lobby. He shook his head as he approached. 'No one picked up the keys.' He noted her sitting, and his face tightened with worry. 'How are you feeling?'
She shook her head.
He kept staring at her. She knew what he was thinking. Seichan had sketched a general plan for entering the prison. They would attempt it tomorrow morning. Gray clearly wondered if she'd make it that long.
Suddenly Seichan appeared, passing from the street through the garden gate. She searched all around. The woman, always hyperalert, seemed especially edgy now. Her eyes were rounder, her gaze more flighty.
Gray must have noted the same. 'What's wrong?'
She frowned at him. 'Nothing. Everything's fine.' But when she noted they were missing one person, she tensed again. 'Where's Kowalski?'
'I thought he was with you.'
'I left him in town to do some research while I scouted the woods.'
'You left Kowalski to do research?'
Seichan dismissed the skepticism. 'It's all grunt work. I left instructions a monkey could follow.'
'Yet we're still talking about Kowalski.'
'We should go look for him,' Seichan said.
'He's probably found a bar open for lunch. He'll find his way back here eventually. Let's talk about what we've all learned today.' Gray motioned to Rachel's table.
Seichan didn't seem happy with that decision. She remained standing, pacing, keeping a constant vigil. Rachel noticed a muscle in her face twitch when the waterwheel squeaked.
The woman was drawn tight, but eventually she took a seat.
Gray questioned her on the plans for tomorrow. They all kept their voices to a low murmur, heads bowed together. As Seichan listed everything they would need, Rachel grew more and more dismayed. A thousand things could go wrong.
Her headache grew to a stabbing agony behind her right eye, painful enough that she began to feel nauseated.
Without missing a beat of the conversation, Gray placed his hand on top of hers. He hadn't even looked in her direction. It was an instinctual gesture of reassurance.
Seichan noted it, staring down at his hand-then she suddenly swung toward the street and tensed. She went dead still, like a cheetah before it charges.
But it was only Kowalski. He came sauntering into view. He lifted an arm in greeting, opened the garden gate, and crossed toward them. He was puffing on a cigar, carrying a pall of sweet-smelling smoke with him.
'You're late,' Gray scolded.
He merely rolled his eyes.
Wallace used the interruption to voice his own concern about the plans for tomorrow. 'This is a bloody long shot. It will take perfect timing and lots of boggin' luck. And even then, I doubt we'll make it to those abbey ruins.'
'Then why don't we just take the tour?' Kowalski asked and slapped a brochure on the table.
They all stared down at a tourist pamphlet. It displayed a picture of an old arched colonnade with a fancy marquee above it.
Rachel translated the French. 'The Renaissance Association of Clairvaux Abbey conducts tours of the prison.'
They all stared over at Kowalski.
He shrugged. 'What? Got that thing shoved in my face. Sometimes it helps not to blend in.'
In Kowalski's case, that was an understatement. No one could mistake him for a local.
Rachel skimmed the rest of the brochure. 'They conduct tours twice daily. Costs two euros. The day's second tour begins in an hour.'
Wallace took the brochure and flipped through it. 'Such a short tour won't allow us much time for a thorough search, but we could get a cursory sense of the place.'
Gray agreed. 'It'll also let us get a peek at the security from the inside.'
'But on this tour,' Seichan warned, 'we'll be searched. We won't be able to bring any weapons inside.'
'No one will,' Gray said with an unconcerned shake of his head. 'With all the armed guards surrounding us, we'll be safer than we've ever been.'
Seichan looked far from convinced.
2:32 P.M.
So the bitch lived.
Four kilometers outside the town of Troyes, Krista crossed the grassy field toward the unmarked helicopters. The two stolen Eurocopter Super Pumas were already being loaded for the mission. Eighteen men in combat gear waited to load up. Technicians had finished equipping both birds with the necessary firepower.
A spotter on the ground reported that the targets were on the move. They had commissioned a tour of the abbey ruins and were headed to the prison. She had hoped to have dispatched Seichan before moving forward. The woman was too much of a wild card, but Krista had more than enough firepower and men to deal with her.
It just made it harder.
So be it.
Her orders were to acquire the artifact and eliminate the others. She intended to do that, but after the recent disasters, she also recognized how precarious her standing had become in the organization. She recalled the threat behind the cold words on the phone. Any failure from here would end in her termination. Yet she also knew that just meeting those expectations would not serve her.
After all that had gone wrong, she needed a win, a trophy to present to Echelon. And she intended to get it. If the Doomsday key was present among the ruins, she would force the others to find it for her, then eliminate them.
With the key in hand, her position in the Guild could be resecured.
Keeping that goal in mind, she left nothing to chance. Her targets had no weapons and no means of escape. Not while trapped in the heart of a maximum-security prison. Once her assault started, the prison would be locked down.
They would have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
