The Last Second

by Catherine Coulter

  She stepped over Kiera and followed Nicholas’s path.

  She could hear the wind start to pick up again outside.

  No time, no time left.

  Mike ran down the hall, dragging her foot, calling Nicholas’s name.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  T-MINUS 6 MINUTES

  Nicholas forced himself to stop before he turned into the last hallway. He used the reflection on the face of his phone to see around the corner. There were four guards grouped in front of a steel door with a biometric panel on its right side.

  They were expecting a frontal assault. In front of them lay four men, two of them obviously dead, the other two moaning. He realized they’d expected to be inside the command center, but instead, there was now a steel door keeping them out. And they were stuck in the open with no cover.

  Nicholas called, “Your mistress has left you to die. We have no desire to kill all of you, but we will if you fight back. We can handle this like gentlemen. Drop your weapons, put your hands on your heads, take your wounded men, and walk away. You have thirty seconds to comply before we start shooting down the hall. Trust me when I say I am an excellent shot, and I have more men behind me.”

  There was a murmur, then one of the men called back, “You are friends with Bernard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Don’t shoot.”

  He looked around the corner to see the four men, their hands on their heads.

  Nicholas said, “Take your men. Leave. Now.”

  The men grabbed the wounded soldiers and carried them out fireman style. They left their guns on the floor. He sent a thank-you prayer heavenward and ran to the biometric panel. Where was Mike? He couldn’t wait, no time. He had to get inside. He had a preprogrammed biometric reader in the pocket of his vest that would override the palm prints approved to open this door and put his in place. He inserted the micro thumb drive into the reader. Moments later, the image of a palm appeared on the glass, and as he watched, it morphed into the outline of his own hand. He slapped his hand into place and the steel door unlocked, opened smoothly.

  He rolled onto the floor in a ball, expecting a barrage of gunfire, but there was nothing, only the quiet whirring of computers and gears. He slammed against a console.

  Where was Nevaeh Patel? He’d expected her to be here, but the room was empty.

  He stared at the computers. They were as high-end as any he’d seen. Liquid plasma screens crowded together on the walls, giving several different views. The command center was offset so the programmer could move from table to table. One side was organized, clean and sharp, the other was reminiscent of the interiors of the International Space Station he’d seen in photographs and interviews, cords and panels set up haphazardly, papers everywhere, all the screens showing different programs running.

  Which one was responsible for the satellite’s motherboard?

  He wished his comms worked, but it didn’t matter. Neither he nor Adam were astrophysicists.

  No help for it. He started moving left to right, systematically, reading the running programs. One was telemetry, one was an orbital path, and he stopped to study that screen. It was just as important for them to figure out where the satellite was as it was for him to get the bomb countdown stopped. He looked at his watch—he had less than six minutes to stop it.

  At that moment, his comms came back on with a deafening squawk, and he heard Adam shouting in his ear. “Nicholas, Nicholas, can you hear us? We can finally hear you, you’re muttering those great British curse words. If you can hear us, give us a sit rep.”

  He shouted back, “Yes, I can hear you again. Thank God, Adam. I’m looking at a screen right now and I’ve got the orbital path. Is this where the satellite is right now?”

  He read off a series of coordinates, and Adam said, “I’ve got it, we’re mapping it now. Can you turn off the bomb?”

  Nicholas looked at his watch—five and a half minutes to go. “Well, I’m in the command center. Can’t find Patel, and Mike is somewhere out in the halls going head-to-head with Kiera Byrne.”

  “We’ve heard a lot of fighting, but I think she’s okay, I heard her cussing up a blue streak about her ankle. The bomb, Nicholas. You have to turn off the bomb. We can’t stop it from here, can’t get the Orbital Test Vehicle into place in time. It’s all up to you.”

  “Problem is I can’t tell which bloody setup is to the satellite’s motherboard.”

  “Well, keep looking, and hurry up. The White House is panicking, they’re about to get on the phone to Moscow and Beijing to warn them, and they’d rather not have to do that.”

  “I’m looking. Wait, I think this is it.”

  He sat on the stool and dug into the code. “It is, I’ve got it. Bloody hell, Adam, it’s in remote mode. I don’t think I can—”

  A voice behind him said, “What do you think you’re doing? Get away from there.”

  He whirled around, saw the gun before he registered the woman holding it. He dove to the side, sent the stool spinning away, but it was too late. He had only a heartbeat to register he’d found Nevaeh Patel before the bullet struck him and the pain began, so sharp and intense it took his breath away. He went down.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Nevaeh stared dispassionately down at the man. He wasn’t dead, he was breathing, but he’d be dead soon. She heard shouting, realized he was wearing an earwig. She knelt down, took it out of his ear, and listened.

  “Nicholas, Nicholas, report! We heard a gunshot, are you hit? Are you hit?”

  She said, “Whoever you are, oh yes, he’s hit. He’s down for the count.”

  She dropped the earwig to the tile floor, smashed it with her shoe. The remote shouting stopped.

  She saw the man, Nicholas, was bleeding, the bullet had caught him in the upper arm. She pressed her foot against the wound until he groaned in pain.

