Snake Eyes

CHUCK DIXON

DR. AVERILL HANOVER never considered himself to be a ladies man. Mathematicians don’t get the chicks. Especially frumpy, fiftyish, balding academicians. But the woman in the third row at his presentation was showing him a flattering degree of attention.

The conference in Geneva was attended only by those deeply devoted to numbers and how they related to life, existence, and everything else. Most of the chairs in the hall were empty. Those attending were either bored, dismissive, or simply holding their seat for the appearance of the next speaker: a best-selling author who made a name for himself on chat shows by providing dumbed-down, simplistic explanations of difficult mathematic principles as applied to socks missing in the laundry and finding lost pets. A phony with an expensive haircut and even more expensive smile.

But the woman in the third row watched with true interest as Dr. Hanover presented his theorem in a PowerPoint show crowded with charts and number sets. She seemed to be absorbing the complex algorithms and rows and rows of symbols with understanding and appreciation. She was a very attractive woman with long dark hair worn loose to her shoulders and designer eyeglasses that took nothing away from her shocking beauty. Rather, they accented it. She wore a black business suit that even someone as fashion-unconscious as Hanover recognized as haute couture.

Hanover did everything he could not to openly stare at her and several times lost his place in his presentation. In the end, he could only concentrate by looking everywhere but where she was seated. When his lecture ended to polite applause he was disappointed to see that her chair was empty and she was nowhere in sight.

He packed up his laptop and made his way from the hall through the crush queued up to see the charlatan who would follow him. He wondered why he even attended these events. He needed attention for his published formulas. The university insisted on it. He had no interest in attending the talks, luncheons, or panels. Each time he went to one of these gatherings, he spent half the time dreading his time on stage and the other half hiding, bitter and deflated, in his room.

That same woman from his presentation was alone on the elevator as Hanover stepped on board. She smiled at him in a friendly way. He turned to tap the number for his floor and stood pretending great interest in the floor display over the door.

“You’re quite brilliant, Dr. Hanover,” the woman said behind him. A lovely contralto voice.

“Um...I haven’t had the pleasure,” Hanover said and half turned to her.

She held out a hand for him to grasp.

“Anastasia deCobray,” she said. She wore soft leather gloves. Perhaps that was the style now? He took her hand and searched for something to say. She saved him from the awkward pause by continuing.

“Your equation for creating predictable growth in the economy of a developing nation is fascinating,” she said. “It seemed counter-intuitive at first but all makes perfect sense when viewed in hindsight.”

“Well, as long as there are no radical changes in a nation’s political ideology,” he said. “My algorithms, if followed, would provide a steady, reliable growth and a leveling of debt loads and trade deficits.”

“But if you could create a formulation that creates a positive economic model, could you not also devise an equation that would destroy a stable economy?”

“I suppose I could,” he began.

“Because we would be interested in such a theorem,” she said.

We?

His last memory was the touch of her suede gloved fingers to his neck.

Then nothing.

FRIDAY 22:30 HOURS

MOSCOW

YURI KOLIABSKAIA was past the age for leaping about on rooftops. Or crawling about one, as was the current case. The snow-slick surface far above the traffic noise and lights was unforgiving. His smooth-soled dress shoes weren’t up to the job. The crocodile-skin loafers, custom fitted in Rome from a mold of his feet at a cost of two thousand Euros, slipped on the slush-coated tiles. He would have traded them in a heartbeat for the pair of combat boots he wore in Kabul all those years ago. Those would be more suited for crossing the roof of the Moscow Grand Hotel in a mid-winter snowfall.

An inch of snow underfoot and twelve stories above the street. He sweated under his suit despite the cold. Too many years of the soft life since the end of the Soviet Era.

Twelve men were paid to protect Koliabskaia from his past. Twelve hard men handpicked by himself and paid well by him. Ex-Spetsnaz. Former mafia. Each one a man more dangerous than anyone Yuri’s enemies might send against him.

They were all dead now. He was certain of it. There was no longer the sound of gunfire from the floors below.

Moments before, Yuri was shoved roughly into an elevator when a man dressed entirely in black materialized among his entourage in the lobby. The two women he’d picked up at the club ran screaming. His guards were too late defending themselves and Yuri saw at least three of them go down in the roar of point-blank fire from what appeared to be an Uzi. Mossad?

Four of his men bundled into the elevator car with him and readied their weapons as the ripping, pounding sounds of automatic fire followed them up the shaft. The thunder from below stopped long before they emerged onto the penthouse level. Two of his men rushed Yuri to a secure room in his suite and told him to stay put while the others tore heavier weapons from a concealed cabinet. Alone in the master bathroom, Yuri stood at the door and listened. Magazines snapping home. Bolts clacking. Muttered curses and whispered grunts of confidence. Men psyching themselves for action. Girding for what was to come next.

