Middleton felt it before he saw it, the faint whump whump whump of a helicopter. When he looked up it was hovering perhaps fifty feet above the wreck of the compound, perhaps two hundred yards from his current position. One man in the helicopter squatted with his weapon, scanning the chaos while another threw over a rope ladder and waved Middleton on. He shouted something, but Middleton could not hear over the noise of the chopper.

But he could hear that noise. His hearing was returning, along with the ringing, but his hearing was coming back.

Middleton had few choices. He could attempt to find his way out of this burning mess, fighting off more Russians as he found them, or he could take the escape offered by the helicopter. That seemed to be the better of the two options. He would worry about the chopper’s BlueWatch logo later.

In her Paris suite, Leonora Tesla had fallen to her knees. She pressed her right hand against the wound in her left shoulder. It bled horribly, but it was not a life-threatening wound—certainly not if she could get medical attention soon. It hurt like hell and she tried to think clearly through the pain, see clearly through the tears of agony that clouded her vision. She still wore nothing but an oversized bath towel wrapped around her and absurdly she felt embarrassed. She should have worn something more appropriate to her own shooting.

Above her hovered the daughter of Santash Grover, the man who had studied with Sikari. Jana was tall for a South Asian, beautiful, dark in complexion, and she moved with a kind of ease and grace that Tesla could not help but admire. She was also very cruel. Tesla could see it in her eyes.

“That,” said the woman in her accented French, gesturing with her weapon toward the wound, “is to let you know that I am serious. Nothing more than that. You may think you are in pain, but it is nothing compared to what you will feel if I shoot you in your knee. In addition, you will have the knowledge that you will never walk unaided again. Think of what will happen, then, if I shoot you in both knees. Take a moment to consider these things and then I will ask you again.”

“I don’t believe I will ever walk again in any case,” Tesla replied in French, trying to think of something, anything, to give her more time, to throw this woman off balance. “You won’t leave me alive. I suspect it is the way you work, but even if it weren’t, I know you are Grover’s daughter. You think you can kill me to contain the secret, but the secret is already out. I’ve already sent a dozen emails.”