Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (36 page)

Conrad glanced at her and saw teeth flash in the gloom. He smiled. Despite the dangers they faced, it felt good to be fighting with his soulmate at his side once more.

Bullets pelted the ground ahead of them. Another group of men was fast approaching from the north. Conrad raised the M16 rifle strapped across his chest and let loose a volley of shots. One of the figures staggered and fell to the ground.

The administration building loomed in front of them. Conrad spotted the lights of the helipad as they bolted into the cover of its rear wall. His gaze switched to the three smaller structures several hundred feet ahead.

Shadows shifted on his left. A shot whistled past his head. Laura dropped back and exchanged fire with the two men coming around the corner of the building.

An explosion ripped the air behind them. Conrad looked over his shoulder and saw the Jeep rolling to a slow stop, its hood ablaze. Guards were leaping out of the vehicle, their panicked screams audible over the roar of the flames. They fell under Anatole’s bullets.

Conrad turned, his eyes focusing on the middle outbuilding. He reached it seconds later and tried the door. It was locked. He whipped out his handgun and shot at the metal insert beneath the handle.

There was movement to his right. Conrad’s head whipped around. He dropped to the ground and barely avoided a spray of bullets as the guard who had been hiding behind the wall squeezed the trigger of his automatic weapon. The immortal rolled and brought his leg around in a sweeping kick that took his adversary to the ground. He straddled the guard’s chest and punched him twice in the face before grabbing his head and slamming it repeatedly against the ground, a guttural snarl ripping from his throat. The man’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he went limp.

Conrad rose to his feet just as Laura and Anatole reached his side.

‘Cover me!’ he yelled above the screaming siren from the production plant and the sharp reports of gunfire.

He was inside the outbuilding a heartbeat later. A dingy corridor stretched out ahead of him. A pale light streamed through a narrow window at the far end and outlined the row of cells to the left.

Three women shrank against the wall next to their cots, their faces ashen; their shoulders jerked in tandem to the shots blasting across the compound. A man pushed himself up shakily onto an elbow and blinked at the immortal.

Conrad’s lips tightened when he saw the conditions inside the jailhouse. ‘I’m with the US government! We’ve come to get you out of here!’

Shocked gasps echoed against the bare concrete. One of the women ran toward her cell door, her fingers closing around the bars in a white-knuckled grip. Conrad recognized Dawn Hagen’s features in her thin, haggard face. The blonde woman in the next cell was an older version of her.

‘Stand back!’ Conrad ordered grimly.

He raised his gun and fired at the padlocks holding the cell doors close. A faint whimper escaped one of the women as the shots reverberated thunderously inside the enclosed space. The locks broke.

Conrad strode inside the cell where the man with the brown hair and eyes was swinging his legs to the floor. Tremors racked his frame as he leaned on the edge of the bed.

The immortal gazed at him in dismay. ‘Dr. Henderson?’

‘His wound is infected,’ said a voice behind him. ‘They shot him two days ago, when we tried to make a run for it.’

The woman who had spoken had dark hair and eyes the color of a stormy sky. An ugly bruise discolored her jawline where she had been beaten. Conrad saw other bruises around her neck and on her exposed limbs. He took a shallow breath and suppressed the wave of rage threatening to overwhelm him.

The woman crossed the cell and crouched by the silent, trembling figure on the bed.

‘Come on, Ed! We’ve got to go!’ she urged and grabbed his arm.

Henderson looked up, sweat dampening his face. ‘I don’t think I can, Alison.’ His accent was distinctly English. He winced and clutched his flank before looking past her shoulder to where the Hagen women stood watching them anxiously. ‘Erica, take Bridget and go,’ he whispered.

‘Not without you,’ Erica Hagen retorted in a hard voice.

Conrad knelt by the man’s side and lifted his soiled shirt. Blood-soaked bandages circled Henderson’s abdomen. The stench of infected flesh filled the cell. Henderson’s skin was burning to the touch. The immortal wrapped his hand around the man’s wrist.

The gunfire had abated outside. The alarm from the main plant still echoed shrilly across the compound. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Laura appeared in the doorway of the cell.

‘Avery’s men are inside the compound. They have control of the site. Moroccan police and army are on their way.’ She stopped, her eyes darkening when she saw the group gathered by the cot.

