The warehouse complex squatted in the pre-dawn darkness like a sleeping beast, all shadows and sharp angles against the Swiss landscape. Alyssa lay prone on a ridge five hundred meters away, studying the target through night-vision binoculars while Marcus's voice whispered through her earpiece.
"Thermal confirms twenty-three hostiles. Six on perimeter patrol, four on rooftop overwatch, the rest inside." Static crackled. "Teams Alpha and Beta are in position. Awaiting your go signal."
Beside her, Dominic adjusted his tactical gear with practiced efficiency. He'd shed the billionaire persona completely, becoming something harder and more dangerous. "Isabella's still in the northeast corner, second floor?"
"Confirmed. Single heat signature, minimal movement. She's either restrained or..." Marcus didn't finish the thought.
"She's alive," Dominic said flatly. "Volkov needs her functional."
Alyssa swept her binoculars across the complex, memorizing every detail. The main warehouse was a brutal concrete structure, surrounded by smaller buildings and shipping containers that provided perfect cover for defenders. Too perfect.
"This feels wrong," she murmured.
"How so?"
"The security placement. It's textbook exactly what you'd expect from a professional operation. But Volkov isn't textbook. He's chaotic, unpredictable." She focused on the rooftop guards. "These men are too disciplined, too organized."
"You think it's not Volkov's people?"
"I think some of them aren't." She lowered the binoculars. "Remember what Marcus said about multiple groups operating in the area? I'm betting at least half those guards are intelligence operatives from other countries. Everyone wants that bioweapon research."
Dominic's jaw tightened. "Which means when we go in, we're not just fighting Volkov. We're fighting a small international war."
"Makes it more interesting." Alyssa checked her watch. "We move in three minutes. You remember the route?"
"Up the drainage pipe on the east wall, through the ventilation system to the second floor, extract Isabella, and down through the maintenance shaft to the tunnel entrance."
"And if we get separated?"
"Rally point Beta-Seven, the old railway junction two clicks south." He met her eyes. "But we're not getting separated. We go in together, we come out together."
"With your sister."
"With my sister."
Alyssa's earpiece crackled. "Control to all units. Satellite surveillance shows three additional vehicles approaching from the north. Unknown hostiles, ETA four minutes."
"More players joining the party," she said grimly. "We need to move now, before this turns into a complete clusterfuck."
They slithered down the ridge, using the pre-dawn darkness and sparse vegetation as cover. The warehouse complex loomed larger as they approached, concrete walls scarred with rust stains and graffiti. The drainage pipe Alyssa had identified was a corrugated steel tube running up the building's east face, wide enough for one person at a time.
"Ladies first," Dominic whispered.
Alyssa started climbing, her fingers finding purchase on the pipe's ridged surface. Twenty feet up, thirty, forty the ground fell away below them as they ascended toward the roof. Her muscles burned from the effort, but she maintained a steady pace, pausing only to check for guards.
At the roofline, she peered over the edge. Two sentries, maybe fifty meters apart, both facing outward toward the perimeter. Professional spacing, professional discipline. Definitely not street thugs.
She hand-signaled to Dominic: *Two targets, synchronized takedown.*
He nodded, producing a suppressed pistol from his tactical vest. They moved in opposite directions along the roof's edge, using air conditioning units and ventilation equipment as cover. Alyssa reached her target first a compact Asian man with military-grade night vision goggles and a Chinese QBZ assault rifle.
Intelligence operative, definitely.
She struck from behind, one hand covering his mouth while the other drove a tactical knife between his ribs. He dropped without a sound, his weapon clattering onto the roof. Across the building, she saw Dominic completing his own takedown with equally lethal efficiency.
"Roof secured," she whispered into her mic.
"Copy that. Teams Alpha and Beta, initiate breach in sixty seconds."
They located the ventilation intake exactly where the building schematics had indicated a large metal grate leading into the warehouse's air circulation system. Alyssa pried it open with her knife while Dominic kept watch, then slipped into the narrow ductwork.
The metal tunnel was cramped and stifling, barely wide enough for her shoulders. She crawled forward through absolute darkness, following the building's blueprint in her memory. Left turn, straight for twenty meters, then down through a vertical shaft to the second floor.
Behind her, she could hear Dominic's labored breathing as he struggled through the confined space. For a man accustomed to corner offices and private jets, he was adapting remarkably well to tactical operations.
Gunfire erupted somewhere below them Alpha Team beginning their assault. The sound was muffled by the building's structure, but she could hear the distinctive crack of assault rifles and the deeper boom of explosives.
"Contact," Marcus's voice crackled through her earpiece. "Heavy resistance on the ground floor. They were ready for us."
