My instinct was to hot-foot it out of there and find them; but that was poor thinking. Just because the bomb wasn’t active at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t be activated by one of the Upierczi here in the refinery. The only way I could prevent that would be to remove the entire triggering system, and that was going to take ten careful minutes. Inactive or not, it was still a nuke and there was always the possibility of booby traps.

Ghost suddenly looked past me and barked. Loud, angry, and scared.

I spun, bringing the pistol up.

Red Knights.

And I didn’t have nearly enough bullets.

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Arklight Camp

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 6:15 a.m.

Church closed his phone and thought about what Alexander Chismer—Toys—had told him. Much of it was information he already had. Some of it was Toys’s guesswork whose accuracy Church doubted. Some of it, though …

Hugo’s cancer.

Upier 531. Dr. Hasbrouck.

The disease and its possible cure explained two key parts of this puzzle. The viciousness was born out of frustration as a narcissistic megalomaniac lashed out from his deathbed. Vox wanted to light a nuclear pyre to mark his own death. Very dramatic, mused Church. Very Hugo.

Then there was the improbable amount of useful information on Rasouli’s flash drive. Vox had used Rasouli to provide the DMS with virtually everything it needed to hunt for the nukes. Why would he do that?

It made no sense unless Dr. Hasbrouck’s treatment had worked.

Hugo no longer wanted to burn the world because he intended to live in it.

Toys had not said any of this in plain language. The young man was more than half crazy with guilt and self-loathing—both for past actions and for betraying Vox with this call—but the essence of Vox’s plan was buried within Toys’s rambling confession.

One element remained obscure, however. Nicodemus. No matter how this thing was turned, the old priest—if priest he was—leered out at them.

Church called Joe Ledger, but there was no signal.

The most crucial thing was the leverage Vox had used to stall Grigor long enough in order to receive the full set of Upier 531 treatments.

The code scrambler. Without that, the nukes were dangerous, but they were sleeping dragons. He called for Lilith and briefed her and then used the team com channel to call Top Sims.

“Deacon for Sergeant Rock.”

“Go for Rock.”

“Sit rep.”

“Cowboy is at zero point. We’re converging on his location. No fuss, no muss upstairs.”

“Proceed with utmost haste. High probability that the nuke is not yet armed. Grigor may be on the way there with the code scrambler. Unknown if other activation codes have been sent. Regardless, obtaining that scrambler is now priority one, superseding all mission objectives and restrictions. Confirm understanding”

“Copy that.”