‘He’s septic,’ Conrad explained grimly, answering the silent question in her anxious gaze. His fingers were on Henderson’s thready pulse. ‘He won’t make it to the landing site.’ He peeled off the dirty dressings and examined the gunshot wound in the man’s flank with his left hand.

The bullet had ripped through Henderson’s abdominal muscles and nicked his large intestine and the edge of his liver. Whoever had dug out the shot had missed the small tear in the gut; peritonitis was setting in. Conscious of the watchful eyes of the Hagen women and Alison Williams, Conrad carefully let his healing powers loose.

‘Avery, one of the hostages is injured,’ Laura said into her throat mike. ‘Any chance the Osprey can use the facility’s helipad to evacuate all of them?’

‘Sure,’ replied the platoon commander over the headset.

By the time the helicopter landed inside the grounds of Khan Inc., the sun was a bright ball on the horizon.

Hot air washed over Conrad as he helped Henderson through the door of the jailhouse. Color was already returning to the man’s cheeks, and his fever had started to subside. Although he was still weak from the infection, he was no longer at risk of dying. Alison Williams held Henderson on the other side, her arm wrapped around his waist. Conrad could not help but admire the woman’s silent resilience.

They passed the admin building and saw the silent crowd assembled to the left. The plant’s guards and staff had been rounded up in the middle of the compound. They sat on the desert floor, inside a ring of hard-faced Marines. Several of the workers looked scared and were crying. The majority bore mutinous expressions. Conrad suspected most were steadfast supporters of Ariana Muhlisi Khan.

Avery and the platoon’s corpsman stood waiting under the Osprey’s spinning blades. They jogged toward the small group approaching the aircraft.

Erica Hagen turned to Conrad. ‘My husband?’ she asked, fear making her voice tremble.

A shout erupted behind them before he could reply. They turned and saw Svein Hagen bolting across the compound from the south. The Hagen women stumbled toward the running man.

Stevens strolled a few dozen feet behind the scientist. Dirt and sand stained the agent’s skin and clothes. He was smiling wearily.

‘Glad to see you’re still in one piece,’ said Conrad when the agent was within earshot. They watched the Hagens embrace in a flood of laughter and tears.

‘Like I said, a walk in the park,’ muttered Stevens, satisfaction evident in his gleaming eyes.

A Puma helicopter from the Royal Moroccan Air Force descended on the site an hour later. It took the rest of the authorities another forty minutes to reach the desolate location over land. By then, the Osprey had also returned from ferrying the hostages to the Marines’ military base a hundred and fifty miles away.

Conrad stepped out of the low-lying structure concealed under a blanket of black rock two miles northwest of the plant and looked up at the azure sky. They had already examined the explosive craters carved in the landscape some distance from the secret facility. As suggested by the UAV’s images, the last one had proven the most alarming of all. Despite the blazing heat of the day, the immortal could not help the cold frisson of fear that danced down his spine. He turned to the three figures that followed him out of the building.

‘Shit,’ said Avery. The platoon commander’s lips were pinched in a thin line. ‘We need to tell Washington about this straightaway.’

‘That’s some bad juju in there,’ said Anatole darkly.

Laura stared out across the desert, a scowl clouding her features. ‘We have to stop these bastards!’

Conrad’s suspicions had been on the mark once more. Their enemy appeared to be getting ready to launch a devastating campaign of destruction on the world. Frustration clawed at the immortal’s insides. They still had no idea where and how they were going to strike. His eyes moved to the shimmering buildings of Khan Inc. He recalled Hagen’s words inside the trailer. He had to speak to the three scientists.

They climbed inside the Jeep they had commandeered from the plant and drove back in grim silence. Stevens was talking to Gibbs in the shadow of the Osprey when they rolled to a stop next to the helicopter. Moore stood a dozen feet away, in conversation with a Moroccan military police officer and an army lieutenant.

Stevens turned when he heard their vehicle brake. Conrad’s stomach knotted at his expression. Gibbs looked similarly troubled.

The immortal hopped out of the Jeep and jogged toward the ashen-faced agent. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded.

