The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

Creed called the elevator, and the doors glided apart immediately. The cage was still on this level. They hurried inside. With no time to reach the servers, Monk abandoned their primary mission and pressed the lobby button. It was time to get out of here. Creed didn’t argue.

Monk stared over at him as the elevator climbed.

“You did good, Doogie.”

“Really?” He scowled sourly. “I’m still Doogie?”

Monk shrugged as they exited the elevator and hurried across the front foyer. He didn’t want the kid’s success to go to his head. As they headed back out into the night, a voice suddenly whispered in his ear, angry and urgent.

“Monk, report in.” It was Painter.

Monk thumbed his throat mike. “Sir, we’re heading out now.”

A heavy sigh of relief followed. “And the mission?”

“We ran into a little trouble with bees.”

“Bees?”

“I’ll explain later. Should we rendezvous back at the hotel?”

“No. I’m headed your way now. I’ve got company with me.”

Company?

“There’s been a change in plans,” Painter said. “Things have gotten a little too hot here in Oslo. So we’re pulling up stakes and moving somewhere a little colder.”

Still soaking wet from the foamy shower, Monk felt the ice-cold night cut down to his bones. Colder than this?

As Monk headed across the corporate campus, he pictured Gray nestled in a warm cabin, a fire blazing in a camp stove.

Lucky bastard.

16

October 13, 12:22 A.M.

Lake District, England

As the forest burned, Gray clutched the lead rope of his stallion. He and the others had quickly saddled the ponies. They didn’t have a moment to spare.

After the initial firestorm, the flames had died down to hellish glows all around them. A pall of thick smoke covered the valley, dimming the stars. A single blaze marked a section of the woods that had caught fire. Likely an old deadfall, dry and ready to burn. The rest of the snowy forest had resisted the flames so far.

But they were far from safe.

“Mount up!” he called to the others.

They had to move now. Every second counted as a more insidious danger closed around them. Peat fires traveled underground, spreading outward in smoldering channels and deeper fiery pits. Though the woods were dark, they hid a raging conflagration below.

Wallace had estimated that the entire valley would be consumed in less than an hour. No rescue could reach them in time. Gray had used his satellite phone to contact Painter, to briefly explain their situation and pass on their GPS coordinates, but even the director had agreed that air support could not be mobilized in time to reach them.

They were on their own.

As Gray climbed into the saddle, one of the massive stones in the ring toppled over as the peat beneath it burned and gave way. As it struck, a spate of flames erupted from the dark soil. Other stones had already fallen, some vanished completely into fiery pits.

This was no natural peat fire.

Someone had torched the place, plainly meaning to destroy the excavation site—and anyone here.

Rachel walked her pony next to Gray, keeping a firm grip on her reins. Her mount’s eyes rolled white, on the edge of panic. Rachel looked no less scared.

They all knew the danger.

As the fires had erupted, one of the ponies had broken out of the paddock. Wild and tossing its head, it had fled into the forest. Moments later, they heard a crash, a fresh blaze of flames erupted, and a horrible screaming followed.

Gray glanced over at the toppled stone as it slowly sank into the fiery mire, reminding him of the danger beneath their feet. Any misstep and they’d end up like the panicked pony.

Seichan hurried over to Gray’s stallion’s side. It was her mount that had fled and died. Gray leaned down, grabbed her forearm, and hauled her up into the saddle behind him.

“Let’s go!” He pointed toward the darkest section of the forest, where there were no glows at the moment. They had to break through the ring of fire and get up into the hills.

Gray led the way with Wallace at his side.

Ahead of them trotted the terrier, Rufus.

“He’ll find us a safe route,” the professor said, his face ashen. “Peat burns most ripe. His nose may pick up what we can’t see.”

Gray hoped he was right, but the entire valley reeked of burning peat. It was a slim chance the dog could nose out the subtle seep of smoke from the subterranean fires. But what other course did they have?

And maybe the dog did sense something. As they headed out, the terrier’s path switchbacked through the woods, with sudden stops and turns.

Gray kept their pace to a slow trot, balancing speed and caution. The dog bounded through the snow and across an icy stream. It seemed impossible that on a night so cold, with the ground mantled in snow and ice, there could be a hellish inferno below.

But they were reminded of just that danger as a red deer leaped past their trail, frightened by the fires. It flew sure-footedly through the trees, then bounded into a snow-filled gully. The ground gave way beneath it. Its hindquarters dropped into a fiery pit, casting up a swirl of flames and burning ash. Its neck stretched in a silent posture of agony, then its body went limp and fell the rest of the way out of sight. Smoke roiled upward. A wash of heat chased back the chill of the night.

It was a sobering lesson.

“Christ on a spit,” Kowalski mumbled atop his pony.

Seichan’s arms tightened around Gray’s waist.

As they continued through the smoky woods, new blazes grew throughout the forest as the spreading inferno lit dead trees into torches. They gave one such tree a wide berth. It was an old oak, brittle and lightning-struck. The flames danced through its white branches, a warning of the danger flowing under its roots.

Even Rufus began to slow. He would stop often, his head swiveling, nose in the air, whining, plainly less sure. But he kept them moving, sometimes having to backtrack, dancing straight through the legs of their skittish mounts.

Finally, though, he came to a complete standstill. It was at an old dry riverbed, a shallow declivity that wound across the way ahead. There didn’t appear to be any threat, but the dog sidled back and forth across the nearest bank. He made one tentative move down into the channel, then thought better of it and retreated. Something was spooking him. He returned to the head of their stalled line of ponies. His low whine turned into a fearful whimper.

Shifting in his saddle, Gray stared into the woods. All around them the wildfire below had begun to crest to the surface, showing its true fiery face. Not far off, a large pine toppled into the forest, taking smaller trees with it. It crashed with a spiraling wash of flames. More and more of the woods was suffering the same fate. Whole sections were now collapsing into the burning bog, either knocked to the ground as their roots were burned away or felled by their sheer weight as the ground itself turned to fiery ash.