Blowback

They picked five soldiers at random. The ones buried behind the thickest pieces of ice were Harvath’s responsibility, as was the most gruesome task of all-lopping off the top of each skull so that Jillian could collect samples of brain matter. As the mystery illness involved such a serious encephalitis component, she had insisted that in addition to the other tissue samples they were collecting, samples of brain tissue were absolutely imperative. Though Harvath and Alcott were each armed with only an ice ax, they went at their task as if chipping away at a priceless diamond while wielding the most precision cutting instruments in the world.

Jillian’s care came out of respect for ancient history. In Harvath’s case it was out of his respect for fellow soldiers. Though outside daylight was fading, neither hacked away at their subjects. They carved carefully into the ice until they were able to access the frozen flesh. While Alcott wasn’t sure if Alan Whitcomb would be able to learn anything from the samples, she certainly wanted to give him a chance. Lying within these frozen bodies could be the key they were looking for. Hannibal never would have sent his men into battle without protecting them against their own weapons. Maybe these soldiers, the members of his elite guard, had been inoculated, and maybe their DNA could tell the modern world something about the great weapon they were carrying.

Once the samples had been collected, they hurried back to their climbing equipment; Harvath unfastened his rope and watched as the weight of his pack up above pulled it through his secondary set of anchors. The rope zipped across the empty space above them and landed with a soft thwack on the correct side of the cavern, right next to Jillian’s.

Attaching their ascenders, Harvath demonstrated how the devices were used to climb back up the rope. He worked with Jillian until she got the hang of it, and then, after he connected the leash between them once more, they began their ascent. Twenty feet from the top, Harvath detached his pack from the line and managed to get it over both his shoulders. After changing ropes at the remnant of the ice shelf, they made it back up onto the narrow Col de la Traversette, packed up their gear, and began the difficult hike back to the Carré de l’Ours with only their headlamps to light their way through the dark.

A thick curtain of heavily falling snow was well under way by the time they arrived at the rear of the hotel’s property. During their trek, not much in the way of conversation passed between them. Jillian was wrestling with the psychological and emotional trauma of having killed Khalid Alomari while Harvath was trying to figure out how the assassin was tied to Timothy Rayburn in the first place. Rayburn had organized the expedition to recover Hannibal ’s mystery weapon, and Alomari seemed to be killing anyone who had any knowledge of it whatsoever. Yet there was one person Alomari hadn’t been able to kill, and that was Emir Tokay, but only because Rayburn had gotten to him first and kidnapped him. It didn’t make any sense. Rayburn and Alomari seemed to be working the same project but from two different angles. Rayburn helped put it together while Alomari worked on taking it apart.

Killing the scientists once their work was complete, as well as silencing anyone with any knowledge of it made sense, but what didn’t make sense was kidnapping Tokay. Why wasn’t he killed as well? Why kidnap him?

As they approached the hotel, Harvath tried to quiet his thoughts. At this point, he no longer wanted to struggle for answers. All he wanted was a long hot shower, followed by several Advils and a good night’s sleep. The minute they stepped through the hotel’s back door and into the kitchen, though, he realized that wasn’t going to happen.

“Putain, bougez pas! Bougez pas!” yelled one of two provincial police officers startled by Harvath and Alcott’s entrance. Based on their uniforms, they looked to be motorcycle cops, but that still didn’t explain what they were doing in Marie Lavoine’s kitchen.

Before Harvath could react, the men had drawn their sidearms and had both him and Jillian covered. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a shootout with police officers, so he just raised his hands above his head and left all of the guns he was carrying where they were for the time being.

Seeing Harvath with his hands above his head, Jillian did the same and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Ta gueule!” barked one of the motorcycle cops, while his partner turned and yelled into the other room for their captain. Moments later, a heavyset man in his mid-fifties with thinning hair and bags under his eyes entered the kitchen. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he quickly recovered and began giving orders to his men.