She spoke into her headset radio to get an update from her team and make sure the explosives were all in place. Eclipse told her the hostages were secure. Everyone else confirmed that they were on their way to the control room, except for Cyclone, who did not respond.
“Cyclone?” Solstice repeated into her mic, but once again there was no reply. “Millicent, where are you?”
Nothing.
She turned to Typhoon. “Check on her. Sweep the crew quarters first, then go take a look in the tunnels.”
With a heavy nod, the thickly muscled ape picked up one of the AR-15s and stalked through the hall toward the stairs.
We entered the upper level of the base and I saw the concrete-encased elevator shaft to my right. It appeared to be just over a meter wide and nearly two meters across and reminded me of an extremely runout and exhausting crack I’d climbed in Yosemite a few years ago. An electrical line stretched up from a relay control module and disappeared out of sight in the shaft.
That’s how they sent the web-based message earlier that everything was fine.
I made note of it. I could use that to contact Margaret.
After we’d stopped Cassandra Lillo.
Twelve stout concrete pillars supported the ceiling of the room. Seven other tunnels spidered out in all directions. The second opening to our left contained a cart that looked like the one Lien-hua and I had just ridden here.
I pictured the topography of the terrain above us, evaluated that tunnel’s direction in relation to the one we’d emerged from, and had an idea of where it might lead. Silently, I gestured toward the stairwell, but before we could reach it I heard movement in the tunnel containing the other railcar.
Swift, cat-like, Lien-hua leapt against one of the support columns to cover me. I raised my gun and my flashlight, approached the tunnel’s entrance. “FBI! Put your hands in the air!” Sweeping the beam before me, I saw Alexei Chekov standing about twenty meters away.
A woman lay at his feet.
She wasn’t moving, and from here I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead.
88
8:54 p.m.
6 minutes until the transmission
“Hands away from your body, Alexei!”
He held up his empty hands. “We need to hurry. We only have until 9:00.'
I motioned with the barrel of my gun for him to step away from the woman. “On the ground. On your knees. Do it.”
“We have six minutes.”
“Down!”
He stepped to the side, went to one knee, then the other.
“Six minutes until what? They send the signal?”
“Yes.”
I punched at my watch so the timer would go off in five. Alexei gestured toward the radio hanging from the injured woman’s belt. “They’re sending someone to look for her.”
Keeping my gun trained on him, I signaled for Lien-hua to check the woman’s pulse, then I walked around Alexei so I’d be able to monitor the tunnel’s entrance while I frisked him.
Cautiously, Lien-hua approached the woman, no doubt aware, as I was, that all of this might be an elaborate trap.
I had the plastic cuffs with me, and though I doubted cuffing Alexei would do much good, I did it anyway. At least it might slow him down if he tried to make a move on me or Lien-hua.
From where I stood now, I could see the woman’s face and recognized her as one of the the Eco-Tech operatives whose photos Alexei had sent to my email account. “Her name is Millicent Alman,” I told Lien-hua.
“She was setting explosives.” Alexei nodded toward the dirt wall of the tunnel. “Triacetone triperoxide.” A strip of TATP with a wireless detonation package had been implanted into the tunnel’s wall with two narrow spikes.
Oh, this was just getting better and better.
Lien-hua bent beside Millicent, checked her pulse, her airway. “She’s alive.”
I patted Alexei down. “What did you do to her?”
He was clean.
“It’s Propotol.” He was eyeing the tunnel’s opening carefully. “She’ll be all right, but she’s going to be out for a couple hours. We should really get out of the line of fire.”
I thought again of the geographic alignment of this tunnel.
Donnie’s biometric ID was at the sawmill… In their break room there was a stairwell to the basement… With a second tunnel, that would explain “You came from the sawmill, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You hacked into my email, read the schematics, that’s how you found it.” It was more of an observation than a question.
“Yes.”
I helped him to his feet. “Where’s the bone gun?”
“I don’t have it on me.”
“What about Burlman’s sidearm?”
“I don’t use guns.”
A person in his profession?
“Because of your wife? Because she was shot?”
He stared at me. “Yes. Because of my wife.”
Millicent had a handgun, a radio, and two sets of plastic handcuffs, all of which Lien-hua helped herself to.
When Alexei had first asked me to help him, he’d told me he wanted to deal “appropriately” with the people who killed the Pickrons, and he’d wanted my help finding Valkyrie… “It was Valkyrie, wasn’t it?” I said. “That’s who killed Tatiana?”
He chose not to reply, but I took his silence as a yes.
At the sheriff’s department when the topic of our wives’ deaths had come up, he’d said that he had someone to take out his vengeance on, that I had only God to blame.
That’s why he’s here. To kill Valkyrie. “Did Millicent tell you who Valkyrie was before you drugged her?”
“Yes.”
“Dana Murkowski?” I said, referring to the alias Cassandra Lillo was apparently using for this mission.
Alexei looked at me stiffly. “That’s right.”
But why would Cassandra have killed Alexei’s wife?
“Pat,” said Lien-hua urgently, “we need to get-”
Abruptly, Alexei held out both hands, palms up, dropping the spent cuffs to the ground. I aimed the Glock at him, but he wasn’t coming at me. He’d freed himself even faster than I’d guessed he would.
“If you fire,” he said, “it’ll give away our location.”
I looked at the time on my watch: 8:55.
Move, Pat. Go.
Dragging Millicent across the ground wasn’t ideal, and with my bum ankle and Lien-hua’s slim frame, we weren’t well-suited to move her. Gesturing toward Millicent and then the railcar, I told Alexei, “Carry her over there.” He lifted her, brought her to the cart, gently set her down. Lien-hua tested one of the bars supporting the
