her nostrils, coating the membranes of her mouth and throat. In the moist air, her breath puffed before her in an icy cloud. The beep of the RDF, steadily accelerating, had become a continuous stream of sound.
She knew then what she intended to do. She had intended it all along. The plan was a cover, an elaborate ruse to conceal her purpose.
She wanted to kill Martínez herself. She wanted to feel him die.
At the elevator, Peter became aware that something wasn’t as it should be just a few seconds before Alicia stepped from his line of sight. There was no rational explanation for this knowledge; it simply came to him out of the stillness, a feeling deep in his bones.
“Lish, come in.”
No answer.
“Lish, can you read me?”
A hiss of static, then: “Stay there.”
There was something unsettling in her voice. A feeling of resignation, as if she were severing a rope that held her over an abyss. Before he could respond, her voice returned: “I mean it, Peter.”
Then she was gone.
He radioed the surface. “Something’s wrong, I’ve lost her.”
“Hold your position, Jaxon.”
Had she said the left tunnel? Yes, the left.
“I’m going after her,” he told Henneman.
“Negative. Stand pat—”
But Peter failed to hear the rest of Henneman’s message. He was already moving away.
At the same time, Lieutenant Dodd had commenced a mad dash down the switchback into the cave. He was unaware that the chain of radio transmission had been broken and that neither Peter nor, by extension, Alicia knew that the bomb at the base of the main entrance had disarmed itself—the first mishap in a cascade of events that would never be fully reassembled to the satisfaction of Command. Somehow—a short in the line, a mechanical defect, a whim of fate—the receiver at the base of the cave had lost contact with the surface. A first-class, A1 screwup if ever there was one, and now Dodd was racing into the mouth of hell.
His first descent had taken fifteen minutes; moving at what counted as a dead sprint down the treacherous, hairpinning pathway, he made it to the bottom in fewer than five. At the edge of his vision he perceived a scuttle overhead, accompanied by a high-pitched squeaking, but in his haste he failed to process this; if Hennemen’s order to blow the package came before he’d made it back out, his team would fire it anyway, killing him in the blast. The only thing on his mind was reaching the bottom, repairing the detonator, and getting back out.
There it was. The receiver. Dodd had left it on a smooth, tablelike boulder situated at the tunnel’s mouth; now it lay on the ground, tipped onto its side. What force had knocked it away? Dodd dropped to his knees, his breath heaving in his chest. Rivers of perspiration spilled down his face. A ghastly stink was in the air. He gently took the device in his hand. The receiver had two switches, one to arm the detonator, another to close the circuit and fire the bomb. Why wasn’t it working? But then he understood that the antenna had come loose, knocked askew in the fall. He withdrew a screwdriver from his pack.
The ceiling began to move.
Alicia noticed the bones first. The bones and the smell, an overpowering stench—rank, biological, like the bottled gas of a grave. She took a step forward. As her boot touched down she felt, then heard, a crunch of bone. The skeleton of something small. The tininess of the skull, its mocking grin of teeth: a kind of rodent? Her field of view widened. The floor was carpeted with the brittle remains, in many places piled knee- or even waist-high, like drifts of snow.
Where are you? she thought. Show yourself, you bastard. I’ve got a message from Louise.
Martínez was close, very close. She was practically on top of him. For the first time in many years Alicia knew the taste of fear, but more than that: she knew hatred. A pure force, binding and suffusing every part of her. All her life seemed called to this moment. Martínez was the great misery of the world. It was not glory she sought or even justice. It was vengeance; not killing but the act of killing. To say, This is from Louise. To feel his life leaving him under her hand.
Come to me. Come to me.
From out of the gloom a shape appeared, a flash of white skin in the beam of her rifle. Alicia froze. What the hell