The Extinction Agenda

by Michael Laurence

  Mason ducked and sprinted to the south.

  If he overshot the house, he could work back toward it from the far side. With any luck, he’d be approaching from their unguarded rear.

  He heard his name called from a distance. Between the wind and the echo, it was impossible to divine its origin, but there was no mistaking the anger in Trapp’s voice. The pain. Mason had allowed the enemy to infiltrate his life in the guise of his partner without so much as suspecting duplicity. He should have been paying closer attention. He should have seen this coming.

  “Maaaasssooooooonnn!” His name echoed across the field. “There’s no point in running! There’s nowhere to go!”

  The sound originated from somewhere between the pens and his current location. Either Trapp had guessed he’d head for the ravine and guessed again that he would head south—the odds of which were, at best, one in six—or they were somehow remotely tracking him.

  He glanced up. The clouds were low and dense. No, they didn’t have a clear image of him. They had to be using a satellite equipped with thermal-imaging capabilities. In which case, he was pretty well screwed. He’d stand out against this sheet of fresh snow like a red-and-gold supernova.

  “Why don’t you come on out of there? Let’s talk about this! We’re on the same side!” Mason thought he heard Trapp chuckle. “You just don’t know it yet!”

  It still sounded like he was charting a course that would intercept Mason’s. And after what he’d done to Trapp’s knee, he should have easily distanced himself from his partner by now.

  If he continued running due south, they would have someone waiting for him. Veering east toward the house would lead him straight into the teeth of his pursuit, but at least he might have a chance of catching them off guard. Surely they’d closed off his direct route of retreat, and there was nothing but an eternity of flat land to the west.

  A mound of earth appeared from the storm ahead of him where the drainage ditch ended. Once he broke cover, he’d be an easy target. As he neared, he saw that it was actually a road that connected the field to the east with the field to the west. And the water would still have had to flow through it somehow.…

  There!

  He could barely see three inverted crescents of darkness over the top of the accumulation. A trio of ribbed culverts that allowed the water to pass under the road, any one of which would extinguish his heat signature beneath five feet of dirt and nearly a foot of snow.

  Mason scurried into the first one, crawled all the way inside, then back out. He did the same thing with the other two. They wouldn’t be able to tell which one he was in by his tracks, and he was counting on the satellite’s thermal spatial resolution not being smaller than the standard three-foot-square pixel.

  A scream from somewhere to the north.

  A woman’s scream.

  The acoustics were odd, hollow, like she was screaming from inside a deep hole.

  “Get her out of there.”

  A man’s voice. Not Trapp’s. Closer than Mason expected. Maybe a hundred feet behind him. A loud cracking sound of breaking wood and Alejandra screamed again.

  She’d crawled inside one of the dead, termite-ravaged trees, which all but confirmed his theory about thermal imaging.

  Her cries reverberated all around him.

  Scream all you want. No one will hear you.

  Mason backed away from the three holes, appraised his work, and prayed they wouldn’t see through his ruse too soon. He turned around and ducked under the overhanging drift. If he could somehow burrow into the windswept snow, he’d be able to conceal his thermal signature from the satellite. The layer of ice on top would maintain the integrity of the drift and keep the whole thing from collapsing on him and giving him away. No one would be able to tell where he had gone without investigating on their hands and knees.

  Or so he hoped.

  He dug into the drift until he’d created a hollow large enough to crawl inside without making the whole white wave collapse. Contorted his body until he was all the way inside. Dragged as much snow in front of him as he could, sealing off the light.

  And waited for Trapp to come for him.

  50

  “Mason…” Trapp’s voice sounded like it came from miles away through the snow packed all around Mason’s head. “We have … girlfriend … got to say … not nearly as attractive as … last one. Things didn’t work out … well for her, did they?”

  His pulse thudded in his ears. It was all he could do to keep from exploding from the snow with both guns blazing. He maneuvered his body so that his feet were flat on the ground and his knees were bent. Compressed himself like a spring. The snow in front of his face turned to ice. He was recycling the carbon dioxide from his exhalations. It wouldn’t be long before he started to get dizzy.

  “He … under there.” A third voice.

  “One of … go around … other side … road.” Trapp.

  “… which culvert…?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Mason pictured three adversaries. Trapp and the man restraining Alejandra on this side of the road. The third man on the far side.

  A thump right beside him. Snow fell down around his face.

  Heavy tread in the accumulation. Coming closer.

  Another footfall, followed by yet another, more labored, thump.

  They were directly beside him now.

  “Don’t make … harder than … needs to be,” Trapp said. “Why don’t … come out on … own so we … discuss … like adults?”

  “No tracks … the other side.” The second voice. Farther way.

  “Take up position … top of … road.”

  Mason maneuvered his Sigma into his left hand and drew Ramses’ Infinity with his right. Crossed them over his chest. He was only going to get one shot at this.

