James Rollins: The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel

She stalked deliberately after him.

He spotted her, swung his weapon at her, and fired.

She didn’t even bother dodging.

Instead, she lifted her arm and squeezed the trigger.

She placed the round through his knee. He fell headlong with a scream, sliding on his belly, spinning. Reaching the broken ice around the blasted bus, he flew out over the open water and plunged into its depths.

She crossed to the edge and watched him come sputtering up from the cold. Compromised by his wrecked knee, she knew every kick that kept him afloat must be agony.

He struggled over to the edge, seeking a handhold, found one where a corner of the bus met the ice. Unfortunately, the bulk of the bus shifted slightly, settling further as its mass compressed the surrounding ice. The movement pinned his fingers in that crack. He cried out, struggling to free his four crushed fingers.

Seichan’s mother had already taken the fifth one to repay a gambling debt. Pak owed Seichan much more.

“Help me!” Pak said, teeth chattering.

Seichan bent down, seeing hope flare in Pak’s eyes.

Instead, she picked up the cigarette that had fallen from his lips as he spun into the water. She straightened and blew the tip to a glowing red.

Horror replaced hope. Like her, he must smell the leaked gasoline and oil, forming a thick layer on the water.

“Cold, isn’t it?” she said. “Let me warm you up.”

She flicked the bud below. A rain of fiery ash ignited the fumes first, then the pool of oil and gasoline. Flames chased across the blue water, reaching and swamping over Pak.

She turned from his screaming and headed back, leaving him to burn above and freeze below.

That’s for Rachel.

32

November 20, 9:55 A.M. IRKST

Olkhon Island, Russia

Ju-long lay on the ice, his blood spreading in a warm pool under him. He had heard Pak begging for his life as the gunfire died down—followed by his screaming. He felt no pity for the man.

The bastard deserved a cruel end.

And maybe I do , too.

As if summoned by this thought, a face loomed into view, staring down at him, merciless despite her chosen name.

“Guan-yin,” he mumbled. He lifted a hand toward her, but with a tremble, he dropped it, too weak. “Pak has my wife . . . my unborn son.”

Her face remained impassive, as hard as the scales on her dragon, not accepting his excuse.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped out, tasting blood on his lips. “I . . . I love them so much . . . please help them.”

“Why should I help you? After what you’ve done?”

“I tried . . . how I could . . . to help.”

A single line creased her brow.

“How did you think you found us?” he said, gasping around a twinge of pain. “Tracked Pak and me to this island?”

“Like you, I have ears everywhere. I heard you left North Korea for Mongolia. So I followed, trailed you. I knew you must still be going after—”

He cut her off. “Who do you think spoke to those many ears of yours? I told them to speak to you.”

It was the truth. Ju-long had to be discreet while with Pak. Using the excuse of monitoring the assassin’s tracker, he was able to regularly call Macau and manipulate matters from afar. While he could not raise his own army in Macau without alerting the North Koreans and risking his pregnant wife’s life, he attempted to raise another, to stoke the hatred of Guan-yin to come to his aid.

He remembered the surprise of the sword piercing his chest.

Apparently he had stoked that hatred too well.

A small miscalculation.

“I drew you here to kill Pak, possibly to free me,” he said with a small laugh full of blood. “To perhaps mend our fences in the end.”

Now all that matters is my beautiful Natalia . . . and the son I will never see . . .

Guan-yin leaned back. He saw she believed him. Still, was that enough for her to help? She was not known for the quality of her mercy.

“I will find them,” she finally promised. “I will free them.”

A single tear of relief rolled down his cheek. He knew she would not fail him.

Thank you.

With this burden lifted from him, he allowed his eyes to close—but before they did, another face appeared next to Guan-yin, the pretty assassin who had caused so much trouble.

Only then did he see the resemblance.

One next to the other.

Mother and daughter.

He now understood the cause of his small miscalculation. In the end, it had never been about money or turf—only family.

No wonder you stabbed me.

Finally recognizing the error of his ways, his own silent laughter followed him into oblivion.

9:56 A.M.

“So that’s how you knew how to find us,” Gray said, standing behind Seichan and her mother, eavesdropping on the conversation.

He carried a pistol and guarded over them, as Monk and Kowalski helped the rest of the Triad mop up the situation on the ice.

Guan-yin stood. “Yes, it’s how we knew you were on the island, but the last word to reach us claimed Ju-long would be at an inn at Khuzhir.”

Gray understood. Ju-long must not have had time to call and update his spies before moving here. “Then how did you know to come out here?”

A sad look swept over her features. “We found a woman, shot, still alive. She told us.”

Rachel . . .

Guan-yin read the rising hope in his face and quashed it. “She did not make it. But it was her dying words that brought us here.”

And saved us all, Gray realized. And maybe the world.

Guan-yin touched his arm. “I think she was hanging on just to get that message out.”

Grief ripped through him, but he held it in check until later.

They were not finished here.

He headed toward the tunnel.

Besides saving the world, he had another mission still to go, one even closer to his heart. As much as it would destroy the man, Vigor deserved to know the fate of his niece.

9:57 A.M.

“And Rachel?” the monsignor asked.

Duncan read the hope in the man’s eyes as they crossed the threshold into the chamber of gold. Jada hobbled on the far side of Vigor, looking upon Duncan with an equal expectation of good news.

After climbing the frozen waterfall, he had caught up with Jada and Vigor on the small pond that served as an antechamber to the golden ger .

Duncan explained as best he could as they scaled the stairs. He had told them about Seichan being held at gunpoint, about the turning of the tides by the arrival of new allies—which still baffled him.

Still, he knew one truth.

“Rachel was killed,” Duncan said, seeing no way to blunt the news.

Vigor stopped a few steps into the room, staring at him in disbelief, his face crashing into ruin. “No . . .”

Jada stayed next to Vigor as grief felled the old man to his knees. She pushed Duncan toward the rock pillar in the center of the room.

“Check the cross,” she hissed, dropping her pack, going after the Eye inside. “But don’t move it.”

He understood. They needed confirmation that the artifact was what they all sought. He hurried to the nest of three boxes: iron, silver, and gold. A skull rested on the gold floor next to the cairn.

Keeping clear of the relic, he looked down into the innermost box. A heavy black cross rested inside, seated in a sculpted bed of gold that matched its shape.

He reached a hand inside, but even before passing through the outer box of iron, he felt the magnets in his fingertips respond. Again he sensed pressure, as if a force were resisting him. He pushed deeper into that field, drawing his fingers closer to its dark surface.