He leapt back as his ears rang with the deep thump of an explosion from the next room. Someone blew through a wall or doorway to gain entrance. Then gunfire. The boom of shotguns and freight train sound of an automatic weapon magnified to a deafening degree in the enclosed space. Then the thuds of furniture and the shush of breaking glass.

And silence.

Yuri used a brass towel rack to break out the bathroom windows and made his way out onto the roof.

The roof was a trap. There was nowhere to hide. Only the big steel boxes of air units. Satellite dishes. He moved breathless around the roof looking for another exit. A ladder. A skylight. It was bitterly cold outside but he didn’t feel it. He clambered over sloped surfaces and gullies, fell and cracked a hip on the decorative shingles.

Was it really only one man who pursued him? There had to be more. Who would send anything less than a team to bring down the best bodyguards his wealth could buy?

Yuri reviewed the list of those he’d crossed in the past as he moved as swiftly as caution allowed over the slick roof. There were so many in a lifetime of betrayals and lies. He was old enough to have been an officer in NKVD but they were never his true employers. He received payments into a Swiss account to act as a servant of the KGB, paid by one master to spy on the other. The civilian intelligence service wanting to know what their cousins in the army were up to at all times. Spies spying on one another within the same house. Nothing changed in Russia. Always a people who could not trust themselves. Too preoccupied with looking behind themselves to ever make progress. The list of his NKVD comrades who were sent to Lubyanka or worse (based on his detailed reports) was a long one. He betrayed still more of his comrades when the old regime fell and he used his amassed fortune and the dirty secrets he knew to secure himself a place among those protected by the ruling elite.

And that was to be the end of it. He was out of the game and free to retire to a dacha on the Black Sea with the funds earned through deceit and compounded through theft and extortion. That was when he learned that he was never in the pay of the KGB all those years. The money placed in his accounts was put there by a shadow organization, a dark cabal who shunned the light and moved people about as though they were pieces on a chessboard the rest of the world was unaware of.

Cobra.

Yuri was never told the name of his true masters. He had to learn it by a process of elimination, by sifting through whispers and rumors across the global intelligence network. There was a void there. Wherever that void appeared, Cobra benefited. There were inexplicable occurrences and irrational alliances. Cobra provided the missing piece of the narrative that brought all into focus.

A force was always there pushing events for ends that were invisible even to someone looking for them. Like an object only seen in peripheral vision. Turn your eyes to it and it was gone.

They kept him in the game he thought he’d left behind. He was expected to maintain his contacts and create new ones. In recent years they had him facil­itating contacts between terrorist and crime organizations to some unknown purpose. He was expected to use his knowledge and influence to maintain and control his own network of cells, most of which had no idea they were part of a larger scheme and would kill him if they knew how they’d been used. And all the while he knew that his web of contacts were only a single skein in the immense tapestry weaved by Cobra for an agenda known only to themselves.

Was it Cobra who had sent this man in black? Was Yuri’s usefulness to them at an end? Is this how they rewarded loyalty?

Yuri realized as he skidded and crept along a ledge that he was not only reviewing a list of his enemies. He was looking back on a lifetime, a lifetime of treason against his fellows, his oath, and his country. This was what a man does when he knows his life is to end.

A shadow fell across him. He turned to see the man in black standing above him. Was that a sword in the man’s hand? A sword?

Yuri’s movement caused him to lose his tenuous balance and his foot gave under him. He slid toward the edge of the dark roof and toward the bright lights beyond the edge. His heel caught on the strip of party-colored neon that described the rooftop. He could feel it bending, cracking, under his weight. He pounded his hands flat on the icy metal slope for purchase to take the weight from his feet but only slid farther.

His wrist was pinched in an iron grip and he craned his neck to see the man in black crouched firm on the forty-five-degree angle above him. The man had his sword driven into the metal roof as an anchor, his fist wrapped firmly around the long shark-skinned handle of a samurai katana. The man’s face was hidden by a mask that covered his head. His eyes were concealed behind a grill of steel. What looked to be a form-fitting Kevlar suit covered his lean form. Blood glistened cold and black on the fabric and Yuri knew that none of it was from his pursuer. The grip on Yuri’s wrist was strong, strong enough to easily pull him from the ledge and to safety. But the stranger did not do so.

The man was not here to kill him. The man was here for something Yuri could tell him.

The man was not from Cobra. Yuri allowed himself the luxury of hope even as the neon strand beneath his foot snapped with a brittle sound. The man’s grip remained firm. He would not let him fall yet.

Yuri Koliabskaia searched his mind for something, anything, he might say to this man to spare his own life. It had to be a current operation.

“Is this about Dushanbe?” Yuri said.

The man was silent. The only evidence that he was not a statue was the thin wisp of vapor that drifted from his mask.

“Or perhaps Hanover—the mathematician?”

The grip grew firmer.

