Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

Sitting on top were two wineglasses and the bottle that she and Andras had shared, each of them hoping to impair the other’s judgment.

Lying at the base of the desk, she began banging into it with her shoulder. It rocked back and forth slowly until one of the glasses fell and shattered.

She squirmed around, trying to reach one of the pieces. She felt a few shards digging into her arm. She didn’t care. All that mattered was getting a larger curved one and using it on the rope.

Finally, she touched one. Grabbing it awkwardly, she felt it cut her palm, but she managed to hold it in a position where she could work it against the rope. She began to move it back and forth, pressing it against the rope as best she could.

She hoped it was cutting into the rope that bound her because with each movement she felt it slicing into her hand, and her palm and fingers were growing slick with blood.

It hurt like crazy, but she wouldn’t give up until every drop of blood had drained from her body.

Still working on the rope, she heard a soft thump on the door. Almost like someone had bumped against it.

The sound of the door opening came next. She couldn’t see it; she had her back to it. She feared what Andras would do if he discovered her. Maybe he’d just let her lie there and bleed to death.

The door shut, and something heavy thumped onto the ground beside her. She felt hands on her, not cold and threatening but caring.

She turned.

Instead of Andras’s face, she saw kind blue eyes and silvery hair.

“Kurt,” she gasped.

He held a finger to his lips. “Don’t move,” he said, “you’re bleeding badly.”

He untied her, grabbed a rag, and wrapped her palm tightly.

Behind Kurt a crewman lay dead on the floor, blood trickling from a bullet hole in his chest. She guessed he’d been the guard at her door.

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“Seeing you on the floor with blood all over your wrists, I thought the same thing about you,” he said.

He helped her to sit up.

“They’re going to use this ship to harm your country,” she said. “They’re going to attack Washington, D.C., in less than fifteen minutes.”

“How?” he asked.

“They’ve built a colossal particle accelerator off the coast of Sierra Leone. They intend to send a massive beam of charged particles at Washington. It will sweep back and forth like the scanning beam on a computer screen. It will destroy every electrical device in the city limits and set fire to anything that burns. Gas mains will explode. Cars. Trucks. Aircraft. People will spontaneously combust as they walk down the street. It will kill and maim hundreds of thousands.”

“I’ve seen some of that already,” he said. “But how can they do it from so far off?”

“This ship is fitted with a powerful electromagnetic array,” she said.

“The Fulcrum,” he said. “I saw it. What does it do? Does the beam come from there?”

“No,” she said. “The beam comes from Sierra Leone. But it passes over us, and with all the power they’re generating and running through the Fulcrum, they’ll be able to bend the course of the particle beam. Instead of continuing off into space in a straight line, it will reach an apogee of sorts, miles above this ship, and then it’ll be bowed by the magnetic forces and directed back down onto your capital.”

“Like a bank shot in pool,” Kurt said. “So that’s why they call it the Fulcrum.”

She nodded in agreement.

“They must be insane,” he said. “They’re inviting all-out war.”

That they had to be stopped went without saying. Kurt stood, popped the clip out of his gun, and switched it for a full one. “I have to get to that array,” he said.

She stood up beside him. “They’re waiting for you there. They know you’ll go for it. They have the reactors covered too. “