The Doomsday Key (35 page)

but to flee now would only draw the full attention of the Norwegian army upon them. Instead, Monk lifted an arm in greeting.

Might as well say hello to the neighbors.

For the past hour, Monk had been observing the soldiers, noting their behavior. They spent most of the time chatting with each other in huddled groups. He noted a few cigarettes glowing. Occasionally a bark of laughter would echo off the mountain and reach them. He recognized the general pattern: boredom. Out here in the hinterlands of the frozen north, the soldiers plainly placed their full confidence in the isolation and harsh terrain.

No reason to dispel that attitude.

“Just play it cool,” Monk said into the radio.

“If I was any cooler, I’d be shitting ice cubes.”

Monk glanced over at him. Was that Creed cracking a joke? Monk lifted his eyebrows. There might be hope for the kid yet.

The side door to the Sno-Cat popped open. Steam wafted out of the heated cab. The soldier didn’t even bother to pull up his parka’s hood. In fact, he left the coat unzipped. With his blond hair and apple cheeks, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalog, the Norwegian version.

See the Norwegian in his natural habitat…

Monk took off his helmet, to look less intimidating. Creed did the same. The soldier waved an arm at them and spoke in Norwegian. Monk didn’t understand him, but the general gist was plain.

What are you doing here?

Creed answered in turn, stumbling a bit with the language. Monk heard the word
American.
The kid must be laying out their cover story. Monk supported him by pulling out a book from his parka’s pocket, a field guide to birds that he’d picked up at the rental agency. He also lifted the binoculars from around his neck.

Nobody here but us bird-watchers.

The soldier nodded and tried his hand at English. “Storm coming,” the Norwegian warned. He waved an arm back in the general direction of Longyearbyen. “Should go.”

Monk couldn’t exactly argue against that. “We’ll be heading back,” he promised. “Just stopping to rest.”

He rubbed his backside for effect—actually he was sore after trundling all over the glacier-broken landscape.

This earned a grin from the soldier. Over by the Sno-Cat, the other door popped open. The driver hopped out, yelled a warning, then jammed a whistle to his lips and drew his sidearm. As he blew a shrill shriek, he pointed his weapon at them.

What the hell?

Both Creed and the other soldier dropped flat to the snow. Monk hesitated. The soldier fired three times. Monk twisted at the same time and spotted a large lumbering form disappearing around a cluster of boulders off in the distance. The gunman’s shots sparked off the stone.

“Polar bear,” Creed said needlessly as the blasts echoed away.

He and the soldier regained their feet. Creed had gone pale, but the soldier only smiled and said something in Norwegian that made his companion with the pistol grin.

They seemed not overly concerned. Like scaring away a raccoon from a garbage can. Of course, in this case, Monk and Creed were the garbage cans. The polar bear must have been stalking them since they’d stopped.

The first soldier motioned toward town, warning them off.

Monk nodded.

The two soldiers climbed back into the Sno-Cat, sharing a joke, clearly at the Americans’ expense.

Creed returned to his snowmobile. “What do we do now?”

“We keep patrolling. But this time, why don’t I watch the seed vault, and you keep an eye out for anything looking to eat us.”

Creed nodded and put on his helmet.

Monk lifted his binoculars and focused across the valley. He hoped Painter wouldn’t be too much longer. If he and Creed continued to idle around here, suspicions would begin to arise. Especially with the storm about to hit.

Adjusting the focal length on his binoculars, he brought up a clear image of the bunker entrance. He watched the door open and the slim figure of a woman rush out. One of the guards tried to engage her. Who wouldn’t? Even from two hundred yards away, it was plain she put the sex back in sexy.

She snubbed the guard with a raised palm and hurried toward the parked vehicles. Apparently she’d had enough of the party—and could not get away fast enough.

12:49 P.M.

The interview quickly went bad.

Painter and Senator Gorman had followed the CEO of Viatus into the set of offices off the main vault tunnel. A staging area for the caterers had been set up in the central room with desks shoved to the walls and replaced by rolling food-tray cabinets, chafing dishes, and storage bins. Dessert was being prepared, which apparently involved a chocolate fountain. The place smelled like a Hershey’s factory with an underlying hint of Norwegian cod.

