Page 107 of Silent Target

“So what do you suggest?”

“We take the command center first. Fathom stops the purge. Then we follow the rail line.”

“And if the Chairman leaves before that?”

I look at Evie.

She already understands.

“The seventh drive is connected to the other six,” she says. “He can’t destroy them remotely without maintaining the link.”

Fathom nods. “If he disconnects, the countdown stops.”

“Then he won’t leave until the purge finishes.”

Rook checks his weapon.

“Left tunnel.”

We continue toward the bunker.

Behind us, the prisoner laughs.

Quietly.

Confidently.

“You’re already too late.”

The timer reaches six minutes.

And somewhere inside the mountain, a massive engine awakens.

The underground train is preparing to leave.

22

EVIE

The drainage channel ends beneath a rusted maintenance grate.

Above us, machinery hums through the concrete.

Fathom studies the building plans on his tablet.

“The command bunker is forty feet overhead.”

“What’s between us and it?” Rook asks.

“Four reinforced levels. Maintenance corridors, storage rooms, an armory, and the central operations floor.”

Falcon gives a low whistle. “That isn’t a bunker.”

“No,” Mac says. “It was designed to survive a war.”

The countdown reads five minutes, thirty-eight seconds.

Cobra examines the grate.