  Alejandra continued to scream. At least he knew where she was, but she was making it hard to determine exactly where the others were. If he had any chance of pulling this off, he was going to need to aim before he even saw them.

  “Shut her up,” Trapp said.

  A sharp crack. A thud on the ground beside him. More snow fell onto his face. He was already feeling the oxygen deprivation in the tips of his fingers and toes.

  “… running out … patience, partner. If you come out … own … let you live, but if … make me … come in there after you … not going to like … consequences.”

  Why hadn’t they just started shooting into the culverts?

  “There may … people who want you … survive this, but … number’s growing smaller by … minute. They won’t be able … protect you forever.”

  “Let’s just shoot … both and get … hell out of here.” The third voice. Ten o’clock. Maybe ten-thirty.

  “Fine.” Then louder. “Richards? If you will…”

  The prattle of automatic gunfire mere feet from Mason’s head. The pinging sound of bullets ricocheting from the inside of one of the culverts and careening off into the distance.

  “One down, Mason. Odds … fifty-fifty. What … you say? Come on out … be done with it.” Then softer: “Be ready. He’s going … shoot back at us … then bolt … opposite direction.”

  “Middle or end?” The second voice. To his right. Two o’clock.

  He had them all now.

  Mason tensed his legs. He could already feel the lactic acid building in his muscles. It was now or never. He just needed all of their attention focused on the remaining culverts.

  “Your choice … might … fun to drag … out a little while longer.”

  The second he heard the crackle of gunfire, he drove with his legs, straight up into the drift. The uppermost layer was hard and crusted and felt like it tore open his scalp when he burst through it. He uncrossed his arms as he emerged, aligned the Infinity with the closest man, to his right, and his Sigma with the man up on the road. The HK417 bucked in Right’s hands, spewing sparks and bullets into the middle culvert. Left was leaning over the far end of the
hole in anticipation of shooting Mason in the back of the head when he crawled out from under the road.

  Neither of them ever saw him.

  He took Right with a point-blank shot that sprayed the contents of his head straight up the western slope of the ditch and into the trees. At the same time, the first shot from the Infinity hit Left in the flank, the second between his shoulder blades. The poor guy might have survived had Right not still been squeezing the trigger as he toppled sideways, his bullets chewing up the hillside to the road and lifting Left into the air.

  Mason turned toward Trapp just in time to see the surprise register on his face. He sighted the barrel of the Infinity between his partner’s eyes, then swung his Sigma around to join it.

  “Drop the gun!”

  “Mason…”

  He fired a shot next to Trapp’s right ear.

  “Motherfucker!”

  He dropped his gun as if it were on fire. Red welts were already swelling on his ear and cheek where the discharge had burned him.

  “How many more?” Mason shouted.

  “Jesus! Get those things out of my—”

  “How many more of you are there?”

  “None. Christ! None! There were four of us. That’s all!”

  “Tell me what’s going on before I put a bullet through—”

  Trapp cut him off with a laugh. Mason was able to resist shooting him in the face, but just barely. He kicked him squarely in the left knee instead. Trapp went down hard with a shout of agony. He rolled over and looked up at Mason, tears streaming down his red cheeks … and started to laugh again.

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? How stupid can one man be?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. You’re talking to the man who just killed your entire team and is currently aiming not one, but two guns at your head.”

  “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done so already.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I have no qualms about shooting you in all kinds of painful places if that’s what it takes to make you talk.”

  “You don’t have it in you.”

  Mason lowered the pistol in his left hand, looked Trapp squarely in the eyes, and shot him in the other knee.

  Trapp bellowed and clutched the wound.

  Alejandra stirred on the ground. The butt of the dead man’s rifle had split her scalp near her right temple. Rivulets of blood were already freezing to her cheek and around the corner of her mouth.

  “You can die with the rest of them, for all I care,” Trapp said. “There’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it anyway.”

  “Why are you doing this? You were my partner. My friend.”

  Trapp laughed again.

  Mason kicked him upside the head.

  Trapp toppled onto his dead partner, losing his cap in the process. He looked up at Mason with blood pouring down his forehead from above his already ruined eye and tossed his broken shades aside. He rolled over onto his side and spat blood into the snow. His right hand disappeared underneath the dead man.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “It appears as though you need me a whole lot more than I need you. How far are you willing to take this?”

  “Just tell me where to find the man with the blue eyes and we can end this. No one has to know. I can protect you.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? This is far bigger than either of us. Events have already been set in motion and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”

  “You obviously don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

  Trapp’s right arm tensed and Mason heard a faint clattering sound from under the body. This wasn’t going to end well.

  “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know? Come on, Mason. Ask me about that sweet little wife of yours. Ask if she begged at the end. Ask about the sounds she made when her hair caught fire. Ask about how she clung naked to that prick Martin while they both burned.”

  The muscles in Trapp’s shoulder bunched. There was no stopping what was about to happen.

  “Damn it, Trapp. Don’t do this.”

