min.” He’s mine. Jakob had the same right to avenge Lars, Mads, and Felix as Thor did.
A young man barely old enough for a beard appeared and ran at them with a cry, an AK-47 in his hands.
Rat-at-at-at!
Jakob fired, and the kid fell.
But the kid had been a distraction, a rush of footsteps coming up behind them.
Thor pivoted, dropped to one knee, and fired.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
Two combatants fell to the dirt, dead.
Weapons raised, Thor and Jakob crossed the courtyard and entered the main dwelling, frightened murmurs and the cries of children coming from a room to their right.
Jakob went through the door first, opened fire, dropping an older man.
Rat-at-at!
“Er det ham?” Is it him?
Rifle raised, Thor walked over to the man, lifted his NVGs, and shined the flashlight from his scope on the dead man’s face. “Nej.” No.
He drew his goggles back down, glanced around to see a half dozen women, some very young, huddled against the wall, staring at him with horror on their faces. He didn’t know Pashto, so he tried English. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Then he saw her.
Samantha!
She sat on a bedroll in the corner, eyes wide, clearly terrified of him.
She screamed.
Thor jerked awake, sat up, found himself not in Afghanistan, but in his room at Amundsen-Scott Station. He got out of bed, his body drenched with cold sweat.
Fuck.
It had been a long, damned time since he’d had nightmares about Afghanistan. What the hell was Samantha doing in his dream?
He glanced at his watch, saw that it was zero-five-twenty. He had a meeting with Tower and Shields in forty minutes.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, he dressed and hit the gym for a quick run before heading back to his room to change and grab his computer. By the time he had dressed, Jones and Segal were in the hall waiting for him.
Jones took one look at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just a long night.”
Jones grinned. “With the journal or with Dr. Park?”
“The journal.” Thor headed up the stairs to the second level. “How was the greenhouse—or did you and Kristi find someplace else?”
“Jesus.” Segal shook his head. “The greenhouse, man? Seriously?”
“How’d you hear about that?”
“Women talk to each other.” Thor made his way to the small conference room. He logged in while Segal and Jones made coffee and traded barbs over Jones’ sex life.
“I’m just saying it’s unprofessional, man. Do it on your own time.”
“You’re just jealous because you’re not getting any.”
Segal laughed. “I just have higher standards for myself than boning the first chick who will have me while I’m on assignment.”
“You two done?” Thor’s finger hovered above the trackpad.
They shut their mouths and joined him at the conference table.
He clicked to start the meeting, sat, and took a sip of his coffee.
A moment later, Tower and Shields appeared on the screen.
“Great work yesterday,” Tower said. “The analyst team has gone over the interviews and yesterday’s events with Barclay, as well as the pages from Dr. Holcomb’s journal. Shields?”
The view switched to Shields. “We can cross Jason Huger off our list. We were able to download the records from Huger’s computer. He was where he said he was that night—hanging out online with his gaming buddies. We can take Dr. Park and Ms. Chang off the list as well. We assess that their answers are authentic. The money deposited into Ms. Chang’s account was part of an inheritance from an uncle.”
That left Lance Barclay, Bai Zhang Wei, and Kazem Hamidi.
Shields went on. “As for Barclay, the journal entries suggest he’s telling the truth. I’m not ready to rule him out as a suspect entirely. He has the skills, and he lied about where he was that night. Also, his jealousy could be a motive. But I’m more interested in Kazem Hamidi. He hasn’t admitted to his aggressive confrontation with Dr. Holcomb, and he still can’t account for his whereabouts.”
“What about Zhang Wei?” Segal asked. “He says he got the nights confused and changed his story to say he worked late.”
“He’s still on the list, too. No one you interviewed remembers seeing him, either.”
Then Tower’s face appeared on the screen. “Dr. Holcomb’s journal confirms that her murder and the attack on the satellite are connected, as the analyst team believed. We know the killer’s motive now. He wanted to silence her. It’s our job to make sure he fails. The question is, what’s our next move?”
Thor had thought about this. “We need to force the killer’s hand, draw him out.”
Tower nodded. “What