“I only know a part of it,” Yuri said and felt the grip press tighter on his wrist. Painful but encouraging.

“I only suggested his name. Had some people verify his calculations. He was easy to find. His travels were a matter of public record. They made contact in Geneva.”

The grip tightened. Painful. The sweet pain of security. Keep talking and the stranger will not let me fall.

“My contact was the woman. The one in glasses. I do not know her name.”

The grip shifted slightly. Blood flowed unrestricted to his hand. Displeasure.

“No! Let me think! There may be something useful to you!”

The vise-like pressure was restored.

“I...I...” Yuri searched his mind for anything, true or untrue, that would buy him a few moments more.

The fingers relaxed. The slightest change in pressure.

“There’s an operation in Nepal. I’ve heard rumors. If you let me go I can learn more for you!”

The grip relaxed further.

“I’ve told you all I know! All they would let me know!”

His fingers tingled as blood rushed back into his hand.

Yuri screamed now, high and shrill. He was past disgrace now. An animal in a trap shrieking for its life.

“I can find out more! I can work for you! I can spy on the spies! It’s what I do!”

The grip released and, as he slid the final few feet to the edge, and the roar and hum of traffic grew in his ears, Yuri looked up to see the man was gone.

And then Yuri was gone.

SATURDAY 04:00 HOURS

NEVADA

UNITED STATES NAVY GEOLOGICAL STATION N-99

A DUSTY SERVICE ROAD stretched across a hundred miles of empty desert to end at a sad collection of Quonset huts. The steel buildings were beginning to bake in the early morning light. Sagging cyclone fence and razor wire enclosed them. Heat haze rose from the rocks and sand that were soaking up the first light of the rising sun. A solitary Marine stood at a corrugated steel shack. Unmoving. Not a bead of sweat on his immaculate BDU’s. He cast no shadow. Occasionally he fluttered. His holographic image flickered.

Like everything else about this lonely base, the jarhead was not real.

A thousand feet below USNGS N-99 was the Pit. Blasted from solid rock, it housed vehicles, ordnance, and self-sustaining living quarters for five hundred. It was built to not only withstand a nuclear strike but to keep its occupants fed, armed, and safe for the day they would take the fight to whoever dared to nuke their beloved country. This was the super-secret subterranean base of G.I. Joe. The American secret weapon made up of men and women who were dead to the world but lived a second life as the vanguard of a force that defended their country from the dangers of a world of harm.

That’s what the recruitment brochure would say. If there was a brochure.

Florescent lights flickered and hummed and bathed the room along Barracks Block A. She sat up in her bunk. Squinted eyes found Shareware standing timid in the doorway. He didn’t want to approach and startle her. Last guy who did that spent two months in rehab with a broken collar bone.

“Sorry, Scarlett. You said to come get you anytime.”

“Snake Eyes?”

“Yeah. Mainframe has a text.”

“Give me thirty seconds.”

Mainframe was already seated at the main console in the intel center when Scarlett entered. High-res monitors surrounded a massive table top touchscreen—all of the high-frontier weapons of cyber war. The current field operations were being directed by General Hawk’s staff in CommCon (Command and Control) on another level. Intel’s background work was done for those ops, and only one intel specialist was required to hold the fort.

“Been up all night, Mains?” Scarlett said as she filled a coffee mug behind him.

“Night. Day. My circadian rhythms march to a different drummer, Red,” he said without turning from the triple array of monitors. “I know we’re supposed to stick to military time. But I never go topside so it’s all good, you know?”

“You have Snake Eyes’ contact?” she said and took a seat and keyboard by him.

“Read for yourself,” he said and tapped a key. On the monitor appeared:

h/-\n0\/3R /-\8d|_|CtI0N G3N3v@ iNtel?

“It’s Leet Speak,” Scarlett said.

“Abbreviated multi-byte Leet Speak,” Mainframe agreed. “And then encrypted. Our silent buddy is quite the one for hacker cool.”

“He’s in Moscow and wants an update on a math egghead who disappeared in Geneva?”

“What’s his interest in a guy like that?”

“Snake Eyes concentrates on the micro,” Scarlett said and tapped in her access code to open her JOEweb account.

Scarlett keyed and scrolled through intel reports from Swiss FCP and INTER­POL. Averill Hanover was a UK native attending a Global Mathematic Solutions Initiative conference and was not seen after delivering an address over a week ago. Swiss cops had it down as a missing persons. No sign of foul play. No evidence of a crime. Hanover was reportedly depressed. He was either on a drunk or was a suicide. Neither of which was illegal in the land of chocolate and coo-coo clocks unless you did your business in public.

Snake Eyes thought otherwise.

Dark hints that this incident was a cover for something more sinister. But that was the world of intel. The glass was always half full. Of cyanide.

“If Snake’s into it then it means something,” she said.

“Ping him then?” Mainframe said. Fingers poised.