Of course they were. Volkov hadn't survived this long by being unprepared.
Alyssa reached the vertical shaft and began her descent, using her elbows and knees to control her slide through the narrow space. Ten feet down, she found the access panel leading to the second floor corridor.
She paused, listening. Footsteps in the hallway outside at least two people, moving with purpose. Guards relocating to reinforce the ground floor, most likely.
She waited until the footsteps faded, then carefully removed the access panel and dropped into the corridor.
The hallway was dimly lit by emergency lighting, concrete walls lined with pipes and electrical conduits. Industrial architecture at its most utilitarian. She helped Dominic down from the shaft, then oriented herself using the building plans.
"Northeast corner," she whispered. "Forty meters that way."
They moved through the corridor like ghosts, weapons ready, senses hyperalert. The gunfire below was intensifying. Marcus's teams were encountering serious resistance. But that was good. The more attention focused on the ground floor, the less likely they were to encounter guards up here.
They reached a junction in the corridor. Left led deeper into the building. Right led toward the northeast corner where Isabella was being held. Alyssa was about to signal the turn when she heard something that made her blood freeze.
Laughter. Cold, mocking, and terrifyingly familiar.
Nikolai Petrov.
"I was wondering when you would arrive," his voice echoed from around the corner. "Right on schedule, as always. You were never very good at avoiding traps, were you, Ms. Carter?"
Alyssa pressed herself against the wall, mind racing. Ambush. They'd walked straight into an ambush, despite all their planning and preparation.
"Come now," Nikolai continued. "I know you can hear me. And I know Mr. Hayes is with you. Such a touching partnership the killer and the billionaire, united by love and mutual stupidity."
Dominic raised his weapon, but Alyssa held up a hand. Wait. Listen. Learn.
"You want to see his sister? She is here, of course. Right where we said she would be. But she is not alone." The sound of duct tape being ripped. A muffled scream. "Say hello, Dr. Hayes."
Isabella's voice, terrified but alive: "Dominic, don't it's a trap! They have Julian and Dr. Chen! They're going to "
The sound cut off abruptly.
"As you can see, she is unharmed. For now." Nikolai's voice was conversational, almost pleasant. "But her continued well-being depends entirely on your cooperation. You have thirty seconds to surrender your weapons and step around that corner, or I begin removing her fingers."
Alyssa looked at Dominic, saw the anguish in his eyes. His sister his responsibility, his guilt. He would do anything to save her, including walking into certain death.
"Ten seconds," Nikolai announced.
Dominic started forward, but Alyssa grabbed his arm. "Wait," she whispered.
"I can't let him "
"Trust me." She was already moving, pulling a flash-bang grenade from her vest. "When I give the signal, you go left. I'll go right. Converging fire on anything that moves."
"He'll kill her."
"No, he won't. She's too valuable." Alyssa pulled the pin, holding the spoon down. "But if we surrender, he'll kill all of us. Including Isabella."
"Time's up," Nikolai called. "I hope you said goodbye to "
Alyssa released the spoon and rolled the grenade around the corner.
The explosion was deafening in the confined space, followed immediately by screams and the clatter of dropped weapons. She went around the corner fast and low, Dominic right behind her, both of them firing at anything that moved in the strobing afterimage of the blast.
Three hostiles went down in the first burst of gunfire. A fourth tried to raise his rifle, but Dominic put two rounds center mass before he could aim. The corridor filled with smoke and the metallic smell of blood.
And there, tied to a chair in what had once been an office, was Isabella Hayes.
She was alive, conscious, and absolutely furious.
"About damn time," she said as Alyssa cut her restraints. "Do you have any idea what these assholes have put me through?"
"Are you hurt?" Dominic was already checking her for injuries.
"Bruised, pissed off, but functional." Isabella stood on shaky legs. "But Dominic, they have Julian and Dr. Chen somewhere else in the building. And they're not just after my research they have samples. Live cultures of the synthetic anthrax variants."
Alyssa felt ice in her veins. "How much?"
"Enough to kill half of Europe if they weaponize it properly." Isabella's face was grim. "We have to stop them."
"First we get you out of here," Dominic said.
"No." Isabella's voice was hard as steel. "Those cultures are unstable without proper containment. If they try to transport them..."
"They'll accidentally release the pathogen," Alyssa finished.
"Right here. Right now. In the middle of Geneva." Isabella met her brother's eyes. "We don't run, Dominic. We end this."
From somewhere in the building came the sound of breaking glass and screaming. Not gunfire something else. Something worse.
And Alyssa realized that their rescue mission had just become a race to prevent biological Armageddon.