The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

There was no way she could raise her gun and shoot before Christl pulled her trigger. Since she was dead anyway, she decided to act first.

Her arm started up. Christl pulled the gun's trigger. Dorothea braced herself to be shot. But nothing happened. Only a click.

Christl seemed shocked. She worked the trigger more, but to no avail.

"No bullets," Malone said, as he entered the plaza. "I'm not a complete idiot."

Enough.

Dorothea pointed and fired.

The first shot caught Christl square in the chest, piercing her thick arctic wear. The second bullet, also in the chest, challenged her sister's balance. The third shot, to the skull, caused her forehead to burst red, but the frigid cold instantly coagulated the blood.

Two more shots and Christl Falk sank to the pavement.

Not moving.

Malone came closer.

"It had to be done," she muttered. "She was no good."

Her head turned toward her father. She felt as if she were awakening from an anesthetic, some thoughts clearing, others remaining cloudy and distant. "They actually made it here. I'm glad he found what he'd been searching for."

She faced Malone and saw that a frightening salvation had seeped into his thoughts, too. The exit portal drew both of their attention. She didn't have to say it. She'd found her father. He hadn't.

Not yet.

NINETY-TWO

STEPHANIE QUESTIONED THE WISDOM OF MCCOY'S WARNING. Smith, unsettled, had stepped back and swung around, trying to focus on them while sneaking a peek at the window.

More shadows fluttered outside.

Smith fired a short burst that obliterated the brittle walls, shattering the wood with jagged wounds.

McCoy lunged toward him.

Stephanie feared he might shoot her, but instead he whirled the rifle around and jammed the butt hard into her stomach. She buckled forward, gasping for breath, and he thrust a knee upward into her chin, flipping her to the floor.

Instantly, before either Stephanie or Davis could react, Smith releveled the gun and alternated his focus between them and the window, probably trying to decide where the greater threat lay.

Nothing moved outside.

"Like I said, I wasn't interested in killing you three," Smith said. "But I think that's changed."

McCoy lay on the floor, moaning in the fetal position, cradling her stomach.

"Can I see about her?" Stephanie asked.

"She's a big girl."

"I'm going to see about her."

And without waiting for further permission, she knelt beside McCoy.

"You're not leaving here," Davis said to Smith.

"Brave words."

But Charlie Smith seemed unsure, as if he were trapped inside a cage, staring out for the first time.

Something thudded against the outer wall, near the window. Smith reacted, swinging the HK53 around. Stephanie tried to stand, but he popped her square in the neck with the rifle's metal stock.

She gasped and found the floor.

Her hand went to her Adam's apple-the pain of a kind she'd never felt before. She struggled to breathe, fighting an urge to choke. She rolled and watched as Edwin Davis catapulted himself into Charlie Smith.

She struggled to stand, fighting both to breathe and to overcome the throbbing in her throat. Smith still clung to his assault rifle, but it was useless as he and Davis rolled through the battered furniture, ending against the far wall. Smith used his legs and tried to wiggle free, keeping a grip on his gun.

Where was Gross?

Smith lost the rifle, but his right arm wrapped around Davis and a new gun appeared-a small automatic-jammed into Davis' neck.

"Enough," Smith yelled.

Davis stopped struggling.

They came to their feet and Smith released his grip, shoving Davis to the floor near McCoy.

"You're all crazy," Smith said. "Friggin' nuts."

Stephanie slowly came to her feet, shaking a fog from her brain, as Smith regripped the assault rifle. This had gyrated out of control. The one thing she and Davis had agreed on during the drive over was not to agitate Smith.

Yet Edwin had done just that.

Smith retreated to the window and quickly peered out. "Who is he?" "Mind if I look?" she managed to say.

He nodded his assent.

She slowly approached and spotted Gross, lying on the porch, his right leg bleeding from a bullet wound. He seemed conscious, but in extreme pain.

He works for McCoy, she mouthed.

