SHANNON SMELLED the musty scent of sweat the moment the doors opened and he was back-pedaling to the corner before they stopped. He sighted down the wall and waited.

The doors closed on the occupant, but the elevator sat still. He waited with his gun arm extended. The charges in the hangar would explode in less than five minutes. He didn’t have all day.

The door opened again and after a moment a gun poked past the wall. Still he waited, his patience wearing thin.

A hand followed the gun. Shannon shot then, into the hand. The slug took it off at the knuckles and he ran forward. The hall filled with the gunman’s wail.

Shannon’s mind echoed with another wail—a wail suggesting that he didn’t have the time for this. He stepped into the elevator just as the doors began to close. The man he’d wounded knelt in a gathering pool of blood. It was the one-eyed man. Shannon shot him through the forehead and had a hand on his collar before the head lolled back. The man’s eyes remained open. He angrily jerked the body from the car, leapt over it, and stabbed the third-floor button.

Too slow. Any minute the mountain would begin its collapse under heavy explosions.

The elevator groaned upward. Shannon cursed the heat flashing along his spine. Anger blurred his thinking. What if Abdullah waited in ambush on the third floor? Had he thought that through? No. He only wanted to kill the man, a blind desire that ran through his blood like molten lead. Eight years of plotting had finally come to this moment.

And what if Abdullah wasn’t up there at all?

Shannon ground his teeth. The bell sounded and the door slid open before his extended gun.

The hall was empty.

He stepped from the car, thinking even as his foot cleared the threshold that he was in a fool’s game now. Acting before thinking.

The hall lay vacant and white-walled excepting two brown doors. Shannon ran for the first, tossing the Browning to his left hand midstride. The door was locked. Any minute now that C-4 would start blowing the helicopters. Grunting against a surge of panic, he stepped back, pumped a single slug through the handle, and smashed his foot against the door. It snapped open and he jumped through, gun extended.

The contents of the room barely registered. Some kind of storage. What did register was that they did not include Abdullah.

Shannon spun around and ran for the second door. This time he didn’t bother trying the handle. He simply shot through the lock and crashed it open with the sole of his foot. He leapt through and fell to a crouch, swinging his weapon in a quick arc.

A desk strewn with papers was on one end of the office; a tall bookcase stood against the other. The office was empty! Impossible!