“I’ll do it. Translate it to Leet for me and send.” She began tapping.

Reliable intel on Hanover?

No active police investigation

What are your needs?

How do we help you proceed?

Mainframe keyed the conversion program and they waited. Fifteen minutes passed with neither of them speaking. A text message opened on monitor:

r3lI@8L3 iN73l. |-|@n0\/3r ab|)|_|C73d.

\/al|_|/-\8le a$s37?

PRi0Rity?

“Snake has reliable intel that it’s an abduction,” Mainframe said. “There’s a Cobra connection.”

“What’s he want from us, Mains?” Scarlett said.

“An evaluation of the situation,” Mainframe said.

“Sounds like Snake wants to go hunting and needs to know the game and the stakes,” Scarlett said.

“What do we text back?” Mainframe asked.

Scarlett tapped.

Hold for ten.

Will have analysis.

Your twenty?

Seconds later:

3N Rou73 G3n3v@

“On his way to Geneva,” Mainframe said.

“As always,” Scarlett said as her fingers flew over the keys and the powerful Snakehunter program booted up. “Into the fire.”

She settled in for a long day and night.

SATURDAY 10:24 HOURS

DR. HANOVER awakened on a bed in a room straight out of a fairy tale. The bed was a four poster of hand-carved wood in an ornate theme of vines and grapes. The other furnishings were old and heavy and dear as well. The room’s ceiling was vaulted with exposed oaken beams carved to match the bedposts. One wall of tall windows of leaded glass allowed sunlight in. On another wall was a stout wooden door banded in iron. So he was a prisoner. He was wearing crisp new pajamas, which troubled him more than anything else. His bare feet touched the broad-beamed wooden floor and it was cold. He found woolen slippers that were just his size, again disconcerting, and padded to the windows.

The view through the thick blown glass was a vista of snow-covered mountains. He was in the Alps. No other mountains look quite like them. And he was at an elevation. Standing on his toes with forehead pressed to the glass, he could see the room he occupied was on the upper floor of a medieval building set atop a peak with a sheer edifice dropping hundreds of meters to a rocky defile dotted with evergreens.

On his tip-toes and peeping out the window in his PJs like a child watching anxiously for Father Christmas was how the Baroness found him.

“You’ll find your clothes in the wardrobe, Doctor,” she said. She was dressed differently than when they last met. Some kind of outfit that looked of a mili­tary nature. Dark blue with red piping but without insignia. A stylish outfit that complemented and hugged her slender form. She also wore a pistol belt and boots. Her demeanor was more martial as well. The charm offensive was over.

“Get dressed and I will take you to your workroom. You will have breakfast as you work. We will make productive use of your time, I assure you.”

The door closed and Dr. Hanover opened the massive mirrored wardrobe to find his own clothing, cleaned and pressed, hanging in a row.

Troubling.

SATURDAY 23:30 HOURS

SNAKE EYES maintained a speed just above the limit for the ride south to Torino. The Volvo he was driving was a car he took from the long-term parking lot at the airport in Geneva four hours ago. He watched from the concealing darkness as a fat couple emptied the rear compartment of a half dozen pieces of luggage. A long trip. The car would not be reported missing for a week or more.

He took the Route de Marlagnou south and pulled into a rest stop north of the Italian border crossing. He left the Volvo parked at the rear of the lot where trucks were parked with engines running to keep their cabs warm in the frigid night. He watched a driver get into a car-carrier truck with Italian plates. He climbed on the back of the trailer as the truck started forward with a jerk and exited the lot. As the truck re-entered the highway and motored south toward the border, Snake Eyes picked the lock of one of the new Audis on the top level of the carrier and ducked inside.

The truck was waved through the Swiss and Italian customs stations and arrived in Milano with no further stops. It was not until the following morning that one of the new Audis was discovered missing.

SUNDAY 05:00 HOURS

THE SHADOWS between the mountains were receding as the sun rose in the sky over the peaks. Snake Eyes guided the Audi along a sidewinder mountain road that hugged a cliff on one side and a two-thousand-foot drop on the other for most of its length. He pushed the car to the limit of its speed and maneuverability as the slick road climbed and climbed in a winding path toward a dead end high above. This section of road was privately owned and would not be monitored by law enforcement. Speeding was not an issue here. As he drove, he maintained contact with the Pit.

“We’ve reviewed surveillance video from the conference center around the time of Hanover’s disappearance,” Scarlett’s voice came through the receiver built into his helmet. “We see him get on the elevator but we never see him get off. There was some kind of interference with the video signal. That would be Cobra covering their tracks.”

Without removing his eyes from the switchback road swerving before him, Snake Eyes tapped keys on a sending set strapped to his wrist. He texted:

EYWITNSSES

“There were a few. A half dozen of them remarked on a woman who attended Hanover’s address. Tall. Black hair and eye-glasses. And not the kind of babe who hangs out with math geeks.”