They hurried through the space to a back office. Inside, a pair of computers glowed at either end of a long table. Between them, organized into neat rows, were piles of aluminum packets. Along a neighboring wall were stacked a half-dozen black plastic storage bins. One was open on the floor, full of the silver envelopes.

“Seed shipments arrive daily,” Karlsen had explained, playing tour guide. “Unfortunately, now they’re backlogged due to the party. But tomorrow these boxes will be sorted, cataloged, registered by country, even …”

That’s when things went wrong.

Maybe it was the nonchalant manner of the CEO, or maybe it was clear to all that Karlsen’s rambling discourse hid a well of guilt. Either way, as soon as the office door was shut, the senator lunged out and grabbed a fistful of Karlsen’s shirt. He slammed him into the stacked bins.

Stunned by the sudden attack, Karlsen did not react for a breath. Then his face collapsed into a muddle of confusion.

“Sebastian, what are you—?”

“You fucking killed my boy!” Gorman yelled at him. “Tried to assassinate me last night!”

“Are you insane?” Karlsen shoved both arms out and broke free. “Why would I try to kill you?”

Painter had to admit that the guy definitely sounded shocked. But he also noted that Karlsen failed to deny the murder of the senator’s son. Painter came between them. Red-faced, Gorman retreated a step. He turned his back, plainly trying to regain his composure.

Inwardly Painter kicked himself. He hadn’t noticed Gorman ramping up like that. He should have reined him in sooner. They weren’t going to get anything out of Karlsen by driving him into a defensive posture. The man would put up walls that they’d never get through.

Painter readjusted his strategy. With Karlsen shaken, and before the man locked down completely, Painter knew he had to strip away any attempt at pretense.

“We know about the mushroom farm, about the bees, about what was covered up in Africa.” Painter hit him with charges one after the other. While Karlsen might have been able to take one blow, the rapid series of punches gave him no chance to recover.

His facade momentarily crumbled, revealing his complicity, his knowledge. He was not a pawn or a blind figurehead. Karlsen knew damned well what was going on.

Still, the man tried to backpedal. The flash of guilt vanished behind a wall of denial. “I don’t know what you’re both talking about.”

No one was fooled.

Least of all a grieving father.

Senator Gorman flew at the man again. Painter didn’t try to stop him. He wanted Karlsen off balance, hit from all sides. Morally, psychologically, physically. Painter would use all the tools he had at hand.

Gorman barreled into Karlsen, ramming a shoulder into his chest and driving the man back into the wall. Lifted off his feet, Karlsen struck the wall hard. The breath gasped out of him. The senator had been a defensive lineman in his college years.

But Karlsen was no doddering old man. He raised his arms and slammed his elbows down hard on the senator’s back. Gorman was knocked to his knees.

On the ground, the senator got an arm behind Karlsen’s left leg. With a roar, Gorman hugged and twisted hard. He threw the murderer of his son facedown on the floor, then piled onto his back and pinned him to the floor.

“You killed Jason!” Gorman growled at the man, his voice trapped between fury and sob. “You killed him.”

Karlsen struggled to free himself, but Gorman held him down. The CEO’s face became beet red. He twisted his neck, trying to get a look at Gorman. His voice spat at his accuser. “I … I did it for you!”

The words momentarily stunned the senator. But Painter wasn’t sure if the shock came from the sudden confession or the strange statement. A part of Gorman must have hoped Painter was wrong. Now there was no illusion.

“Shut the fuck up,” Gorman warned, not wanting to hear anything more.

With the one domino dropped, Painter knew he could get the others to fall. What he had thought might take a full day had been accomplished in minutes. But they were far from finished here. Karlsen could recant. He was still on home turf in Norway, with powerful ties and connections.

Painter knew he had to take advantage, to control the situation. That meant getting Karlsen out of here and keeping him in custody. For that, he would need to call in some help.

“Keep him there,” Painter said.

