Anna nodded. ‘Yes.’ She raised a hand and touched the lines furrowing his brow gently. ‘I may not be as good a fighter as the rest of you but there is no way I will stand by and watch you walk into this on your own. We’re going to go and get our children. Together.’ Her lips curved into a faint smile. ‘Besides, I’ve been taking lessons.’
Lucas startled. ‘You have?’
Anna nodded and glanced at Alexa where she stood next to Zachary some twenty feet to her left.
‘You’re kidding?’ Lucas said hoarsely as he stared from their cousin to the woman before him. ‘I thought you hated fighting. And when?’
Anna pursed her lips. ‘Remember all those long walks Alexa and I used to take around the island and when we visited Zachary and her in New York? Well, we weren’t just walking.’ She rose and pressed another kiss to his mouth. ‘Considering I’m married to a man who has a nasty habit of getting himself into all sorts of dangerous situations, I thought it would be best if I didn’t assume the role of damsel in distress every single time. So make your peace with this.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I’m not changing my mind.’
Lucas swallowed and nodded. He recalled the attack on their house and how she had defended herself against their masked intruders.
Anatole returned from where he had been talking to the Hunters and the Rangers, Reynolds and Sergeant Peters following in his steps. The latter’s wounded leg had been healed by Conrad while they were still at Hawthorne and he walked without a limp.
‘We’ve briefed the other troops joining us about the—’ Reynolds grimaced, ‘—special circumstances of this mission.’
Anatole grinned and indicated Peters with a tilt of his head. ‘He told them you guys were regular-day superheroes.’
Reynolds froze in his tracks and turned to look at Peters.
‘Is that true, Sergeant?’ he said, aghast.
Peters shrugged. ‘Greaves and I thought it would be the easiest way to prepare the other soldiers for the unnatural shit they’re going to be exposed to during this battle, sir.’
Reynolds watched him for a moment before sighing. ‘Well, you’re not wrong.’
Ethan and Olivia approached with the others.
‘Just try to keep it, you know, as normal as you possibly can,’ Reynolds told them sternly.
‘I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,’ Reid said wryly. ‘These guys don’t do normal.’
Reynolds groaned and rubbed a hand down his face. ‘Christ, it’s going to be like that time in Yuma, isn’t it?’
‘I think this is gonna be worse than Yuma,’ Ethan said in a determined voice.
Olivia dipped her chin next to him, her eyes shining hard.
Reynolds scowled. Something on the tarmac drew his gaze.
‘Are those…monks?’ he said dully.
Lucas turned and eyed the crowd of saffron-robed figures exiting an aircraft a short distance away. Alexa and Zachary headed briskly across the tarmac and greeted the smiling young man in the lead with warm hugs.
‘Ah-huh,’ Lucas murmured with a faint smile.
Peters’s eyes widened. ‘Why are they bowing to her?’
Lucas grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck as they watched the monks practically kowtow before Alexa. ‘Well, technically, they’re her sect.’
Reynolds gaped. ‘She has a sect?!’
‘Like I said, technically.’
Asgard walked over to them from where he had been talking to some Hunters.
‘Are your ships in position?’ he asked Reynolds.
The major nodded. ‘They’re closing in on the coordinates we’ve given them as we speak, as is our submarine force. We leave at zero two hundred hours.’
Laura ignored the cramps in her belly as she watched the live, infra-red satellite imagery streaming across the flat-screen monitor; she’d become used to her false labor pains in the last couple of days.
Howard sat at the workstation next to her chair, his back rigid and his normally jovial face set in stiff lines.
They were in the bunker beneath the mansion in Santa Monica, where they were helping coordinate the attack on the enemy’s facilities in Greenland with Jordan and Eva. Their live link with Sumava remained open on another screen, as did the one with the Bastian headquarters in Vienna. Victor and Dimitri were visible inside the windows, their expressions similarly strained.