BRONESS   CNFRMS MY DESTNTN

“Mainframe worked his magic. If Hanover was taken to the nearest location related to Cobra it would be Monte Verdi. A former Franciscan monastery scammed off of Pope Innocent XIII back in the eighteenth century by the deCobray clan. One of the holdings the Baroness married into.”

CERTNTY?

“Mains gives it seventy percent. They could have yanked him to one of their secret sections. If they did, we lost him. We only know the location of a few of them, and most of those were closed once they were compromised. This is the best bet within driving distance. It might be why they grabbed him

DTA ON HNOVER

“Except for why Cobra snatched him, the guy is an open book. He works in theoretical economics. Making projections and predicting trends. His latest work is in fiscal dynamics. Macro economics stuff. Nothing dangerous there. No weaponry or anything that goes boom. Cobra’s interest in him doesn’t exactly jump out at us.”

LVERGE

“Hanover is a widower. He’s estranged from his grown daughter. She’s the wandering type. The perpetual student type. We’re narrowing down her current location.”

ETA MNTE VRDI WITHN THE HR

SNKE OUT

“If you hold position and re-con we can send—”

He tapped the temple of his mask and the transmission went dead. He pressed the pedal, shifted down, and drifted around a hairpin turn. This turn fed into a run of straight road that climbed upwards at steep angle. The sun glinted for just a second to his left as he flashed past a dark car parked on a runaway lane.

A check of the rearview showed the dark car was in motion and pulling onto the two-lane road in a shower of dust and gravel. Snake Eyes pushed the Audi harder and tore around a curve to put him out of sight of his pursuer.

SUNDAY 05:16 HOURS

THE ROOM had probably been a grand dining hall at one time. But in place of serving tables and sideboards there was an impressive computer station. A young man in a T-shirt sat absorbed by the images and words on the three big monitors before him. Several tablet computers were on the table before him. Against a wall painted with a mural of Saint Francis and his trial by fire were eight-foot whiteboards on rolling stands. Boxes of markers were open and ready. Seated at a table near the door were the two men in dark clothing who had brought Hanover to this room. They sat sipping espresso with the bored expression of sated lions.

The Baroness stood before the mural.

“Saint Francis was freed by the Sultan after he stepped through the fire unharmed,” the Baroness said.

“Is that a promise?” Hanover said.

“Merely a story.” The Baroness turned to the young man

“You two will work together,” said the Baroness. The young man reluctantly turned his attention from his monitors. He wore a black T-shirt with ERROR 404 on the front in block letters. His hair was studiously unkempt and he wore a permanent sneer of derision. A pair of rimless glasses were perched low on his nose. This tyro was a type Hanover had become familiar with in his years as a teacher.

“Whatever you need to crunch the numbers, Doc,” the young man said and shrugged elaborately.

“The white boards will be enough,” Hanover said.

“Too slow. Too sloooooooow,” the young man said. “You do the big thinking and let me handle the interstitials, know what I mean?”

“I worked ten years on my equation with only chalk and a blackboard. It is not a simple matter of reversing the formula.”

“We don’t have time for that old-school approach, Doc. Life is short. We need results yesterday.”

The Baroness interceded.

“We are on a timetable, Doctor,” she said. “We don’t have the luxury that a university tenure affords you. Your equation presents a convincing model for how to build a stable economy from a faltering one. It should be the work of no more than a few days to deconstruct that equation to provide guidelines for collapsing an existing stable economy. Particularly with the aid of our computers.”

“Theoretically, yes,” Hanover said. “But how are you to determine that the results I give you are effective? How are you to know that I am not just stalling, only to give you a useless formulation in the end?”

“That would not be in your interest,” the Baroness said. She gestured to the young man who turned to the computer station and touched a screen.

The largest monitor filled with a high-definition image of a modest living room. Messy bookshelves lined one wall. A sofa and an armchair. An Indian weave throw was over the back of the sofa. The setting was familiar to Hanover. A cat, bushy-tailed Persian with dappled white and black fur, strolled into the image area and climbed up on the sofa.

His daughter’s cat.

It was a live shot of his daughter’s apartment in Paris.

“You see that you have a reason to share our urgency,” Baroness said.

SUNDAY 05:29 HOURS

THE BLACK MERCEDES SL 600 rounded a turn on the Via Monte Verdi to find the Audi pulled onto the gravel of a scenic lot overlooking an Alpine valley. The Audi was running and sat alone in the pullover area.

The Mercedes pulled up and stopped thirty meters behind the Audi. The driver and passenger emerged with automatic weapons in their fists and fired controlled volleys at the Audi. The car bucked and twitched like a live thing under the impacts, the windows exploding out in all directions. The interior was filled with a haze of pulped upholstery fill and dusted glass as three- and five-round bursts of nine millimeters tore through the car in an expert crossfire pattern.

