Seichan didn’t seem happy with that decision. She remained standing, pacing, keeping a constant vigil. Rachel noticed a muscle in her face twitch when the waterwheel squeaked.

The woman was drawn tight, but eventually she took a seat.

Gray questioned her on the plans for tomorrow. They all kept their voices to a low murmur, heads bowed together. As Seichan listed everything they would need, Rachel grew more and more dismayed. A thousand things could go wrong.

Her headache grew to a stabbing agony behind her right eye, painful enough that she began to feel nauseated.

Without missing a beat of the conversation, Gray placed his hand on top of hers. He hadn’t even looked in her direction. It was an instinctual gesture of reassurance.

Seichan noted it, staring down at his hand—then she suddenly swung toward the street and tensed. She went dead still, like a cheetah before it charges.

But it was only Kowalski. He came sauntering into view. He lifted an arm in greeting, opened the garden gate, and crossed toward them. He was puffing on a cigar, carrying a pall of sweet-smelling smoke with him.

“You’re late,” Gray scolded.

He merely rolled his eyes.

Wallace used the interruption to voice his own concern about the plans for tomorrow. “This is a bloody long shot. It will take perfect timing and lots of boggin’ luck. And even then, I doubt we’ll make it to those abbey ruins.”

“Then why don’t we just take the tour?” Kowalski asked and slapped a brochure on the table.

They all stared down at a tourist pamphlet. It displayed a picture of an old arched colonnade with a fancy marquee above it.

Rachel translated the French. “The Renaissance Association of Clairvaux Abbey conducts tours of the prison.”

They all stared over at Kowalski.

He shrugged. “What? Got that thing shoved in my face. Sometimes it helps not to blend in.”

In Kowalski’s case, that was an understatement. No one could mistake him for a local.

Rachel skimmed the rest of the brochure. “They conduct tours twice daily. Costs two euros. The day’s second tour begins in an hour.”

Wallace took the brochure and flipped through it. “Such a short tour won’t allow us much time for a thorough search, but we could get a cursory sense of the place.”

Gray agreed. “It’ll also let us get a peek at the security from the inside.”

“But on this tour,” Seichan warned, “we’ll be searched. We won’t be able to bring any weapons inside.”

“No one will,” Gray said with an unconcerned shake of his head. “With all the armed guards surrounding us, we’ll be safer than we’ve ever been.”

Seichan looked far from convinced.

2:32 P.M.

So the bitch lived.

Four kilometers outside the town of Troyes, Krista crossed the grassy field toward the unmarked helicopters. The two stolen Eurocopter Super Pumas were already being loaded for the mission. Eighteen men in combat gear waited to load up. Technicians had finished equipping both birds with the necessary firepower.

A spotter on the ground reported that the targets were on the move. They had commissioned a tour of the abbey ruins and were headed to the prison. She had hoped to have dispatched Seichan before moving forward. The woman was too much of a wild card, but Krista had more than enough firepower and men to deal with her.

It just made it harder.

So be it.

Her orders were to acquire the artifact and eliminate the others. She intended to do that, but after the recent disasters, she also recognized how precarious her standing had become in the organization. She recalled the threat behind the cold words on the phone. Any failure from here would end in her termination. Yet she also knew that just meeting those expectations would not serve her.

After all that had gone wrong, she needed a win, a trophy to present to Echelon. And she intended to get it. If the Doomsday key was present among the ruins, she would force the others to find it for her, then eliminate them.

With the key in hand, her position in the Guild could be resecured.

Keeping that goal in mind, she left nothing to chance. Her targets had no weapons and no means of escape. Not while trapped in the heart of a maximum-security prison. Once her assault started, the prison would be locked down.

They would have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

She signaled her squad to board their aircraft.

It was time to crash this party.

29

October 14, 2:40 P.M.

Clairvaux, France

Gray knew they were in trouble.

Security at the prison proved to be iron-tight, even for the private tour group. Their passports were logged in, their packs hand searched, and they had to pass through two metal detectors, followed by a full-body wanding. Guards armed with rifles, batons, and holstered sidearms held positions throughout the main facility. More men patrolled the outer yard with massive guard dogs.

“At least they skipped the cavity search,” Kowalski groused as they cleared the last checkpoint.

“They’ll do that on the way out,” Gray warned him.

Kowalski glanced his way to make sure he was joking.

“This way, s’il vous plaît,” their tour guide said with a wave of her mauve umbrella. The representative from the Renaissance Association was a tall, no-nonsense woman in her midsixties. She was dressed casually in khaki pants, a light sweater, and a burgundy jacket. She made no effort to mask her age. She had a weathered look to her, her gray hair pinned back over her ears. Her expression seldom mellowed from stern.

Down a hall, they came to a set of double doors that led out to an inner courtyard. Sunlight splashed over the trimmed lawns, manicured bushes, and gravel paths. After the high security, it was as if they’d suddenly stepped into another world. Sections of crumbled stone walls, half-covered in ivy, crisscrossed the two-acre expanse, along with angular mounds that marked old foundations.

Their guide led them across the yard, trailed by an armed guard. She waved her umbrella toward the walls. “These are the last remnants of the original monasterium vetus. Its square chapel later became incorporated into the larger abbey church with its vast choir and radiating chapels.”

Gray took it all in.

On the tour bus ride there, the woman had given them a brief history of the monastery and its founder. They knew most of it already. Except for one telling detail. Saint Bernard had built the monastery on his own family’s land. Because of that detail, he would certainly have been well aware of the topography, of any hidden caves and grottoes.

Had he chosen this exact spot for a reason?

Tags: James Rollins Sigma Force Thriller
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