The Thirteenth Skull

“What is it?” I asked.

“Shh!” She listened for a few more seconds.

“They’re talking about a package . . . on its way . . . This sounds like Nueve . . . All units to rendezvous at the helipad . . . Nueve’s en route . . .”

“Package?”

She looked at her watch. “Thirty minutes.”

“What package?”

She was walking again, quickly now, back into the trees and up the slope. Our boots crunched in the fresh snowfall.

“I’m guessing it’s a replacement for the SD 1031 in your pocket,” she said.

“He gets his hands on that and we’re toast,” I said.

“What’s the plan?”

“We have to stop him before he takes delivery.”

“That’s more of a goal than a plan,” I pointed out.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

I tried to come up with one. We were two against OIPEP’s full force on the mountain. Ashley was a trained field operative and I wasn’t exactly a novice by this point; still, there were only two of us and a lot of them, plus Nueve who wouldn’t let niceties like keeping casualties low stand in his way. Even if we took a hostage, Nueve wouldn’t care. A frontal assault was suicidal, but how could we sneak in? They knew Ashley and they sure as heck knew me.

“We have to create some kind of diversion,” I said. “A fire or explosion—and while they’re distracted . . .”

“And what are we going to blow up, Alfred? The only bomb we have is inside your head.”

I stopped walking. She didn’t notice at first, she was so focused on making it to the helipad before the chopper landed. When she did, she turned and stared at me.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve got it,” I said. “The one thing he wants that we have.”

“I know, but he’s getting another one.” She had a concerned look on her face, like she was worried I had finally cracked.

“No,” I said. “There might be a hundred little black boxes, but there’s only one Alfred Kropp.”

01:17:04:39

Twenty-five minutes and a hard hike through dense woods and heavy snow later . . .

A helicopter hovers over a landing pad nestled in a valley in the Canadian wilderness . . .

While forty heavily armed men encircle the perimeter . . .

. . . and a dark-haired man with a lean face and piercing black eyes waits, leaning on a black cane, thinking, maybe, that the kid should have killed him when he had the chance because it’s done now, the game’s over . . .

. . . as the kid lies on his belly a dozen yards away, hidden in the trees, sweating despite the bitter cold that’s caused icicles to form on his eyebrows, praying he still has one move left in the game that the Operative Nine assumes is over . . .

Beside him, the girl whispers, “Now?”

“Not yet.”

Must move before Nueve reaches the chopper. Timing was everything in this game and up to this point the kid’s had none. Events have controlled him and the kid is now at the point where he either takes control of events or the events overwhelm him. Dr. Mingus waits at the château with his scalpel and his vials.

So when the skids of the chopper brush the icy concrete, the kid is up and running, straight for the pad, tossing his AK-47 to the ground, both hands over his head, one empty, the other holding the black box, his thumb resting on the blue button.

The foot soldiers don’t get it. They swing their rifles toward the kid, fingers quivering on the triggers, centering his tall, lanky frame in their scopes.

The Operative Nine gets it though. He gets it immediately, because that’s his job—to get it before anyone else does; in the time it takes for most people to realize a new move’s being played, he’s already absorbed the play and all its repercussions, and he’s making his countermove.

He shouts for them to lower their weapons, but they can’t hear him over the roar of the chopper, so he makes a slicing motion across his throat as the bird settles to the ground. The pilot cuts the engine.

The kid keeps walking, up to the line of the men standing between him and the chopper and the place inside the circle of guns where Nueve stands.

Hands high.

Thumb on the button.

If he’s wrong about this, he’s dead. The girl, too, probably. Nueve would kill her because alive she serves no purpose. And it doesn’t matter that she loves him—or used to love him—and his feelings—if he has them—don’t matter either. He is the Operative Nine, and nothing matters but the mission.

The kid prays there’s a purpose to Mingus and the vials. He doesn’t know what that purpose is, but he prays he’s still a Special Item in OIPEP’s eyes.

“Lower your weapons,” Nueve said in a calm voice. “Let him through.”

I walked through and their line closed around me. I held the box, Nueve held his cane, and the men behind us held their assault rifles.

“This is the moment when I say, ‘Ah, Alfred Kropp, we meet again,’ ” Nueve said.

“We’re checking out of Club OIPEP,” I told him. “Me and Ashley.”

“It’s more akin to the Hotel California, Alfred,” he said.

“What?”

“An obscure reference to a song well before your time. You intend to press the blue button. Proceed. Press it.”

My thumb hovered over the button.

“He who hesitates,” Nueve said softly.

I pressed the blue button. The red one next to it began to low.

“You truly are extraordinary, Alfred,” he said. “In another life, you would have made a superb Superseding Protocol Agent. You are about to say you have no choice because we’ve given you no choice.”

I nodded. “You’ve given me no choice.”

“That the choice between spending the rest of your life here as our lobotomized guest and dying here, right now, is no choice at all. You would rather die.”

“That’s right. I’d rather end it now than spend the rest of my life as a vegetable.”

“And you are gambling that your death would completely disrupt our plans for you.”

“I knew you’d get it.”

His dark eyes danced. “I get everything. What would you say, Alfred, if I told you that we have more than enough samples to render your continued existence irrelevant?”

“I would say you’re bluffing,” I answered.

His right eyebrow climbed toward his hairline. “Because?”