The men inserted fresh magazines and approached the Audi from either of its blind sides. With one standing cover, the other stepped to the driver’s side and, leading with the barrel of his MP5, craned for a look inside the Audi. It was empty.

As both men turned to scan the park around them, a dark figure rolled from beneath the Audi.

Neither of the men had a chance to turn to see what had disturbed the gravel behind them.

SUNDAY 08:01 HOURS

“LET ME see her,” Hanover said. He tried to keep a note of pleading from the request.

“Since you’re playing nice,” the smirking young man said.

The young man touched the screen and the view of Caroline’s apartment appeared again, the cat still dozing in the late morning light.

Hanover turned from the second white board he’d filled with the figures of his formula. He was transfixed by the monitor.

“We have full audio,” the young man said. He touched the screen and a volume control appeared. He dialed it louder.

The faint sound of Paris traffic came from the speakers on the wall. The ambient noise of an unoccupied apartment. Then a clinking sound. The snicking of locks. The creak of a door opening off screen. A voice called an indistinct word. Repeated it. The cat mewed in answer and leapt from the sofa to trot off screen. A shadow fell across the room as a figure moved in front of the windows.

“That’s enough for now,” the young man said. The screen returned to windows displaying progress bars for the many tasks Hanover had set it to.

Hanover turned to his figures and wiped the last row away with the sleeve of his sweater. He heard her. She was alive. They were only letting him know that they were watching her. That they could reach out whenever they wished. Now or in the weeks to follow, should his equation prove unworkable.

“Any more numbers for me, Doc?” the young man said.

“In a few moments.”

SUNDAY 08:18 HOURS

IT WAS SNOWING now as the Mercedes came to a level patch of road just short of Monte Verdi’s peak.

The car came to the end of the road and turned onto a broad circular drive before a stone building at the foot of the mountain. There was no one in sight but two black SUVs were parked near the entrance. From the rear of the building a set of rails ran up the slope to the monastery above. It was a mile-long track at a steep thirty-degree angle that clung to the incline and bridged a fissure before it entered a tunnel carved from the rocky wall of the mountain. At the other end of the tunnel, the tracks crossed an open area and then vanished into a broad opening in the cliff’s face that would access the cellars of the medieval abbey. A single cable car was drawn by a cable up the tracks with the pulling motors at the top of the run.

Snake Eyes punched the gas and aimed the Mercedes at the decorative double doors of the stone building. The car jumped the steps with a shower of sparks and slammed the doors from their hinges. Snake Eyes leapt from the car as is it continued across the lobby to slam into a stone pillar with a force that shook the entire building.

He was on his feet and moving through the building toward the open cable car platform at its rear. With his Uzi in one fist and a long-slide custom 1911 automatic in the other, he trotted toward the open platform where the six-seat car waited. Six men, professionals all, leapt from their positions with automatic rifles and shotguns drawn up toward him.

Seconds later he stepped over their bodies and boarded the cable car.

SUNDAY 08:31 HOURS

“MADAME, I may interrupt?” The man stood in the doorway of the monastery’s library, where the Baroness was indulging in a cup of hot tea.

“What is it, Emil?” She stirred fresh cream into the china cup.

“Bruni and Paltz radioed. An unauthorized car coming this way on the access road. They found it pulled over on one of the scenic cut-offs.”

“And then?” She was growing impatient.

“Then nothing. The men at the base cable station have called to say that Bruni and Paltz’s car has arrived but they are not responding to either radio or cell calls.”

The Baroness was up and brushed past Emil.

“Follow me!” she called as she stormed down a corridor toward a broad flight of steps.

In the great room she pulled open a cabinet concealed in the paneling to reveal an impressive armory of automatic weapons, ammunition, and explosives. She drew two Panzerfaust 3 rocket-launchers from their place. German designed, one-use projectile weapons. She handed one to Emil and, carrying the other, trotted through French doors and out onto a broad battlement that overlooked the cable car tracks.

She braced herself between two stone crenellations and aimed through the scope at the cable car slowly trundling up the tracks from below.

“It could be our own men,” Emil said.

“It is not,” she said and squeezed the trigger.

The 60mm anti-tank round took the cable car head-on and burst inside blowing windows and doors out in a fiery blast. The cable continued drawing the flaming and smoking mess up the side of the mountain.

“Another!” she said and held her hand out for the next launcher.

The second round impacted the tracks below the car and tore away the supports of an old wooden bridge that carried the rails over a rocky depression. The bridge collapsed and the car tumbled to the rocks, where a secondary explosion ripped it in half. All that remained was a greasy fire that sent thick smoke drifting up the mountain side.

Baroness tossed the smoking rocket tube aside and addressed Emil in a flurry of orders. She gave these as she walked back into the monastery and he trotted behind her like a faithful dog.