Smith's gaze searched beyond the porch, to the brown grassy meadow and thick woods. "Who's a lying bitch."

She gathered her strength. "But she did pay you ten million."

Smith clearly did not appreciate her levity.

"Tough choices, Charlie? Always you made the call when to kill. Your choice. Not this time."

"Don't be so sure. Get back over there."

She did as told but couldn't resist, "And who moved Ramsey?"

"You need to shut the hell up," Smith said, continuing to snatch glimpses out the window.

"I'm not letting him go," Davis muttered.

McCoy rolled onto her back and Stephanie saw the pained look on her colleague's face.

Coat… pocket, McCoy's lips said, without a sound.

MALONE DESCENDED STEPS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PORTAL feeling as if he were walking to his execution. Tingles of fright-unusual for him-danced down his spine.

Below stretched a huge cavern, most of its walls and ceiling ice, casting the same bluish light across the orange sail of a submarine. The hull was short, rounded, with a flat superstructure atop, and totally encased by ice. More of the tile pavement looped from the staircase around to the cavern's far side four to five feet above the ice.

Some sort of wharf, he concluded.

Perhaps this harbor had once opened to the sea?

Ice caves existed all across Antarctica, and this one loomed long enough to accommodate multiple submarines.

Moved by a common impulse, they both walked. Dorothea held her gun and so did he, though the only threat to either of them now was the other.

The rock portion of the cavern's wall was polished smooth and adorned similarly to the inside of the mountain, with symbols and writing. Stone benches lined the wall base. On one sat a shadow. Malone closed his eyes and hoped it was only an apparition. But when he opened them, the ghostly figure remained.

He sat upright, like the others, back straight. He wore a khaki naval shirt and pants, the trousers tucked into laced boots, an orange cap lying on the bench beside him.

Malone inched his way closer.

His senses reeled. His sight went dim.

The face was the same as the picture back in Copenhagen, next to the glass case with the flag the navy had handed his mother at the memorial ceremony, the one she'd refused to accept. Long, equine nose. Prot

ruding jaw. Freckles. Gray-blond crew cut. Eyes open, staring, as if in deep communion.

Shock paralyzed his body. His mouth parched.

"Your father?" Dorothea asked.

He nodded, and self-pity pierced him-a sharp arrow that drove down his throat, into his gut, as if he'd been skewered.

His nerves stretched taut.

"They just died," she said. "No coats. No protection. As if they sat down and welcomed it."

Which, he knew, was exactly, what they'd done. No sense prolonging the agony.

He noticed papers lying in his father's lap, the pencil writing as fresh and clear as it must have been thirty-eight years ago. The right hand rested atop them, as if making sure they would not be lost. He slowly reached out and slid them free, feeling as if he was violating a sacred site.

He recognized the heavy script as his father's.

His chest ballooned. The world seemed both dream and reality. He fought against a reservoir of unlocked grief. Never had he cried. Not when he married, or when Gary was born, or when his family disintegrated, or when he learned that Gary was not his biological son. To suppress a growing urge, he reminded himself that tears would freeze before they left his eyes.

He forced his mind to focus on the pages he held.

"Could you read them out loud?" Dorothea asked. "They could affect my father, too."

SMITH NEEDED TO KILL ALL THREE OF THEM AND GET OUT OF HERE. He was working with no information after trusting a woman he knew he shouldn't have trusted. And who had moved Ramsey's body? He'd left it in the bedroom, intent on burying the corpse somewhere on the property.

Yet somebody had taken it below.

He gazed out the window and wondered if there was anybody else out there. Something told him that they were not alone.

Just a feeling.

Which he had no choice but to follow.

He gripped the rifle and readied himself to turn and fire. He'd take out the three inside with a short burst, then finish off the one outside.

Leave the damn bodies.

Who cared? He'd bought the property under an assumed name with false identification, paying cash, so there was nobody to find.

Let the government worry about the cleanup.