  “Or maybe I should ask you, partner. How does it feel to know that your wife died in the arms of another man?”

  Trapp rolled to the side and drew the assault rifle from beneath the body in one swift motion.

  Mason pulled both triggers at once.

  The top of his former partner’s head disappeared in a crimson burst that spattered the snow around him. His body snapped backward and landed in an awkward twisted position.

  The echo of the combined reports boomed across the plains.

  51

  Mason quickly searched all four dead men and found exactly what he’d expected to find.

  A whole lot of nothing.

  He had a feeling he’d seen one, maybe two of them before, but he couldn’t recall where or under what circumstances. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties and had the look of military men. They wore matching utilities and carried nothing of a personal nature. No IDs of any kind. They each had comlinks that fit snugly inside their ears. He took one from the man he’d shot on the road above the culverts, as it was the only one not covered with blood. Whoever had once been on the other end was long gone, though.

  Alejandra followed him back to the Bronco. Her pupils were sluggish in their reactions and she occasionally swayed as she walked, but she didn’t once complain. The only way he could actually tell that the injury bothered her at all was because she pressed a snowball to her forehead.

  Whoever had been coordinating the men was probably staring at a computer screen displaying their complete lack of movement and rapidly fading thermal signatures. He’d surely dispatched another team, which meant that Mason was already on borrowed time, but he wasn’t about to leave without searching their vehicle first.

  The men had parked their black Ford Explorer behind the old Bronco. It was the same model as the green-and-white Border Patrol vehicles in Arizona, one routinely used by any number of government agencies, the FBI chief among them. It was a pool car, so Trapp would have needed a requisition to check it out, and that requisition had to have a signature on it. Someone in a position of authority at the very agency to which Mason had dedicated his professional life had given the order for them to track him down.

  Someone inside the FBI had signed his death warrant.

  There were no receipts in the glove compartment. Nothing to link the occupants of the vehicle to the Bureau, outside of the VIN number, which could be easily altered in a computer database the moment anyone started asking questions. There was no dirt on the floorboards. No trash. No cups from which to pull prints, even if he could somehow gain access to the crime lab and the NGI.

  Mason did find something on the backseat itself, though.

  He pinched it between his fingers and held it in front of his face to get a better look.

  It was a short, coarse hair. Black. Barely distinguishable from the dark upholstery.

  He smiled and let it drift away on the breeze. Now he remembered where he’d seen one of the men before. He wished he could say he was more surprised.

  “Your phone is ringing,” Alejandra said.

  She was already sitting in the passenger seat of the Bronco, eager to get away from this place.

  As was Mason.

  He climbed into the car and answered as he started the engine.

  “Get out of there, Mace!” He recognized Gunnar’s voice immediately. “They’re already locked onto your position. Your pursuit is maybe fifteen minutes out. Coming in fast from the northwest. And there’s an eye in the sky on you even as we speak.”

  Mason drove around the dirt island and pinned the gas on the straightaway.

  “Talk to me, Gunnar.”

  “You’ve got at least two vehicles closing on you by road and a freaking helicopter streaking overland.”

  The Bronco bucked from the ruts and barely stayed on the road. He tossed the phone to Alejandra
so that he could use both hands on the wheel. She put Gunnar on speaker.

  “How did you find us?”

  “It took all of about three seconds to figure out where you were going, which, in case you didn’t notice, fooled absolutely no one. From there it was less than a minute’s work to isolate the lone cellular signal within a ten-mile radius.”

  The Bronco slid sideways out onto the main road. The tires barely caught in time to keep them from firing straight through the barbed-wire fence and into the field on the opposite side of the road. They headed south as fast as the car would go.

  “Was there a reason you called, Gunnar? If all you want to do is criticize, then I should probably let you know I’ve got my hands kind of full at the moment.”

  “Listen to me and listen good. Roughly ten miles south of your current position is a bridge spanning the South Platte River. A mile and a half to the west is a grove of trees. Beneath those trees is a farmhouse. What you need to do is run that car off the road and into the river. They’ll have to confirm that you were in it, which ought to buy you a little more time. Find a way to get to that farmhouse. And make sure you sell it, Mace. If they catch on too quickly, you’re in big trouble.”

  Gunnar disconnected without another word. Mason debated throwing the phone out the window, but there was really no point if his adversaries already had a bead on his location. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how he was supposed to pull this off. If the men tracking him were using thermal surveillance, they’d see him and Alejandra the moment they got out of the car and it would be impossible to miss them trudging through the deep snow. And there was no way he and Alejandra would be able to run a mile and a half through shin-deep accumulation in fifteen minutes. All the men would have to do is take whatever road led to the farmhouse and they’d overtake them. He didn’t know what Gunnar had hoped …

  “Oh no,” Mason said. “He can’t be serious.”

  “What?”

  Alejandra braced her feet against the dashboard and clung to her seat belt like a life preserver.

  “I need you to crawl over the seat and get into the back for me.”