SNAKE EYES crouched on a ledge and watched the remains of the cable car burn below him. The smoke offered further cover for his ascent, as did the increasing snowfall. He climbed to within a hundred meters of the monastery’s cellar entrance after setting the car’s departure for a thirty-minute delay. With the most obvious path to Monte Verdi closed off, the Cobra agents in the abbey would believe they were safe for a time.

The way was steep but there were plenty of reliable hand and foot purchases. His chosen path would bring him to some ancient iron steps leading directly up to the broad cable car entrance carved in the mountain’s face.

“WE’RE GOING!” the young man announced. He stood before the white boards and used a small camera to take HD images of the equations Hanover had already written there. The pair of armed watchdogs had already left the room in response to commands over their radios.

“But the work—” Hanover said.

“We have to leave, Doc. Now,” the young man said and turned to his keyboard to open a program that would transfer the data they’d created to the COBRAnet. The hard drives here would then fry, leaving no way for others to retrieve their work.

Baroness had given the orders. This place was compromised. Whoever was on that cable car was just a scout. Whatever agency he represented (anyone from Delta Force to the Italian Carabinieri or even Mossad) there would be more on the way. And they’d come in hard and not spare the ammo.

Cobra existed this long by never leaving themselves open to a direct fight with law authorities, especially in a European Union member nation.

Hanover stood transfixed by the image on the large monitor. It was afternoon in Paris and the shadows in the apartment were lengthening. He watched as a slender young woman entered the frame. Unruly blonde hair and dressed in the loose-fitting silk robe top that he’d sent his daughter from a conference he’d attended in Cairo. She shooed the cat from its resting place on the chair. The cat leapt down.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard the voice through the speakers as though she were here in the room with him.

“Get down, Napoleon. You’ve slept enough.”

“Come on, Doc!” The young man was jamming equipment into padded cases. “We’re out of here!”

“My daughter...”

“We’ll maintain the link. She’ll be fine. But we gotta move, okay?” The young man stood holding the door and looking warily down the hallway outside.

Hanover lifted a heavy external hard drive from a table. It was warm in his hands. He brought it down on the back of the young man’s head with all the force he could manage.

SNAKE EYES reached the opening in the cliff face and hugged an interior wall as he crept along the shadows under a steel-ribbed loading platform. His hands felt along the granite surface. This was the winch room for the cable car. The cable looped through a massive wheel powered by twin gasoline engines. There was a reservoir tank for gasoline mounted on the floor beneath.

Voices and the clang of footfalls above. Ten men. Maybe more. In a mix of three languages they discussed their status. The Baroness had ordered an immediate evacuation. A small force would be left as a rearguard to ensure her escape along with the hostage. Their job was to prevent any follow-up force from gaining access through the tunnels beneath the monastery while the evac was in progress.

Snake Eyes crouched in the dark and moved across the grease-slick floor toward the winch. He placed a full block of Semtex on the outside of the gasoline reservoir. Two hundred liters at least if it were filled to capacity. He stabbed a stick timer into the block and set the countdown.

He drew throwing blades from a scabbard on his thigh and slipped toward a ladder that led to the walk above.

The first two died quietly with throwing blades deep in the place where the cervical spine joins the base of the skull. The third turned in time to see a dark figure leap over the corpses of his comrades. The only sound he made was a truncated hiss as the long blade of a katana cut short his life.

The rest, eight in all, realized too late that they were under attack. By then Snake Eyes had positioned himself between them and the only exit from the winch room. A spray of fire from his Uzi dropped two of them and sent the rest to cover. He leapt through the doorway and kicked it shut as answering fire swept the spot he’d occupied a half second before. He secured the heavy wooden door and dropped an iron-studded bar across it. He could feel the impact of hundreds of rounds being pumped into the door from the other side, to no effect.

They wouldn’t get through the door to trouble him further.

Especially not in the fifteen seconds they had left.

A BIG HELICOPTER sat idling in the courtyard of the monastery. A fat EH-101 with no markings. The four rotors created mini cyclones of dust and snow powder as the Baroness ran low toward it with a trio of armed men.

“Error! Respond!” She shouted into a handheld radio. “Where is that geek?”

As if in answer, the young man stumbled out into the courtyard holding a hand to his bleeding scalp. He fell to his knees as the Baroness reached him.

“The old guy clocked me and ran off,” the young man said with a wince.

“The formula?” she said.

“Uploaded to the COBRAnet,” he said. His eyes swam as he fought to remain conscious.

“Can we finish his work?” The Baroness was shouting now and shaking the young man by the shoulders.

His head lolled back and his mouth went slack.

“Get him on board,” Baroness said. Two of the men lifted the young man under the arms and dragged him to the bay doors of the waiting chopper.

“What are our orders?” said the armed man who remained by her.