‘It’s starting,’ Howard murmured.
Westwood studied the moving dots on the digital map on the main screen of the Oval Office. Connelly perched on the armrest of the sofa, her body full of the same tension coursing through his veins.
It was midnight in Washington and the room was a hive of activity.
It had not taken the two of them long to convince the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense that it was in the best interests of the United States to help their allies defeat an enemy they had not even known existed until a few days ago.
The strike force they’d hastily assembled with NATO was now within sight of their target, having crossed the three hundred miles from Iceland in a little over an hour.
‘The Sixth Fleet should be there right about now, sir,’ the Chief of Naval Operations said tersely.
Westwood felt Connelly stiffen next to him. He reached out and took her hand where it rested on her thigh. She startled and looked at him. He kept his gaze locked on the screen ahead.
Lily stirred in her sleep. She sat up, brushed her hair from her face, and blinked at the dark cell, wondering what had awoken her. That was when she felt it. Felt her.
Tomas’s drowsy voice echoed in her head. Lily?
Lily’s pulse accelerated. She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, seeking the familiar consciousness that had just brushed against hers so briefly. It was several seconds before she sensed her once more.
Aunt Olivia.
She felt Tomas wake fully at her breathless words, their connection buzzing with a sudden burst of his energy.
You can hear her?
Not quite. But she’s close.
Lily’s eyes widened when she registered an echo in her aunt’s consciousness. It was only as the link between their minds strengthened that she finally understood what it was she was sensing.
Navia.
Lily felt Tomas’s jolt of shock.
You can—you can feel her too?
Ivan had told them what Victor had said about the reawakened souls. After witnessing Bastian and Crovir’s rebirths, Lily had had no trouble believing him. She swallowed when she discerned the other ancient souls bearing down on them.
Yes. And not just her. Lily pulled back the covers and climbed off the bed. It’s time.
‘Found them.’ Olivia opened her eyes and studied the dark mass looming on the horizon through the plane’s cockpit window. ‘They’re on the thirteenth floor, in the basement of the main facility.’
Asgard twisted on his heels and headed into the aircraft’s cavernous hold to tell the others.
Olivia’s heart quickened as she reached out to Lily’s faint consciousness. Can you hear me?
It was a moment before she heard her reply.
Yes.
Olivia swallowed, joy and relief flashing through her at her niece’s voice. We’re coming for you.
Lily’s resolve resonated across their connection, so intense it raised goosebumps on Olivia’s skin. We’ll be ready.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ethan glanced from the luminescent dials of his diving watch to the shadowy ripples ten feet above him as he bobbed in the undercurrent. It was another minute before Howard’s tense voice came over the sub-assault headset under his suit hood.
‘Continuous loop recordings on the security cameras are set up. You guys have fifteen minutes, tops.’
Ethan signaled to Reynolds where he floated next to him and kicked up toward the surface. He emerged slowly from the icy waters, scanned the area, and drew up on a concrete side ledge.
By the time the Rangers had
climbed out around him, he’d unlocked the watertight exit door in the south wall of the channel and twisted the opening wheel to expose an emergency tunnel. They crowded inside the underground passage, removed their rebreathers, and stripped out of their neoprene drysuits.
Cold air fogged in front of Ethan’s face as he checked his gun and the suppressor attached to the muzzle.
Forty minutes had passed since they’d been dropped off in a fjord by an amphibious assault ship behind the cover of one of the uninhabited islands that dotted the eastern coastline of Greenland. They’d navigated five and a half miles of open water with the aid of free-flooding, wet submersibles and reached one of four access channels leading to the underground port without any incident.
‘Go straight for one hundred feet, then turn right,’ Howard said over the headset. ‘You’ll see another door after forty feet. This one opens onto the corridor that will take you to the security center.’
Though Howard and Eva had managed to identify and infiltrate the computer networks of the secret port and the weapons base, neither of them had been able to connect to the main research station. The only way to do this, they hoped, would be to access it from one of the secondary facilities.
