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Bazin looked at him in the mirrored finish. “You’ll have to shoot him to get me.”
“Not what I had in mind.” Juan shifted the Colt’s sight to the metal sign. He waited until Bazin eyed him with a sneer, then triggered the laser.
Bazin cried out as the powerful beam blinded him and he let go of Schmidt, who ran toward Juan in a panic. There was no way to fire again safely until he was out of the way.
“Down!” Juan shouted. Schmidt tripped over his own feet and went sprawling, bashing his head against a metal shelf. Juan had his first clear field of fire at Bazin, who was still blinking away the dazzling effect of the laser.
The door to the hall flung open and another Haitian charged in, dual pistols blazing. The clever Bazin had been stalling, waiting for his man to arrive and outflank Juan. Juan didn’t have time for more than a couple of wild shots as he dived for cover.
At the same time, the C-4 sailed over the shelf and landed on the floor next to the dual-wielding gunman. He looked with curiosity at the device before it detonated.
The blast hurled him like a rag doll against a shelf, knocking it over and causing a domino effect of tumbling shelves.
Bazin took advantage of the distraction and darted through the door next to him.
“Eric!” Juan yelled. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. Just buried under some books.”
Juan pulled the dazed Schmidt to his feet and pointed at Eric. “Help him.” Schmidt nodded, and Juan dashed through the hallway door in pursuit of Bazin.
As soon as he got
outside, he saw Bazin running around the corner. When he saw Juan, he changed course and shot out the glass window into the central atrium. He jumped through and onto a table, past the students who were already rushing toward the exits in response to the blast and gunshots.
Juan chased after him. The masses of students in the background prevented him from taking a shot at Bazin, who vaulted down the terraces.
Juan was one terrace behind. Their jumps down to the next level were synchronized. When he reached the bottom, Bazin avoided the main entrance where the students were streaming out and instead crashed through an emergency exit.
Juan burst through the door seconds later to find near-blizzard conditions. Wind howled, and the icy flakes needled his exposed skin. The only good thing about the weather was that he could tell exactly where Bazin had gone.
Juan sprinted after the fresh pair of footprints.
Martinique
Max kept track of the recovery process from his engineering station in the op center. According to the latest reports from the divers on the Roraima, shoring up the collapsed steel girders was complete and they were beginning to dig through the debris where they’d gotten the radiation readings and found the camera lens. Eddie and Linc were about to go down for their second dive and join the search. If any photo tins were left intact down there, they should be relatively near the surface since the passenger cabins had been at the top of the ship.
“Max,” Mark Murphy said with uncharacteristic alarm, “you better get over here and see this.”
“Are the radiation readings spiking?” Max asked as he went over.
“Worse. I just got an email.”
“From who?”
“That’s problem number one. I don’t know.”
When Max reached Murph’s station, he immediately saw the second problem. The email contained two photo attachments. The first was a picture of the interior of a tourist submarine with two rows of people, sitting back to back, with their wrists bound behind them and blindfolded. In the background was a plastic shipping barrel. The second photo showed what was in the barrel. It was enough dynamite to blast the sub to bits.
The message had only one line: Stay away or they all die.
Max frowned at the screen. “You don’t know how you got this?”
Murph threw his hands in the air, flummoxed. “This is my private Corporation account. Nobody but the people on this ship should have the email address.”
The breach was further confirmation that their security had been compromised.
“What does he mean ‘stay away’?” Murph said.