  “Your name is Nicholas? And just who are you, you gorgeous creature?”

  Nicholas tried to lunge at her, but she was fast and he was light-headed from the pain. He could feel the bullet, knew it had gone through his arm and into his chest, right in the notch where his body armor met his underarm. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, but he knew it had to be bad, he was having trouble breathing. It had hit a lung.

  He knew he had to get up, he had to stop the countdown. He tried to push himself to his knees and Patel started to laugh at him.

  “Hurts, does it? I’ve not been shot, but Kiera told me the pain is incredible, like hot pokers shoving into you over and over.”

  He managed to grab hold of the counter that held the multiple command and control modules.

  He got some air in his lungs, not much, maybe he’d gotten lucky—again—and the bullet wasn’t in his lung. He looked over at the older woman, fit, tall, glossy black hair, wearing, strangely, a Roman-style toga. “Why are you doing this? Trying to set off a nuclear EMP, hurting thousands, and eventually millions of innocent people the world over?”

  “Unlike you, I am doing this to change our screwed-up world, to stop all the fighting, the incessant wars. I will bring peace, no matter what is necessary to do so. The Numen will be beside me. I have the Heaven Stone, thanks to Jean-Pierre, and it will come to obey me, to do what I require of it. I have the satellite in place, the bomb will go off shortly, and the Numen will come to me. They will reward me.

  “I met them in space, did you know? Is that why you’re here? Did those bastards at NASA send you? Well, let me tell you, the moment the bomb goes off, the space station will be the first casualty. They’re going to be in exactly the right spot—”

  “No, they won’t. They’ve been alerted to the danger and altered course two hours ago.”

  Nicholas watched this woman go from dreamy to psycho in a heartbeat. Even her voice changed, no longer eerily calm, it was vicious, cruel.

  “How is that possible? Who are you?”

  “I’m Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, FBI. And it’s time to end this insanity
, Dr. Patel. Listen to me, please. Your actions could start another world war. Help me end this. Help me turn it off.”

  Nevaeh sneered, but her voice calmed, and she sounded like a professor he’d once had. “You poor stupid boy. I’m bringing peace to this corrupt world. As for the EMP, the Numen require silence. Our presence in space, all our technology and satellites—they cannot communicate with us. Only with me. You know as well as I do the world now worships itself, the age of Me, everyone staring at their cell phone screens, no one really present. It must end, or civilization as we know it will cease to exist. The Numen—through me—will bring back peace, prosperity, and the communications structure will revert back. We don’t need all this science, all this technology. Look what it’s done, look at the harm it’s caused. The world is on fire. The Numen and I—we have a chance to stop it.

  “And with that end will come peace. Do you know I was the first one to fulfill NASA’s grand mission? The one thing they claim to want more than anything is to make contact with an exoplanetary species, and that’s what I did. And I am the one who is going to bring them back to Earth. I alone will be responsible for first contact.”

  The pain thudded in his chest, but he couldn’t let it grind him under.

  She smiled. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s all over. The launch computer takes over in five seconds, and we are no longer in control. So sit back and enjoy the silence. It will last forever.”

  He had to get up, he had to stop this, but before he could get to his feet, she was out of sight. He collapsed back onto the floor, trying to catch his breath.

  Clinically, he knew what was happening. His lung was filling with blood. He needed a chest tube.

  He needed Mike.

  But he had no idea where she was.

  He dragged himself to the command module, pulled himself to his knees. He was bleeding on the keyboard, not good. He fumbled his hands into place and started to type. He had to stop the bomb.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  T-MINUS 3 MINUTES

  Nevaeh shot him again, in the chest, even though she knew there was nothing he could do. She walked quickly out of the command center and back to her bedroom, shutting doors behind her as she went, the Heaven Stone in her hands, dragging her down. Why did it seem so much heavier than it had even ten minutes ago?

  On the wall in her bathroom, she pressed her hand into a slight groove and a biometric panel rose from the gap, rotated into place. The surface was coded to her handprint alone, so even if they made it through all of her doors in the next minute—impossible, but Nevaeh was an astronaut, redundancies were her calling—no one could follow her.

  The door opened with a click. The small lit passageway would lead her back to the observatory. She shut the door behind her, used her handprint to close and lock the biometric mechanism so it would slide away and no one else could find it, and followed the small hallway, repeating the same steps to open the door to the observatory.

  When she was safe inside the circular room again, she activated the shield she’d designed to drop steel cages across both doors. They clanged into place. She was alone. No one could get in, and, most importantly, no one could stop her now.

  She glanced at her watch, moved to the wall, and set the timer to open the roof in eight seconds. She took her seat again, setting the Heaven Stone in her lap. It hurt it was so heavy. No, it had to be her imagination. She had to be patient. Soon now. The telescope’s command module swung into place in front of her.

  The countdown continued to move ever forward, winding down to the moment she’d be back with her friends. Would they appear at her side immediately after the bomb went off? Or would it take them a few minutes to let the reverberations of the EMP make their way through the orbit before they came?

  Interesting that she hadn’t thought of this before, or thought to ask.

  She waited patiently, lightly rubbing the Heaven Stone, so heavy on her legs. She ignored the shouts and calls and gunshots she heard outside the room. Soon, none of this would matter.