‘Number of unfriendlies in the immediate area?’ Ethan said into his transmitter.
‘Six within fifteen feet of that door.’ Howard paused. ‘The place is crawling with them. Be careful.’
Ethan took the lead and moved swiftly up the tunnel. He reached the junction Howard had indicated, headed into the side passage, and slowed when he saw what lay at the end.
‘Shit.’
‘What?’ Reynolds said as he came up next to him.
Ethan indicated the door’s opening mechanism. ‘It’s another locking wheel. They’ll hear the damn thing the second it starts moving.’
‘How many revolutions?’ Howard asked over the headset.
‘Two and a half,’ Ethan said.
‘Go slow.’
Ethan stared at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling. ‘Seriously? That’s your suggestion? Go slow?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Howard muttered.
Ethan sighed, holstered his gun, and placed his hands carefully on the wheel. He closed his eyes and sent a gentle, controlled wave of elemental energy through the door. They all held their breath when it unlocked with a soft click.
Ethan froze. Reynolds stiffened beside him.
‘You’re okay,’ Howard said over the headset.
Ethan maintained a steady stream of elemental energy as he slowly twisted the wheel, eliminating friction from the rotating parts. It was a full minute before it completed its final turn. He grabbed the panel with Reynolds and carefully pulled it open.
A brightly lit, concrete passageway appeared on the other side.
They peered out before pulling back.
‘I’ll take the guys on the left,’ Ethan murmured.
Reynolds nodded.
They stepped out silently into the passage with the rest of the Rangers, splitting up and moving toward the figures at either end. Ethan got within seven feet of the guards he was targeting before one of them turned and spotted him.
He shot the man in the chest, saw the round punch through his uniform, and crushed his gun and those of his two companions with a blast of elemental power. Bullets whizzed past him as the Rangers fired at the disarmed figures.
Fifteen seconds later, they had control of the corridor.
‘We’d better secure these guys and leave them in the escape tunnel,’ Ethan said as he observed the dead men. ‘I don’t know how many of them are Immortals. They could wake up again.’
Reynolds hesitated before nodding, his expression uncomfortable.
Howard’s voice came over Ethan’s earpiece. ‘The security room is one hundred feet north and fifty feet east of your position. I count eight guys inside.’
They turned and headed in the direction he had indicated. Halfway to their target, they walked into a group of guards.
Ethan’s pulse stuttered when he registered the empty looks on the faces of the five men who had just stepped out of a room ahead and to their left.
Super soldiers. No doubt about it.
‘Go for head shots!’ he barked at Reynolds as the figures reached for their weapons.
Gunfire exploded across the corridor.
Heat surged inside Ethan’s chest and down his left arm as he raised his hand and released a barrier of elemental energy.
By the time the last fragmenting bullet had smashed into the invisible wall, he’d ground their enemies’ weapons to a pulp. The super soldiers stared at the lumps of metal in their grasp, cast them to the ground, and charged wordlessly toward them.
Ethan snatched an EMP grenade from a pocket on his thigh and was about to depress the button when it was kicked out of his hand. He cursed, ducked beneath a powerful fist, and lunged toward where the device had fallen on the ground. His eyes widened when he caught a glimpse of the giant figures heading their way from the far end of the passage.
Ethan closed his fingers around the grenade, reached inside to the glimmering, pulsing source of his power, and felt the soul within him stir.
Conrad paused on the dimly lit staircase when he heard shots through the receiver in his ear. He signaled to Greaves and the group of Rangers behind him before peering over the railing to the shadowy drop below.
It had been eight minutes since they’d infiltrated the underground port via a submerged channel to the north and started making their way to the generator room. They’d emerged from an escape tunnel fifty feet from the access door they were targeting and were a quarter of the way down the stairs that would lead them to the basement of the facility.