Stevens swallowed hard. ‘Something’s happened in Luxembourg.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘T
he detonations hit the capital at eight forty, when the place was at its busiest,’ said Connelly. ‘At first, everybody thought it was a major earthquake. The last time Luxembourg City experienced any kind of seismic activity was more than a decade ago. Once the tremors died down, reports started coming in from the less affected areas surrounding the impact zone about possible underground explosions being heard at several locations.’ She scowled. ‘That’s when we got suspicious.’

Conrad stared at the computer, his mouth dry. The first window on the screen showed the Sit Room link. The second featured live coverage of the disaster that had struck the European city that morning, shortly after the gunfight at the Khan Inc. plant had abated.

‘Could they have been gas explosions?’ said Laura. She glanced distractedly at the squad of Marines running past.

They were standing in front of an improvised command post inside a hangar at a US military base in southwest Morocco. Avery’s boss had granted Conrad and his team permission to use the Marines’ facilities. The site had been a hive of activity ever since they landed there a quarter of an hour ago; US Armed Forces were being mobilized in view of a probable impending threat.

Connelly shook her head, lines of tension pinching her mouth. ‘Not on this scale. Gas companies have plenty of fail-safes in place to stop catastrophes of this nature happening. No, this was probably a bomb. Or a number of bombs, according to the experts who’ve looked at the initial data. The European Seismic Center has confirmed that no earthquake foreshocks or precursors were detected for the region in the last year. They also think the seismic waves they identified this morning are more in keeping with explosions than genuine quake activity.’

A video clip from a hovering helicopter flashed on the news channel. Dismay lowered the pitch of the reporter’s voice as he commented on what he was seeing in French. ‘This is unbelievable, people. Luxembourg City is no longer recognizable! A third of the capital is now a disaster zone centered on the Kirchberg Plateau, to the northeast of the town. Large sections of the old city walls have crumbled into the Alzette River, crushing buildings in their path! It’s—it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before!’

Blood throbbed dully inside Conrad’s head as he stared at the scale of the destruction. The rubble of collapsed buildings and roads filled most of the wide crater that took up the screen. A few fires had broken out among the wreckage of homes and businesses. Emergency vehicles dotted the lip of the basin. Hundreds of figures could be seen scrambling across the uneven terrain in their attempts to rescue survivors. Body bags were already piling up on the fringes of the devastation.

Although the Luxembourg impact zone was marked by the presence of crumbled human constructions, there was no denying that the shape and size of the depression matched those he had seen in the desert floor outside Khan Inc. under an hour ago. He had yet to tell Connelly of their shocking findings at the concealed facility close to the explosive craters.

‘The death toll is predicted to be around 4,700,’ the Director of Intelligence stated leadenly. ‘It gets worse. Kirchberg was the site of several major European institutions, among them the European Parliament Secretariat, the European Commission, and the European Investment Bank. This calamity has dealt a severe blow to the EU as a whole. Not only have they lost a lot of their key staff and data, the financial ramification alone is likely to set them back a couple of years.’ She sighed. ‘It might be a day or two until we can determine where and what kind of explosives were used. We’ll send the information we obtained from the Strabo Corp. databases about that new liquid explosive to the experts on the ground.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said someone behind Conrad. ‘I can give them its exact composition and the chemical signature of its residues.’

The immortal turned and saw Svein Hagen heading across the floor of the hangar toward them. He was helping Ed Henderson along. Alison Williams walked on the other side of the frail British engineer, her shoulder supporting his hand.

Conrad waited until the three scientists joined them at the command post before making introductions to the puzzled Director of National Intelligence across the video link.

‘Professor Hagen you were already aware of,’ the immortal said in a voice underscored by tension. ‘This is Professor Alison Williams, geotechnical engineer from Berkeley, and Dr. Ed Henderson, a British civil engineer with expertise in directional boring and trenchless technology.’

Surprise flared across Connelly’s face.

‘Professor Williams was kidnapped five years ago, during an exploratory expedition to South America,’ said Conrad. ‘Her team’s caravan was attacked en route to a mining site in Chile. She is suspected to be missing, presumed dead. Dr. Henderson was similarly abducted during an inspection of one of his firm’s projects in China. Again, since no ransom was ever made for his release, he is presumed to be dead.’