  When the roof opened, she smiled up at the shadowed bloodred moon in the sky above her. The eclipse was at almost 100 percent. Soon now, very soon, the bomb would go off, only two more minutes to complete totality.

  With a beatific smile, she turned her face to the heavens. “It is time. I am ready.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  T-MINUS 2 MINUTES

  Mike had to get the door open to the command center, but how? She’d put her hand on the biometric panel, but nothing had happened. Now, nearly frantic, she slapped it, pressed every button she saw, but still nothing. She called out Nicholas’s name again, but no answer. Was the room soundproofed?

  There had to be a different way in. Her comms crackled to life.

  “Mike? It’s Adam. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you. What’s going on? I can’t get inside the command center but I know Nicholas did. I called out, but I don’t think he can hear me.”

  She heard Adam start shouting, then Gray came on the comms, calm and cool.

  “Mike, we’ve lost comms with Nicholas. We believe Patel shot him. She spoke to us, then she must have smashed his comms. We need to get you in there. You’re going to have to stop this, and her.

  She heard her voice as if from a long way away. “Gray, do you know if he’s alive?”

  “We don’t know. Mike, we have to get you inside, now.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Look for a panel.”

  “There’s a panel, I’ve put my hand on it a hundred times now, and it’s not opening. I’m trying to break in and I can’t do it.”

  “Okay, take a breath. It’s programmable. I’m going to need you—”

  “There’s no way, Gray. I’m not the computer whiz you guys are.”

  It hit her then. She looked up. The ceiling.

  “Hold on, I’m going to try something else.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She piled up the two dead bodies the soldiers had left and used them as a stepping stool to climb up to the ceiling. She shoved the panel above her head and it gave way.

  Her arms screamed as she pulled herself up into the rafters. The steel door to the command center reached all the way to the ceiling above her, but there was a tiny gap on either side, fifteen feet to the left and to the right of her current position. Rafters spread out like metal ribs in five-foot increments.

  “Okay, Gray, can you hear me? I’m in the ceiling, I’m going to try and get around this door from above.”

  “Mike, we’re under a minute—hurry!”

  She didn’t think, she just did it. She jumped the five feet from the first rafter to the second, almost falling off. The pain in her ankle shooting up her leg took her breath away, plus the mud on her boots made each step slippery. No time to take off her boots, and her ankle needed the support. She jumped more carefully the second time, landing better, and jumped again, to where she could see the sliver of light.

  “This better work.”

  The gap between the steel and the girder that made the wall was small, but she had a runner’s build. She eyed the gap, realized there was no way to make it through with all her gear. She shucked off the tactical vest, put a gun in her waistband at the small of her back, and squeezed herself into the gap, past the steel door.

  She barely made it.

  Once on the other side of the steel wall, she danced her way back two rafters, then dropped to her knees and used the butt of the gun to bang a hole in the ceiling large enough to drop through. The ceiling material fell to the floor and she braced herself for a retaliatory shot, but nothing came.

  She stuck her head down through the hole and saw an empty room. But it was definitely the command center.

  She dropped in, landing on her good foot.

  “Nicholas!” Then she saw him lying on his side. She ran across the room, her heart pounding in her ears. He was still breathing.

  “Come on, Nicholas, you’ve gotta get up and turn off
the nuke.”

  “I’m—trying—” he gasped out, and she saw the keyboard on the floor next to him. “I shut down the failsafe on the satellite. But the countdown didn’t stop—”

  “Which one is running the bomb?”

  He pointed. She pulled her Glock from the small of her back and emptied the entire magazine into the computer.

  Thirteen shots.

  An explosion rattled the building, and she dropped to her knees. Threw herself over Nicholas. It hadn’t worked, she’d failed.

  She heard cries and shouts, smelled smoke, and realized the explosion was on the ground, not in the sky. Mills’s men must have blown off a door to get in.

  She looked at the countdown clock. It wasn’t moving anymore, read 00:00:01:03.

  She reared back. Nicholas was white, his breathing labored, and there was blood covering his chest. But he gave her a half smile. “Shooting the sucker—never would have—thought of that. You’re—such a show-off.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “Where are you hit?”

  “Lung,” and his voice sounded hollow, breathless. “Then she shot me in the chest, hit my Kevlar.” Mike spoke calmly into her comms. “The countdown has stopped. Gray, Adam, Lia, anyone there? Nicholas needs a medic, immediately. It—it’s not good. I think he’s lung-shot.”

  “Copy that.”

  She brushed Nicholas’s hair back from his forehead. “I don’t know if we stopped the nuke, but it stopped the countdown. You turned it off from the ground?”

  “Yes. It should have stopped the countdown, too.”

  “So we’ll never know if it was you who stopped it, or me. I’ll go with me. My shooting has always been better than your computer skills.”

  He tried to laugh, but only his jerky hollow breathing sounded in the silence.

  “Mills’s guys are now inside, that was the explosion we heard.” Nicholas was getting paler by the minute. She got back on her comms. “Were you able to get anyone up here? If so, divert them into the building, now. Hurry.”