The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Peering around the corner, he spotted a figure limping toward the narrowing arch of sunlight. He was about twenty yards from escaping. Gray leveled his pistol.

“Nicolas!” Gray barked at him.

Startled, the man tripped around.

“Don’t move!” Gray shouted.

Nicolas searched for a second, then turned and fled. Gray could not risk killing the man. Not until he found out what was planned. So he took careful aim and shot. Nicolas’s good leg went out from under him. He sprawled onto the floor.

Gray rushed toward him, but a man such as Nicolas did not rise to his height of power by folding under stress. The senator rolled behind a stack of steel I-beams. Shots fired back at Gray, forcing him to duck to the side. He took shelter behind a pallet of lumber.

“Chyort! Rodilsya cherez jopu!” Nicolas cursed at him in Russian, his voice edging toward hysteria. He yelled at Gray. “We can’t stay here, you svoloch! We have less than three minutes.”

Beyond the man’s hiding place, Gray watched the sliver of sunlight between the massive concrete wall and the trundling hangar pinch ever closer together. There was only four feet of space left. No wonder Nicolas was in a hurry.

“Then tell me how to stop Operation Uranus!” Gray called back.

“There is no way to stop it! It’s all been set in motion. All we can do is get out of the way…now!”

“Tell me what you’ve done.”

“Fine! Concussion charges! Planted inside the pillars on the other side of the Sarcophagus. They’ll rip a wall down and expose everyone on that side to a lethal dose of radiation. There’s no way to defuse them. We MUST go now!”

Gray attempted to digest what he’d heard, trying to seek a solution. Even if he ran outside and screamed for an evacuation, it would be too late.

“There’s no reason for us to die with them,” Nicolas continued. “The world needs a new direction. Needs strong men. Like myself. Like you. Our group’s goal is to better the state of mankind, to forge a new Renaissance.”

Gray remembered the senator’s earlier discussion about propping up a new prophet onto the world stage. So this is how he planned to do it, creating world chaos, then offering a solution, one promoted by a figurehead who was guided by the prescience and knowledge of augmented children.

“Even if we die here,” Nicolas pressed, “it won’t be the end. Plans are already in motion that cannot be stopped. Our deaths would serve no purpose. Join us. We can use such men as yourself.”

In truth, Gray could think of no way to stop what was to come.

Beyond Nicolas, the walls continued to close.

“Two minutes!” he called to Gray. “There’s a lead-lined control booth just outside. We can still make it if we leave right now!”

Nicolas shifted behind his hiding place, plainly considering making a run for it. But with a twisted ankle on one side and a wounded leg on the other, he must know that path was certain death.

Then again, so was staying here.

Nicolas finally tossed out his pistol and stepped into the open. He faced Gray, arms out to either side, tottering on his legs. “If this is the only way to live, so be it!”

Gray cursed under his breath. Unable to stop the deaths to come, his only recourse was to apprehend the mass murderer who had orchestrated the deadly operation. Gray stepped out into the open with his pistol leveled.

At that moment, the drone of the hydraulic pumps climbed into a screaming roar. With a groan of twenty thousand tons, the massive arch began to shudder.

What was happening?

Kowalski stepped over the dead soldier to join Elena at the control panel. While Gray had fled on foot, Elena had driven the motorcycle like a NASCAR driver on crack. Kowalski had clung so hard to the sidecar’s handles that his fingers still trembled. They had rocketed to the rear side of the steel archway and sailed up to a concrete bunker that trailed big cables.

It was the control shack for the hydraulic jacks.

A fierce but brief firefight followed.

Kowalski had tried to help, but Elena spun like a ballerina with a machine gun. She danced and pirouetted through a hail of bullets as if anticipating each shot. She took out four soldiers. Kowalski managed to kill only one.

Nicolas’s men, Elena had said once the gunfight ended.

Once inside, Elena had set to work. Bent over the control board, she pushed the hydraulics toward the redline, seeking to close the hangar faster.

Just outside the shack’s window, one of the towering motors smoked, looking ready to blow. On one of the screens, flashing red warning signs blinked.

That couldn’t be good.

Kowalski stepped out of Elena’s way and stared at a row of monitors. They displayed video feed from inside the hangar. On the middle screen, Kowalski spotted two tiny figures on the floor.

Gray and the Russian guy.

From the angle of the camera, Kowalski could see what Gray could not.

Oh, crap!

“Elena!” he called out. “A little help here!”

He turned in time to see her suddenly slump toward the floor. He reached out and caught her around the waist. His hand found the shirt under her dark jacket soaking and hot. He parted the coat and saw her entire left side drenched in blood. It seemed her dancing had not been as flawless as he’d thought.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he said with an ache in his voice.

She waved to the monitors. “Show me.”

Gray struggled to comprehend the sudden acceleration of the hangar’s closure. The momentum of twenty thousand tons was not easy to get moving quickly, but it was definitely closing faster, accompanied by the scream of hydraulic motors.

“No!” Nicolas cried out.

Gray realized the anguish in his voice was twofold: fear that he now had even less time to escape, and dismay that his plans would be ruined if the hangar sealed too soon.

“Let’s go!” Gray said, pointing his pistol at the man.

Nicolas lowered his outstretched arms—and revealed what was hidden behind the pile of I-beams. The man’s hand had been out of view until now.

A second pistol.

It pointed at Gray’s belly and fired.

Gray managed to twist sideways, but the bullet still burned a line of fire across his stomach. He pointed his own weapon and fired. The shot, thrown off by the sudden attack, ricocheted harmlessly off the floor. Even worse, the pistol’s slide popped open.

Out of bullets.

The same could not be said for Nicolas.

The Russian drew a dead bead upon Gray.

As a consequence of his concentration, Nicolas missed the movement along the roof of the arched hangar. A massive yellow trolley crane swept above them and dropped a giant hook.