Page 90 of Cold Target

Joe ran low, the case clutched against his chest, the rifle slung across his back.

A beam snapped overhead and swung down, missing his head by inches. He ducked under it and kept moving, his boots slipping on loose rock, his injured ribs screaming with every step.

The tunnel narrowed and he heard timber give way.

The slope was upward now, toward the entrance, toward the outside. His legs burned and his lungs were on fire. Every breath was dust and smoke.

Light ahead.

Faint. Gray. The color of pre-dawn sky.

The entrance.

Joe sprinted, the case banging against his leg, his vision narrowing to that pale rectangle of light.

The entrance collapsed behind him as he hit the snow, the mouth of the mine folding shut with a roar that shook the ground, a blast of air and dust exploding outward, washing over him, covering him in a layer of gray powder.

Then silence.

Joe lay face-down in the snow, chest heaving, the case still clutched in his hand.

He didn't move for a long moment.

When he finally pushed himself up to his knees, he turned and looked back.

The mine entrance was gone. Buried. Sealed. A pile of broken rock and twisted metal where the opening had been, steam rising from the rubble as the cold air met the heat from below.

Behind him, the mountain had closed its mouth.

Joe stood slowly, his legs shaking, his body one continuous ache.

He looked down at the case in his hand.

Operation Cold Target.

Five devices.

Five targets.

He turned and started running as best he could toward the truck, his boots crunching through the snow, the sky above him beginning to lighten with the first gray promise of dawn.

36

The National Counterterrorism Center occupied a secure facility in McLean, Virginia, a building that didn't appear on most maps and didn't advertise its purpose.

The operations floor was three stories underground, climate-controlled, soundproofed, and designed to coordinate responses to threats that kept cabinet members awake at night.

Ivy stood near the back of the main operations floor, her arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the wall of screens that dominated the front of the room. Five large displays, arranged in a row, each one showing a different location. Each one showing a target.

The Pentagon. The White House. The Capitol Building. The New York Stock Exchange. Offutt Air Force Base.

Beneath each screen, smaller monitors displayed live feeds from surveillance cameras, satellite footage, and new prototypes of a body camera worn by some tactical teams.

Red dots marked the suspected locations of the devices. Blue dots marked the positions of federal response teams.

The room was packed. Easily sixty people, maybe more. FBI. ATF. Secret Service. DOD. Capitol Police. NEST—the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. Representatives from half a dozenthree-letter agencies, all crammed into a space designed for coordinated chaos.

Ivy had been here for four hours. She'd arrived still wearing the same clothes she'd worn to the archives, her eyes gritty from lack of sleep, her hands shaking from too much caffeine and too much adrenaline.