Conrad’s blood pounded steadily in his veins as he strained his ears. Bar the steady humming that made the metal steps vibrate under his feet, no other sound escaped from the level beneath them.
‘What’s happening?’ he murmured into the transmitter pinned to his combat suit.
‘Ethan and Reynolds came across a group of super soldiers on their way to the security center,’ Howard replied over his earpiece. ‘They’re engaging them as we speak.’
Conrad frowned. ‘I’m not hearing any alarms.’
‘I disabled them.’
Conrad smiled faintly at that. ‘We’re almost at the generator room.’ He was about to start down the steps when he paused again. ‘How’s Laura?’
‘Heavily pregnant and as grumpy as a cave full of bears. Ow!’
Conrad swallowed a chuckle. ‘Did she just smack you on the side of the head?’
‘Yeah,’ Howard muttered. ‘How did you know?’
Conrad grinned. ‘She does it to Anatole all the time when he’s being an ass.’
‘She says to tell you that she loves you. And if you die before she has this kid, she will follow you to hell and bring you back just so she can personally kill you herself.’
Conrad sobered up at that. ‘I won’t die.’
He motioned to the Rangers and headed silently down the stairs. Fifteen feet later, the outlook opened out to his left. He stopped on a landing and studied the giant space spread out below him.
Dome-shaped turbines and generators lined the floor of a murky cave. Rising at the far end was the faint outline of the concrete containment unit housing the facility’s nuclear reactor. A maze of platforms, walkways, and pipes connected the elements of the power plant.
Fifty feet ahead and to the right, light spilled through the glass observation windows of a control room built into the wall of the cave.
Conrad closed the last twenty feet to the ground with the Rangers in tow and ducked into the shadow of an overhead gangway. They made their way silently through the gloom toward the source of the light, their weapons in hand.
Hairs rose on the back of Conrad’s nape as he passed an aisle next to a turbine. He saw movement out of the corner of his left eye, dropped to the ground, and raised his gun as he rolled and came up on one k
nee. A figure stepped out of the narrow space and punched Greaves hard in the solar plexus. The Ranger grunted as he flew backward and crashed into three of his companions, taking them to the ground.
Conrad pulled the trigger of his semi-automatic, saw his silent bullets smash into the super soldier’s liquid-armor suit, and snatched an EMP grenade from a pouch at his waist. Pain exploded in his left loin. He gasped, lunged out of the way of the second super soldier’s boot, and yanked his staff weapon from his back.
He jumped to his feet, sent a pulse of healing energy to the fresh contusion on his flank, and narrowed his eyes at the group of blank-faced men closing in around them. Motion captured his attention to the right.
Conrad’s pulse spiked when he saw the hulking figures of five giant super soldiers approach from the direction of the control room. He twisted a ring on the staff and unsheathed his swords, heat building inside him as he focused his ungodly gift. Power flashed through him from the soul that now dwelled in his heart.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘Left turn coming up in twenty feet,’ Eva said in Alexa’s ear. ‘The control room is fifty feet up the passage. There are two guards stationed outside.’
Alexa slipped the second Sig from the holster on her lower back and moved silently along the corridor, the Marines and the Freemasons at her side.
Thirty minutes had elapsed since they’d jumped out of the cargo hold of a C-130 Hercules and parachuted down to the ice under the streaming waves of the Aurora Borealis. They’d landed one mile from the weapons base and skied their way down the frozen slopes of a shallow elevation toward the hulking, dome-shaped roof of the structure projecting from the plain below.
It had not taken long to locate the air vent Eva had identified as an access point. By the time they had crawled through the ventilation ducts and reached the second level, the AI had taken control of the facility’s security cameras.
Alexa slowed when she neared the junction and motioned to the men with her. They froze against the concrete wall.
She stepped out into the adjoining passage, let out a soft whistle, and raised her guns. The guards framing the doorway ahead never saw the bullets leave the suppressors on the Sigs.
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