After a few moments, Randi started in the direction Ivers had gone, no longer concerned about the projectiles or anything else Takahashi could throw at her. The team she’d put together was down, a bunch of innocent kids were dead, and pretty soon that genocidal maniac was going to go on a rampage through the most populous country in the world.

Yet she kept on breathing. It was her greatest talent. Sometimes she wondered if it was her only talent.

Reiji was lying facedown, penetrated by no fewer than four of Takahashi’s projectiles. Ivers was up another twenty yards, kneeling over his dead wife. Randi gave him a wide berth. What could she possibly do? What could she say?

Instead she headed for the table they’d been using as a command center. The secure satellite link was undamaged and she put the headset on, opening an encrypted channel to Fred Klein.

“Go ahead,” said the familiar voice.

“We’re shut down.”

“Casualties?”

“Two survivors including me.”

“The professor and his stu—”

“Gone.”

“Understood. I have an extraction team on alert at the Okinawa air base. They’ll be in the air in—”

“No. I don’t know what we’re dealing with and I’m not going to put any more of our people in the line of fire. Eric and I will find our way home by ourselves.”

61

61

Outside Tokyo
Japan

General Masao Takahashi sat silently in the back of the limousine as his driver weaved through the small, private airport. It had been three hours since he’d been chased from his own facility by the American and the traitor Hideki Ito. Communications had been lost and according to the team he’d sent to the site, the blast doors were sealed. With no sign of life inside and exterior radiation levels well above normal, it appeared that the emergency sterilization protocol had been carried out.

Takahashi glanced down at his briefcase, confirming once again that it was resting safely on the seat next to him. The two canisters inside were all that was left of the weapon. Its creator was dead, the development facility would be uninhabitable for a thousand years, and the fourteen other canisters had been irradiated.

It didn’t matter, though. Ito and the American had failed. While the destruction of China’s infrastructure would be slower and more haphazard than he had planned, it would be just as complete. That was the genius of the weapon. It had a life of its own.