The flagstones of the courtyard shook. From beneath their feet came a growing rumble. The winch room. It had to be. They were here.

“We leave,” Baroness said.

“What about the old man?” the armed man said.

“He didn’t hold up his end of the bargain, did he?” she said with a bitter smile. “Make contact with our Paris operatives and give them the green light.”

SMOKE WAS FILLING the monastery from the fuel fire raging in the cellar. It provided cover for Snake Eyes, who moved through the haze-choked corridors with the help of optical equipment. It cut through the cover of smoke to give him a clear digital image of the armed men rushing in confusion about the interior of the abbey. Most of these fell silently to his blades as he slipped up close to them in their blindness.

A rack of an action being drawn back. Twenty feet away. Maybe less.

Snake Eyes dived behind a heavy wooden balustrade just as a belt-fed weapon opened up on him. Bullets sent splinters flying over him and racked the plaster walls all around. The gunman was firing blind, sensing the presence of the intruder rather than seeing him. This killer had a hunter’s instinct, a predator’s wariness.

Five- and six-round bursts followed one after another and expertly swept past Snake Eyes’ position. He moved as the rounds reached the farthest point of their arc from him. Low and soundless. The opticals revealed a big man blocking the entrance to a courtyard and firing an FN Minimi hung from a combat sling. The man was bringing the big gun around for another sweep, but Snake Eyes was already in motion and dove into the hallway to plant three rounds from his .45 in a close pattern on the man’s chest.

Snake Eyes snatched up the Minimi and followed the stream of the oily smoke that poured up from the floor vents in every room. It was being drawn toward open air. He could hear the thrum of a helicopter’s rotors powering up ahead of him. The smoke haze was being blown clear by a big chopper lifting off from the courtyard in the flat light of a snowy afternoon.

Dropping to one knee, Snake Eyes trained the Minimi on the ascending bird and let fly with a long burst that struck sparks from the chopper’s undercarriage until the massive vehicle disappeared over the monastery wall trailing smoke. Its barrel burnt out, Snake Eyes tossed the weapon aside. He saw the chopper regain altitude and move, nose down, toward the mountains in the distance. It made a grinding racket but was still air-worthy, and getting farther from his reach with every second.

He whirled, .45 gripped in both hands, and laid the front sights on a figure stumbling from the dense fog of smoke roiling from the abbey. It was a disheveled man in his fifties in a suit that had seen better days. The man bent over and leaned on his knees to retch. Snake Eyes holstered his handgun and approached him.

“May I assume,” the man said between coughs, “that since you are at odds with my captors that I may count on your friendship?”

In response, Snake Eyes snapped open a flip phone and held it out to Dr. Hanover. The face of an attractive red-headed woman of serious demeanor appeared on the tiny screen.

“Dr. Averill Hanover?” she said.

“Yes?” he said.

“You’re safe with our operative, sir,” she said. “Italian authorities will be there within thirty minutes.”

“My daughter...” he started.

“She’s in no danger, sir. We dispatched a unit to watch over her as soon as we’d determined your situation. There’s no reason to worry.”

“I suspected so,” Dr. Hanover said with a weary smile. “After all, her cat’s name is Mimieux.”

SUNDAY 22:21 hours

PARIS, 14th ARRONDISSEMENT

THEY WERE relieved to get the call. Eight hours of cramped quarters in the rear of the van with only one another for company were quite enough. The two men stepped from the rear doors and crossed the street to the apartment block in which their target waited unawares. They were dressed in workman’s coveralls stenciled with GDF SUEZ, the logo for Gaz de France Suez, the country’s primary natural gas utility.

As they climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, they each drew handguns and held them close to their sides. The 9mms were equipped with silencers and special rounds with reduced powder loads. Execution rounds. For when your target was close and helpless and time was not an issue. They counted off the numbers in the dim hallway until they reached the fourteenth doorway.

They stood before the door and one of them banged on it.

“Mademoiselle Caroline Hanover?” the man called out. “Gaz de France!”

He leaned an ear to the door and could hear movement within. Then:

“Oui?”

“There is a reported gas leak. We must speak to you, Mademoiselle. It is urgent.”

“Just a moment.”

The men took a step back and raised their weapons to train them on the doorway. They had decided that one would take the center shot and the other would deliver the coup de grace. They each took in a breath and slowly released it as they heard footsteps approach the door from the other side. Pulses steady. Eyes trained.

The hallway filled with a cloud of splinters as a dozen heavy slugs exploded through the door from inside the apartment. The door crashed open even as both men were flung across the hallway. A woman with a mop of unruly blonde hair and dressed in a silk robe worn over a Kevlar jumpsuit stepped into the hallway with a matched pair of automatic pistols in her fists. She pumped a three-round burst into each of the fallen gas men.

“Caroline’s not home,” she said to no one who could hear her. “But you can call me Agent Helix.”