The Breach with Bonus Material by Patrick Lee

Author:Patrick Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ten minutes later Travis and Paige were standing at an open window on the eighth floor, one of the few unoccupied by snipers. The rest of the detachment had dispersed throughout the building to reinforce the defenses, either at other windows or at the ground-floor entrances.

Travis stared out, high above the city and the fog. Nearby building tops rose from the mist like ships in a marina. Deep beneath the surface, streetlights cast diffused circles of bluish light, and here and there, Travis saw the roaming glow of vehicle headlights, and heard the sharp echoes of footsteps or voices, some of them American. Drunken tourists, the only people awake in Zurich at a quarter past three in the morning. The only steady traffic was a modest flow along a primary street a few miles to the west, bisecting the river and climbing away toward the ridges to the north and south. It was the road Travis and the others had come in on, E41.

Beside him, Paige’s breathing betrayed her anxiety. It reminded him of the fear he’d seen within the first Tangent group in Alaska, when they’d noticed the footprints in the mud. Not cowardice. Real fear. Fear in someone who didn’t scare easily.

“I really thought we had a chance,” she said. “I thought those inscriptions would tell us what we needed to do, and then however hard it was, we’d do it. I didn’t think we’d get this far and still be at zero.”

Her eyes roamed back and forth over the city. Like she expected hell to come rolling in at any second. Maybe it would.

“I don’t even know what to do now,” she said. “That was our only move. Now . . . we could leave if we wanted to, but it wouldn’t matter. It’s not like any place is safe, if Pilgrim achieves his goal. Staying feels better, like we’re doing something, right? But obviously we’re not. Forty-two snipers in this building, but we won’t slow him by a minute. Not when he has the Whisper. He’ll know what to do.”

For a long time, neither spoke. In the night around them, Zurich rumbled on idle.

“Tell me what’s worse than the nuke upstairs,” Travis said.

She looked at him, almost grateful for something to talk about besides the dead end they’d come to.

“We don’t think the nuke is the only defense system in this place,” she said. “We don’t even think it’s the main defense.”

Travis waited for her to explain.

“The bomb’s purpose is obvious,” she said.

“No opening the boxes,” Travis said. “No opening the ninth floor.”

She nodded. “There are even pressure pads embedded in the ceiling on Level Eight that prevent us from cutting through to the ninth floor that way. Same for the exterior walls. And the roof. And the windows on that level. Which are painted from inside. Obviously we’ll never figure out the purpose of this place until we can see into those boxes and that floor, and Pilgrim doesn’t want that, so . . .

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