He crossed to the computers and searched behind them. There had to be a communication trunk feeding into this room. A T1 or T3 line for Internet connectivity, but more important—

Painter’s fingers found the telephone line. He pulled and traced it back to the wall. With no cell service up here, he needed to radio Monk, but buried underground, that was impossible. He would have to tap into an open line using a device known as a SQUID to boost the signal. As his
fingers ran along the wire to the wall, he found some gadget already plugged into the telephone outlet. He pulled it out and immediately recognized its function.

Cell signal booster.

It wasn’t that sophisticated, but the technology was above anything he’d seen here. It felt out of place. He examined it closely and recognized a short-range transmitter wired into it.

Why would someone need a short-range transmitter wired to a telephone line?

He could think of only one reason.

The door crashed open behind him.

He swung around as Copresident Boutha stormed into the room. A few other men stood behind him. Boutha frowned in confusion at the scenario he’d burst in upon: Karlsen on the floor, the senator kneeling on his back.

“Caterers reported yelling …,” Boutha began, then shook his head. “What is going on here?”

Using the distraction, Karlsen was able to throw an elbow back and catch Gorman in the ear. Knocked to the side, Gorman couldn’t stop Karlsen from rolling free.

Boutha and the others still blocked the way out. Trapped, Karlsen turned to face Gorman, only to find a fist flying toward his nose. He dodged enough to avoid a broken nose, but he took a hard punch to the eye and stumbled back a few steps.

“Stop!” Painter bellowed, freezing everyone in place with the force of his command.

All eyes turned to him.

Painter pointed an arm at Boutha. “We must evacuate this facility. Now!”

“Why?”

Painter looked down at the foreign device in his hand. He could be wrong, but he saw little reason for a short-range transmitter.

Except one.

“There’s a bomb hidden somewhere down here.”

Shocked reactions and questions tried to follow.

Painter cut through them. “Get everyone out!”

Unfortunately, they were too late.

12:55 P.M.

Monk edged his snowmobile through the valley, making a slow slaloming pass along the bottom. Creed followed in his tracks, watching for polar bears. Monk kept an eye on the concrete bunker that marked the entrance to the seed vault.

Overhead, the storm had rolled a mass of dark clouds over the mountain. The sky pushed lower and dropped the temperature with it. Winds also picked up, scouring through the valley in blinding gusts of ice crystals.

Monk called for a stop. He thought he had heard something, or at least felt something deep in his chest. He cut the engine. The low rumble continued, coming from the cloud layer overhead, like distant thunder to the north. Before he had a chance to question it, the rumble turned into a roar, then into a scream. A pair of jets shot out of the clouds and raced straight down the valley toward Monk and Creed.

No, not toward
them.

As the jets passed overhead, they veered sharply back up with a shriek of acceleration. Missiles fired from their underbellies. Hellfire rockets. The missiles struck the snowy ridge where the seed vault was buried. A line of fire exploded across the mountain face. Rocks and flames shot high. The concussions pounded Monk and Creed.

Up on the ridge, men went flying, some torn to fiery shreds. Others fled on foot or slid down the mountainside. Monk watched a large Sno-Cat tumble into a crater that once was the lone road up there.

As the smoke cleared, Monk searched the ridge. The bunker still stood, but one side had been blasted black and a large chunk of it had cracked away. The missile strike had only dealt a glancing blow.

Then a new rumble grew in volume. Monk feared the jets were scrambling for another pass. But this noise was accompanied by cracking detonations.

As Monk watched in horror, the entire mountainside above the bunker began to slide. A massive section of glacier broke loose and crashed, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, gaining speed and turning into an avalanche of ice.

It swamped the bunker and buried it completely.

More soldiers were caught and crushed in its path.

And still it kept coming.

Toward them.

“Monk!” Creed screamed.

Dropping back into his seat, Monk thumbed the ignition. His engine roared. He gunned the throttle. The rear track chewed snow, then found traction. Twisting the handle, Monk pointed an arm to the far side of the valley.

“Get to high ground!”

Creed needed no guidance. He had already turned and was flying toward the opposite side. The pair of them raced across the valley floor, trying to get clear.